Home Games

by Benjamin Markovits

  “Come on, Ben!” he says. “I’m waiting.”

  For some reason this reminds me of Jake. Sometimes, when we were hanging out, I used to wonder why I liked him. I mean, would I like him if I just met him, if he wasn’t already my friend? Jake is one of those kids . . . Even in school, he asks for a lot of attention. I don’t really like attention. Whenever he got a test back, if he got something wrong, Jake would say, “Oh, come on!” Like, loud enough for the teacher to hear. Not like he was really mad but just kind of pretending to be mad, so the teachers had to say something. And they always fell for it, they always said, “What is it now, Jake?” Pete’s kind of the same way. It’s like, whenever he misses, he has to let everybody know that something’s gone wrong, this isn’t supposed to happen. It’s like he thinks, How could this happen to me?

  At the end of practice, I walk around the court with a big sack and put the balls away for the last time. The basketball office is next to the locker room, so I carry all the equipment through and dump it on the floor. The door swings shut behind me. Some of the boys come into the locker room. I can hear them talking.

  “I don’t even know why he’s here,” somebody says.

  “He’s always carrying that clipboard around.” It’s Pete’s voice. “It’s kind of creepy. I’m, like, get away from me. You’re not the coach.”

  I wait for a minute, until they go off to the showers, before walking out again.

  Mom is supposed to pick me up at the gym. There isn’t a school bus at six o’clock, so most kids need a ride. At first, I think she must have forgotten, but then I hear her saying, loud enough so everyone can hear, “Look at you. My basketball boy.” She’s been talking to Mr. Tomski.

  Pete’s just coming out of the locker room with wet hair. His face looks pink and hot from the shower. “Hey,” he says to me, but quietly, so nobody can hear. “That’s a good name for you. Ball Boy.” He means like those kids at a tennis match who have to run around and get the balls for everybody else, who don’t even play. And then he calls out, “Hey, Mrs. Michaels. Ben did great,” and he says to me, so Mom can hear him, “See ya tomorrow, Ben.”

  “You hear that?” Mom says to me as we walk to the parking lot. “You’re already making new friends. Pete Miller’s a real popular kid. Even I know that.”

  When we get in the car, Mom’s still talking about it. “I told you that you’d have a good time. Didn’t I? And you didn’t want to go. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I know even better than you do, what makes you happy.”

  I don’t say anything. After our fight at lunchtime, I don’t want to pick another fight. I don’t want to tell her, Mom, I hate it here and I hate the basketball team. I hate everything. I want to go back to New York. Or London, or anywhere else. Mom looks happy for me, and I don’t have the heart to tell her, nobody likes me. Whenever I’m around other people, they all wish I wasn’t.

  Sixteen

  IN TEXAS IN JANUARY, there are warm days and cold days—wet days and dry days. You never can tell what you’re going to get. But it doesn’t matter to me. Every lunchtime, I take my brown paper bag to the basketball court behind Sam’s hut, sit on the bench, and eat my sandwiches.

  Afterward, I like to shoot baskets. The ball is always where I’ve left it the day before: under the bench. Whenever a shot goes in, I imagine making a check by my name on the clipboard Mr. Tomski gives me during practice. Whenever I miss, I imagine an X.

  It’s a tough place to shoot. Because of that tree branch on one side and the telephone wire on the other, you have to put a lot of arc on the ball. The rim is hard iron, which makes the ball kind of bang around—sometimes it rattles halfway in and rattles out again. But I feel like I’m on an island somewhere, and nobody can reach me or get to me. The only thing that matters is making the next shot, that’s what I’m concentrating on. If it goes in, it’s like getting an answer to something, and the answer is yes; and if it doesn’t, you just have to keep shooting.

  Every day after school, I go to basketball practice and set out the cones and collect the balls and take notes on Mr. Tomski’s clipboard. I help put everything away at the end of the day and make sure the uniforms are washed and ready before each game. But I never bounce a ball or take a shot on one of the baskets in the gym—I want Mr. Tomski to know that I’m not having fun. I’m just doing something because I have to do it. Because my mom thinks this is best.

  The season’s been going since November, but my first game is Friday the 15th—against Pflugerville. Almost two weeks since we got back to school. (Mr. Tomski gave me a calendar with all the game dates, and Mom put it up on the fridge.) We meet in the gym after the last bell. I ride the school bus with them and carry their uniforms in a big duffel bag. It’s about a half hour journey. I can’t tell you how lonely it feels on that bus. None of the kids talks to me—they’re all on the team together, about to play a game—and I’m sitting in front with Mr. Tomski and a bag of clothes at my feet. The sun’s going down, we’re on the highway, there are cars coming and going below us, and I feel like everything I know is a long way away.

  Even Mr. Tomski feels bad for me. He tries to start a conversation but eventually gives up—all I give him are yes or no answers. It’s all I can give, just saying a word is like lifting a heavy sack. You want to put it down again as soon as possible; you want to stop talking because at least that doesn’t take any work. You can just stare out the window.

  Pflugerville has a pretty good team this year. They’ve got this one kid, Travis Brown, who’s already got some college scouts looking at him—you can see them in the stands, middle-aged guys wearing jackets, writing notes. Before the game starts, Mr. Tomski takes Pete aside—he puts his arm around him and points into the crowd. One of the men waves and stands up; he walks over to the coach, who introduces him to Pete. All the other kids are doing layup lines, but I’m sitting there on the bench. I can hear Mr. Tomski say, “Keep your eye on this kid, Howard.”

  It’s a pretty close game. The gym is packed; you can feel the heat of the overhead lights; and the Pflugerville kids stamp their feet against the bleachers to make noise—it’s like being at the bottom of a ship. Travis Brown is almost six foot six, but he handles the ball a lot, too, and guards Pete on the other end. Pete’s too short to shoot over him so he has to be tricky. He head fakes and gets Travis in the air; he leans in and forces the ref to blow the whistle. He takes a lot of free throws.

  With fifteen seconds left, we’re up by two points, and Pete’s at the foul line, shooting two. If he makes both, the game is over—there’s no way Pflugerville can come back. And I’m sitting on the bench and hoping Pete misses, and feeling miserable and ashamed at the same time. It’s mean, and I feel mean, but it doesn’t matter what I feel because Pete makes them anyway; and when the game is over, and the kids are all shouting in the locker room, laughing and goofing around, it doesn’t matter what I do because nobody notices me.

  But this is what I do: I pick up their sweaty jerseys and shorts from the locker room floor. Then I put them back, soaking and stinking, into the bag and drag it to the bus. That’s what I sit with on the ride back to school—a duffel bag full of smelly, wet clothes.

  It’s dark now, and we get stuck in traffic coming back into Austin. You can just see the lights of cars coming and going. The countryside around is pretty flat; there are some trees by the side of the road that look yellow in the streetlamps, and gas stations and taco stands and fast-food restaurants. The engine noise, especially at the front, is very loud. If I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, Mr. Tomski won’t try to talk to me, he won’t try to include me in the conversation. So I close my eyes and even fall asleep for real, so when the bus pulls into the school parking lot, Mr. Tomski has to wake me up.

  “Come on, Ben, we’re home,” he says, shaking my shoulder. “Your mom is waiting for you.”

  The school looks different at night—the white brick walls are lit up like a prison, and you can see arcs of pale light on the dead grass
. The parking lot is almost empty, apart from a few other cars, parents picking up their kids. It’s starting to rain a little, but it isn’t cold. I can feel the rain as I get off the bus.

  Mom is standing there, holding a sweater over her head. “So, how’d we do?” she says, and Mr. Tomski tells her, “We won.”

  “Yay,” she says, and gives me a hug. Then we drive home together, and I have to pretend to be excited about it all.

  Next Thursday, Mr. Tomski comes to dinner again. He brings flowers again, and it all happens like it did last time, it’s kind of awkward and boring and I don’t know what to think about him.

  He’s got big hands, that’s one thing I notice. And tough, thick knuckles. He doesn’t always know what to do with his hands. He puts them on his lap like he’s hiding them away, but then when he talks somehow one of them escapes—he puts his arm out to make a point, then feels embarrassed, and the hand goes back on his lap. But he doesn’t talk much. Mostly he listens.

  “I’m so pleased,” Mom says, “about the basketball. Ben’s like a new person—I see kids talking to him in the hallway. They know his name, it’s made a real difference.”

  “Well, he’s been working hard,” Mr. Tomski says. “I don’t know what Ben’s getting out of it yet, but it’s made a difference to me.”

  Mom puts her arm around me—she’s sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “It takes a while, but we’re getting settled in.”

  It’s like she wants to show off how close we are.

  Granma brings out a roast chicken and sets it down on the table—the steam from the tray gets in her face, she blows her hair out of her eyes. She says to Mr. Tomski, “Will you do the honors?” and passes him the carving knife. His tie is tucked into his shirt, but he rolls up his sleeves and leans over the chicken—he’s good with a knife, very careful, and carves out nice fat pieces of meat.

  “It’s good to have a man in the house,” Mom says.

  They talk about school while we eat—Mom does most of the talking. Mr. Tomski likes to ask questions. He asks Granma about her husband, and we have a long conversation about the merchant marine. Mr. Tomski knows a lot of military history—it’s one of his hobbies—and Mom says, “Go on, Ben. Why don’t you show him Granpa’s pocket watch, the one Granma gave you?”

  I don’t really want to, but I get up anyway and go to my room. Then I sit on the bed for a minute—the lights are out, I’m not really doing anything. I’m just sitting there for as long as I think I can get away with it. The watch is on my bedside table, and I hear Mom calling out, “Ben? Can’t you find it?” so I pick up the watch and come out again and show it to Mr. Tomski. I’m kind of standing by his chair and he takes it gently out of my hand with his rough fingers.

  “This is a very fine instrument,” he says to me, looking me in the eye. “You must be proud to own a timepiece like this.”

  He gives it back to me, and I feel myself blushing.

  For some reason, I turn it over and show him the writing on the back—Acta Non Verba—and he reads it and laughs.

  “Always good advice,” he tells me.

  After dinner, he offers to clear the table and wash the dishes, but Granma shoos him out of the kitchen. “You, too,” she says to Mom. “You both have jobs in the morning. I don’t do anything all day but sit on my tail end.”

  “Maybe you’d like to go for a walk, Jenny?” Mr. Tomski asks, and Mom says, “Maybe a short one.”

  She gets her coat. “Do you want to come, too, Ben?” she asks.

  “Can I watch TV if I don’t?” and she laughs.

  “I’d rather you came,” she says, but she’s not laughing now—she’s looking at me hard.

  “I’d rather watch TV.”

  “All right, Tom,” she says, smiling again. “Just once around the block.”

  They walk out the door and Granma starts clearing the table, while I turn the television on. Then I feel bad and get up to help in the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You’re a good kid.”

  I carry the plates to the counter and put away stuff like ketchup and butter in the fridge. Granma has pulled on a couple of yellow rubber gloves. The sink is filling with hot water.

  “Why don’t you have a dishwasher, Granma?”

  “When we bought this house, the kitchen didn’t have one. And I never felt the need.”

  “Everybody has a dishwasher.”

  “I like to do things myself. When your mother was younger, I looked after her, but I didn’t have a job. And for a long time after your grandfather died, I was on my own. I don’t make a lot of mess. Plus, I like doing the dishes. It’s a good time to talk.”

  But saying it puts an end to the conversation for a while. Eventually she says, “What do you think of Mr. Tomski?”

  I don’t answer at first—I’m wiping the table clean.

  “He’s a good teacher,” I say eventually. “Everybody thinks it’s easy to distract him because all you have to do is ask him about his ranch. But even when he’s talking about that he’s trying to teach us something. He listens, too. Some teachers just talk and never listen, but he’s not like that. He treats all the kids the same.”

  “That’s not really what I was asking about,” Granma says, but then Mom comes back. Mr. Tomski just leans in the door—he calls out, “Good night, Mrs. Koehner. Thank you again,” and then the door closes and it’s just the three of us again.

  Later, after I get ready for bed, Mom lets me watch a little TV—Granma tells her that I helped out with the dishes. They stay in the kitchen, Mom makes a pot of decaf coffee. A basketball game is on, but it’s the commercials, so I turn down the sound, loud enough so it’s like a background noise but I can hear them talking in the kitchen, too.

  “You have to be careful with Tom,” Granma is saying. “You know that, right?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s just nice to have a little attention, that’s all.”

  “How do you think Ben feels about it?”

  “Ben likes him. He told me so.” Mom gets up—the coffee must be ready, and she pours herself a cup and sits down again. “Anyway, there’s no it. We’re just friends.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Granma says. “You have to be careful. For Tom’s sake.”

  “Of all the people involved, he’s probably the last person I’m worried about.”

  Then the game comes back on, so I turn up the sound again. It’s Spurs/Knicks—I can’t decide who to root for. Austin isn’t far from San Antonio: it’s like my new home playing against my old one. But San Antonio is also where Mabley’s grandparents live. That’s one of the things I write in my diary when I go to bed: the final score, which is 111 to 98. Kawhi Leonard had 25 points and 11 rebounds; Tim Duncan blocked four shots. San Antonio won.

  Seventeen

  THE NEXT MORNING, Mabley and I sit at the opposite ends of the bus, but somehow we end up in line together on the way into school. “Hey,” she says. “What’s going on? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Nothing much.”

  “You’re not still mad about anything, are you?” she says. She stops in the hall and puts her hand on my elbow—other kids go past.

  “About what?” I can hear my heart beat in my ears; it’s pretty loud, and a drop of sweat runs down the side of my ribs.

  “I don’t know,” she says. She’s wearing a white shirt, buttoned up all the way: her short yellow hair doesn’t reach the collar. I’ve realized that I’m taller than she is now—she has to look up at me. Her eyes are very pale blue. “Because of the . . . stupid thing at LBJ, and Peter and . . .”

  “I thought you were mad.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she says.

  Somehow we get pushed into the crowd of kids walking to class. For maybe a minute, we don’t say anything—we just walk, navigating the hallways. But our homerooms are in different directions, and Mabley touches me on the shoulder with her hand. “If I don’t see you later, I guess I’ll see
you at the game.”

  The Hornets are playing at home today. There’s a pep rally during lunch; everybody has to go.

  I run into Laura on the way to the gym after math.

  “I hate sports,” she says. Sometimes she makes me laugh—she has all these strong, private feelings. When you look at her, you think she’s just a quiet, shy, nerdy type of kid. “Everybody acts like it’s such a big deal to be on the basketball team. Why should I have to spend my lunchtime watching them run around like idiots?”

  “I don’t know. No reason. I hate it, too.”

  “It’s like the only thing that anybody really cares about is throwing a ball. Music, math, everything else . . .” Then she stops. “Hey, wait. Aren’t you on the basketball team?”

  “I’m the manager.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “My mom makes me do it. She thinks it will help me make friends.”

  “Who wants to be friends with those kids,” she says.

  After school, I go to the PE office. Mr. Tomski is there, with the uniforms, and he pulls out a couple of bags of basketballs, which I drag out to the court. The team warms up by running drills, layup lines and shooting drills, and I have to make sure they always have balls to shoot with. It’s embarrassing, standing around in normal clothes while the guys on the team run past in their uniforms and everybody else watches from the bleachers.

  Other kids have started calling me “Ball Boy,” not just Peter. Some of the players, for example . . . not in a mean way, but not in a nice way either. “Thanks, Ball Boy,” they say when I pass them a basketball. Then the kids in the crowd (some of them are in my class) pick up on it, too. “Hey, Ball Boy,” they call out.

  After the game starts, it’s my job to sit at the scorer’s table and keep the stats. I have to write down every time someone misses a shot or gets a rebound or commits a foul. This keeps me pretty busy, I need to pay attention.