Family Affair

by Caprice Crane

  I’m driving aimlessly, stressing over heading home because I’m not sure what the protocol is. Just when my stress is about to cross over into full-blown anxiety, I remember that my razor broke this morning, so I pull over at the convenience store to buy a disposable one.

  Curious name, “convenience store,” since the only thing that seems to be conveniently located there is liquor. So I grab my three-pack of razors, which is going to cost as much as a bottle of fine wine. As I walk to the counter, I notice Dustin Caldwell, one of my younger cornerbacks, haggling over the price of something he has no business purchasing: a liquor cabinet’s worth of vodka, gin, whiskey, and some dreadful apple liquor. To top it off—as if it needs topping off—he smells as though he’s already been sampling the goods.

  Seeking to head off this budding scandal, and thanking God for the supreme coincidence that I’m there and not some administrator, I kindly intervene in favor of the law against selling alcohol to minors and insist on driving him home.

  He is adamant that he walk. But I remind him it’s nearly ten blocks, that he’s obviously a little “under the weather,” and that it’s absolutely no trouble. Especially since I can use all the bonding I can get in these hard economic times.

  Dustin pulls at the zipper on his hoodie and stares out the window for most of our ride, and then a block before we get to his frat house, he perks up. “You can just let me off here.”

  “Dusty, it’s only one more block. We’re not exactly going out of my way.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and zips his sweatshirt up again for the sixtieth time.

  Before we’ve even reached our destination I hear a cacophony of party sounds and music so loud I’m pretty sure I can feel the bass in my car.

  “Oh, look at that!” Dusty says, as if he’s surprised. “A couple friends must have popped over. I better be going now.” He already has the car door open and one leg out.

  “Not so fast, kiddo,” I say. “What’s going on in there?” As soon as the words slip out of my mouth I regret them. Bad enough that I have to play bad cop when I’m trying to bond a little with my team; I have to sound like an idiot on top of it? It’s very clear what’s going on. It’s a party. They’re all drinking. I’m pretty sure the legal drinking age is still twenty-one. And unless they’ve flunked a couple years, no one in that frat house is tall enough to get on that ride.

  “Uh—” Dusty stammers.

  “Tell you what,” I cut him off. “How about I come inside and hang out with you guys a bit?”

  “Like a chaperone?” he asks. Man, am I really this old? Yes. “No.”

  “We’re not doing anything wrong,” Dusty says, although his eyes have avoided mine pretty much since I bumped into him.

  “I’m sure you’re not. That said, I’m responsible for you guys. I’m here. I’ve found you guys doing things I can’t technically allow. I’m not judging, but I have to be available and make sure nothing bad happens.”

  • • •

  “Coach Foster!” I hear Kevin Bateman shout as I enter the house behind Dustin.

  “Came to check out what you ladies call a good time,” I say.

  The party is your typical Friday-night let’s-get-crazy gathering. Loud music. Plastic cups and beer bottles everywhere. Snack foods burrowed into the carpet. (Layla would have a fit.) Girls dancing like they’re training for the Pussycat Dolls. Guys dancing halfheartedly, trying to balance the willingness to please the girl they’re dancing with by dancing at all and the crippling fear that they might look uncool. And eyes. Hungry teenage and barely post-teen eyes darting around in search of that night’s hookup. Now they’re all turning to see a football coach strolling in, certain that he’s about to call the police and bust up the whole affair.

  I sidle past a few students and try to ignore the creeped-out looks and “Oh my God, what’s the coach doing here?” whispers.

  But I power through and tell a few people that I won’t bust the party as long as they keep the noise reasonable and the drinking doesn’t get out of control. I ultimately manage to have a decent conversation with Ronnie Sidwell about watching The Wizard of Oz set to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, and then I destroy any and every opponent who dares to challenge me at Guitar Hero.

  I’m walking out of the kitchen when Anya Hendrickson, an exceedingly well-built cheerleader, appears before me, blocking my path.

  “Hey, Coach,” she slurs.

  “Hello, Anya,” I say. I know her name because she’s one of the newer (read: freshman, possibly not even eighteen) cheerleaders; she’s one of the girls I hear the team talk about incessantly.

  “Having a good time?” she asks, her head cocked sideways, her eyes trained on my lips, which start to feel dry, like the rest of my mouth.

  “I am.”

  “I’m bored,” she says.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply, as I dig my hands into my pockets and try to take a step to my right, edging ever so slightly forward, signaling that I’d like to pass. She doesn’t budge.

  But she does pull a small bottle of schnapps out of her pocket and takes a sip. “I hate beer. Jody got busted for selling her little brother’s Adderall, and beer literally makes me yack. Blegh!” She mimics an aggressive vomit session and then recovers, coyly passing her hand through her hair as she holds up the bottle of schnapps like she’s posing for an advertisement. “So it’s this or nothing.”

  I think of those fake commercials they do on Saturday Night Live and picture Anya vomiting all over the place and then someone handing her a bottle of schnapps, which she takes and then smiles. The voice-over booms, “When your Adderall connection evaporates and beer just makes you blow chunks: schnapps. It’s this or nothing.”

  “Want some?” she says, as she holds out her tiny bottle.

  Schnapps is one step removed from NyQuil. I remember the last time I actually drank some. Seventh grade. I was on a ski trip and Skip Dougherty brought peppermint-flavored schnapps in his parka. We knocked it back on the lifts, and the mint liquor combining with the cold air made our throats feel like we were guzzling Freon.

  “No, thanks,” I say.

  She shrugs and takes another swig. “College guys are so lame,” she then announces with a roll of her eyes. “It’s part of their charm.”

  “It’s not charming. It’s pathetic. They’re boys. Not men.”

  It’s getting warm in the kitchen doorway. I’d like Anya to move so I can get the hell away from this potential train wreck.

  “They’ll be men soon enough,” I promise, as I turn sideways and try to squeak through the space between her body and the entry. She doesn’t move, and I inadvertently brush against her on my way past.

  She grabs my arm. “Soon enough for who? Because it’s not soon enough for me.”

  I look around the party and spot John Crooks. He’s about six-four, built, one of my best players. “What about Johnny C. over there?”

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “He’s a good-looking guy. Tall. Manly.” What am I saying? I’m even creeping myself out. “What about you?” she asks point-blank.

  “I’m a hundred years old,” I say. “I bet you’re not even thirty.”

  “I will be in December.”

  She leans close, and her hair falls on my shoulder. “I’d like to give you an early birthday present.”

  I instantly perform a snap cost-benefit analysis on the chalkboard in my head. On the plus side: She’s hot and I haven’t been with a woman other than Layla since … ever. On the minus side: My career would be ruined, my family would be disgraced, Layla would never speak to me again, I’d probably have to leave town after I got out of jail for statutory rape, and I’d never be able to teach or coach again.

  It’s a very close call.

  Luckily, I’m saved by a quick vision of the headline in the local paper: Condor Coaching Cad Caught Canoodling with Curious Coed. I awkwardly turn Anya down with some line about seeing wh
at’s going on around the pool—though the house doesn’t turn out to have one—and as I’m leaving the party I notice Dusty Caldwell and some kid I don’t know snorting lines. I clap a hand on Dusty’s shoulder to get his attention and he whips around looking guilty.

  “Can we have a private convo for a minute, Scarface?”

  His friend scurries off as Dusty begins to babble: “I hardly ever do that stuff, Coach. It’s a party is all, and Nadia told me she gets all horny whenever she does coke and—”

  “Shut up and listen for a minute,” I say. “I’m gonna tell you about a teammate of mine back in college. He was a pretty straight shooter, but he also got caught up with a girl who wanted him to buy some blow so she could have crazy coke sex with him. Wanna know what happened to that very talented kid?”

  Dusty hangs his head. “I don’t know. He got kicked off the team?”

  “No, he couldn’t afford the coke. But she gave him crabs. He plays strong safety for Detroit now. Good guy.” I pause for a moment and look meaningfully at him. “You see what I’m saying?”

  “Not really, Coach,” he replies, baffled.

  “He was one of the lucky ones,” I say pointedly. I’m done joking around. “I know at least a dozen guys—talented players—who lost every shot at their dreams by screwing around when they should have been focusing. Some of them dabbled with drugs, some of them drank themselves out of contention. If my old teammate had been able to afford coke for that skank, he probably would have been another casualty. Instead, he bought some of that crab shampoo, washed that girl right out of his balls, and got back to the business of being a focused ballplayer. And now he plays pro ball.”

  Dusty snickers. “In Detroit.”

  “Yeah, well, they may suck. But right now, on your best day, you wouldn’t have a prayer of making their roster. Think on that, Cokie.” Dusty starts to protest, but I cut him off. “Oh, you have plenty of talent, but your focus and discipline are half-assed. At best. And if this is any indication of where it’s headed, there’s no way you’re gonna be able to compete in any championships. You have to trust in yourself and trust in your team. And you gotta kill yourself for both.”

  “I threw up on myself in Friday’s game,” Dusty mutters, without looking up. “I couldn’t catch a cold.”

  I lean into him, serious as I’ve ever been. “Three things you need to get clear on, brother: One, you’ve got it in your head that championships are won based solely on what you do on the field. Wrong. Fifty percent of being a champion is about your behavior and composure during the one hundred and sixty hours a week when you’re not on a football field. Second, I ever hear about you doing blow again, you’ll be off this team quicker than you can say ‘random drug testing.’ Third, you’ve put me in a terrible position, and I’m gonna be taking a big risk by not reporting you this minute, so you owe me big, and I do not expect to be let down. You got that?”

  Dusty nods as I turn to leave. But before I go, I offer him one more nugget. “Oh. And I’ve seen that girl you’re with—and who else she’s been with. Off the record, I think you’ll be lucky if the only thing she gives you is crabs.”

  • • •

  When I get back to my house, Layla has locked herself in the bedroom. I don’t know if the door is actually locked, but it’s closed, and I take that to mean “keep out.” I’m not surprised. I spend the night tossing and turning on the living-room couch. Second night in a row.

  To say our couch is not sleepworthy is a gross understatement. It’s technically a love seat, and I honestly don’t know how in the name of all things holy the thing earned that designation. Sure, you can cram two people onto it, but where is the love? You can’t stretch out, you can’t maneuver—there’s barely enough room to move. Same goes for sleeping on it. I end up on my back with my legs bent over one edge and my head crooked up on the other, my chin mashed into my chest, giving me a scowl that looks like Winston Churchill’s in that famous picture, though I don’t know true pain until I try to lift my head the next morning.

  • • •

  Sun streams through the living-room windows, and I look around for Layla, half thinking she’ll be making eggs and bacon and a thick fruit smoothie, humming happily to herself and telling me that whatever’s in my tortured and compressed head was all a bad dream. But she’s gone. And my suitcase has been set out—or, I should say, angrily chucked—near the door of our master bathroom.

  It’s in that moment that I realize I’m going to have to move out.

  • • •

  Noah Price, a guy in the UCCC math department, gives me a lead on a loft apartment. Four days later I’m moved in, though my new bachelor pad is not quite the swingin’ place you’d imagine. I’ve got a plaid couch with one leg missing, lifted from the basement at my parents’ (they didn’t really speak to me when I picked it up); a recliner that reclined halfway one night and since then has declined to return upright; an inverted milk-crate table, inspired by countless campus residents before me; nothing on the walls (except about three-quarters of a coat of paint); a microwave with a door that won’t stay closed (so I keep my distance); a good toaster (so I’ll be eating a lot of toast); the last boom box in existence; and a box of condiments, from ketchup and mustard to rare chutneys and fish pastes that are rejects of my mother’s fridge.

  The plus side? I can leave dishes in the sink until 2012 and not hear one word about it. I can leave dirty clothes strewn about, and unless the piles start to smell or walk themselves, I don’t have to pick up or wash them. The minus side? My place is a hole—and it’ll get worse as I live there longer. Naturally, nobody’ll want to come over. Even I’m going to be disgusted by it. But it’s month-to-month. Like my situation. I would have gone day-to-day, but the landlord merely gave me a look when I asked, so I played it off as a joke.

  None of my friends are going to want to hang out with me anyway, because my split has had a trickle-down effect on our friends’ wives. They’re all saying things to the guys like, “Oh, so is that what you want, too? You want to be a bachelor again now, too?” So the wives are pissed, and the guys are all pissed at me because I started it, so I have no one to hang out with.

  I stop by Norm’s Restaurant for a late-night snack, and I’m two bites into my tuna melt, sitting at the twenty-four-hour restaurant’s counter, when I hear a semi-familiar voice. “Hey, Coach,” it says, and I look up to see Heather.

  “Hi,” I answer, hoping she didn’t see my attempt to talk to the woman sitting next to me five minutes earlier—which I swear was just me trying to be cordial. I mean, we were sitting next to each other. She wasn’t even attractive.

  “So your wife doesn’t make a good tuna melt?” she probes.

  “We’re …” I think about how to word it. “Separated.”

  This seems to take Heather by surprise. “Wow. You okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “And already back on the horse,” she says. “Struck out with that girl, huh?”

  “I was just trying to be polite. Not hitting on her.”

  “Uh-huh,” Heather says, with a wry smile.

  “Fine.” I exhale. “Think what you want.”

  “What I think,” she says, as she takes the now-empty seat next to me, “is that for a coach, you’ve got no game.”

  “Please, have a seat,” I say, too late, half kidding. “Are you here by yourself?”

  “No,” she says, as she motions to two women sitting at a booth. “I’m with those girls over there. The ones staring at us right now.”

  “Tell him you’d like to huddle!” one calls out.

  “Shut up,” she answers, and rolls her eyes. “Ignore them.”

  Then the other one chimes in. “Tell him he can go right up the middle. Tell him you’re ready to go long.”

  “I apologize for them,” she says. “Football humor.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “I am sorry to hear about your separation,” she says, an
d then smiles. “Not really. I mean, I’d be sorry if you seemed all bummed, but if you’re okay with it—”

  “I’m okay with it,” I say.

  Heather tells me she’ll give me pointers on how to pick up women, which I politely decline, but she’s adamant, so we start playacting like we’ve never met, and I have to try to pick her up. After a while the lines get blurred and we’re definitely flirting. Her friends have left and we’re there together, as if we’d planned it. And it’s fun. It’s actually nice to talk to a woman who doesn’t know everything about you from the time you got your driver’s permit.

  When I finally say good night and head off home, I’m in a better mood than I’ve been for weeks.

  layla

  John Lennon once said, “Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.” While I tend to agree with him on most things, I’m down on marriage at the moment, so we’ll just focus on the first part: rituals. They are important. They create routine and stability—something I’ve always craved—and as such, I’ve always been the first to embrace family traditions wholeheartedly.

  I love to cook the turkey every Thanksgiving with Ginny, each of us alternating basting duty throughout the day. I love making the Famous Foster Sweet Potato Soufflé: Ginny mostly steers that ship, but I’m the captain of marshmallow duty. When Christmas rolls around, there’s nothing I like more than making gingerbread houses with the Fosters—although I got an early jump on my house this year. Traditionally, all of our gingerbread houses sit proudly displayed atop the mantel above the fireplace upon completion. Between then and Christmas, we all try to secretly eat doors and windows off someone else’s house when nobody’s looking. I love traditions, and on occasion even create them. My proudest creation? Movie Night.

  Movie Night is a tradition I started with the Fosters long before Brett and I got married, and it’s carried on ever since. It’s the eight p.m. showing, every fourth Friday of the month at the Mann Village Theater. Whatever’s playing. Since they show only one film, that last rule means nobody gets blamed for picking a bad movie, nobody fights over the genre, and nobody gets confused about where we’re going or when. It’s all predetermined. Life affords us so many choices—too many choices—so it’s good that some are preplanned.