A Short Move

by Katherine Hill

  Months later, when Mitch was basically living in his locker at the practice facility, she knew she’d made the right choice. For herself, but also for Caryn, whose pain suddenly reached her in New England, overwhelming and all too familiar.

  Radiant in pregnancy, Caryn grew tattered in the post-partum gale, her lustrous hair diminishing and falling out, a loge of darkness filling in beneath each eye. She wore her nursing bra like a harness, her jeans like surgical scrubs.

  “Come on,” Cindy found herself cajoling her. “Let’s go out.”

  She’d drive her to the mall, where Caryn would creep among racks of onesies with diamonds in her ears and Alyssa strapped to her chest like a bomb. Under a skylight in the brand-new café, they’d order smoothies because Caryn’s teeth had grown sensitive and Cindy wanted to show her support.

  “People here are pretty awful,” Caryn said one time, watching a woman in pearls and a quilted jacket cup her tea in two delicate hands.

  “Amen,” Cindy said, happily bouncing Alyssa.

  “They just aren’t—nice,” she said, finally.

  “They say please and thank you, don’t they?”

  “I’ve heard it.”

  “I’m with you. I’m just trying to put my finger on it.”

  “Eye contact,” Caryn said, looking at her own hands. “They don’t make it.”

  “That’s it. You’re right. Eye contact.”

  They had become friends. Which, for some reason, was thrilling.

  “You’ve met nice people, though,” Cindy mused. “The other wives?” For a moment, she felt like she was back at her job, that trippy, long-ago thing, like a half-forgotten bender, counseling a NICU mom.

  Caryn shrugged. “They’re not from here, though. They’re all, like, Pennsylvania and California and Georgia. And Vicki’s the only one who likes me.”

  “Who wouldn’t like you?” Cindy balked, but Caryn just narrowed her eyes. “I mean, once they got to know you.” Cindy kissed the hot cap of Alyssa’s head.

  Without warning, Caryn’s eyes filled, and she blinked furiously, tossing her thinned-out hair from her face, the youngest and most dangerous she’d looked in months. “I’m not really that good at keeping people.”

  “Sure you are,” Cindy protested feebly. It was hard to look tears in the eye, but she made herself. She was not one of these Yankee bitches.

  “People always have other things that are more important. And they are important. I mean, the NFL is important!”

  “It’ll be different after the first year,” Cindy insisted, not even believing it herself. “Once he learns the ropes.” After the first year, it would only be more permanent. All those play calls, all those other personalities. Already, there was a defensive lineman named Hardy, Vicki’s husband, who behaved as though he’d known Mitch all his life.

  “But my parents,” Caryn said, “what’re they doing? What’s their excuse?”

  Cindy tried to recall a single thing Caryn’s mother had ever said. She was one of those meek people who hid behind her smile, thinking maybe no one would murder her if she kept on looking nice. The dad wasn’t much more outgoing. Oh, they were agreeable, all right. But Cindy could see why Caryn might yearn for something thicker.

  “They haven’t even come to visit yet,” Caryn went on. “They just call every now and then to say how great they think my life is. They’re so nice, but I feel like they’re done with me. Sometimes I feel like I’m done.”

  For years Cindy had wanted to deface Caryn, and now here she was under a skylight in Massachusetts, doing all the vandalism herself. Well. People changed. Cindy certainly had. Over the years, she’d trained herself to hold back the heavy, complicated sea of herself, a lesson she’d half-learned from Joe, and then all over again from Tim. But something told her she no longer had to do that with Caryn. She sat there with her a moment longer, letting her not-cry, letting her regain her composure, before asking her, “Caryn? Do you want to know something about me?”

  And then she told her about Mitch’s dad. How they’d collided after their senior year, a desperate time, when she’d felt ready to topple off a cliff. How he’d wander over every other night or so—she left the sliding door unlocked—but they otherwise had separate routines. Life had gone from public—school, games, parking lots—to something so private she didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Boyfriend was a sugar candy word, a lollipop for little girls. She was in nursing school, stacking her brain with information. Cold, hard facts, a great contrast to the jellyfish she felt like with him. He came to her smelling of earth and pine mulch, marked by the loss of a mother, and in another way, a father, wounds he could not put into words. It wasn’t clear they had a future, but it was clear he felt safe in her bedroom, with the portable record player and the poster of Robert Redford over the bed. Sometimes, Joe was so physically present, she thought she might explode, the boundaries that held her together releasing themselves into him. Sometimes, she thought he was just another Redford, because she never saw either one of them anywhere else but in her room.

  The erotic confession embarrassed neither of them. Caryn nodded and scratched her neck with the hand she wore her rings on. She was wearing them again, her fingers returned to their original size. Weight was never Caryn’s problem.

  She hadn’t been able to keep him, but she loved him; Cindy wanted Caryn to know. She loved him in a way you can love only one person, the one you’re with when you discover you are boundless, that however you look standing around a bonfire and whatever name you happen to go by, you contain within you all your past and future selves, your current phase, and all your potential. He’d taken a lot from her, but he’d also given her something, more than just a son she adored.

  “You are not done,” she told Caryn. “You are just starting. You are taking off right this very minute.”

  Caryn snorted at Cindy’s hyperbole, but then something remade her face. She understood. She grasped the use of it. She wiped her eyes and met Cindy’s gaze dead-on.

  NAME

  One Wednesday early in his first NFL season, Mitch neglected his most important rookie duty: picking up lunch for the veterans. He spent that afternoon bandaged to the goal post in New England’s crumbling stadium, wearing nothing but a jock strap and a helmet. It was already getting cold in late September, and after a few minutes of useless wiggling, followed by tingles that quickly penetrated his bones, and the understanding that even Hardy wasn’t coming to cut him loose, his mind landed on a sort of meditation. Wilkins, LB, 59. That was how he appeared on the roster: name, position, number. The phrase circled back to him, and it calmed him down, helping him to endure the involuntary shaking, and the hair he was, with every lurching adjustment, forcibly ripping from his skin until he was free. Wilkins, LB, 59. He called it up pretty regularly after that, in the midst of another agonizing loss, in between another pair of legs that weren’t Caryn’s, pretty much any time he needed a little assistance quieting his body or his mind. Wilkins, LB, 59. An entire season, an entire life’s ambition, condensed into a guiding mantra: the pleasing, reassuring sound of his own, successful name.

  7. CARYN, 1997

  When they talked about the game, which was not often now, Mitch liked to remind her that it didn’t matter how smart you were, what kind of strength or instincts you had. If you’d only done something once, you probably hadn’t done it right. You had to do it a hundred times, a thousand. Lift, drill, study, react. The movement had to slip through your veins so chemically, you weren’t even making a decision; it had to be automatic.

  It was with this gospel in mind that Caryn Wilkins was making her second rep at the Koalani Resort on Oahu, a cruise ship beached in postcard paradise, every window capturing cutouts of the Pacific. Each year the NFL rented out the whole place for the post-post-season Pro Bowl, and when she arrived with Mitch, their daughter Alyssa, and Mitch’s mother Cindy, it was once again crawling with board shorts, shot-put calves, and all the other regular pageantry of footbal
l families on vacation. The printed sarongs over titantic boobs, the thousand three-year-olds in water wings, everything just as she’d left it on her first rep—and what a funny thought that was, her first rep, the very concept implying a second, a third, and then, eventually, one that fails.

  This time, she would improve. This time, she was nearly done with her two hundred hours of yoga teacher training, and as a corollary she was making a concerted effort to live in the moment, in her body.

  Her body was in the hotel. It had come from the car past the koi ponds and through the glass entrance so harmonious with nature it didn’t even need a door. She heard rustling and the sound of birds, taking a moment to register what she already knew, that the rear of the lobby had no walls. She recalled this sensation from last year, the breezy warmth of being outdoors even when you were inside, though this time it was a bit duller, the novelty slightly worn down. A good feeling nonetheless. With Mitch by her side, she stepped one foot forward, then the other. She spread her collarbone and checked in with her pelvis, leveling it as they crossed the tiled atrium lobby to registration.

  “Wilk!” Jordan Cash was approaching, the Jets quarterback Mitch sacked at least once a year. Mitch turned to clasp his hand in a micro man-hug. “Good to see you, man,” Jordan said, tugging Mitch’s signature ponytail. “What room they have you in?”

  Mitch laughed in that forced way of his. “Don’t even try that shit with me. Ain’t you found a rookie yet?”

  “I swear, I don’t know where these guys are hiding! I got a happy hour to bill!” Jordan leaned toward Caryn now, a Georgia boy with instinctive manners and a fat gold wedding band he wore ostentatiously during games. “Looking lovely as always, Mrs. Wilk.” Caryn received his kiss on her cheek. “Pam’ll be happy to see you.”

  “You too, Jordan.”

  “Where’s your entourage?”

  She pointed at the imperial couches by the coffee bar, where Cindy sat with Alyssa collapsed into her chest. The single tiny thing she could control: her own family. Every other power sat with the almighty League. “Just Mitch’s mom and Alyssa this time. We’re trying to make it a family trip. First week for them, second week for us.”

  Jordan heaved forth a laugh. “Good luck! You know how this place is! Camp Koalani!”

  She did know. Mitch had brought his protector Hardy Mulligan and two other New England teammates to the previous Pro Bowl, leaving Caryn in the pool all week with the female element. Mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. Alyssa, then a few months shy of the ubiquitous three, bobbed in glittered wings, scooping water from her left into the water on her right. “It’s all the same water,” Caryn had tried to explain. But Alyssa hadn’t cared, didn’t even seem to notice her efforts were futile; for her, too, it was about the repeated movement.

  She’d made some friends last time. Noelle DiMassi of Denver, Carmen Jackson of Pittsburgh. And of course she had her old New England standby, Vicki Mulligan, who came with Hardy as a package deal. But the best was when they’d been with their men, everyone wearing leis, drunk with their feet in the surf of their private NFL-only lagoon, raising Mai Tais and beers to the endless ocean beyond the breakers. It was possible, then, to believe, that life did not get more beautiful than this. At last a rest. At last a vacation. On an island made for vacations.

  Hardy had made the Pro Bowl on his own this year, so Vicki and the kids were back, and it was all lining up to be the perfect do-over, because this time, Caryn had some new beliefs. One: that she was valuable. Cindy had taught her that. It had taken some time, but she got it now. Two: that she deserved the truth.

  “Camp hell,” Mitch said. “I’m here to win my wife a convertible. Then she’s dragging me to Kauai.”

  “You, the Pro Bowl MVP?” Jordan hooted. “I’d like to see that!”

  “I know you would. Don’t worry, you’ll get your forty g’s. Gonna need it if you can’t find a rookie to take your sorry-ass tab.”

  They explained things to each other, these men did, things all of them already knew. It was part of being in the club, having something to say that had often been said before, the more often, it seemed, the better.

  “Don’t you dare try to put it on our room,” she said, succumbing to the habit herself. “We haven’t even checked in!”

  The room—707, a number she would guard all week with her life—had an immaculate bed and sliding shutter doors that opened onto a lanai overlooking the ocean. She watched Mitch push them open with a resignation that seemed new to his body even in the last few minutes, the energy he’d whipped up for Jordan having thoroughly leached away. She picked up the phone, dialed Cindy and Alyssa next door to tell them she’d meet them at the pool. When she turned back, Mitch was settled in an armchair, as much as he was capable of settling, his leg canted at its big boy angle, jiggling vaguely in the direction of the sun.

  It had not been a good year for them. She swore up and down that she would leave him if he didn’t pull himself together soon, but she’d sworn it only to herself, so how was he to know? Tactically, she’d made many other mistakes, mostly involving her temper. The time she’d accused him of sleeping with the redheaded publicist was one she’d particularly like to have back. Of course he was sleeping with her; she kept calling, and she was so condescending to Caryn on the phone. But Caryn had timed it wrong, waiting up for him on a Sunday night early in the season. Mitch could be downright self-righteous after a loss, his temper much louder than hers, even more so at 0-2. She threw vodka cranberry in his face. He dragged her to the couch by her hair and punched a hole in the wall. A terrible start to the ’96 season. No one knew they’d end up in the Super Bowl.

  The Super Bowl was bad, too, and even two nights in the French Quarter were not enough to get over a loss like that. She’d handled him delicately ever since, a tiny, simpering shadow ready with Tums and Advil and water if he asked. He never did, keeping his eyes behind caramelized sunglasses throughout the ten-hour flight.

  So there was never a good time. Really, that was the trouble. There was no such thing as a good time to ask a 255-pound man who made a million dollars a year when he planned to stop fooling around. Even now, alone in a room with a water view and nothing to do for the rest of the day.

  The important thing, then, was to be in the moment, to let go of everything that didn’t serve her, beginning with her travel clothes. She began stripping them off, a stretchy t-shirt and jeans that were now limp and vaguely stale after their half-day in recycled air. She felt something fresh attend her skin as she flicked them into a corner under the desk. She would put on one of the new suits she’d bought; she’d take Alyssa in the water. She was determined to feel relaxed.

  Then, just when she’d forgotten to worry about him, his voice came ripping across the room. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  It was not a neutral question, or even, she felt, a literal one. He seemed to be accusing her of something far outside the physical moment. She stood over her suitcase, naked, Brazilian waxed, with a pink bikini bunched in one hand and an aqua one in the other. They were both from Newberry Street and still had their safety-pinned tags.

  “Going to the pool?” she said, which immediately sounded like the wrong answer.

  “With the window wide open like that?” He was standing now before the lanai, setting his arms out like a protective fence.

  She laughed nervously. “Who could see me?” she asked. “The dolphins? I don’t mean the kind from Miami.”

  He twisted his mouth trying to decide if he would laugh at her lame joke, his eyes lazing as if threatening at every minute to fall asleep. He must be tired. He’d been a machine for twenty-two weeks.

  She hurried into the pink bottoms and tied the pink triangles over her boobs. “There,” she said superfluously. “All better. Do you want to come? I mean—you don’t have to. Just, if you want to. Maybe you’d rather nap. Whatever you want to do is fine.” She couldn’t believe how difficult it had become to ask him a simple question.

>   He shook his head, at which part she wasn’t sure, then sluggishly waved her on her way, at least no longer annoyed. She grabbed her sunglasses and her key card and made her escape. Alone in the elevator, with the card in her mouth and the sunglasses on her head, she unpinned the tags from her side boob and butt crack. She wasn’t sure why she was so scared. It wasn’t as though he’d ever hit her, not really, not anything that she would count.

  She made her way out to the pool, and there was Vicki, accepting a Mai Tai off a tray from her lounger. They’d suffered the long season together, all the way through to the flight from New Orleans, but the sight of her here in her fuchsia lei and fishnet sarong seemed to erase all that post-season misery. It was the post-post-season now, and had maybe always been, the eternal Pro Bowl, the endless vacation.

  Vicki was her confidant from day one in New England, when the Mulligans cooked them their very first dinner, steaks and corn on their big back deck. She was like a homecoming queen out there, smiling constantly and at the same time constantly on the verge of tears, which might’ve been from the grill smoke, but in any case made Caryn feel at home. The old Caryn would’ve rolled her eyes in embarrassment and found another caustic girl to laugh with, but the new Caryn was a mother and had cried every day since Alyssa’s birth. She felt grateful to have her hand in Vicki’s as Vicki told her, “These men, you know, they’ll test us. We wives have to stick together.”