Now he was different. You know the effort it takes to call upstairs to someone? That was the effort it took for Dad to speak at a normal volume.
Four dribbles. Bend the knees. Deep breath. Swish.
I blinked and the ball was back in my hands. They used to call him the Wizard, because of his first name, a family name that he hated, Ozzie.
The Wizard of—you get it.
He went by his middle name, Rick.
Four dribbles. Bend the knees. Deep breath. Swish.
“That one was a little off,” he said, catching it before it hit the ground.
Billy Fritz, the cashier at the 7-Eleven, once told me that Dad used to catch his own made shots before they hit the ground. People in town were always doing that. Dad’s greatness was like a precious ember everyone in Ardwyn had to keep blowing on or it would go out.
“I swished it,” I said.
“Yeah, but not a pure swish.”
“A what?”
“A pure swish. You do it right, the ball passes right through like there’s no net at all. Totally silent. Try again.”
I shot.
Swish.
“Nope, still heard it.”
I shot.
Swish.
“Nope. But closer. Keep tryin’.”
I shot.
Swish.
He pinned the ball on his hip. “Listen, I gotta go. Five more and that’s it. You hear me? There’s a French bread pizza in the freezer. And, hey, don’t forget to turn the oven off this time, okay?”
“I thought maybe the house would be worth more if I burned it down.”
“Not funny.”
“Oh right, we don’t have insurance, either.”
Dad pressed his lips. You okay, Lizzy Bean? Because if you’re not, god help me, you know I’ll go to that school and raise hell.
I squinted. Yeah, Dad. I’m good.
He snapped me the ball and limped away, head down, breath fogging in the cold. I began my routine again, eager to keep trying for this mythical—what had he called it?—pure swish. But then a thought came to me. I paused before shooting. “Hey, Dad.”
He turned back.
Swish.
“Thanks for listenin’.”
I woke up at four instead of four forty-five the next morning. I broke Dad’s sunrise rule and began my normal workout in the dark. You say I can’t have this? I thought, sweeping the court from end to end with a big industrial-size broom. Well, watch this. I’m just gonna work harder.
I swept in long straight lines, all the way up, then all the way back. I carried all the broken glass to the Dumpster using a soggy Big Mac box as a dustpan. I crawled across the cracked cement, plucking the weeds that had sprouted up overnight. I scraped up a wad of gum stuck to the three-point line.
That day, a special occasion, there was a drug needle on the far sideline. I slid my hands into the husks of Dad’s old, oily work gloves so I didn’t get pricked. I slid the needle into a plastic Pepsi bottle, carefully, like it was an antique ship-in-a-bottle in some rich guy’s office or something. I twisted the cap extra tight, and—
What’s that thing our hippie guidance counselor told us about? The invisible scoreboard where the gods keep track of all the good and bad things you do when no one’s looking?
Oh right—karma.
I shot the needle-in-a-bottle into the Dumpster, holding my finish high like Dad taught me, wrist tipped down like the head of a swan.
Two points.
And now that the dance floor was cleared, so to speak, I could really get to work.
I zigzagged between little orange cones. Keep your head up. Keep your head up. Keep your head up. I tied a rope around my waist and dragged a twenty-pound tire up the full length of the court. Up and back, up and back, up and back. I did that thirty times, imagining that Sidney Rayne was chasing me, trying to steal the ball.
Next, I stood at midcourt and circled my tattered ball around my body. Ginger was bright and tacky when I first rescued her from the discount bin at Walmart, but now she was saddle tan and smooth as a peach.
I tied on Dad’s rusty ankle weights and rose up on my toes until my calves burned. By now, lights were blinking on along Dayton Road. Working class. Up with the sun. I did wall sits until my thighs twitched. I ran suicides until I puked in the grass.
Then I shot jumpers.
After all that—just a normal morning for me—it was seven thirty. Reaching down for Ginger, dripping sweat, I saw Toby waddling toward the court.
“You puked again?” he said, hauling up his pants.
I shrugged.
“Ah,” he said. “A lady never pukes and tells.”
He scooped up Ginger and stumbled around the court, dribbling once for every three steps. “Three . . . two . . . one . . .” His shot missed everything, even the backboard. The ball rolled over by the monkey bars. “Annnnnd they still win,” he said, flashing those goofy-colored braces I joked he’d never get off. “They were up by forty!”
“Convenient,” I said.
“Well, it’s the only time I get in the game. I’m just trying to make it as realistic as possible.”
I smirked. “I gotta rinse off. I’ll meet you.”
For some reason, that day, as I passed beneath the sneakers strung along the power lines, I looked back. It was just after sunrise, and for a half second the abandoned factory shimmered like one of those ancient castles you see on TV—you know, with the stone towers and the ivy swirling up its walls? But then I blinked and everything became its dreary self again. The ivy sank into the walls and became ghetto ivy. Spray paint.
That day after school, I was in a really bad mood. Toby and Tank and all the other boys had their first day of practice. The girls’ tryouts weren’t until the following Monday. I’d just left school and was walking home. I was doing this thing—maybe you’ve done it?—where I kicked the same pebble over and over. Every time I kicked it as hard and straight as I could. It wasn’t quite as good as shooting free throws, therapy-wise, but it helped. A little.
As I neared the playground, I felt a familiar buzzing in my pocket.
I gnashed my teeth and tried to ignore it. The debt collectors had been calling me nonstop. Sometimes four or five times per day. It didn’t matter that I was thirteen, apparently. I was next of kin, so they could harass me day and night.
“JUST STOP!” I answered. “OKAY? JUST STOP CALLING. I TOLD YOU. HE DOESN’T HAVE—”
It wasn’t a debt collector.
No.
It was worse.
It was one of those robocalls.
“Con-grat-u-la-tions,” the mechanical voice said. “You have been pre-sel-ected for—”
I laughed.
It was all I could do.
“Con-grat-u-la-tions,” the mechanical voice said again. “You have been pre-selected for—”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a little busy. I have to—”
And just before I hung up, I heard:
“One free wish.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Say what?”
“To re-deem your wish, press one. For more op-tions, press—”
I pressed one.
“Thank you. Please hold.”
I waited.
And waited.
Elevator music played.
Smooth jazz.
And then:
“Hell-o. This call may be re-cor-ded for qual-ity assur-ance. Please say your name af-ter the beep.”
Beep.
“Um, Lizzy?”
“Hell-o, Um-Lizzy?”
It patched in my human voice for my name.
“It is nice to speak with you to-day, Um-Lizzy?”
My eyes darted around.
A white van was parked on the corner.
Was this some kind of prank?
Could Toby have pulled this off?
“Please state your wish af-ter the beep.”
“Wish?”
“Please state your
wish af-ter the beep.”
“I’m confused.”
“Please state your wish af-ter the beep.”
This was weird, man. I probably should’ve just hung up. But in the same way you might as well flip a penny into the fountain at the mall when you walk by, I said the first thing that came into my mind—my secret fantasy: “I want to never miss another basketball shot for the rest of my life.”
“Thank you, Um-Lizzy? Your wish has been re-cor-ded. Let us re-view. Your wish is: ‘I want to never miss another basketball shot for the rest of my life.’ Is this cor-rect? If so, press one. If—”
I pressed one.
“Thank you. Good-bye.”
Well, that was weird, I thought, staring down at my phone.
But I didn’t dwell on it for long.
I had five hundred more jump shots to get up before dark.
I carried my ball around the broken merry-go-round, ducked beneath the rusty monkey bars (where the outline of Toby’s wood-chip angel from the week before was still faintly visible), and onto the basketball court. I stomped on a rolling cigarette butt, carried it to the Dumpster, and made my way back to the ghosted-out foul line.
Same ritual as always.
Four dribbles. Bend the knees. Deep breath . . .
Just as I shot, a gust of wind blasted in from the right.
The ball drifted left . . . but then it did something impossible.
It changed direction. The ball curved back into the wind like a heat-seeking missile and darted down through the rim.
I laughed.
You ball outside long enough, you’ll see some crazy things.
Gust number one blows the ball left.
Gust number two blows it back.
Then, suddenly, like someone in a control room somewhere had pushed a button, the downpour started. I’d never seen anything like it. The raindrops were hatching on the court like a plague of spiders. Lightning flashed across the sky. I closed my eyes and began my routine.
Four dribbles. Bend the knees. Deep breath . . .
I closed my eyes and shot. The ball, passing through the rain, sounded like a radio dial cutting through heavy static.
And then . . .
Somehow . . .
I heard it.
It was the squeak of a sneaker on freshly waxed hardwood.
It was the horn blaring when you check into the game.
It was the shriek of a referee’s whistle.
The crunch of frozen grass in the winter.
The soft scrape of sidewalk chalk in the summer.
The turning of a heavy, old-fashioned key.
A single string plucked on a violin.
The radiator clanking in my room.
A car door lock popping up.
My mother’s voice.
It was all of those things at once, and many more.
Had you been there, standing under the basket, you know what you would’ve heard?
Nothing.
A pure swish.
2nd Quarter
On September 25, 2009, my mother, Nora Collins Trudeaux, was jogging along Niles Road very early in the morning. She was training for an Ironman, the competition where you swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles, all in a row. She was hit from behind by a Toyota 4Runner driven by an overnight security guard named Jack Perkins who fell asleep on his way home from work. Dad and I were both in the hospital room when she died. I was asleep on one of the chairs we’d dragged in from the hallway. When I shut my eyes, she was breathing. When I opened them, she wasn’t. I had a dream about ninjas.
There was a funeral.
A burial.
A reception.
There was cake.
Dad made me go see a therapist for a few months afterward. I resisted, of course, but looking back I’m glad that I went. I always felt better—actually physically lighter—when I left Dr. Kelly’s office. She was divorced. She had lots of framed academic degrees on her wall, and also a painting of a sailboat in a storm. The boat was tipped way up on its side; the man was leaning way back, almost parallel to the choppy water. It was real somber: all blues and grays and blacks. Dr. Kelly said: “You like that painting?”
I shrugged.
“You’ve been staring at it for the past twenty minutes. Must be something.”
I shrugged again.
Dr. Kelly leaned forward. She was the first woman I ever saw wearing a tie. She lifted it off her leg, rubbed the silk between her fingers, then set it back down again. “What do you think when you see that painting, Lizzy? I mean—how does the experience of looking at it make you feel ?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s no right or wrong answer.”
“I know. I just . . . I don’t really feel anything.”
“Nothing?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a stupid painting.”
She smirked. I liked Dr. Kelly. She asked lots of mushy questions, but I didn’t hold it against her—that was her job. “I’m going to tell you something that helps me when I’m feeling sad, okay? Maybe it will be helpful to you, and maybe it won’t. But I’m just going to say it and you can store it away for later. You see those dark patches on the surface of the water? You know what those are?”
“Oil?”
“Good guess. But no.”
“Fish?”
“Even better, but still no. They’re wind.”
I squinted.
“Experienced sailors know to scan the water for those dark patches. But sometimes they gust out of nowhere—”
“It’s, like, one of those things,” I said. “From Language Arts class. A metaphor.”
“That’s exactly right,” she said. “The reason I like this painting—the reason I have it here—is because it reminds me of something important. It reminds me that there will always be those dark patches in life, those gusts, and no matter how good a sailor you are, or how fast your boat is, you can’t outrun them. You can’t go around them. You have to go through them. You see what I’m saying, Lizzy? Lizzy?”
I’d drifted off into one of my daydreams again. I was remembering a time Mom and I were sitting on the stoop, watching some older boys play half ball in the street. Half ball’s the one where you cut a tennis ball in half and hit it with a broomstick. We were sitting there watching, and a scuffle broke out; I don’t know why; someone pushed someone. Mom hopped up, but the fight fizzled. She sat. “You know how to throw a punch, Lizzy?”
I was tonguing the smooth gap where my front teeth used to be. “Yeah.”
She turned her body and held up both palms.
I narrowed my eyes and smashed her right palm.
Her hand closed around my fist. Her hands were shockingly strong. “No. You do that and you’ll break your wrist.” She tapped the groove between my middle and pointer knuckles. “You lead from here, from the inside of the hand. Got it?”
She raised her mitts again.
This time, the smack was even louder.
She sighed. “You and that Sykes boy have been watching too many movies. Keep it short.”
I punched again. This time a more controlled strike.
“Good. But hit through it. Like you’re following through on your shot.”
I hit through the target.
“Good.”
Just then, the half ball rolled over to Mom’s feet. She scooped it up and turned it over it like she’d found a penny and was trying to decide if it was lucky or not. “Your grandfather was a boxer,” she said. “A featherweight. You know that, right?”
“Back in Ireland?”
She nodded.
“He was tough?”
“Oh, he was the biggest softie I ever knew. He used to carry bugs outside and let them go. Drove Mom nuts. She’d yell: ‘It’s just gonna come back in, John!’ And he’d mutter”—I loved when Mom put on her Irish brogue—“he’d mutter, ‘Well dat’s his choice.’ Dad was a champion mutterer. I don’t think he ever opened his mouth in hi
s life, except to sip his tea. He showed me what I just showed you, when I was your age. He said, in his way, real soft, ‘Now listen, Nor. When ya feel scared—in dat first rush—yer impulse’ll be ta run—but don’t. No. Ya go forward. Ya cut off what’s comin’ at ya, ya knock it off balance. Ya knock it off balance, ya create an opening—that’s what it’s all about. Ya go forward.’ ” Mom whipped the half ball back to the boys in the street. The power of her arm startled them. They gaped, limp-armed.
*She added the standard disclaimer that fighting should always be my last resort.
**Throwing a punch was just a general life skill, like those patches all the other girls my age were getting on their Brownie sashes.
“But you used to get in fights all the time,” I said.
“Not all the time.”
“Matt Murphy told me that you knocked his dad out cold once.”
She swept her hair from her face and laughed. “I did. And he deserved it. But things were different back then. The boys were a lot rougher. They’re all Mr. Softees now.” That’s what she called Dad when they were teasing each other—Mr. Softee, like the ice cream truck. Sometimes, she hummed the music just to get a rise out of him.
“Dad says I have your temper,” I said.
She pinched my chin roughly, tilted my face up, and peered down into the secret room behind my eyes. “That’s true,” she said. “But you’re still more like your father, Lizzy. More than you know.”
The Monday after the spooky robocall, Coach Gulch called me into his office. “Have a seat,” he said.
“Where?”
“Move some of those envelopes. There’s a chair under there somewhere.”
In addition to about seventy-five thousand manila envelopes, Gulch also had one of those old-fashioned projectors, the kind with the two big reels. He flipped a switch, and the reels clunked into motion. It reminded me of train wheels making that first, heavy turn. A ghost blinked awake on the far wall. “You recognize this game?”
Of course I did. It was the Pennsylvania state finals. There was Dad. Number twenty-four. He had those goofy sideburns. The high socks with the red stripes on them.
“We’d lost to Spring Valley in the final the year before,” Gulch said. “God, look at those shorts. You can see our thighs. It’s borderline indecent.”
Lizzy Legend Page 2