by Neal Pollack
I wanted him to see the Packers win because I couldn't think of anything to say that would make him happy. That would make him realize he wasn't a wimp. Because my own dad had been able to do that. The morning after my second concussion—blindsided by a freckled safety with the ball bobbling in my palms—I woke up to see dad at the end of my bed. He'd just pulled a shift and was still wearing his coveralls. I could smell his armpits and the Pabst he'd knocked back after work. "Hi," I said.
"You're not big enough," he said. "But you are tough, and you know, you can be tough in other ways. The way you study—so hard?—that's being tough. Not everyone can do that. Reading long books, that's tough too. That's stuff I can't do that you can do. And if you do that, you're going to be able to do some things I can't."
So I hit the books harder than Ray Nitschke. Dad'd find me sitting at the kitchen table at 2:00 in the morning and pat my head. When he saw my report cards he'd hit me so hard on the shoulder I'd bruise; we'd smile at each other while I tried to rub away the pain and not squirt a tear. I wanted to be tough. I kept at it through high school and as I pursued my business degree at Marquette University. That's where I met Natalie, who got me with the blond patch in her dark-brown hair and her ability to talk for hours about something called "branding." She needed less sleep than I did. A consulting business hired me after graduation and she went to work for a cheese company. Not long after that we went for our MBAs at Kellogg. She went to one of the world's biggest packagedgoods companies, I went to a well-known consulting firm with offices in every major city around the globe. She now spent her every waking hour trying to give personalities to frozen foods; I was the reason my boss issued a no-poaching order to the partners. Nat was looking on the Web for homes in Winnetka.
I can say without being at all reductionist or overly schematic that my dad's words that dismal morning set me on the path I took. But I couldn't say those words to Andy. My dad was a guy who carried beer barrels under his arm at block parties. I was a guy who got knocked out the only two times he ever suited up.
Andy's head bounced when we hit the toll both speed bump. As I fished some change out of my pocket, I saw an empty toll gate. I hit the gas.
In the mirror, Andy was still looking out the window. He had missed the best part—Majikowski throwing what looked like a touchdown pass and the place going crazy. Then the flag; Majikowski was over the line of scrimmage when he threw it. This time the fans howled. As if to soothe their rage, the top ref went to his tape player to review the play. For nearly five minutes.
"Is Parkinson done looking at the tape?" I knew the answer.
"Yes."
I slowed down to drop the coins in the change basket. The gate lifted. I looked at the clock, counted to five, and started by imitating the ref: "Upon further review …" And then I repeated the roar that had filled the bar before Parkinson could explain himself: "THE BEARS STILL SUCK!" I could see the look on Bears kicker Kevin Butler's face. Ditka's face so red I'd hoped the heart attack would hit him then. After four years of losing to the Bears, the Packers pulled one out. After watching the 1985 Bears go to the Super Bowl, the Packers had humbled them. It was all the sweeter because of the way the Bears showed their loser mentality: In later team guides, an asterisk hung over the score. "Instant replay game." The game they could never admit they lost.
"Can we stop at Wendy's?"
"Sure."
The lot was a third full. I spotted marks of road-tripping Bears fans. A weathered flag mounted on a window of a minivan. A dozen bumper stickers seemingly holding together the disintegrating rear bumper of an Aspire. A Bears helmet in the back window of an Audi. I grabbed my hat from the passenger seat.
"All right, let's put our gear on. Got to hold our heads high, win or lose, right? Otherwise, we might as well be Bears fans."
I turned to Andy. He stared back at me. He made a face and put his hat on.
Listening to Andy order three double burgers with bacon, I wondered if he didn't have a growth spurt ahead of him. He asked for barbecue sauce for his fries. Nat never let him eat like this even though he was bony. But after the loss and knowing what tomorrow would bring, I wasn't going to stop him. Maybe Nat wouldn't have either.
We passed a family with two boys younger than Andy as we looked for a place to sit. All of them were wearing growling Bears sweaters. The older boy smirked at us. The minivan, I figured. I didn't look around for the drivers of the Audi or the Aspire. We took a table by the window.
"They should be able to take the Lions and the Niners," I announced. Andy was halfway through his second burger. It was the first thing I said to interrupt our watching headlights pass beneath us. "But after the bye, man, it gets tough. Miami. The Vikes. The Bucs. Ugh. If they don't start looking better, they're not going to make the play-offs."
"Yeah, but do we want to limp into the postseason anyway? I mean, why not just get the draft pick?"
"But you can't play like that. The guys won't play like that. They have to look good if they want to get the big money, you know?" I took a drink from my soda. "And the coaches would get run out of town if they did that. You know that. The fans own them; they wouldn't like that."
"The McCaskeys don't seem to mind losing."
"As they say: 'McCaskey has no Ditka.'" I tapped my cup against his as he swallowed the last of his burger. He didn't reciprocate. "Just as long as they beat the Bears at Soldier, huh?"
"Could we go?"
My face muscles tightened; I felt my lips draw taut. That was a popular ticket for the firm. They always tried to get a big client in there for that one, and they always wanted a show of force. Andy looked away.
"Maybe …"
"I gotta go to the bathroom."
"Okay. I'll clean up."
I didn't enjoy going to the box. I hated it. The chit-chat and bullshit bonhomie with clients or prospects over beers and wings—we were all such regular guys in our luxury suite—while talking business. How to get ready for Y2K. How to open a plant in Mexico. How to find reliable partners in China. Usually the game was background music. Only a few of them could even follow it. Any time one of them said something, it was just rehashed Chris Berman or Dan Pompei.
"What we need are more Grabowskis," said one west suburban metal bender busy plotting to move a couple of lines to a maquiladora, invoking the word Ditka used to describe blue-collar guys he wanted on his teams.
"You probably got a guy named Grabowski who'll need a new job soon," I had replied. It was a joke. That's what I told my boss the next morning. I was told to consider myself lucky we had kept the business. He left it at that.
I prodded the wrappers and stray French fries onto the tray. I spotted a napkin crumpled under Andy's chair and reached for it. My shoulder hit the tray, sending my cup tumbling over my back. It hit the floor and sprayed ice across the floor. I swore and started to pick up the cubes. Mama Bear was watching me with a thin smile as I set the last shard on the tray.
I dropped everything in the trash and headed toward the bathroom, wondering what was taking Andy so long. The nut and candy stand by the bathroom was closed. I heard someone yelling. I started to run. I heard words now:
"Favre sucks. Why don't you get a real team?"
My hands were on the door.
The bathroom reeked of stale whiskey. The fluorescent fixtures cast a nicotine-yellow glow. I looked past the bank of stalls and saw Andy. He was pressed up against the wall near the sink. His eyes were wide and wet. His fingers were spread against the tiles. The only parts of him moving were his carotids, throbbing.
The man standing between us had half a head and fifty pounds on me. A Bears helmet patch was stitched on the back of his army jacket. Wiry black curls sprung from under his knit Bears cap. From the way he rocked in his heavy boots, I was sure he was the source of the whiskey odor. Then he started slurring.
"What, are you going to start crying now, you little pussy?" He stuck his gloved hand at Andy. "That faggot Favre likes to cry."
My hands against the man's back. His headlong fall toward the stall door. The door opening as his face hit it. The sharp, hard crack. The heavy whumpf on the floor. The door bouncing back and forth several times before settling shut. The man's boots sticking out from underneath it. Then the smell: sharp, sweet, and sour at once. Like something rotting.
Andy was shivering. I realized we had to get out before someone else walked in. "Andy," I said. He didn't look up from the floor. I said his name again; no answer. Then I saw he was looking at something.
The liquid was black in the yellow light. The first trickle streamed along the grout line on its way to the sink. But it was chased by a faster current moving across the tiles.
"Get over here, Andy."
He looked at me, looked at the floor, and looked at his shoes.
"Andy, get over here right now. We have to get out of here."
His eyes repeated their motion. Then he broke for the stall. I hopped over the widening puddle and cut him off. I hugged him and lifted him off the floor. Just as I stretched my leg over the puddle, he kicked the stall door open. I caught a glimpse of the stain the man's head made on the toilet. I don't know how much Andy saw.
I set him down at the exit door. "Walk," I said. "Walk, just fucking walk."
Mama Bear's hand was locked on the forearm of her crying daughter. The lines were getting deeper at Wendy's. A kid was playing the mechanical crane game near the doors, trying to maneuver the claw toward a stuffed rabbit in the corner. No one said a word to us, no one looked at us. No one shouted, "Stop!" We were just two sorry-ass Packers fans scurrying on our way home.
Driving, I figured the scenario. A hidden camera in the bathroom must have caught me pushing the guy. Cameras in the parking lot probably followed our escape. At least the film would show I didn't mean to kill the guy. They wouldn't try to get me for murder. Manslaughter, maybe, but even then I'd probably get some slack; the guy could have hit Andy for all I knew. But there would be a trial. And even if I won, I would lose my job. No reputable consulting firm could employ someone who killed a stranger in a rest stop bathroom. They'd treat me well—no doubt partly out of fear I'd go postal. At a minimum we'd have to leave Wilmette; Nat might very well move out.
The next toll came up. Did the workers have my plates and description? I imagined my foot pressing on the gas pedal—the grill could take out the toll gate, I had no doubt. But then I realized: They wouldn't stop a killer without backup. No police cherrytops were spinning up ahead and a state employee wasn't going to try to be a hero. I slowed down and in my pocket my fingertips effortlessly set on a dime, a nickel, and a quarter. The toll booth worker was wearing headphones and smoking.
"Go Packers!" I shouted before I rolled up the window.
I got off at Tower Road and followed it through leafy Winnetka. I stayed five miles below the speed limit. But even as I kept my eye on the speedometer, my hands didn't feel the steering wheel; every tiny bone still rang from the man's shoulder blade. The balls of my feet were still pressing against the wet tile floor. My calf muscles ached from stretching for maximum push. I couldn't see Andy in the darkness but I knew the fear I'd seen when I opened the door still filled him. The men's room was staying with us.
A BMW brighted me and sped by in the other lane. He honked once he passed by. I waved, sincerely. Having somebody behind me would have made me nervous.
I went south on Green Bay Road along the Metra tracks. The stores in downtown Winnetka were dark and the auto repair shops looked abandoned. I flipped off the ridiculous cursive Kenilworth sign, a joke Andy and I shared. But once again, he didn't take the bait. I went east on Lake and a few blocks later turned onto our brick-paved road. I always said the best part of our suburban battlewagon was that you couldn't feel the ruts.
We sat in the car for a while after I pulled into the garage. I was waiting for Andy to say something until I realized he was doing the same. I was the father, so I went first.
"Well, I've got some work to do before I turn in. You?"
"Social studies homework."
"Okay. Well, we'll get them the next game, right?"
"Right."
Listening to his footsteps overhead, I went to the liquor cabinet and poured a Scotch. Then I went to my office. Two Macanudos lay in the top drawer. They were to have been lit up by us if the Packers had won. Looking at them now, I couldn't believe I had conceived such a horrible idea. It was so horrible I couldn't help but laugh. When I calmed down, I unwrapped one and sliced off the end with my Packers cutter. I lit it. After a couple puffs I went to the front room. I wanted to see the police as they came for me up our bumpy narrow street. Or maybe they would walk over; the Ridge station was only a few blocks away.
I stared into the lit windows of the Georgians and bungalows across the street for a peek of my neighbors. No luck. Scaffolding loomed in John Doolin's backyard. He'd blown out the back to add a home theater. During the summer it had been copper gutters. He was a broker.
"It should really help the value when we try to sell," he said at a block party over the summer. "People expect that kind of viewing experience today. It's getting to be like central air."
"When are you moving?"
"Oh, no, we don't have any plans now. But when the time comes."
"Right, when the time comes."
"And I'll say now, I couldn't have picked a better time to liquidate some stocks to raise the money." He paused and looked both ways. "I unloaded in February."
"Did you tell your clients you were doing that?"
He'd laughed, twisting a fallen leaf under the toe of his loafer. "One or two."
When Andy and I set off to watch the Packers lose, John's son Steven, who was in the same grade as Andy, had been playing catch with his little sister. Both were wearing Cade McNown jerseys. It made me laugh. How was I to know? But now as I stared at the dark, empty lawn, I recalled a day years back: Steven running in circles and kicking up leaves in a Favre jersey. And in the seasons after the Super Bowl, he wasn't the only kid on the block sporting No. 4.
And that's when it struck me: For as much as I hated the kids who were going to torture my boy the next day, it wasn't entirely their fault. If their parents, most of them nominally Bears fans, even some of the ones from out of town, couldn't teach them to hate the Packers, you had to wonder what exactly were they being taught. I tried to imagine a kid in my Milwaukee neighborhood of duplexes and bungalows wearing McMahon's jersey. I couldn't. So no wonder they walked around Old Orchard gabbing about nothing on their cell phones and buying movie tickets with plastic. If they weren't being taught something as basic as you don't wear a Packers jersey, what were they being taught? The question answered itself.
After I finished the cigar I went to the kitchen and took out the Scotch bottle again. Then I went to the den and turned on the TV. I kept the volume low so I could hear the police tires slither over the bricks.
The news at 5:30 a.m. mentioned a body found in the Lake Forest rest stop; police were investigating. When I heard Andy's feet coming down the stairs I hid the bottle under the blanket and feigned sleep. After he left, I called in sick. By 8:00, it appeared the man had slipped but police were investigating. At 10:30 the police gave a name to the body: John Radkovich, a thirty-two-year-old landscaper from Lincolnwood. He'd watched the game at a friend's in Lindenhurst. "Yeah, he'd been drinking, but not so much," his droopy-eyed host said, unconvincingly. On the 5 o'clock news, Radkovich was divorced with one son. They showed a picture of him and his ex. She had slapped him with a restraining order when he was caught creeping in the bushes around her house after hearing she was engaged. She didn't appear on camera, but was kind enough off-camera to tell the shivering reporter that John had fought a "long-running battle with the bottle." As it turns out, he had
been the driver of the Aspire.
The death of John Radkovich registered sixty seconds on the 10 o'clock news; the segment included a safety expert noting how many fatal accidents occur in bathrooms, so people should be vigilant. There was no mention of a crime being caught on camera, of a car being spotted fleeing the scene.
The police didn't come that day or the next. Or ever.
I didn't have any problem getting out of luxury box duty. It was simple actually. All I had to say was, "My son wants to go to the game with me Sunday night."
"Do you want to bring him in the box?"
"No, I think he'll want to sit outside."
"I can get 50-yard-line seats for the two of you. Would that be all right?"
Was it ever. The Pack whipped the Bears 28-6. Drive after grinding drive capped by Tyrone Williams returning a pick for a touchdown. Shane Matthews was no McNown. Andy was as excited as I'd seen him in months; he was smiling, jumping, and highfiving a couple Packers fans sitting two rows behind. The Bears fans around us were tolerant and one even told Andy that Favre was the best quarterback he'd ever seen.
I wondered what they'd think if someone had told them not three months ago I killed one of their fellow Bears fans. Would they have believed it? This guy who takes his son out on a Sunday night to see a game? Who called for beers for the woman whose call wasn't heard by the vendor? They would have expected some mark probably: excessive stubble or a twitchy eye or a haunted expression. Some physical manifestation of guilt. But not a trace of that. And not because I was hiding it. I didn't feel it. I'd slept soundly since the first few days, when I realized I wasn't going to get caught. It didn't hang over my thoughts either. And, to be honest, Nat and I had been having our best sex in years. Nothing like a crisis averted to reawaken the animal passions. I was still enough of a Catholic to wonder if I should be guilty: I killed a man, after all. But it had been an accident. And while he'd left behind a son, who's to say his ex's new husband wouldn't be a better man? What kind of father can a man be, really, if he's berating a small boy in a public rest room?