by Mike Lupica
Lucas took in some air, a lot of it, like he was blowing off some steam. There was more that he wanted to say to him now, a lot more, put it all out there once and for all, let Gramps know how angry he was, and hurt, and betrayed. But in that moment, he didn’t want to make things worse than they already were. They were already bad enough.
And he was smart enough to know that Gramps was right about the way Lucas had acted today.
“It won’t happen again,” Lucas said.
His grandfather pushed down with a hand on each knee, as a way of getting himself out of his chair. This time it took him two tries, but he finally made it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night at practice,” Gramps said.
Julia said, “I’m glad you came by, Sam.”
“I can see myself out,” he said.
When Gramps was gone, Lucas’s mom turned to him and said, “Now I want to say something.”
“Mom, I got the message,” Lucas said. “I did.”
“That was his message, not mine,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?”
Lucas smiled and said, “Do I have a choice?”
“Never,” she said.
She smiled.
“You only get so many seasons in your life,” Lucas’s mom said. “Not all of them are going to be special. This one still has a chance to be.”
“I know that,” Lucas said.
“I know you know,” she said. “You’re not just a smart basketball boy. You’re smart, period. So the choice you have to make is whether you’re going to make the most of this season going forward. Because if you don’t, you’ll always regret it. I asked your dad one time, after he got sick, if he had any regrets. He smiled at me—he had a great smile, your dad—and said, “Other than not still being a kid?”
“You think Dad really did forgive Gramps, even if he never got to tell him?” Lucas said.
“It never would have occurred to your dad not to forgive him,” she said.
“You don’t know that.”
“But I knew him,” she said. “And he knew better than anybody not to waste energy or a day of his life on things that he couldn’t change, on anything that didn’t matter. It was all there in the letter.”
He thought she might cry. She did sometimes when she was talking about his dad. Instead she broke into an even bigger smile than before.
“Now get outside and shoot some hoops in the driveway,” she said.
It was exactly what Lucas did. He knew this wasn’t the season he’d expected. It wasn’t the season he wanted it to be, for him or for Gramps. There were things he couldn’t change.
But the season still mattered.
A lot.
And it really was the only one he had.
TWENTY-FOUR
Practice before next Saturday’s game against the Oakdale Owls was different for Lucas. Not bad. Not even weird. Just different.
Gramps was acting as if things were back to normal with Lucas after what had happened in the last game. He wasn’t treating Lucas any differently than the rest of the Wolves. He had put in a new zone press for the Oakdale Owls. He drew up some plays that took Ryan away from his usual forward position and put him in the backcourt with Lucas, saying he thought that move might create real matchup problems for the other team.
“Christmas is right around the corner,” Gramps said. “Maybe in the right moment, we’ll treat a big guard like Ryan as a brand-new toy.”
“Like I’m a video game, Mr. Winston?” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Richard said. “Ryan 2K.”
If you didn’t know that Gramps and Lucas were related, you wouldn’t have been able to tell by the way they acted around each other on the court. Lucas was still playing ball with his buddies, and for his grandfather. He still loved being out there, loved the process of practice, of learning things on offense and defense. He loved the process of getting better. But he knew things weren’t the way they’d always been, could see that they weren’t, even if his teammates couldn’t. Gramps would still pull him aside and tell him there might have been a better way to run a play. He’d still give Lucas a shout-out when he made a particularly good move.
It was just different, no getting around it. Gramps was still right there, limping out to the middle of the court when he wanted to make a point, still teaching. But it was as if there was distance between them.
And Gramps, at least for now, had stopped coming over to the house for dinner. Lucas wanted to talk with Ryan or Maria about what was really going on. But he couldn’t do that without telling them who Gramps really was, and what he’d done.
So the only person to talk about it with was his mom, though Lucas was starting to worry that she must feel she was having the same conversation with him, over and over and over again.
“When is this going to get better?” Lucas said. “You keep telling me this is going to get better.”
He told her about the feeling he had that there was this big distance now between him and Gramps.
“Maybe not until the season is over,” she said. “And the two of you can put some real distance between yourselves. Maybe then you can find your way back to each other.”
It was the night before the Owls game, to be played at the Oakdale YMCA. Lucas’s mom had cooked up homemade pizza for them. He didn’t know how she did it, but her pizza tasted even better to him than Gus’s, not that he would ever tell Gus something like that.
“Or maybe it won’t ever get any better than it is right now,” Lucas’s mom added. “Maybe this is what people like to call a new normal.”
“Doesn’t feel normal to me,” he said.
“Or me,” she said.
“I hate this,” Lucas said.
“Just remember that you don’t hate him,” Julia said.
“I can still hate what he did,” Lucas said.
“There’s a difference,” she said. “And a distinction.”
“I just don’t see either one sometimes,” he said.
She tented her fingers and put them under her chin and smiled at him.
“You are a spectacular twelve-year-old boy,” she said, “as prejudiced as I might be on this particular subject. But I have to remind myself sometimes that you are still twelve years old.”
Lucas was already working on his third piece of pizza. He noticed his mom was still working on her first. He had never understood how she could control herself like that.
“What does that mean?” Lucas said.
“It means that just because you’re not ready to forgive your grandfather now, one of these days you’re going to be,” she said.
“For what he and his teammates did?” Lucas said. “Or for him pretending to be somebody he wasn’t my whole life?”
“But that’s the thing,” she said. “He hasn’t been pretending. Gramps is who he is. He’s the sum of everything that ever happened to him, the way we all are, whether he shared all of it with us or not.”
“I’m gonna get another slice,” he said. “Okay?”
“I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” his mom said.
He got one from the counter and sat back down.
“But if Gramps was the person I always thought he was,” he said, “he wouldn’t have been able to cheat the game like he did.”
“People change,” she said.
“You never do.”
“Everybody changes, honey. You change, your life changes. Look at mine. Your dad and me were going to live happily ever after.”
Just like that, a sad look came across her face, a shadow that appeared out of nowhere, and her smile was gone. It happened that way sometimes, even when she was sharing a happy memory about his dad. Lucas knew what a happy, positive person his mom was. But maybe she was right, what she’d just said about Gramps. Maybe everybody was the sum of everything that had ever happened to them. Good or bad.
He didn’t know what to say. She had told him once that you could never go wrong keeping your mouth shut when you didn’t have
anything to say.
“Only the ‘ever after’ for the two of us became the two of us,” she said. “You and me.”
“I’m sorry I keep bringing this up,” Lucas said. “We start out talking about Gramps and then we end up talking about Dad.”
She took her right hand now and placed it on the table between them, palms up. Lucas put his hand inside it. As always, it fit like a glove.
“I’ve been telling you this in different ways your whole life,” she said. “All of us just have to remember how precious every day is. And not waste time trying to change things we can’t.”
“Like what?” Lucas said.
“Like the past,” she said. “Yours. Gramps’s. Mine. Everybody’s.”
“Mom,” he said. “I hear you. I know what you’re saying. But I know I’m still mad.”
She gave his hand a squeeze.
“Maybe that anger will end up in the past someday,” she said, “even if it doesn’t change the way you feel right now.”
When they were done cleaning the kitchen together, he went into the living room to watch the Celtics play the Bucks. He loved the kind of team ball the Celtics played. Gramps had always told him it was part of the Celtics tradition, in their own way-back machine, that they’d practically invented team ball in the NBA back in the fifties and sixties when they used to win the championship almost every year.
Funny, he thought.
Even when he was angry, and disappointed, and ashamed of what Gramps had done, he’d hear something inside his head that Gramps had said.
He loved talking about the way-back machine in basketball.
Just not, as it turned out, when the conversation was about him.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was about a half-hour’s drive from Claremont to Oakdale. Lucas had heard his mom talking to Gramps on her phone after breakfast, telling him that they could all drive together.
But then he heard her say, “Are you sure? We’d love to have the company.”
Lucas heard her inviting him to dinner, then heard a slight pause.
“Okay,” she said. “But if you change your mind, you know it’s no problem for me to set an extra place.”
When Lucas walked into the kitchen she said, “I guess you heard?”
“I did.”
She shook her head. “The new normal.”
“It must be the normal he wants,” Lucas said.
“I don’t think any of us wants this,” she said.
* * *
The game against the Owls was a lot like their first game of the season: They dug a big hole for themselves early. They were playing solid defense, but not solid enough, as it turned out. The Owls just couldn’t miss. Most of the scoring damage was being done by their two guards, Gary Cullen and Len Shenfeld. They were both big, they could both shoot, they could both handle the ball. If you were just watching the game from the stands in the Oakdale Y, you would have had a hard time deciding which one was the point guard and which one was the shooting guard. It made Lucas remember something else Gramps liked to talk about when he got into his way-back machine:
They were both just guards. Not point guards. Not shooting guards.
Just guards.
During every time-out in the first half, as the Wolves couldn’t dent the Owls’ fourteen-point lead, Gramps would say the same thing:
“We’re fine.”
Lucas didn’t think they were. Their zone press hadn’t worked this time. Gary Cullen and Len Shenfeld were just too good with the ball. Even when the Wolves would have one of them trapped in the backcourt, they would find a way to make a pass over the top of the defense, and the Owls would end up with another easy basket.
They were the ones playing basketball the right way today.
A lot righter than us, Lucas thought.
Their lead was still twelve halfway through the third quarter. The Wolves were shooting a little better by then, the Owls shooting a little worse. But Lucas knew that if something didn’t change, and soon, the Wolves were about to lose their first game of the season.
Maybe it was just one of those days. Maybe the other team was just better today, no matter how much the Wolves tried to change things up.
Only Lucas just wasn’t ready to concede that.
At the end of a time-out the Owls had called, Lucas said to Gramps, “We should try what we worked on in practice the other night.”
“We worked on a lot of things,” Gramps said.
The other Wolves players in the game were already walking back on the court. It was just Lucas and Gramps. Talking basketball. Trying to figure it out.
For now, things were the way they used to be.
“How about we put Ryan in the backcourt?” Lucas said. “Let him bring the ball up. Make Len match up with him instead of trying to have Sharif and Neil match up with Len.”
Gramps nodded.
“Maybe I should have thought of that myself.”
“You did,” Lucas said.
“Think it will work?”
“All we’ve got to lose is the game,” Lucas said.
The ref blew his whistle.
“That’s a lot to lose,” Gramps said.
“I know,” Lucas said.
“Go make it happen.”
“I’ll try,” Lucas said.
“Everybody tries,” Gramps said.
Ryan took the ball from the ref, ready to inbound it to Lucas. Only Lucas took the ball, and quickly whispered the plan to his best friend.
“Trust me,” Lucas said.
“Always,” Ryan said.
“Let’s win the game,” Lucas said.
They didn’t run pick-and-rolls now. Instead the Wolves spread the court, giving Ryan plenty of room to operate. He wasn’t waiting for Lucas to throw him the ball now. He had the ball. First time down, he blew past the kid who had been guarding him, Juanell Robinson, for an easy layup. The Owls lead was ten. Gary missed an open shot. This time, as Ryan was bringing the ball up, Len switched over to guard him. Lucas took a step out on the wing, as if coming to the ball, but then stopped and broke for the basket. Ryan hit him with a pass. Lucas got a layup.
Now the lead was eight.
It hadn’t even taken a minute. But the Owls looked rattled now. Sometimes it didn’t take much. Ryan pressured Len as he brought the ball up, swallowing him up with all his length. Len got rid of the ball too quickly and Lucas was sitting on the crosscourt pass Len tried to throw to Gary. He picked it off cleanly, streaked down the court alone, laid the ball in.
Now it was 38–32, Owls.
Len missed now, forcing a shot. Billy got the rebound, snapped off an outlet pass to Ryan, who took the ball to the middle and led the fast break. Lucas was to his left. When Len came up on Ryan, trying to force him to pass, Ryan did pass, to Lucas, streaking again for the basket. He caught the pass in stride, confidently put the ball on the floor with his left hand—all the extra work he’d done with his left hand paying off—laid the ball off the backboard with his left hand, getting fouled by Gary in the process.
He went to the line. It wasn’t late in a game. It wasn’t the last minute. But he felt as if this was the first big free throw of the season for him, a chance to make it a one-possession game if the Wolves could get another stop and make a three-pointer.
Lucas went through his routine. Took a deep breath. Even visualized the ball going through the basket the way Gramps had taught him. Made the free throw.
They were down three.
Same two teams on the court. But it was a different game.
The Wolves and Owls were tied going into the fourth quarter. Gramps kept moving guys in and out. He gave Lucas a one-minute breather at the start of the fourth. He did the same with Ryan a minute after that, not wanting to have both of them out of the game at the same time, even for a few seconds.
With four minutes to go, it was the Wolves who were ahead by five points. They were the ones who couldn’t miss now. Lucas and Ryan were the ones handling th
e Owls’ press with ease.
Lucas remembered one time when Mike Breen, his favorite announcer in the NBA, said that when momentum changed in a game, it was like trying to turn an ocean liner around. That’s what happened at the Oakdale YMCA in the second half.
Different backcourt for the Wolves, different game.
Only one thing hadn’t changed for the Wolves by the time the horn sounded:
They were still undefeated.
TWENTY-SIX
It was the last full week of school before Christmas break began the following Wednesday. The Wolves had won two more games by then, and suddenly there were just three more games left before the top two teams in their league would play for the championship. And if the Wolves could win the championship, they’d qualify for the state tournament for seventh-grade All-Star and travel teams.
If Lucas had been asked to describe his relationship with Gramps lately, he thought this was the word he would use:
Polite.
It was the best he could do.
Neither of them had mentioned the Ocean State Bisons again. They’d had no disagreements, on or off the court. Maybe it had something to do with the Wolves playing as well as they were, and neither one of them wanted to do anything that might get in the way of that, or hurt the team.
One night at practice, Gramps had been talking to the team about decisions a coach has to make, during a game and during a season, and had said, “You don’t always have to like what you do. Sometimes your players hate what you’re doing. But if it’s for the good of the team, you have to do it.”
So they were polite with each other, as if they sensed that was what was best for the Wolves. There was still all this distance between them. Lucas realized he’d stopped feeling angry about who Gramps was and what he’d done all the time. But he also realized that the anger wasn’t ever very far away. And probably wasn’t ever going away.
Their next practice was on Tuesday night. On Monday, Mr. Collins told Lucas and Ryan he wanted to see them after class. He wasn’t smiling, or acting like friendly Mr. C., when he said it.
