Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

  That was kind of cute. She pretended to know too little, he too much, and they flirted like this for the first quarter as the Mavs and Rockets collided.

  “Here comes our boy Roy.”

  The crowd gave it up as Perkins high-fived his way to the bench. The whistle and the inbound and Tarpley was on Hakeem’s hip.

  Cady pulled her hair back over her neck. “You remember Julie Houlihan? She went to Rita’s with us?”

  Dan thought of himself lurking below the Ursuline balcony that night of the dance. “Yup.”

  “Well, Samantha Schimmel told her that she heard from Misti Ushio that Jasmine D’Errico did it with Trey Diller.”

  “Wait, Trey Miller, the senior?”

  “Noooo! Trey Diller, the junior.”

  Growing up in Dallas, you ran into a fair share of Treys. But Trey Diller, class of 1988, was a Spicoli-style burnout, and Jasmine was the prissy empress of the homecoming court. This was total Breakfast Club territory.

  “That can’t be true.”

  “I know, so gross, right?”

  “Well . . .” Dan was left to figure out the gross part as Tarpley stole the dump pass to Hakeem and then dribbled out into a fast break and rifled a no-look pass to Brad Davis for a corner three. Mavs rolling. The crowd tom-toms: De-fense. De-fense.

  “I bet she has herpes now,” Cady said in a very sad, resigned way. “Also I heard everyone is bailing on the winter formal because Caroline Mackenzie’s parents are away and that’s where the party is going to be.”

  “Wait, when is that?”

  “January twenty-second.”

  Dan knew when it was. In fact he had been planning on asking Cady to go to the winter formal at the end of the night. “I can’t even think about our school calendar right now, so depressing.”

  “Totally.” And then Cady revealed her agenda. “So we should, like, meet up at Caroline’s that night.”

  “Sure. That’s cool.”

  “Cool.”

  So two dates now? That’s sort of good. Time to do something gentlemanly to earn this. “Can I get you a hot dog?”

  “A hot dog?” Cady shot him a startled look. “Gross.”

  “So two hot dogs then? Extra sauerkraut?”

  “You’re insane.” Cady flicked her hair again. “I’ve got gum. I’m good.” She pointed at the purple wad smooshed between her molars.

  “Yeah, I’m good too.” Dan was starving—somehow chips and queso had made him more hungry. In the blocks, Tarpley drove in for an over-the-head dunk as Hakeem wisely cleared out. The crowd roared, and Bill Fitch slapped his clipboard and called a time-out. Mavs up by six now.

  “Such a good game!”

  Cady didn’t hear him as the crowd screamed even louder at the forced time-out. “You want to walk around a little?”

  Sigh. “Sure, let’s do it.”

  They meandered the halls of Reunion Arena, Dan dying at each rise and roar of the crowd—Tarpley was single-handedly dismantling the Houston space program. Dan bought some Blue Bell to share with Cady, and he watched her lips on spoonfuls of peaches and cream. He needed less distraction to plan strategy. He had a tentative date on the books, but he still needed to kiss her, and there was an unspoken shared terror that this was expected. But frankly the corridors of Reunion Arena were as romantic as a big beige urinal and not so conducive to Beatrice-Benedict repartee.

  “Do you watch L.A. Law?”

  “No, my parents watch Cagney and Lacey.”

  “Oh. L.A. Law is like the best show ever.”

  “Sorry.”

  While they were both trying, Dan felt the swing in momentum, much like the Mavericks, who let the Rockets back into the game. Halftime came, and the crowds swarmed into the hallway. Time for a move, and Dan made one—he grabbed Cady’s hand and pulled her up the ramp for their section. It wasn’t exactly Burt Lancaster on the beach with Deborah Kerr, but when they got back to their seats Cady didn’t let go of his hand.

  Like good teams should, the Rockets and Mavs survived the third quarter, trading buckets, sizing each other up for crunch time. At the start of the fourth, Perkins picked up a cheap fifth foul and MacLeod put his hands through his gray perm in disgust. So here came Tarpley. The Rockets had been threatening to start a run, but Tarpley grabbed the board off a Hakeem baseline shot. He ripped it down and then kicked it out past half court to Aguirre, who backed in with his big butt and easy off the glass. Fitch took another time-out in disgust. Rockets down by five.

  Dan smiled at Cady. They were still holding hands when “Shout” came on the speakers. The crowd stood up at the command of Otis Day’s long tambourine rattle.

  “Do you want to dance?” Dan yelled at Cady.

  Say that you love me, say that you need me . . .

  Cady’s cheerleader training kicked in, and they shimmied together while the whole arena screamed “Shout” at the Rockets’ bench.

  Now wait a minute . . .

  A few in the crowd yelled out Yeah yeah in response and Dan lip-synced into an empty Dr Pepper like Boon in the movie. Cady grinned but apparently hadn’t seen it.

  A little bit softer now . . .

  Shots of the toga party on the Jumbotron. Dan held Cady’s hands as they dipped into a crouch. The whole stadium was ready to pounce, and then . . .

  A little bit louder now . . .

  Cady and Dan swung back up together, and it was time to SHOUT again and everyone in the stadium forgot who they were—a few beers went flying, a few fights broke out, and a couple of people were having a good time.

  Hey HEY hey HEY . . .

  And the time-out ended and Derek Harper poked away the inbound and found Blackman on an ESP pass, who sank a long two. Smooth.

  “Cady! Let’s go . . .”

  Two minutes left. Houston down by seven—not over—and fucking Todd Bloom was beckoning from the aisle.

  “Come on!”

  They couldn’t argue over the crowd noise. Sleepy Floyd for the quick layup . . . blocked by Tarpley! Everyone went bananas. MacLeod kept him out there for crunch time, and Sam Perkins looked like he was okay with it, fanning the parquet with his towel like it was on fire.

  “We’re leaving your asses if you don’t come now.”

  Fine. They shoved past everyone in their row and headed into the tunnel as Aguirre hit a dagger three and the arena detonated. Another time-out and cue “Celebration.” But Todd Bloom had them scurrying like rats out the back gate. Dan grabbed Cady’s hand again, trying to make the best of a bad exodus.

  * * *

  Todd Bloom dumped Dan on the curb of Crown Shore Drive. There had been no chances for fireworks at the end of the date—which was kind of a relief—just a dull ride back to North Dallas with Lang Dudek picking his nose in the passenger seat. Nonetheless Cady had nuzzled into Dan and they shared sugary and assured smiles. Safely on to the next date, he thought.

  Dan walked up the moonlit blue driveway, pulled the extra key from under a rock hidden in the Ligustrum, and crept in the door. It was past eleven, and the front of the house was dark and still. He turned down the hallway toward his room, noticing a light under the bathroom door. Crap. The problem with holding hands in the second half: no bathroom breaks, and he needed to go now. Dan got ready for bed, stripping to his boxers. He cued his Dylan tape to “Mr. Tambourine Man” and waited to hear the bathroom open up. A long minute went by. Dan checked the hallway. The door to his parents’ bedroom was closed, but the back-room TV was on, muted. The couch had a bed pillow and sheet on it but wasn’t pulled out. Another minute and the silence from the bathroom was broken by the sound of the toilet seat falling. Dan really had to go. He stepped to the bathroom door and knocked lightly.

  “Dad?”

  “Occupied.” His father’s voice sounded like he was gargling.

  “I got to go, Dad.”


  “Is it just you, Dan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to bed, honey,” he slurred.

  In a huff, Dan stomped off to the kitchen, took down his Willie Randolph Big Gulp cup, and peed in it. He threw it down the drain of the sink and rinsed the cup before stacking it in the dishwasher. He came back down the hallway. He still needed to brush his teeth and was thinking of knocking again when he heard a crash and a rattle. It sounded like the door to the shower.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m fine!”

  “What happened?”

  “Go to bed.”

  And Dan cracked open the door. His father was between the toilet and the tub, trying to pull himself off the floor. His left leg was pinned back at the knee. The shower door had been punched out of its track and dangled from the top rail. Dan moved toward his father as Pat’s head lurched down into the toilet bowl and he vomited.

  “Good God, Dad.”

  Pat retched again and again, hovering over the bowl and ignoring Dan for a long time. Eventually he looked up, his bloodshot eyes welling with tears, and motioned to Dan to help him up. But then he gagged again, and this time there was nothing but bile and spit. When he was done, he gasped for air and, with trembling hands, started to push himself off the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Dan,” Pat moaned. “I think it’s the flu. I can’t keep anything down.”

  Dan struggled to pick his father off the tiles. Pat tried to stand, but his legs were numb and he almost fell back into the tub. He braced himself against the sink and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Should we call a doctor?”

  “No. I’ll be fine.” The blood returned to Pat’s legs, and the numbness started to tingle away. He took a step closer to the sink to wash his hands and face. He bent over and gulped water from the faucet. His skin was crawling and his head felt like it was bleeding from within, and just then Pat realized he had purged the booze out of his system.

  Dan took a deep breath. “Can you walk?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not.” Dan was trying to whisper and not wake his mother.

  “Get out of my way.”

  Pat stepped out of the bathroom and then had to turn back and throw up in the sink. Nothing, just dry heaves now.

  “Okay, that’s all of it.” He was shaking and red faced as he hobbled down the hallway. “Just need to lie down and die.”

  The joke didn’t land, and Dan felt his heart drop. Pat’s left foot snagged on the carpet, and he scraped by the door to the boiler closet. He grabbed the doorknob and made the last few careening steps down the hall. Dan went to the kitchen and brought the big ceramic mixing bowl and a glass of water to the back room. His father fell onto the couch and lay there exhausted, his head rolled back like he had broken his neck.

  “Dad?”

  “Just leave it. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  “Listen, Dan, one thing. Go to the garage and get me a bottle.”

  “No.”

  “Dan, please do this for me. I feel terrible . . .” Pat’s face crimped into a sob that he tried to hold back. “I can’t sleep with this flu, and I just need a drink to knock me out.”

  Dan took his father’s water glass and went out the back-room closet through to the garage. In the dark he poured the water on the ground. Dan found the case of Wolfschmidt and cracked open a bottle, pouring three fingers. He came back into the house and presented the glass to his father.

  “Here.”

  Pat had the spins, and he opened his eyes like he had been caught falling. Dan saw how frightened his father looked as he grabbed the glass. Then Pat stopped and remembered himself. He looked up.

  “It’s okay, Danny boy. Thank you. I’ll be better in the morning.”

  Pat took a sip, and Dan watched as he regained himself. He thought about the Hawthorne story where they drink from the fountain of youth and the miserable brume of cares and sorrows and diseases lifts like a dream, only to curse the drinkers. Pat took another swallow, finishing the drink, and tried to sit up on the couch.

  “Did you bring the bottle in?”

  With a terrible anger, Dan left his father lying in the dark and returned to his own room.

  [ JANUARY 1, 1988 ]

  Pat stood before the steamed-up mirror. His face was gray, minus his nose, which had turned bright red at the tip. Can’t shave. He had acne and a staph infection on his chin that was irritated and wouldn’t close, and his skin felt too raw, thin, and dried out. He combed his hair, his scalp riddled with dandruff and itching madly. He blotted the condensation off the mirror and looked into pink, rheumy eyes that ran dry and then too watery. A small sty was forming on the lid of his left eye. His left leg was bad this morning, way too stiff, like it had fallen out of its socket at the hip. The instep of his left foot was pulsing with something called plantar fasciitis. His neurologist had sent him to a podiatrist, pretty sure it wasn’t part of the MS, and the foot doctor explained it to him by talking about the silver skin on a raw chicken. It wasn’t just the foot; the sheathing of his heel, ankle, leg, and torso were all either too loose or too tight. Strung out or worn away. Pat leaned into the mirror, studying his dark, desiccated pores. He reached into the drawer for a Q-tip and dug at his ears, which were clogged with wax the color of soot that cracked like rocks on his eardrums. He brushed his teeth gingerly; his mouth was full of canker sores, and his tongue looked like it was smeared with white paint. Too painful to Listerine. He spat out the toothpaste—when he wasn’t drooling and sucking spit into a swallow, his throat had a dry catch to it. He toweled himself off, his underarms and sides rashed from the starch in his shirts. He held the towel in a trembling hand with skinned knuckles. Don’t remember how I did that. There had been too many falls lately. A wave of nausea crashed over him as he bent down to dry himself, his head like a weeble wobble that took forever to right itself. When he stooped over there was a sharp pinch in his gut. Like my appendix is about to burst, or something, probably my liver. Feels untucked. His stomach rumbled, but he had no appetite and for the past week had had watery, unpredictable bowel movements that would suddenly swell within him and result in panicked, hobbled dashes to the toilet before he lost control. Pat stood still to regain his balance, his hands flush against the sink to stop their shaking. Gripping things all the time to stop the tremors made him realize how weak he felt. He had just taken a lukewarm shower and his body temperature was unable to calibrate. Sweating and shivering at the same time. The towel slipped off, and he couldn’t catch it before seeing all of himself in the smudges of the defogging mirror. Can’t remember the last time I got him up. And when he tried he found himself holding his breath for so long he nearly passed out. So he just gave up, his thing limp, blue, and shriveled, his jock itching with the same staph infection from his chin, and he had to rub calamine through the crack of his ass, his taint, and the crevice between his leg and his gut. He tried to clear his head with a cleansing breath but came up hacking, a lingering bronchitis that wouldn’t go away and produced dirty brown phlegm.

  A lot of rot goes into an empire, Pat thought. What was exacerbated by MS was hard to reconcile, but the drinking was taking its toll. And Pat was determined to stop. This was his New Year’s resolution. Never again. God as my witness. He was done.

  Day one.

  * * *

  Dan meandered into the TV room, where Pat was sweating it out just as Timmy Brown brought the kickoff back for the Irish. His father had a Willie Randolph Big Gulp cup of ice water and a smaller Mike Schmidt glass of ginger ale. Dan lay down in the gray gloom of the couch. Notre Dame was driving as the Heisman winner caught one for twenty-plus over the middle.

  “There you go. Pride of Woodrow Wilson High School.” Pat scratched his scalp and tried to relax his jimmy legs. “Do you know, Dan, who the other Heisman Troph
y winner from Woodrow was?”

  “I give up.”

  “Davey O’Brien. Played for TCU.”

  “Oh.” As his father spoke, a picture of the leather-helmeted number 8 appeared on the TV.

  “Played for the Eagles, but we won’t hold that against him.” Pat stretched out his left leg and tugged at the chair cushion. “And then he gave up football—retired and became an FBI agent. Like your uncle Jackie.”

  Pat let out a sigh of regret as they both thought back to that dinner. Notre Dame QB Terry Andrysiak found you-know-who on a drag route, and number 81 sprinted to the end zone. Touchdown Irish.

  “Suck on that, Sherrill.”

  Dan was no fan of the Aggies, but he had more tolerance for what his father called “slick Southern sideliners” like Jackie Sherrill. Texas A&M, clad in their home maroon, answered with a field goal and then a touchdown soon after. The Cotton Bowl looked like a frigid quarry pit on TV. Dan wandered off to the kitchen.

  I really should be going over the classifieds, Pat thought, redrafting my résumé.

  The Irish were driving again when Andrysiak threw an interception in the Aggie end zone.

  “Stupid Polack.” Pat fished for a chunk of ice to chew. He had bugs crawling down his sleeves, but he shook those out. Got to stay distracted and get over the hump here.

  Dan returned with a grilled cheese just as the game swung away from the Irish, and while he didn’t recognize signs of withdrawal and detoxification, he did understand his father’s sports universe—and the wheels coming off for Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl did not obey the laws of that universe. Or if it did, there was a deeper causal sin that had yet to be discovered—like failing to recruit quarterbacks with good Irish names such as Jim Kelly and Steve Walsh. This was a very superstitious cosmos, with many ways to be relegated to a circle of hell (dance routine following a touchdown, taking on a called third strike, not boxing out properly), but with apologies to Aquinas and Alighieri, there was a great chain of being to whom Pat Malone rooted for . . .