My dad has come.
The first thing I think is: I wish he hadn’t. Because my dad will make me nervous, and if I’m nervous, I’ll miss.
“Come on, Ben,” Pete says. “You got this.” He’s standing behind me at the three-point line. When he’s playing, it’s like he’s got this electric current going through him that he can’t quite control—he keeps shifting his feet and tucking and untucking the uniform inside his shorts. Another thing to make me nervous, and I reach down and dry my hands again against my socks. The ref gives me the ball and I close my eyes and imagine the court behind the football field where I eat my lunch. As if I’m alone and nothing matters anyway. Then I open my eyes and bend my knees and follow through.
I make the second shot, too.
There’s still a minute left, and now we’re up by one. Murchison comes down court and passes the ball inside to big number 7. He turns around and dunks, pulling himself up on the rim, so that it snaps back into place when he lets go. Murchison fans are going crazy; they’re up by one, and keep shouting the same thing over and over again: “Keith, Keith, Keith.” When he runs, there’s something funny about his arms: it’s like he has to pull himself along. You want to get out of his way.
Pete dribbles across half court and takes a jump shot from the top of the key—nothing but net. Hornets by 1. Murchison throws the ball inbounds, but Daniel Krasnick has been hanging back. He manages to stick out a hand and knock it toward half court, where he chases it down. But Murchison traps him against the sideline. I can hear Mr. Tomski calling out behind me, “Time-out, time-out!” Nobody listens. Pete cuts to the basket, and Daniel tries to find him with a pass. But there’s no way through, Murchison steals it, and suddenly we’re all running the other way. One of their guys has been cherry-picking at the other end, and Keith throws a long pass over our heads. The kid lays it in and Murchison is up by one.
“Time-out!” Mr. Tomski calls again, and the ref finally hears him. He blows his whistle and we all jog over toward the bench.
What happens next happens in a kind of silence. Mr. Tomski is talking but I can’t really hear him—he’s got his clipboard in hand and is drawing up a play. Everybody else is talking, too, five hundred people in the gym all talking at once, but the noise is like traffic when you’re on the highway, it’s everywhere and all the time and there’s nothing you can do about it, so somehow you close your ears and shut it off, but that means shutting everything else out as well, including Mr. Tomski. There’s a whistle and I feel someone hitting my back and then I’m jogging out onto the court again in the middle of all the lights with nine other boys.
There are only seventeen seconds left in the game, but seventeen seconds can take a long time if you count them out slowly. The way Mr. Tomski counted out the seconds on the football field, using his fingers: one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five, and so on. Pete has the ball and dribbles up court. He’s letting the clock run down—he wants to take the last shot. Mr. Tomski calls out, “Fifty-one! Fifty-one!” and Pete puts his fist in the air. I run down to the block to set a pick for Daniel, who sprints hard to the free throw line, but I can’t remember what to do after that. Suddenly I notice that Mabley is sitting right there, a few rows up behind the basket, screaming silently it seems with her face a mess of orange and black. My hands feel as cold as ice.
Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking. Some of the crowd start chanting out the time, counting down to zero. Eight, seven, six. And I run to the corner just to get out of the way and drift along the three-point line. Murchison sends two players at Pete, who splits the defense but ends up at the free throw line with Keith standing right in front of him. Five, four. Pete has picked up his dribble. Three. He sees me on the wing. At least, he sees a kid in a Hornets jersey and passes me the ball. Daniel sets a back screen and Pete cuts to the rim and claps his hands. He wants the ball back, the lane is clear, but I’m too slow so he slides along the baseline into the corner. Two. “Pass,” he says. “Pass.” Pete’s open now, but it’s all happening too fast. “One,” the kids on the bleachers shout, stamping their feet. Time is running out and instead of passing, I do what Sam told me to do. I shoot.
As soon as the ball leaves my hands, I know it’s going in. Sixteen-footer from the wing—it’s the same shot Michael Jordan took to win his first championship, as a freshman at North Carolina. (Mom sometimes lets me look at highlights on YouTube.) He gets the pass, he steps into the open space, he shoots. It’s like he’s not even thinking about it. My legs feel strong, I leave my arm out on the follow-through; the line is true. The horn sounds and at the same time the ball hits the back of the rim and bounces out . . . and rolls harmlessly away on the ground.
I guess I must have had too much adrenaline. The shot was two inches long, and the Murchison kids run on to the court to celebrate. Game over. We’ve lost.
Pete is still standing in the corner, as if he’s waiting for the ball. “Why didn’t you pass?” he says to me. “I told you to pass.”
“What?”
I feel pretty close to tears and can see Mr. Tomski walking across the court. Daniel Krasnick is sitting down under the basket, too tired to stand.
“I told you to pass,” Pete says. His face looks like a little kid’s when he doesn’t get his way; it’s all scrumpled up. Maybe he’s crying, too.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, and Pete picks up the ball. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but suddenly he throws it at me. He’s standing about five feet away and the ball hits me in the stomach, knocking the wind out, but I catch it anyway, hugging the ball and doubling over.
“Hey,” Mr. Tomski breaks in. “Let’s cut that out.”
“I told him to pass. We could have won.”
Even though everybody’s crowding onto the court, it still feels lonely. The Murchison fans have drifted toward the other side of the gym by the exit, where the girls who sold tickets are now selling T-shirts. Most of the kids from our school are heading home, but Mabley finds Pete and gives him a hug from behind. He kind of shrugs and pushes her away.
“We win together, we lose together,” Mr. Tomski says.
“You know how to pass?” Pete says again, and without even thinking about it, I throw the ball back at him.
“Like this?”
Pete has his hands down. It hits him in the face, and for a second nothing happens, then he runs at me.
“Hey,” Mr. Tomski shouts, and sort of reaches out his arm to get between us, but I’ve already turned away, and he catches me in the neck. It doesn’t hurt exactly, but I can’t breathe, it’s like breathing in a glass of water, then I cough and the air comes flooding back.
“What’s going on here?” My mother has come; she sees me bending over. “Tom,” she says. “What’s going on?”
Granma is there, too. She bends down with me and I can see her orange shirt; she puts her hand on my shoulder.
“You all right?” she says.
“I’m fine.”
But Mom is still mad. “What’s going on?” She’s starting to repeat herself. Tomski is always a slow talker; he doesn’t say anything right away. There are other parents around, picking up their kids. People come and pat him on the back. But Mom keeps at him. She says, “How can you put him under that kind of pressure? When he hasn’t played all year.” Since she started teaching again, she’s gotten better at what she calls her “angry” voice—she doesn’t sound like somebody you want to disagree with. And Mr. Tomski isn’t good at disagreement anyway.
“Mom,” I say, “Mom. It’s okay,” and Granma says, “Calm down, Jenny.”
But she keeps going, she’s really lost it. “You don’t know what it means to raise a boy on your own, a kid who doesn’t talk to anybody, who doesn’t have any friends, who doesn’t want to be here, who doesn’t want to be on the goddamn basketball team, where it’s like, I always have to be happy enough for two people, just in case a little of it rubs off. . . . It’s your job to make this stuff easier, it
’s not your job to throw him to the lions like that, where everybody’s watching him, just so they can watch him mess up, which is what everybody wants him to do anyway, because they’re all a bunch of . . .”
Finally, Mr. Tomski gets a word in. “He did great, he played great. You should be proud of him.”
“Don’t tell me what to feel about my son,” she says. It’s still hot in the gym, and her voice is cracked from screaming—her face looks red and sweaty—but she sounds teary, too, and she keeps brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Of course I’m proud of him,” and she reaches out her hands to me. “I’m sorry,” she says to me, quietly this time. “I’m sorry about all of it, the whole nine yards,” and closes her arms around me.
Then my dad walks up, wearing one of his suits and looking about eight feet tall.
So for now at least everybody’s there—Dad, Mom, Granma, me, like a normal family. It feels weird seeing him again, especially since I’m covered in sweat. I don’t want to hug him and get stains on his suit. But he waits for Mom to let go of me and then he hugs me, too.
“I’m sorry we lost,” I say into his shirt. “It was my fault.”
“Nothing’s your fault. You played as hard as you could.”
Pete has walked away. His dad is this real Texan-looking guy, with super-clean blue jeans and sunglasses on a string around his neck—I think he’s a dentist. His mom is there, too. She has the kind of hair where every hair is exactly where she wants it to be, and you feel like, don’t touch. Next to them, Pete just looks like a kid. Mabley says hi to his parents, but Pete just wants to leave, and Mabley has no one to talk to—she wanders back to us.
“Who’s this?” my dad says, so I say, “This is Mabley; she lives next door,” and Mabley says, “I thought Ben played great. You must be proud.” She’s good at talking to grown-ups; at least, she says the kinds of things they like to hear. But she also looks basically like a crazy person, with her face covered in paint, in orange and black like a hornet; the colors have run together.
Mom has her purse out—she’s trying to wipe the mascara off her cheeks. Maybe she also wants to give us a little space. Maybe she also wants to look nice for Dad; at least, less like an emotional wreck. Granma is just kind of standing around, like she doesn’t want to get in the way of our reunion. When she’s tired, I notice, sometimes she rubs her swollen hand, like it hurts. The game is over, there’s really nothing to do. Everybody’s waiting for somebody to say, I guess we should go, but then I remember Mr. Tomski. A lot of kids are going home in their uniforms, they’re leaving with their parents, but I still have to get everything together—the balls and towels and water bottles, and the practice uniforms and everything else.
So I say to my dad, “I’ve got to do something,” and just . . . I just leave. I walk over to the bench on the other side of the court, by the scorer’s table, and start picking stuff up.
Mr. Tomski is there. He’s talking to one of the parents, but then he sees me. “I can do that, Ben. It’s all right.”
“That’s okay, it’s my job.”
He sort of looks at me, and I sort of look at him. I wonder if he’s thinking, “That’s his dad over there,” but I don’t want to say anything about it. And I kind of feel sorry for him, too. After my mother shouted at him, in front of all those people. I feel like . . . in a funny way I feel like . . . I’m going to miss him, even though he’s right there—as if something has changed, or is going to.
“I’m sorry, coach.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“For missing that shot.”
Mr. Tomski shakes his head. “You played great, Ben.” But I don’t think he’s really thinking about the game. His tie is loose, and he’s unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. The bottom of his shirt has drifted out of his pants. He looks like he’s walked about ten miles in the rain.
There’s something else going on in my mind, which is just that I like the idea that Mabley is stuck there with Mom and Granma and Dad, standing around and talking. I mean, I’m glad they’re all talking to her and getting to know her. But I’m also glad that I’m not there, that I don’t have to listen . . . and start picking up our team balls and separating them out from the Murchison balls.
The gym is about half full now. The girls by the entrance who sold tickets are still there, gossiping with some of the other kids—they look older, like they go to high school. And the whole place feels like somewhere that something has happened but it’s not happening anymore. There’s a little breeze coming in through the open door; it doesn’t feel so hot; it’s quieter, too, just a lot of different conversations going on in normal voices at the same time. Just normal life.
For some reason, I think of Jake. I really miss Jake. Because he always did all the talking, and I didn’t have to decide what I thought or liked or wanted to do. And also because—I didn’t choose Jake. I mean, Jake was just my best friend because he lived three floors below me, and our moms used to take us to kindergarten together when we were five years old. It’s like we didn’t even have any choice. Maybe that’s what it’s like if you have a brother or sister, I don’t know. But it means you don’t have to think about it, he’s just there. At least he was. But now I feel like . . . Mom and Dad are expecting me to choose something. It’s up to me, and I have to figure out for myself what I want.
Mom is right. I can’t be miserable anymore. It makes everyone unhappy.
Mabley is still there, listening to my mother. They’re standing under one of the baskets—the basket where I missed the last shot. On the other side of the court, I can see Pete’s dad talking to some girl; maybe it’s his daughter. It’s like he’s saying, Come on, and Pete is just waiting, like he wants to go home.
It’s funny to see Mabley talking to my mom—with my dad hanging around and thinking, Now Ben is friends with girls, the kind of girls who paint their faces in school colors, and I have to find something to say to them, or something like that. He’s standing there, not saying anything, which is one of his signature moves. He’s just being tall, that’s something he does—he looks tall and important so nobody wants to talk to him. But I can’t stand around here forever putting balls in a sack.
At some point I’m going to have to go back there and talk to Mom and Dad and everybody else, and have an all-you-can-eat breakfast at his fancy hotel, and say goodbye to him at the airport, and watch him walk through security in his pinstripe suit with his briefcase in hand. When a plane takes off, I’ll wonder if it’s his—on the way to London, where the Beatles recorded their music and there’s a school just for American kids. At some point I’m going to have to decide what I want to do—where I want to live and who I want to live with. If I want to stay here, with Mom and Granma . . . and Mabley and Pete and Sam and Mr. Tomski, and just accept that this is where I am, and make the best of it. Or move to London with my dad and start again. Anything can happen, and somehow it feels like the ball is still in the air.
Twenty-Six
I COULD HARDLY SLEEP last night. Everything kept going through my head. Making those free throws, missing the last shot, it’s almost like, if I imagine it over and over again, I can imagine it different—something will change. Pete throwing the ball at me after the game. Me throwing it back. Mom shouting at Mr. Tomski. Dad coming.
After the game, Dad said, “Listen, Ben. I’m a little bushed right now. I flew into Houston last night. It’s a six-hour time difference; this feels like midnight to me. And then from Houston it’s a three-hour drive. I haven’t even checked in to my hotel here, I drove straight to the gym. I really want to see you, but I need to go to bed. But we’ve got all day tomorrow—anything you want to do.”
I don’t say anything for a minute, and eventually he says, “The hotel I’m staying at is famous for its breakfasts. All you can eat. I can pick you up in the morning, any time.”
“I think I’d like to go for a bike ride.”
He looks at me. “I didn’t really . . . I don’t have a b
ike, Ben.”
“You can use Mom’s.”
For a second he stands there, pursing his lips. He’s making up his mind. Then he says, “You know what, let’s do that. I’ll figure something out. We’ll go for a ride together, that’s a great idea.”
We walk to the parking lot, Mom and Granma and Dad and me, and on the way out, I see Sam—he’s standing by the table at the entrance. Maybe he’s waiting for me, and I say to Dad, “There’s somebody I want to introduce you to.”
But Sam has already come up. “You look like you used to play a little ball yourself,” he says to my dad, checking him over.
“I’m tall enough, but I’m too skinny. People used to push me around.”
“I don’t believe that,” Sam says. He says hello to Mom and Granma, too, and I say, “This is Sam—he takes care of the school grounds. There’s a court near the football field where I have lunch . . . he lets me play on it.”
“I just wanted to introduce myself,” Sam says. His arms are crossed, like he’s angry, but it’s really just to keep his hands warm. Sometimes he complains about his circulation, so he tucks his hands in his armpits and sort of leans forward, but it looks like he’s restless or uncomfortable.
We stand there for a minute. It’s a little awkward—my dad doesn’t really know what to say. “Sam taught me how to shoot,” I tell him.
“You mean, it’s my fault,” Sam says, laughing.
But my dad looks at him seriously. “I’m grateful to you. I haven’t always been . . . around to do these things.”
“Well, I know what that’s like.”
They shake hands, and on our way out, Sam calls after me. “See you on the court.”
All of these things, these little conversations, are things I go over in my head as I lie in bed.
My feet hurt when I finally get up—there’s still a little dried blood on one of my toes. I’m thirsty, too, and when I stand in the bathroom, trying to pee, it’s like I don’t have anything in me. But everything hurts in kind of a good way; it’s nice just to walk around barefoot in the house and feel like all of your muscles are doing their job—they’re getting stronger.
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