by Terry Fallis
I opened the notebook and turned to where I’d finished off the preceding chapter back in September. I immediately recognized the Parker Quink Blue. She must have been up half the night thinking and writing.
It only took me half an hour to read the chapter. Alli sat still and watched me the whole time. I didn’t cry—but I could have, and man, I wanted to. Finally, I looked up at her. “So you don’t think they could somehow make it work with her in Toronto and him in Boston?”
She reached for my hand. “No, Adam. I don’t. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them,” she said sadly.
“But they’re meant for each other. You said it yourself.”
“It’s just not realistic. They’re so young. And if they are truly meant for each other, a few years apart won’t change that. They’ll get back together if it’s meant to be.”
“What about having her go to university in Boston so they could be together?”
She just looked at me with the same furrowed eyebrows she’d shown me Friday night.
“That came out wrong,” I backpedalled. “She needs to keep focused on her dream, not his. I know. I know. I get it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing my hand.
“I am, too.” My heart was pounding and breaking at the same time.
It was a very, very long drive back to Toronto. Really, really long. When Allison’s parents dropped me at my house, she handed me the box holding the vintage Parker Duofold and the bottle of ink. “I don’t think I should keep this. It’s lovely but it’s too much, especially, you know, now.”
I’ll spare you the details, but she kept the pen and ink at my insistence. I think she acquiesced because she just didn’t want to make a scene in front of her parents. That was why I didn’t get out of the car until the box was back in her hands.
No matter what happened in the years ahead, it gave me some comfort to know that she’d be writing with the pen I’d given her. It felt like there was still hope for us as long as she was holding the pen; that a piece of me would always be with her even if we weren’t together. Now, that’s some heavy romance novel stuff right there, don’t you think? But I sure wasn’t looking at it that way as I slid out of the car that night.
Chapter 6
SEPTEMBER 2014
WITH MY PARENTS‘ BLESSING, Ms. Davenport escorted me down to Stanford in late August. She was very helpful in easing me into the golf program. Thanks to her, the coaching staff all understood and accepted my completely unorthodox approach to golf. It also didn’t hurt that she had delivered me to her alma mater. Top golf schools remember their star athletes from the past, and Bobbie Davenport was no exception. By then, they’d all read Professor Gunnarsson’s theory and measured the extremities of every student athlete they could corral in the hopes of finding another prodigy, in golf or any other varsity sport. Nobody they measured scored higher than seventy-eight for any sport.
While the coaches certainly appreciated that practice would not help my game—in fact, it could ruin it—my fellow student athletes weren’t quite as accepting. A few of them had trouble understanding why I was somehow exempt from the hours of driving-range practice while they had to hit bucket after bucket of balls, day in and day out. While they toiled to move from good golfers to somewhat better golfers, I was able to maintain my status as the best player on the team simply by enjoying my classes, staying on top of my courses, eating whatever I wanted thanks to my unlimited meal plan, and practising putts and bunker shots a couple of times a week. I could see why I wasn’t warmly embraced.
I lived in one of the on-campus residences, in a large and lovely private room that even featured a small putting green in one corner. Until classes started in September, I just tried to work on my putting, my bunker shots, and learning the rules and etiquette of golf. Studying the rule book was a colossal bore, even though I understood why it was important. Ms. Davenport gave me a couple of very old books on golf and etiquette that were more interesting just because the writing was from a bygone era.
“Call me anytime you want to talk about anything,” Ms. Davenport said, standing next to the cab that would whisk her to the airport for her flight back to Toronto. “Do not think about golf when you’re out on the course, or you know what will happen. Keep up with your schoolwork. A degree from Stanford is respected, even revered. Don’t discount it by phoning in your classwork. Keep reading and keep writing. And try to have some fun along the way.” Then she leaned in and gave me a hug.
After she’d left, it felt different. I was lonely. I kept thinking of Alli, imagining her walking through the campus of the University of Toronto while I was three time zones away. I wished I were with her, experiencing university life together, studying together, finishing our novel together. It was what we’d talked about for so long. I’d botched that plan, and that was on me. But then I remembered all the reasons Stanford made so much sense. Yes, on paper, I was in the right place. But in my heart, I was a long way from where I wanted to be. The world should have my problems, right?
The first NCAA tournament I played for Stanford didn’t start off in the right way. I wasn’t used to walking the course on my own, without Ms. Davenport to talk to and keep my mind off of golf, and as a result I messed up the first round. I found myself thinking about my shots more than I should have been, and finished the round at two over par. For me, it was a very mediocre score. Before the next day’s resumption of play, I cooked up a list of interesting topics to occupy my mind, and wrote them on a Post-it note that I stuck onto my scorecard. Then, during the second round, I studiously tackled each item on the list. It wasn’t just so I’d play better; I needed to combat the tedium of eighteen holes of golf. Sure, watching paint dry is boring. But if golf were the only other option, it wouldn’t necessarily be an easy call.
The only golf-related brainwork I was permitted was calculating yardages, selecting clubs, and reading putts. Over time, I became more adept at fleetingly turning my mind to choosing the right club and lining up my shot, before refocusing my brain back on whatever non-golf topic I’d been wrestling with before my game so rudely interrupted me. It seemed to work quite well. Occasionally I’d make minor club selection errors by not properly accounting for the wind or elevation changes on the hole, but for the most part, I did just fine.
I shot sixty-six on day two and took a three-stroke lead into the weekend that I never relinquished. But maintaining the lead wasn’t my biggest challenge. What I struggled with was thinking up enough interesting topics to occupy my mind for two entire rounds of golf. I worked my way through the benefits of piston fillers over cartridge/converter fountain pens, the great gold-versus-steel nib debate, and which writers, dead or alive, I’d most like to have dinner with. Finally, in an act of desperation with three holes to go in the final round, I mentally drafted a letter to my parents, assembling sentences as I walked and shot, and then memorized it. I thought it was an awesome letter, and I wrote it all down later that night and mailed it the next day. The team toasted me after my victory, but I could tell I still wasn’t one of them.
Missives to my parents weren’t the only letters I penned. Every week or so I’d write Allison a letter, seal it in an envelope, address it, stamp it, and file it in my bottom desk drawer. We’d agreed not to communicate with one another, to make the break cleaner and more painful (okay, I added the “more painful” part), but I couldn’t stop myself from writing to her. Sometimes I’d just recount what was happening in my life. Other times I’d tell her how much I missed her, how much I still loved her. I would ask her what she was writing, and what pen she was using. But I never mailed them. Yes, I wrote letters that were never sent.
I knew, intellectually, that I should have been elated at winning an NCAA golf tournament. By all rational and reasonable measures, it was quite an achievement. And it did feel good holding the trophy for the photographers and speaking to reporters. But the good feeling was muted, because I knew that I hadn’t really won that golf tournament—
my ideally proportioned body had. Professor Gunnarsson had won a piece of it, too. And even Ms. Davenport had a stake in my place at the top of the leaderboard. Victory just isn’t as sweet when your role in the win seems so passive, so minor, so incidental, even accidental. And by the way, despite my success, I wasn’t finding golf any more enjoyable, fulfilling, fun, inspiring, exciting, etc. I found it as time-consuming as it was boring—and it was a boatload of both. And really, what was it accomplishing? What was it contributing to the greater good?
All that golf would have been the end of me were it not for my courses. I was majoring in English and creative writing, with a minor in NCAA golf, in a way. I studied Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and others, and found my course work the exact opposite of golf—time flew, and it was fascinating and fulfilling. I took the only course with Canadian content I could find, called Looking North: Canadian Literature. It was actually taught by a Canadian professor. In the course, she covered the heavyweights, like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, and Michael Ondaatje, along with several other lesser-known writers. It was fascinating to read these writers closely, analyzing and assessing their styles and techniques. It was reading and thinking about novels at an entirely new level for me. And I loved it. All of it.
My creative writing classes forced me to broaden my writing horizons. We covered short stories, novels, playwriting, screenwriting, essays, creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry. We had to write from various perspectives and in many different styles and voices. And while a lot of the writing I was doing was for class, some of it was just for me. I even started writing some poetry outside of class, just to push myself beyond the kind of writing I typically pursued. As it turned out, I’d learned just enough about poetry to know I wrote really bad poetry.
My social life at Stanford wasn’t exactly flourishing. I made some friends in my classes, but I didn’t seem to be connecting with any of my golf teammates. It made some sense when I thought about it. Most of them had golfed with, or against, one another all through their high school years as they rose to the top of the collegiate heap. I was a Canadian they’d never heard of with an innate gift for golf. I never spent any time on the range with them, because I wasn’t allowed to practise. And to make matters worse, I was winning. I was a threat to their success. I could take their spot on the PGA Tour and push them onto the second-tier professional tour. So I wasn’t surprised that I was shunned, even though I thought of myself as a nice guy. I guess the stakes were too high to make being a nice guy a relevant factor.
One afternoon, I walked across campus to the library to do some research for a paper on expat writers in Paris in the 1920s. Just as I approached the front door, four of my golf teammates came out of the library. Given the time, I was sure they were heading to the range for daily practice under the close scrutiny of our coaches.
“Hi, guys,” I said.
“Well, if it isn’t the golf freak,” said Tom McCann, the de facto leader of the foursome. His tone was not warm and friendly.
“At your service.” I said it casually, but my guard was up.
“Well, it looks like you’re going the wrong way. That’s the library, the range is at the other end of campus,” he sneered. “Oh, but wait, I forgot. You’re the chosen one from the frozen North who’s not allowed to practise because it might hurt your God-given golf magic. Yeah, well, I think that’s a load of crap. You’re just a lazy-ass who’s somehow gamed the system.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” I said, my rhetorical arsenal apparently offline.
“Listen, Captain Canuck, when I win a tournament—and I’ve won plenty—it’s because I’ve worked hard, studied the game, respected golf traditions, and focused on nothing else,” Tom said, pointing to himself. Then he pointed at me. “When you win, it’s because your mother and father’s DNA combined to create a golf freak with no control over his own ability. I’d much rather win because of what I’ve done and not because of what I am.”
I paused for a moment to let my anger flare just a bit. “Two things. First of all, to be honest, I’d rather win your way, too. And second, just in case you’re unclear about what you are, I can tell you. You’re an asshole.”
“You’re the asshole,” was all Tom could muster, giving me his fiercest look. I’ve always considered the old I know you are but what am I gambit to be quite lame. So I told him so.
I would like to say that I caught the punch out of the corner of my eye and ducked just in time. Instead, I caught the punch full on the side of my head. I hadn’t been in many fights growing up. Okay, I hadn’t been in any fights growing up. But I knew enough to at least be able to give the impression that I was in a fight. On instinct, I adopted the “go crazy” fighting strategy reminiscent of the berserker warriors in the Icelandic sagas I’d studied. They fought with fire and fury, almost as if they were in a trance. I could feel Tom on top of me, raining down blows on my torso and head—somehow, I was kneeling on the ground by this time. So I went all berserker on him. I just started throwing elbows into his midsection to get him off me. Then I jumped to my feet and rushed him, my shoulders, arms, and fists windmilling in front of me like the giant rotating brush on a street-cleaning machine. I was in my own little bubble. I seemed to lose contact with time and space. But on a positive note, I somehow made contact with Tom’s face, not to mention his head, chest, shoulders, stomach, and several other body parts for which I wasn’t aiming but struck all the same.
I may be making it sound like the brawl was a little one-sided after I summoned my inner Icelander, but Tom was landing a few punches of his own. I can report with firsthand knowledge that nothing quite grabs your attention like a direct blow to your nose. That was a pain with which I’d previously been unfamiliar. We alternated between boxing on our feet and, when we had tired one another out, wrestling on the ground. And I know what you’re thinking. As the Canadian in the bout, I was probably a great fighter, right? But despite the stereotype, I’d never actually played organized hockey, so my fighting skills were, shall we say, underdeveloped for my age.
To me, it felt like an epic battle worthy of stage and screen. But I was informed afterwards by several unbiased witnesses that neither Tom nor I was a particularly adept combatant. Our combined Gunnarsson score for any of the martial arts probably wouldn’t break fifty.
The incident ended when Stanford security arrived—and not a moment too soon. We were both exhausted. Upon learning we were both on the golf team, security hauled us straight to the office of our coach, who’d been just about to leave for the team’s daily practice on the range. It’s fair to say he was not very happy. He proceeded to yell at us for several minutes, tearing both Tom and me additional bodily orifices that we apparently deserved.
“You guys are idiots! You’re both key members of the varsity golf team and you decide to start beating your fists against each other’s very hard skulls. You’re lucky no one broke a knuckle. You need your goddamn hands to play goddamn golf! And you’re both here on full-ride deals. Don’t you dare fu…mess that up.” He turned to me. “And you, Coryell, it’s your job to fit the hell in and be a member of this team. I don’t care if you have some divine frickin’ gift for golf and can’t screw around with it by practising, you’re still a goddamn member of this goddamn team! Okay?”
I just nodded, the Kleenex I had plugging both nostrils failing to stanch the blood dripping all over my shirt. It was not a good look.
“And McCann, you jackass! Why do you have to be such a prick all the time? Tone it down, be a team player, and pull your head out of your ass. Coryell may be our best shot at the championship in years. Don’t you ever lay a hand on him again! You got it?”
“Got it. Sorry, Coach.”
Then, in a scene right out of a Family Channel movie of the week, Coach made us shake hands before sending me to my residence room and taking Tom to the range. My nose looked like someone else’s for the next couple of weeks, befo
re the swelling eventually subsided. It hurt every time my club hit the ball.
* * *
—
BEYOND AVOIDING SCANDAL, arrest, and incarceration, not to mention on-campus brawling, there was really only one rule I had to honour to keep my very generous four-year scholarship. I had to play golf. It helped if I won—which, I say without conceit, I usually did—but I really only had to show up, play, and acquit myself reasonably well.
In September alone, I won all three tournaments Stanford entered. A coach would walk around the course with me, offering advice on yardage, and course and wind conditions. It was helpful and I came to trust what the coaches said. Once in a while, I’d make the wrong club selection, usually when the required yardage fell neatly between two clubs. The coaches also took lots of video of me on the course to try to see if they could identify anything in my swing to explain how and why I could hit any club a good twenty to forty yards further than the pros. No one could figure out anything beyond a lovely and fluid swing. It was just what Professor Gunnarsson’s theory had predicted. My perfectly proportioned body and natural swing somehow led to a higher club-head speed, which, when my ball striking was true, inevitably led to greater distances and a dead-straight ball flight. Simple but rare.
But I didn’t win every tournament. I’m not sure I could have handled the publicity had I swept the NCAA. So in a few tourneys I purposely thought about my shots, with predictable results. I guess it was self-sabotage, but it took some of the pressure off if the world around me periodically viewed me as mortal. Don’t worry, I never fell off the front page of the leaderboard and usually came second. The other way to lose was to putt badly. Since it was the only part of the game—along with bunker shots—that was truly in my own hands, it was easier to mess up without it looking too obvious.
