by Nina Revoyr
"Yes, I know," said Paula. "I mean, no, I'm not. Staying for dinner. I came by early because I knew they wouldn't be here." She paused. "I'd like to talk to you, Claudia."
Claudia looked at me, caught me staring, turned back to Paula. "All right, let's talk out here," she said. She stepped outside and shut the door.
I scrambled around the love seat, went up to the door, and pressed my ear against the wood. They must have been standing just a few feet out in the driveway—although their voices were muffled, I could hear every word.
"I've missed you, Paula," I heard Claudia say, and I was so surprised by this that I pulled back for a moment.
"I've missed you too," said Paula.
There was caution in their voices, but also pain, also caring; it made me wonder what their friendship had been like before.
"Listen," Paula said, "I'm sorry I tried to keep you from giving your talk. You should do it. The committee still liked the outline of your speech, and oh, I don't know. I just came to my senses. It was immature of me to use the BBA to try and work out my issues with you."
Claudia was silent for a moment. "So you're apologizing?"
"About the speaking thing, yes. But I'm still upset about everything else . . . I feel like you've deserted me, Claudia."
Claudia gave a joyless laugh. "I feel like you've deserted me, Paula."
They were both quiet for a few seconds. Then Claudia said, "What do you want me to do, Paula? I mean, what do I have to do to show you that I haven't changed?"
"But you have changed, Claudia. Ever since you moved in with Wendell. Ever since you've been with him, really. You're not around as much, and you don't call us as much, and you just seem, I don't know. More distant."
"I'm just busier, Paula. It's not that I care any less. What—you think this is Wendell's fault?"
It took Paula a moment to answer. "Well, you weren't like this when you were still married to Carl. Or when you were with Mark or Darryl."
Claudia laughed. "Carl, if you remember, spent more time with his other women than he did with me. And Mark and Darryl were never serious." She paused. "I guess you're right, though. I probably have been less available, and that's my fault. I promise to make an effort to spend more time with you all. Meanwhile, can't you just try to be happy that I've found somebody? I mean, I know you'll probably never like Wendell, but can't you be happy for me?"
"I don't know, Claudia," Paula answered. "I just don't know."
"I'd be happy for you if you found somebody."
"I know you would. But that'd be different. I'd never put you in this position."
"What position?" said Claudia, and it sounded like her patience was running thin. "Paula," she said, trying to be calm again, "I haven't done anything to you."
"Well, it's nice that you think so," said Paula. "I just can't believe you've let that man be more important than our friendship."
"I haven't," said Claudia. "You have."
Just then, the phone rang, and I jumped as if someone had caught me. I ran into the living room and picked it up on the third ring. "Hello?" I said.
"Hi, is this Nancy?" asked the voice on the other end.
"Uh, yes."
"This is Rochelle. How you doing? Honey, could you tell Claudia that I'm going to be a little late? I've got a few more calls to make here at the office, and then I have to go home and feed my cat."
"No problem," I said, and then hung up as quickly as possible so I could go back to the door. When I got there, though, it seemed that Claudia and Paula had moved farther down the driveway, and while I could hear the murmur of their voices, I couldn't make out what they said. Finally I gave up and returned to my books. A few minutes later, Claudia came back inside and headed straight for the kitchen, where she banged pots around until her friends arrived. I said hello to them, and went up to my room. For once I wasn't interested in eavesdropping; I didn't want to hear any more.
* * *
The semester ended the following week. On the night before our finals began, my father and Claudia cooked a big dinner for Raina and me. They made barbecue ribs, black-eyed peas, potato salad, and corn bread. We ate at six, the two of us kids not talking to the parents much because we were studying at the table—Raina had Government and English Lit the next day, and I had Trig and Chemistry. I kept licking my fingers before I handled my flash cards for Chemistry, but the cards still got covered with red-orange smudges from my father's special barbecue sauce.
"Dad, why couldn't you have made something less messy?" I asked.
He'd been buttering a piece of corn bread, and he looked up at me now. Creases formed at the corners of his eyes, and he almost smiled. "I try to do you a favor and cook a good meal before you descend into finals hell, and you complain that the food is messy?" He looked at Claudia and shook his head. "What are we going to do with this child?"
"I don't know," she answered. She smiled, but looked subdued. "We could concoct some horrible punishment. Make her wash all the dishes with a toothbrush."
"Good idea," he said. "And maybe we can get the other child there to help her."
Raina, who'd been staring at her notebook, looked up at my father. "By thy long gray beard and glittering eye / Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?"
My father really smiled now. "No reason," he said. "Just checking to see if you were with us."
Raina put a hand on his arm and gave him a mock-serious look. "I'm with you, brother," she said.
He shook his head, looked greatly pleased. "Are you engrossed in English literature?"
She nodded. "Deeply."
I looked at her notebook and laughed. "Raina, there's nothing but basketball stats on that page."
Claudia looked up sharply. I could tell she wasn't amused by Raina's lack of concentration. She'd been in a horrible mood since her confrontation with Paula, and also busy, obsessed with her speech. I remember thinking that her concern was unnecessary—Raina always did fine on tests—and that she was being a bit uptight. It would take years before I'd understand why she watched Raina's life so closely, or how desperately, because of her own thwarted hopes, she wanted her daughter to succeed. "Can I ask what you're thinking about?" she said now, her voice heavy with disapproval.
Raina's smile, when she answered, was a little strained. "I was thinking about dead British poets."
Claudia raised her eyebrows. "Dead British poets who played basketball?"
Raina leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Okay, you're right, I wasn't thinking about dead British poets. Actually, I was sitting here wondering where I'll be in a year."
My father nodded and stroked his chin. "I've been wondering that myself," he said.
At first I thought he meant this in relation to Raina, that he wondered where she'd be in a year, and I found it a little strange that he was so concerned about her future. Then I thought he meant it in relation to me, and felt a flicker of annoyance at his meddling in my business. But finally I realized that I'd been wrong in both assumptions; that he had meant it, in fact, about himself. Claudia must have come to the same conclusion, because she gave him a searching look.
"Why?" she said. "Where do you think you're going to be in a year?"
My father sighed. "Well, that's just it, isn't it? I really don't know."
The light mood of a few minutes earlier had suddenly vanished. Claudia sat straight up in her chair and put her fork down. "Do you really think that the school would fire you?"
My father stared down at his plate. "Yes, I do."
She was silent for a moment. "Well, I guess that's just a risk you'll have to take, then," she said. She picked up her fork again, stirred some peas around on her plate. "I don't know, maybe I'm just being an optimist, but I think that if you do what's right, do what you have to, it'll all work out somehow in the end."
My father didn't answer for a long time. I tried to make myself smaller, and Raina stared at her notebook; we both pretended not to listen. When my father spoke again, his words were car
eful, his voice intense and low. "I love those kids," he said slowly. "It would be terrible if I couldn't coach them anymore."
Claudia nodded. "I know. I know how much you love being a mentor. But if worse came to worst, you could always go coach at another school, couldn't you? And I'm sure you'd love the new kids too."
I glanced up at my father to see how he'd react to this. He shot Claudia a look which seemed composed mainly of annoyance, but which also contained a bit of anger. "That's not the point," he said. "And besides, it's not as easy to get a new coaching job as you think." He took a gulp of his beer, and stared at a spot on the table. "A couple of weeks ago, I tracked down Cameron Smith, who was the assistant coach at Hawthorne before I came. He had to resign ten years ago because there was this rumor going around that he was providing drugs to some of the players. It never became public, and none of the boys who supposedly got drugs from him ever materialized, but the whole thing was enough of a scandal to force Smith to lose his job." He paused. "I always believed what Larry told me about him, but then when all of this stuff started happening with me, I wondered if there was more to that story. So I found Smith through some other teachers who were still in touch with him. He's down in Long Beach now, working in a real estate office, not coaching or teaching at all. And the story he told me was pretty damn different from the tale that Larry's been spinning all these years."
Claudia was watching his face closely. "Well, what was his version?"
My father sighed. "Smith's version, yes. What a version. According to Smith, Larry's wife, Cathy, had her eye on him—on Smith, I mean. He was single at the time, and Cathy was unhappy, which is one thing that hasn't changed much since then. Anyway, she launched into a full-scale pursuit of him—calling him at home, hanging all over him after games, writing letters that Larry would intercept from their pile of outgoing mail. She didn't try very hard to hide her intentions, and maybe she actually wanted Larry to know. At any rate, Larry was pissed as hell. Nothing ever came of Cathy's efforts because Smith wasn't interested, but I guess just what she had done was enough for Larry. Suddenly the rumors about drugs were floating around. And Smith had to resign. And no other school would touch him—even though he was a first-rate coach, even though they knew the drug thing was a lie. So now he's out of teaching altogether. And Larry Henderson is still the head football coach, and Cathy is still his wife."
Claudia was silent for a moment. "So Larry's powerful," she said. "And vengeful. But that doesn't change the fact that you have to do what's right."
"I'm in a position where I can help these kids, and guide them. It's a privilege and a responsibility to be where I am, and I don't take those notions lightly."
"I know you're really invested in your players—"
"Those kids count on me. They talk to me. They do not want me to leave."
"Yes, they love you, Wendell, but you've still got to do what's right."
"I know," my father said. "I know I have to do what's right. But the hard part is figuring out just exactly what that is."
* * *
The next day I descended into the land that my father had aptly described as finals hell. It was the land of coffee and Scantron sheets; of potato chips and cookies; of watching the first blush of sunrise color our windows pink and gray. It was the land of grueling two-hour exams, after which we somehow had to pull ourselves together enough to make it to a practice or a game. Raina and I didn't talk to each other much during the three days of our finals, and neither of us talked to the parents. My last final was on Thursday, and after our game, I walked home and went straight to bed without eating my dinner.
On Friday, we had no school, and I slept all morning before getting up to go to practice at two. When I got home, I took a shower, and then sat with Raina in front of the TV in the kitchen. She was in a shitty mood, despite her finals being over, because Toni had left a message saying she had to cancel their plans for that night. I was glad that Raina was staying home, shitty mood or not. Claudia came in at seven, and when she called out for my father, no one went to the door to greet her except for Ann. She set her briefcase down in the living room and came into the kitchen. She was wearing a long blue dress with yellow flowers on it, and blue heels which brought her almost to Raina's height.
"Where's your father?" she asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know."
She went upstairs and changed out of her work clothes, reappearing a few minutes later in jeans and a sweatshirt. "Has he called?" she asked, as she poured herself a glass of Coke.
"Nope," I said, not looking at her. Raina and I were drained and barely functioning. We were also caught up in a rerun of The Cosby Show and didn't ponder my father's absence.
"Well, maybe we should call him," she said. She pressed the mute button on the remote control, which brought grunts of protest from Raina and me, and then dialed the number of my father's school. She stood there in the corner of the kitchen, brow furrowed and phone pressed to her ear, for a good minute and a half or two minutes. Finally she sighed and hung up. "No answer," she said.
Raina turned the volume back on, and Claudia continued to look concerned; I knew she was thinking about what had happened to me on New Year's. "Well," she said finally, "I wish he'd at least call and say whether he plans to be home for dinner."
He was not home for dinner, nor for coffee afterward, nor for Miami Vice at nine. He was not home at ten thirty, at which point Claudia stopped working on her speech and began to call some of his colleagues, and even I was beginning to get concerned. Then finally, just after Claudia had completed one of her calls, we heard his car pull into the driveway. Raina and I were in the living room, where we'd moved for the larger TV. Claudia came in from the kitchen and looked at the door.
"He'd better have a good explanation for this," she said.
The door opened, and my father came in, and the dog ran up to greet him. We heard a helicopter pass overhead. My father crouched down to pet Ann, and when he stood up and looked at us, we all saw that he swayed a little.
"Where have you been?" Claudia demanded, sounding equally worried and mad.
"Out," my father said. He took a few steps forward, and when he came into the light, we could see that his face was almost as red as the Clippers shirt Raina was wearing. He tried to unzip his jacket, but his fingers seemed to pull in all the wrong directions.
"You drove like that?" Claudia said, hands on her hips. "What were you thinking? At least you could have called so I could come pick you up."
"Leave me alone," my father said, holding his hands up in defense.
"No, I won't leave you alone. What do you mean, leave you alone? You had me worried half to death. I was just about getting ready to call the police."
"I turned in the kids' grades today," he said.
Claudia went silent. Raina and I were sitting on the couch, and it felt like something cold crawled up the back of my neck. I didn't know what Raina was doing, because I couldn't bring myself to look at her.
My father managed to get himself around the love seat and sit down. Then he stared straight ahead, not really looking at anything. "I turned in the kids' grades today," he said again, his voice completely flat. "I finished grading all the finals and figured out the kids' grades, Eric Henderson's last of all."
Claudia stood right where she was, but her shoulders slumped a little, and when she spoke again, her voice was much softer. "And what did you give him?"
My father broke out with a short, bitter laugh, and began to rock back and forth. "I gave him a B," he said. "B for 'bastard.' I could've given him an A for 'asshole,' or even a C. Oh, except I forgot. The C is my grade. C for 'coward.'" He closed his eyes and kept rocking, fingers entwined over one of his knees.
Claudia went over and stood next to him. She touched the space between his shoulder and neck, then pulled his head to her stomach and stroked his hair. "It's all right, Wendell," she said softly, as my father squeezed his eyes tighter and grimaced.
"Nancy," Claudia said, but I was already gone. I ran up the stairs, went into my room, and slammed the door. I didn't know what to do; it was as if my father had changed right in front of my eyes, transformed into someone I did not want to know. The feeling was deeper, somehow, than disappointment; it felt like an utter betrayal. Years later, I'd have a better understanding of what my father must have been going through. I'd know that sometimes, standing up for your principles costs more than you think you can afford. My father would have lost his job if he hadn't passed Eric, and new jobs were not easy to come by; on top of that, he really believed that he'd be helping his kids by staying. But that night, and for several months afterward, I would listen to no excuses. I was ashamed of my father, and angry at what he'd done, and also, I know now, afraid that I might be like him. I did not want to have anything to do with him, or with the part of myself that might be capable of the same kind of weakness and compromise. I was ashamed that Raina had seen this too—in him, and perhaps in me—and the way I dealt with that shame was by blaming him, running away. From then on his pronouncements held no weight anymore, and his advice was insubstantial, something to walk through, unobstructed, like idle conversation, like fog.
* * *
One Saturday night in mid-February, Raina's team had a non-league game. Coaches arranged these sometimes if they were old rivals who would not otherwise have the chance to let their teams loose on each other, or if they just needed some competition in the middle of an undemanding league schedule. This particular game had some additional intrigue, because a few of Raina's teammates, including Stacy, had gotten into a minor scuffle with some girls from this team after a USC game in December. Now both sides were out for blood, and the bleachers of Raina's high school were as packed as I'd ever seen them, despite the big storm we were having. I sat with a few of my teammates behind the home team's bench. Most of us were in standard jock gear—ratty shorts, sweatshirt, hip pack. We almost always dressed this way, with the allowable substitution of jeans for shorts, partially because it was comfortable, but also because we looked upon the street clothes of nonathletes with the same disdain I imagine military people have for civilian attire. Anyway, Claudia sat with my father about five rows behind us; I didn't even turn to look at them, because I did not want to see my father's face. Behind them, in the last row, were three college scouts, there for Raina no doubt, set apart from the rest of the crowd by their silence, their dress (no-nonsense polo shirts with the names of their colleges embroidered on the pockets), and the clipboards they held in their laps. No one seemed to notice them, though, but me. People had come to see some intense basketball action and maybe even a little blood; already they were scrutinizing the players for signs of overt hostility. Members of the two teams glared at each other as they warmed up on opposite ends of the court. Toni was conspicuously absent.
