All the Old Haunts (13 page)

She offers to let you have first possession. You decline. You are the man, after all. And you don’t
want
first possession. She shrugs, takes the ball, doesn’t move her feet at all as she floats a shot over your head. It doesn’t go in, but by the time you’ve turned to see, she’s already blown by, picked up the ball, and rolled it in.

She takes it out again, dribbles to her right. You keep your hands up. That’s all you know, keep your hands up like a human letter Y, and keep yourself between her and the hoop. Desperately you try to do that, but you can’t manage to sidestep, sidestep, and wind up running awkwardly cross-body, foot over foot. You manage the small victory of not falling, but watch as she passes directly under the basket to come up for a reverse layup on the other side.

She cannot believe you are as bad as this so she laughs, thinking you are toying. You laugh along, dropping your hands. As soon as you do, she races by. You chase. She stops short. You fly past. She pulls up and banks an easy jumper.

She’s into double figures and your Florida Marlins sweats with the leaping fish are soaked by the time she seems to gather that you have nothing.
Nothing.
You don’t laugh anymore, don’t smile. You try like hell. Only halfway through a game neither one of you wants to finish. But she’s kind enough not to offer, and you’re stupid enough not to quit. You sweep at the ball and actually tick it, knocking it out of her hands. She doesn’t chase, and you get it. You are an impossible twenty feet from the basket, but you heave the ball from where you are. Airball, of course, and she looks irritated that you did it.

She stands practically in your shoes as she squares up to take the mid-range jumper. You are looming over her, the shot begging to be blocked. If there is one thing you should be able to do, this is that thing. She goes up, you go up. You can see the ball, you can see your outstretched hand, you can see her outstretched hand, as the ball leaves it.

It has always been this way. It never mattered whether the shooter was a foot shorter or could not jump, or didn’t even try to jump. It was as if there was just something, something about trajectory, something about time, that everyone else knew but that you did not. You never arrived at that point in the air at the same time that the ball did. Never.

What you need here is a cold-blooded killer, someone who would stick the dagger in, twist it, beat you soundly and quickly. What you have unfortunately is a girl with a heart. She tries to joke again, but the pity is clear on her face and in her game. As she creeps toward twenty-one she tries mightily to get you some points. She dribbles the ball off her foot, expertly booting it right into your hands. You fire up another brick. She hauls in the rebound out of instinct, but stands flat-footed and lets you take it away from her. It is a gimme, but you panic and roll it off the rim.

“Why didn’t you just stick it, for god’s sake,” she yells, angry like a coach. She’s mad at having to work harder for your points than for her own. “You’re that close to the hoop with the ball in your hands, you jam it in. It’s not even regulation height.”

Out of her exasperation come more baskets. A bank shot, a hook shot, a short baseline jumper, all rain right over your head. It feels better than the charity, though.

She needs only one basket to finish it, to skunk you finally, a shutout. “Don’t forget, gotta win by two,” she says, a tired smile relighting her game face. She dribbles once behind her back, between her legs, to her right, to her left. By most standards, she is not a great ball handler, very shaky and off-balance with the show-time moves that seem unnatural to her. But you can’t touch her.

Suddenly for no good reason she pulls up from long range. She doesn’t penetrate at all, which she has already proven is easy enough to do. Instead she lets it fly, from three-, or four-, or five-point land. A line drive, a bullet. You turn to watch the shot ricochet off the front of the rim, and bounce all the way straight out to you. She hasn’t moved for the hoop, so there you are with the ball and nothing but air between you and the basket. You put the ball on the floor. It works once. Twice, three four five consecutive off-balance dribbles as you lumber toward the hoop.

If you were alone, you would have taken some small pride in having come within five feet of the basket before having the ball trail off harmlessly in one direction while you and your empty hands go flailing off in another.

You don’t try to talk to her as you angle off the side of the driveway, across her front yard, toward home. You stare straight ahead and compulsively keep pushing your sleeves back up. They slide back down over your forearms, you push them back up.

“It’s not important, you know,” she says from right behind you. You don’t want to hear it. She comes up alongside, locked into step with you, the two of you marching along like a pair of string-bean soldiers. She marches and swings her hands, a little comedy, as she tries to catch your eyes with hers. You see her clearly in your peripheral view, but you will not turn.

“Really,” she said, “I really don’t think it’s a big deal. I beat guys all the time. We’re not all athletes, you know.”

None of it means anything, until she touches your arm. You have just pushed the sleeve back up, again, and her fingertips feel cool and wet there. You stop walking.

“I
can
do stuff,” you say, a little desperately. “People just think because of the way I look that I’m supposed to play ball. But I can do stuff. I can do lots of other stuff. I’m not a loser, you know. I’m not a geek.”

“Nobody said you were,” she says.

“You want to see? I have a lot of stuff, back at my house. I’d love to show you. I have a ball signed by Bill Russell, did you know that? I shook his hand. He hates this whole city, and he shook my hand. I paid the money and he signed the ball and shook my hand and laughed that spooky cackle laugh even though I didn’t say anything at all to the guy. You want to see it?”

She nods, impressed. “I’d like to see that, sure.”

It seems like no one is home when you bring her in through the front door. “Mom,” you call out tentatively. You get the no-answer you hope for.

“You have a very nice place,” she says. “It’s so clean and airy. Really nice.”

“My mom,” you say, leading her up the stairs. “My mom is wild for cleaning and straightening. This is nothing though. Wait’ll you see my room.”

It was something you just hadn’t thought about, something you just took for granted after so long. You smile at her as you stand for a second before your door, which is almost entirely taken up by a life-size poster of Evander Holyfield, who is perfect and is sculpted and smiling and a half foot shorter than you. The poster is signed. You own Evander Holyfield.

But as soon as you swing the door open and look at her astonished face, you remember. You feel yourself flush as she beams.

“This is unbe
liev
able,” she says, scanning the brilliance of the room all around. “It’s like opening a door on the Academy Awards show.”

“Oh never mind that,” you say, but it is too late. She rushes to the tall chest of drawers, covered with trophies. She careens over to the dresser, blinding as it is with the trophies themselves and their reflections off the mirror behind them. The nightstands on either side of the bed, covered. Small brass loinclothed men standing atop pedestals, arms raised triumphant, at attention all along the baseboards of the four walls.

“Hey, let me show you that ball,” you say, even your voice sweaty now. You make for the closet.

“Track,” she points at one modest third-place plaque hanging on the wall. “Tennis?” She points at a trophy, the player bent over backward in mid-serve. “Football, boxing, hockey. Sailing? Who
are
you?” Her voice, momentarily filled with awe, changes as soon as she gets up close and begins reading. You are buried in the closet, but you can tell. You take your time.

“Wait a minute? Oh, I know who you are. You’re Sven Lundquist. Oh no, you’re Eamonn O’Rourke. Wait, wait, you’re Jamaal Abdoul.”

When she starts laughing hysterically, you come out of the closet.

“This is soooo cute,” she says, delighted. “You’re a funny guy.”

“No it isn’t,” you answer coolly. “And no I’m not.”

“Come on now, you’re kidding me, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, then, what? It’s a hobby, right? It’s a cool idea, I think. You’ll probably wind up with an unbelievable collection, the way you’re going. A real conversation-starter, to say the least.”

“No, they’re mine.”

“They’re yours. You
won
them? All?”

You nod.

“Stop pulling my leg. Okay, so you won, ah,” she browses, “the American Legion baseball championship in 1990? You also won … the New England regional Golden Gloves middleweight title in … ooh, you were a busy boy in 1990, huh?”

“They’re mine,” you say.

“Sure they’re yours, because you bought them, or swiped them, but not because you
earned
them.”

“Please. I earned them. I did, I earned them. Can we not talk about them anymore? Look, here’s the Russell ball.”

“Just, okay, for my peace of mind, before we move on, just can I hear you tell me you know these are somebody else’s awards?”

You know the stakes, you know the true facts. You know you don’t want her to leave, and you know the appropriate answer. You open your mouth, and some words come out.

“They are mine. Really. They belong to me.”

She backs toward the door, talking calmly, sadly. Pity again. “Being a geek is okay, you know. Being a psychopath is not. You can
be
a lovable geek ….”

“They really are mine,” you say, almost following her. She’s on her way down the stairs. You get to the threshold of your bedroom but you don’t cross it, unable to go out even though you’d like to bring her back.

You hear your mother say hello as they pass each other at the front door. The response is a polite but rushed “Hi” as she speeds out.

When your mother reaches your room you are rapidly tearing open all the remaining packs of 1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice baseball cards. You are certain that the prizewinner is in there, the ticket that puts you on Griffey’s card for the millions of Hobbyists and girls to see next year. When each pack comes up a loser you drop it to the floor. Your mother looks at your face and she knows the story. You can see your fractured heart in hers.

She stands in the doorway holding a crinkled brown shopping bag. She pulls out a small but different-looking prize, the figurine on top made of white marble instead of metal. “This was at the thrift shop today. I thought you’d like it, thought you could make room for it. You don’t already have anything from soccer, do you?”

When you don’t respond, she comes on in. Even with her standing up, you have to sit on the bed for her to cradle your head in her arms.

S
O THE FIRST THING
he asked me, this doctor, or anyway not the first first thing but the first of the things that stuck with me, was “Son, have you ever had a beer before breakfast?”

To which I replied, because, right, what are you supposed to say to something like that but anyway, to which I replied, “Does vodka count?”

And anyways it doesn’t even really matter what his answer was to my question, right, because I had kind of lost that particular conversation either way, don’t you think?

At which point you are most likely to say, but that’s so negative, and there are no winners and losers and looking at it like win-lose is all wrong when the man is only trying to help you.

Self-defeating, is what you’re thinking. It is a very very popular phrase in my experience, so I know when it is about to come into play, and I think you’re thinking it right now.

Which is why I’m doing the talking. To make sure it comes out right.

This is a place, right, this place here, which is mad with daffodils every spring, I mean, like,
rotten
with these gorgeous exploding crazy yellow daffodils every spring, and it doesn’t matter. They even have a daffodil
festival
here, like we’re famous for it, in one of the warmer months named after a girl, April, May, or June or something. But it doesn’t matter. It rains too much. The shops where you shop have too many checkout girls who have a black eye. And every even-numbered person you pass on the street looks about ready to cry and it’s probably because every odd-numbered one looks like he just did something awful to them.

You want to help everybody, right, but you can’t. There is only one of me. If there was more of me it would be different but there isn’t so it isn’t. Hard to be the people’s champion when there is only one of you and so many of them, but that’s the way it is. If it was otherwise, girls would neverever get black eyes but they do. Way too many of them. I would put a stop to that. If there was more of me there would be less of black eyes, and that’s a fact.

It’s too much coincidence, really, that a place would have so many checkout girls with black eyes. You have to conclude, don’t you, that something is wrong. That the girls here are too slow-witted and clumsy and giving themselves black eyes by bumping up against things or falling down against things. Or that they aren’t even giving themselves black eyes, so you have to conclude somebody else is doing it.

Like I say, if there was more of me there would be less of black eyes. If they was really falling down and bumping all the time then I’d be there to catch them. And if it was the other, then I’d be double-time there and you know it. Nobody’d be blacking no girl’s eyes if it was up to me.

How could anybody, though? Unless it was an accident. How could anybody want to give a checkout girl a black eye except maybe by accident? Crazy business, that is. That’s just unimaginable, crazy business.

Makes you want to cry. On purpose, by accident, whether they are falling-down clumsy or whether they had a little help doesn’t matter, checkout girls with black eyes are the saddest things a place has to offer, and if that don’t make you want to cry then you probably wasn’t alive in the first place.