by Kyell Gold
Gena glances at us and then stands. “Excuse me,” she says, and hurries after her husband.
Lee and I look at each other across the table. “Maybe we should go,” I say.
My fox nods, but bites his lip. “I hate to leave Gena,” he says softly. “She’s having a really hard time.”
“What can we do?” I spread my paws. “If there were some way we could help, I would, but…”
“Fisher seems more willing to talk to you,” he says. “Maybe you can see if he wants to get together at a gym or something, somewhere he can open up without the family around. Look at how he keeps retreating to his study.”
“Yeah.” I think about the championship rings there, the photos, the things he keeps obsessing over. “Maybe that’s not the best place for him.”
“I guess that’s our best—”
Fisher’s voice echoes from the kitchen. “I know!” he yells, and then there’s the sound of something breaking.
I jump up and head toward the sound without even thinking. If he’s hurting Gena…
But Gena appears in the kitchen doorway as I get there, one paw out to my chest. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She’s breathing heavily. “He just got…”
We look at each other. Fisher steps into view behind her. “I got a little excited,” he growls. “I’m cleaning it up.”
“Ah, look,” I say. “It’s getting late.”
Fisher comes out to shake my paw and Lee’s. Then he goes back into the kitchen and there’s the scrape and clink of shards of something.
Gena walks us to the front door while Lee murmurs apologies and I stay quiet, trying to figure out if Fisher’s just upset at the prospect of retirement or if there’s something else going on. I mean, he does keep kind of messing things up, like the name of his agent and the team we played, and there’s the headaches, which are pretty worrisome. But heck, he was always kind of a volatile guy, and if you’d told me the team was trying to force retirement on him, well, I’d have been able to tell you he wouldn’t take it well.
At the door, Gena hugs me and says thanks for coming, and then she hugs my fox. He murmurs, “It’ll be okay,” as she bends down, and then she shakes and seems to lean on Lee. He supports her well enough, and she gasps out something next to his ear that I don’t catch.
I reach out, uncertain what I can do, if anything, but a moment later she’s standing up and wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sure I can…”
I put a paw on the door handle, feeling like shit, but what can we do?
5
Open Doors (Lee)
When I tell Gena that things will be okay, she chokes out, “I hope so,” with so much pain in her voice that I stop, searching my memory for anything else we can do to help. She told me in the kitchen that she was checking around for some live-in help, and at the time I thought that I could’ve called her instead of Hal when I ran out on Dev two weeks ago, that at least I’d have had a proper bed to sleep in (not that I regretted staying with Hal).
And thinking about Hal reminded me again about his article, and then I felt bad for thinking about that when Gena was hurting. So as Dev moves to open the door, impulse seizes me and I ask Gena the only thing I can think to offer. “Do you want me to come by tomorrow and help out with things?”
I’m serious, but I expect her to laugh and say, “Oh, goodness no,” and at least I would feel good for offering.
Instead she looks at Dev, and then back at me. “Would you really?”
“Uh.” Dev’s kind of caught by surprise and so am I. “If you need me to, of course.”
“I don’t want to separate the two of you. I know you haven’t had a lot of time together the past two weeks.”
It’s hard, because I do want to go back and cuddle up to my tiger; more than ever, in fact. Watching Fisher’s arguments with his family makes me even more aware of how special Dev is and how much I love him. Still, the desperation in Gena’s eyes doesn’t leave me a way out. Not one that leaves me feeling good about myself, anyway.
So: “No, it’s fine,” I say. “I can help with the cooking and shopping and let you worry about Fisher while he figures out this retirement thing, and maybe in a couple days you can find someone you can hire to help out. I can help with that, too.”
She starts to smile, then looks up at Dev. “Fisher won’t like it. Especially if he thinks you’re there because he’s being a problem.”
My tiger puts a paw on my shoulder. “I don’t like it,” he says, but before either of us can say anything, he squeezes my shoulder. “But I think you should do it. Just don’t tell Fisher you’re there because of him.”
I nod. “If it comes up, we can tell him you’re going out with Gerrard and I’m here to visit Gena.”
Gena breathes. “That would be wonderful. I can handle things tonight and I’ll tell Fisher you’ll be coming by tomorrow.”
“Right.” I keep the smile on. Maybe I can use the time to get closer to Fisher and tell him about Hal’s story.
Dev stays quiet as we get in the truck. When he pulls out onto the street, he says, “That’s a nice thing.”
“She needed someone.” I uncurl my tail, relieved he’s not angry. “And you couldn’t stay there. Fisher would figure that out and might feel threatened. You never know.”
He nods. “I’m glad you’re coming home with me tonight, though. You’re still not finished making up two weeks.”
“Still?” I laugh softly. “How much more do I have to do?”
He purrs and looks sideways at me. “How much lube do we have?”
“Not that much.”
“Well, you can use your mouth when it runs out.”
I chuckle and lean back. “Happy to.”
On the highway, he drapes one paw casually over the steering wheel and keeps looking forward, but his tone gets more serious. “It’s hard to remember the things we need to think about when we’re getting along like this.”
“And when we’re distracted with other people’s problems. I mean…” I spread my paws. “We’re doing something constructive. We’re trying to plan our future. We’re not watching our relationship fall apart.”
“Already did that,” he mutters, maybe so that he thinks I can’t hear him, but then he turns slightly and the corner of his mouth lifts in a grin.
I’m glad he can joke about it. “But Gena and Fisher…they’re trying to plan a future too, only one of them doesn’t want that future at all. He keeps reaching back for a past that—well, I don’t know the details, but it sure sounds like it’s gone.”
“Yeah.” He exhales, and I can see as clearly as if it were one of the road signs that flashes by that he’s looking into his own future, to a time when age or injury or both takes football away from him.
“We’ve got a long way to go to get there,” I say. “And I plan to stick with you, FYI.”
“Well, yeah.” He taps the wheel. “Who’s going to remember the names of the championship teams I’m on when I can’t?”
I don’t know what to say to that, and a moment later Dev hits the steering wheel, his smile gone. “Sorry. That wasn’t funny. Shit, what a—I’m sorry.”
“How bad is it with Fisher?” I ask, to avoid having to think about Dev losing his memory.
“Not bad.” He sounds relieved, either that he’s not thinking about himself, or that I didn’t jump on him for a bad joke. “Just seems like sometimes he’s flashing back to ten years ago. He got the name of his agent wrong, and I think once or twice he was confusing this year with ’97 when they lost the championship game.”
I try to remember what happened with my great-grandfather—Father’s grandfather—when he started to lose his hold on reality. Did it start slowly? I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know. “Doesn’t sound that bad. And it’s been a stressful weekend, and he doesn’t have a fox to release stress with.”
The smile comes back across his striped muzzle. “True.”
“Maybe he just nee
ds to rest up.” But even as I say it, I’m not convinced. I don’t think this is just the end of Fisher’s football career. I think he needs more help than a live-in maid.
By the time we get home, it’s not so late that we have to go to bed right away, but we also don’t want to talk about Fisher anymore. So I get some ice cream out of the freezer and make up a couple bowls, and we sit on the couch and throw in a short movie. It’s the perfect distraction, and snuggling together on the couch makes me feel warm and safe.
In the morning, I do a load of laundry while I pack up some clothes to go to Gena’s with. I also call my father while I’m down there. I’d tried to call him Monday, but he had meetings, and he’d said Tuesday or Wednesday morning would be a good time to call. Sure enough, he picks up the phone on the second ring.
“You talked to your mother?” is the first thing he asks.
“Yeah. She said I finally convinced her of the error of her ways.” Into the silence on the other end I add, “maybe not in those words.”
“Right.” He coughs. “What about you? How are things with you and Dev? Are you talking again?”
I rub the base of my tail. “Uh. Yeah.”
“Good.”
“And other things too.”
“Wiley. I didn’t ask.”
I lean against the washer, tail swishing. “I thought you were concerned about me.”
“This conversation alone makes me feel better about how things are going for you. I’m just going to assume that along with ‘talking’ goes all the other things couples do.”
“We had to do the other stuff to get to the talking part.”
That startles him out of his cynical tone. “What?”
“It was very romantic,” I tell him. “Hal went out on a date but told Dev that I’d be at his place alone, and he showed up without telling me.”
“Okay,” he says, but I don’t stop.
“He said he didn’t want to give me time to prepare. And he said we had to get the physical needs out of the way before we could talk about our relationship without just wanting to jump into bed.”
“That’s…” He chuckles. “That’s pretty smart. I remember when Eileen and I were that passionate for each other.”
“He’s a smart tiger.” I look up as though I can see through six floors to where he’s sitting in his apartment. “So we’re talking. We’re going to spend a month figuring out if this is going to work long-term. But even if it doesn’t, we’ll still be friends.”
“That’s good. Why a month?”
“Oh.” So I tell him my news about Yerba, and he’s excited for me, more so than for me getting back together with Dev, but I guess if you look at it objectively, this is probably more surprising. “We’re going out there in a few days to look for a place to live.”
“Rental or purchase? In Yerba, you’d be better off buying if you can. Property there is a great investment as long as you’re going to live in it for a few years.”
“I plan to. I don’t really know what I’m looking at, though. Isn’t property crazy expensive there?”
He launches into a discussion of investment and rental prices versus interest and reminds me that mortgage rates are pretty low at the moment. “Okay,” I say, “so I’ll send you the info before I make any purchases?”
“I don’t know the area, but I can probably point you to someone who does. Or I’m sure your new bosses can, too.”
“Probably. I’ll give them a call. Though…I wouldn’t be able to buy a house without Dev’s help, I’m sure.”
“And?”
“Well, that might complicate all the thinking we’re doing about our relationship.”
He thinks about that for a moment. “The house would be a good investment out there. So even if you break up—”
“We’re not talking about breaking up. Just maybe scaling down to ‘friends with benefits.’”
“Okay…there are plenty of people who would buy a property for an investment and rent it to a ‘friend.’ It’d be fine.”
I’m not sure, but that’s a conversation to have with Dev. “Speaking of investments, how’s work? Have you started with the Firebirds accounts yet?”
“I don’t have the whole team,” he says. “Vonni DiCarlo’s wife has their money all taken care of, and Fisher Kingston seems pretty set too. But I sent contracts out to Gerrard Marvell, Carson Omba, Jorge Lopez, and of course Winston Porter.”
Lopez is Pace, a jaguar who plays safety, and Gerrard and Carson are Dev’s fellow starting linebackers, but… “Porter? Oh! Charm. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use his legal name in front of him. It’s not even on his jersey.”
“Probably not.” Father sounds amused. “He didn’t want to give it to me until I reminded him I’d seen it in the media guide anyway. There are three more players who were interested, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.”
“Dev’s interested. Did you send him something?”
“No. I was waiting to see what happened with you two. I can send him an e-mail today.”
“Just send the contracts. He’ll sign ’em.”
“They’re not contracts, technically. They’re agreements and legal documents conveying—
“Whatever. He’ll sign ’em.”
He chuckles. “Thanks.”
I pause until he asks what else is going on, and then I take a breath. “When your grandfather had Alzheimer’s…”
He fills in the silence when I pause. “That was twenty years ago. Wait. Thirty, now.”
“Do you remember how it started?”
The silence stretches on longer. “Not particularly well. I wasn’t living with them. I got a phone call from my father saying that he—my grandfather—wasn’t remembering things so well and that I should come see him. I went a few times. Early on it didn’t seem like much was wrong. He’d forget names, you know, or dates. But he still seemed sharp. After a few months, it got worse. He’d forget things you’d just talked to him about, and then…well, you know how it goes. He never forgot my name, but he could never remember my age or what I was doing.” He exhales across the phone mic. “I stopped going to see him around then. It was just too hard.”
“I can understand.”
“I wish I’d gone to see him one more time.” He sighs again. “But I presume you didn’t ask just to make me feel bad about missing my grandfather. What’s happening?”
“It’s Fisher.” I tell him about the anger and the small slips and the concussions, though I leave out Hal’s report for the moment.
Father absorbs that. “It’s pretty soon after the concussion,” he says finally. “I’m not a doctor, but I presume the team has one. If he’s home, they can’t be too worried about it.”
“Maybe. I was talking with Gena in Boliat after his concussion there, and she said he was dizzy and forgetting things there too. She mentioned his father, who had Alzheimer’s.”
“I guess she would know better than I would. I hope not, though. He’s so young.”
In the world at large, he is. In football terms, he’s old. Not ancient yet, but definitely old. “Was there anything your father did with his father? I mean, things that could maybe help a bit?”
“I don’t remember any. Wait—I do remember the nurses saying that if you ask him about memories, make him try to remember things, that that can help. If he’s accessing the memories, it stabilizes them. Not a lot, but every little bit helps.”
“Did he get angry about losing his memory?”
“Sometimes.” Father says it slowly. “Sometimes. But your great-grandfather wasn’t that kind of person. He was pretty calm. There was one time…I was visiting him, and he was trying to tell me the story of how he’d helped the union stand up to the factory he worked in. He remembered the dates but he couldn’t remember any of the names of the people who’d stood with him. ‘Bren,’ he said, ‘I worked alongside those foxes and wolves and rams and deer for thirty years. I can see their muzzles and I remember their scents
as clear as yours. But the names are just gone.’ And he put a paw over his heart then and he said, ‘I remember the love, the passion we all felt. God might take the details, but He leaves the important things.’”
That sets my tail swinging against the washing machine. “That’s pretty inspirational. He sounds like a great guy.”
“He was.”
“I don’t think Fisher has that zen of an attitude. He tends to want to tackle problems.”
“I can see that. Hang on.” He types for a bit. “I just got the e-mail confirmation from Angela Marvell. Hey, I normally don’t travel to clients, but since I’m setting up several new ones, I think the firm would pay for me to go down to Chevali to do some setup in person. When will you be back from Yerba?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t even bought flights or anything.”
“You know how much more expensive it is last-minute…” He laughs. “For normal people, I suppose.”
“It’s more expensive for Dev, too,” I say. “Just not so’s he’d notice. He hasn’t even asked about his forty thousand dollar playoff check.”
“Were you going to donate that to Equality Now?”
“I was. I still might. I haven’t decided yet. I want to give it to a good cause, but I’ve been…kind of distracted the last couple weeks.”
“You should invest it in the meantime. Hold onto it until I come down and we’ll work something out.”
“We can just take you out to a nice dinner for the amount of commission you’d be losing.”
“Ah-heh. It would have to be a very nice dinner. But that’s not the point. The point is, it’s not doing anybody any good just sitting there.”
“All right. I’ll deposit it today before I go over to Fisher’s.”
“What?”
So I have to explain that to him, and he says it’s a good thing to do but be careful, you know, in a house with a football player who’s violently coming to terms with his loss of memory, and I say I’ll be fine. “I have experience with football tigers,” I remind him.