“They promised him a scholarship?”
T.J. nodded. “It was only verbal, though; nothing in writing. And it was only if he qualified academically.”
“If they broke their word, that’s regrettable, but I would assume that in the world of big-time college athletics, there would be no shortage of broken promises. Would I be wrong?”
“No, you would be right.” The next thing would be, how much could he share with her? She wasn’t the kind of person you could enjoy, but her sincerity was something to respect. It wouldn’t be hard to trust her, but getting in a comfort zone would be something else. He said, “Ever since I read the letter, I’ve wanted to get back at them. It’s like I’ve wanted to find a strategy for revenge.”
“Revenge? What would provoke you to want revenge?”
T.J. took a deep sigh, but then he went ahead and told her the whole story. He summarized his meetings with Lindsey, the journal/diary he’d been keeping, the implied payoff he might receive for his record keeping, and the fact that he went to Full Court only to protect his interest in Tyron. When he was finished with the summary, he said, “Which brings me to the subject of the ACT.”
“What about the ACT?” Mrs. Osby asked.
“I don’t want you to read it to him,” said T.J. bluntly.
“And why not?”
“Because the whole thing is phony. It’s part of this whole stupid game. The idea came from Lindsey, not from me. It was part of the 504 strategy. See, it’s like everything about this is strategy, not honesty.”
Mrs. Osby straightened her posture even more erect before she answered. “Can’t you see anything positive in all this, T.J.?”
“Positive? About what?”
“About yourself. Can you see any sense in which Tyron is better off because of your interest in him?”
“Not right now. Right now I can’t.”
“He’s a better player because of you. He’s a better student because of you. He has goals. He’s less susceptible to gang or drug cultures because of you. Please tell me if I’m wrong.”
It was a liberating feeling, something honest, something pure, to have a discussion like this one, with no cover-your-own-ass political motivation. T.J. wondered how it was Mrs. Osby could combine so much formality with trustworthiness. It crossed his mind that the other part of his dilemma, the LuAnn part, was a subject he could discuss with her. But that conversation, if it ever came, would have to wait till another day. T.J. said, “With all due respect, Mrs. Osby, you’re sounding a little bit like those arguments the college coaches use.”
“How’s that, T.J.?”
“They say Tyron will be better off in college than out of it, even if he doesn’t graduate. He spends four years playing basketball, which he loves, and the chance for an education is always there.”
“What else do coaches say?”
“They say if he never graduates, and ends up at Burger King the rest of his life, it’s still the same result, only at least he doesn’t have to flip burgers straight out of high school. He gets the four years of glory and he’s no worse off.”
“Does any of that make sense to you?”
“In a way,” T.J. had to admit, “but it seems pretty lame. It’s like a cop-out. I should know. The bottom line is, my biggest reason for getting involved with Tyron and North State was for myself. I thought it would make me important. I thought I could have big-time power with college coaches. I’ve been using him. I hate to put it this way, but the fact is I turned myself into a street agent.”
“I’m not sure what a street agent is, but I do know that none of us has pure motivations. We all do things for a mixture of reasons, especially those things we feel are important. I hope someday you’ll understand that part of what motivates you is affection for Tyron, and a concern for his best interests.”
“I can only appreciate that in my head, not where my feelings are concerned.”
“Then maybe someday. Maybe a month from now, or two months from now.”
“Maybe,” T.J. mumbled without conviction.
Mrs. Osby took her glasses off. She began to clean them, using a bottle of Lenspure. When she finally spoke, she said, “If you think the ACT is part of the problem, I can tell you how to solve that.”
“What should I do?” T.J. asked.
“Don’t do anything,” Mrs. Osby replied.
“Do nothing?”
“No. Let me decide. It may be that Tyron is a student with an undiagnosed disability who needs to have the test read to him, or it may not. Let me decide.”
“I suppose so.” He was surprised at the relief he felt, but it made perfect sense.
“That’s what I get paid for. I have more background than you do, so let me decide. You wrote that coach and told him not to include you in the loop any more. I’m giving you permission to let this testing part of it go.”
T.J. felt silly enough that he could only repeat himself. “I suppose so.”
When he stood up to leave, T.J. shook her hand. “Are you a good player too, T.J.?” Mrs. Osby asked him.
“I was once,” he replied.
“Do you mean you used to be?”
“No, I mean I was once.”
The revenge factor didn’t go away immediately. T.J. longed to get back at someone, somehow, even when he understood his anger was mostly directed at himself. As disturbed as Tyron might have been about the letter, T.J. was no less disturbed, if in a different way. The letter seemed to add defeat to treachery. While he tied off plastic bags of trash and wiped Formica tabletops in Hardee’s lobby, his inner dialogue crafted a fantasy of revenge. He knew he had power he could use if he chose to:
This is the story that Gaines, the sportswriter, wants. If I showed him the diary, he would pay money for it. It would only be a question of how much. It would be a lot simpler, though, to just go to Lindsey and threaten to do it. Something like, if you pull Tyron’s scholarship offer, I go to Gaines with the diary, and he writes feature articles about it. It would be blackmail, but North State would be between a rock and a hard place. They wouldn’t have a choice. They would end up paying me the money and giving Tyron the scholarship as well.
As foolproof as it seemed, T.J. knew immediately how much it sucked. While he was heaving full bags of trash into the stinking Dumpster, he reminded himself, And then what? More political bullshit, more guilt. If you found what looked like a window of opportunity, it was really a trapdoor, so you had to put all your energy into looking for the next door and trying to find out what it would take to open it. A vicious circle without an end. He shook his head.
When he went inside to wash up and change out of his uniform shirt, he saw Rita Esposito. She was sitting by herself in one of the corner booths, the one farthest away from the counter. It wasn’t hard to pick her out because the crop of customers was thin; by this time of the evening most of the supper surge was on the wane.
T.J. hadn’t seen her since that day in the library a few weeks earlier when she sort of spun out on him. There wasn’t any reason to think that she was here to see him, although it was unusual for her to show up at Hardee’s.
When he emerged from the bathroom, having washed up and changed into his Bulls jacket, Rita was looking at him. He approached her table. “Yo, Rita; what’s up?”
“I thought maybe we could talk for a few minutes,” she replied. Rita had a notebook with unruly pages sticking out and two college catalogs on the table in front of her, Northwestern and the University of Missouri.
“Why not? I was going to get some coffee before I leave. You want a cup?”
“You buying?”
“Let’s say I am.”
“Okay, I’ll take one. One sugar, please, no cream.”
When T.J. returned with the coffees, he asked Rita about the catalogs.
“I’m either going to Northwestern or Missouri,” she told him. “It’ll depend on the aid package I can get. They’re both expensive, though. Missouri because it would be out-of-s
tate tuition and Northwestern just because it’s expensive.”
“With your grades and résumé, you could probably get a scholarship to Yale if you wanted.”
Rita took a sip of the coffee before she answered. Her glasses were slightly askew. She must have had corn for supper, because there was a small husk clinging to one of her front teeth. “I’ve checked into Yale,” she said. “It’s not good enough.”
T.J. found this to be a choice remark. “Why isn’t it good enough?”
“It isn’t rated that high for journalism. I want the best journalism school I can find. The best one in the East would probably be Syracuse, but I have no desire to go there.”
“It must be nice to have your future so figured out.”
“When your present is unpleasant, you tend to concentrate on your future.” She said this to him while staring directly into his eyes, over the rim of the steaming coffee cup.
T.J. thought he understood what she meant. She was talented and brilliant, but she was also a nerd. Most people didn’t like her; they made fun of her. She probably would be a lot better off in a college setting. But even though he thought he understood, he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“What about you, T.J.?” Rita inquired. “What are your plans for college?”
“I don’t have any yet. I might even go to junior college. I need to start thinkin’ about it, though.”
“Have you got your paper done for Mrs. Rubin yet?”
T.J. didn’t answer right away. He wondered by this time why Rita wanted to talk to him, anyway; it couldn’t be just to gab about colleges and papers for English class. Or could it? He even wondered how she knew where he worked and what time he got off. He finally said, “No.”
“What are you writing it on?”
“I haven’t started yet. When I do, I’m going to write about Hamlet.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“No. Why?”
“Because everybody has to write about Hamlet; that’s the play we’re reading.”
“I don’t mean about the play,” said T.J. “I’m just going to write about Hamlet himself, the main character. Just him, just the guy. I understand him all the way down.”
“And why is that?” Rita took a cigarette from her purse and started to light it.
“You better not smoke that in here,” he warned her, “I’ve had the manager on my case for smokin’ even in the entryway.”
She blew a smoke ring. “I’ll take my chances.”
“I’m warnin’ you, though.”
“I know. I heard the warning. I asked you why you think you understand Prince Hamlet so well.”
“Because he’s all fucked up inside and doesn’t know what to do. He thinks this way, then he thinks that way. He thinks he’s got something figured out but then it’s like something puts him back to square one. He’s in over his head and it makes him paralyzed.”
“Wow,” whispered Rita, clearly impressed. “Have you been there?”
“I’ve been there,” T.J. replied quickly. But at this point he was running out of patience, besides which, her smoking made him nervous. Someone could come back here and kick them out. “Rita, why’d you want to talk to me, tell me that.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t believe you want to tell me about college catalogs or find out what I’m writing for my English paper.”
“Right. Okay. You asked me about depression, but I came unglued.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I’m okay with it now. What did you want to know?”
This was a surprise; it took him a few moments to collect his thoughts before he explained, “I knew the girl who died at the Bible camp. The one who committed suicide. You know who I’m talkin’ about?”
“A little bit. It was in all the papers. She was from Peoria.”
“Yeah, okay. Her name was LuAnn. I was at basketball camp in the same complex. I talked to her a few times. It was just by accident that we met at all, but we talked about some personal stuff.”
“You’re sad that she died.”
“Yeah, but what I was askin’ you that day was about depression. An article I read in the Trib said she was being treated for depression before she went to the Bible camp. That really confused me.”
“Why? If a girl commits suicide, why would it be a surprise to find out she was depressed?”
“Because she was all smiles and grins. She was all happy in the Lord, and joining the Lord in the air for the Rapture.”
“You think she couldn’t be depressed if she smiled all the time?”
“Well, yeah. It makes sense, doesn’t it?” If his remark was naive, T.J. didn’t know why.
Before she answered, Rita dropped her cigarette, which was half smoked, into the coffee cup, which was still half full of liquid. They both listened to the sizzz. “Let me tell you what I know. I spent six weeks this summer in County West. I assume you know what that is.”
T.J. did know. County West was the psych unit. “I know what it is.”
“While you were shooting baskets,” she continued, “I was being probed and stuck and serving as a guinea pig for various medications.”
“Rita, why are you telling me this?”
“Maybe I want us to be better friends, so I can talk you into writing for the paper.” She was smiling, for the first time. The small corn husk was gone now, so maybe the coffee had rinsed it off.
“I didn’t ask you about depression to pry into your personal life.”
“I know you didn’t. It’s not a problem. I’m okay with this now. I’ve got the right medication, so I’m good. What I can tell you is this: I got to know a lot of people with acute depression. Some of them smiled a lot.”
“They did?”
“Some of them did. There were others who were all melancholy and miserable, including me. But some people you’d never know, not by their appearance or their behavior.”
“But why would that be?”
“I can’t say for sure. Sometimes it seems like it’s a mask, but other times it seems to be like a form of denial. Just make believe you’re happy and sooner or later you’ll have yourself convinced.”
T.J. leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. This was food for thought. Even with all the smiles and the rose-colored lenses, LuAnn might have been in depression, even the acute kind. Rita Esposito wasn’t sweet or charming, but she was a person you could believe if she told you something.
Rita was putting on her coat. “I have to get going,” she told T.J. “But before I do, there’s one other thing I’m thinking of about your friend.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Some of those wackos in a religious cult would probably tell her she didn’t need to take medication. That’s even if she was taking any, which I’m sure we don’t know; but if she was, they might’ve told her that people who have to take medication for emotional problems are just proving they don’t have enough faith in the Lord.”
“You mean like there’s no need to take medicine because the Lord will satisfy all your needs.”
“That’s what I’m saying. If that’s what happened, then your friend could have been not only depressed, but off her medication. It’s just a thought.”
“And that could affect her behavior? If she quit taking her medication, I mean.”
“Oh, no more than a diabetic who stops taking their insulin,” was her sarcastic response.
“Why do you have to be such a smart-ass? I’m just asking you a question.”
“Sorry. But, yes. Not only her behavior, but possibly her judgment and even her decisions. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And all I’m saying is, if you sanded off some of your rough edges, you might make a few more friends.”
“That’s a charming thought, but rough edges is who I am.” It was Rita’s last word on the subject, just before she headed out the door.
For a few moments, T.J. tried to absorb th
e information she’d given him. By hurrying after her, though, he caught up before she pulled her car out of the parking lot. “I was just thinkin’, Rita. You really want me to write for the school paper?”
“Sure. Are you interested?”
“I’ll think about it,” he answered. “Not makin’ any promises, but I’ll think about it.”
THIRTEEN
This time the road was beautiful. There was scarlet sumac in the ditch next to the shoulder, and the timber was transformed by an October palette of gold and orange maple leaves splashed against the brown oak. The visibility was better too. Enough leaves had fallen to provide open spaces for viewing clear to the shining reservoir.
T.J. drove slowly, relishing this same environment that had seemed such a forbidding wilderness the first time he’d traveled it. The road wasn’t any wider or any straighter, but it felt opened up. A warm sun perched high in the sky of bluest blue and shimmered on the wet blacktop.
He parked on the other side of the complex this time, in the lot near the administration building next to the section where LuAnn’s camp had been housed. There were puddles in the gravel lot from last night’s rain.
Sister Simone began the conversation by telling him she sold Mary Kay Cosmetics. “When I’m not involved with Camp Shaddai,” she added.
T.J. could believe it. Her own makeup was expert. She was a beautiful woman for someone in her thirties or maybe as old as forty. Even her body was primo; she had clear skin and a golden brown tan.
“You caught me just in time,” she told him. “After October, we’re in recess until the spring. By next week at this time, I’ll be back in Chicago.”
They were sitting in an open shelter, on a wooden bench with an uncomfortable back. It was probably a place where LuAnn had gloried in one of the many praise meetings. It wasn’t too different, only a little smaller, from that other tabernacle place. The one he’d stumbled into in the dark back in July, when he’d observed Sister Simone preaching to the flock.
From this position, T.J. could see the large lake and spillway out to the west, through the silvering leaves of the cottonwoods. But he couldn’t see the courts where they had had their games, or the footbridge. There was still too much foliage blocking the view. Maybe in December, he thought, you’d be able to see clear across, but who’d want to sit outdoors in the winter?
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