The Corn Husk Experiment

by Andrea Cale

  “You heading out, Max?” asked an admiring coworker who secretly hoped she’d join him for a beer at the pub nearby to celebrate the end of the workweek.

  Maxine ran her left fingers through her hair and looked up from her work with a smile.

  “Nah, unfortunately I’m not done just yet.”

  Both Maxine’s smile and her response made him fidget. Her lack of an engagement ring, though, gave him hope.

  “I’ve been assigned a series of profiles on superstar high-school athletes in the region, and I’m so behind,” she added. “And then there’s a busy weekend of games ahead of me that I need to prepare for. You know how it goes. It never stops, does it?” She intended to tack on the admirer’s name in an effort to warm up her decline, but she failed to come up with it.

  Maxine’s years of developing a portfolio of Syracuse sports shots during weekends off from the newspaper had paid off. The International Presswire had picked up a few of her pictures over the years—with Maxine’s cranky editor’s reluctant blessing—and the wire had eventually offered her a job as a senior sports photographer in its Syracuse bureau.

  Maxine watched her admirer head toward the door with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and a press pass dangling from it. Did the name on it read Ted? Fred?

  She thought of Ed, the government beat reporter who had accompanied her a dozen years ago on assignment to Washington, DC. She hadn’t forgotten his name. She hadn’t forgotten their dinner together when he refreshingly and surprisingly brought her guard down. Maxine also remembered the bit of drool that had escaped the corner of Ed’s mouth on their plane ride home. At the time, it had been enough to end a romantic pursuit of the man before it even began.

  Age had not changed the fact that Maxine was still impossibly particular with love. She wondered on this lonely Friday evening in a near-empty workplace whether Ed was still running the political beat for her former newspaper only an hour’s drive north. Maxine toyed for a moment with doing an electronic drive-by—searching Ed’s name on the Internet or checking the online archives of her old paper to see if he was still there. Instead, she opted for one more pass through her work before making the lonely trek home.

  Maxine always chose to walk to her home at Jefferson Clinton Condominiums. Not even the harshest of Syracuse’s lake-effect snowstorms kept her from doing it. Her walks were always in the dark of night, even on a Friday, when most of her colleagues tended to cut out a bit early. With each step, Maxine succeeded in erasing just a little bit of her worries from the office, only to trade them for other uneasy thoughts. More than any other time in her life, Maxine felt nagged these days by being alone.

  This night was no different as she dodged the singles along the sidewalks of Syracuse’s Armory Square. They were dressed in their best seductive clothing, overpowering perfumes, and expressions of excited hope as she longed to get out of her work clothes and into her yoga pants, soccer flats, and long-sleeved T-shirt filled with the comforting smell of fabric softener.

  Each day of the week seemed to bring out its own type of love on the streets. On Saturday night strolls home from covering games, Maxine weaved around small fences of couples on dates, drunk from love, booze, or both as they linked arms. Sunday evenings featured the low-key, loving married couples who had the Sunday blues and weren’t quite ready for their weekends to end.

  Mondays attracted college students in search of a good meal off campus on an evening that wouldn’t make them miss a moment of important nightlife back at the M-Street college bars on the hill. These patrons appeared to include boyfriend-girlfriend prospects from the weekend, each hoping they liked the other sober as much as they had tipsy and under poor lighting. The days would replay themselves over and over again in front of Maxine as she made her way home alone each night.

  Having her right hand free of the buttons and soothing clicks of her high-end camera made her feel especially out of place during the walks. She’d attempt to fill the void with a dated gray cell phone to dial up friends and family members who, against Maxine’s better judgment, had collaboratively convinced her recently to turn to the world of online dating.

  “Max, what have you got to lose? Is it any better to meet someone at a bar or at work?” her best friend had asked last Thursday, a night that marked ladies’ night on the square.

  As Maxine’s ears had taken in the familiar, unsolicited dating advice, her eyes had observed the irony that ladies’ night brought out just as many men, and these guys seemed by far the most aggressive of the prospects on any other night of the week. On Thursdays, Maxine felt relieved to be armored by a boxy sweater or a conservative, button-up work shirt under her jacket.

  Her girlfriend’s case for giving online dating a try was the same one made by Maxine’s mother, her old college roommate, her cousin, and seemingly everyone else in America who she overheard discussing dating in the twenty-first century.

  On this Friday evening, the photographer passed a finale of singles on their way out of the condos as she inched closer to hers. She stepped into the elevator on the heels of a handsome, salt-and-pepper-haired man she hadn’t noticed before in the building. She grew impressed by his designer shoes that looked nice without being too flashy. As they pushed their respective floor buttons, she unconsciously ran her ringless fingers through her short hair for the second time that night.

  “Have you ever wondered why this place isn’t called Madison Bush,” the salt-and-pepper man asked. He was searching hard for conversation within their Jefferson Clinton building, but Maxine found that endearing and paid him a warm smile. He gave one back, unveiling a bit of arugula in his teeth left over from dinner while the elevator let out a high-pitched, mocking ding as though it had noticed the green salad bit too.

  “Or Monroe Obama. Have a wonderful weekend,” Maxine said as she exited quickly onto her floor. Always polite, she knew she might as well have told him to have a nice life.

  “Could there be more wrong with me?” she asked herself in the empty hallway as the elevator door snapped shut behind her.

  There wasn’t as much as a goldfish or even a plant to greet Maxine in her condo, but some of her best photographs hung on the walls, and the work made her feel right at home. She let her body relax just a bit, but her mind, as usual, was still in overdrive.

  “Or Fitzgerald Kennedy,” she said to herself, broadening the possibilities of the puzzle the anonymous man in the elevator had laid out for her.

  She plopped onto a lightly used sofa, opened her laptop, and began editing her online dating profile. For just a moment, she was quite content—and a bit excited—to be alone in her place on a Friday night as she clicked away at the dating boxes that best captured her interests, exercise preferences, and income.

  But the feelings were short-lived.

  “How do you describe your physique,” she read aloud.

  The petite, stunning photographer reviewed some of the options for women, including “a few extra pounds” and “big and beautiful.” Maxine winced. There, in black and white, were words that made her feel just how overly critical she had been when it came to dating. Maxine’s dearest and most loyal friend was married. She had supported Maxine for years through her dating process. The woman was far from being able to squeeze in a sample-size dress, yet she was the most beautiful person Maxine had ever met. Maxine wondered how her best friend would fare in the world of online dating if she hadn’t already met her match, a man who easily saw through any meaningless imperfections to get to the good stuff.

  Maxine thought of Ed’s bit of drool that she had been unable to shake so long ago. She thought of the salt-and-pepper-haired man’s bit of dinner in his teeth on this night. No one was perfect, especially not herself, she thought. She wondered if she’d get to see either of the men again before closing her laptop roughly.

  Further into her condo, she found the yoga pants and soccer flats that had been on her mind during the walk home. She smiled in annoyance at herself because she
didn’t do yoga and she didn’t play soccer. She vowed to do a better job at remembering that appearances aren’t as clear as they seem on the surface.

  CHAPTER 10

  JP

  The Destined One

  An exhausted nineteen-year-old entered his family’s home, wiped sweat from his dark skin, and looked happily into the eager eyes of the professors who had adopted him nearly two decades ago.

  To them, the teenager’s humble entrance felt as grand as a visit from the president of the United States himself, a man whom the family regarded highly—not necessarily for his politics but rather for his belief that with hard work and passion for America, a child can rise above any challenge and become destined for greatness. For the five-foot, six-inch JP, his dream, against a number of odds, involved landing a spot on a Division 1 college football team.

  The teenager brought into the laundry room the dirty clothes that saw him through a full day of tryouts. JP’s father, as roly-poly as ever, followed his boy and chanted his name as proudly and excitedly as a game-day fan repeatedly shouting “De-fence!”

  “J-P! J-P! J-P!”

  JP’s own name still evoked tremendous emotion within him. It still made him think about the unknown woman who had put the two letters together as she had talked to JP while he was inside her womb. Deep down, JP wondered if the woman, wherever she was, would be proud of him on this day. On the surface, he gave the only father he ever knew an appreciative smile for his tireless encouragement.

  “I’m going to hit the shower, Pops,” he said before exhaling for what seemed like the first time all day. “I’ll be down in a few to tell you all about tryouts.”

  The other Syracuse College professor of the household overheard the father and son’s brief conversation and took it as her cue to stop grading her students’ papers and begin assembling the bowls of hearty chili she had prepared earlier in the day. The woman had hoped that JP’s favorite meal would be the perfect sustenance for either a celebratory dinner or a comfort meal following heartache. It was an act symbolic of her raising JP all his life with great thought, love, and kindness.

  By the time a freshened JP returned to the dining room, every utensil was in place. Even the anxious mother and father had found their respective seats at the round family dinner table. The professors had already poured themselves a couple glasses of Merlot. They held off, though, from taking their first sips. With a soft navy hoodie, sweats snuggled against his clean body, and the aroma of his mom’s cooking in the air, JP wondered if the moment could be any richer.

  “To our son, who every day makes me more proud as a mother than I could ever manage to put into words,” said the professor.

  The parents reached across the length of the table to clink glasses and take a celebratory sip of the wine even though they still weren’t sure what they would be celebrating. The professors knew they were proud to have raised a son who went after a far-out dream, regardless of his chances for success or failure.

  “Well, my boy, we just wanted to say how much we love you, no matter the outcome from your day,” the anthropology professor added as he awkwardly stretched and clinked glasses with his wife a second time. “Have a seat and tell us everything—the highs, the lows—everything.”

  JP took in a deep breath to enjoy the feeling of holding the information his parents so lovingly wanted. Before taking his spot between them, though, he exhaled and reflected upon the challenges he had overcome to get to this very point.

  While JP never had an ideal football build, his talent for the sport had grown throughout his youth with the help of a trio of supporters who descended upon his life in the form of out-of-shape, sullen coaches.

  In grade school, JP couldn’t catch the football or throw it. He was too small to power through a defensive tackle or block offensively for his quarterback. Nevertheless, his first coach had been insistent on finding a spot for every player and had rotated positions for weeks. One afternoon, he pulled JP aside to share a discovery with him.

  “You can run, little man,” he had said with a dry laugh and a rough pat on JP’s fragile chest. “You can run!”

  “I can?”

  “Yes, you can, and you’re going to be my new secret weapon,” he had said before lowering his voice to an intense whisper. “Now don’t go signing up for track or cross-country on me now. You are a football player and a valuable one at that. Stick with me, kiddo. I see some touchdowns in your future.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh, I know so. Someday, when you become a rich and famous athlete, try not to forget me, eh?”

  Both JP and the coach had believed that dream was a wild exaggeration—or so they thought at the time—but the words had made the boy feel like he belonged on the field nonetheless. It was a welcome feeling.

  “I won’t forget.”

  JP had kept at the position throughout elementary school and on to the more challenging middle-school years, when the pre-adolescent boy’s body became even more gangling. He had grown a bit bigger in height, but it only made him appear smaller in width.

  As JP graduated to middle-school play, he had met coach number two. Just as he unintentionally managed with the first, JP quickly became his middle-school coach’s favorite player. The man had noticed JP practice as hard as anyone he’d ever seen at that age. He had watched JP work the track before school, and he even met him there on a lazy and unseasonably warm September morning.

  “You work pretty hard, don’t you, JP?”

  “You think so?”

  “Harder than anyone else on the team,” the coach had said with eyes so focused on the boy that JP wondered if the man could see into his soul. “What drives you?”

  “I just like to play ’cause it makes me feel pretty good.”

  “It makes you feel like you belong?”

  It was impossible to ignore the fact that JP was different. The kind coach hadn’t meant to get personal, but he held a position in which players and parents constantly lobbied him for playing time and better positions. JP had touched coach number two’s heart without trying.

  The young player nodded weakly as the good coach softened his stare and his tone.

  “Well, you do belong. You’re pretty quick. I believe you’ll succeed. Now go ahead, get back to work. Don’t let me bother you. You know what you’re doing.”

  The scrawny boy had accepted his orders and gone back to working the empty track.

  Despite the support, JP hadn’t earned the starting running back position in the middle school years, when his competition got bigger and faster and harder to dodge on the field. JP hadn’t quit the sport though. His middle-school coach had at least succeeded in making sure the boy continued playing in high school.

  As JP entered Jamesville-DeWitt High, his body had finally begun filling out, and it slowly transformed from a skeletal pencil to a thin crayon. He had started supplementing his before-school running with post-practice playbook studies. By JP’s junior year, he had become the starting running back for the Jamesville-DeWitt Lions. By the end of it, he was breaking central New York rushing records with the support of his third mentor, a coach with the nickname of Crash, a man who would need to fight even harder than the others before him to keep the small running back advancing to the next level of the sport.

  Coach Crash had earned his nickname when he was a student himself at Jamesville-DeWitt, back when bell-bottoms were stylish and Elvis Presley tunes from Vegas shows seemed to play endlessly through radios of cars including Crash’s candy-red Ford Mustang. He had been considered a natural at playing the defensive line. His talent alone for stopping the opposition should’ve made him the star. But Crash had shared every practice, every game, every celebratory supper in his home—and even the Mustang—with a twin brother who had played offense nearly as brilliantly as Crash did defense.

  The twin on offense had stood out because he was the one scoring the touchdowns, even though Crash was more often responsible for quietly winning the gam
es on defense. The offensive twin was appropriately nicknamed Flash and was more outgoing. He had pizzazz. In the high-school cafeteria so many years ago, the twins’ classmates had subconsciously gravitated toward him over Crash, who had been more than happy to let his brother take the spotlight.

  Now in their fifties, the twins had continued on paths that were both similar and different. While Crash was still the football coach at the high school from which he graduated, never leaving his hometown, Flash took one coaching promotion after another as though he were climbing up bleachers with great determination until he reached his top seat—as the head coach for the Division 1 Syracuse College Orange and Navy nearby.

  “Congrats, man,” Crash had said when his twin had told him of his promotion a few years ago.

  The brothers had been competitive on the field, but they had never let those feelings affect their treatment of each other off it. They never missed the other’s games unless both were coaching them at the same time.

  “You deserve this position more than me, you know,” Flash had said. “You’ve always had the most strategic mind of anyone in the sport, including the pros, I’d argue.”

  “Just give the Orange and Navy some wins, will you? It’s been a while since this city has had a team to root for in a major bowl game. I’m happy holding down the field here at our high school alma mater.”

  Both twins had known that the humble one never gave himself enough credit. He belonged somewhere bigger, just like his brother.

  In each of his three years in his collegiate post, Flash had looked to his brother whenever there was a spot on SC’s team for a walk-on to serve as a practice dummy on his best day and a water boy on his worst one. He knew Crash had studied the high-school competition extensively and would have the best take on the player who the Division 1 college managers overlooked. None of the picks ever saw much—if any—playing time, but both brothers had felt good about giving the spots to kids who deserved them.