Round Robin

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  After supper, Todd went outside to join his friends; Michael trudged back upstairs without waiting to be told. As Tim and Diane cleaned up the kitchen, they discussed their options. Michael had lost so many privileges already for past transgressions that there weren’t many left to revoke. Grounding him wouldn’t do any good because he spent most of his time in his room anyway. They could take away his skateboard, but to Diane that seemed like a slap on the wrist compared to the fright and embarrassment he had given her.

  “Why does he do these things?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tim said, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “Why don’t we ask him?”

  They called him into the living room. He slumped into an armchair and studied the floor as they seated themselves on the sofa facing him.

  “Michael,” Tim said, “your mother and I have been trying to figure out why you got yourself into this situation today.” Diane admired the way he kept his voice so calm, so reasonable, without a trace of the worry she knew he was feeling.

  In reply, Michael shrugged.

  “Come on, son. You must have some reason. Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “No, I didn’t see it,” Michael muttered. “But I knew I wasn’t allowed to skate there.”

  “Then why did you?” Diane demanded. When Michael shrugged, she fought off the urge to shake him out of pure frustration.

  Tim looked puzzled. “If you didn’t see a sign, how did you know you weren’t allowed to skate there?”

  Finally, Michael looked up. “Because we aren’t allowed to skate anywhere. Every single place is off-limits. The sidewalks, the parking lots, the campus—everywhere. It’s not fair. I bought my skateboard with my own money and I can’t even use it.”

  “Why not use it in the driveway?” Diane asked.

  Michael rolled his eyes. “’Cause I don’t just want to go back and forth, back and forth all day like a five-year-old idiot.”

  “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” Tim said. Michael scowled and slumped farther into his chair. If he kept it up, Diane figured he would be horizontal before the conversation ended. He muttered something inaudible that could have been an apology.

  Tim left the sofa and took a seat on the ottoman close to Michael’s chair. “Look, we’re trying to understand things from your point of view, but you have to help us, okay? If you knew you weren’t allowed to skate there, why did you do it?”

  “Because it’s skate where I’m not allowed to or not skate at all.”

  Diane modeled her tone after Tim’s. “Why not do something else?”

  “Because I don’t have anything else,” he burst out. “Don’t you get it? Todd has band and swimming and about a billion friends, Dad has his job and his workshop, you have all that quilting stuff—all I have is my skateboard. I suck at school, I can’t play sports, the popular kids don’t know I’m alive, but I can skate. I’m good at it. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

  “That’s not true,” Diane said, astonished by the bitterness in his tone. “You’re good at lots of things.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m not. You think I am because you’re my mom, but it’s not true. I’m not good at anything. Except for this. I’m one of the best skateboarders in Waterford, and the other skateboarders know that. I have friends when I skate. I’m important. I’m not just Todd’s loser older brother for a change.”

  Diane didn’t know what to say. She and Tim exchanged a long look—enough for her to see that he wouldn’t be able to take away Michael’s skateboard, either.

  They sent him back to his room. He eyed them as if not quite believing that they meant for him to go without being yelled at first, but eventually he shuffled out of the room. They heard his footsteps as he went upstairs, slow, despairing, like a man on his way to the gallows.

  Diane and Tim talked until it grew dark outside and Todd came in from shooting hoops in the driveway. He greeted them and continued on to the kitchen, but on the spur of the moment Diane called him back. She would ask him, she decided. She would ask him if what Michael said about himself was true.

  “What’s up?” Todd asked, tossing the basketball from hand to hand. He stood in the doorway, red-cheeked and glowing from exercise, grinning as if recalling a great shot he had made minutes before or a joke a friend had told. He had inherited Diane’s beauty and his father’s temperament, and as Diane admired him it occurred to her that he would always have an edge in life his brother lacked, his brother who had inherited his mother’s temper and smart mouth along with his father’s slight stature and narrow shoulders. Michael was two years older, but in the past few months Todd had almost caught up to him in height and weight, and threatened to leave him far behind soon.

  “Mom?” Todd said after a long moment passed in silence. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “No.” Diane shook her head and forced herself to smile. “That’s all right.”

  He gave her a bemused grin and continued on to the kitchen.

  “There must be someplace in this town where a kid can ride a skateboard in peace.” Diane bit at her lower lip, thinking. “Todd has his basketball courts, the swimming pools, the band practice rooms—we have to find a place for Michael. What does a skateboarder need, anyway?”

  Tim didn’t know, either, but he promised to find out. Tomorrow he would let his graduate students fend for themselves while he helped Michael find a place to skate. He kissed Diane, squeezed her arm in a gesture both affectionate and comforting, and went upstairs to talk to their son.

  The next afternoon, as she assisted Judy with her workshop at Elm Creek Manor, Diane’s thoughts wandered from the quilt campers to her husband and son. The search could take them days or weeks, and as they looked, they would have time alone to talk. Maybe Michael would lower his shields for a while and allow Tim the chance to become closer to him, close the way Gwen and Summer were close.

  That evening at supper, Tim and Michael took turns describing their search. They hadn’t found anything yet, but Tim was learning a great deal about skateboarding. Right before coming home, they had checked out a parking lot behind a medical office.

  “There was this paved ditch next to it that I liked,” Michael began.

  “And I liked the fact that there were so many doctors nearby, just in case,” his father finished. They looked at each other and laughed.

  Diane blinked at them, speechless. Since becoming a teenager Michael had scowled instead of smiled, but now here he was, laughing.

  On Wednesday, Tim and Michael investigated the edges of town, and this time they took along Troy, Brandon, and Kelly, who, Diane learned at supper, were Michael’s best friends.

  “How nice,” Diane said, thinking, Michael has friends?

  “Aren’t those the geeks from computer club?” Todd wanted to know.

  Michael’s scowl returned. “Shut up.”

  Diane ignored the outburst. “Were you thinking about joining computer club with your friends?”

  “I dunno.” Michael shrugged and took a drink of milk. “Maybe. They said they could help me make a skateboarding website. Sometimes they go on trips, like, to computer companies to see how they run. Next month some movie animator guy’s coming in to talk. He got, like, an Oscar or something for special effects.” He took a bite of casserole and chewed thoughtfully. “That would be a way cool job.”

  Diane pretended not to be thrilled. “Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t think you’d have enough time for something like that. When would you get your homework done?”

  “After school. After meetings.” His alarm was unmistakable. “It wouldn’t take too much time. I could do both.”

  She bit her lower lip. “Well...”

  Tim was shooting her frantic looks across the table, clearly convinced she’d lost her mind.

  “Please?” Michael looked almost desperate. “I’ll get my homework done, no problem. I’ll even show it to you.”

  She feigned reluctance and said, “We’ll see.�
� Michael nodded, but his brow furrowed in determination, as if his mind was already working on how to change that “We’ll see” to “Yes.” For years she’d urged him to get involved in school activities, and he had countered every effort with resistance. Now he would do everything short of begging to be permitted to join, and since he’d had to work for the privilege, he would become the computer club’s most enthusiastic member. Maybe he would even become their president, and wouldn’t that be something to mention to Mary Beth from next door, who practically sent out daily press releases about her kids’ achievements.

  She gave Tim the tiniest flicker of a triumphant smile when she was certain Michael wouldn’t notice. Tim hid his grin, but he couldn’t mask the admiration in his eyes.

  On Thursday evening the mood shifted. Tim and Michael had exhausted the local possibilities and weren’t sure where to look next. “You’ll think of something,” Diane told them, disguising her concern behind a cheerful smile. Without skateboarding, there would be no friends, no computer club, no motivation to do homework, no inside jokes with his dad. Michael would revert back to his old, practiced ways, she was sure of it.

  The next afternoon, the Elm Creek Quilters held a business meeting during the campers’ free time after Agnes’s workshop, so Diane headed home later than usual. Todd would be finishing his homework already, and Tim and Michael would be continuing their search. She hoped their luck would change, and soon.

  To her surprise, Tim’s car was in the garage when she got home. She pulled in beside it, wondering. Had they found a place for Michael, and was he even now spinning around and popping wheelies or whatever those tricks were called? Had they been forced to admit failure, and was Michael sulking up in his room while Tim paced around the house trying to figure out how to tell her? She got out of the car and leaned up against the door to close it, nervousness twisting in her stomach. She couldn’t stay out there forever, she told herself, but she could delay the bad news a while.

  Then she heard strange sounds coming from somewhere outside the garage. She walked down the driveway, listening, until she realized the noise was coming from behind her own house. It almost sounded as if the woods abutting their property had been turned into a construction site. She went around the side of the house and found Tim and Michael at the far edge of the backyard with all manner of building supplies and tools piled up on the grass around them.

  She was almost afraid to know, but she approached them and asked what they were doing. They looked up from their work with nearly identical happy grins. “Dad’s building me a ramp,” Michael exclaimed. “Isn’t this cool?”

  “That’s one way to describe it.” She folded her arms and surveyed the damage to the lawn. They had enough material there for a small house. “Are you sure you don’t need a building permit?”

  Michael laughed and returned to his work.

  She fixed her gaze on Tim, who was kneeling on the grass and sanding a board. “You know, for some reason I can’t remember the conversation where you told me you were going to build a skateboard ramp in our backyard. I must have forgotten it, because I know you wouldn’t begin a project like this without talking to me first.”

  He gave her a look that was both pleading and sheepish. “Honey, we looked everywhere. Every suitable place was off-limits. The only solution was to build our own place.”

  “Maybe I would have come to the same conclusion, if I had been asked, if we could have discussed this the way normal, rational, sane people usually discuss these things.”

  “It couldn’t wait,” he said simply, and Diane knew that he, too, had sensed something last night, some unspoken, unintended signal that this could be their last chance to reach their son, to convince him they were interested in his life, that despite their greatly advanced age and their abhorrence of all things fun, they didn’t want his teen years to be entirely miserable.

  She sighed and shook her head, and when Tim’s face brightened she knew he understood that she was granting permission for the project to continue. What else could she do, really? They had installed a basketball hoop for Todd; was a skateboard ramp for Michael any different? Aside from its size, of course, and the expense, and the loss of a good portion of their backyard.

  She turned and walked back to the house so that she wouldn’t have to think about just how large the skateboard ramp would be if it required so much material. Their backyard was big enough; all of the backyards on this side of the street were, because they bordered the Waterford College Arboretum. The yards were separated by fences and mature trees, so they wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. Really, she couldn’t complain.

  Tim and Michael worked until supper, then headed back outside as soon as the meal was over. After clearing away the dishes, Diane took her sewing basket and the round robin quilt out to the balcony off the master bedroom, so that she could keep an eye on the construction as she planned her border. But the quilt rested in her lap unnoticed. Tim and Michael worked until it grew too dark to see, and all the while Diane watched them, thinking.

  The skateboard ramp took shape that weekend. By Saturday afternoon they had erected a structure of crossbeams that supported a U-shaped curve resembling the cross section of a pipe. It was higher than Diane had expected, and longer, but she clamped her mouth shut and vowed that instead of complaining, she’d buy Michael a helmet.

  That evening some of Todd’s friends came over to watch videos. From the family room where she was loading piles of folded laundry into her basket, she heard them raiding the refrigerator and arguing about which movie to watch first.

  Then one of the boys interrupted the debate with a cry of astonishment. “What the hell is that?”

  Todd’s reply was barely audible, and she had to strain to catch it. “Something for my brother.”

  “But what is it?” another boy asked.

  “It looks like a skateboard ramp.” This voice was lower; it belonged to Mary Beth’s son, Brent.

  “Great theory, Einstein,” Todd retorted. “It only took you one guess.”

  Brent laughed. “I didn’t know you were a skateboard geek.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Your brother is.”

  “So? That doesn’t mean I am. I mean, look at him. He’s a total loser. I’m nothing like him.”

  Diane’s grip tightened on the handles of the laundry basket.

  “You better watch out,” the first boy drawled. “You have the same genes, right? It might show up later.”

  The boys snickered.

  Diane sailed into the room and slammed the laundry basket down on the kitchen table. Todd and his friends jumped at the sound. “Well, hello, boys,” she declared, nailing a grin to her face. “Getting yourselves a snack?”

  They muttered hellos and sneaked furtive glances at Todd, all but Brent, who had the nerve to look her straight in the eye and smile. “We were just checking out the skateboard ramp,” he said. “It’s really cool. Do you think Michael would let us try it when it’s ready?”

  Insolent little weasel. “You could ask him,” she said, still grinning.

  “Maybe later,” Todd said, shoving his friends out of the kitchen. “Mom, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  She would have been more impressed by his apology if he hadn’t waited until his friends were out of earshot. “You have no idea how much it hurts me to know you score points with your friends by ridiculing your brother. You, of all people, should defend him.” She snatched up the laundry basket and stormed from the room.

  Tim and Michael worked until dusk, and the next morning Diane woke to the sounds of hammers and saws outside her window. They worked all day, taking breaks only for meals and church. Michael tried to convince her to let them skip mass just that once, and Tim looked like he might agree, but Diane would have none of it. “With this thing in the backyard we’re going to need all the divine assistance we can get,” she said, herding father and son inside with orders to clean up and change within twenty minutes or
she’d cancel construction for the day.

  Tim and Michael got back to work after church, and when Diane returned from welcoming a new group of quilt campers to Elm Creek Manor, they were still at it. By Sunday evening the skateboard ramp was finished. Diane and Todd joined Tim and Michael outside for the final inspection.

  Michael was holding his skateboard and grinning. “What do you think?”

  “Unbelievable,” Todd said, eyeing the structure, and Diane agreed. The U-shaped half-pipe nearly spanned the width of the yard and looked at least twelve feet high.

  “It’s safe,” Michael assured her. “Really.”

  Diane circled the ramp, looking it over. When the supporting beams hid her from view, she seized the nearest one and threw her weight against it. It didn’t budge.

  “Dad already tried that,” Michael called. “It’s sturdy.”

  Diane joined them in front. “It seems to be,” she admitted.

  Michael apparently took that as the signal to begin the test run, because he put on his helmet. He climbed up a ladder built into one side of the structure and moved onto a platform at the top of the U. He placed his skateboard at the edge, stepped on it, and scanned the length of the ramp.

  “I can’t watch,” Diane murmured, but she couldn’t look away, either.

  Then Michael launched himself forward, over the edge and down the slope. His momentum carried him up the opposite side, where he turned at the edge and raced back down again. He shot up the first slope, but this time he soared above the U, crouching down to grab the skateboard with one hand as he turned.

  “Big air,” Tim whooped as Michael rode down the slope again. “That’s what the kids say,” he added in an undertone.

  Diane nodded, her anxiety giving way to amazement as she watched Michael swoop down one side of the U and up the other. He was positively graceful.

  Finally he slowed and came to a stop at the bottom of the U. “What did you think?” he called, smiling with triumph and breathing hard from exertion. Somehow he tossed the skateboard into the air with his feet and caught it.