Finally, when I’m lost well among my thoughts and have forgotten about Calvin, he turns to me and says, “Could we go in now?”
Last night it rained heavy and there is a large kidney-shaped puddle of mud between my car and the back door to the gym. Although he begins to whine, I hoist Calvin over my shoulder and carry him toward my office to preserve his best pair of shoes. We leave our coats and I sort through some papers on my clipboard before walking down the hallway that leads to the gymnasium floor. The girls’ varsity team is finishing its game with Fairview and I poke my head in to see the scoreboard. Tarent is ahead by six, with slightly under four minutes remaining. Calvin tries to look inside, too, but I pull him back and direct him to the locker room.
The boys are standing around in various states of undress, some of them talking, laughing. In a far corner Pat Booth is lacing a new pair of sneakers, while Chris Rayles sits at his side, pointing at a picture in a magazine, trying to get Pat to look up. Eric Shaw is sprinkling powder on his feet, kneading it in with the heel of his palm. Calvin rushes to Peter Sawyer, who is pulling at the armpits of his jersey to loosen it. He slips it on and then lets Calvin grab hold and dangle from it as he stands.
“You look kind of nervous,” Peter says, turning to me with Calvin clinging to his torso like a suckling orangutan.
“Are you?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Yeah, me too. A little. I suppose that’s only natural, though.”
Peter nods and then lowers Calvin to the ground. Ned Morrow comes up behind me and asks if he can have another jersey number, he has decided he doesn’t like the one he’s been assigned.
“You’ll have to wear it for this game. I’ll look and see what I’ve got for next time.”
A boy I’ve never seen before comes in to tell me the girls’ game has ended and we have to take the floor for warm-up in fifteen minutes.
There is nothing else I can tell them, I think, my eyes skipping from face to face. Noah spins a ball on his finger, slapping at it occasionally with his free hand to keep it moving.
My father might have given them something they could use, told them how much this game meant, how it will set the tone for the rest of the season. How they should reach down inside for that something extra, if need be, and not let him or the school down. But, most important, not to let themselves down. I will not speak of these things. For, after all, they are simply children.
“Have some fun,” I say.
They are waiting for more, but there is nothing else. Only a small smile from Calvin as he follows me out the swinging door. The first time I hear their voices again, I am halfway down the corridor to the gym. And even then, they sound stunted and unclear.
Calvin reaches the bench before me, climbing up to greet Zoe, who is seated in the bleachers behind him. I’m walking slowly around the court, taking it all in like a long, sweet breath. A couple of cheerleaders run past, digging through their purses as they reach for the pay telephone. The air smells of warm, buttered popcorn and hot dogs, which rotate on a spit behind one of the school’s mathematics teachers at the concession stand. Against the walls at either end of the floor are hand-lettered signs painted by the school’s pep committee. The Trojans Will Triumph, says one. Another has an enormous red Trojan holding a rather meek-looking wolf in his armored fist. It reads: Rip the Wolves.
There seems to be a relatively good-sized crowd, with most of the bleacher seats taken. Poised near the scorer’s table, wearing a flannel shirt and tweed blazer, is Lyle Anderson, the man who rented Calvin and me our house. He is talking to Jess Thomas, the school’s principal and scoreboard operator. As I approach them, Lyle grabs my bicep and gives it a gentle squeeze as he wishes me luck. I thank him and take a drink from one of the water bottles beneath our bench. Calvin sees this and calls for a drink of his own. But once I hand him the bottle he begins squirting it randomly, sending squiggly, toothpaste-fine bursts of water across his legs and on the floor in front of him.
“That’s enough,” I say, taking a towel and wiping up the damp spot beyond the bench. I wave to Zoe and she smiles back, holding up her right hand and crossing her fingers.
“For luck,” she says, so softly I can barely make out the words.
Then Jess Thomas sounds a loud buzzer that causes Calvin to jump. Carbon Springs comes out first, immediately breaking into two single-file lines for a lay-up drill at the opposite end of the court. Shortly thereafter, Tarent follows suit and the crowd erupts with applause. This is the best part of the game, I remember my father once saying under his breath as I stood at his side. He meant the endless possibilities, the prickly energy popping from each nerve ending. It is taking forever, I think, pacing in front of the bench while the boys change from lay-ups to jump shots. From behind, Zoe reaches down and hands me a stick of chewing gum.
“It’ll help you relax,” she says.
“What makes you think I need relaxing?”
“That,” she responds, pointing to a game program I have nearly twisted in two with my right hand.
The first basket is scored by Eric Shaw, who intercepts the opening tip and dribbles freely to the foul line, where he hits a jumper. Sitting motionless, hands facedown on my thighs, I watch them set up on defense. They begin in a two-three zone and I yell out for them to put their hands up. Quickly, it becomes apparent that Carbon Springs is overmatched and by halftime Tarent is ahead by 16 points.
There is much of the same in the second half and I ease into the role of fan instead of coach. I no longer walk through the plays in my mind; now I simply enjoy the game. Late, after much of the crowd has already begun to leave, I glance down the bench and realize that Cy Connell is the only player who hasn’t been in yet. I call him over and tell him to replace Noah.
When he does, Noah reluctantly grabs a towel and turns to me. “I only need one more bucket,” he says. “I’ve got 18 points.”
“Cy has no points,” I say.
Noah shrugs, and almost instinctively, sickened by his lack of compassion, his absence of decency, I swing my arm toward his forehead. Casually, as if scattering birdseed. Already he has moved down the bench and I strike air, only air. No one notices; it appears as if I am simply signaling a play or stretching my arm, awkwardly, from deep at the shoulder. But, really, I had wanted to hit Noah, intending to slap him hard with my open hand. My mouth turns arid and bitter as tobacco. “That’s it,” I say to myself, pacing along a small rectangle near the scorer’s table. Deck him. Pop him good, in front of his teammates and teachers and sister and your own goddam son.
So now the fire comes in a tidy box, lapping at sides charred and crooked with damage. Thoughts plead for safety: If you really want, slug him with a roll of quarters curled in your palm, the cartilage in his nose splintering into bloody hangnails of gristle. Stand over his twitching body, cursing, hands pink and jagged. Better: Kick him solid in the ribs and chest with steel-toe workboots. He won’t mouth off again; he’ll never wear his freakin’ earring or show up late for practice. This cannot be me, I think, terrified, scratching the flaky skin at my elbow. Not even for an instant. Ugly and raw. It’s only in my head, all in my head. But what’s to keep the hair-trigger soldered tight?
A sickness I will not be able to vomit away.
Before turning my attention again toward the game, I look down the bench, frightened—I look to meet Noah’s gaze and apologize with a gesture or nod for almost striking him. He does not see me, his head twisted back to find familiar faces in the stands. He does not know that sometimes even coaches, even fathers, fill with awful, hateful thoughts. Especially fathers.
In his two minutes and fourteen seconds of playing time, Cy doesn’t exactly distinguish himself. He is called for traveling and once he almost throws a pass into the concession stand. Still, when the buzzer sounds he is the first person I go to, slapping him on the butt and telling him he played well.
It’s nice to be undefeated as a coach, even if it is only one game. Certainl
y, I suppose, it’s more satisfying than being 0 and 1. Walking toward my office, I am congratulated by several people. One of them is Calvin, who, leaving Zoe’s side, walks over and uncomfortably raises his hand.
“Good game,” he says, peering back toward Zoe.
“Thanks, pal.”
“She made me say it.”
“That’s all right. It’s a very nice thing to do.”
He shrugs and then tells me that he is hungry.
“We’re going to get a quick bite to eat,” I say to Zoe. “You wanna come with?”
She says she would, but she has promised to let her brother use the truck.
“I think we could manage giving you a ride home,” I say, tapping Calvin on the head with my forefinger.
Sitting behind a cheeseburger that nearly eclipses his entire face, Calvin reaches up for a handful of french fries. I had asked the waitress for a booster chair, but Calvin complained, insisting he did not need one. Zoe is talking about the tendons marbling a horse’s leg, how the ones down low are often as thin and fragile as lace. However, at the moment I am not listening. Instead, I’m watching as Calvin carefully, deliberately, grabs his burger, the weight of his forearms resting flush against the plate. Slow like porridge, the dish slides forward, hitting Calvin in the chest before landing upside down on his lap. Instantly he begins to wail, pushing himself back from the table and allowing the plate and its substance to roll off his shins and on the floor.
“Oh, now stop that,” I say, lifting my head to assess the damage. “Didn’t I ask for a high chair? Didn’t I tell you the food was too far?”
From the corner of my eye, I can see Zoe wants to say something, to intercede. Maybe she wants to tell me that I’m doing this all wrong, that I should not be so hard on him. Maybe she wants me to wait until I get home to chastise him, wait until then to explain tables and height and the length of a little boy’s arms. But finally she is only quiet, taking a small, quick mouthful of her meat loaf.
“Let’s take you to the bathroom to get cleaned.”
He does not want me to come along, saying he can do it himself. Tonight he is suddenly feeling very independent.
“You’ll see,” I say to Zoe in a sarcastic tone. “Someday you’ll have kids of your own.”
She smiles and we both watch Calvin disappear around the corner as a busboy begins cleaning the scraps of spilled cheeseburger.
“This must be something that feels nice to you,” she says. “I mean tonight. The game. Having Calvin with you to see it all.”
Indeed it does, although it’s not something I had given much thought to until now. Zoe leans back and the orange, muted light sets her hair ablaze.
“You’re good with him,” I say.
“Really, he’s good with me.” She pauses to take a bite of mashed potatoes. “I like watching the two of you together. Like the other day, after we were finished riding, he came right up and buried his head in your stomach. But not because he was unhappy or embarrassed or tired or anything like that—just as sort of a greeting. And then after, I watched you both walk to the picnic table and you reached down and handed him the napkins to hold, to carry. So he would feel as if he was making a contribution. We never had that in our home. There was only a lot of tension.”
“There was a lot of that when I was growing up, too.”
“My mother was an alcoholic—she died when Noah was thirteen. My father just didn’t know how to deal with her, or us. He still doesn’t, for that matter. He’s a good man, good at heart, but he doesn’t understand …” She trails off, rubbing her chin with her napkin while she thinks of the right words. “I guess what he doesn’t understand is life—or a life when it’s different from his own. That I could want to be a veterinarian and not a housewife. Or that Noah might actually want to go away to college to study business or law or literature or anything other than growing goddam corn and wheat.
“Sometimes it seems so peculiar to me that a man could live fifty-eight years and know nothing else of life, of the world, than what’s in his own back yard. But other times I don’t think it’s odd at all. When I was young I used to lie in bed at night and wonder, Who’s gonna save me?” Carefully, she places her fork down at the left side of her plate as if it had not yet been moved. “Forty-five minutes after my mother’s funeral, my father went back to working his fields.”
Pursing my lips, I prepare to tell her how three years after my father’s funeral my mother still hasn’t gone back to work. Not because she is weighted by grief, but quite to the contrary. She has spent a good deal of that time traveling, painting, reading. Shortly after my father’s death, I found my mother sitting on her bed with her back to the door, making delicate yelping sounds. I came up from behind and laid my hand across her shoulder, telling her things would be all right. But when she turned to face me, I could see she wasn’t crying at all. She was laughing.
She apologized, saying she could not help herself, and, truthfully, she had never been happier. Really, she said, reaching for my arm, she never thought she would feel this free, this liberated again. She stood up and held me for a long time, not like a mother holding a son, but with her body pressed close, tight against mine, and a stranger’s sour breath on my neck. Then, before we went back downstairs, she told me that my father was not a bad person, he was simply someone who should not have been a husband.
This I do not tell Zoe, though, because rather suddenly Calvin returns, not much cleaner than before. He climbs back on his chair and I give him half my hamburger, telling him to be careful.
“Is there mustard on this?” he asks.
“No, there’s not mustard on it.”
“I want it.”
“No, you don’t want it. You don’t like mustard on your hamburger. You never had it before.”
“I want it now.”
“Calvin, just eat the burger.”
After he begins I grab some fries and place them on a butter dish, sliding it between us.
“You want to come over to our place for Halloween?” I ask Zoe. Calvin glances up, but he is not quite sure what Halloween means. This will be his first season trick-or-treating.
“Oh, I’d love to. But I’m working at Cale’s.”
“Maybe we’ll stop by there.”
“That’d be great. What’s he going …” She stops and leans down toward Calvin, inhaling a heady breath through her nostrils. “Do you smell anything?” she asks me. “Kind of like piss.”
“Now …” I take a sniff. “Yeah.”
Zoe peels back the front of Calvin’s shirttail, revealing a damp, tennis-ball-sized stain on his upper thigh.
“Jesus!” I say. “Calvin, did you go to the bathroom in your pants?”
“No.”
Still holding his half of the burger, he twists his body to free Zoe’s grip.
“Then what’s that?”
He does not answer, instead laying the burger directly on the Formica table.
“Get up,” I say, pulling him off his seat and around toward me. “Let me see this.”
Touching the stain, I can feel a hard lump beneath the cloth of his trousers. I reach into his pocket and pull out a thick, waxy urinal puck. Oddly enough, I am relieved.
“What are you doing with this?”
Zoe is trying hard not to laugh, but she is not having much success and she walks over to the front counter for a toothpick.
“It was in there,” he starts, pointing back to the bathroom. “And we don’t have one, so I jus’ …”
He is sincere. Taking the puck, I wrap it in a napkin.
“What is with you and toilets?”
Of course, he does not know the answer to this. He is picking at fries over my shoulder as I kneel, diluting the stain with water.
As we drive down Mercer, Calvin sitting tall and odorous on Zoe’s lap, the windshield fills with droplets of icy rain. But after one wave of the wipers it is clear again for the rest of the ride, for the rest of the evening. Zoe lives on
Hillside, in an apartment above a record store. We park on the street and I leave Calvin in the car, lying across the front seat, while I walk Zoe to her door.
“Really, you don’t have to do this,” she says, pulling her keys from the breast pocket of her jacket.
We step together the ten or so feet from the curb to her doorway, arms locked. Nervously, she tugs at the waistband of her sweater, bunching it above the hemline. My hands run down past her elbows, past her forearms, past her wrists before letting our left fingers lock together. She is holding the keys in her right hand, jagged and cold, pressed awkwardly between our palms. Laying my forehead on her shoulder, I push her flush against the building and then lift up to kiss her square on the mouth.
At first her lips are stiff and dry as chalk. It doesn’t take long for them to moisten, slick with saliva. Holding her face in my hands, I trace the outline of her mouth with my tongue and slowly, cautiously, I move it along the inside of her lower lip. Then we both pull back, ghosts of breath dispersing above our heads.
“That was nice,” she says.
“It’s been awhile.”
We hug and as she slides the bridge of her nose down my jawline, she says, “I’d better go.” But before we part, she leans in close, the linty fuzz of her cheek brushing my earlobe.
Lying against our back screen door is a large padded envelope with four dollars’ worth of 20-cent stamps pasted on its upper right corner. The parcel is from my mother and I am slightly encouraged by the fact that I did not have to sign for it. I allow Calvin to take it upstairs with him, but I tell him he must get ready for bed before opening it.
When I enter his room he is sitting on the floor wearing one of my white undershirts and his pajama bottoms, the torn package at his feet.
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