Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

  “Well, I sure miss you, honey.” She always says shit like that. But we avoid each other like the flu.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I know.”

  “You’ve got to come see us soon.”

  “Yeah. I will.” “Us” means her and Norm, the guy she lives with in New Jersey. I’ve met him twice. He plays a lot of golf. Cares a lot about his car. Smokes cigars. Wheezes.

  “Did you get my card?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” A Christmas card with a puppy wearing a Santa Claus hat on the front, and a check for twenty-five dollars.

  “Oh,” she says. “Well, I miss you.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry you’re alone,” she says.

  “It’s all right.”

  “No. It isn’t,” she says.

  I wince a little, because her tone is starting to change. That’s inevitable, but I’d hoped we could feign togetherness for a few minutes longer.

  I hear her sigh. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Mom.”

  “I don’t just mean today,” she says.

  “Mom …”

  “No. Why the hell did he have to leave you like that?” she says. “He had no right.”

  “It’s okay,” I say softly. “I’m fine.”

  “I guess he used up all the whores in the county,” she says. “Had to start looking elsewhere.”

  Jesus, this is all I need. “I’m not sure you’re being fair,” I say.

  “Oh, don’t go sticking up for him again,” she says. “He abandoned you, Jay. He’s scum.”

  I let out my breath, which I guess I’ve been holding. “He didn’t abandon me. He just got on with his life. It’s not like I’m nine years old again.”

  Everything ices up with that comment. I try an abrupt change of subject, which at least will end the conversation in a hurry. “So,” I say. “Did he get you some nice presents?”

  “Did who get me nice presents?”

  Huh? “Norm.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Like what?”

  “Gifts.”

  “I see.” We don’t say anything for a few seconds, which seems like an hour. “Well,” I say. “You probably have a lot to do.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, then. Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And to Norm.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Bye.”

  I stare at the phone. And to all a good night.

  When Spit shows up, I’m in my underwear, eating sardines out of a can.

  “My mother said I should come check on you,” she says, leaning against the door frame.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She’s got her hair pulled back in a ponytail, a look I’ve never seen on her. “She said to drag you out of this hole and haul you over to our house.”

  “What made her say that?” I set the sardines on the radiator and look around for my pants. I’m uneasy about this. A big part of me would rather be by myself than have anyone feeling sorry for me.

  “We were just sitting around and I said, ‘Shit. Jay must be all alone.’ So she sent me over here.”

  “That’s nice of her. She doesn’t even know me.”

  “She’s a great mom. She asks about you.” She gives me a sweet smile. “Ever since you rescued me.”

  “I should bring her something.”

  “Forget it. We did the big gift thing last night. Today we mostly eat.”

  “Okay.” I don’t have anything to bring anyway. Pop-Tarts, maybe. Or potato chips.

  It’s late afternoon and the streets are empty. We walk up Main Street and turn toward the hospital. They rent the first floor of a house back here.

  Her mother greets me at the door in a green dress and bare feet. They have a tree; it’s small but real, decorated with a string of tiny blue lights and wooden figurines.

  “Jay,” her mom says. “We were ready to eat, and Sarita mentioned that you were likely to be alone.”

  “It’s all right,” I say. “I called my mother …. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  There’s braided bread on the table, which is set for four. “Can I help with anything?” I ask.

  “Would you like to pour some cider for us?” she asks.

  “Sure. Three of us?”

  “Yeah,” Spit says. “That fourth one is for the ancestors. They all crowd in there together.”

  “I see.”

  Her mom gives her a playful slap on the wrist. “It’s a tradition to set a place for our ancestors at Christmas dinner, Jay.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  So I go into the kitchen, which is painted in warm colors and has big ladles and tongs and things hanging from the wall, and garlic and other spices. Great kitchen. Not like Shorty’s.

  We eat a salad with mangoes and spinach, and then stewed fruit. Spit goes out to the kitchen and brings back a platter of fish. “It’s haddock,” she says. “Have to spill some blood on a holiday, you know.”

  “Sarita.”

  “Sorry, Mommy,” Spit says, and she takes a little piece anyway.

  A small black-and-white cat comes into the room and stops at Spit’s chair, mewing up at her. “Hi, Katie,” Spit says. “You can have some.” She reaches down and gives the cat a fragment of the fish. The cat eats it and then plops down under the table.

  “Your mother,” Spit’s mother asks me after a while, “is she … well?”

  “Yeah …. No. Physically, I guess. She’s hard to explain. I guess I don’t even know her.” I look down at my plate, blink a couple of times. I don’t know her, so I don’t miss her. But sometimes, like here, I catch a glimpse of what I might be missing.

  “Maybe when you’re older you’ll find a way to … reconnect. Sarita told me a little.” She smiles at me like the older waitress at the diner, the breakfast lady. “Sarita’s father is ill … in that same way, I think.” She’s rubbing Spit’s arm kind of tenderly. Spit looks, what, sweet? Young. Comfortable.

  And I suddenly feel very grateful to be here. Nobody’s rubbed my arm like that for a long, long time, if ever, but somebody will.

  I say, “I think, when my father was here looking out for me, she could pretend that I was okay. So we could at least talk sometimes. Now she knows I’m on my own, so she gets pissed at my father all over again. Like it’s all his fault.”

  Spit reaches over and rubs my hand. The food is good. We stop talking about distant parents, and Spit’s mother tells me about her early childhood in Portugal, the way her own parents loved their five children, how her father worked in a cannery. I stay until late in the evening. We play cards. They teach me a carol about a farmer who is awakened by a bird and told to make preparations for the arrival of three guests.

  I mean, I have guilt, too, about not being able to talk to my mother, but part of that is loyalty to my father. As big a screwup as he’s been, at least he tried. He tried for a good long time.

  He’s still trying, I guess. I know he is.

  It’s snowing lightly when I leave, but there’s no wind. A good night for sleeping after all.

  THREE

  Weasel

  I go with Alan to the Sturbridge Holiday Tournament on Tuesday evening. Sturbridge has won this thing like ten years in a row, but it’s kind of shameful the way they stack the field. Tonight we’re playing West Sullivan, New York, for example, which couldn’t beat our freshman team. I mean no disrespect, because this is a school with like twenty-five kids in their graduating class every year. We’ve got ten times that many.

  The “championship” game tomorrow night will be against either Forest City or Montrose, which are both small and not exactly powerhouses. While other teams look for tough early season opponents to prime the pump, our school just looks for easy wins.

  Brian Kaipo scores eight points in the first quarter, and the lead
quickly reaches double digits. Early in the second, he makes a nice steal and races upcourt, two strides ahead of everybody else. He can’t quite dunk, but he makes a spectacular reverse layup that gets the crowd on its feet. I notice Coach stand up, too, but he doesn’t look pleased. He stands there with his arms folded, glaring at Brian.

  Brian steals another pass and goes the length of the court again. He could easily make another layup, but he swings a behind-the-back pass toward Jared Hall. Jared’s not expecting it. The ball glances off his fingers and winds up in the third row of the bleachers.

  Ricky gets up from the bench, takes off his warm-up top, and goes over to the scorer’s table. He goes in for Brian, who gets a huge cheer from the crowd. Coach makes him sit next to him, and you can see him chewing him out, although he doesn’t raise his voice enough that you can hear it.

  Brian’s arguing back. Eventually, he gets up and goes to the other end of the bench, shaking his head. He doesn’t play at all the rest of the night.

  After the game, Alan and I walk down Main Street to hang out by Turkey Hill, which is something I wouldn’t normally do, and never would do alone. You have to have a certain credential to hang out here, a certain level of rebellion or machismo.

  There’s not a whole lot of things that are less cool than being president of a Methodist youth group, but Alan seems to thrive on it. Which in a way makes him extra cool, because he’s accepted in most circles in spite of that.

  He starts talking to a guy named Gary who’s wearing a long Army-type coat. The guy glances at me and nods.

  “Weasel been around?” Alan asks.

  “I seen him before,” Gary says. He looks back at me, not sure if I can be trusted. “Down in front of O’Hara’s.”

  “He got stuff?”

  “He’s always got stuff.”

  “Maybe I’ll walk down that way.”

  Weasel is a drug dealer; Spit buys from him sometimes. He’s about a year older than I am, but he dropped out of school a while back.

  Gary walks away.

  “More research, huh?” I say.

  Alan gives a short laugh. “I just want to get a couple of joints. I’m not big into it.” He bumps my arm lightly. “You up for this?”

  “No,” I say. “I know what would happen if I ever got started with that shit. My family’s got a history.”

  “So you’ve never gotten high?”

  “Depends how you look at it,” I say. “Basketball’s my high. I’m not kidding.”

  So we walk a few blocks toward the center of town. “I’ve only bought from this guy once,” Alan says. “He may act a little paranoid.”

  Nothing is open down this way except for a couple of bars and the Chinese take-out place, so nearly all the storefronts are dark. We find Weasel sitting in the doorway of a jewelry shop with his back to the glass. He stands up as we approach.

  “Men,” he says.

  “Hey,” Alan says. “How’s it going?”

  “No complaints,” he says. “Have a seat.”

  We sit on the stoop. “You know Jay?” Alan asks.

  “Jay,” he says, sticking out his hand. The hand is cold and dry, sort of bony, even though the rest of him is puffy. “So what are you boys doing?”

  “Hanging out,” Alan says. “How’s business?”

  “What business would that be?”

  “Whatever business you’re up to.”

  “Well,” Weasel says, looking around. “I ain’t ready to retire.”

  “Hey, you’re young.”

  Alan asks him how his sister’s doing, and Weasel just says she’s all right. A guy—an adult—comes walking briskly by, carrying an unopened umbrella. All three of us watch until he’s about a block away. Nobody says anything for a minute.

  “I could use a couple of joints,” Alan says.

  Weasel stares out at the street. “That’s easy,” he says.

  “Same deal as last time?”

  “Yeah. Same price.” He looks past Alan at me. “You?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I’m with him.”

  “Congratulations. Well, Alan, I believe I can fill your order on the spot.” He pulls open his jacket and pokes around in an inside pocket. He takes out three joints, looks them over, and sets two of them on Alan’s thigh.

  Alan hands him some bills, and puts the joints in his shirt pocket.

  “Now I can retire,” Weasel says.

  The championship is closer than the first-round game. Montrose has a big man inside, but overall they’re slower and weaker. Ricky starts and plays well. There are intermittent chants of “Kai-po, Kai-po,” but Brian doesn’t get off the bench. At halftime we’re ahead 29-22.

  “This is bullshit,” Alan says during the third quarter as Montrose pulls to within a point. “What’s he trying to prove?”

  The Kai-po chant starts again in earnest, and it seems to stir up our team. Brian stays planted on the bench, but Ricky leads a 12-0 burst, and suddenly we’re comfortably ahead.

  Coach pulls all the starters except Ricky with three minutes left and a seventeen-point lead. Then he calls Brian over. Brian looks around at the bleachers, then at Coach. He shrugs and walks over to the scorer’s table. There’s a foul a few seconds later, and Brian goes in.

  The Kai-po chant stopped a long time ago. People cheer, but the excitement has worn off. In fact, I’ll bet that if the chant hadn’t stopped, Brian wouldn’t have got in at all. This just looks like a chance for the coach to embarrass him.

  First time upcourt he nails a three. Second time, too. And the third. Then he gets a steal and dribbles the length of the court, scoring a layup and finishing with eleven points in two-and-a-half minutes.

  The announcer asks that everyone stay for the presentation of the all-tournament team and the championship trophy. Most of the crowd leaves anyway, but me and Alan go over to the side of the court, where Brian is leaning against the wall with a small group around him. He’s got a half smile on his face, slowly shaking his head.

  Jared Hall and Billy Monahan make the all-tournament team, and Ricky gets the Most Valuable Player trophy. Brian sort of shrugs when Ricky gets the award, but he claps politely. Somebody says, “Should’ve been you, Brian,” and he smirks like he knows damn well it should’ve.

  Community Service

  Spit comes to the back door the following evening when I’m eating. I open the door and hold the hamburger up to her face, like I’m going to force her to take a bite. Big joke.

  She’s got a light frosting of snow in her hair. Most of the orange has faded out. I ask her the obvious question about whether it’s snowing, and she says it is, a little. Her cheeks are red. She looks nice.

  “It’s great out,” she says. “There’s no wind, so it feels really warm.”

  “Maybe we can go out in it later.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Hey, I went before the magistrate today.”

  “And they didn’t lock you up?”

  She swipes at me. “Just a fine, like Stanley said. And community service. Fifty hours.”

  “Yeah? So what are you going to do? Carry groceries for old ladies?”

  “Right. She said I should call that Y where you play basket ball. I could paint the women’s locker room or something. Maybe I could do a mural.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “It might even be fun.”

  “So what’d she say? The judge.”

  Spit gives a kind of pouty face, like she’s thinking. “Just that I should know better. That I need to think before taking chances with my life. That’s a little extreme, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Maybe. But it sounds like she let you off easy.”

  “Probably. Then Stanley tried to tell me the exact same thing. ‘Think about what she said,’ he keeps saying.” She rolls her eyes.

  She sticks her hands in her back pockets and looks out the kitchen door toward the bar. Patsy Cline is singing from the jukebox. Spit looks back at me and flicks up her eyebrows
. “Four people out there.”

  “It’s Thursday. And it’s early.”

  “Tomorrow night, man. We rock.”

  “New Year’s Eve.”

  “We’ll kick ass.” She winks at me. “You bringing in another date?”

  I laugh and shake my head, blushing. “I wish.”

  “She was sweet. Too bad you drove her away.”

  I smirk. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Poor Jay. One fleeting moment of love.”

  “Two. But that’s life.”

  She runs a finger down my face. I lean toward her, like I might kiss her, but she gives me a squinty look and backs away. “Hamburger breath,” she says.

  “That’s life, too.”

  She sticks to her chop-busting tone, in my face but flirty. “What do you know about life?”

  “I’m learnin’ fast.”

  “It’s a hell of a ride,” she says.

  “Isn’t it?”

  She starts drumming on her stomach. “I love my life. I do. Maybe not everything about the way I’m living it, but I love that I have the chance to do it. I cherish every second.”

  She picks up a dish towel and starts wrapping it around her hand, just playing. I like these discussions we have, these little pools of calm where she talks about her songs or her past or whatever.

  “Really,” she asks, “she gone for good?”

  “I’d say yes. I mean, she ain’t coming back. I don’t even know her last name. That was a … I don’t know. Just a thing that happened.”

  “Things do.”

  “All the time,” I say.

  “You just gotta be there to catch ’em.”

  “I plan to.”

  We look at each other for a couple of seconds. I always smile when I look at her. I can’t help it. She can’t either. And no matter what I say, however stupid or offensive, she lets me get away with it.

  “Things happen,” I say, crossing my arms.

  She crosses her arms, too. “Some things,” she says.

  “Surprising things, sometimes.”