by David Wright
The train dipped from above ground into the bowels of the city. The sound of the wheels on the tracks was a metallic humming. I thought about the Jets. They were the number-one team, so by losing to them we’d put ourselves behind the eight ball after our very first game. We’d need to go undefeated from now on to end up at the top of the final rankings and have any hope of qualifying for the championship game.
Go undefeated the rest of the season? Right. With reliably unreliable Sidi, a spotty defense, a crappy backup QB leading the team for one entire half…
What Monsieur Lebrun had said on the sideline at the end of the game haunted me—about what Freeman and I were supposed to be doing for the team. If we lost again, would he send us home early?
At Gare du Nord station, the car filled up. Normally, this was where Freeman would transfer to catch the metro to take him home, but Juliette had asked him to dinner.
He spoke suddenly. “Can’t be but one of us on the field at once.”
“Huh?” Sometimes I couldn’t understand his English any better than his French.
“There can’t be but one of us, either you or me, playing at one time, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“We’ve got what it takes to beat the Jets, that goes without saying. We should run the table all season. But here we are.”
“Here we are,” I said.
“Well, how about this: what if you and me go both ways?”
I didn’t follow him.
“I played running back till my junior year,” he said. “I got mad skills. And you’ll train with the defense, so you can go in on D. That is, if you ain’t afraid to come up and hit a body.”
“Ha! I played safety two years in high school.”
“That way,” he went on, “the half when you can’t play QB anymore, you go in on defense...”
I finally got it. “And since we can’t be on the field together, you boost the offense.” It was smart—a great idea. And he didn’t even know our heads were on the chopping block. “I bet it’ll fly with the team too.”
“Get two full games out of us instead of just one and a half,” he said. “If we do that and avoid the M&Ms, we be clean as gasoline. Whoop Jets butt, Mousquetaires, all of them.”
“The M&Ms?”
“Mental mistakes,” he said.
I couldn’t help myself; I cracked up. “Right, of course, Mister Cheap Shot to the Chin, Fucking Al-Qaida Motherfucker!”
Even he had to smile at that. Then he got quiet.
“This is okay, you know,” he said.
“This losing?”
“Not the losing—of course not that,” he said. “But this.” He pointed toward the floor of the train. “Being here. Back home, Coach tells you when to pee and how to hold your willy. That’s all you ever know—what you’re told. Here, it’s like we got some say in it.”
He’d hit the nail on the head. It was what had made me leave home: so I’d have some say in what I did with my life.
We got off at Cité Universitaire. Across from the Parc Montsouris was a bakery. Freeman stopped. “I’ve got to bring something,” he said, dropping his bulky bag in the middle of the sidewalk for me to watch over. “Can’t show up to your cousin’s empty-handed. I’m suave like that.”
He pronounced it swah-VAY.
Through the window I watched him survey all the selections in the glass case. He came back out carrying a box.
“Fruit tart.” He frowned. “That mess is expensive!”
“The cost of being suave.” I pronounced it like him, but he didn’t laugh.
MATT
Juliette had insisted I invite Freeman to dinner because, as my “surrogate mom” (her words, not mine), she said she was responsible for me and needed to know who I was spending time with. But also Juliette could be kind of starchy. She was twenty-five, and since coming over two years ago to do a dissertation on literary feminism of the 1950s, it was like she was more French than the real French. Anyone who didn’t have the appropriate credentials was suspect.
I knocked to make sure we didn’t barge in on her getting dressed or anything. “Jules, this is Freeman,” I said when she opened the door. “Freeman, Juliette.”
“Come in,” she said in English. “Welcome.”
Freeman handed her the tart.
“Thank you very amicably for the invitation,” he croaked. Her English is spot-on, as good as mine, and I had told him so, but he kept going back to his overly formal, very guttural French. And he was struggling. “Mathieu speaks very amicably of you,” he said.
Amicably again. Swah-VAY.
Jules chuckled. “It’s only because he can’t afford not to.”
He and I sat on the couch (my bed) while she went into the kitchen to check on dinner. We were silent, kind of awkward. Since Jules’s pad had only one bedroom, my room was the living room—it was also the dining and TV room. Freeman had told me his host father was a captain of industry or something, so Juliette’s place must have seemed like a closet to him. These tiny Paris apartments were quaint when it was just you and your cousin, out in the world, making it on your own, but having another North American there made it seem like what it really was: former maid’s quarters, with drafty windows and three people on top of one another.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him, and I slipped into the shower closet, closed the door and sat on the commode. Just a few minutes to myself.
» » » »
“The Second Sex remains a touchstone text…”
Juliette was preaching at Freeman as I served myself a second helping of lasagna. Her goddess was Simone de Beauvoir.
“She sounds fascinating,” Freeman said in English, all flirty.
“Hear, hear.” Jules lifted her wineglass.
(She’d served us sparkling mineral water.)
“Never heard of her,” I lied and plunged a forkful of pasta into my mouth.
She threw a leaf of lettuce at me. “Dumb jock. You should take some cues from your friend here.”
Freeman finished his plate and pushed back from the folding card table we’d set up in the corner. “This is by far the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten,” he said in English, and Jules blushed, and I was like, Stop!
I said, “Jules, really, is feminism still even relevant?” I knew this would make her thick.
“Relevant!” She pushed aside her plate, not just thick but fuming, her face suddenly flushed. I could almost see smoke streaming out of her ears. “Take a look around, kiddo. Women’s rights have a long way to go before…”
I laughed, and she realized I was pulling her leg.
“I’m the one who was raised by a hardcore feminist, remember?” I said.
“Yeah, but your mom ditched the cause a long time ago to embrace consumerism instead.”
And Jules was right. My mom runs the biggest women’s magazine in Canada, one that torments women monthly—about their age, their weight, their inabilities in bed, in the kitchen, as mothers. I’m just seventeen, but I’ve spent so many afternoons with her in her office it’s like I have a PhD in women’s issues. No joke. I probably know more about cellulite and bacterial vaginosis than some doctors.
I mean, don’t get me wrong—I love my mother. I’m just not sure I always like her very much.
She left my dad eight months before I came to France, after twenty-nine years of marriage. They met at university, when my mom was a journalism major and my dad was the star running back of the team. They say that if he hadn’t blown out his knee, he would have been a lock for the CFL—he might even have made it in the NFL! He became a high-school coach instead, and a good one too. But that’s also why my mom ended up leaving him. I guess over the years his good nature and fun personality ended up carrying less weight for her than his lack of ambition.
I lifted my glass of water. “To my one and only mom.”
“So, Freeman,” Jules said, “what will you do after college?”
“Go pro,” he shot back, all brav
ado.
“It’s very rare to play professionally, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, it’s probably wise to have a backup plan, no?”
He looked down at his empty plate, kind of sheepish. “Bien sûr!” he croaked. Then, in English: “But the NFL would open all kinds of doors. So I could launch myself in broadcasting or the business world or something.”
Jules asked, “So you guys won today?”
It hadn’t come up until then. Neither of us answered.
“You lost?”
“Got spanked,” Freeman said.
“At least you didn’t get hurt,” she said to me. “Your mom would never forgive me.”
» » » »
Freeman and I were in the tiny kitchen, doing the dishes, when Juliette, who was sitting at the living-room window smoking a cigarette, called over, “She phoned again this morning, you know, after you left. You need to call her back ASAP.”
“And you need to quit smoking.”
Disgusting habit.
“I’m serious, Mathieu.”
I didn’t say anything, just dried the dish Freeman handed me and replaced it in the cabinet above the sink.
“What’s up with that?” he asked.
“My mom wants me to call.”
“But why the big deal behind it?”
I just rubbed and rubbed the washed lasagna casserole with a dish towel.
I’d talked to her three times since arriving. The first time, all she did was scream, “You’re a minor, for Christ’s sake! You cannot leave my house, much less the country, without my permission!”
The second conversation was even worse. She had called from her office and begun by announcing, “Your father is here with me,” and I knew I was screwed. My parents were never in the same room at the same time if they could help it. They only talked through their lawyers.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
He didn’t say anything, but I could feel him there.
My mom was pacing back and forth; I could hear her heels clacking against the hardwood floor. I’d seen her turn in circles, like a lion in a cage, a gajillion times before.
“The bank called yesterday.” Her voice was icy calm and echoed because of the speakerphone. “Not only do you leave the country without permission, but you steal money to do it?”
I didn’t answer right away. I mean, how do you tell your parents that you just want to play ball one last season, that you’re tired of thinking about your screwed-up family, that you’re tired of living one week at your mom’s new penthouse with her new boyfriend and the other with your dad at the old family home while it’s waiting to be sold?
“Well,” I said, “it is my money, after all.”
That was when she lost it. I won’t even repeat what she said. I mean, I just won’t repeat it.
My dad had still not said a single word. The entire time, he never did. It was the worst thing he could have done.
“I just needed to get away,” I told Freeman now. “My mom’s a hotshot magazine editor, and my older brother and sister have big careers.”
He stopped washing and stared.
“I’m good with it,” I said. “With the expectations. I just needed a little break first.”
“They didn’t know you were coming?”
“They do now.”
“My man Matt, a runaway!” He laughed. “Am I going to see your mug on the back of a carton of milk?”
“The season’s over in April, and then I have my whole life to get degrees and good jobs and to make money.”
“Dang, son,” he said, “you got big cojones. Beaucoup big.”
“You’re one to talk about the size of someone’s cojones,” I said. “Acting tough but afraid to go skiing.”
“Afraid?” Freeman made a sucking sound through his teeth—tsst—something between irritated and dismissive. “Please.” He kept scrubbing the salad bowl when it was obviously clean. “It’s just bad timing is all. The trip falls right between our game against the Ours and the one against the Anges Bleus.”
He’d told me one day at practice that his host family had invited him to go skiing with them in a few weeks but he didn’t think he would go. “You can catch the TGV down after the game…” I said.
“The TGV?”
“The high-speed train,” I told him. “You can catch it on Sunday and be back by Tuesday. You’ll only miss one practice, a walk-through.”
Juliette had gone to her room to study. He handed me the salad bowl.
“I used to love family ski trips,” I told him. “My mom and dad, Marc and Manon. Sometimes my uncle Pierre would bring his kids—my cousins. We’d be all together, you know. There’s nothing better.”
“These folks aren’t my family though.”
“For the next four months they are.”
There were no more dishes, but he stood there with the hot water running into the empty sink. I reached over and turned it off.
“Is it about money?” I tried to be tactful. “I mean, I can front you some cash if you need it.”
“Naw, it ain’t that. They’re paying for everything.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “It’s just that I should be home, that’s all,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like I ran off too, like you did. I should be back there, helping out.”
If we didn’t do better than we had earlier, I wanted to say, he would be home soon enough.
“There’ll be time for all that,” I said instead, because I was sure there would be. “Time’s the one thing we’ve got lots of.”
“Lots of time,” Freeman said, suddenly dour. “Right.”
» » » »
Freeman thanked Juliette for an amicable soirée. She was working on her laptop on her bed. She said goodbye but kind of automatic-like, and he looked deflated.
I walked him downstairs.
“So, you gonna phone your mom?” he said as we stood under the porte cochere.
“Tomorrow.”
“You better, man, ’cause family’s the most important thing.” He crossed the street, calling back, “I’ma be on you about it.”
I watched him disappear into the dark alongside the Parc Montsouris.
My mom had agreed to send a letter authorizing me to play, but she didn’t say much else. She wouldn’t accept my apology. She told me I was enrolling for summer classes at Orford the day I got back. She said she would contact the coach at Laval to let him know my decision. My decision? We hadn’t talked since.
My girlfriend, Céline, sent a long email. She dumped me. She said she couldn’t trust me.
I pulled my cell from my pocket, flipped it open and scrolled down the text messages to the one my dad had sent the day after the last call with my mom. Make things right, was all it said.
DIABLES ROUGES (1–1) V. OURS (0–2)
FEBRUARY 28
FREE
Me and Matt, Moose, pushing his ten-speed, and Aïda, our flag-team captain, were walking from the stadium to the RER after practice. They were chatting and laughing and whatnot, Matt and Moose horsing around, exchanging clownish looks and faux-sexy glances. Aïda, in her headscarf, smiled at their silliness. Me, I kept to myself.
It had been a month or so since I’d decided to stay. I was having fun and all—living in France, who wouldn’t be?—but I wasn’t feeling right either. Not easy, like Matt seemed to be. Homesick maybe. I’d Skype Mama every week, and she’d tell me how she was doing (“Fine”) and how Tookie and Tina were doing (“Fine”), and she’d ask how it was with me (“Fine,” I’d say). So we were all fine, you know. Still and all, as often as not I just felt off, uneasy.
Me and Matt and them passed by the city cemetery and the humming electrical substation that powered Villeneuve—ten-foot concrete walls topped with barbed wire, skull-and-crossbones and Danger–High Voltage signs all over. There was what they called an “industrial park” nearby. It wasn’t much of a park: fenced-in construction sites and giant cinder-block warehouses, most of them vacant. A ways off was a congested
highway.
“The A1,” Matt once explained to me. “The Autoroute du Nord. It leads to Brussels.”
“How do you know these things?” I asked.
“How don’t you know them?” he said back.
We had the Ours (French for “bears”) coming up on Saturday, a game we should win. The Saturday before, we had stomped the Mousquetaires, 42–0. Mobylette killed. Matt kept calling sweeps and Mobylette would turn the corner and blow by the DBs like they were standing still, his legs just a-churning. The boy could scoot! But it was Matt who won the day, calling the right play at the right time, getting everybody involved and keeping everybody focused even as the game got out of hand. Other teams had foreign players too, but Matt was on.
Me, not so much. Coach Le Barbu had me at safety, and I played it as a sort of monster-back—part linebacker, squeezing the line of scrimmage when I saw a run coming, and part defensive back, dropping into coverage. I’d been effective, you know. I’d made lots of tackles. But I hadn’t shined, really. Not like Matt. I hadn’t gotten a single interception, very few big hits. It rattled my confidence for real, yo. And I hadn’t played a down on offense. No need for me to.
We wove our way through the Cinq Mille projects. In the concrete courtyard between high-rises, some older guys—gray-haired, a mix of Arab and black—were playing the metal ball game you see old French guys play in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Pétanque, it’s called. That was what I was staring at when I noticed this group of dudes a little ways off: five of the hoodie boys that hung out by the big oak tree at our games. Three Arabs and two Brothers. Chelou, Moose called them—suspect, shady. One Brother was passing a plastic baggie to another, accepting some bills from him.
One of the Arabs was hawking on me. “Qu’est-ce tu mates, toi…” blah, blah, blah, he hollered my way. I hardly understood a word of his slang, but I got the message still and all: he had seen me eyeing his crew, so he was calling me out.
He moved on me, hard, so I pulled up. Didn’t say nothing, but I freed my hands from my pockets. He was spitting his slang, his crew pushing up behind.