Where We Fall: A Novel
Page 8
Rose looks twentysomething, but the sadness around her eyes has aged her. Her hair was probably once a vibrant, shiny blond. It is dull and combed forward to cover her face.
“You want to know why I do this to myself?” she asks. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
“No,” I tell her, “believe me, I’m done throwing stones.”
She says, “Physical pain feels so much better than emotional pain.”
Her wisdom grips me in a powerful, unavoidable way. I get up, and she lets me wrap a thick shawl around her bare shoulders. She softens and takes my hand. Perhaps the time here has trimmed her thorns. I think about the two of us and the circumstances that brought us here.
“My mother told all her fancy friends that I’ve gone to some program in Europe. Like a Habitat for Humanity for rich people. I still get urges sometimes. But I know I can’t succumb, so the most I do is scratch myself with my fingers. We’ve found a better release for my blood. When I’m able, I’m going to donate blood to the blood bank. I figure if I want to let it out, I might as well give it to someone who needs it.”
I want to let things out too. Only what I need to give will hurt too many people.
I admire this young girl’s bravery. If we weren’t roommates in this facility, we probably never would have had the opportunity to meet. I am no different from Rose. Rose is no different from me.
CHAPTER TEN
RYAN
When Juliana was just a baby she fought us, and herself, for sleep. Neither pacifiers, a bottle, nor Baby Einstein lullabies could lull her to sleep. Abby took it as a personal affront to her mothering, which would send her into a fit of despair. I’d bundle Juliana up and drive her to my office at the high school with a stack of history papers that needed grading. Once Jules fell asleep, she was knocked out for the night. I could easily transfer her, and used the time to finish the papers in silence.
My office was a makeshift space by the locker room that overlooked the field. Listening to baby Juliana suckle in her sleep, her tiny breaths, was the lullaby I needed to get through some pretty awful essays. I cherished those nights as much as Abby detested them. The field I loved, together with my little girl—my heart was as full as it could be.
Sitting here at my desk, things have changed, while others have remained the same. Now my little girl’s not so little. She’s grown up, and she loves a boy from this field. And with him missing, my girl is feeling the loss and unanswered questions. I look beyond the window and beyond the sleeping grass. The lights are out and the grounds are still and quiet.
Thinking about E.J. and football keeps me from the other things that I’ve become good at hiding. Decisions and doubts are nothing compared to the magic of these lights. Ask any player, coach, or fan at a stadium football field, and they’ll tell you this: the scene is electric, having much to do with the beaming flares that ignite the sky. Friday-night lights, they call them, and they sprinkle the stadium and its guests with stardust.
Friday-night football games symbolize different things to different people, though all can agree that the promises that fly above the field are what make dreams come true. Whether you’re sitting in the stands or playing your heart out on a field to guarantee yourself a spot on a college team, or you’re the girl being thrown in the sky on the shoulders of the other cheerleaders, or the guy toting the bassoon around during halftime, the atmosphere sizzles, and the sport touches you in some way.
I have always spoken of football as a way of life. For my players and me, it is not just a sport. The respect I command on the field is the same discipline I expect off the field. The young stud who shoots the finger after a supposed bad call from the ref is the same guy who won’t be able to deal with mockery in the hallways. I teach my boys how to handle a football with dexterity and rhythm while facing a forbidding offensive line, all the while practicing self-control.
It may sound contradictory to expect these young loose cannons to exhibit fearlessness on the field, to run into a burning building, and then to know when it is time to walk away from an unsafe situation. It is a skill that some master; others don’t.
I have coached a lot of boys over the years, though none like Evan James. His body is more machine than flesh, surpassing most every record for players his age across the country. He has already been offered over a dozen scholarships to some big-name schools. After careful consideration and hours spent in our kitchen, Evan James and I, together, signed with the University of Alabama.
Remembering a similar day when I committed to Davidson College was the highlight on a reel I visited often. My father was beside me with tears in his eyes. You never want to see a grown man cry, no matter the circumstance, but tears of pride are an exception. E.J. has all the mechanics, drive, and ambition to be a top athlete. The only thing he’s missing—what I had on that afternoon when signing on the dotted line—is a dad.
There are pockets of Charlotte known for hardship and havoc. Often the two are interchangeable. E.J.’s one fault of birth was being born into an underprivileged family. E.J.’s oldest brother, Rodney, is serving a twenty-five-year sentence for narcotics distribution. The middle brother, the one born three years before E.J., Devon, is teetering on the brink of the same incarceration. Not even a short stint on my field could sway him from a life of trouble. E.J. was the baby, and although birth order assumed he should be taken care of by doting, mature siblings, it was he who was the caregiver.
Ruby Whittaker was a chunk of a woman who had withdrawn from her marriage after her husband resorted to the occasional left hook to show his appreciation for her. The first time she sat in my office, she was like a rusty faucet dripping with tales of their hardship. The years had not been kind to her, and she wore her stress on aged caramel skin. Ruby was terrified of her husband. Ellis Whittaker was a strong-willed man who had raised Rodney and Devon to use the bare minimum to achieve maximum results. Lying, cheating, and breaking the law were acceptable means of survival, viable means to reach an end. Those hurt in the process were bystanders, casualties of a socioeconomic war against their troubled neighborhood.
Why does anyone choose to marry a cruel-hearted partner? Ellis wasn’t always that way. The way Ruby tells it, Ellis’s parents were taken away when he was five. A car crash killed them instantly, leaving their only son in the shuffling hands of multiple foster homes. Ellis’s pain ran deep; the foster parents mistook his silence for contempt. The lack of attention and love stripped the young boy of any good. This hardened version of Ellis got Ruby pregnant when they were high school juniors, and while there were signs of the loving boy who longed to be loved, there weren’t enough of them. Marrying Ruby and having a child would provide accessories to his crimes. A team of thieves. By the time baby Rodney was eight, he had assisted in four drug deals; by ten, he had been the lookout for six burglaries.
Ruby was trapped and her children were pledges. Each time she tried to leave, Ellis would raise his hand and threaten. The years had tightened his hold on her, his temper finely tuned to blast through their house and seize her in its choking grip. When she considered the reasons to flee, E.J. was always at the top of the list. She could never leave him in Ellis’s care. E.J. was special.
What set him apart from the other boys had nothing to do with the fact that he mirrored his mother the most. From an early age, Ruby knew he was more her blood than the others. Call it a mother’s intuition, a connection that runs so deep it is immune to DNA, but E.J. distinguished himself early on as her son. When Ellis took the three boys to the mall and coached E.J. at the ripe age of ten how to scam the elderly or distract security so they could steal, E.J. protested in a way that set Ellis on fire. When he was thirteen, he unknowingly assisted his brothers in a scam while sitting in a car outside a bank. When E.J. found out what they had done, he gave Rodney and Devon the silent treatment for a week, which drove the boys crazy. At fourteen, his passion was discovered in a rather unusual way. When the cops chased E.J. and his brothers from an abandoned wa
rehouse, E.J. found a measure to his limbs he had never noticed before. It was as though his body had arisen from a deep sleep, and it propelled him yards ahead of the others at lightning-fast speed.
The afternoon E.J. stepped into my office, I couldn’t grasp the enormous weight on this young boy’s shoulders. Nor could you ever watch him race across the field and know that he was carrying a burden that would slow most boys down. Instead, E.J. was graceful and fast.
He said, “My daddy wants to use my speed for bad things. My mama says I should put it toward good.” Ruby Whittaker sat beside her son. Sad eyes peeked out of their sockets. The woman was terrified she might get caught defying her husband.
I have seen my share of these kids, deprived and discouraged. Their brains are hardwired into rough and tough bodies with the belief that sports will give them their lucky break and a ticket out of town. So many factors come into play for ultimate success. Six of my players have gone on to NFL careers. It isn’t enough to have skill or talent, though. Dedication, discipline, and drive are vital to athletic success. When E.J. and his mom sat before me in my office overlooking the players’ field, I saw a hunger in E.J.’s eyes and a wish in Ruby’s. This was a mother who would scour the trenches of evil in order to protect him.
“Let’s go outside and see what you’ve got.”
Four years have passed since that afternoon. Four years of watching E.J. score touchdowns, break records, and lead our team to victory. Once his father intuited that his seemingly useless boy was going to be a pricey commodity, a potential NFL ball player, all hell broke loose. By then, Ruby had finally found the courage to leave Ellis, and she and E.J. had moved across town to a tiny, squalid apartment. Ruby had been working multiple jobs to save for her escape, and she squired E.J. away on his sixteenth birthday, a gift she said would last him for many years. Ellis chuckled when she slammed the door behind her, calling her good for nothing.
Battles ensued. Ruby tried her best to keep Ellis away from E.J., but Ellis Whittaker would show up at practices drunk and angry, belittling his son. When bullying him didn’t work, he attempted humanity, which on someone like Ellis looked insincere and foolish. Then he would sic Devon on him. Devon was E.J.’s Achilles’ heel, his soft spot in a hardened shell. E.J. was a young, impressionable teen, and though he chose a different path from his siblings and father, he felt a nagging sense of responsibility. “They’re my family,” he would tell me when I found him taking risks, getting into scuffles, committing petty crimes that fortunately didn’t stick—all while trying to save his brothers from themselves. There was love, and there was hate. So deep, the two were indistinguishable from each other. Devon was a pesky reminder of their home where the three boys had once shared a bed and tossed a football. E.J. missed the raucous banter and practical jokes. Devon told him he needed him. Then he would promise to get a real job, and E.J. would think maybe this time it would be different. But it never was. Ellis controlled Devon in a way he couldn’t unhitch.
Despite his family’s shortcoming, E.J. was one supremely talented, resilient boy: Evan James Whittaker, the star of the Pine Ridge Giants football team.
I should have picked up on E.J.’s behavior in the days leading to his flight from Sheriff Buford. Usually steady and bright, his vigor had stalled. I had seen it before in his eyes. It wasn’t the usual moodiness that accompanied a visit from his estranged family and shadowed him around the field. This was something else. Living with Abby and her moods all these years has made me immune to things I should be ashamed of. There were so many false alarms, cries for help, and bouts with hypochondria that I ultimately stopped recognizing when something serious was about to happen. So I should have seen that something was chipping away at E.J. I had thought about approaching him. He always responded to me like a sponge. Whatever instruction I threw in his direction, whether about life or football, he absorbed and put into practice. Hardships aside, he was a good study and eager to learn. And I gave him something that no other man would—unconditional love.
Things happened so fast with Abby’s hospitalization, though, that I never got that chance to reach out to E.J., to stop the train from crashing. The day spiraled away from me.
And now, E.J.’s on the run.
Wayne has often asked me how I manage a team of teenage boys with more muscle than mind when I can’t reason with my own wife. I cast him off as being witty, but the question has nagged at me more than once. If only I could get inside Abby’s head and understand the inner workings. But I’ve never felt, from early on, that we really understand each other. Now she’s gone, and I am here, the place she has referred to as “my mistress,” my team, and I know her absence is the beginning, or the continuation, of the rift that has split our marriage.
I’m about to lock up when my cell phone rings. It’s Buford. E.J.’s turned himself in.
Relief washes over me. “I’m on my way,” I tell him. “You tell E.J. to hang tough.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JULIANA
When E.J. was born, his mother loved him so much she gave him two first names, not one: Evan James.
And when the new school boundaries sliced through our lives, our house was one block away from what would have sent me to Pine Ridge with him. One block. But because Dad remained on the faculty, calling the exodus to a newer, shinier school cowardly and disloyal, our mismatched lives were due to cross. And they did.
I know I should be concentrating on Mama and missing her and being scared for her, but E.J. occupies every available space inside me. There’s just no room for Mama right now. I think about this while my headphones are stuffed in my ears, and my iPhone is playing all the songs that bring E.J. close. My friends try to get me to come over, but I’m not in the mood for sitting around and Snapchatting when I have no stories of my own to share. I’ve been dialing E.J. for days and texting him all kinds of crazy messages. His silence has me in a frenzy. Being in my room only makes it worse, so I head for my parents’ room down the hall and climb onto their bed, dissolving into the soft comforter.
E.J. and I met at a back-to-school bash. He was standing there in a corner with the football players, bulky juniors with attitudes as big as their egos. He was wearing my lucky number on his jersey, eighteen. The party, in the cozy neighborhood off Stettler View Drive, was jam-packed. The line for the bathroom was twenty people deep when E.J. came up behind me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and whispered that he was ready to take me home. The look on his face when I turned around was at first shock, and then it transformed into something else.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”
Whether he knew I was Coach’s daughter or not, he didn’t let it show. “There’s another bathroom upstairs,” he whispered.
Every impulse in my body told me to walk away from this boy with the shaved head and cappuccino-colored skin, but instinct guided my legs to follow him upstairs to an abandoned bathroom.
“Shouldn’t you find that someone you’re supposed to take home?”
He shrugged it off, his quiet telling me not to pry. I had been warned as a teenager to never go anywhere alone with a boy who dwarfed me in size and stature, but there was something about E.J. that told me he wasn’t nearly as secure as he sounded. The lock on the door was broken, and E.J. assured me he wouldn’t leave without me.
After that first night, E.J. would show up everywhere I went.
“My daddy’s not going to like you hanging around here,” I would chastise him, with the early emergence of my soon to be “resting bitch face.” I was working at Victoria’s Secret in the Southpark Mall, and it was bad enough one of my father’s controversial, gorgeous players was eyeballing me, but across the aisle from sexy underthings—words I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud—was sure to irritate him. I would be there after school, folding and refolding those lacy numbers into these ridiculously tight cubbyholes, and he would hover as if I were folding something as everyday as T-shirts at Abercrombie.
I smiled at him instead of sending him away. I did it first out of curiosity, and then it became something bigger than even I could understand. I was terrified of the way E.J. made me feel, and it wasn’t the kind of fear I could turn away from. Other girls acted silly and different when he was near. I didn’t want to be like them, but something about his presence and his eyes and the way he curved his lips told me that I was. I felt goofy and girly around him. My laugh sounded decibels louder than I ever remembered it being. He occupied my thoughts in a way that other boys never could. Marlee would always tell me that love doesn’t make sense: “It just grabs your heart and pulls you in directions you’ve never been.” She’d say it plays tricks with your mind: “You’ll see things brighter and clearer and feel them harder and deeper.” When E.J. would circle around me in the store, I knew she was right. He was breaking me down, piece by piece. Whatever love was, it was something I knew I wanted.
“I’m not afraid of your daddy,” he whispered at me. It felt like a tickle escaped this overgrown boy’s body and slid down my back.
E.J. is five feet, eleven inches and two hundred twenty pounds. He runs forty yards in four point forty-eight seconds. I know this because I have studied every newspaper article about him and memorized his stats better than I will ever know calculus. He followed me out of the mall while the security guard eyed me, trying not to act as though he was concerned about a young girl being followed by an oversized boy. When he got closer and saw it was E.J. Whittaker pursuing me, he smiled and gave him a high five. After he got even closer and saw that I was Coach Holden’s daughter, his surprise smoldered with a warning.