by Pasha Malla
"Right," he says, rubbing sweat from his hands down his pants. "I'm articling here in town, myself."
"A lawyer?" I hope I don't sound as blown away by this as I feel.
"Almost," Bettis says, "but I've had to take a few weeks off because of, you know, stuff?"
There's something in his voice when he says this that forces me to really look at him for the first time, and it's like someone's kicked my legs out from under me. I see bags the size of teacups under the poor guy's eyes, a week's worth of stubble peppering his jowly face. Here's someone reaching out, his wife dying, for all I know, and I'm closing down. I swivel around to face him, take a big breath before I speak. "Actually, I'm here for my brother," I say. "I'm here for Dizzy."
BEFORE BASKETBALL took over his life, Dizzy was always the kid off on his own, the kid who'd eat dinner in total silence while me and Mom and Dad joked with one another about whatever, and then we'd turn around and his plate would be empty with the chair pushed back from the table and he'd just be gone, off wherever, down to the ravine or up to his room.
Dizzy drove Mom crazy, especially with how careless he was with his health. He usually had his insulin on him, he'd just forget. Before we ate Mom always asked him, "Did you take your meds?" and Dizzy would nod, hiding behind all that hair in his face. Then I'd watch him sneak a needle out of his hip-sack, stab himself through his T-shirt under the table, then stash it and move right to his knife and fork and dinner. But he hated it, always did - not so much the needles or the diet, but the dependence, relying on something just to stay alive.
He's been Dizzy for so long that when Mom called me up at home in Oakville last week and said, "Derek's coming home," it took me a minute before I realized who she meant. Even in the few emails we kicked back and forth I never read the D he signed off with as his real name. Of course those weren't ever much more than him telling me how his Spanish was getting better, or me giving updates about the NBA. It felt more like checking in than real communication, and often his messages would sit unanswered for weeks before I could think what to write back - and, considering the lag between replies, I assume he had the same problem with mine.
Dad came up with his nickname one day down at the Pinery. I'd shown my little brother how spinning in place could make the world swim up and away from you. He'd loved it. Mom and Dad and I watched him all afternoon twirling circles with his arms out until he couldn't twirl any more, staggering down the beach and trying to make the water before he fell down. I'd been seven, he'd been five, and all the way home in the back seat he was Dizzy, and then it came to school with him that Monday, and that's who he's been ever since.
While I was happy as a kid to sit down with the Tv, maybe play Trouble with Mom or Dad, Dizzy couldn't stay inside. It's funny, because he was always so quiet, not your average hyperactive kid bouncing off the walls and shrieking and starting fights. Just restless. First chance he got from about age eight to twelve, he was right down to the ravine behind the housing complex, building forts to shut himself away in. First the ravine, then the basketball court: places he'd escape to, passing in and out of them, sly and silent, like a ghost through walls.
"DIZZY?" SAYS BETTIS.
"Yeah. It's a complication from his diabetes." I pause. "You knew he was diabetic?"
Bettis shakes his head.
"No, why would you. Sorry. Anyway" - I breathe here, deep - "he's got some problems with his feet. Pretty serious."
"Oh, that's terrible."
"Yeah. They're amputating one for sure, but they're going to try to save the other one. The right foot." His jumping foot, I think, but I don't say it.
"Amputating? Oh, god. That's - that's terrible."
"He didn't take care of his feet down in Cuba, was the thing. Trucking around construction sites in flip-flops or whatever. After so many years it started to take its toll."
"Man," says Bettis. "Well, I hope everything turns out as good as it can."
"Yeah. I mean, he's not going to die or anything."
I realize what I've said as soon as it comes out, but Bettis is just nodding, slow and thoughtful. If, for a second, he's forgotten about his wife, I can guess the one thing he's thinking is that Dizzy's ballplaying days are now officially over. But he can't say that. And neither can I.
DIZZY AND I FIRST played together when he was in grade ten and I was in grade twelve. He'd averaged something stupid in midget ball the year before, thirty-some points a game, half a dozen triple-doubles over the season, forty-two in a city semifinal his team won by twenty. I stayed back for a second year of junior, so I was captain on a team that lost twelve of fourteen in league play, but I made it to the all-star game, where I missed the only shot I took and got dunked on twice. Dizzy had fourteen as the midget MVP, passed up a few layups, air-balled a three-pointer and jogged back down the court grinning like he'd just done the grandest thing in the history of the sport.
The following year I moved up to the senior team and Dizzy went out for the juniors. The senior coach, Mr. McGowan, this shrivelled-up old guy who'd been coaching senior ball at Northern since, Dad joked, they made the switch from peach baskets, showed up at the first junior practice and grabbed Dizzy when he came in the gym and wheezed something at him like, "How'd you like to play up in senior with your brother?" I can just imagine what Dizzy might have done: shook the hair out of his eyes, shrugged, given McGowan that funny little half-smile of his, said, "Sure, okay," and left the gym without another word.
So Dizzy was the coveted recruit and I was backing up this kid, Raul, who'd come back for grade fourteen - the victory lap, he called it. It pissed me off a bit, because otherwise I would have started, and in practice the guy was a real cock, giving you titty-twisters when he came off screens, bringing his knee up into your balls if you guarded him too close. He had this scraggly little goatee like pubes on his chin and a bald slash through his eyebrow he told everyone was a knife wound but I heard he'd shaved there himself and never grew back.
For our rookie initiations Raul made me and this other kid, a big gangly stringbean of a redhead called Clark, run suicides with a hard-boiled egg between our ass cheeks. If it fell out you had to eat it. Clark got going too fast right away, only made it to half-court before his came plop out of his shorts, bounced once, and rolled right into the tip-off circle. Raul came over shaking his head and watched Clark chew his way through the egg while I waddled up and down the court - foul line, baseline, three-point, baseline, half-court, baseline - until Raul decided I'd had enough.
For his initiation, Dizzy got his head shaved. They buzzed everything right off, starting with that flop of bangs in the front. He sat on a bench in the change room while they did it, almost patient, waiting until the last of it was lying on the floor between his feet. Afterwards he even offered to sweep up, dumped all that hair into the trash by the sinks and came into the gym looking like a Navy SEAL.
First drill of practice he had Raul on him and did some crazy crossover I'd never seen before, and Raul went for it, diving one way and then stumbling back the other, and his one leg buckled and he was over on the ground hollering like he'd been shot. Dizzy didn't say anything, even helped Raul limp off the court, then came right back into the next drill on defence, first senior practice of the year, this scrawny little kid, fifteen years old. While he didn't start a game that season, he was usually off the bench for ten, easy, with a handful of boards and a few dimes and a couple of steals in there too.
BETTIS WANTS MORE. And, shit, I guess I owe it to him. "So he's been back from Cuba for a while?" he asks, and I start to feel like I'm Dizzy's agent doing press or something.
"No, not long at all. My parents flew him back a few days ago, basically right after he called and explained what the doctors in Havana had told him."
"And he's been in hospital ever since?"
"Pretty much, yeah." I pause. "But I haven't seen him yet."
"How come?"
"Well, I've been working," I say, knowing it sounds wea
k. "I live in Oakville, so I just thought I'd come down today, for the surgery."
"You talked to him since he's been home?"
"Not exactly." Bettis is looking at me funny, trying to figure this out. "He - he doesn't exactly love what I do for a living, to be honest."
"What, sales?"
"No, not the sales part."
"Then?"
I consider this, not really sure I could even answer in specific terms if I wanted to. Instead, I reach into my pocket and pull out the postcard. "You should check this out, actually," I tell Bettis, passing it to him. "It was his."
THE NEXT YEAR, my last year of high school, we both made the starting rotation. And, to be honest, we were magic together - all those years of two-on-two on the driveway at home finally paid off.
We had a system if McGowan's flex offence broke down, which it often did. I'd call for a reset, and while everyone was shifting around I'd drive the lane, go up among the trees, turn in the air all desperate, and there Dizzy'd be like a saviour open on the wing, rolling off a screen, hands up and ready. I'd kick it out and he'd catch and shoot, that jumper like a silk handkerchief pulled loose from a shirt pocket.
If a defender stepped up from the weak side he'd throw one of those killer head-fakes - he'd grown his hair back, so that shock in the front would go flopping up and send whoever sailing by, and he'd put it on the floor and come swooping down the lane, lay it in, his hand on the glass not a slap so much as letting the basket know he'd been there.
"HE USED TO STARE at that thing for hours," I tell Bettis.
"It's great," he says, smiling, handing it back to me.
"I brought it for him. When he comes out. I thought" - What did I think? - "I thought he'd like to see it, for old times."
Bettis's smile widens. "Old times. They are old times, aren't they?"
I look down at the postcard, at that frozen moment in history. I realize for the first time how faded the picture is - the parquet yellowing, Jordan's jersey a washed-out pink. I look up at Bettis. He's still grinning at me, putting on a good show despite whatever's going on with his wife. I drop the postcard into my pocket and do my best to force a smile to match his.
DIZZY LOVED basketball but could never watch it on TV for longer than a few minutes - he'd get all antsy and be up with a little Nerf ball, doing post-moves against the doorframe in the TV room, a drop-step and then baby-hooking into the kitchen. And when he got bored of that he'd just disappear, like when he was a kid. I'd turn around from my spot on the couch and he'd be gone - maybe out in the garage, dribbling away, or taking free throws in the driveway with his mitts on in the snow. I might go out there and we'd play some post-up, slipping around on the ice and Dizzy dropping lazy fadeaways over me with either hand.
But that year things started to change. Right around the start of the season he got this girlfriend, this mousy little thing with dreadlocks and a hoop through her nose, and he'd be out in the garage less - more often she'd swing by in her parents' Golf and pick him up. They'd be off somewhere, and when he'd trudge back in that night, shaking the hair out of eyes red and bleary from weed, Mom'd ask where he'd been and he'd tell her, "Out," showing that little half-smile that was the citizenship card to whatever world he lived in.
Still, the second year of senior ball we played together, our team was magic. Big carrot-top Clark hit the weights and put on about forty pounds, turned into a real force down low. We got a new kid, a transfer named Healey, a comedian, and deadeye from outside. He'd come off screens down low and pop out for threes, and make us howl doing Marv Albert all through practice, with McGowan barking at us to "Shut up and do it right," totally baffled as to what was so funny.
Regardless of whatever else he was getting into, Dizzy was the star. Grade eleven and already one of the most dominant players in the county, maybe the entire region. He was off on weekends with the under-21 rep team - at sixteen! - for tournaments all over the place, down to the States for training camps and clinics, playing against prep-school guys with NBA deals waiting for them like presents wrapped under the tree. But more and more often basketball was taking a back seat to whatever else: the girlfriend, the Grateful Dead, weed. Every chance he got he was reading The Catcher in the Rye or that motorcycle repair guide, whatever it was, and then at Christmas his girl got him the Che Guevara biography, and after that you'd never see him without it.
I remember playing against Bettis and his St. Paul's Panthers that year in the playoffs, how they threw a box-andone at Dizzy. McGowan called a time out right off the tip, took us into the huddle, and rasped at us to run the zone offence, four-on-four, and to take the open shots as we got them. We worked possessions for minutes on end, swinging the ball from one side of the court to the other, watching their box shift left and right, and Dizzy running the odd cut through the key to keep his man moving. We wore them down, let the ball do the work, and ended up pulling away in the second half before taking the game 36-24. We'd never scored less than seventy points all season, and here we were finishing with a combined sixty. Dizzy had eight, a season low, but he didn't seem to care. In the change room Clark stood naked except for his high-tops and tried to get us going on some lame team cheer before Healey came slinking up behind him and dumped the ice bucket over his head.
I MENTION THIS to Bettis now. "You remember that year in the playoffs when you guys tried the box-and-one on us?"
He's not biting. The high-school talk isn't reeling him in like it was minutes ago. He's twisting his wedding band around his finger. He's looking at the clock. "She'll be coming out of surgery now," he tells me. "It'll all be over soon."
Dizzy should be done too, and I start to wonder why a nurse hasn't come out to tell me anything. And here's when I realize that I'm not sure I want him to come out, that I want the surgery to go on until Mom and Dad show up so I don't have to see him by myself. I imagine him with bloody stumps disappearing into bandages, lying in a hospital cot like a bomb victim. And me walking up, not knowing what to say. I can picture myself standing there, him looking at me, waiting, and then eventually I'd fish the postcard out of my pocket, hand it over. Maybe he'd take it even, that sad little piece of cardboard nostalgia - not even close to enough, so far from enough it might as well crumble to dust in his hands.
MY LAST GAME of high-school basketball was the city finals. We played a school from across town that had snuck its way through the playoffs, the Richmond Heights Golden Bears. They'd finished sixth in the regular season, then made a run, taking out the third-place team in overtime in the first round, rode the win into the semis and blew out the two-seed, then met us, who were seeded first, in the finals. They played this crazy three-quarter-court press that some schools never quite got the hang of breaking. If you rushed, they'd trap you at halfcourt and you'd either throw the ball away or turn it over on the ten-second call.
Before the game Dizzy sat there in the corner of the change room with that Che Guevara book open on his lap, warm-ups on, shoes untied. He was using the Jordan postcard as a bookmark but wasn't looking at it, instead totally sucked into whatever the hell revolution he was reading about. When McGowan came in Dizzy dropped the book into his gym bag and sat back, ready for the predictably inane pep talk the old man had planned.
The game started and the stands were packed with half our fans, half theirs, both sides going crazy with banners and cheers and a few nuts from both schools with trombones and bass drums. But we got down fast. We were caving to their press, offering stupid cross-court passes like gifts, dribbling right into their traps and getting stripped, rushing our offence and forcing dumb shots. Down our end they were hitting everything, and by the end of the first quarter were up 17-2, capped at the buzzer with a bomb from half by their shooting guard.
Second quarter, Dizzy took over. He started dropping into the backcourt when we inbounded, taking the ball himself and dribbling through the pressure, pulling up in their end and looking for me to run the offence. We started hitting shots. First possessio
n, I nailed a three on a botched pick-androll, and then it was all Dizzy. He got the ball on the wing against their zone and found holes, weaved through it like a needle through cloth. He hit layups and jump shots, collected other people's misses and put them back for two. He drove and dished to Clark, who powered it up strong, both hands on the glass. At half-time we were down five, 31-26.
A NURSE COMES out then. Bettis and I sit up like something's stung us both. She looks at me and smiles - trying to seem nice, I guess. Then she turns to Bettis. "You can go in and see your wife now, Mr. Bettis."
He stands up and the Sports Illustrated slides off his lap to the floor, lies there glossy and glistening in the waiting-room lights. "How is she?"
"Recovering fine. The surgery couldn't have gone more smoothly."
"Oh, thank you." Bettis lays one of those paws on the nurse's shoulder. "Thank you."
He turns to me, bowing his head. "Good to see you," he says. "And good luck." And then he's gone, and by the determined way he lopes after the nurse, I have to wonder if he's already forgotten about me.
SO WE CAME OUT for the second half, and both teams started slow. We turned the ball over to their press; they couldn't hit a shot. The crowd got less rowdy, then quiet, then just bored. The game was sloppy - passes off guys' hands out of bounds, power moves fired straight off the backboard and out to the foul line. Four minutes in, with the score barely changed at 34-28, 1 dribbled the ball off my own foot and McGowan called a time out. On our way over to the huddle, Healey muttered in his Marv Albert voice, "Neither team looking confident out there."
McGowan was waiting. "Christ almighty," he spat at us and then went nuts with the marker on his clipboard, all squiggles and Xs and Os in the craziest game of tic-tac-toe you've ever seen in your life. When he was done Clark stepped up and started yelling, "Let's do this! Let's fucking do this!" and we actually sort of got into it and the other guys were up off the bench and the crowd went crazy and we stuck our hands together and "One-two-three: Northern!"