by Britt Morrow
“Get dressed quickly, Levi. I want to have a quick chat before you go out there,” Coach Carson calls out as soon as he spies Jeremiah and I entering the locker room.
I obey, donning my gear quickly, before knocking on his office door.
He doesn’t bother with any pleasantries. I’m grateful; I don’t have the patience to convince one more person that I’m fine today.
“How do you think last week went?” He inquires.
“Pretty well. I think?”
“Say it with conviction next time. It did go well. I’m thinking of putting you in during the second half again. The University of Tennessee is a whole different beast, though. They’re big, real big. And the defense is one of the strongest that I’ve seen. Do you think you can handle that?”
I’m not sure, but I muster what conviction I can. “Yessir.”
“Good. Get out there.”
He follows me out, calling for everyone to huddle up.
“Let’s go, boys! This one ain’t gonna be easy,” he warns. “University of Tennessee is consistently ranked as one of the top teams in the division. They’ve steamrolled their opponents for the last couple of weeks, but their reign stops here. We’ve also been crushing our opponents. We’re not playing scared tonight, or thinking of ourselves as the underdog. We’re just as likely to take the win tonight as they are. So I want you to go out there with confidence, and channel the prowess and grit that you’ve all been showing me in practice!”
I wonder if Coach Carson practices his speeches beforehand, or if delivering impassioned monologues on the spot is just a skill you develop as a coach. Regardless, we’re motivated and raring to go. We take the field as a united mass of muscle and ambition.
I take a minute to survey the crowd, most of them have faces painted their respective school colors, the dexterity of the marching band’s baton twirlers, the bravery inherent in some of the cheerleading stunts. This has become my pre-game ritual: attempting to absorb everything and be grateful for the opportunity. It’s something I’ll be able to hold onto even if the game goes badly. It isn’t until I take my habitual spot on the bench and watch the teams huddle up that it hits me. I’m relieved that I’m already seated because my knees would have buckled otherwise.
Even in a throng of towering, brawny guys, his face obscured by his helmet, his bulk is unmistakeable: Colt.
I’m not sure how I failed to make the connection. I knew he went to play for UT, so of course he would be here tonight. In my attempt to divert my mind from any thoughts of Charlie, or anything even tangentially related to her, I’d inadvertently blindsided myself.
I don’t want to think about Colt, or how he’ll react to seeing me, so I try to shift my focus to the game. The first half is quick and brutal. UT takes an early lead and gradually extends it further and further. As much as I hate to admit it, Colt is playing particularly well. One of the best games I’ve seen from him, in fact. Shocking, considering I had expected his lifestyle to devolve into constant partying.
There’s no lack of trying on our part, though. The guys are playing relatively well, maintaining cohesiveness and executing plays the way we’ve been practicing them. It’s one thing to be losing when you’re distracted and not playing well; you can console yourself with the fact that your mind is elsewhere and that you’ll get it together for next time. It’s another thing entirely to be losing while giving your best possible performance, to realize that, even at your absolute best, there are people that much more talented than you are.
We retreat to the dressing room at half-time, and the air is heavy with defeat. Coach Carson knows better than to try to lift our spirits with inspirational mantras. There comes a time in every game where you have to accept your fate, and ours was dealt swiftly tonight.
“Levi, I want you to start the next half,” Coach Carson instructs.
I nod, trying to suppress my anxiety. Even though he’d warned me about going in, I wasn’t actually expecting to. Our starting quarterback, Taylor, has been playing as well as can be expected, and there’s next to nothing I can do to help us. I’m fine going in when we have a lead and my only job is to maintain it, but contributing to our walloping is much harder to swallow.
My palms are slick with sweat as we take the field despite my repeated efforts to dry them off on my pants. My heart’s beating fast enough that I’m aware of its rapid cadence.
Even though I try to avoid it, I can’t help looking over at Colt. He does nothing to acknowledge me, not even a head tilt or a smirk of recognition. He’s staring intently at the pigskin. This level of focus would have been greatly appreciated when we played together.
Although our relationship has never been anything other than antagonistic, this is the first time that we’ve actually been opponents. It makes me nervous. As much as I disliked Colt, I always liked knowing that he was on my side. The alternative was never a good place to be.
“You alright?” Jeremiah calls over.
I’m not sure exactly what gave away the fact that I’m anything but, but the question forces me to pull it together.
I take a deep, steadying breath before announcing, “Yeah, fine.”
Coach Carson instructed me to do a running play. I desperately want to call something different, but I’m pretty sure that being afraid of an opposing linebacker isn’t a justifiable reason for changing the play. Apparently, I’m slightly more intimidated by Coach Carson than by Colt.
I can’t stall any longer. “Hut-hut!”
I pretend to make a handoff to the halfback, Kip, before skillfully dodging a defensive end. While I was focused on him though, I failed to notice the linebacker coming at me with the force and intensity of a freight train.
I’ve never been hit this hard. Not even the time I accidentally broke a bottle of Brandi’s whiskey playing around with a football inside. I’m gulping for air without being able to take any in, and panicking at my inability to breathe, thinking that I may have punctured a lung.
“You said you’d take care of her,” he tells me simply, before backing away and allowing a referee to scrape me up off the turf.
“Where does it hurt, son?” the referee asks, but I’m still too winded to respond.
It isn’t until the ref helps me off of the field that I manage a few gasping breaths. All of my body parts appear to be intact, but I’m too shaken to know for sure.
“Are you alright to sit here, or do you need to see a medic?” one of the assistant coaches asks.
“I’m fine.” At least physically, I think. My ego is definitely going to be feeling this one for a long time, though.
I force myself to watch the rest of the game even though it’s painful. Even more painful than the splitting headache I’m currently experiencing. Despite giving it our all, we get our asses handed to us. It’s not just a loss but a pulverizing one. The kind of defeat that goes beyond disappointment to sheer humiliation.
The locker room is dead silent when we finally beat our retreat. Even Jeremiah, who I’ve never seen exhibit anything other than joviality, looks like someone kicked his dog. I can’t handle the moroseness on top of the pounding in my skull, so I shower quickly and exit the locker room as soon as my aching body can manage.
“Levi?”
I panic, wondering if I sustained a concussion when Colt hit me. I can’t imagine any other reason why Charlie would be waiting outside the locker room door for me like she used to: a heart-wrenching apparition.
She reaches for me, but stops short, frowning. “Don’t look so happy to see me.”
I close the distance, grasping her firmly by the shoulders to ensure that she’s real.
“Hey, take it easy.” I realize that she’s referring to my vice-like grip around her, but I can’t seem to release her.
“Are you ok?” Her gaze is searching, and I can tell that she’s not just referring to Colt’s hit. My thoughts are completely incoherent, but the irony isn’t lost on me that she’s asking me if I’m alright after her
brother just tried to put me in a coma.
“Yes. No. Not really.”
She glances over her shoulder worriedly. “I don’t have a lot of time, I drove up here with my dad to watch Colt.”
To watch Colt, not me. I’m suddenly weak. I manage to drop my arms and take a small step back. Far enough away to really take her in. She’s much paler than the last time I saw her. It’s not just the pallor of losing her summer tan, either. It’s the kind of colorlessness that’s accompanied by dark circles rimming her eyes.
“How are you?”
She hesitates, and I have a sudden premonition that she’s about to tell me something terrible. “Are you sick?” I press.
“Sort of. But not the way you’re thinking.” She looks up at the sky, inky and starless, then down at the gravel, deliberately avoiding my gaze.
“Dope sick?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. I can’t think of any other reason for the dark circles. I’ve seen enough of it growing up to recognize the signs.
She shakes her head slowly. “Morning sick.”
Like so much else about Charlie, I’d never asked her about birth control. She was always so self-possessed, I just assumed she had it handled. And, truth be told, I could never hold myself back long enough to ask.
I’ve spent my entire life silently deriding Brandi for her inability to control herself, and it turns out that I’m not any better.
“I’m going to handle it,” she reassures me. “I just thought you should know.”
“Don’t!” I say it loudly enough that she flinches. I don’t really know why, it’s just a visceral reaction.
“Don’t what? Make a decision that’s going to prevent us from ruining both of our lives? From ending up like our parents? From fighting over child support payments, how much I drink and how little you’re around?”
It comes out in a rush. I wonder how long she’s been turning this over in her mind. She’s wild-eyed and pacing. I want to hold her, but it feels wrong - like trying to trap a wild animal. Maybe I already have.
The first time that Brandi laid hands on me, or at least the first time that I can remember, was because I wet the bed. I was three years old and locked in my room all day while she and her latest boyfriend did God knows what in the living room. I couldn’t hold it anymore, and my closet-sized room didn’t contain any appropriate receptacles, so I just let my bladder go on the bed where I was sitting. And then, for lack of anything else to do, started bawling.
Brandi was pissed about the interruption and furious about the urine. $0.75 per load at the laundromat was a luxury we could only afford once a month, where we each piled up our sheets, towels, underwear worn inside out so we could get two-days worth of use from each pair, and every item of clothing we owned. We got one load each, and anything that didn’t fit stayed dirty. Laundry day had been the previous week, so I still had two-and-a-half more weeks to sleep in the soiled sheets.
I guess that wasn’t punishment enough, though. Once her boyfriend ran out, apparently turned off by screamers, she backhanded me hard enough to split my lip and knock out a baby tooth. I wasn’t old enough at the time to recognize that this was inappropriate parental behavior, much less abuse, but I was old enough to recognize her meanness and that I didn’t want to grow up to be anything like her. I’ve never thought much about what that really entails though, beyond getting an education and not becoming an abusive alcoholic, or how it pertains to parenthood. Whether I should avoid having kids in an attempt to break the cycle. Or whether I should become a doting parent despite my lack of parental, or even functioning adult, role models. It certainly isn’t a dilemma I thought that I’d be faced with at eighteen.
“Can we talk about this?” I plead.
“About what? The logistics? Don’t worry about it, the waitress who works the morning shift at Pete’s is going to take me. She knows a clinic where they do it.”
“That’s not what I meant. I want to talk about whether we’re making the right decision.”
She finally looks me in the eye. Her expression can only be described as outraged. “What decision, Levi? There’s no choice to be made here. I can’t stay in my house with a baby. Are you going to move me and an infant into your dorm? Watch him in between football practices and classes while I try to scrape by with a job that doesn’t even pay minimum wage?”
I’ve never been religious, and I’ve always found pro-lifers to be over-zealous and intrusive, so I don’t know why I’m so averse to the idea of her having an abortion. Ultimately, it’s Charlie’s body and, therefore, also her decision. I want her to realize that it is, in fact, a decision though, not something forced upon her by our circumstances. I need her to know that I would be willing to do whatever it takes to make this work. A realization that comes as a shock, even to myself.
“Can we please just take some time to think about this? A lot of people in way worse situations than us have kids.”
“Exactly. And those kids end up like us. Poor, angry, and repeating the cycle.” Her words are caustic, but I can tell that she’s softening. The way she’s looking at me tells me that she doesn’t want to do this any more than I do.
Guys are starting to trickle out of the locker room, and we’re no longer alone.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” I suggest.
“I can’t. I need to get back, I told my dad I was running to the washroom.”
I reach for her, but she’s already backing away towards the parking lot.
“Do you work next Saturday?” I ask, suddenly overcome with desperation.
“The breakfast shift.”
“I’ll pick you up after. Promise me you won’t do anything until then?”
“Ok.”
“Promise me?”
I know that I’ll have to respect any decision she makes, but I don’t want her to make it alone.
“I promise.”
She turns, striding away quickly without saying goodbye. I want to chase after her, but my legs are much too weak. In fact, they give way beneath me, and I find myself sliding down the cinder-block wall of the locker room and sitting down hard in the dirt.
I don’t know how long I sit there. But it’s long enough for the parking lot to clear out. Even the lingering UT fans, celebrating by shotgunning beers and high-fiving each other repeatedly, have departed, giving me curious glances, but probably just chalking my state up to the loss. I know I should leave, but I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to have to explain where I’ve been to Jeremiah.
“Levi? Are you alright?”
It takes me a few seconds to recognize who’s speaking to me.
“Levi?” The urgency in Coach Carson’s voice brings me back to the present.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You don’t look fine. That was a hard hit. I think we should go to the medical center.”
“I guess I’m not fine. But it has nothing to do with the hit.” In fact, I’d completely forgotten about it. Even the throbbing in my temples has taken a backseat to the unsettled feeling in my stomach.
“What’s going on?” He drops to his knees beside me with a slight grunt.
“I’m having a baby. Maybe.”
I have no idea what prompted me to tell him. Maybe the hit did do some damage to my brain.
“Maybe? As in there is a girl who may or may not be pregnant?”
“There’s definitely a pregnancy…” I’m trying to word this delicately, but there’s really no way to euphemistically talk about it. “I just don’t know if she’s keeping it.”
“You know that you can’t make that decision for her though, right?”
“Yeah. But I still want to convince her that we can do this. That we’d make good parents.”
The shock on his face is evident, but he conceals it quickly. He obviously wasn’t expecting me to be the one who’s pushing for having the child.
“Do you love her?”
I reply without hesitation, “More than anything.”
“Does she love you?”
“I don’t know.” I think she used to, but that was before I left, before she knew the position in which I’d left her.
“Why doesn’t she want to have the baby?”
“She doesn’t think it would work. That we don’t have the money. That I won’t have the time or the desire to be a dad. That she would just be a burden.”
“Is any of that true?”
“Just the money part. I came to university to make a life for myself, get a job with a good salary and benefits.”
“I won’t presume to know what the right answer is, Levi,” he sighs. “What I do know though, is that it’s important to make a good living. But not at the expense of making a good life. And bringing a new life into the world is pretty damn special. Especially with someone you love.”
Chapter 17
I’ve never thought that much about fatherhood or what it means. Probably because I’ve never had a father to complain about, or compare to the other dads I know, the way that I have with Brandi. Involved fathers were an anomaly in my town, so I never felt like I was missing out on much. An absent father is preferable to an abusive one.
Fatherhood isn’t as all-encompassing as motherhood. It’s a role that can be slipped into and out of in between meetings, hunting trips, and boys’ nights. A male with children is a man before he’s a father - his own individual. A female with children is a mother above all else. Women define themselves by their relationships; men define themselves by their accomplishments.
I worry that by asking Charlie to keep the baby, I’m asking a much bigger sacrifice of her than I am of myself. But I intend to ask nonetheless. The more that I’ve thought about it over the last few days, the more convinced I am that it’s what I want. Seeing Charlie, even briefly, reaffirmed how much I need her. How unfulfilled I’ve been without her here, even though I have everything else that I’ve always wanted. I don’t know how better to convey this to her than by convincing her to have the baby: an unseverable link between the two of us.
