The Second Season

by The Second Season (epub)

  Her official explanation, trotted out in interviews, is that she crossed her arms and refused to leave; over time, the world relented. A more popular theory involves a Canadian rapper’s bespoke T-shirt, emblazoned with her Warholed face. He wore it to a game and asked her out to dinner on national television. He advised her to “come alone.”

  What Ruth believes is that the players noticed her first. They noticed her tailor-made questions informed by their stats, histories, and past comments. They appreciated the maternal placement of her hand on their backs. Her disarming, deliberate eye contact. It was Emory Turner who first matched her gaze and, with the red light as his witness, thanked her by name. Several years ago, while filming an endorsement for the network, Emory was asked to list his top five basketball personalities. He mentioned Ruth first. “She always asks you a question you’re down to answer. We all have our preferences when it comes to the media, but no one’s ever upset to see Ruth. She’s our girl. She’s the goat.”

  A colleague had sent her the clip before it aired. She watched it, smiling up until the last line. In a text to Ariana:

  Good or bad if Emory Turner calls me a goat?

  Ariana wrote back:

  Greatest! Of! All! Time!

  Six months ago, Ruth sat down with Emory in the locker room following his first game without Darius Lake. “It’s always hard to lose a teammate,” Ruth said. “But you and Darius played eight seasons together. Four playoff runs, two trips to the finals against Orlando. I remember talking to him after a game last season, and you interrupted Darius to ask if you could borrow his deodorant.”

  “Not the deodorant he was using. Dude keeps about three things of Old Spice in his bag. Unopened. Says he doesn’t like to sweat.”

  Ruth laughed. “That’s—”

  “Peculiar, I know.”

  “It was only a few years ago that the Sonics urged Lake to re-sign with the whole . . .”

  Emory sighed. “The ceremony.”

  The team owners had summoned Lake to the arena, leading him through a makeshift walkway, the walls of which were collaged in his image. They hoisted his jersey to the rafters while a gospel choir sang a saccharine version of “Run This Town.” Did the whole spectacle sound absurd, superfluous? Yes.

  Does Ruth wish she had been there? Also yes.

  “When Darius re-signed with Seattle, we all understood his loyalty was to the city, to the franchise, and to you. Can you tell me about the moment you learned you were no longer teammates?”

  Emory was sitting with a towel draped over his head. He pushed it back to look Ruth in the eye. “My phone rang. Three a.m. Sasha’s sleeping in bed next to me, so I go to the bathroom and I sit down. And Darius says, ‘Man, I got traded. They traded me for Kasey.’ ” Emory dug two fingers into the grooves of his forehead. His account of the phone call exposed the serrated edges of his grief, his barely-contained anger at Seattle’s front office. He didn’t yet know the Supersonics would face the Wildcats in the finals and couldn’t have processed the outcome even if he had, somehow, been warned. It was bad enough to know that the general managers, in spite of their elaborate gestures, would play their lives like the stock market.

  “I had to drop my head between my knees to stop the room from spinning. It was worse than a concussion. Worse than . . .”

  Ruth thought back to Turner’s rookie season, cut short by a torn patellar tendon. Nineteen years old, he had crumpled to the floor, a horse-wild look in his eyes. Over and over in a haunted monotone: “I’m fucking done. I’m fucking done.” The telecast’s audio had lapsed.

  “Well, you know,” he finished.

  If Joel hadn’t already left for San Diego, this is when Ruth would ask him to confiscate her screens before she could pore over the replies to Emory’s tweet. Social media is a necessary tool for tracking industry drama, but she tries to avoid her own mentions. Posts need to be both viral and flattering before she will respond. When a high school girl tweeted a picture of herself dressed as Ruth Devon for Halloween, Ruth offered to loan her an outfit next year. When a college player’s friends filmed him high on laughing gas after dental surgery, raving about her beauty and prowess, Ruth wrote, “Wishing this young man a speedy recovery!” She thought the “young man” was a nice touch, erring on the side of matronly for her daughter’s benefit.

  To Emory Turner, she tweets, “See you tonight!” with a heart and a hashtag: #letstipitup. She suspects Emory has motives beyond flattering her. She doesn’t mind. If she can relieve some of the pressure heading into Game One, Ruth is happy to assist.

  The pressure must be immense. Because the trade that broke up the NBA’s most prominent bromance did not break Darius Lake. Instead, it resulted in a puzzling, stunning breakthrough. Halfway through Game Seven of the Eastern Conference Finals, Lester called Ruth at home. He called on the landline she had been meaning to disconnect, it rang so rarely. He greeted her with, “Correct me if I’m wrong—”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “During last year’s finals, Lake was shooting thirty-five percent from the field.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “Turner appeared to be on the verge of drawing up divorce papers.”

  “It was an emotional series for the Sonics.”

  “But tonight, one year and one mind-fuck of a trade later, Darius ‘King of the Midrange’ Lake has made six three-pointers.”

  Ruth carried the phone back to the living room and sank into the couch. She muted the rival network’s telecast, preferring Lester’s uncensored commentary in her ear. For them it was a night off; they had already wrapped up their coverage of the games out west. Joel had gone upstairs to watch The Bachelor with Ariana. In his absence, Ruth could relax into the rhythm of the game, no longer obligated to find her boyfriend’s questions clever (“Do the refs ever get power-hungry?” “Do the players smell bad after?”) and her reactions to each play freed from Joel’s ironic scrutiny. She loved the man, but he needed to stay the hell off her couch during the playoffs.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Lester repeated, “but the Wildcats are about to win this.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Ruth said. “Five minutes to go.”

  On cue, Orlando combusted. This was their conference and their game to win. They were set on a three-peat with the Sonics as their worthy competitors—not these wide-eyed Wildcats reliant on Seattle’s castoffs. 5.2 seconds on the clock, the score tied, and Lester stopped speaking. The phone was hot against Ruth’s ear. Darius dribbled along the perimeter, stopped in front of his own bench, and let it fly from thirty feet. The ball bounced twice on the near side of the rim.

  Twice more on the far side of the rim.

  The ball fell through the net.

  Darius Lake has been called the Stoic. He has been described as detached, emotionless—a robot programmed to pose as a human athlete. A space alien blundering his way through earthly transactions. Rumors abound: that he skips postgame celebrations in favor of Friends reruns at home; that he still drives his Chevy Elantra from high school. In Ruth’s opinion, the characterization is overblown, designed to provoke a young man who remains shy in an industry fueled by fame. Still, it was breathtaking, his understated reaction to sinking the buzzer-beating three that won the Eastern Conference Finals. Darius Lake did not scream. He did not cry. He did not fall to the floor, euphoric and spent.

  He nodded.

  The fourth wall of the telecast crumbled: cameramen swarmed the court; reporters seized their mics; coaches delivered congenial blows to each other’s backs. Ruth was a thousand miles from the Amway Center but she could feel the vibrations of the court in her calves. Her eardrums flinched, bracing for an onslaught that wasn’t coming. Her eyes followed Darius as his teammates mauled him. At last Sondra Lake shoved her way onto the floor, and Darius enveloped his mother in arms that could have wrapped around her twice. Sondra, a
retired schoolteacher from Compton, once lingered in a media scrum to pull Ruth aside and wish her a happy Mother’s Day, a kindness so unexpected Ruth had teared up on the spot.

  Ruth was watching in her softest sweats and oldest Georgetown T-shirt. She should have been happy for this brief reprieve before the finals—a few days among her people, a few nights in her own bed. In the morning she was going to fire up the lawnmower and conquer the grass caressing the sides of the house. Ariana had threatened to hire landscapers, but Ruth reserved the task for herself, relishing the sun on her shoulders, the heft of the machine, the visible progress. Sometimes she fantasized about mowing the local baseball field, doing the lines and the bases, so that it would be pristine for upcoming Little League games. Thinking of the lawnmower dormant in the garage, Ruth was happy—and she had nearly forgotten she was still on the phone when she heard Lester clear the emotion from his throat.

  “What would you give to get that interview with Lake?”

  She laughed and told him what he already knew.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Two hours before tip-off, deep in the arena’s underground, Ruth slips inside a dressing room. Angie, the network’s senior stylist, has already unpacked and arranged her supplies: the foundations and blushes and shadows, the cupfuls of brushes, the ceramic irons and combs.

  “Are we alone?” Ruth asks, her voice amplified by the high ceilings.

  “Completely. We’re basically quarantined. Even I had trouble finding this place.”

  For what feels like the first time today, Ruth sits. Angie pulls the elastic from Ruth’s ponytail and examines the blond ends of her hair. “Good,” she says. “You’ve been using the conditioner.”

  “It makes me smell like yogurt.”

  “Nope.” Angie shakes her head. “It makes you smell like coconut and cardamom seeds.”

  Angie’s look changes every few weeks. Though the transformations are dramatic, they are also so frequent Ruth no longer notices whether Angie’s hair is turquoise or maroon, partially shaved or woven into extensions. For herself, Ruth wants the opposite effect: an appearance so unchanging, viewers are tricked into admiring that which is clearly, dependably, under control.

  For years Ruth was tasked with her own beautification: alone in a hotel room, contorting her arms behind her head to iron her hair. She’s glad to have bequeathed the responsibility to someone else. And Ruth trusts Angie, the way you trust the woman in whose hands your porous, cavernous face—ravaged by airplane air and sleep deprivation—becomes camera-ready. The trust is essential: Ruth will use her hour in the chair to call her daughter.

  Players have their pregame rituals. There’s the jittery point guard who insists on making a shot from the tunnel, a full fifty feet away; the sixteen-time All-Star who heaps powdered chalk in each palm before tossing the dust in the air, arms flung crucifixion-wide; the player who pounds his head against the stanchion of the basket, obliterating non-game-related thoughts; the veteran who massages the ball as if loosening the peel from an orange. Likewise, Ruth needs to hear Ariana’s voice in the hours before tip-off; she needs it with her whole twitching, flinching body. Because once the clock is running, Ruth knows she won’t think of her daughter at all.

  In the regular season, when she returns home for three- or four-day stretches between games, she sustains her momness. She wears jeans and hosts sleepovers and schedules dentist appointments to preserve Ariana’s second and final set of teeth. She eats dinner with her daughter. She asks her daughter to please not leave wet towels on the carpet in her room. She has time to worry she’s raised a shallow girl, a vain girl, a flimsy girl—only to end the night laughing helplessly into Ariana’s hard shoulder, assured of the kid’s sweetness and hilarity, the warmth she inherited from her dad. But in the postseason, when Ruth is on the road for weeks at a time, she forgets her maternity the way New Yorkers visit Los Angeles and never take their balled-up sweaters from their suitcases. It’s involuntary and inevitable: she forgets what her daughter is like.

  Lately, Ariana has tended toward suburban transience, drifting from one Maryland McMansion to another. Sleeping in a series of luxurious, generic guest rooms and washing her hair with shampoo selected by someone else’s mom. Consequently, Ruth never knows where her daughter will be when she picks up the phone. Tonight, Ruth is pleased to learn that Ariana is at home with her grandmother.

  “How was prom, sweetie? Was the after-party fun? Was Chandler there?”

  “Prom was fine. The party sucked and, yeah, Chandler was there. The two things are probably related.”

  “Chandler is the reason the party sucked?”

  “The parties never change, and Chandler never changes, either. I’m thinking maybe I’m done with things that don’t change.”

  Ruth refrains from pumping a fist in the air. She has nothing personal against Chandler, whom she is fairly certain she could identify from a lineup of young men named after nineties sitcom characters. She is always relieved when her daughter breaks it off with another boy.

  “You should have come to Seattle with me.” Days ago, Ruth tried and failed to coax Ariana out west for Game One. Ariana declined the invitation repeatedly, her stubbornness opaque. The last game she had attended was a season-opener in Orlando. Ruth was actually calling that one, in the booth alongside play-by-play announcer Marcus Keen. At the start of the third, Marcus said, “We have a handful of celebrities in the house tonight, but none so important as this young lady.” The broadcast cut to a shot of Ariana seated a few rows up from the floor, hunched over her phone, obliviously scratching at a zit on her nose. “There’s Ariana, Ruth’s daughter,” Marcus said. The tribute delighted Ruth. She had seen her daughter on the booth’s monitor and thought she looked beautiful, if bored.

  Ariana, after a friend tweeted the clip, seethed for days.

  “See, the thing is,” she says now, “I don’t actually like basketball.”

  “But you like me. And I’m here.” Ruth knows she is fishing for affection from her teenage daughter; the desired result is so satisfying, Ruth feels no shame.

  “I do like you,” Ariana agrees. “And it would have been nice to get out of here. Speaking of which: there’s something you should know.”

  Ruth steels herself. “All right.”

  “I’m going to LA in July.”

  “No,” Ruth says reflexively but without conviction. If she fights Ariana, she will lose every time. It’s tepid support that sometimes works out in her favor.

  “Yes. Manny booked me a shoot for Brandy Melville.”

  “Can I come?” The first week of July is Ruth’s break before the start of summer league. The fantasy of spending her vacation in LA with her daughter unspools rapidly in the seconds between the request and Ariana’s answer.

  “No, Mom, this is a real job. An editorial shoot with a real contract. I can’t bring my mother with me. It would be like you bringing Grandma to a game. You’d be like, ‘He shoots! He scores! Nothing but net, hoo-wee!’ And Grandma would be like, ‘Honey, it’s a little bit cold in here—did you bring a sweater?’ ”

  It’s deliberately inaccurate, Ari’s impression of her job. Still Ruth laughs, provoking Angie into threatening her with an eyeliner pencil.

  Accepting or at least resigning herself to Ariana’s modeling career is an act of will that takes daily recommitment. It started when Ariana was fourteen. It started, in Ruth’s opinion, innocently enough, with makeup tutorials uploaded to YouTube. There was an intriguing honesty to those early videos, the way they began with Ariana’s face naked and blemished. Narrating every brushstroke in her world-weary tenor, Ari painted on her shimmering contoured disguise. Back then, the fights about her future were messy and unsophisticated. Ari bellowed the usual refrains—Ruth was a tyrant, a prison warden—and Ruth countered with stock phrases of parental authority, none of which satisfied her daughter, much less Ruth herself. As Ar
iana grew into a young woman, shrewd and perceptive, she learned to exploit her mother’s weakness: basketball.

  Ruth had maintained that Ariana was going to college, and for a long time Ariana had no retort; it was an expectation held by all her friends’ parents. Until the day it dawned on Ari that only a fraction of the players in the league Ruth so revered had finished school before declaring their eligibility for the draft. Turned out, invoking the NBA invalidated most of Ruth’s arguments against modeling: that Ari shouldn’t tie her living to her body; that her health would be destroyed by the strain of long hours and travel; that she needed a viable and meaningful career after the age of thirty.

  Ruth remembers pressing the small of her back against the kitchen counter, removing her glasses to massage the bridge of her nose, a cliché of maternal exasperation. Professional sports are, yes, a commodification of the body. Like supermodels, NBA stars take out insurance plans on their limbs. Both athleticism and beauty are gifts of genetics, randomly bestowed—but capitalizing on those gifts takes commitment, discipline, work. Ruth had played the game until her body failed her; given half a chance, she would do it again, even if she knew the result would not change. (Always, in the end, howling on the floor, cradling her blown-out knee.) Ruth knows this much about herself, and Ariana knows this much about her mother.