Tell Me

by Mary Robison

Daphne came after him. “Aren’t you?” she said.

  “I guess you thought he was cute,” Coach said. He flipped through some mimeographed pages, turning them on the notebook’s silver rings. “I don’t mean to shock you about it, but you’d be wasting your time there. You’d be trying to start a fire with a limp wet match.”

  Daphne stared at her father. “That’s sick!” she said.

  “I’m not criticizing him for it. I’m just telling you,” Coach said.

  3

  “This is completely wrong,” Coach said sadly. He read further. “Oh, no,” he said. He drowned the newspaper in his bathwater and flung the wet pages over into a corner.

  His wife handed him a dry copy, one of the ten or twelve Rooters Daphne had brought home. Sherry was sitting parallel to Coach on the edge of the tub, with her back braced against the tiled wall. “Oh, cheer up,” she said. “Probably nobody reads a free newspaper.”

  Coach folded the dry new Rooter into an oblong around Toby’s article. “O.K., I wasn’t head coach at Elmgrove, and I sure wasn’t Phi Beta Kappa. Ugly, ugly picture,” Coach said.

  “Your head looks huge.”

  “You were never at Mt. Holyoke. Where did he get that one? I didn’t bitch about the sidewalks this much.”

  “You didn’t? That’s almost too bad. I thought it was the best part of the article,” Sherry said.

  Coach slipped deeper into the warm water, until it came up to his chin. He kept the newspaper aloft. “Oh, come on, give me some credit here!” he cried. “Don’t they have any supervision over in Journalism? I don’t see how he could get away with this. It’s an unbelievably sloppy job.”

  “It’s just a dinky article in a handout paper, Coach,” Sherry said. “What do you care? It wouldn’t matter if he said we were a bright-orange family with scales,” Sherry said.

  “He didn’t think of that or he would have. This breaks my heart,” Coach said.

  “Daph liked it,” Sherry said.

  Coach wearily chopped at the bathwater with the side of his hand. “They read this in the football office. I’ll spend my first year here explaining how none of it’s true.”

  “Lie,” his wife advised him. “Who’ll know?”

  “And sure Daphne like it. She was called ‘pretty’ or whatever. The pretty Noonan daughter who’ll be attending Flippo High School in the fall,” Coach said.

  “‘Petite,’ actually. ‘The petite brunette,’” Sherry corrected.

  “Daphne’s not that small,” Coach said.

  “I just think the person who’s going to come out of this looking bad is that reporter, finally,” Sherry said.

  “I could kill him,” Coach said. “Then he’d look bad.”

  4

  Now Coach had a little more than a month before the start of the two-a-days. He was seated awkwardly on an iron stool at a white table on the patio of the Dairy Frost. Daphne was beside him, fighting the early-evening heat for her mocha-fudge icecream cone. She tilted her head at the cone, lapping at it.

  “You aren’t saying anything,” Coach said.

  “Wait,” Daphne said. She worked on the cone.

  “I’ve been waiting.”

  “If you two want to separate, it’s none of my business,” she said.

  Out in the parking lot, a new powder-blue Pontiac turned off the highway, glided easily onto the gravel, and took the parking slot by the door. The boy in the driver’s seat looked familiar to Coach. Good-looking shoulders. The couple in the back—the boy’s parents, Coach thought—were both talking at once.

  “Have I been wasting my breath for nothing?” Coach said. “Not a separation. Not anything like it.”

  “All right, not,” Daphne said. She stopped her attack on the cone long enough to watch the Pontiac boy step out. A blob of ice cream streamed between her knuckles and down the inside of her wrist.

  “You’re losing it, Champ,” Coach said.

  Daphne dabbed around the cone and her hand, making repairs.

  “Hell, real trouble—your father wouldn’t tell you about at a Dairy Frost,” Coach said. “This apartment your mom found is like an office or something. A place for her to go and get away every now and then. That kid’s in my backfield. What the hell’s his name?”

  They watched as the young man took orders from his parents, then came into the Dairy Frost. He looked both wider and taller than the other patrons—out of their scale. His rump and haunches were thick with muscle.

  “Bobby Stark!” Coach said, and smiled very quickly at the Pontiac. He turned back to his daughter.

  “She wants to get away from us,” Daphne said.

  “Definitely not. She gave me a list, is how this started. She’s got things she wants to do, and you with your school problems and me with the team, we’re too much for her. She could spend her whole day on us, if you think about it, and never have a second for herself. If you think about it fairly, you’ll see.”

  “That guy looks dumb. One of the truly dumb,” Daphne said.

  “My halfback? He’s not. He was his class salutatorian,” Coach said.

  “He doesn’t know you.”

  “Just embarrassed. Can’t we stick to the point, Daphne?”

  She gave a sigh and marched over to a trash can to deposit her slumping cone. She washed up after at a child’s drinking fountain. When she came back to the table, Coach had finished his Brown Cow, but he kept the plastic spoon in his mouth.

  “What was on this list of Mom’s?” Daphne asked.

  “Adult stuff, Daphne.”

  “Just give me an example,” she said.

  Coach removed the spoon and cracked it in half.

  “Dad!” Daphne said.

  “I always do that. Your mother’s list is for five years. In that time, she wants to be living differently. She wants to be speaking French, regularly. She wants to follow up on her printmaking, and we both know she’s got talent there, with her lithographs and all.”

  “This is adult stuff?” Daphne said.

  Coach raised a hand to Bobby Stark. Stark had three malt cups in a cardboard carrier and he was moving toward his car. “Hey, those all for you?” Coach said cheerfully.

  “I still got a month to get fat, Coach. Then you’ll have five months to beat it off me.”

  Some of the people at the tables around Coach’s lit up with smiles at the conversation. Stark’s parents were grinning.

  “Every hit of that junk takes a second off your time in the forty,” Coach said.

  Stark pretended to hide the malts behind his arm. He was blushing.

  “Duh,” Daphne said in a hoarse voice. “Which way to duh door, Coach?”

  “He can hear you,” Coach said.

  “Duh, kin I have a candy bar, Coach?” she said. “Kin I? Kin I?”

  They watched Stark get into the Pontiac. He slammed the door and threw Daphne a wink so dazzling that she went silent.

  5

  Coach was in the basement laundry room, both arms busy hugging a bundle of jogging clothes. He was waiting for Sherry to unload her clothes from the washer.

  “The Dallas Cowboys are soaking their players in a sense-deprivation tub of warm salt water,” she said.

  “We know,” Coach said.

  “If Dallas is doing it, I just thought you might like to consider it.”

  “We have. Hustle up a little with your stuff,” Coach said.

  “It’s like my apartment,” Sherry said. “A place apart.”

  Coach cut her off. “Don’t go on about how much you love your apartment.”

  “I wasn’t,” Sherry said. She slung her wet slacks and blouses into the dryer.

  Coach had two weeks before the start of the heavy practices. His team would have him then, he knew, almost straight through to the Christmas holidays. “You already spend half your time there,” he said.

  •

  A little later, Coach and his wife were on the side patio together, sharing a Tab. They could hear the hum and tick of th
e dryer indoors.

  “You know what’s odd? Daphne’s popularity here,” Sherry said. “I don’t mean it’s odd.” She was taking sun on her back, adding to her tan.

  “No, that isn’t new. She’s always done terrific with people,” Coach said.

  “Your people, though. These are hers,” Sherry said. “The phone hardly ever stops.”

  “Well, she’s out of math trouble, I guess,” Coach said. “And you have your apartment hideout, and you’re adjusted here. Now, if only I can have the season I want.”

  “I love it with her and that reporter,” Sherry said.

  Daphne had become tight friends with Toby after she telephoned her gratitude for what he had written about her in The Rooter.

  “Yeah, they’re like sisters,” Coach said.

  “You’re still bitter?”

  “I’m really not,” Coach said. “I live one careful day at a time now. No looking back for a second. Fear motivates me.”

  “You’re fearful,” Sherry said.

  “Shaking with it,” Coach said.

  6

  It was eight days before the two-a-day practice sessions would begin. The sky was colorless and glazed, like milk glass. When Coach flicked a glance at the sun, his eyes ached as if he were seeing molten steel. He had run some wind sprints on the stadium field, and now he was doing an easy lap on the track. A stopwatch on a noose of ribbon swung against his chest. He cut through the goalposts and trotted for the sidelines, where he had dumped his clipboard and a towel.

  Bobby Stark came out from under the stands. His football shoes were laced together and draped around his neck. He was in cutoff shorts and a midriff-cut T-shirt. He walked gingerly in white wool socks. “Did everybody go, or am I the first one here?” he called to Coach.

  “’Bout a half hour,” Coach said, heaving.

  Stark sat down to untangle his shoes, and Coach, sweating, stood over him. Coach spat. He folded his arms in a way that pushed out his muscles. He sniffed to clear his lungs, twisting his whole nose and mouth to one side. “You know, Stark, I heard you were salutatorian for your class,” he said.

  “High school,” the boy said. He grinned up at Coach, an eye pinched against the glare.

  “That counts, believe me. Maybe we can use you to help some of our slower players along—some of the linemen.”

  “What do you mean—tutor?” Stark said.

  “Naw. Teach them to eat without biting off their fingers. How to tie a necktie. Teach them some of your style,” Coach said, and Stark bobbed his head.

  Stark settled the fit of his right shoe. He said, “But there aren’t really any dumb ones on the squad, because they just flunk out here. Recruiters won’t touch them in this league.”

  Coach planted his feet on either side of a furrow of lime-eaten grass. Above the open end of the stadium, the enormous library building was shimmering and uncertain behind sheets of heat that rose from the empty parking area.

  Stark got up and watched his shoes as he jogged in place. He danced twenty yards down the field; loped back. Other players were arriving for the informal session. Coach meant to time them in the mile and in some dashes.

  Stark looked jittery. He walked in semicircles, crowding Coach.

  “You worried about something?” Coach asked him. “Girl problems? You pull a muscle already?”

  Stark glanced quickly around them. He said, “I’ve lived all my life two doors down from Coach Burton’s house. My mom and Burton’s wife are the best of friends, so I always know what’s really going on. You probably know about it already, anyway,” Stark said. “Do you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Stark?”

  “Oh, so you don’t. Typical. Burton’s leaving, see, like the end of this year. His wife wants him out real bad, and the alumni want him out, because they’re tired of losing seasons. They’re tired of finishing third in the league, at best. Everybody says he should go to Athletic Director, instead. So what I heard was that you were brought in because of it, and if we do well this season—because people think you’re a winner and pretty young—like, you’ll be our varsity coach next year.”

  “That’s conjecture,” Coach said. But his voice sounded strange to him.

  “We could go through four years together. I respect Coach Burton, but I don’t see why in four years we’d ever have to lose a single game,” Stark said. He toook a stance, his body pushing forward.

  “Ho!” Coach barked, and Stark lunged out.

  “See me after this practice!” Coach called to him.

  •

  It was three o’clock, still hot. Coach was moving along a sidewalk with Stark, who was balanced on a racing bike, moving just enough to keep the machine upright.

  “Three things,” Coach said. “I’ve seen all the game films from last year, and I came here personally and witnessed the Tech game. No one lost because of the coaching. A coach can work miracles with a good team, but he’s helpless if his folks don’t want it bad enough. That’s the worst thing about running a team—you can’t climb down into your people’s hearts and change them.”

  Some college girls in a large car passed and shrieked and whistled at Bobby Stark. “Lifeguards at the pool,” he explained.

  “I don’t know if Burton’s leaving or not, but if his wife wants him to, he’ll probably go,” Coach said. “If you’re ever thinking about a career in coaching someday, Bob, think about that. Your family’s either with you or you’ve had it. You drag them all over hell—one town to another—and bury them, and whether you stay anywhere or not depends on a bunch of kids, really. I swear, I’d give up a leg for a chance to get in a game myself—just one play, with what I now know.”

  “I wish you could,” Stark said. He swerved his bike’s front tire and let it plunk off the curb into a crosswalk. He stood on the pedals for the jolt of the rear tire.

  “The last thing is, don’t mention the varsity-coach thing to anybody, and I mean anybody. Do you read me?”

  Stark nodded. They went on a block, and he said, “I turn here. You going to tell your beautiful daughter about it?”

  “My daughter. You want a kitten? Because when I tell her, she’s going to have kittens,” Coach said.

  No one was home. A plastic lady-bug magnet held a note to the face of the refrigerator. The note read; “Noonan, I’m at my place. Daph’s with Toby K. somewhere, fooling around. Be good now. Sherry Baby.”

  “Dope,” Coach said, smiling. He felt very good.

  He took a beer upstairs and drank it while he showered. He cinched on a pair of sweat pants and went back down and fetched another beer. He watched some of a baseball game on cable television. He thought over the things he had told Bobby Stark.

  “Boy, is that true!” Coach said, and then wasn’t sure why he had said it.

  He frowned, remembering that in his second year of college, the only year he had been on the varsity team, he had proved an indifferent player.

  “Not now,” he whispered. He squeezed his beer can out of shape and stood it on top of the TV.

  •

  There was a thump over his head. The ceiling creaked. Someone had come home while he was in the shower. He took the stairs in three leaps and strode into the bedroom, saying, “Sherry?”

  The dark figure in the room surprised him. “Hey!” he yelled.

  Daphne was dancing in front of the full-length mirror on Sherry’s closet door. She had improvised a look—sweeping her hair over her right ear and stretching the neck of her shirt until her right shoulder was bared. A fast Commodores song thumped from her transistor radio.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “You’re not home. Aren’t you with Whoosis? You’re supposed to be out. You are beet red,” Coach said.

  Daphne lowered her head and squared her shirt, which bagged around her small torso. “O.K., Dad,” she said.

  “No, but how did your audience like the show? I bet they loved it,” Coach said. He smiled at himself in the mirror. “I’
m just kidding you. You looked great.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Daphne said, and tried to pass.

  He chimed in with the radio song. He shuffled his feet. “Hey, Daph. You know what time it is?”

  “Let me out, please,” she said.

  “It’s Monkey time!” Coach did a jerky turn, keeping in the way of the exit door. “Do the Shing-a-Ling. Do the Daphne.” He rolled his shoulder vampishly. He kissed his own hand. He sang along.

  “Thanks a lot,” Daphne said. She gave up trying to get around him. She leaned over and snapped off the radio. “You’ve got to use a mirror, so you don’t look stupid on the dance floor. Everybody does,” she said.

  “I really was kidding you. Seriously. I know dancing is important,” Coach said.

  “May I go now? I’ve got algebra,” Daphne said. She brought her hair from behind her ear, which was burning pink.

  “Before that, you have to hear the news,” Coach said. “Here’s a news bulletin, flash extra.”

  “You’re drunk. You and Mom are going to live in different cities. Somebody shot somebody,” Daphne said.

  “No, this is good news. There’s a chance I’ll be head coach here, of the varsity. The varsity coach. Me.” Coach pointed to his chest.

  “Let me out, please,” Daphne said.

  Coach let her pass. He followed her down the thin hallway to her bedroom. “More money. I’ll even be on TV. I’ll have my own local show on Sundays. And I’ll get written up in the press all the time, by real reporters. Daphne?”

  She closed her door, and, from the sound, Coach thought she must have leaned against it.

  “What’s going on? Tell me, why am I standing here yelling at wood?” he said.

  8

  By dusk, Coach was drunk at the kitchen table. He was enjoying the largeness of the room, and he was making out a roster for his dream team. He had put the best kids from his fifteen years of coaching in the positions they had played for him. He was puzzling over the tight-end spot. “Jim Wyckoff or Jerry Kinney? Kinney got that tryout with the Broncos later,” he said out loud. He penciled “Kinney” onto his diagram.

  He heard Daphne on the stairs, and it occurred to him to clear the beer cans from the table. Instead, he snapped open a fresh can. “Daphne?” he said.