by Andrea Cale
“You are JP’s mother—period—professor,” Maxine had continued. “If this is all more than a pile of coincidences and JP is in fact the one I gave birth to, please know I would never dream of overstepping any boundaries. You’re clearly much better at this mom thing than I have ever dreamed. I’m calling, though, to see if any of you might want any part of me in your lives.”
“How about coming over for Sunday dinner?” the professor had sputtered with great surprise and little hesitation. “Let me talk with my husband. Let me talk with JP. But let me also extend to you an invitation to come to our family’s home this Sunday.”
Three and a half years and nearly two hundred Sunday dinners later, Maxine stood at the Hemmings’ familiar stoop.
“I thought I told you to just come on in, Maxine,” the professor scolded with a wave of her frosting-covered beaters. “You’re family, you know.”
The comment, which tugged at Maxine’s heart in a way that made it feel no longer lonely, was topped only by the warm hug and smile that followed from her biological son.
“Maxine,” JP said. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“As do I.”
“So where is he?” JP asked protectively. “Where’s our final guest? You didn’t come together, Max?”
Following Maxine’s fateful reconnection with JP a few years earlier, the photographer had found one pesky, haunting cliché to ring true when it came to finding love: it comes when you’re least expecting it. Her prize-winning photo from the Orange Bowl had prompted a call from a longtime admirer.
“Maxine here,” she had said from her desk at the Syracuse bureau.
“Max. I don’t know if you remember me, but this is Ed. We worked in northern New York together so many years ago at the paper? I cover politics? We once shared lobsters and beer on assignment in Washington, DC?”
“Ed, of course I remember you,” Maxine had said, unable to contain a smile on the other end of the phone.
She thought of his humor. She thought of the chemistry they had shared over dinner. She avoided thinking of the bit of drool that had turned her off so many years ago as Ed had slept on their plane ride home to the bureau. Life had given her new perspective.
“It’s so good to hear from you,” she said, unaware that the comment had made the kind man on the other end of the line feel weak. “How are you? Where are you these days?”
“Oh, I’m still here, in northern New York, working at our same old paper. I’d ask how you’re doing, but I can see from every major daily in America that you’re not only living your dream, but becoming, like, one of the best sports photographers of all time. I just called to say congrats. If anyone deserves this success, it’s you with all of your hard work. I’m thrilled for you.”
Maxine had mustered enough courage to make an uncharacteristic and bold personal move.
“We’re only an hour’s drive apart,” she had said. “Would you like to get together over dinner again sometime and catch up? No pressure, by the way.”
“Um, I’ll be there in an hour.”
Maxine had hoped his comical eagerness meant he was still single.
“And I thought you only called to say congratulations, Ed.”
“Seriously, Max, a girl like you with the looks of Halle Berry shouldn’t get a guy like mine’s hopes up. My palms are starting to sweat over the thought of a date with…another lobster.”
“Well, there aren’t many lobster joints here in the central part of the state, but would you settle for baby back ribs, BBQ sauce, and bikers?” she had asked.
The former colleagues had gone on to dine at Maxine’s favorite Dinosaur BBQ, where their second, more formal date went just as well as their first impromptu one had more than a decade ago. Maxine had accepted and grown to love Ed’s little imperfections—his five o-clock shadow, his pudgy waist, and the light snores that escaped his slightly asymmetrical nose in the middle of the night. Ed had immediately opened his bear-like arms to Maxine when she revealed her past to him.
A few years of effortless dating later, in the home of the family she had inadvertently helped piece together, Maxine giddily anticipated the dinner party’s final guest.
“So, Max,” JP persisted. “You avoided my question. Why isn’t this new fiancé of yours chauffeuring you around already, huh?”
“Oh, JP, give the good guy a break, will you?” the professor interjected as she adjusted her oversized glasses. “Maxine, let me see the ring.”
“The ring with the bling,” the professor of anthropology added.
Maxine outstretched her newly decorated hand to the professors as she turned her beautiful eyes toward JP.
“He’s coming straight from work,” Maxine explained. “He’s sneaking out before deadline just for us.”
Ed had landed a job that spring as the political beat reporter for The Syracuse Herald Journal. He had celebrated the local offer with Maxine over his moving boxes in her apartment and a shiny engagement ring in hand.
A ring of the doorbell interrupted everyone.
“Please tell me I’m not late to my own engagement dinner,” Ed said as he was shown in.
“Without further ado,” the anthropology professor declared. “Let us celebrate.”
With a heart that was finally full, Maxine looked admiringly at her unconventional family. She thought of the great loneliness that had been in her heart ever since she gave JP away. She knew deep in her bones that it was JP she had been missing all those years. Her mind and body finally felt at rest to have found true love in two unexpected places.
Maxine and Ed’s engagement was just one of the celebratory items on the family’s agenda as each member found his or her place at the round table.
JP’s graduation from Syracuse with a degree in exercise science was only a week away. While a NFL job had not been in the young man’s future, Coach Flash had made certain that JP’s football career would not end on his watch.
The coach had met his twin at the familiar gathering spot on the Jamesville-DeWitt High bleachers that had seen the brothers through four years of high-school play. Crash still coached there, but not for long. His twin’s success at the Orange Bowl had inspired him to dream bigger, and he had accepted a coaching position with the nearby Ithaca College Bombers.
“So who’s gonna help me find local high-school diamonds in the rough now for my SC walk-ons? You’re leaving me without a secret resource,” Flash had joked. “But, seriously, man, congratulations. I think it’s great. I want to come out and see your team.”
“I guess it’s about time I graduated from this fine place,” Crash had said. “It’s still pretty damn hard to leave.”
“Do you have a replacement?”
“Not yet, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
“Well, it just so happens I have an idea.”
Flash had unveiled a book of SC stats, reminiscent of the other twin’s plea for JP to walk on the collegiate team a few years ago. Crash had immediately gotten the message.
“Is he looking for a job?”
“I believe so,” Flash had said as he tried to recall the exact words of his twin before JP joined the Orange and Navy’s roster. “He’s got the best attitude. He’s the hardest worker. He plays each damn game as if it’s his last, for some reason.”
“For some reason, you don’t have to convince me as hard as I needed to convince you,” Crash had said. “But thanks for the information just the same. I’ll be giving him a call and recommending the school make him an offer. He’ll be a great addition to the Physical Ed department too, with that damn drive of his.”
Back at the Hemmings’ table, JP’s mother poured her son a glass of wine.
“I’m still not used to you being of age,” she said. “Would you like to give the toast tonight, Coach JP?”
The young man looked at each of the loving faces around the table. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment. His life’s unusual turn of events made him struggle between
his beliefs in predestination and free will through hard work, but he accepted either reality. He raised his glass and cleared his throat.
“To dreaming big, being surrounded by people you love, and embracing whatever the future may bring—or whatever we may bring to the future.”
More than 250 miles southeast of JP’s family celebration, a gifted quarterback sat at his kitchen table in a clean, cool, and modern million-dollar home as he prepared to make a toast of his own.
Three and a half years after his final collegiate game at the Orange Bowl, Devin Madison still played football. He had earned the Heisman for his senior year performance with the University of Boston Orange Bowl Champions and an AFC East team draft pick to be a backup quarterback in the NFL.
Over sushi and sake in his grand mansion, Devin still surrounded himself with an entourage of buddies and one girlfriend or another. He held up a gaudy shot glass and spoke to everyone.
“To a never-ending summer that’s light on the training and heavy on the good times.”
The young man who had given up nearly every summer that he could remember still longed for a break. His heart wasn’t into the game as much as he’d like, and he felt something was missing.
His girlfriend sat on the only piece of furniture that still remained from the old college days. The orange plaid couch still reminded Devin of the small amount of time in his life when Caroline had sat on it by his side. He had been unable to part with the eyesore despite its clash with the rest of his new home.
“Deal ’em up, boys,” Devin said. “Who’s in for a little Hold ’Em? We’ll keep it fun. How about a $2 table? I bet even you could handle that, Rookie.”
“I could handle that,” replied one of the first-year players on Devin’s team. “I can handle it like I did one of your many ex-girls last night.”
The guys guffawed along with Devin over the joke that they knew to be the truth. Devin studied his girlfriend of the week. She had red hair, but to Devin’s dismay, she had turned out to be nothing like the cheerleader who wouldn’t have stuck around for the disrespect. This girl smiled at their laughter. She was clearly content with being part of the prestigious gang.
The only one who knew the secret of Devin’s ongoing obsession with Caroline—and the humiliating night at the Gentlemen’s Club that had ended it—was a psychologist who the quarterback quietly visited every other Monday to discuss topics ranging from the childhood that had been filled with adult-like expectations to the Monday morning quarterbacks yelling on sports radio during his drive to the appointments. When his guard was really down, he brought up Caroline.
“It must’ve been very difficult carrying such heavy expectations when all of your school buddies were out playing tag and hide-and-seek,” his therapist had said during one of their earlier sessions. “How is your relationship with your family now?”
“Not great,” Devin had admitted behind the safety of four walls containing no cameras, fans, teammates, or members of his entourage. “I’m bitter toward them, and they’re disappointed in me for not making it to the starting quarterback position. I’m not sure that’s even what I want anymore.”
“What do you want, Devin?”
“I don’t know, because football is the only love I’ve ever had,” he said. “Well, just about the only love I’ve ever known.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“One time, I think, and I messed it up and let her slip away,” he said. “She was perfect and imperfect all at once. She was perfect in that she was the one person who had the potential to put my attitude into place. Over time, she would’ve turned it around. I could see myself having a family with her, if you can believe that. She was imperfect because she was living a double life at her work, and I had been unaware of it. But she ended that double life when I uncovered it all.”
“How did you leave things?”
“Weirdly. We had both lied. We both were at fault. But I can assure you, she had the better character of the two of us.”
“Have you ever tried talking with her about how you both left things?”
“She’s a few years younger, so whenever I visit the guys left on the team, I go to our usual bars and parties with hopes of running into her. I never have. She was probably at her dorm or apartment, behind a book or something on those nights.”
“But have you ever thought about calling her?”
The conversation paused.
“Nah, you think I should? I’m not the type of guy to go running back with my tail between my legs. There are too many buddies of mine who would never let me hear the end of it.”
“If it would make you happy to make amends with this girl—and I think I’m hearing from you that it could—then shouldn’t your happiness make your friends happy too?”
Devin had avoided the question about his so-called friends.
“She’s probably graduating right about now and heading out of Boston,” he had said. “My chances of getting in touch with her are probably dunzo at this point.”
Back at the poker table, Devin dealt out the first hand of cards. He looked around at the guys, who were thirsty to take his poker money and who knew what else. Then he looked at the red-haired girl who he had hoped could fill the emptiness left three and a half years ago after the abrupt breakup with Caroline.
One of the guys leaned back on the couch to look at the redhead’s cards.
“Let’s just say if another heart comes up, we should probably fold,” the guy reported back to the rest of the table.
“She’s almost got the flush, huh?” asked another.
The young lady was unable to keep her poker face and blushed silently.
Age and therapy were slowly making Devin a hair more mature. If his girlfriend of the week didn’t have the backbone to stick up for herself, he would stick up for her—even if she wasn’t going to last one night longer in the girlfriend role.
“What’s the matter with you losers?” Devin said. “Her money is as good as—if not better than—yours. Stop trying to get an easy win, you lowly jerk-offs.”
The quarterback felt good about his defense of the girl, even though he knew his choice of words needed work. He accepted the fact that he was still a work in progress and wasn’t the gifted golden boy he appeared to be. In Devin’s opinion, he was a pretty insecure guy with a far from gifted childhood when it came to being loved.
He was also a guy trying to make sense of it all now in his young adulthood. As he thought of his tough father, who was still living in the family home in Chantilly, Virginia, Devin looked around at the guys doing their best to be cool around the poker table. He realized for the first time that they too were likely to have one hidden reason or another for lashing out.
Caroline was the last of her apartment roommates to remain in Boston before summer break officially began. A graduation gown was the sole garment hanging neatly in her closet. The only items that remained outside of tidily packed boxes were the beautiful peonies she had received that morning from her cheerleading coach and a small makeup bag that would fit in her clutch.
As she waited for her father to find a parking space in a reasonable vicinity of her building, the trill of her cell phone interrupted the stillness.
“Shoot,” she said to herself. “I’ve got to remember to turn this darn thing off before commencement.”
She glanced at an unfamiliar incoming number and answered the call anyway.
“Hello?”
She listened intently but heard only the deep, bellowing horn of the T blare outside her open window.
“Hello?” she said again.
There was only quiet white noise on the other end. The potential conversation would never come to life as a knock on the door prompted Caroline to hang up first. She looked through the peephole and saw her kind father, who was bearing a modest bouquet of flowers. She quickly hid her coach’s designer Winston’s vase in the closet before letting him in to share the next phase of her life.
; “Dad!”
“Congratulations, Caroline,” Kenny said.
He was wearing his best Sunday pants and a navy necktie. It was the same tie he had worn as a younger man during his interview for a temp position at Harper Manufacturing, when Caroline was a little girl. They’d both come a long way, he had thought when he pulled the garment out of the closet this morning. His late wife had picked out the tie for him many years and struggles ago. On this day, though, Kenny was the one who clumsily tied it.
“Look at you, Dad,” Caroline said. “You look really nice.”
“It’s a special occasion,” he said. “And thanks, but I think all the looks in our small family of three came from the female side.”
Caroline tugged on her locket as both of them silently wished Lindsay were there with them.
“I brought something for the graduate.”
“They’re beautiful, Dad. I’ll dry the flowers and keep them forever.”
“Oh those, yes, I almost forgot about those. I brought something else too.”
Kenny carefully pulled a wrapped box from his travel bag. The father and daughter weren’t experienced in giving gifts or celebrating holidays following Lindsay’s death. Their favorite part about Christmas was attending midnight Mass together before walking home in peaceful silence over dark, snow-covered sidewalks.
“What’s this?” Caroline asked.
“Please,” Kenny said. “It’s a very little something, but I think it’s special.”
Caroline fingered a frame under the paper and was slightly afraid to unwrap it. When she finally did, she found herself looking into the eyes of her mother and a much younger and more innocent version of herself. The trouble-free little girl in the photo was pulling the locket hanging around Lindsay’s neck. Neither had been aware of Kenny’s presence behind the camera in that happy moment.