“It was like that at the draft!” Moore interjected. “I knew they was calling my name before they called it.”
“The film runs,” Goldman continued, unaffected, almost without pause. “And I hardly know what to think. It still seems good to me. It’s basically what I envisioned: boy conquers moon, builds a world. But as the projector clicks, I become aware that there are so many different ways this moment could go, so many different meanings it could have. Am I being punished? Am I being celebrated? The teacher is smiling, but why? Is she happy because she’s getting to teach me a lesson? Is she happy because I’ve done something good? The other kids’ faces are hard to read, too, and I realize in those few minutes while the film is still rolling, that they’re all waiting for things to be explained to them. Why this, why now. I realize, too, that I have the power to explain it.”
Mitch looked at his teammates, whose expressions were open and tolerant. They were willing to be persuaded, waiting for explanations in the exact same way. The conversation had reached this point because Moore had mentioned D’s videos, and Goldman was a man who liked to hold court, and yet, at the same time, it seemed possible that God had arranged the entire dinner because there was something specific he wanted Mitch to hear.
“So when it’s over,” Goldman said, “I stand up. The lights are still down, but as they’re coming up, I take a bow. And what does the class do? They start applauding. The teacher may have led them, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that key moment when I decided I was proud of what I’d done, not embarrassed or scared. It was the pride that made it good. It made it something worth applauding, and it made me think, I should do this again.
“I went home that day still feeling strong, and that evening, when my dad asked me his standard question about what I had learned in school, finally, for the first time in my life, I had a really good answer. I told him what had happened, carefully, without in any way implying that he might’ve had something to do with it. He listened as I described the moment I decided to take my bow, and I still remember the look on his face. It was neutral, which, from my dad, was the closest thing to approval. So I got out the film reel that the teacher had given to me to keep, and I asked him if we could watch it. Again a neutral response: ‘If you want.’ I still remember those three short words. If. You. Want. Well, I did want him to see it, I always wanted him to see my films, so I loaded it up. We watched it, and he said, ‘You’re a filmmaker, son.’ Again, that neutrality. But it was the greatest gift you can get in this country. Because neutrality, you see, means possibility. It means it’s up to you to make your own destiny. He was telling me, in his way, that I had no barriers. I no longer had to follow his rules.
“My next film was even better. I worked harder on it. My skills improved. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what faith is.” He ran his fingers up the scale of an invisible piano. “It’s directing a certain kind of energy toward something good. For me, then, it was films. For us, now, it’s football. We want this team to be a place where people can give everything they have. Where they can surprise themselves by being even better than they thought they could be. And I don’t just mean you guys: the starters, the veterans. I don’t just mean the rookies we’re looking to see improve. I mean every last man. I mean special teams. I mean the practice squad. I mean the guys we cut next year in training camp. I want them to leave saying, ‘Damn, I was a pro. I made it. For four weeks of my life, I flew.’”
Mitch felt himself getting hyped and sentimental all at once. He took Lori’s hand under the table. Goldman sat back in his chair, his eyes almost levitating with his football faith. You could see how he’d gotten to where he was, why it was that he’d been so successful. He understood that it was a team, and that guys had to sacrifice for that, but he also wanted the best for every single person, the absolute maximum each man could do. Football sometimes felt a little wrong, tragic in ways Mitch could not explain, but when he listened to someone like Goldman, how could he argue? How could anyone? The team glorified the individual. The individual glorified the team. They were all doing what they loved and getting paid.
On the drive home Mitch let the dark Jersey fields slip by. It had been one of those electrifying nights, Goldman’s words still sizzling in his brain. Neutrality was not a concept he’d thought about much before, but he could see now how it applied to his life. We are born, we are met with indifference, we go positive or negative, that’s it. He’d gone positive, the only way forward. He didn’t dwell on the things he couldn’t change. He saw in the long stretches of countryside a good world, and he was one of the good guys in it.
He did not watch Eddie’s scouting tape that night. It stayed where it was in an old Powerade bag in the backseat of his car.
“How was the boss man?” D asked, settling into his seat across the aisle from Mitch. “He fire you up?” The team had chartered an Amtrak for the game, and the train was big enough, and the men were big enough, that everyone got to have his own row.
“You know what,” Mitch said. “He did.”
Griggs scooted by in his worsted three-piece, which looked to Mitch like regular winter wool. More notable were the diamond earrings and purple pocket square. He and D weren’t much for dressing sharp. Give them fleeces that fit, clean pairs of jeans. Look appropriate, look like you’ve been there before.
D pulled out his bright blue Nano, a tiny electronic ocean in his palm. He’d never liked the owner, never liked any owner. “Long as he’s got you going towards victory.”
“Sure, definitely, victory.”
“I thought you said he fired you up!”
“But I don’t just go towards victory. I go towards excellence.”
Mitch said this almost without thinking, as though this were an old mantra of his, and now that the words were out of his mouth, echoing in the neutral air, he realized it basically was.
D narrowed his eyes, peering through the crack in Mitch’s logic. “Excellence is code for victory, though.”
Mitch conceded that it was. “In this game.”
“In any game! Find me one that’s just about going through the motions. Find me one people don’t want to win!”
He thought about other games. Individual sports like tennis and golf. Long-distance running. Every one of those guys wanted to win. But maybe you could invent a sport that didn’t care. He tried to imagine it. Something challenging everyone could work toward together, like climbing a mountain. Well, sure, like climbing a mountain, people did that already. He banished the thought in embarrassment, wiped his hand across his forehead, which was sweating, and reached up to adjust his nozzle for air.
“What about you?” he asked, needing to take his attention off himself. He could always get nice and quiet for a while if he could just get D to talk. “Don’t you go towards anything else? Like action, maybe? Or anger?”
“Well, shit,” D laughed, because they both knew his anger was historical. “Who doesn’t? But anger’s another step on the road to victory. Gotta have anger.”
“Wouldn’t be hitting people for a living if we didn’t.”
“No, sir, we would not.”
Mitch felt a twitch in his leg, the good kind. The kind that whispered, Tomorrow.
“Offense might not have anger,” D said. “Or not as much. They have to be sane, right? Calmly carry out the plan.” He nodded his head toward the next car up, where the quarterbacks and running backs were sitting. “Rainman’s too busy training dogs anyway. Oh! But you know what? If someone hurt one of those girls? That’s when he’d lose his shit. I can one hundred percent guarantee it. So no matter what, calm as you are, offensive-minded as you are, you got to have that violent streak.”
“Hey, Wilk!” The right guard Hock was passing through, gathering intelligence. “Who’s the best ping-pong player?”
“Kohler.”
“Thank you!” Kohler cried, pointing from other the end of the car.
“That manatee?” Hock laughed.
/> “Just—thank you, Wilk,” Kohler said. He flapped his bloated arms. “See, Hock? You’re the best driver; I’m the best ping-pong player. Rainey’s the best at corn hole. Small’s the best singer. Quinn’s the best dancer. Everyone’s got their thing and it’s important to recognize that.”
D leaned like a minister over his seat. “Go back to your pen, Kohler,” he shouted, as Steef squeezed by with an ice pack. “This is a car for serious men.”
“Who’s the strongest?” Moore called, receiving the ice pack.
Kohler grew diplomatic. “That’s a tough one.”
“He don’t even need to say best dresser,” Griggs boasted. “We all know that.”
“What am I the best at?” Mitch asked, unable to resist.
“Let’s see,” Kohler said, everyone in the car looking his way. “You’re the grandfather, so you’re probably the best at wisdom, right?”
Groans throughout. D whistled through his teeth. “Man! What does that even mean? The best at wisdom? That’s not a skill. It’s a general quality. ‘This my friend Wilk: he’s the best at excellence.’”
“Wisest, then?” Kohler giggled. “Most wise? What’s the correct term? I’m actually asking. I was terrible at grammar.”
“You definitely were, because you are,” D retorted. “‘Kohler is terrible at grammar.’ Was and is, son. Present tense.”
“Maybe I should revise that. Maybe you’re the best at wisdom.”
“Now, see, that’s just what you don’t understand,” D said. “Grammar’s practical shit. Like paying bills, but with words. Wisdom has a more spiritual component, and Wilk is definitely the wisest. I’m just better educated than you.”
“D-Mars: best educated!”
D shook his head. “Oh, we got work to do.”
“I’m not wise,” Mitch said. He looked out the window at the dim 30th Street platform. They still hadn’t left the station. “Not in the past, present, or future.”
“Come on.” D’s voice was dismissive in a way that was meant to pump him up.
“I’m not.” He spoke from his power center, that self inside him that never went dark. “I’m just the all-time greatest.”
Alyssa, Caryn, and Cindy were already seated by the time he arrived at Osteria, a clean little white tablecloth place with mirrors on the walls. This was life now, apparently: a ropes course from one fancy restaurant to another.
“The Princess in her palace,” he said, taking the seat next to his daughter.
Alyssa gripped her menu board, hardly looking at him. Her nails were the color of a wet frog. “I could’ve said the Inn at Little Washington. It’s like $500 a person there.”
“Alyssa,” Caryn said.
Mitch bent down, tried to hook his daughter’s eye with his, but she was dug in. “Well,” he said. “Lucky for me I have a meeting at nine.” He looked at his mother, who was sitting across from him. “How was the train?”
“Fine.” She beamed next to Caryn as though Alyssa’s behavior were completely normal. Maybe it was. Or maybe she was just so happy to see her favorite daughter-in-law, she didn’t care what else was going on. Cindy and Lori got along fine—there was no one who didn’t get along with Lori—but Cindy and Caryn were the real comrades.
“You know y’all can call each other,” he told them. “You don’t need me for your excuse.”
“We do,” Cindy said, and a whole life he had no part in whistled through his mind. If that was the case, he wanted to ask, then why are you crashing my dinner with my kid? She could’ve come down the next day with the rest of them.
He looked at Caryn. She was wearing earrings that hung like fireworks. Her lips were lit with their own red light. The whole effort was perilously attractive. He felt grateful that most of their recent conversations, about the yoga studio she was preparing to open in Bethesda, and in which he was the chief investor, had happened over the phone.
He turned to Alyssa, who was still practically living inside her menu. “So what looks good?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, you were the one who wanted to eat here. What’re you getting?”
She shrugged again. Such strange resistance, and no help from Caryn and Cindy, who were already locked in deep conversation. Maybe he needed them after all.
“How about the pork chop?”
Alyssa made a face.
“Are you kidding? It sounds delicious. Mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts?”
She twisted her mouth and shook her head.
“Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll get it. I’m sold.”
A few more agonizing moments passed before she finally released him from her nervous hold. “You don’t want the octopus salad?” she asked.
“I’m thinking pork chop.”
“But—” She took a breath as though she had something terrible to confess. “I could have a bite.”
“Then why don’t you get it?”
“Because I’m getting the tomato tart.”
“Get them both.”
“But I want the fennel ravioli for my main.”
Mitch looked at Caryn, who had snapped out of her conference with Cindy. “We have to talk.”
“Can I help it if she’s developing a palate?” Caryn asked.
“You sure you don’t want the pork chop?” he asked Alyssa. Then to Caryn, “You sure she’s mine?”
The menu talk went on for several more minutes, eventually involving the waiter, a skinny guy who sensed in their indecision a chance to sell more plates, and even though Mitch was hungry, and even though the waiter was maybe a bit too proud of himself, the delay was fine by him. There was normalcy when people argued about food, because everyone was just saying what they wanted. No stonewalling. No games.
When at last their negotiations concluded, and everything Alyssa mentioned had been ordered, they turned their attention to the next day’s game.
“We beat ’em once, we can beat ’em again,” Mitch said.
“You know I love watching you play,” Cindy said, “but I still get scared. I just can’t stop myself from imagining worst case scenarios.”
“Mom, how many years have I been doing this?”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“And how many times have we had this conversation?”
“Tell him about your time,” Caryn urged Alyssa. “Huh?” Mitch asked. The repetition of his own word confused him.
“Whatever,” Alyssa said. “I beat the boys. Nothing new.”
At his perplexity she rolled her eyes and poured forth a torrent of words. “Remember last year I was the fastest, even faster than the boys? Everyone said they’d catch up, and they did, but now boys and girls run separately so you have to actually challenge someone if you want to know you can beat them.”
“She beat them all,” Caryn said.
“All but one.”
“And that one is headed for the Olympics.”
“That’s just what they say,” Alyssa said, exasperated. “Mostly the boys are slow.”
“So you’re gonna be a runner, huh?” Mitch asked.
Alyssa shrugged, her new favorite word. “I don’t know. I have to pee.” She went off to the bathroom with a shoulder hunch that only drew more attention to her womanly back. She seemed to have grown four inches in four weeks.
“It’s been a rough year,” Caryn explained. “The high school boys are circling, but she’s not interested.”
Mitch was shocked. “Good.” Caryn leaned back to allow the waiter to set various special utensils. “What are they doing?” Mitch asked, when the waiter had gone away. “The high school boys.”
“Nothing, really. It’s still more about the girls. But she’s so honest, you know? When she’s upset, it’s all right there on her face, practically begging people to hurt her. And they will. The queen bees will. I keep telling her she’s gotta act a little. Not show them all her cards.”
“She’s the queen, though, right?”
“You w
ould think.” Caryn pursed her lips, trying to decide something. “She’s in a cautious phase,” she finally declared.
“That’s normal,” Cindy said. “Girls are mean. I hear these things from Alyssa and I’m just so grateful you were a boy.”
He had been looking forward to this meal all week, but now that he was inside it, a prissy dining room with carefully set utensils, surrounded by fennel and the lives of girls, he found himself missing men. Where were the jokes? Caryn had been funny once. Where was that? Where was the meanness that wasn’t mean—that was love? His felt his leg twitch and it wasn’t the good kind of twitch, it was the kind that wanted the hell out. He looked at his leg. He loved his leg. He couldn’t retire this year. Not possible. Give him a boss, give him hell, give him a mandatory meeting every morning of his life if only there were men in it.
He felt better once the food came. The pork chop slid down his throat; it calmed the self inside him. He looked at his girls: his. Well, Caryn was technically a was, not an is, but he felt the past belonged to him, too, especially when it continued to look so good, and to require his financial assistance. He ate his tiramisu while she updated him on the studio, which was scheduled to open in January. She was telling him about flooring and HVAC, and the wall system for bolsters and props.
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