Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  With an eager sigh of anticipation, I shuffled past the strand of neglected bike racks, a precious few bikes scattered throughout like forgotten dishes in a drying rack, and yanked wide one of the four glass doors.

  I left the stagnant heat of Spokane in summer for the air-conditioned desolation of a building on Gonzaga’s presently near-deserted campus. Cement walls towered above me. A gabled sunroof lent the memory of warmth to the otherwise austere central hallway. I shuffled onward until I reached a long, glossy wood counter. Seated behind the catwalk-esque desk sat a pale-skinned girl with wavy blond hair bound in a low ponytail. As I approached, she transferred her gaze from the computer monitor she had been watching to my approaching form. Seeing her face-on, I realized she had startlingly clear skin: crisp and white as if the only sunlight she ever received was through the glass-paned roof towering over her head. She smiled at me in a warm but detached way.

  ‘Hi,’ I greeted her, calm and composed (I hoped). ‘I’m looking for the Athletics Department.’

  ‘Certainly. Upstairs and down the hall to your left.’ I nodded once and continued on my way.

  Upstairs was a gangplank of a walkway that led left and right, linking the two cement walls of the hall. I turned left, as she had instructed and shuffled past a series of red-framed windows, each one providing a glimpse into another facet of the Centre like a living museum. I peered through each window in turn: a room crammed with rows upon rows of treadmills and elliptical machines and stationary bicycles and rowing machines and Stairmasters; an indoor, full-sized track of red turf that overlooked basketball courts on the ground floor below; several rooms of shiny wood floors lined with mirrors. With the exception of two lonesome joggers on far removed treadmills, the place appeared devoid of life and disremembered. Even the joggers seemed to be remnants from bygone days.

  I shivered and navigated past a few more display-case rooms until a sign indicated the Athletic Administrative Offices could be found through a door to the left. As I passed from the light of one set of florescent bulbs to that of another, a woman’s voice beckoned to me from my right.

  ‘Hello!’ she chirped like a door chime the moment I crossed the threshold. I turned my head and determined the source of the call to be a middle-aged woman with fluffy brown hair that filled out the space around her head as generously as she did the navy “Go Zags” sweatshirt she wore. ‘Can I help you with something?’

  She beamed at me from behind a counter covered en masse by stacks of documents and manuals for the fall athletic programs. My eyes fell on a familiar cover on the left side of her desk and a small smile tweaked my lips. the Soccer Atlas, I lovingly mused at the sight of my old friend. Printed and ready to be distributed to my new team.

  Looking up from the chaos on her desk with renewed alacrity for the start of my new job and pursuit of my master’s degree, I replied cheerily, ‘I hope so. My name’s Scott Martin. I’m looking for Coach Ric Grenell.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re the gentleman that Coach Grenell appointed as his assistant.’

  I smiled and dipped my chin.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You know,’ she went on, the smile fading from her face as her words took on a different tone – apologetic, perhaps? ‘He left before he could meet with our new Athletic Director, Mr. Roth, and Mr. Roth appointed Melissa Ziegler as the interim head coach.’ She gave me a smile that was more grimace than anything else, as if she were a sympathetic wincer and was empathizing with the pain this news must cause me.

  I realized I was staring at her and blinked hurriedly. Melissa Ziegler, the former assistant coach, was now the head coach? So I had come all the way out here for … what?

  ‘Will I be the assistant coach?’ I asked, less than hopeful. No matter what her answer, it wasn’t going to be good news.

  ‘I believe so. Here’s Coach Ziegler’s phone number,’ she said, handing a piece of notepaper to me across the piles of packets. I pinched it between the fingers of the right myo, barely aware of its presence. For once I didn’t feel robbed of touch by the myos; I was relatively certain that even with human hands I wouldn’t have been able to feel the paper between my fingers. My mind had detached itself from my body and was now processing things from somewhere distant and disconnected.

  ‘You might want to call her,’ the empathetic secretary told me. I glanced at the note more out of pretense than interest.

  ‘Those manuals that you requested to be prepared are right there on the counter,’ she offered in a high voice, a concession prize for being demoted before I was even officially promoted.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured in the best imitation of gratitude I could muster. I cradled the box of Atlases and left the way I had come, somewhat the worse for wear.

  ~~~

  Melissa and I met in what was now her office a few days later. As it turned out, the office of Head Coach Melissa Ziegler was as much of a display case as the exercise rooms I passed throughout the Martin Centre. The front wall made entirely of glass looked onto the central area of the Athletic Department. From within the confines of the room, the only place an occupant could hide was directly behind the wooden door on the left-hand side of the wall. Unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to feel consoled at this fact, it did nothing to lessen the blow of having Coach Grenell and Mike Roth not meeting. I would gladly have taken that office as The (New) Soccer Office.

  As I neared the wooden door with the empty name plaque, I had a clear view of a petite, sharp-boned woman with light auburn hair seated behind the wooden desk inside the head coach’s office. Try as I might to take her measure through the glass wall, all I could gauge was the Spartan décor: a simple wooden desk with papers and things scattered in a vaguely organized manner across its surface; a solitary bookcase against the wall with as many holes as there were clusters of objects on its shelves; and the typical, requisite Gonzaga Bulldogs paraphernalia dotting the walls. Nothing personal. No family pictures or team snapshots, no loved mementos or congratulations cards. Nothing to give me a clue about the woman poised behind the utilitarian desk like a Meerkat, frozen and erect as it scans its terrain.

  I knocked and waved through the glass when her head swiveled around to face me. With a flap of a hand she beckoned me inside, standing when I drew near. She thrust her right hand at me.

  ‘Scott, I presume.’

  She spoke in clipped tones, striking each hard consonant with lavish force so my name became sCoTT when emitted from her lips. I swallowed a grimace and replaced it with a smile.

  ‘Coach Ziegler,’ I returned and gave her the right myo to shake. Her eyes strayed to the myoelectric hand now clasped in her own, but they held only morbid fascination without surprise; she had undoubtedly been warned about my handicap.

  As I settled into one of the two chairs across from her desk, my only thoughts were of how much I suddenly missed the Soccer Office. I had been on this side of the desk with John at TESC, but for some reason the divide felt larger here. Perhaps she had a bigger desk…

  It’s probably just a matter of time to adjust, I told myself as I waited for Melissa to open the discussion. You came here expecting one thing but got another. As soon as you tweak your compass a bit, things will feel more comfortable.

  ‘So, Scott,’ she segued after an expectant pause on both our parts. ‘What can I do for you?’

  I blinked at her owlishly. What could she do for me? Seeing as I was now her assistant, it seemed the question should have been reversed.

  ‘Uhm,’ I said, struggling to regroup my thoughts. I had been anticipating a briefing with her giving me an overview of how they did things here at Gonzaga and the players I’d be working with. Apparently she had envisioned it another way.

  ‘Well,’ I ventured, ‘I was hoping to get a run-down of things before the season starts. Tactics, players, what I can expect my role to be... That sort of thing.’

  She nodded along to everything I was saying like a therapist taking mental notes of my compla
ints and symptoms. ‘Okay. That shouldn’t be a problem.’

  I stared at her, uncomprehending. Shouldn’t be a problem? What does that mean?

  As it turned out it meant the exact opposite of what she had said: it was a problem. My pre-season briefing quickly turned into a question-and-answer – or rather, a question-and-evade session as I continually supplied the questions and she, in turn, did what she could to avoid giving direct answers. I may as well have been seated across from a politician. It made no sense.

  Why would she be trying to hide things from me? I wondered after departing. You would think she was working on some top-secret tactical scheme. But even that makes no sense. I’m her assistant. Of everyone, I’m the one person she’d have to include in such strategizing.

  I shook my head in bafflement. For all the questions I had walking into the meeting, I was walking out with a whole slew more. For instance, her only reference to her coaching background was the previous season at Gonzaga. I hadn’t pressed her for more details at the time because it wasn’t my place, but my curiosity would lead me to later discover that that season was in fact the entirety of her coaching experience. So there I was with nearly twenty years under my belt and suddenly I was expected to train the team, develop a style of play, and evaluate match play but not select the lineup, make substitutions during the matches, or be involved in recruiting.

  It’s okay, I told myself time and again. It’s still Division I, which makes it a step in the right direction. But no matter how many times I repeated the mantra, doubt and dismay would rekindle their cumulative flame. Together they’d burn a hole in my optimism, creating an opening through which The Fog, my ubiquitous foe, could wade in.

  Ah, who am I kidding? I’d surrender in the end and shake my head in disillusionment and dread. It was going to be a long year in my company.

  The only truth I could console myself with was that the situation couldn’t have been much easier on Melissa; thrown out onto center stage after only one rehearsal and suddenly she was expected to not only perform, but direct the rest of the show as well. No, this was hardly what you would call an ideal situation for anyone involved. And yet I was trapped with no one to turn to who could balance our scale.

  ~~~

  Midway through the season, Athletic Director Mike Roth came to watch a training session. High-ranking in education and aesthetic appeal while also being an NCAA Division I school, Gonzaga was an easy school to sell to recruits. As a result, we had a decent base of players to build from. What Mike wanted to discuss with me in his office the next day, however, was not just the program itself.

  ‘Can I ask, Scott,’ he gently probed, peering at me from beneath low hanging brows which sat like two straight black lines above his eyes. ‘Why are you in charge of training the team?’

  I took a breath and said the only thing that felt right to say: the truth. ‘Last season was Melissa’s first time coaching.’

  Quiet descended on us as Mike processed the information I’d just pitched into his lap. I watched from my seat across from him as all the pieces began to slide into place. His eyebrows drew together to form one long line as if to physically underline his thoughts and conclusions. Then the muscles in his forehead gradually slackened their hold and released them back to their original, distinct positions. With his thoughts reconciled, he let his head teeter forward and back on his neck like a bobblehead doll.

  ‘Keep training the team,’ he said as I stood to leave.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ~~~

  I spent the next week doing what I did best: training the players. Melissa made the calls and I learned the art of suggestive reasoning to coax her along what I viewed as the correct path. We fell into as much of a groove as was possible considering our situation. Still there was this discontent within me like an itch you can’t scratch. I tried to shake it, telling myself Mike had the facts now, so it was probably only a matter of time before things righted themselves, but I couldn’t sit still. I rounded out each day with a feeling that there was something more I could be doing and spent most of the night tossing and turning in my lonely bed without Ellen’s warmth to guide me to sleep.

  25

  The Power of the Press

  Right below the fold on the front page of the Spokesman-Review, a title of an article prompted:

  What disability?

  Above the headline was a black-and-white snapshot of me standing behind one of the Gonzaga players on the soccer field. The rest of the team stood in a scattered line to our backs, squinting into the sun as I demonstrated how to stand when defending an opponent during a corner kick (stationed between the goal and your opponent with your hips turned to allow you to see both the ball and the opponent; and never flat-footed). In the grainy image you can just make out the right myoelectric hand, poised in mid-air and mid-sentence.

  The Spokesman-Review staff had run the article as part of their Creative ’98 project, a series of feature stories which highlighted the ‘passionate, inspiring and energetic people’ in the Spokane community. I was October fifth’s ‘passionate, inspiring and energetic’ person.

  So between an article on the possibility of formal impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and one titled in ominous, bold typeface, ‘Global Economy Worsens’, was a story about me:

  Give Scott Martin an ordinary wooden spatula and he’ll convert it into a device for tucking in his shirt.

  Present him with one of those plastic drawstring clasps you see on Windbreakers and he’ll use it to tie his shoes.

  Place him on the soccer field where he’s a rare disabled coach among a swarm of able-bodied athletes and he’s not even fazed...

  Without his innovative homemade tools – and others such as his buttonholer – Martin would be unable to wear dress shirts or shoes with laces.

  He has accepted the fact that things take longer for him than they used to.

  This is reality for Martin now, the painful truth that he will be putting on his arms and feet each day for the rest of his life along with his shirts and socks…

  The staff writer, Janie McCauley, had been kind to me. The article went on to depict my devastating journey in terms of accomplishments and triumphs. According to her, I was an inspiration to those around me, an innovator, and a “humble conqueror who chooses his words with a care that shows he is an equal and nothing more. ” I tried to read the prose without an encroaching sense of unworthiness and self-doubt, but I so seldom felt like all the things she and the people she’d interviewed – she’d even called Ellen – were touting me to be. In the end, it just made me cry.

  When the tears had cleared, I scanned the twelve-hundred word article again, this time looking for one thing in particular. I found it – the sentence – six paragraphs from the end of the piece:

  He would like to fill the school’s head-coach spot next year when interim coach Melissa Ziegler steps down, thus fulfilling his dream of coaching at the Division-I level.

  That was all I had wanted from the article: to make my intentions clear. And now, between the article and my earlier conversation with Mike, I knew I had done all that I could. Now there was only waiting. And hoping.

  ~~~

  It took a month for the seeds I’d planted to jostle something else into motion. I was hunched over one of the two long tables that filled the sterile space referred to as the Graduate Assistantship Office. A rectangular closet of a room, really, as if someone had taken a storage closet, grabbed it by each end and pulled until they had just enough space for the tables and chairs currently crammed within. Then, upon realizing this left those in the grad program (people like me who were employed by the university athletics department but compensated in credit hours as opposed to a normal salary) with a rather austere and unwelcoming place to work, someone had had the forethought to tack two bookcases on the long walls and line the floors with blue carpeting. Still the room fell far short of inviting. But perhaps this had been the intention: a constant reminder to tho
se working within its walls that they were here to accomplish something and to not be distracted by the alluring grandeur of the campus and surrounding areas.

  With my nose in one research book, and three more stacked to my left, waiting to be addressed, I had thoughts only for my graduate thesis. When a motion in the doorway caught my eye, I glanced up solely out of reflex and without bothering to lift my head. Some part of me not preoccupied by my work, however, registered that there was something significant about the shadow being cast over the threshold. I did a hasty double take. This time when I looked up my eyes focused on the narrow man in the dark suit who had just strolled into the room and recognized Mike Roth.

  I slowly lifted my pen from the paper and straightened in my chair as Mike crossed the room towards me. He grabbed the back of the blue plastic chair to my left and tugged it away from the table. Realizing he intended to sit down, I shifted my stack of books to my right side and tweaked the angle of my chair so we could semi-face each other. He glanced at my books, silently dawdling while I watched him keenly from the corner of my eye.

  To me, Mike was like the CEO of a major corporation. I knew his goals were to generate revenue in order to upgrade our facilities, which would in turn generate more income. Simply put, he needed to produce two things: wins and income. The question was which category was he here to discuss with me now?

  At long last, he hiked up his pant legs, leaned against the back of the chair, and said point-blank, ‘A sports writer named Joe Avento called and is trying to reach you.’

  ‘Holy cow!’ I gaped at him. ‘Joe and I played college soccer together.’

  Mike nodded, his straight eyebrows inclining in the middle to create an open-topped triangle like a volcano waiting to erupt above his nose. While I was trying to decide if this peaked expression was an invitation to continue elaborating on my relationship with Joe Avento, a thin-lipped smile began to form on Mike’s face.