The Second Season

by The Second Season (epub)

  When Ruth thinks about what she wants, what she’s asking for, she could laugh. That the network hasn’t rushed to hand her a copy of Lester’s contract with his name crossed out and hers written in is laughable. Already she works harder than Lester. As an analyst she would double down. Because as an analyst, finally, Ruth will have an outlet for her gluttonous body of NBA knowledge. No more fifteen-second segments or hurried huddle updates: she will weave all she knows into a game-long dialogue, loose and luxurious and, until now, unheard.

  She will wake up to emails from PR directors and the network’s research department. She will inhale stats, highlight videos, quotes from coaches. When Lester would close his laptop for the morning, Ruth will press on, reading every profile published in the preceding twenty-four hours, committing to memory the idiosyncrasies of each player’s game, the meals they carry onto the plane, the news from their hometowns. And in the car on the way to the arena Ruth will catch up on a Memphis point guard’s self-produced cooking show, on which he invites his teammates to sample off-putting foods—bull’s penis pizza, live cricket tea. She’ll watch a Maverick’s Instagram stories: the songs lip-synced from the driver’s seat of a vintage Impala, the Taco Tuesdays with his kids. If a Cav and his girlfriend call it quits, if a Pelican’s baby is born, if a Blazer seeks treatment for his anxiety, Ruth knows. She stalks all of them with extracurricular pride and concern. Not to interrogate them about their personal lives, but to see them and know them. And when she’s talking to these men in the strobe-lit aftermath of a win or the swampy heat of a locker room, it’s clear to them that she gives a shit. That her curiosity extends beyond the numbers on the board. Players notice. And it’s the players who made Ruth who she is, her fame related to the way they look at her on national television, respect evident in their angled jaws.

  When journalists write about Ruth, they seem to consult a thesaurus for synonyms of badass. In print Ruth has been called confident, gutsy, and intrepid. She’s a tough cookie, a tomboy, unflinching and formidable. In Ruth’s mind, these words describe not her, exactly, but the kind of woman people assume she must be in order to do what she does. If there’s some truth to the characterizations—which, with the exception of one Reddit thread, stop short of accusing Ruth of harboring above-average levels of testosterone—it’s that Ruth is competitive. Fiercely, blindingly so. If she could win the job by playing Rick Bellantoni one-on-one, she would wipe the floor with the old man. But to the question Why you? Ruth’s answer is that she’s open. She goes into game days armed with every piece of information available to her, predictions penciled faintly in her mind, but without expectations. Watching the action, Ruth sees not what’s supposed to happen but what is happening—whether it’s a star underperforming, a rookie combusting, a veteran reliving his glory days, or a reliable sixth man playing through a covert injury. She approaches her interviews with the same openness, prepared to be shut out or let in, confined by a player’s ego or loosened by a joke. Ruth is good at her job because she has mastered the art of the split-second reaction. She has no problem relinquishing control. That Ruth is a woman who understands basketball should not be remarkable; basketball is a sport that women understand.

  Ruth is asking the network for a job she can’t help doing. To be promoted to the role of superfan, which she has compulsively filled all her life. And yet, if she does nothing, she will be snubbed. The network will give the gig to a septuagenarian whose voice sounds ineffably correct coughing along with the action. Who could fault them for it? Say what you will about Rick Bellantoni: the man is good on television. As Cincy digs out of a thirteen-point hole, Bell paces in front of his bench, flailing and shouting, towing a thin line between rage and joy. Ruth can already hear his voice replacing Lester’s in her earpiece, spouting controversial opinions about All-Stars and female referees, uniting the command of the hall-of-fame coach with the crankery of your drunk uncle. When the camera pans to courtside celebrities, Bell will feign ignorance. What kind of name is Rihanna?

  Ruth doesn’t have to be there for it. Sticking around is optional.

  She imagines calling Phillip and telling him she’s pregnant, taking leave. She can hear the lightness in her producer’s voice as he congratulates her, his relief standing in for the relief of the entire network. They will pat themselves on the back, assuring one another they knew she was hiding something—that the circles under her eyes had darkened for a reason. Bell in the booth, and Ruth pregnant! Who saw that coming? Everyone wins.

  If she discovers blood at the end of the night, does she grieve? Heave a sigh? Find it within herself to try again? Ruth has no plan. No idea what she wants. A wave of nausea crests as Seattle’s offense falters. Emory misses a shot, and Darius pounces on the long rebound, batting the ball away from Kasey Powell and flying up the court for the kind of uncontested dunk featured on posters and video game covers. Still all business, his face impassive and steady. “When Darius Lake retires he should do the voice for meditation apps,” says Lester in Ruth’s ear, in sports bars and apartment living rooms. “People would pay for the privilege of listening to him feel nothing.” Nobody knows, but Lester Devon is an alto, sings with a Sinatra-smoothness that embarrasses his daughter and haunts his ex-wife. Sometimes she expects Lester to split in two. To keep it professional on air while, on her IFB, breaking into song.

  The score is tied. There are three minutes left in the third and Seattle calls a timeout. Ruth lingers on the wings of the huddle but learns little. The coaches, mic’ed, are likely revealing more to the production truck than to Ruth, who can’t hear much over the agitated roar of the fans, the Lizzo single blasting through the public-address system. She spends the commercial break shifting her weight from one hip to the other, trying to ascertain if she’s still bleeding. Was she ever? Is she making things up? Losing her mind would be worse than miscarrying.

  From the moment Ruth reclaims her seat, it’s clear the timeout mattered. First comes Emory Turner’s up-and-under layup, which he punctuates with a stare down directed at his best friend / worst enemy Darius Lake. Teammate Kasey Powell has Turner’s back with a clean three. “And just like that,” Lester says, “Seattle reminds Cincinnati who they’re dealing with.”

  What Ruth wants, truly, is to put her hands on the child she already has. She wants to see her daughter’s face. If she were to book a first-class ticket for Ari to meet her in Seattle in three days—she has the miles—Cheryl would remind Ruth it’s not Ariana’s job to travel. To swoop in and save the day and make Ruth feel better about her choices. Mothers swoop. Mothers save. And to her credit, Cheryl has done nothing less for Ruth. After her divorce, Ruth called her mother with a not-so-selfless proposal, and Cheryl agreed to move into the house Lester had willingly left to Ruth, to retire years earlier than planned, accepting her daughter’s financial support in exchange for on-demand, near-constant childcare.

  Cheryl has done everything for Ruth. That Ruth has done everything for her own daughter is an argument no one could make. Apologies have been tumbling from her tongue since the beginning: that first night in the maternity ward, the baby wouldn’t stop crying and Ruth said, with calm sincerity, “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” Lester asked, shoulders slumped in that Hawaiian shirt Ruth hated.

  “For evicting her,” Ruth said.

  Emory intercepts a pass and starts the break. An outlet to Kasey for the two-on-one, with Darius backpedaling on defense. “And it’s back to Turner at the rim!” Jay screeches in Ruth’s ear. “He throws it down!” It’s a sublime give-and-go alley-oop; neither player’s feet touch the ground while the ball is in his hands. Emory shushes the restive crowd with a finger cocked against his lips.

  Ruth’s birdcaged heart can barely take it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  @HeyRD was practically catatonic in that interview with Bell. Lady might as well wear a Sonics jersey to game five.

  Is it just me—or has her pr
ofessionalism deteriorated RAPIDLY over the series?

  Honestly, Ruth Devon looks tired. Maybe she should make like her ex-husband and put down the mic for good?

  K, now I’m hearing that she’s been harassing network execs for a full-time announcer’s contract. Umm . . . how about not?

  I don’t have a problem with a woman in the booth, I just find her voice SO annoying. And let’s be honest—she’s never been impartial.

  Agreed! Always obvious who she’s rooting for. The way she cozies up to Emory Turner . . . she wants the D. And I don’t mean defense.

  At the start of the fourth, the game is still tied and Ruth is nervous. She hasn’t puked since Game Three but she has come close, bile burning at the back of her throat. Now her mouth is a sea of hot saliva, her eyes watering preemptively. Weighing these symptoms against the blood she’s sure she felt between her legs is confusing, infuriating. Fuck this, she thinks—this being the mystery of her middle-aged body.

  Both teams have eighty-nine points. Two minutes pass and the score doesn’t change. The Wildcats and Sonics have figured each other out. Both teams have taken away threes and layups; what remains are contested midrange jumpers, fouls at the rim, lots of yapping at the refs. The smell is back. Only the knowledge of the camera panning the floor, catching her in the background of any midcourt shot, prevents Ruth from burying her nose in the sleeve of her dress. She turns when she feels a hand on her shoulder. Seamlessly she breaks out a smile for Patricia O’Connor, radio announcer for the New York Yankees.

  “Just saw that article,” Patricia says, her Boston accent turning Bronx in disgust. “Hated it.”

  Ruth throws up her hands. “Just a rumor, right?”

  Patricia is clutching a red-and-white-striped sleeve of popcorn. Ruth is interested until she catches a whiff and wants nothing to do with the stuff. Horrible. Patricia squeezes Ruth’s shoulder and mouths something profane before moving toward the aisle. Ruth doesn’t envy Patricia’s ascent to the press box. Twenty or thirty rows above the court, she’s always shocked at how quickly the game recedes, the action flattened by distance, secondary to hotdogs and selfies and beer sloshing over the rims of plastic cups. Those high-altitude fans have no access to Jay’s play-by-play or Lester’s analysis or Ruth’s updates; the unhinged caterwauling of the stadium announcer is their sole insight into the action. Ruth thinks she’d rather watch at home, hanging on every word of the broadcast, counting on the ever-shifting camera angles.

  In her ear, Jay is enthused over “a skip pass from Kasey Powell,” and Ruth whips around in time to see Emory Turner catch the ball at the three-point line and drive hard. He flies toward the rim but two Wildcats are already there, and Emory takes off early, hoping to clear them. His legs meet their shoulders, throwing him off balance.

  There’s a snap, like wood splitting.

  “That looks like—that’s a hard fall,” Lester stammers. “A hard fall—oh!”

  The “oh!” is hopeful. Lester gives himself room to acknowledge an overreaction. He waits for Turner to bounce back. Turner doesn’t. Because when he landed his leg buckled beneath him, and now there’s a hinge halfway between his knee and his ankle.

  “Turner broke his leg,” Lester says in one breath. “Turner has broken his leg.” Three sharp blasts of the ref’s whistle. “Turner has broken his leg.”

  The camera confirms: flash of flesh, flash of bone. Ruth has stopped breathing. Turner, crumpled like a car totaled on the interstate, slams his back against the court to escape the wreckage of his limb. The monitors show his face constricted in agony: eyes screwed shut, mouth knotted. Did the man scream? Ruth doesn’t think so. In the confusion, Sonics rookie Aaron Thomas has grabbed the rebound and tipped it in—now he sees Emory and his first instinct is to run in the opposite direction, as if a bomb was detonated and the shards are still flying.

  After a moment of shocked inactivity, coaches and team doctors rush to Emory’s side. Pressure mounts behind Ruth’s eyes as she grips the edge of the media table, physically preventing herself from going to him. Tears form and wobble, distorting her vision but not falling. You barely know him, she tells herself. He’s not yours. The crowd’s silence yields to a low murmur—twenty thousand subdued laments. Rising above the regret comes scattered applause. Drunken cheers. A riptide of enthusiasm for Emory Turner’s fate. Ruth slides out from behind the table, jumps the two steps to the court, and faces the fans. Her expression may be discernible only to those in the first few rows, but with the stretch of her arms and the force of her palms, with an intolerant shake of her head, the cheers die down. The applause becomes erratic, then stops.

  Darius has gone to Emory’s side. Ruth can’t see his face until the monitors fill with it. The man they call stoic, as if it’s his epithet, is sobbing. As Seattle’s doctors set Emory’s leg in an Aircast, players on both teams embrace and kneel and pray. Could have been any one of them, but it was Emory. Could have been any game, but it was Game Four of the NBA finals. The broadcast replays the fall in excruciatingly slow motion. In case you missed it, or in case you need a second look. The choice is Phillip’s, and Ruth can’t decide if she holds it against him. These men’s bodies are the entertainment. These bodies are insured for millions.

  These bodies break on national television.

  After the replay, the broadcast cuts to the bird’s-eye view from the top of the backboard, where the camera has been manipulated to show Emory supine and sprawled in the corner of the paint. Doctors and coaches and Darius surround him, fanned out like petals.

  Ruth makes her way across the court, dodging security and stepping over wads of blood-stained towels. In her ear, Phillip cuts through Jay and Lester’s somber commentary. “RD, where you headed?”

  She doesn’t answer. On the outer circle of the group tending to Emory, Ruth stoops and picks up the size-fifteen sky-blue Nike that a doctor pried from Emory’s foot and discarded. She watches between pairs of broad male shoulders as the medics lift Emory onto the gurney. Emory doesn’t lie back but sits upright, gripping the edges of the bed. The hard set of his jaw is incongruous with his eyes, now wide and disbelieving. The crowd issues a slow, respectful clap as Emory is wheeled toward the tunnel.

  As he passes, Ruth touches the player’s unbroken leg, his left. Emory looks at her with dim acknowledgment, evoking their encounter in the elevator after Game One, the discrepancy between Ruth’s delighted “Hi!” and his own indifference. A few hours ago he secured her a peanut butter sandwich in a brown paper bag. In that moment, he was an All-Star prepping for Game Four, and she was his favorite reporter. Now he is a man whose life has changed, and she is nothing more than a bystander. Ruth is sorry this has happened; she is so sorry, she feels sick.

  An equipment assistant approaches. “I’ll take that,” he says, reaching for the shoe. Ruth gives it up willingly.

  Lester is naming the bench player who will check in to replace Emory. “With Ruth Devon reporting, we’ll get an update on Emory Turner’s status as soon as we can.”

  Only then does Ruth remember to follow the gurney into the tunnel.

  Alison Lee, sideline reporter for Seattle’s regional network, is chronically cheerful, her personality carbonated. Even now, each of her sentences ends with an exclamation point: “I’m just realizing that the snapping sound was the bone! I thought it was a glitch in the sound system—like, I thought it was coming through the speakers! That’s how loud it was! Did you hear it, Ruth?”

  Outside the X-ray room, Supersonics staff push past them and through the door, avoiding their hunger. Ruth nods at Alison. Her expression is vacant as Roxanne compulsively compares Emory’s fall to past injuries suffered by other players: Solomon Gay’s off-season fracture sustained during a Team USA scrimmage; a Timberwolf’s bad luck in the regular season; a college kid’s Sweet Sixteen emergency. Solomon returned to the court after nine months. The Minnesota player is still in
therapy. The college kid was never heard from again.

  Without Emory, the Sonics will lose tonight. They will lose the series. It’s a fact supported by statistics and history and by the grief coiled between Ruth’s ribs.

  If she could, she would tell Emory what a nurse told a twenty-two-year-old Ruth Landon who could not stop sobbing into her hospital pillow: It’s not your fault. Our bodies fail us—even hotshots like you. Ruth had been unable to look at the nurse, but the words dove deep into her memory, resurfacing as needed. A version of this truth is what Ruth told her own mother the night Cheryl—typically stalwart, secretive—finally consented to one of Ruth’s interviews about the past. On summer evenings, provoked by loneliness and the long off-season, Ruth has a habit of plying her mother with chardonnay and unwanted questions. Last year, she asked her mom about the dead baby whom Cheryl delivered when Ruth and her brother were two and four, respectively. “It must have been hell,” Ruth said, twirling the stem of her glass between her fingers.

  “It wasn’t pleasant,” Cheryl admitted.

  “It was a tragedy, Mom. A stillbirth. You lost a kid—and you can’t admit it broke your heart?”

  Cheryl twisted her lips. “Of course it was a tragedy. Of course it broke my heart. But I didn’t expect everything to be easy, and so most things weren’t that hard. And when they were hard, it’s not as if I had all the time in the world to feel sorry for myself. There were no babysitters, no maids on payroll. I went back to work, and I took care of the children I already had, and I moved on. That’s something people used to do: move on.”

  Ruth leaned toward her mother. They were on the patio, the only light coming from the kitchen, filtered through the screen door. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right? Our bodies, they fuck up.”

  Cheryl’s expression had softened as she said, “Honey, I know.”