“’Well, that’s great.”
“But I still want to catch the winning touchdown in the football game. It doesn’t have to be the winning, as I think Laporte will destroy us. So I will settle for just a touchdown pass. If that doesn’t work out I will settle for catching any pass.”
“Alright,” I replied. “I think that is very doable.”
“Okay. Then all is forgiven. I am glad you are back home on the couch and sorry my routine wasn’t powerful enough to fix what is wrong between you and mom although it did precipitate Coach Williams divorce and future union with Miss Fielding.”
“Well, I wish it had fixed things up but it was a very good dance.”
“Yes. Now I am now going to spend time with my counter-culture girlfriend Amy who everyone thinks is a lesbian, but she is actually Goth, which refers to a black magic movement involving witches and goblins, but she doesn’t practice witchcraft. We are probably going to smoke cigarettes and walk around aimlessly listening to counter-culture anthems or rap and hang around outside a drugstore or find a decaying mall.” “That’s great, Toby. Just don’t smoke too much.”
“I don’t like to smoke. The Surgeon General said it can cause lung cancer and birth defects. Since I am not a female, I do not care about the birth defects unless of course it was my child, in which case I would advise the female not to smoke. Anyway I just hold the cigarette and fake smoking by blowing it out of my mouth and not inhaling.”
“A good strategy.” I held out my arms. “How about a hug?”
“I don’t like to hug, but this is a special reconciliation hug, so okay.”
So we hugged and it felt really good.
ALL IN
COACH
YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU got maybe twenty or thirty good years left you start to think about the what ifs. Linda and I were laying in her bed in her condo and she asked if I could be anything in world what would it be and I said a real football coach for a high school that could win games. I didn’t tell her that from there I would go on to college and then pro.
“Then why don’t you do that?”
“You have to know people.”
“Then get to know people, Ronald.”
So I don’t know. Maybe it was watching the Laporte coach going up and down his sideline so sure they were going to kick our ass that I did what I did. I had been watching Clampet in practice and with his height and long arms he probably had about three inches on the defender. We had tried to get him the ball a bunch of times but he couldn’t hang on to it. Maybe this was the time. Poor Randy. His arm is spaghetti after a week of throwing countless passes to the kid. I must say, I have a newfound respect for the little prick.
I looked at the clock.
“Toby. Go in for Dobbs,” I said to him.
I watch that gangly Clampet kid run right to the Laporte side.
“Wrong huddle. Hey Clampet. Wrong huddle!”
Toby then goes back to ours and I shake my head.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
I shrug and send in the play with Randy. It’s a bomb to Clampet in the end zone. We are getting our ass kicked by Laporte, so I am hoping they will relax their coverage. All Randy has to do is get it to the kid and then this madness is over. My team claps and I watch them line up. Clampet is on the far right. Randy takes the snap and I think about that day when I walked on to the Green Bay Packers Lambeau field and I wonder again for the thousandth time if I gave my all. Then I think about Linda’s house I just finished moving into. It’s like that old movie Risky Business. Sometimes you got to just say, what the fuck.
HUT ONE,
HUT TWO
RANDY
THE CLAMPET KID HAD come up to me at practice. I thought he might take a swing with everything that happened before. But he just stood there with that helmet on top of his head.
“I want you to know that even though you are my nemesis we can work together for the good of the team. I am no longer interested in being popular.”
I don’t know what the fuck a nemesis is but I just shrug.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I know now my father put you and Macy up to making me feel like the popular guy at school but I want you to know that is not important to me anymore. I am more like Marlon Brando in Rebel Without a Cause or On the Waterfront, two seminal movies that established him as the first counter-culture superstar of the silver screen. This tied with the publication of JD Salinger’s groundbreaking novel The Catcher in the Rye, in which Holden Caulfield is a disaffected teenager drinking and getting hookers in New York City when he should have been in his exclusive prep school. Up until then there were no antihero novels of any note and while JD Salinger never wrote another novel his has stood the test of ttime and spawned the Beat Movement and the sixties Boomer-fueled rebellion fueled by an affluent World War II generation able to send middle class kids to college for the first time. Many were referred to by the media as hippies or bearded bums. So I am now the counter-culture individual or rebel and you can be the popular guy because I have no interest. I will soon grow a beard.”
I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about but I was cool with it.
“Okay”
“Okay And I have a counter-culture girlfriend Amy who everyone thinks is a lesbian but she is actually heterosexual. So I have no interest in Macy.”
“Alright.”
“Good,” he said, and then walked away.
So now we are all in the huddle with our heads together. You think about it, it’s kind of weird with all these guys with their heads so close you could kiss. I mean that’s a weird thought, but I have been having a lot of weird thoughts lately. One is that I could be a star like Tatum Channing. I mean I’m just as big and I have always been the popular guy. Macy says she wants to go to Hollywood and I figure what the hell. I could be a star too.
“Alright Clampet. On two. You go long down the right side,” I say even while his dad is talking in my ear.
“Does he understand?”
“Affirmative.” I say, while staring at the other players who think I am nuts because I am talking into my helmet which is pretty cool. Just like the pros.
The Clampet kid stares at me with those big dark eyes.
“You got it. Clampet you are going to go long and I am going to hit you in the end zone. All you gotta do is catch it.”
“I have to go the end zone to catch the football?”
“Yeah. Just get to the end zone and I’ll get it to you.”
“Alright Clampet, long on the right side and I hit him in the end zone. On two.”
We all clap and I walk up to the line of scrimmage. I realize then this is my last game in high school. This might be the last time I ever play football again. And so I pause and look around and watch the cheerleaders and the people in the stands and I look at the goalposts and it’s like I am at some sort of crossroads. All the guys are bent down waiting for my snap and I feel like I am giving something away that might never come back. What if I am not the next Tatum Channing?
Clampet suddenly stands up.
“Down this side and to the end zone on two right?”
“Yeah! Now get the fuck back down!”
I shake my head and put my hands into Thompson’s ass. Fuck it.
“Hut one…Hut two…Hike!”
I take the ball and fall back into the pocket.
JUST ONCE
JULIE
ALL THOSE FOOTBALLS SAILING through the air were like little dreams. And that is what no one understands. Toby has dreams just like other kids. He wants all the same things, but they are held out of reach. There was an eighth grade trip to Washington, DC, and the whole eighth grade was going. And they had a rule that if you didn’t get in your final assignments then you could not go. Toby was always behind in everything and we worked very hard to get all the assignments in but we couldn’t finish one English paper on time and the teacher wouldn’t grade it. When the bus pulled up my son wasn’t on it and he wasn’t al
lowed to go with his classmates to the nation’s capital.
This was before we knew for sure. We knew something was wrong, but the school was provincial and wouldn’t bend. He stayed in his room the whole day and it broke my heart. I gave that principal so much hell he asked if I was threatening him. I was. And so now, watching this gangly body running to the end of the field and that quarterback lobbing the football I asked God to let him catch one. Just let him catch one football and get a taste of what other kids take for granted. And I had my cheerleaders chanting his name along with the students in the stands and it seemed even the townspeople had joined in.
Just one. Just let him catch one dream. That is all I ask.
A HAIL MARY
PAUL
UP HERE IN THE announcers’ booth I can see the whole field. It smells like old movie programs or like a tree fort I built once that got wet with rain. I am sure in the good days of Sycamore High there were many tense exciting moments up here. But now it feels like an abandoned house.
On the field, Julie’s five cheerleaders are doing pretty well. Basic stuff no stunts. Except for Macy. She is a walking stunt and would do a walkover just for the hell of it in the middle of a routine. It looked like the entire school turned out and I felt in some way they were there to support Toby. Or maybe everyone knew this was it and that the school would close forever. The game has started and the marching band of twenty kids did their best. The lights and the goalposts and the stands all coalesced into a moment and I wondered again how we got here.
The glow of my three laptops gives the space a blue cast and the hum of the computer fans fill the air. I have cameras in both end zones and one shooting down from the booth. I can pivot the cameras and get just about any angle. I am wired into Toby. I have pyrotechnics at both ends of the field for effect. It is eight minutes and thirty seconds in the fourth with the score 21 to 7. The game is basically over. But that doesn’t seem to matter. The guys want Toby in.
Toby has been clear he wants to catch his pass on his own merit. It’s first-and-ten, and Randy can’t get the ball to him. Toby runs the wrong pattern. On the next down he drops it. On the third down Randy gets sacked. I am praying Coach will keep Toby in for one last try.
From where I was I saw that last pass. Randy was a very good quarterback and he led Toby perfectly. But many of the passes had been perfect. So I held my breath and I saw all those moments when Toby sat in front of the television while we went different places. When he became a teenager he just didn’t like to go places and sometimes he made a scene. So we got in the habit of leaving him behind. It is nothing I am proud of, but you cope as best you can. And now I am screaming against all those years.
“Catch it son…catch it son…keep your arms out…it is coming down…get ready…catch it son…”
I seeCoach screaming too. “Catch the ball, son. Catch the fucking ball!”
My eyes are wet and I am watching him on the computer screens and I am staring down at this boy with his arms held out. I hit my knees then and started praying.
WILD CARD
TOBY
THE PHYSICS OF CATCHING a football has to be considered with many variables in mind. There is the prevailing wind. Temperature. The Earth’s rotation. My speed. The ball’s speed. Newton’s Law that an object in motion stays in motion. Gravity. Humidity. All these factors along with the fact I was not a good football player had to be built into the final pass. Randy has thrown two balls to me, but I have been unable to catch any of them. I don’t have great motor skills. This is a problem.
So I looked up and the ball was coming down toward me. It seemed to me my best chance of catching the ball was to keep my hands extended so the ball would not bounce away and then bring it to me. Randy had thrown the ball several feet in front of me so I slowed my pace down. It is difficult to run and concentrate on catching a football coming down from the night sky. So I decided to concentrate entirely on the football falling down in front of me. I realized I had to speed up slightly and so I increased my gait and I could now see the ball was turning as it came down and I wondered if it mattered where the laces met my hands but I realized this was something I could not control. And so I extended my hands even further.
I was calculating time and distance and the impact of the football in my hands and then just then I felt the football hit my hands and I remember then Dad saying to bring the ball in so that is what I did and in this motion I lost my footing and fell but I kept the ball clasped against my chest and decided to not worry about the fall because the pads should be rated for such an impact and I felt myself rollicking inside my helmet and I concentrated solely on the executive functioning command to keep the ball in my possession which is really the crux of the matter with autism…that is to know what is most important and what is not. For many kids with autism the world is like playing cards and you just don’t know which one to pick. It seemed to me at this moment it was most important to keep the ball in my hands, and so that is the card I picked.
MY BEST YEAR
PAUL
SYCAMORE HIGH DID CLOSE, but Toby got his nine credit hours and caught a touchdown pass. The team carried him off the field after he made that beautiful catch and we blew off the fireworks at both ends of the stadium. We moved back to Chicago area and I found an apartment in Oak Park, which was a lot closer to the city. We are empty nesters now and we are dealing with the issues of all parents who find their child has left home. Toby went to Illinois State University on a probation program where he has to keep his grades up. Julie and I split up after we came back.
In looking back on it I think my quest for Toby’s Best Year probably killed our marriage. Maybe it would have died anyway, but you do things for your kids that cost you. So I went back to school and got my Education certificate. I started substituting and I get kind of a kick out of the kids calling me Mr. C. I don’t know. Maybe you just look for a little more in your forties and I was almost fifty. A girl came up to me in an English class where the teacher had taken maternity leave and handed me this letter. She stared straight ahead as I read the paper.
“I have autism. This paper says I have to give extra consideration and you have to sign it to say you agree to the terms which is basically more time for tests and more time for reading and no pressure on me.”
She was staring past me just like Toby and I nodded slowly.
“No problem Audrey,” I said signing it and handing it back to her. “How is school going for you otherwise?”
“Thank you. I am a senior. This is supposed to be my best year but nothing has happened yet. I want to go to prom and I want to be popular this year.”
I kept my eyes on her. She was very pretty with blond hair and blue eyes.
“Well. It will happen Audrey. Sometimes you just have to have faith.”
“That’s what my dad says too.”
“Then let’s make it your best year, shall we?”
She blinked twice.
“Okay”
FORWARD, BACKWARD
JULIE
AFTER PAUL AND I split I founded the Best Year Foundation and actually used some of the ideas Paul had come up with. We basically try and fill in the gaps for kids with autism at schools and make sure they are getting opportunities socially as well as academically. We don’t do anything crazy like hiring Homecoming parades but we try and give kids a chance to go the dances and other things normal high school students do.
I could say it was Paul’s infidelity that broke us up, but really I think some people are very good parents and when that role draws to a close sometimes there is just nothing left. I am sure Toby is better for what happened in Indiana and our marriage brought about the ideas that I use today. Human relations are complicated, but I know one thing: People will do anything for their children, no matter what the cost.
I stay in touch with Linda, who calls from time to time. She says they still talk about Toby like he’s a hero. She told me that Randy went to a Community College. Macy dumpe
d Randy and she and her mom never made it to Hollywood. She ended up modeling for some cheesy magazine and then came back to Sycamore. Linda said she last saw Georgia pouring coffee and bending over with her wrinkly boobs.
Turns out Michigan City needed a high school coach and of course they wanted someone to teach Driver’s Ed. So, they called Coach. He and Linda bought a little cottage in a place called Long Beach right along the lake. In a way, they are a legacy to Toby’s Saturday Night Fever dance; Staying Alive.
LOVED-IT CATEGORY
FIRST YEAR STUDENT HEATHER FRANKLIN, ILLINOIS STATE
I MET TOBY IN Chemistry. He was like the smartest guy in the class. He always came to class dressed like a gangster with a dew rag and gold chains and low riding pants and hat on backwards. Really weird. He was always the last one to leave, so one day I just asked him.
“Why do you wear all that? You don’t seem like you are from the hood?”
He looked up at me with these dark circled eyes.
“I am a counter-culture figure. I am from the suburbs but rap is the poetry of the ghetto and has been adopted by white suburban teenagers like me as the music of rebellion against adult authority namely our parents. It is laced with offensive sexual language and lots of swear words and is very aggressive in tone and beat. So I have updated my ensemble to reflect my affinity with Ice Cube, Jay Z, and Eminem.”
My Best Year Page 15
