“C’mon in, boys,” I say, signaling to the team.
The temperature has dropped a few degrees, though I don’t feel the chill against my skin. I look up to the fifty-yard line and count five rows up to the spot reserved for Abby. It’s not a formalized spot, but for the past dozen or more years, the crowd has respected that proprietary seat in Coach’s palace. This is my kingdom, the field my shrine, and my girl in her designated seat is something I have come to rely upon.
Shutting out her absence, I am focused and in control. I stand before my team and say the words they need to guide them through the next forty-eight minutes. Though I am not a religious man, a coach’s words are gospel. They can impact and incite, or deflate. It’s both what I say and how I say it. The kids know my mood through the arc of my sentences, the tone of my voice. They know me well, and I, them. Despite what’s going on at home, I need to parlay my words into the role of actor. I do this for the boys because they depend on me.
The team huddles around me. Wayne joins my side. The crowd has grown and spills out onto the field. ESPNU is on the sidelines waiting to film the game for national television. The noise is loud; the band plays the same song again and again, but spirit laces through the chords and makes it less annoying. I survey the boys. They are padded up and look larger and scarier than some of the college teams. My boys are black, white, but mostly poor. Colson Pepper was arrested for shoplifting at the Food Lion when he tried to sneak a twenty-five-pound turkey out underneath his girlfriend’s dress; Tate Williams has been in and out of several foster homes; Braylon Jones is failing eighty percent of his classes. A few have beaten the odds and excelled in school. A few have had less chaotic upbringings, but they are few and far between.
This is important, because my team has risen from the ashes. I have watched the morale and confidence strip from their faces as the city around them lost faith and hope. They were expected to fail. They were expected to lose. It took us years to get inside their heads and to break through some of their most guarded exteriors. To some of them, Coach Harrow and I are the only people they can count on, the only ones who say they’ll show up, and then do. When you build a team, it is easy to get caught up in the trappings of physical talent. No one can coach without it. But a team that wins championships is one with heart. And that comes with trust and a mental acuity that trumps bodily muscle. I am proud of these boys. They have overcome tough circumstances in ways most never will. Now it is up to me to inspire them. They will rely on my steadiness and rationale to make sense of their imperfect worlds. Together, on the field, is where we become unified as one. We are all the same. And we have one common goal on Friday night: to win.
“Coach Holden,” comes the gruff voice from behind me. Sheriff Buford knows better than to bother me on the field while I’m meeting with my boys. “Coach Holden,” he says again. I survey my players, looking for the one who looks away.
I am just about to move these boys into playing mode. It is a shift that will block out the noise and get them to concentrate on the task ahead. We are playing West Meck, and they are good, but never as good as us.
All eyes are on me. Except E.J.’s.
“Coach Holden, my apologies, sir,” Buford says, as he takes off his hat. We don’t shake hands. This is not a friendly visit. “We need to talk to one of your players.” How many times have I sat in Sheriff Buford’s office bailing out one of my kids?
“Now, Sheriff?”
“I’m sorry, Coach. You know I’d never disrupt y’all out here unless we had no choice.” Sheriff Buford puts his hat back on, changes his mind, and takes it off again. He’s in uniform, so the crowds have quieted down and all eyes are on the field. The ESPNU crew respectfully turns away from us. This is not the distraction my boys need. Seeing a cop throws them off balance and zaps that energy that was about to fuel them through four quarters.
Buford, a thick man with spiky dark hair, eyes me with cautious disregard. He finds my star player and says, “E.J. Whittaker, we need to ask you some questions.”
And like Usain Bolt, E.J. is off and running.
Men are not equipped to be out of control. And football players build careers around control. I am powerless watching my boys grapple with what they’ve just witnessed. Buford sprints after E.J., but he doesn’t stand a chance against this kid’s unnatural speed. E.J. is across the field and over the fence before any of us even blink. A few of the boys holler at him to stop; the others are too shocked to speak. The ripple effect of what they’ve all witnessed spreads without mercy across our field. My boys are sluggish and hunched at the shoulders, their faces spooked and disbelieving.
“Daddy! Daddy!” come the shouts of my Juliana. E.J. is already long past the crowd of spectators and gawkers who opened up a space in the crowd for him to whip through.
“Ryan, go after him,” says Wayne, shifting from coach to friend.
“Daddy! Please!” Juliana is crying and screaming and pulling on my shirt.
I have to grab her elbows and shake her to get her to calm down.
“You promised you would always watch out for him. You have to help him.”
“Jules, look at me. Look in my eyes.”
She stops crying, and the streaks on her face are filled with dread. Everything she shared with E.J. is dripping down her face.
“I’ll take care of this. I promise you.”
She begins to sob again as my words wrap around her, and she releases her fears into the air. Her daddy will collect them and put them somewhere safe.
“They’ll hurt him, Daddy. He has nobody!”
We both know E.J.’s mother Ruby is working her second job of the day, and likely has no idea her son may have just committed a major offense.
“We’ll figure this out.”
Juliana nods and wipes her nose. She hugs me hard this time, harder than she ever has in front of my players.
By now, the boys are on one knee, the standard position when one of their own is down. They are praying, silently and desperately. I can feel their collective worry strumming around me. Sirens blare in the distance.
I draw strength from somewhere deep within and rouse my team with the thundering clap of my hands. “Boys, we have forty-eight minutes. You focus on those minutes. Nothing more. Nothing less. You find the fighter in you and you pull him out. The full forty-eight. Now get out there and hustle.”
Concentrating on the game is tough. The question Should I or shouldn’t I go after E.J.? is pulling at me. But now is not the time to abandon my boys with a league title coming up the pipe. Stupid, E.J., I think. I set the thought aside and do what I do best. And for a short while, I don’t think about anything but football. My wife is convalescing in the hospital, my star player is on the run, and my daughter is alone and frightened. Yet I coach my boys to a win, despite it being a tough match-up. I am proud of my young men and tell them so.
Many coaches will tell you their players learn the most from loss—that it builds character and resiliency. And there are those who say you’ll learn more by watching an athlete win. How he reacts to his opponents, how he gloats or talks smack or shakes hands with integrity. These responses speak a lot about character. And without character, you can never be a successful ball player. I’m not sure what tonight’s win means. My boys hold their heads high, though their hearts are with their brother E.J.
“Daddy?” She is standing there, my teenage daughter with a child’s frightened face.
The last of the boys has departed the locker room, and I am sitting on a faded bench. Her eyes remind me of the day she was born, their light green searching for answers, unable to calibrate.
“Jules,” I say, as she folds her crumpled body onto my lap. I bury my face in her hair, a rare moment when she allows me some affection. I will take it. I will latch on to it, ingesting all the parts of her that have escaped me in the years she pried herself away.
“I’m scared,” she tells me. I’m not sure if she is referring to her mama or her b
oyfriend. When she whispers, “I’m sorry,” I know at once it is E.J. who has pushed Jules’s mother from the forefront and absorbed her worry.
Jules has been apologizing to me for months for falling for a member of my team. It was a strict rule in our home and on my field, and so the quintessential forbidden fruit. Their growing infatuation defied my refusals, and before long, even I came to understand and enjoy the refreshing affection of their relationship. Sure I was worried about E.J.’s background and how the fringes of his life would mingle with hers, but what Juliana lacks in grades, she makes up for in sensibility. The girl has a strong, capable head on her shoulders. Perhaps that comes from living with a woman who is so entirely unsure of herself. Jules knew early on who she was and exactly what she wanted.
E.J. swept into her life when neither of us was looking. He promised her things that scared and excited her. Here was a boy who doubled her in size, was flawed and imperfect, but managed to fit deep within her soul. I know Jules had struggled with the pressure to conform, to be like other girls her age. And with a mother who couldn’t give her what she needed, it wasn’t always easy for her to find her smile. But my girl changed when she was around E.J. I knew this when I watched them together. I had never seen her happier.
She is hunched over on my lap, and I wish I could reach inside her and fix all that’s broken. Though it’s a breezy fall night, she still smells like summer, and I brush her hair away from her face and feel the smooth texture of her skin against my fingers. I am not sure when she stopped being my little girl. One day she was squirming in my arms while I rocked her to sleep, and now she is almost a woman who astounds me with the magnitude of all she holds in her heart. She is heavier than I remember, and it has nothing to do with Cheetos and midnight pizza with her friends. My daughter is filled with the burdens of those she has chosen to love.
I tell her I need to go. She sits upright, burying herself into my shoulder, and her long lashes are covered in tears. I try not to focus on her sadness as she begs me to please go find E.J., mouthing his name in perfect synchronicity with the drops sliding down her cheeks. “He needs you more than she does,” she says, though how she understands this at such a young age amazes me. Abby and I, we may not have been the perfect match, our story not quite ripped from the pages of a favorite fairy tale, but we did do something right by our daughter.
“Jules, I will. I’ll go to the station and talk to Buford.” I steal a glance at my watch and wonder whether I should ask her to go to her mother, or better yet, tell her to go home and get some rest. No matter how old your kids are, it’s impossible to stop protecting them. I know she won’t sleep. I know she’ll wait to hear from me and from E.J. Only then will her world turn upright again.
There is an urgency gnawing at me, and I feel it permeating Juliana as well. “Daddy, he’s not answering his phone. What if he’s hurt?” And I know all the possible scenarios, but not until she holds me a little less close will I let her go. She’s got to be worried about her mother, but that’s harder for her to express. Worrying about E.J. protects her from the troubles of her own home; she sinks into his world rather comfortably.
She softens, and I feel her grasp loosen on my jacket. Part of me wants to stay with her and forbid her from ever crossing into adulthood. I could keep her insulated in our cocoon, where she would always remain my little girl. But since I can’t, I will give her what she wants and what she can count on: my word. Something she hasn’t always been able to get from those around her.
It is in that moment of oneness with my child that I notice the bruise across her lower back. She stands and reaches for her jacket, turns away from me, and tosses the quilted fabric around her shoulders. The movement is so fluid, I almost miss it. She raises her arms, and I am staring at the ugly shades of purple and black. Reaching for her waist, I hear myself shout, “Juliana, what is that?” But what I’m thinking is, What the hell?
The way my daughter retreats is a wordless response I despise. “Juliana?”
She descends deeper into the jacket, and her hands pull down her shirt, though the damage is already done. She frees strands of her dark golden hair from beneath the collar, and it falls like fur across her shoulders. I want to grab it and scream.
“Who did this to you?” The revelation sickens me. “Did he do this to you?”
Juliana is not quite my height, but when she has something to say I swear I am looking straight into her eyes. “How could you? How could you blame E.J.?” She is shrieking now, and this time the sympathy washes out of me. It is replaced with venom. It is so vile, I think I might throw up right there on the locker-room floor. Juliana whimpers, and I count to ten, a deflection that affords me time to consider the possibility that I’m wrong.
E.J.’s locker is behind us, and Juliana stomps over the pile of towels the boys left on the floor and makes her way over to its door. She opens it and quickly slams it shut. Then she proceeds to slam it open and closed again, until all the pain has receded in the gray metal. I watch her, even though I want to go to her and make her stop.
“He didn’t mean it!” she shouts at me.
I try to be objective. I try to be her father. E.J., for all his troubles, has never shown violent tendencies. His gentle side contradicts his ferocity on the field. Only now I can’t help but imagine my fingers around his throat.
“It was an accident, Daddy. Please, please, we’ll talk about it later. He needs you.”
“I may kill him,” I say to her flushed cheeks.
“You have to believe me. He didn’t mean for this to happen. E.J. would never hurt me. Just go to him. I’m begging you, Daddy. Please!”
Never before have I been more conflicted than in that moment. I want to destroy the boy who holds my little girl’s heart. Her resolve cuts into me.
“Please,” she says. “I’ll tell you everything. First, you have to find him. I would never ask you to help someone who hurts me. You’ve gotta believe me.”
And I love her so much that I turn from her and do as she asks.
CHAPTER FIVE
ABBY
I have never missed one of Ryan’s games. Despite our differences and my state of mind, I show up. The players and coaches have a host of amulets, and I am his. But today, when he stamped me with his hasty look before clearing the hospital room with Juliana, he made it known that he was prepared to play this one without me.
Watching them exit, hand in hand, left me sad and relieved. I hated having them see me like this, although, at the same time, it was nice not to be scrutinized. When Ryan and Juliana are in each other’s presence, I am an outsider, watching my life through someone else’s eyes. Juliana once used to adore me the way she now worships her father. My inadequacies pushed her away, and it is something I have not been able to change, but I’ve tried. If only I could jump inside someone else’s skin and replace my missing parts with better, stronger ones for her. It is hard not to hate yourself when you are convinced you are the cause of the suffering of those around you.
The nurse brings me dinner, and I shudder at the sight. I push the tray away without even pulling off the plastic wrap that’s meant to keep it fresh and edible, but it looks otherwise. The hospital room is unfriendly and cold. I look around and see the window, and my first thought is, How high? And the next, What if I jump? But the drugs have kicked in, and even when I play these masochistic tricks with myself, I fail to elicit a reaction, because I’m not in charge right now; Mr. Ativan is.
The medicine, combined with boredom, puts me to sleep. When I open my eyes, I am startled to find Babs standing over me. My eyes clamp shut, and I open them again. I must be dreaming. But she’s still there.
“Babs?”
Babs was therapist number three, and she holds the record for all my helpers. Six years we were together, though I haven’t seen her in about four. I can’t imagine why she’s here.
“They told me you refused to eat dinner. You’re really pushing this suicide thing.”
&nbs
p; Babs is a delightfully mean little person. She is five feet nothing with bleached blonde hair cropped close to her head. Unlike most psychologists in their ivory towers, Babs practices out of a dump in downtown Charlotte. It’s not a great neighborhood, but Babs is tough and no one bothers to mess with her in her spandex workout gear. So why did I choose her once? She is far from our home and inner circles, and no one would catch me visiting her. There would be no chance of taking a seat in her run-down office and running into the PTA president.
It’s hard to turn from the bright, satiny pants outlining the abnormally trim figure of a seventy-year-old grandmother. I can’t get over how she keeps herself so fit.
“Abigail.”
Babs always called me Abigail despite my efforts to interject Abby into every one of our conversations. I believe one of her granddaughters shares the name, and it’s familial to her, or maybe she is letting me know who’s boss in her prickly militant style.
“Abigail,” she repeats while I stare at how the years have hardly changed her. “What on earth is going on? Ryan called me. I was his last resort. Thanks for that, by the way. You know I’m retired now? But I got a soft spot for ya, kid.”
Her appearance is jarring. Her eyes show new wrinkles, and I try not to stare. I am touched that she’s come all this way, though I don’t know how to express it. If I speak, my gratitude might reduce me to a puddle of tears. I remember vividly the sessions in her office when Juliana was a toddler, telling her how hard being a mom was, all the while my thoughts a looping reel of What if I leave her in the car? What if I hurt her? No matter what I had heard about the health-care system taking care of the mentally ill, I knew that if I told Babs my crazy thoughts, I would never see my family again.
“You never showed suicidal tendencies, Abigail. You didn’t exhibit any of the signs or behavior. This has to be a mistake. I will take this as a personal affront if I failed you.”
Instead of placating or pitying me, Babs makes this about her capability. And as soon as the words tumble from the tight skin of her chin and neck, she grabs my hand and yells, “I will not watch you lie in this bed and throw your life away, young lady. You’ve got a man who loves you, a daughter who needs you, and this—this stunt—is just unacceptable!”
Where We Fall: A Novel Page 3
