by Mike Lupica
“You know one of those guys?” Lucas said.
“I do,” Julia said. “The one on the left.”
“Who is he?”
“Gramps,” she said.
SIXTEEN
Okay,” Lucas said to his mom. “This makes no sense.”
“I can’t say for sure that it’s your grandfather,” she said. “But except for the hair, they could be twins.”
“I never saw that picture before,” Lucas said.
“I didn’t even remember I had it,” Julia said. “Pretty sure it’s the only one I’ve got of your grandfather as a young man. The ones with him and your dad, he’s a lot older, obviously.”
“Could Gramps have had a brother named Joe or Tommy?” Lucas said.
“Your dad didn’t have any uncles or aunts,” Lucas’s mom said. “And at our wedding, the only family on your dad’s side was Gramps and your grandmom.”
Lucas reached down and moved the pictures around, just to be doing something with his hands.
“Where is Gramps from in California?” Lucas said.
“The few times I ever talked about this with your dad,” she said, “he just said that his dad had been a foster child, and moved around a lot when he was a boy. I think he mentioned Bakersfield. Maybe Fresno. One time in particular I asked your dad, ‘Aren’t you curious about what your dad’s life was like growing up?’ And he kind of shrugged and said that Gramps didn’t like talking about it. He just assumed it hadn’t been a particularly happy childhood, that going from one family to another had been like having no real family at all.”
“And you never asked Gramps yourself?”
“You know him,” she said. “He talks about what he wants to talk about. Like he’s calling the plays even when you’re having a conversation with him.”
Lucas said, “Maybe I don’t know him nearly as well as I thought I did.”
* * *
The Wolves’ next practice was the following night, the first of two practices before they’d play the Grisham Mavs the Saturday after next. Lucas had been excited from the time he’d seen the schedule and realized this would be their third game. He was going to get the chance to go up against Jake Farr, who’d been one of the best point guards in their league last year. Jake was the Twin Lakes League version of Steph Curry, because of the way Jake could handle the ball and make shots from just about everywhere. He’d been a little taller than Lucas when they were sixth-graders, just as fast, left-handed. A total star. Lucas couldn’t wait.
Tonight they worked a lot on their transition defense. If the Mavs hadn’t changed their style, they liked to run as much as the Wolves did. So Gramps had a chance tonight to talk about one of his favorite subjects: turning good defense into offense.
“No matter how fast they come at you,” he said, “you can always slow those boys down with good D. You make them miss. You make them rush. You take the ball away. And then it’s you coming at them fast. Like you’re trying to give those poor boys a case of whiplash.”
Being even more aggressive on defense than the other guys were on offense was another big thing with Gramps.
“I don’t want you to be afraid to take chances, or make mistakes,” he said. “Everybody makes mistakes in this world, and not just in basketball. The best you can do is keep taking chances, and hope not to make the same mistake twice. The great Red Auerbach used to tell his shooters, ‘If you miss a few, keep shooting.’ ”
At the end of practice they scrimmaged less than usual. Lucas had no problem with that, either. This was the best way for them to get their minds right for the Grisham Mavs. It was another example of what a good coach Gramps was, Lucas thought. He could get a bunch of twelve-year olds this fired up about defense.
Lucas’s mom had asked Gramps to drive him home when they were finished. Before they headed for the parking lot, Lucas helped Gramps collect the basketballs and the pinnies they’d used for the scrimmage.
The other players were gone by then. It was just the two of them in the gym. It had been an early practice. It was just a few minutes past seven.
“You coming for dinner?” Lucas said to his grandfather. “Mom’s making turkey burgers.”
“I do love those turkey burgers your mom makes,” Gramps said.
“So you’re in?”
“Already told that to the best cook in Claremont.”
He smiled. Lucas smiled back at him.
“Ask you something?” Lucas said.
“In my life,” Gramps said, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a boy as full of questions as my grandson.”
“How else am I gonna learn?” Lucas said. “That’s what my coach is always telling me, anyway.”
Lucas’s backpack was on the floor near the bleachers where he’d dropped it before practice. He went over and unzipped a side pouch and took out the picture of Joe and Tommy and brought it with him to where Gramps was standing at mid court, car keys already in his hand.
“I want to show you something I found in one of Dad’s old Chip Hilton books,” Lucas said.
He handed his grandfather the picture.
Gramps took it. Lucas could see the slight tremor in his hands, but there was nothing unusual about that. Gramps just called it one more old-man thing he had to deal with. Lucas would notice it sometimes when he was lifting a drinking glass, or holding a piece of paper up to show Lucas a new play.
He studied the picture before handing it back to Lucas.
“What did you want to ask me?” he said.
“I wanted to ask you if that’s you in the picture,” Lucas said. “Mom thinks it might be.”
“Tell me again how you found it,” Gramps said.
“I wasn’t looking for it, I promise,” Lucas said. “It just fell out of a book in the attic.”
“What were you doing up there?” Gramps said.
“You know I go up there sometimes,” Lucas said. “I like going through Dad’s stuff.”
Suddenly he felt as if he were back playing defense, and wasn’t sure why. Or what to say.
“You are stubborn,” Gramps said.
“Mom says I get it from you.”
“Probably so.”
“So is that you?” Lucas said.
“More like who I used to be,” Gramps said.
“Joe or Tommy?” Lucas said.
Gramps took a deep breath, let it out.
“They called me Joe back in the day,” he said.
Then he said, “Time to take you home.”
Without another word he turned and led Lucas out of the gym and to the place in the front parking lot where his car was. They both got in. Gramps drove them home.
Lucas was afraid to say anything himself until they were in his driveway. It was as if Gramps’s silence had formed this force field around him. But when the car stopped Lucas said, “Are you still going to have dinner?”
“I’m awful tired all of a sudden,” he said. “Think I might turn in early tonight. Please make my apologies to your mom.”
Lucas got out of the car, but didn’t close the door.
“Are you okay, Gramps?” he asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Just tired, like I said. Some days I feel all my years more than others.”
Because the door was open, the interior lights in the car were on, so Lucas could see clearly the look on his grandfather’s face. For a second, Lucas thought Gramps was the one who might start to cry.
In a soft voice Lucas said, “Why’d they call you Joe?”
He wasn’t sure his grandfather had heard him correctly, because he didn’t answer the question.
“He’s just a boy who got left behind a long time ago,” he said. He took another deep breath and let it out slowly. Then asked Lucas to please close the door.
“Good night, son,” Gramps said.
He drove away. Lucas stood there in the driveway and watched him go, wondering in that moment why “good night” had sounded so much like “good-bye.”
SEVENTEEN
Lucas’s mom tried to call Gramps when Lucas told her what had happened at the gym. Gramps didn’t answer his phone. That wasn’t unusual. Gramps had finally given in and purchased a cell phone, but he preferred talking on the landline at his apartment.
She was sent to voice mail on his cell. She got the answering machine at his apartment.
“He really didn’t talk all the way home?” Lucas’s mom said.
Lucas shook his head.
“He said they called him Joe?”
“Yes.”
“But didn’t explain why?”
“No.”
They were in his mom’s room. She was up there reading when Gramps dropped off Lucas. Now he was sitting on the end of his mom’s bed. He still had the picture of Joe and Tommy in his hand.
“Gramps was Joe,” he said. “Now he’s Sam.” He groaned. “I really do wish I’d never started asking questions in the first place.”
“Now the genie is out of the bottle,” she said. “And I’m not exactly sure how we get it back inside.”
“If I had dropped this when Gramps asked me to,” Lucas said, “none of this would have happened.”
“Sometimes not giving up has consequences,” his mom said.
“I know,” Lucas said. It came out of him like a groan. “I feel like going to my room and doing a deep dive under the covers and just wait for this to be over.”
She patted the space next to her on the bed. Lucas went and sat there. She put her arm around him. “It doesn’t seem like it right now,” she said. “But this will all work itself out.”
“I feel like I’m about to mess up our whole season,” he said.
“You know that’s not going to happen,” she said. “Basketball is too important to both of you. Let’s just give him some room to breathe. When’s your next practice?”
“Thursday,” he said. “And you wait and see. I won’t see Gramps until then. I’ll bet you anything he doesn’t come to dinner tomorrow night, either.”
“You give yourself some room to breathe, too,” she said. “Go watch a game. Read a book. Do some writing. Let’s see what happens at practice. Maybe I’ll go with you if you’re worried about things being too awkward. We’ll all get through this together.”
* * *
Gramps wasn’t at practice Thursday night. Mrs. Moretti, who’d been away doing some alumni work for the UConn women’s basketball program, told Lucas and his teammates that Gramps had called her that afternoon and asked if she’d mind taking over for him.
Ryan poked Lucas and whispered, “Did you know this was going to happen?”
“Nope.” Lucas turned to Ryan’s mom and said, “Did Gramps say anything about not feeling well? He never misses a practice.”
“He didn’t,” Jen Moretti said. “Just said he had some personal business to take care of.”
“Did he say what kind?” Lucas said.
“I actually thought you might know,” she said, grinning, “since neither one of you seems to make a move without the other one knowing.”
“No idea,” Lucas said. “He didn’t mention anything to my mom or to me.”
Gramps hadn’t said anything to either one of them, because he hadn’t returned any calls since Tuesday night.
When Mrs. Moretti dropped him off after practice, Lucas told his mom about Gramps not being at practice.
She immediately pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and tried to call Gramps again.
“Voice mail.”
Then she hit a few more keys on her phone and shook her head and said, “Answering machine.”
“We should drive over there and make sure he’s okay,” Lucas said.
Julia motioned for Lucas to pump the brakes.
“He was fine when he called Jen,” she said. “Maybe he just wants some of that space we talked about. And let’s be honest, if he wanted to talk to us right now he’d be talking to us, because there’s nothing stopping him.”
“Except being stubborn,” Lucas said, then added, “Stubborn as me.”
“We don’t know the whole story,” she said.
“And don’t know if Dad knew.”
“Your dad and I never kept many secrets from each other,” she said. “So if he was keeping one about Gramps, he must have had his reasons.”
“You think Gramps will ever tell us the whole story?” Lucas said.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “But he might not.”
“And you know what?” Lucas said. “I’d be okay with that, no lie.”
“All you did was ask a question,” his mom said. “I hardly think that question is going to ruin your whole season, especially not with the kind of team you guys have.”
“I just want things to be the way they were,” Lucas said.
“We all want that sometimes,” she said.
He went upstairs to write. Not what he didn’t know about Gramps, but what he did about Mr. Collins. He didn’t think he’d be able to focus on his writing. But he was. For a little while, he did what Gramps was always telling him to do:
Eliminate the noise.
Lucas had spent some time with Mr. Collins the day before, asking him questions about his past, about how he came to love reading and writing, what made him want to be a teacher, why teaching English had become his passion.
It was almost bedtime when Lucas closed his laptop. Thought he might leave some time to work on his basketball journal, but he’d do that tomorrow. Maybe he’d have a better idea what to put in there when he knew more about what was going on with Coach Gramps.
But what was going on?
Lucas felt as if the more he knew the less he knew.
What he did know was this:
There was a lot going on in his life.
An awful lot.
EIGHTEEN
Lucas tried to explain it all to Maria when it was just the two of them at lunch the next day.
When he finished she said, “You should just drop this now.”
“I would have by now,” Lucas said, “if that picture hadn’t dropped out of the book.”
“But it wouldn’t have if you hadn’t gone up into the attic snooping around,” she said.
“I wouldn’t call it snooping,” Lucas said.
He saw she was smiling at him. Sometimes when she did that he had to find an excuse to turn away, as if he’d spotted somebody else on the other side of the cafeteria, afraid he might be blushing.
“What would you call it, then?”
“Trying to solve a mystery,” he said.
“Maybe it’s not that great a mystery,” Maria said. “Maybe it’s just a story your Gramps doesn’t want to tell. You know what I really think you should do?”
“Tell me.”
“Tell him you love him next time you see him,” she said.
“That’s it?” Lucas said.
She smiled again. “My mom says you can never do that enough with the people you love,” she said. “And don’t you always do what he wants you to do in basketball?”
“Yeah.”
“Do that now,” she said.
Maria already knew Lucas had picked Mr. Collins to write about now that he wasn’t writing about Gramps. Maria had picked her grandmother, because she wanted to write about how inspiring her life had been, starting her own dressmaking business as a young woman. And, she told Lucas, it was more than that. Her grandmother had been born in China. Maria wanted to focus on why her life was such a good example of how immigrants could come to America and lead great American lives. And she told Lucas that there were things that her grandmother had seen growing up that she didn’t like talking about.
“I’m so glad Mr. Collins asked us to do something like this,” Maria said.
“Well, I’m not!” Ryan said.
He’d been sitting at another table with some of the other Wolves’ players. Now he plopped himself down in the chair next to Maria’s.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Ryan said.
Maria smiled again. “That’s so unlike you.”
“I need more help with my paper,” he said.
“Do you mean you want Lucas to help?” Maria said. “Or both of us?”
“You want to help me too!” he said. “Awesome!”
“Sounds like more of a Lucas thing to me,” Maria said.
“Thanks a bunch,” Lucas said to her.
“Oh,” Maria said, “you don’t have to thank me.”
“What’s the problem now?” Lucas said.
“Other than I can’t write?” Ryan said.
“I thought we had you off to a good start,” Lucas said.
“But every time I try to write on my own, I get stopped,” Ryan said.
He turned to Maria and started to tell her how he couldn’t get less than a B on his paper or he wouldn’t be able to finish the basketball season.
“I know,” she said.
“You do?” Ryan said
“I think my distant relatives back in China know,” Maria said.
Lucas couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“Funny?” Ryan said. “You think this is funny?” He groaned as he put his forehead down on the table.
Maria leaned down close to him and said, “Didn’t Mr. Collins tell us that a lot of great writers suffered?”
“I’m not looking for great here,” Ryan said. “I’m just looking for doesn’t stink.”
The bell rang then, ending lunch, and sending them off to their one o’clock class. Lucas told Ryan they could work at his house after they got off the bus, and that he promised to get him unstuck. He was actually looking forward to it, thinking it would take his mind off Gramps. And he was happy to help his friend get through this paper, get a good grade, get on with the basketball season.
He wished he was as confident that things would work out with his grandfather.
More than ever, Lucas wished he could write a happy ending to that story.
* * *
He and Ryan worked until it was time for Ryan to leave for dinner. They were up in Lucas’s room while his mom was down in the kitchen grading papers of her own. Ryan asked Lucas if his mom might mind terribly just shooting him an A on his paper. Lucas told him he was pretty sure it didn’t work that way.
