by Tim Green
She had planted her head between her knees and she wore her arms like a hat.
“Mom, don’t cry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you that way.”
She shook her buried head and talked between her ragged breaths. “No. Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry . . . I should have told you a long time ago about your father. I should have talked to you when you drew that picture of Julian in kindergarten and asked me. I wanted to. Tell you. But every time I was going to, it just . . . never seemed right.”
I sat down with my back against the same wall and put a hand between her shoulder blades, against the knobby ladder of her backbone. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. I’ve got you.”
“He’d be proud of you.” She raised her head, her red-rimmed eyes burning. “He may be proud. I have no idea what he knows or doesn’t know about you. And you’d be proud of him, Ryan. I really think you would. He’s very successful, and he’s not a bad person. He and I . . . we just . . . sometimes adults have different ideas of what life is supposed to be.”
“Is he a . . . does he play? F-football, I mean?”
My mother laughed at that. “I suppose in high school he did. Not after that. He’s an engineer. Very smart. But he loves the game. That I know. He loves that game.”
I nodded my head. I liked him already. Smart. An engineer. Football fan. I was hungry for more. “Is he rich?”
She took a deep breath, uncovered her head, and looked up at me. “You and I are rich. Us. What we have, a family. And we love each other. That’s rich, Ryan. I want you to remember that. So, in that way, no, your father isn’t rich at all. Not by my standards.”
“But he has a lot of money?” I couldn’t help asking it.
She sighed and nodded. “And to give credit where credit is due, that’s why we live the way we do.”
“He pays for things?” I asked.
She nodded. “Everything.”
“I thought Poppa and Nanna . . .” My grandparents lived in Seattle, in a nice home on Lake Washington. I just figured everyone had a bunch of money. No one I knew really talked about money, so I just assumed my mom had it, like everyone else.
My mom laughed. “Oh, no. Not that they aren’t comfortable, but your poppa? Not a dime. He didn’t even pay for my college. No, they don’t believe in that.”
“What’s my dad do?”
She took my hand and held it and pulled me next to her so she could drape an arm around my shoulders. It was one of the warmest moments in my life, sitting there, just the two of us on the floor with the big quiet house my father bought all around us. We were like seeds in the core of some wonderful shiny red apple.
“Well, like I said, he’s an engineer, but he’s more than that now.” It sounded to me like she admired him, maybe even liked him. “He started out as a kind of inventor on a research team for a big company that made medical devices. Then he realized that if he could get his own company going, he could do things faster, even better.”
“So he just started a company?”
She laughed. “In our garage.”
“Your garage? You lived with him?”
She looked at me funny. “We were married, your father and I.”
“You were? Then how come I don’t know him? How come everything’s a secret?” I asked.
She bit her lower lip. “I did that for you, Ryan. I still want to do it for you. You have to trust me. It’s better for you not to know him or who he is. It would only make things harder for you. You have to believe me. It hasn’t hurt you not to know him. It hasn’t hurt you not to even talk about him. That’s why I call it the F-word. Let’s not even talk about it.”
This was news that made my head spin.
Then my mother said the only thing that could have possibly taken my mind off my father.
5
PRESENT . . .
I woke up suddenly, my heart beating and my brow sweaty, realizing that I had tangled myself in the sheets, and now I struggled to break free. I turned over and looked at the clock. It was midnight and pitch-black around me. I had practice tomorrow, and I was already exhausted. My mom must have been, too; I could hear her voice floating up from the kitchen, still talking on the phone. I flipped over, trying to get comfortable. It was raining outside again. Shadows cast by the moonlight took on strange shapes, suggesting bad thoughts and deeds, lies and deceit and cover-ups all around me. I wanted to scream, but I kept quiet and untangled myself. I lay panting in my bed as I realized it really hadn’t been the best thing for me not to know my father. Not now, not with him dead. Now I would never get to make him proud, so that even if I fulfilled my dreams of becoming a star quarterback, he’d never know. I’d never be able to tell him.
But back when I was in elementary school, my mom distracted me from the fact that I didn’t know who my dad was.
YEARS EARLIER . . .
She’d said, “Let’s only have one F-word we don’t talk about. I’m taking football off the list. Let’s go sign you up.”
She’d had a twinkle in her eye, and I couldn’t believe I’d come through that terrible tantrum complete with broken glass, slammed doors, and calling my mom a liar with her still willing to make me a Highland Knight.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, grinning.
I didn’t say another word for fear of breaking the spell, but was on my feet in a split second and headed for the door to the garage. “Don’t forget the birth certificate.”
“I know, and my checkbook,” she mumbled. For some reason, she sounded irritated.
But I knew the birth certificate was a must for PYFL sign-ups. The league had strict age limits on its players. I opened my mouth to explain, then stopped. It hit me why talk of a birth certificate might annoy her. Besides having my date of birth, that official government document would also probably have my father’s name on it.
I rode up high beside her in the front seat of our big white truck. Lots of moms drive pickups in Texas. The inside of a King Ranch F-350 is like the living room in a hunting lodge, with big thick leather seats, the kind of place you could put your shoes up on the furniture without a second thought. I kept my shoes on the floor, staring intently at the sunbaked road up ahead but powerfully aware that the folded paper on the console between our seats very likely held the name of the man who was my father.
The thought of grabbing my birth certificate and quickly stealing a look ran wild around the inside of my head. I stuffed my hands beneath my legs and started to sweat, despite the cold blast of AC from the dashboard vent.
I looked over at my mom. She scowled at the road, lips tight. I took a deep breath.
“Mom, the league makes you bring a birth certificate to prove you’re not too old to play. I’m not going to look at it.”
“Oh, I don’t care about that.” She waved her hand in the air, but I could see her face suddenly relax.
“Okay.” I gave a short nod, then turned on the radio to fill the quiet.
Ten minutes later, my mom parked the truck in the fire lane in front of the school. It was almost 7:25, and I hopped down and walked real fast, tugging her toward the main entrance. Two boys I didn’t recognize walked out just as we got there. Both were big and hulking and my mom looked them over before turning to me and tilting her head in a way that asked if I was really sure I wanted to do this.
I flung open the door and held it. “After you.”
In she went and we marched up to the table in the front hall of the school just outside the principal’s office. The fluorescent lights above the table glowed, but the rest of the hallways were dark and eerie, and it made the whole thing seem like a dream, which made me think about how it was a dream, a dream come true. Me, playing football. Finally.
Jason Simpkin’s dad sat on the other side of the table with a man who I thought I recognized as the father of Bryan Markham, one of the biggest, strongest—also meanest—kids in the third grade. I knew from talk at school that Bryan’s dad was Mr. Simpkin’s assistant and had himself played
middle linebacker at Baylor. While Mr. Simpkin, the former SMU center, reminded me of a neckless rhino, Mr. Markham was more like a balding gorilla, complete with long arms and dark furry hair on the backs of his pale hands and neck. In his mouth was the unlit stub of a fat greenish cigar. The two youth-league coaches were in the process of gathering up their papers when they saw us, stopped, and looked at each other. I thought Mr. Markham rolled his eyes, but the sudden chill I felt left me uncertain of exactly what I had seen.
“Hey!” Mr. Simpkin found his smile and rubbed his forehead with a thick stubby hand. “Jason’s little buddy . . .”
My mom extended her hand. “Ryan. He’s Ryan. I’m Katy. Katy Zinna. We’re here for football sign-ups.”
Mr. Simpkin shook my mom’s hand, dainty as a rhino. “Yes, well, it’s nice to see you. I—”
My mom fished through her purse, then handed him my birth certificate and slapped her checkbook down on the table. “Seven hundred ninety-five dollars? Is that right? How do I make that out?”
“Well, you see . . .” Mr. Simpkin looked to Mr. Markham for help.
“Sorry,” Mr. Markham grunted, adding a few more wrinkles to his thick brow, “but you missed it.”
“Missed what?” My mother had that thunderstorm look.
“Sign-ups.” Mr. Markham shrugged in a not-so-nice way and spoke around his stub of a cigar so that it wiggled. “We’re full. Maybe next year, though. Anyway, it’ll give the little guy a chance to grow.”
I closed my eyes, ’cause I knew what came next. And it was not going to be good.
“Excuse me?” My mom’s shrill voice could have cracked a glass.
Mr. Markham’s face contorted into a mean smile and his voice got smooth, so you knew he was no stranger to nasty situations. “I’m just telling you the facts. You missed sign-ups. It’s over. Sorry, lady.”
I glanced at Mr. Simpkin, hoping he’d vouch for my speed and suggest I was worth bending the rules for. I’m the third-down slot receiver, remember? You said so at Jason’s party. I wanted to say that, but didn’t.
“And you’re the coach?” My mom glowered at Mr. Markham.
“One of them.” Mr. Markham puffed up and yanked the cigar from a picket of yellow-stained teeth.
“Good, then I wouldn’t want my son being coached by a pompous jerk like you, anyway. Come on, Ryan. I’m betting there are better teams than this you can sign up for.” She took my arm and we headed toward the door. Out on the sidewalk, we passed a father and his son, a boy both tall and lean.
“They closed them down, the sign-ups,” my mom said, trying to be helpful.
“Oh. Yeah? Well, we’ll give them a shot anyway,” the man said.
My mom shook her head as if to wish them luck despite her doubts, and we climbed up into her truck. The big machine rumbled to life. She put it in gear and we pulled away from the curb. As we passed the entrance, my mom slowed down and leaned my way, peering through the passenger window at the school.
“Oh, really?” she barked at the window like she was talking to someone else.
Then she hit the brakes, so only the seat belt kept me from bouncing my head off the dashboard.
She slammed the truck out of gear, turned off the engine, flung open the door, and hopped down. As she marched toward the main entrance to the school, I threw my own door open and shouted, “Mom! What are you doing?”
Caught in the horror of wanting to stop her but knowing it was hopeless, I jumped down and chased her into the school.
6
Mr. Markham was accepting a check from the dad while Mr. Simpkin offered back a birth certificate, along with some other papers. They froze at the sight of my mother.
She marched toward them with her arms crossed. “What do you people think you’re doing?”
Mr. Simpkin stuttered without really saying anything. Mr. Markham wore that bold smile and let fly with a nasty snort. “These people already signed up. They just came back with the right paperwork. Like I said, we closed it down right before you got here.”
“Mom?” I whispered. “Please.”
My mother didn’t hear or didn’t care. She went right for Markham, got up in his face, and spoke through clenched teeth. “You can’t keep my son off this team and you know it. You get that sign-up sheet back out and put his name on it or you’ll have lawyers swarming you and your little mess of a football league like buzzards on roadkill.”
My mother stared. Mr. Markham stared right back. Neither of them moved and I held my breath. Suddenly, Mr. Markham snorted again and rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to do.” She took her checkbook back out of her purse, along with my birth certificate, slapping them down.
The boy and his dad left without further comment. The coaches sat stiff, and what few words they uttered plunked out of their mouths like ice cubes in a plastic cup, hard and cold. As we walked away, the team schedule, fund-raiser forms, and medical permission slips clutched in my mother’s hand, she held her head high in triumph.
I stole a glance back at the two coaches, who watched us like unblinking crocodiles, and wondered if, in fact, we’d won anything at all. The idea of playing for coaches who had no interest in having me on their team didn’t seem fun at all, let alone smart.
We got back in the truck and my mother looked over at me and chuckled.
“I don’t see what’s funny. I gotta spend seven days a week with them. They’re my coaches, and you just got them steaming mad before I even got my pads on.”
She cranked the wheel of the massive truck and we careered around a corner with tires yipping for mercy. “Don’t get between a bear and her cubs. That’s the natural order of things. A mother fights like nothing else.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
My mom shook her head and I clenched my hands at the thought of those two coaches making me run laps and do sets of twenty push-ups as punishment for all sorts of imagined violations.
“They can’t threaten, bully, or intimidate me in any way, and they know it. They don’t want to see my claws. They’re afraid of me.”
“Mom, they’re the coaches.”
She patted my hand as we pulled into the driveway. “They aren’t going to give you a hard time. I promise.”
One of the very few things I can’t stand about my mom is that she’s pretty much right about everything. She was right about the coaches, too. I wonder if she could have even imagined that them not giving me a hard time was about the worst thing they could ever do.
7
On that first day of Highland football, I had strutted around in my full uniform the moment I got home from school. The only thing I took off for dinner was my helmet. The rest of it came off only after practice, when I gleefully got hosed down by Julian to rinse the mud before I was even allowed in the laundry room. It rained in buckets during that first practice, a big Texas rain, and the coaches had us do bull in the ring right in the middle of a big mud pit down where the field drains off.
I knew what bull in the ring was because I’d heard kids talk about it in school. Everyone would circle up around a single kid. The coach would shout out numbers, and if he shouted your number, you ran full speed at the kid in the middle and CRASH.
I remember pulling up to the field after dinner just as the first random sprinkles of rain spotted our windshield, imagining what it would be like to be that bull.
“Oh, I doubt they’ll practice when this hits.” My mom waved her hand at the weather out her side window. Towering black clouds climbed over the tops of each other in their haste to get to the Oklahoma border.
“Only if there’s lightning they won’t.” I had my hand on the door handle already, eager for her to take the truck out of gear so I could jump out.
“I don’t see how you can get anything done in rain like that.” She pointed and finally put the truck into park.
“It’s football, Mom,” I shouted back to her, and slammed the door.
She’d started to say something more, but I was already gone, sprinting across the field toward my new teammates, some of whom were tossing around a ball as if there were a bright blue sky. I ran up to a few of the guys who lounged by the blocking sled, their arms draped across the big blue canvas blocking dummies like best friends.
“How about that storm coming, huh?” I hated myself for speaking, but in my excitement I felt if I didn’t say something, I’d bust wide open.
“It’s football, Zinna.” Bryan Markham punched the blocking dummy like it was supposed to be me. It rattled and shook and he folded his arms across his chest. “Not soccer.”
“I know.” I nodded brightly. “I just said that to my mom.”
Bryan scoffed and muttered under his breath as he snapped his chin strap and walked away. “Your mom.”
Coach Simpkin gave his whistle a blast and without so much as a word, the players all took off for the sideline, running in single file around the perimeter of the field and then spilling out through the goalposts into six perfect columns spaced out every five yards on the line. I followed and stumbled into place, just doing what everyone else was doing. While my equipment suddenly felt too tight in some spots (like the forehead pad in my helmet) and too loose in others (like my girdle and all its pads drifting down my butt), excitement still won out over discomfort. I had waited so long to be here, and finally, here I was.
I stretched my hamstrings and shoulders and everything else you could stretch, barking out a ten count with the others, thrilled to be a soldier in the football army. The coaches wandered among us like generals, the wind whipping their hair. They wore shorts to their knees and shells for the coming rain. We compressed our columns to the goal line and did agility drills, running out to the twenty-yard line before re-forming and waiting to return. When the first serious drop of rain hit my helmet, I looked around for the person who’d thrown a rock. Then I heard the next tap, then another, until it was a patter that made it hard to hear Coach Simpkin shouting to us all.
