by Mary Robison
“He can hear you,” Coach said.
“Duh, kin I have a candy bar, Coach?” she rasped.
They faced Stark, who smiled a little crookedly at Daphne, and threw her a wink so dazzling, she went silent.
5
COACH WAS IN THE BASEMENT LAUNDRY ROOM, BOTH arms busy hugging a bundle of jogging clothes. He was waiting on the washer, waiting for Sherry to unload her clothes.
“The Cowboys are soaking their players in a sense-deprivation tub of warm saltwater,” she said.
“We know,” Coach said.
“If Dallas is doing it, I just thought you might want to consider it.”
“We have. Hustle up a little with your stuff, will you?” 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 going to,” Sherry said. She slung her wet slacks and blouses into the dryer.
Coach had just two weeks before the start of the heavy practices. His team would have him then, he knew, almost straight through to the Christmas holidays.
“I like that,” Coach said. “A place apart.”
A HALF HOUR LATER, COACH AND HIS WIFE WERE ON the side patio. They could hear the tick of the clothes dryer downstairs. Sherry had changed into a halter top. She was taking sun on her back, adding to her tan.
“You know what’s odd?” she said. “Daphne’s popularity here. I don’t mean it’s odd.”
“She’s always done terrific with people, always gone over well,” Coach said.
“Your people, though. These are hers,” Sherry said. “Like that reporter.”
“Yeah, they’re like sisters,” Coach said.
6
IT WAS A WEEK BEFORE THE TWO-A-DAY PRACTICE sessions would begin. The sky was colorless and glazed, like milk glass. When Coach looked at the sun, his eyes ached, his head screamed.
He had run some wind sprints on the stadium field, and now he was doing an easy lap. A stopwatch on a noose of ribbon swung against his chest. He cut through the goalposts and trotted for the sidelines, for the twenty, where he had dumped his clipboard and a towel.
Someone called to him.
Blond Bobby Stark came out from under the stands. His football shoes were laced together and draped around his neck. He wore a midriff-cut T-shirt and shorts. 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, twisting his whole nose and mouth to the left. He said, “You know, Stark, you were salutatorian for your class.”
“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, maybe I’m thinking.”
“What do you mean—tutor?” Stark said.
“Naw. Teach them to eat without biting off their fingers. How to tie a necktie. 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 any really dumb ones on our squad, because they’d just get flunked out. Recruiters won’t touch them in this league. There wouldn’t be any percentage in it.”
“Then I’m greatly relieved,” Coach said.
He planted his feet along a furrow of lime-eaten grass. He faced the open end of the stadium, where the enormous library building stood shimmering and uncertain behind sheets of heat that rose from the parking area.
Stark stood up and studied his shoes as he began jogging 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.
“What’re you worried about?” Coach asked him. “Girl problems you got? You pull a muscle already?”
Stark glanced quickly around them. He said, “I live all my life two doors down from Coach Burton’s house. My mom and Burton’s wife are best friends, so I always know what’s going on.”
Burton had been the head coach of the varsity team for over a decade.
“You probably know about it already, anyway,” Stark said. “Do you?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Stark?”
“You don’t know? Typical. Burton’s leaving, see? Like at 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. So what I heard was you were brought in because of it. And if we do okay this season, like you’ll be varsity coach next year.”
“That’s conjecture,” Coach said. But he was excited.
IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK, STILL HOT. COACH WAS moving along a sidewalk with Bobby Stark, who was balanced on a racing bicycle, 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 is helpless if his personnel don’t want it bad enough. That’s the worst part about running a team—you can’t climb down into your people’s hearts and change them.”
Some college girls in a large expensive car went past. They shrieked and whistled at Bobby Stark.
“Lifeguards at the pool,” he explained.
“I don’t know if Burton’s leaving or not,” Coach continued. “But if his wife wants him to go, he probably will. 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. And remember, whether you stay someplace or not depends completely on a bunch of kids. I swear, I’d give up a leg for a chance to get in a game myself—just one play, with what I know now.”
Stark nodded. They went on a block, and he said, “I turn off here. You going to tell your daughter about the job?”
“My daughter?” Coach said, and smiled.
7
NO ONE WAS HOME. A MAGNET UNDER A PLASTIC ladybug held a note to the face of the refrigerator. The note read:
Harry, I’m at my place. Daph’s with Toby
K. somewhere, fooling around. Be good now,
Sherry Baby.
“Dope,” Coach said.
He felt very good.
He took a beer upstairs and drank it while he showered. He cinched on a pair of sweat pants and, wearing only these, went back down and fetched another beer.
He watched some of a baseball game on cable. He thought over his conversation with Bobby Stark. “Boy, is that true!” Coach said, and then was not at all 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. “Not anymore.”
He squashed the shape out of his beer can and stood it on top of the television.
THERE WAS A THUMP OVER HIS HEAD. THE CEILING creaked.
“Someone came home while I was in the shower,” he said to himself, and ran his hand over his belly, feeling for signs of bloat from the beer.
He took the stairs in three leaps, strode into the master bedroom, calling, “Sherry?”
The dark figure in the room surprised Coach.
He yelled, “Hey!”
Daphne was dancing in front of the full-length mirror. 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 thing by the Commodores shrieked from her transistor.
“Nothing,” she said.
“You’re not home. Aren’t you wi
th 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. “Okay, 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, Daph. You looked great.”
“Come on, Dad,” she said, and tried to pass.
Coach chimed in with the radio. He shuffled his feet. “Hey, Daph, you know what time it is?” he said.
“Let me out, please,” Daphne 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 on trying to get around him. She leaned over and snapped off her radio. “You’ve got to use a mirror so you don’t look stupid,” she said. “Everybody does.”
“I was only kidding. Seriously. I know dancing is important,” Coach said.
“May I go now? I’ve got algebra.” Daphne brought her hair from behind her ear.
“Before that, you have to hear the news. Here’s a news bulletin, flash extra.”
“You’re drunk. You and Mom are going to live in different cities,” Daphne said. “Somebody shot somebody.”
“No, this is good news. I’m going to be coach here of the varsity. Me.” Coach pointed to his chest.
“Now let me out, please,” Daphne said.
Coach let her pass. He followed her down the narrow hallway to her bedroom.
“More money,” he said. “I’ll even be on TV. I’ll have my own show on Sundays. And I’ll get written up in the press all the time. By real reporters. Hey! Why am I yelling at wood, here?”
8
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?” he said aloud. He penciled “Kinney” into his diagram.
He heard Daphne on the stairs. It occurred to him to clear the beer cans from the table. Instead, he snapped open a fresh can. “Daphne?” he called.
“Wait a second. What?” she said from the living room.
“Just wondered who else was alive besides me,” Coach said. “Your mom’s still not home.”
Daphne entered the kitchen.
“You’re sorry you were rude before? That’s perfectly okay, honey, just forget it. All right, Father, but I really am ashamed of myself anyway,” Coach said.
“You guzzled all those?” Daphne said.
“Hold still. What’ve you got on?” Coach asked her. He hauled his chair around so that he could see his daughter.
“Two, four, five,” Daphne said, counting the cans.
She was wearing one of the fan shirts that Coach had seen on a few summer coeds. On the front, against a maroon field, in gold, was GO. Across the back was GRIFFINS.
“Now you’re talking,” Coach said.
“It was free. This guy I met—well, these two guys, really—who work at Campus World, they gave it to me. It’s dumb, but I want you to see I care. I do care. Not just for you, but because I want to stay here. Do you think we can maybe? Do your people look any good this year?”
“Winners,” Coach said.
“Yeah,” Daphne said.
Coach skidded his chair forward. “Have a beer,” he said. “Sit down here and let me show you on paper the material they’ve given me to work with. Then maybe you’ll be a believer. Now these guys are fast and big for once. I’m not overestimating them, either. I’ve seen what I’ve seen,” Coach said.
A car crept into the drive, and then its engine noise filled the garage. Coach and Daphne were quiet until Sherry bustled down the short hall that connected the garage to the kitchen.
“Really late. Sorry, sorry,” she said.
“It’s a party in here, I warn you,” Coach said.
“So I noticed.” Sherry had a grocery sack, but it was almost empty. There were bright streaks of paint on her brown arms.
Daphne plucked a bag of Oreo cookies from the groceries.
“Shoot me one of those,” Coach said.
“Is there any beer left for me?” Sherry said. “I want to drown my disappointment. I can’t paint!”
“You can paint,” Coach said.
“Let’s face it,” Sherry said. “An artist? The wife of a coach?”
You Know Charles
ALLEN WAS DRIVING HIS FATHER’S DODGE UP LIGHT Street, looking for an empty parking space near Cheshire Towers—the old Baltimore hotel turned apartment building. As he got close, Allen noticed an odd-faced teenager sitting on the steps of the Cheshire. The boy wore shorts and a cowboy hat. He was seated in the bleak sun, up from the shadows of the mighty shrubs that flanked the Cheshire’s entrance.
Allen began breathing through his teeth. People like the teenager made Allen anxious.
The teenager bounced from his seat, and threw open the Cheshire’s doors for a nurse in pale hose and crisp uniform. Allen pointed his father’s car into the far-left lane of the street and kept on driving.
Allen’s paternal aunt, Mindy, had a rental suite on the eleventh floor of the Cheshire Towers—a creamy, stone building, distinguishable for its many windows and the various drape styles and colors in them. Allen had left his home in Towson that morning on an impulse. He had felt the urge to chat his problems out with someone more mature.
“Aagh,” he said, and stamped on the brakes for his fourth stoplight. “I hate this damn town. I really do! Row houses, shmow houses. Couldn’t they think of something else?”
His generator light blinked on. With a little jump and an intake of breath, Allen saw the light and snapped off the air conditioner.
He found a parking slot in front of a necktie shop in an alley. The shop was open for Saturday business, but empty, except for a stout saleswoman who was planted, angrily, in the doorway.
“Bless you,” Allen told the parking meter as he read its orders. He drew a shade with his hand over his eyebrows, and squinted at the façades of his aunt’s apartment building. “Please, please be home,” he said to the upper-floor windows when he found them. Allen adjusted his right foot in its penny loafer, and walked.
THE TEENAGER IN THE COWBOY HAT HAD COME OUT onto the broad sidewalk, and was watching as Allen approached.
Allen stalled, and got his bearings under a lilac bush. He busied himself with his wristwatch, shaking it and scowling at its face. It was eleven-forty.
“Guess how much I used to weigh,” the teenager said. He held open the vest he wore instead of a shirt, and showed Allen his tiny waist and rib cage.
“You’re crazy,” Allen said.
“Yeah, but just guess,” the boy said.
“Four hundred and fifty pounds,” Allen said. He headed up the sidewalk, toward the entrance to the Cheshire.
The cowboy followed close on Allen’s heels.
“You belong back in your room at the mental asylum,” Allen said.
The cowboy took his hat, waved it with his hand, and did a low bow. “Monsieur.”
Allen looked at the bent-over boy, saw the zodiac pendant hanging from his neck, the archless sandals of stitched plastic.
“You look about the right weight,” Allen said, and swallowed.
“That’s what I think,” the cowboy said. He straightened up and took a soldierly stance. “It took willpower.”
MINDY WAS PROPPED ON HER COUCH, ON FOAM PILLOWS the colors of Easter candy. She had a crocheted afghan spun twice around the calves of her legs.
The old suite she rented had been restyled with lowered ceilings and a pink-beige carpet. There was a new, folding door on the bathroom, and a line of little appliances in the kitchen.
The room seemed hushed after
the street racket below, and the floor and furniture were striped with light that came through the window blind. Low on a wall, an air cooler was chugging.
“Ooh, thank heavens, you’re here,” Allen said. “Do you have any idea what would have happened to me if you’d been gone out to lunch or something?” He flopped down on the floor in front of Mindy, gripped the back of his neck, and let his head roll. “Whew, I’ll tell you. I’d be at the police station right now, filling out reports. That’s a tricky downtown, on a good day. But on a day like today—a Saturday, when everything’s thronged— the people get irritable enough to kill one another, and they don’t even know why. It’s because they’re hot.”
Mindy was watching Allen without interest.
“Aunt Min, I hope you can help me,” he said. “I need desperately for somebody to talk me out of doing something stupid.”
Mindy creased the pages of the newspaper she had been reading and tossed them over her shoulder onto the floor behind the couch. She reached for a glass on the lamp table—a brown drink with a bobbing cherry.
“Give me a minute to get my equilibrium,” Allen said. “Then I’ll unload the whole problem. Your place sure is coming along. It looks better and better every time I come. Is that a new painting?”
Mindy lifted herself and craned her neck to see the wall behind her. “No,” she said. She relaxed back into place, and tapped the cherry that floated on the surface of her drink. “I got that at an estate sale almost a year ago.”
“What does it remind me of?” Allen said, thinking. “My head is full of names. I’ve been taking a course on the history of art—which I love. I was smart, for once, and got the jump on my graduating class. They don’t start college until fall quarter. Rousseau is the name that keeps sticking in my mind for some reason—in relation to that one.” He nodded at the wall. “Someone, either the textbook or my t.a., says the whole pageant of art history stops right with Henri Rousseau. I think I already knew that—but, anyway, his work sort of reminds you of looking through a magnifying glass. He can take you out into a field or a jungle, say, and leave you standing there. Painting, I found out, is all done with the eyes.” Allen straightened his posture and pulled his feet into a lotus position.
