Home Games

by Benjamin Markovits

  “So you’re not coming,” she says.

  For the next few minutes, I only hear her side of the conversation. “You realize what this does to him,” she says. “It’d probably be easier if you didn’t make promises you can’t keep. It doesn’t matter . . . that doesn’t matter. It’s what he hears. He hears that you want to see him, and then you don’t. I’m the one who has to deal with him . . .”

  “Mom,” I say. “Mom, it’s all right. I’m all right.”

  But it goes on like this for another few minutes, and then she hangs up. “Come here,” she says afterward, and opens her arms. There are tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ben. It’s better just the two of us, anyway. You and me, kid.” I let her hold me, because it’s what she wants.

  “I’m fine,” I say, talking into her apron. “He’s just working hard, he explained it.”

  “It’s not your job to make excuses for him,” she says.

  The next day is Christmas, another sunny day. I go into the garden after breakfast and poke around the bamboo for a while, hoping Mabley comes out. Then I remember, she’s in San Antonio. The trampoline is covered in leaves. So I take out my bike from the shed and ride around the neighborhood. A couple of boys are playing football in the street, but I don’t know them. The swimming pool is empty in the park. Nobody’s really using the playground, except the kiddy bit, with little slides and swings; a couple of dads are leading their toddlers around. The grass is yellow; the basketball court has wet patches on it: it must have rained last night. Eventually I bike home again—the day seems pretty long.

  Mom is in our bedroom, where I’m not allowed to go because she’s wrapping gifts. Granma’s fussing in the kitchen.

  “Maybe you’d like to call one of your friends,” she says. “One of your friends from New York.”

  “I don’t know Jake’s number. I never used to call him, I just knocked on his door.”

  “I’m sure your mother can find it,” Granma says.

  The first time I call, nobody answers. It’s exciting to hear it ring, and I can see the hallway in his apartment where they keep the phone. Funny to think that just because I pressed some buttons, two thousand miles away in New York, there’s this noise . . . just a few floors down from where I used to live. But when the answering machine finally comes on, I feel relieved. I don’t leave a message.

  A few neighbors stop by to say hello. Granma has been living in the house for over fifty years, and a lot of the people she used to know on her street have died or moved out, but there are new families around with small kids, and sometimes the mothers ring the doorbell. (“Checking up on me,” Granma calls it.) Someone brings gingerbread cookies, and I eat one politely. Mom makes coffee; they sit around and gossip. “It must be so nice for you to have a full house again.” That’s the kind of thing they say. I’m glad when they go.

  Afterward, we sit down to Christmas dinner—on the dark wood table that usually lives in a corner of the living room. “Where you can see the Christmas tree,” Mom says. She puts on a fancy cloth and lights candles. We’re all pretty sick of turkey after Thanksgiving, so Granma makes a brisket, which is easier, and everybody likes it more anyway.

  “I don’t believe in food as punishment,” she says.

  After dinner, I call Jake again. But the phone keeps ringing and the answering machine clicks on again.

  We open our presents. I get two big ones and a lot of small ones. The big present from Granma is an old pocket watch, the kind that you hang on a chain, which my grandpa used to wear. When he was young, he served in the merchant marine. He helped carry supplies to soldiers in the Second World War. Granma likes to tell me stories. He worked in the engine room. A lot of cargo ships were lost, torpedoed by the Germans. The back of the watch has a logo on it that says Acta Non Verba and Kings Point 1943.

  “Do you know what that means?” Granma asks. “Acta non verba?”

  “No.” I hold the watch to my ear to listen to it ticking.

  “Actions, not words.”

  “Great.” Mom rolls her eyes. “That’s just what he needs to hear. Because Ben’s real problem is that he talks too much, right? He sits there in school every day eating lunch by himself. . . . I have to pay him to talk.”

  “Acta non verba,” I say, and Granma laughs. “Anyway, you never did pay me.”

  “That’s because you never talked,” Mom says.

  My second big present is a new fountain pen with a gold nib in a velvet case that shuts with a loud snap. A pack of ink cartridges, too. I also get a diary with a leather cover and a page for each day of the year. “You’ve got a lot going on, stuff you might want to remember,” Granma says. “This way you can write it down.”

  I give her a hug, then I give Mom a hug. It used to be, when I hugged her, that my arms went around her waist. Now I can feel something under her shirt at the back—her bra strap. My head is at her shoulder, I let go pretty soon. When we’re finished unwrapping, I ask, “Can I call Jake again?”

  “You can try,” Mom says.

  This time Jake’s mother picks up the phone. “Hi, Mrs. Schultz,” I say. “It’s Ben . . . Michaels calling. Is Jake around?”

  “Hey, Ben.” Her voice is super friendly—it’s the voice grown-ups use to talk to little kids. “He sure is. I’ll go get him.”

  But when Jake answers, I don’t know what to say. I panic. “Hey, Jake” is the best I can come up with.

  “Hey, Ben.” His voice sounds different from what I remembered. I mean, he sounds like Jake, but it’s also like . . . he’s this other person, while in my head, when I’ve been talking to him in my head, it’s like, I know exactly what he’s going to say.

  “What did you get for Christmas?” The phone line isn’t great; there’s a little delay, so we end up answering at the same time. “I got an old watch and a fountain pen.”

  “I got a dog,” Jake says. “My sister is really pissed off. She bugged my parents for a dog for years, and now she’s in college. . . . Mom said, it’s because I miss her. Which is just . . . I mean, I said, Hey, Jennifer, look what we got to replace you. It’s a bearded collie; it’s like one of those dogs with so much hair, it can hardly see. . . . I mean, I just kept laughing. Jennifer was so pissed off.”

  “That’s funny,” I say. “That’s so funny.” But it doesn’t sound like I mean it, I don’t know why. And he kind of runs out of steam; he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t ask me any questions. Finally, I say, “What did you do today?”

  “It snowed last night, so we went to Central Park. We had to take the dog for a walk anyway. Dad made me clean up her poop. Then we had a snowball fight and I hit Dad in the nose. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or just pretending to be mad.”

  “There’s no snow here. It’s like eighty degrees outside. I’ve been playing a lot of basketball.”

  “Who do you play with?” Jake asks. It’s the first thing he’s asked me, but I don’t want to answer because the answer is nobody.

  “There’s this kid called Pete,” I say. It’s not really a lie, it’s just like I’m answering a different question. “He’s like the star of the basketball team. Anyway, we went to this Number Sense competition, and he got annoyed because . . .” But it all gets a little complicated. For some reason I don’t want to talk about Mabley, even though she’s really the point of the story. Or not the point exactly, but the part I want to talk about, even though I also don’t want to talk about her. It doesn’t make sense. “For a while, it was like, they might suspend him from the team,” I say. “But he’s too good. Anyway . . . nothing happened in the end. They didn’t do anything.” It feels like a lame way to finish the story and I don’t think Jake is paying attention. He hasn’t said anything for a while.

  “You probably have to go,” I say.

  “Yeah, I should probably go.”

  I hang up, and it’s almost a relief to get off the phone.

  “How’s Jake?” Mom asks. She and Granma were doing dishes in the kitchen
, but as soon as I hang up they come in.

  “Yeah, he’s good.”

  “It’s so nice you got to talk to him. I bet he missed you. Did you tell him you missed him?”

  “Mom . . .”

  “What?” she says.

  “Of course I didn’t tell him that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. I bet he misses you, too.”

  “He didn’t sound like . . .”

  “What?” Mom says. She’s standing with her hands on her hips. Her hair is a little frizzy from the heat of the kitchen—she looks mad, which isn’t how she means to look, but I don’t think she can help it when she’s in one of her I’m concerned about you moods.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, I want to know. He didn’t sound like what?”

  “Nothing . . . he didn’t sound like anything.”

  “That’s not what you were going to say.”

  “Why do you make me say things I don’t want to say?”

  Mom looks at me with wet eyes. “I don’t make you . . .”

  “Yes, you do, all the time. Ben doesn’t talk. Pay Ben to talk. I’ll talk when I want to.”

  “Okay, Ben. All right.”

  “I’ll talk when I feel like it. I mean, what’s the point? What do you want me to say? Do you want me to say that Jake sounded totally fine? Like, he’s got a new dog, and he’s at home . . . I mean, he sounded fine. What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. I want you to say what you want to say.”

  “Well, I don’t want to say anything.”

  “Fine,” she says. “Let’s nobody say anything.”

  And Granma gives her a look. Like, leave him alone. Let it blow over. As if I can’t see.

  Fifteen

  FOR THE REST OF THE VACATION, Mom makes me use the diary—it’s called “keeping a diary” apparently, like keeping a dog or something, like you have to take it for a walk every day. (Jake gets a dog for Christmas and I get an empty book with lined pages.) But it’s my fault. One morning I complain to her, “I’m bored,” and she says, “Why don’t you write something?” and I say, “What should I write?”

  “Granma gave you that diary. She’ll be upset if you don’t use it.”

  “But I don’t have anything to write about.”

  Granma’s gone shopping and we’re sitting at the kitchen table, which is still full of breakfast stuff. It’s my job to clear it, which basically means putting everything in the sink, but it only takes about five minutes, and since I don’t really have anything else to do, I’m not in any hurry. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “Write what happens to you.”

  “Nothing happens to me. I sit around all day. Sometimes I sit in the yard, sometimes I go for a bike ride. Nothing happens.”

  “Write what you’re thinking about, write what you’re feeling.”

  “I don’t really think anything.”

  “We both know that’s not true, Ben.” But a few minutes later, she says, “Just write anything. Write down the weather.”

  So that’s what I do. Every morning I check the temperature on Granma’s outdoor thermometer, which is shaped like a fish for some reason and is nailed to the wall by the back door. After breakfast, I describe what I had for breakfast, and I check the overnight scores in the sports page and write some of those down, too. But sometimes I add a few lines before going to bed, about what I did that day, before Mom turns my lights off. It’s usually a good excuse for staying up a little later. Sometimes I write about where I went on my bike, the different routes, or list what we watched on TV after dinner. It turns out to be pretty easy to fill a page.

  Then it’s the new year and school starts again.

  Mom wakes me up at six thirty in the morning, which hurts again, because I’m used to getting up whenever I want. But I put on my clothes and brush my teeth and eat a bowl of Cheerios and head out the door. It’s still dark outside, and it feels like this is real now, this is my life.

  Mabley is already at the bus stop, talking to other kids, but she stops talking and comes over to give me a hug. “Did you have a good Christmas? What did you get?” she says, but then the bus arrives and she climbs on with other people. I sit behind her and I can hear their conversation.

  Some girl says, “It doesn’t feel like Christmas unless you at least see some snow.” Her grandparents live in Colorado; she went skiing on Echo Mountain.

  Mabley says, “For me it doesn’t feel like Christmas unless I’m clearing out horse manure from the stable. I guess everybody’s different.”

  Then we drive under the highway, and through the neighborhood streets around the school, and pull into the parking lot. It’s just another school day.

  In social studies class, Mr. Tomski pulls me aside after the bell rings. “I look forward to seeing you at basketball practice today.”

  I stare at him.

  “Your mother said you wanted to be the manager,” he says. “Just go to the main gym after the last bell. I’ll show you what to do—it’s all pretty straightforward.”

  When I don’t say anything, he puts his hand on my shoulder. “Give it a try, son. Everything looks worse from the outside. We’ll have some fun today.”

  After lunch, I run into my mother in the hallway—she’s talking to one of the other teachers, and laughing, the way she does sometimes with other people, because she wants them to like her.

  “Mom,” I say, and she turns around, still smiling.

  “Hey, Ben”—like she’s surprised to see me, and everything’s great. “This is my son, Ben,” she tells the woman. “He’s in seventh grade.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” the woman says. She’s wearing a sweatshirt that’s too big for her. It says, Kettner’s Cafe, New Braunfels, Texas, on the front, and underneath: “Sprechen Sie Bratwurst?”

  “Mom, can I talk to you?”

  “Sure, Ben.” She’s still in social mode—like I’m one of her students.

  “In private.”

  “Excuse us a minute,” Mom tells the woman, and we go into an empty classroom. It’s a biology classroom and there are posters of skeletons all over the walls, diagrams of hearts and lungs, and a big papier-mâché rhinoceros sitting on one of the desks, with a Santa cap on its head.

  “That was rude,” Mom says, “and I don’t like being rude.”

  “Mr. Tomski told me to come to basketball practice today.”

  “I thought that’s what we decided.”

  “You decided it! You did! I never said I was going to go.”

  Mom says quietly, “Keep your voice down, Ben. This is my place of work. The people here are my colleagues and students. You cannot talk to me this way in front of them.”

  “What about me? I’m your son.”

  “Then talk to me like my son.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “No, you’re talking to me like a spoiled, angry . . .”

  “I don’t want to be the basketball manager,” I say.

  “Give it a try, Ben. Right now you don’t want to be anything.”

  “I don’t want to be here, that’s for sure. I don’t want . . .”

  “What do you want me to do then?” and suddenly my mom sounds angry, too. “I can’t make your father come back, I can’t do that. I’m doing what I can. I need your help.”

  “You can’t make me go to basketball practice either.”

  “No,” she says, sitting on the teacher’s desk. She isn’t shouting anymore—she just sounds tired. “I can’t make anybody do anything, obviously.”

  But then the bell rings, and Mom says, “I have to go teach. You have to go learn. You know what I expect of you . . . what I’m asking you to do. Give it a try, Ben, please.” She opens the door again, and all the school sounds come back in; kids in the hallways, everybody talking and in a hurry. Three eighth graders come into the room and look at me, laughing. I pick up my bags and squeeze past them.

  After my last class, when the long bell
rings, I wait in the hallway until most of the kids have gone, then walk down the empty corridors to the gym. Most of the players are getting changed, but I just sit on one of the bleachers and wait for them to come out of the locker room. Mr. Tomski drags a bag of balls through the office doorway onto the court, but I don’t know what he wants me to do with them.

  Eventually he calls out, “Maybe you can help me with these.”

  He’s putting orange cones down in a pattern—around the three-point line, at the free throw line, and at a few other places in between. “I’d like you to set these cones up the same way on the other side of the court,” he says.

  So that’s what I do. Pete’s probably watching me—setting everything up so he can play. Meanwhile, Mr. Tomski gets the players in a circle and takes them through some stretches. They’re all wearing white practice uniforms with HORNETS written across them in orange letters and a picture on the back that looks more like a friendly bee. It’s a dumb mascot, but I still feel jealous of those kids, because they belong together, and I don’t. It’s like, ever since I left New York, I’m on the outside looking in. That’s why you need a best friend. With Jake around, I was on the inside.

  For the next two hours, I chase balls and move the cones around. Mr. Tomski gives me a clipboard, which has a piece of paper on it with all the boys’ names. Whenever they run a drill, Mr. Tomski wants me to put a mark next to the name of the boy who took the shot. An X if he misses the shot, and a check if he makes it. I feel sneaky, writing down these marks, because it’s just for the coach—the kids don’t get to see them. But it also makes me feel like I have some kind of power.

  Pete is the best player on the court. He comes first in every race and ends up with the most checks by his name. Even the net acts different when Pete makes a shot—the ball spins back and almost seems to bounce into his hand. If he does miss, he scowls and shakes his head like he’s mad at somebody—like somebody made him miss. In fact, he even blames me. One of my jobs is to stand under the basket and get rebounds, then pass the ball back out so kids can work on their jump shots. Anyway, Pete doesn’t like the way I pass him the ball. He’s left-handed, so he wants me to throw the ball to his left hand. But three or four kids are shooting at once, I’m just trying to keep up.