Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  “I’ll shoot you a text with the details, and I’ll make some calls, tell everyone you’re in town.”

  “Sounds awesome.”

  “Great seeing you. Nice meeting you,” he said to Beccy, and then he turned and wandered over to the bar.

  “Friend of yours?” she asked with a grin.

  “High school. Linebacker. Nice guy.”

  “Who refers to his wife as numero deux.”

  “We all have our foibles.”

  “Numero is Italian, deux is French.”

  “That’s your problem with that sentence?”

  “Oh, I have many. And what did he call you? Redshirt?”

  “It’s an old thing.”

  “With a story behind it, I can tell.”

  “I got the nickname in school.”

  “You really do have a thing for nicknames, don’t you.”

  “I don’t go looking for them, but they do tend to stick.”

  “So how’d you get it?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I really do.”

  I sipped my wine. “It was from middle school, I guess. Not long after my mom passed.” I stared into my glass and swirled the burgundy-colored liquid. “Things weren’t so great at home, as you know. Dad was drinking and going further down the rabbit hole, and there didn’t seem to be anything anyone could do to stop him. I was pretty messed up, I suppose, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, certainly not dad. If I just mentioned mom he’d either burst into tears or run to the kitchen for a bottle of something. So my grades were sliding and I sort of lost interest in sports for a bit.”

  I took another sip but didn’t look up at Beccy. I just kept talking.

  “Coach Dunbar wasn’t just the high school football coach. He was the athletic director for both the local high school and middle school. It’s not like Texas here. They don’t pay top dollar for coaches, at least they certainly didn’t then. Most coaches were teachers who got a little extra stipend to coach a team. So anyway, Coach Dunbar knew what was going on with me, and I guess he saw me slipping away, I don’t know. He kind of took me under his wing. But he didn’t have the time to spend much of his day at the middle school, so he brought me up to the high school for practice and sat me on the bench with the junior varsity football team. I guess so he could keep an eye on me, or to keep me out of trouble. I couldn’t play, of course, because I wasn’t actually in high school yet, so he told everyone I was redshirting.”

  “Like a redshirt freshman,” Beccy said. “Spending a year on the bench before you’re eligible to play.”

  “More or less. The next year I moved up to high school and I was able to take the field, but the name kind of stuck. I was Redshirt until the day I left Connecticut.”

  “When you became Miami.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then that kind of stuck.”

  “It did. Not sure I’ll ever be rid of that moniker.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I like it fine. It’s who I am. Just like Redshirt was who I was back then.”

  Beccy smiled warmly. “So you do owe this Coach Dunbar.”

  “Yeah, I do. But enough about all that,” I said, wanting to talk about anything else. “What about you? You still enjoying ESPN? You mentioned something earlier about maybe not being in New York anymore?”

  She flicked at her hair. “No, I was in Manhattan at first. That was kind of fun, but the main production campus for ESPN is out here in Connecticut.”

  “Bristol, right?”

  “That’s right. And when I wasn’t doing games, I was spending more time there and less time in the New York studio, and the commute was killing me. It was like two hours each way.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yeah, it was a killer. So in the end I left Manhattan behind.”

  “You live in Bristol?”

  “Hell, no. Going from Manhattan to Bristol would have been like moving to a Mars colony. No, I got a place in Hartford.”

  “The insurance capital of the world.”

  “It’s no Manhattan, but there is life there.”

  “You should chat with Dustin, he’s into insurance,” I said, nodding toward my old high school pal at the bar.

  “And shoot for being wifey numero trois? No thanks.”

  “That’s what drives most people into Connecticut. Marriage, family, all that.”

  “Yeah, that’s most of my neighbors.”

  “But not you?”

  She swirled her wine, and then she looked at me. “No, not me.”

  “Career first,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.

  “Something like that.”

  “You not enjoying it?”

  “It’s not that. I like it fine. I’ve gotten opportunities to produce segments, a 30 for 30 piece. I’d like to do more with that, but the opportunities are few and far between.”

  “So?”

  She looked at her wine again, perhaps thinking over choices made, or perhaps assessing whether she wanted to answer my query. I noted the cloudiness in her eyes. In our day she had been steadfast in her determination to make it as a television sports journalist. She knew exactly what she wanted and she knew the steps to get there. Now the certainty was gone. I knew that feeling. I had been similarly certain about my baseball career at one time. I had never expected it to be easy, but I was certain it would happen. Then I got called up by the Oakland A’s, and then I sat in the bullpen for 29 days as the season came to a close, and that was the pinnacle of my career. After that season I was traded to the Mets, who placed me with their affiliate in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and by the time I met Beccy my certainty had begun to crack, and the winding path that we call life had started to reveal a fork in the road.

  “When we broke up, I told myself it was because you had given up,” she said. “You had this dream, to play baseball, and you gave up on it. I told myself that I wasn’t going to stay in Florida and do that.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “About you. About all of it.”

  “We were good for a while,” I said. “But we weren’t destined to sail the whole journey together.”

  “No, I get that. I don’t mean that. Don’t get me wrong, you were fun, but I don’t want to be wifey numero deux to a Miami private eye.”

  “I work in Palm Beach.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I don’t mean to belittle it, what you have there. It’s something good, I think. Something I don’t have. Here, people all seem to have an angle. You can either do something for them or you can’t, and that defines the relationships you have.”

  “Maybe you’re hanging with the wrong people.”

  “Or maybe I finally get it. I see why you stopped playing ball. You stopped because life moves on. What did Shakespeare say? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. We change because life is unpredictable, but we also change simply because we change. The goal posts move—hell, the game itself changes.”

  I nodded. “Shakespeare? That’s pretty impressive.”

  “English and journalism. Don’t let it be said I wasted my college days.”

  We ordered another round of drinks and the sun left us behind and the candles really kicked in.

  “So what’s next, then?” I asked. “I can accept that your goals have changed, but I find it hard to believe that the Beccy Williams determination I knew has completely died.”

  “I don’t know. That’s the hard bit, right? When you finished baseball, did you know exactly what would be next?”

  “Not really. I let the river guide me, to be honest. And then I found some people to care about, and I found Danielle, and that was more than I ever thought I’d get.”

  “I have been talking with Fox.”

  “About?”

  “More producing. You remember I worked with them in Florida.”
/>   “I do.”

  “So a guy I worked with when I did sidelines down there approached me about some stuff after he saw a segment I did for ESPN.”

  “Sounds promising. Are they in New York?”

  “They have a studio there, of course, but this guy works out of their HQ in Century City.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Big move.”

  “That’s part of my concern.”

  “It’s just geography.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “People always talk about moves like that with such finality. It’s not Mars. They have oxygen in LA, and they have humans and they have food. Granted their oxygen and their humans and their food are a bit different on the West Coast, but they’re still there. It’s sunny and it’s not humid and the traffic really is a killer, but you’ll either love it or you won’t. If you love it, then great. If not, move on. There are other places and they all have oxygen and humans and food. You’ll find one that fits. Go find your tribe.”

  “My tribe?”

  “Yeah. Go find a group of people who you like, and not necessarily because they are exactly like you. Look inside. That’s what I did. Not intentionally, but that’s how it turned out. I found a bunch of people that I get, and who get me. And I’ve come to realize that there’s a group like that for everyone. So go find them.”

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You sound like one of those guys. Go find your tribe. You’re going to start doing motivational videos next.”

  “I don’t know how to work a video camera.”

  “You can do that stuff on a phone now.”

  “Shows you what I know.”

  Beccy smiled and flicked her hair, and then dropped the smile.

  “There’s this guy out there.”

  “This guy?”

  “Yes. We met at an industry event in Manhattan.”

  “He’s in LA?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you be working with him?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “It’s a pressure you don’t need, that’s all. Especially in the beginning. So what’s stopping you?”

  She looked me in the eye. They were blue like the water over the Bahama banks, inviting me in with a siren song.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “All of a sudden, I don’t know what the right move is.”

  “You’re having a crisis of confidence.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. You think you’re a sideline reporter and maybe that’s all you’re good at.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ve built a career in front of the camera, and to be fair, you’ve built a lot of that on the fact that you look good in front of that camera.”

  “You want to test me about what I know about sports?”

  “Nope, because you’ll win, and I’m not saying one is exclusive from the other. I’m saying it was an attribute you had, and you used it to your advantage, just like I could throw a fastball better than a lot of guys. But I got older, and my fastball got slower. And now that I’m sitting here with you, I can see that what you’re wondering is, what happens if your looks fade but there’s nothing of value inside.”

  “Don’t hold anything back, will you?”

  “I’m on a roll now, and I think you need to hear this. Because these new opportunities, these producing segments and such, they all depend on attributes other than the ones you have depended on. Your looks and your sports knowledge don’t really matter. So my advice to you? Go do it. Go to California, go do this thing. Be a small fish in a big pond and fight hard and work your tail off and get better at the things you’re afraid of.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then it doesn’t work. So what. They have oxygen and humans and food. You’ll be older, wiser, and have some new skills.”

  “And maybe a broken heart.”

  “You think that’s his plan?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because if you do, take that off the table right now. That’s the kind of thing we mess with in our twenties, but seriously, time’s too short. Sex is fun but you get too few days to not wake up with someone you love. If a broken heart is the price the ferryman requires to find someone worth holding onto, then it’s a price worth paying.”

  She sipped her wine. I knew she was listening, but I didn’t know if she was hearing me. I wasn’t expecting her to stand up and proclaim I’ll do it and then march out of the wine bar to pack a bag and catch a flight. She wasn’t that kind of gal. She’d think it over and she’d make up her own mind in her own time.

  The conversation turned to sports and we both took a breath and stayed on familiar ground. After the second wine neither of us instigated a third, and then we paid the check and wandered outside.

  “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” she asked me.

  “No, I think I’ll walk.” It was a fair march back to the Dunbars’, and the night had gotten cold, but I felt like I could use the air.

  We walked to her car, and then she put her hands on my shoulders and then pushed up on one foot and kissed me on the cheek. It had a strange feeling to it, a feeling of finality, as if one of us was going off to war and the odds were they we weren’t coming back.

  Beccy stepped lightly around her car, opened the door, and tossed her bag inside. Then she stood and looked at me across the hood of her SUV.

  “You know your old friend in Florida,” she said. “That guy Lenny.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  “He’s still alive,” she said.

  I frowned. That wasn’t true. I knew that for a stone cold fact.

  “I wish,” I said.

  “He is,” she said, and she pointed right at me. Then she slipped into her car and drove away.

  I watched her taillights turn off the square around the green and head for the freeway, and then I started walking. I regretted not getting a ride within minutes, and I thought of all the times that I had run home from football training in nothing but shorts and a sweatshirt, oblivious to the cold. Perhaps Florida had made me soft.

  As I picked up the pace to keep warm, I pulled out my phone and made a call to someone else that Florida had probably made soft.

  “What’s news, kid,” said the gruff voice on the line.

  “I’m cold, Sal,” I said.

  “It might dip into the seventies tonight.”

  “Or lower, where I am.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Connecticut.”

  There was long pause, and then, “What’s wrong?”

  Sally Mondavi knew my story as well as anyone, even Danielle. There were parts of my history that I chose not to share with her because she always looked at me with a sparkle in her eye, and I never wanted to give her cause to lose that. Sal, on the other hand, had done and seen things that made me look like a choir boy, so he pretty much knew it all.

  I told Sal the story of Coach Dunbar, of how Kerry had called me and how I had felt compelled to come. I didn’t need to explain why. Sally knew more about that than I ever would. A lot of people owed Sally Mondavi, and not just the money that ran through his West Palm Beach pawn shop. He had helped a lot of people, a lot of at-risk kids particularly, to find a better path. There were folks all over South Florida who would drop everything without hesitation if they got even a hint that Sal needed help. I told him about Brett, and his wheeling and dealing. I told him about the Russians.

  “You know anyone like that?” I asked.

  “I know everyone like that. Or I know someone who knows. You got a name?”

  “Nurlan.”

  “That a first or a last?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just known as Nurlan, apparently.”

  “Like a Brazilian soccer player.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I
’ll make some calls.”

  “Thanks, Sal.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Cold, but fine.”

  “Don’t stay too long, you’ll get frostbite.”

  “Roger that.”

  “You going to the game tomorrow?”

  “What game?”

  “The cold must have frozen your brain. Jets-Pats.”

  “The Jets and the Patriots are playing tomorrow? Where?”

  “Meadowlands.”

  “I’m not going out to New Jersey.”

  “You afraid?” he asked. I could hear the snigger in his voice.

  “Of the Jets? Unlikely.”

  “Well you should be. This is our year.”

  “You say that every year.”

  “Aach,” he said in lieu of saying something coherent.

  I said goodbye to Sally and he promised to be in touch. I wandered along Chapel Street, away from the green and into the suburbs near the river. Chapel Street eventually passed by Yale Bowl, now dark and dormant, and then I cut north into the tree-lined subdivision that gave the night a new depth.

  I stopped outside the Dunbar residence. There were vehicles in the driveway and I watched the yellow glow from the windows for a moment but saw no movement. I felt something holding me from going inside, and then I thought of Beccy, and of moving forward, so I ambled along the driveway to the back door, and I stepped inside.

  The room smelled of pizza, and I heard the giddy laughter of a young child. Kerry Dunbar was in the kitchen, carrying plates.

  “Just in time,” she said. “We’re having pizza.”

  “I can smell it.” I hadn’t eaten in forever and my stomach growled.

  I followed Kerry into the dining room. Mrs. Dunbar was at her end and Coach was at his, and on the far side sat two kids, a boy maybe eight years old and a girl who was about six. They were smiling and giggling at the prospect of pizza in the way that only kids can. I noted that both Mrs. D and Coach wore smiles that reflected those coming from the children. It was the first time I had seen Coach smile since I had been back, and it lifted my spirits.

  I sat next to Kerry and she introduced her children, and said they had the Thanksgiving week off from school, and that they would be joined by their father on Tuesday night. We didn’t talk about Brett Pickering. For one evening it was like the ghost of Christmas past and Christmas future, except it was Thanksgiving. I saw myself years before, these same people at this same table, only the children were Kerry and I, and I gave a silent thanks for them all. We ate pizza and drank Cokes and talked about football and turkeys and the likelihood of snow on Thursday, the way families do.