Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  Resentment percolates in this kind of arrangement, particularly with moms who have this history of men leaving them behind. And one of the easiest targets for this resentment becomes Mrs. NFL Star. You can imagine how the moms feel. They have labored for years working long hours at low-paying, scumbucket jobs, coming home to rat-shack housing, struggling to be both father and mother to their brood, and when one finally hits the jackpot, the million-dollar payday, he’s suddenly off splitting the wealth with some leather-booted, blowdried tart with a board up her ass. This isn’t just a matter of sharing Junior’s time and affection either. Once the tart reels in her boy and wears the ring, suddenly the family fortune is split in half!

  In short order, the ugliness flows both ways. It’s just swell when a single guy decides to shell out $400,000 for a DHM and put his beloved mom on a generous monthly stipend. But when it’s your husband talking about shipping that kind of money out of the family bank account— Hey, can’t we talk about this? Aren’t we trying to build a family of our own here? What about college for the kiddies down the road? There is usually a yawning culture gap, too. Your basic NFL superstar isn’t likely to meet and marry someone from his mom’s general social circle and educational background. No. He marries one of these college-educated sweeties with upper-middle-class values. Take Jennifer Joyner, for instance. She’s not just white, she’s amazingly white, greeneyed, blond— Dutch, for crying out loud! She speaks three languages, has a college degree, speaks her mind about everything under the sun; she’s the embodiment of every black mom’s worst Aryan-bitch daughter-in-law nightmare! The NFL wife tends to show, if not contempt, then certainly an aversion to the basic staples of American po’-folk lifestyle. Little things like greasy-fingered diets laden with fat and cholesterol and gooey sugary treats, baby-sitting toddlers with game shows and TV soap operas, Mama’s gun-toting alcoholic con-man boyfriend, plastic coverings on the furniture, and an alarming tendency to haul off and whack a fussy two-year-old, in public! Honey, you aren’t really thinking about leaving Junior with your mother for the weekend, are you? In the worst cases, a subliminal tug-of-war goes on, with Mom functioning as a kind of rival for her boy’s affections and, in some cases, actually working to undermine her darling superstar son’s marriage.

  Erika and Jennifer, who both had served as vice-president of the Association of Eagles’ Wives, were shocked sometimes comparing notes on their predicaments, how similar they were, the moms, the bimbos, the avoidance … right down to their husbands’ pulling the sheets up over their heads.

  “Seth does that, too?” Erika said.

  Even players with moms who didn’t meddle were influenced by this outsized role as Shahanshah, Lord Bountiful. It gave them tacit license to flaunt their disdain for the normal rules of marriage and family. Within the brotherhood, it was neither unusual nor especially frowned upon for a married guy to show up at a nightclub or a party with a girlfriend on his arm, or to leave with one. There was even a certain amount of macho grandstanding involved. A married player could demonstrate his regal stature by flaunting a Sis-Boom-Bimbo without it causing any outward domestic stress, as if to say, Look at me, I’m such a stud the normal rules don’t apply … the wife doesn’t dare give me shit. And, sure enough, the dutiful and adoring wife would be there in the lounge on game day, as usual, and on the star’s arm for any serious public occasion, like an awards ceremony or an NFL-sponsored United Way commercial (which would portray the player as a great humanitarian for showing up to hold a disabled kid on his lap long enough to make a sixty-second commercial) or an antidrug lecture (Erika had seen players give antidrug lectures who she knew were users themselves). Wives were useful whenever it was important to preserve the club’s image, to present the clean, upright, all-American NFL family front.

  Erika could live with the facade. She was no innocent. She had grown up in south-central L.A. in a family that made money on both sides of the law and had a cynical sense of humor about the more extreme illusions peddled by the NFL. But she, unlike some of the other wives, could not cope with infidelities.

  She had almost walked out several times. But Wes would always swear it had meant nothing. What really galled her, though, was this attitude that she couldn’t shake in him, this notion that she was somehow oppressing him by objecting to his dalliances. What’s the big deal? What did you expect from me? He was never exactly contrite. He would act as if the problem were with her!

  “Aren’t you at least sorry for it?” she would say. My God—how easy she was willing to make it for him, advertising her willingness to forgive.

  And even that didn’t do it. The best he’d come back with was this sarcastic, “Yeah, Erika, I’m sorry.”

  Wes just didn’t get it. As Erika saw it, deep down, he thought he was a terrific husband and father. After all, he had given them his name; he came home every night; he supported her and Montana; he worked hard at his job; he was somebody they could be proud of ... what more did she want? It was one helluva lot more than his father had ever done for him and his mother! And his mother, Maggie, she never complained. She had never expected anything from the man who had fathered Wes. What was Erika’s problem? What strapping, healthy young man didn’t sample the other wares now and then? Did she expect him to be a saint? Why couldn’t she just let Wes be Wes?

  Erika had stuck around hoping that he would grow up. He would be thirty-two this year. His career wouldn’t last much longer. Surely he realized what he had in her and his daughter was more valuable than any fleeting pleasure he got out of playing superstud in a nightclub or hotel room. Sometimes Erika found herself looking forward to it all being over, to Wes’s retiring and withdrawing from this goddamn fraternity/family of Team, so that the two of them could be a real family, live a normal life.

  Except, Erika did love to watch him play. She lived for the sunny autumn and chilly winter Sundays, the gathering of the wives in the lounge, all of them looking so terrific, and watching the game together out in the stands, cheering their men on, then getting together afterward for nice dinners out on the town, where they would be received like royalty at local restaurants. She called football season “my time.” Game days were what made all the bad things worthwhile.

  When Erika first found the letter from Amy on that drive in mid-June, Wes told her all about it … again, What’s the big deal? To her, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

  They were on their way out to do a walk-through of the new house they had built, the final preliminary before settlement. The house was a half-million champagne stucco beauty on a wooded corner lot in a swank New Jersey development, with a grand entranceway and huge sunny living room and kitchen under a twenty-foot ceiling; it was their triumph, tangible evidence of how far they had come back since Wes’s injury and ruin. To Erika, the house was a symbol of everything she had meant to Wes, and a cornerstone for the rest of their lives together.

  And now comes this Amy.

  “Wes, it’s the forty-eight on your back,” she said. “You know that’s why they want you, the number forty-eight on your back.”

  “No, it’s not like that,” he said.

  “What’s this ‘decision’ you have to make?”

  “It’s nothing. She can’t do anything for me. I just have fun with her.”

  Erika told him to get rid of her. They went ahead with the walkthrough that day, but her heart went out of the project. She was going to leave him. This business with Amy, his attitude … it showed he wasn’t changing. He was getting worse. It was only partly the girl. Ever since he had worked his way back into the starting lineup and regained his old form, Wes had been feeling more and more strongly the pull of Team. It was like he had forgotten his years as a ghost. He had gone back like a pathetic kicked puppy. He couldn’t get enough of them. During the season he was off at dawn and didn’t come home until late. He would spend all day with the guys, and then they would stay late to study film and then retire to one of the hot-spot bars they liked to frequent, Mahor
n’s in Jersey and, in Philadelphia, the Cat Club and the Ritz. On his day off he’d go golfing with them. During the off-season it was more of the same, weekend trips out of town to golf tournaments with the guys, nights out drinking at the clubs— they couldn’t get enough of one another. Wherever they assembled, there was the magic of Team, the stir of excitement, the thrill of stardom—it was like a drug. This, Erika knew, was her real enemy, not Amy. Amy was just a symptom. After Amy it would be somebody else, and somebody else.

  “When this is all over,” Erika’s mother said, “Wes will be looking for you with a candle in daylight, he’s going to be looking for you so hard.”

  Erika’s patience and pride had just about worn out.

  She would ask him, “Why are you going through with this? You’ve been seeing this girl since January, through the whole time this house has been under construction. Why go through with it? I don’t want to move into a house that’s just a shell. We’re supposed to be building ourselves a home. What is the problem with you? We’re working on this, this is supposed to be our thing! We’ve worked hard to have this.”

  Wes had no answers.

  Then Jerome died. Erika had tracked Wes down by phone, pulled him off the golf course, to tell him the news, and he had come home shaken. He told Erika to get him something to drink, so she went out and bought him a bottle of cognac, and Wes sat on the sofa all night getting drunk and talking on the phone. He was inconsolable. She never knew Jerome had meant so much to him.

  They all went down for the funeral in Brooksville, that glorious, uplifting, emotional ceremony, and Reverend Reggie and the other fine preachers talked about how fleeting was our time, and about how youth flies and beauty dies and how critical it was for one’s soul to see through what was temporal and trivial (though tempting) to the things that were truly lasting and important … and they all wept and felt their hearts break and then miraculously mend; they all praised Jesus and sang and held one another close, awash in sorrow and wonder at the savage beauty of life. It was cathartic. No one left unchanged.

  How could she walk away from her marriage after that? Wes said he would end his relationship with Amy, and Erika believed him. They settled on the new house and moved in in late June, just a few weeks before training camp opened in West Chester.

  Wes had gone off to camp when the phone bill arrived, on Erika’s birthday, with a record of toll calls to Newtown, Pennsylvania. Erika knew that this Amy lived somewhere northeast of Philadelphia. They didn’t know anyone in Newtown … it had to be.

  She dialed the number.

  “Hello?” A young woman’s voice.

  “Hello, may I speak with Amy?”

  “This is Amy.”

  “This is Erika Hopkins, Wes Hopkins’s wife.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on between you and my husband, but I want to ask you one question. At Jerome’s funeral he told me, ‘That’s it.’ Is it over between you?”

  “No,” said Amy. “We haven’t broken it off. As a matter of fact, I saw him just two days ago.”

  Still, Erika wouldn’t give up. She drove out to see Wes at camp, an hour and a half away, and when she and Montana had been there for only about fifteen minutes, he asked her to leave.

  “I don’t want you here,” he said.

  He swore he had ended his fling with Amy, but when he came home from camp he was obviously unhappy. Something had changed. In the past, Wes would always come around. If he didn’t apologize, at least he knuckled under, showed some desire to remain a family. Now his attitude was different, and Erika thought she knew why. It occurred to her that all the profound connections they had made at Jerome’s funeral, not just she and Wes but the whole team, had actually been a giant misunderstanding. When she heard the preachers talk about how fleeting was life, how crucial it was to remember what part of the human experience was lasting and truly important, she heard it as a plea to honor family and God and truth. It gradually dawned on her that the message Wes seemed to have taken, and Seth and some of the others, was exactly the opposite. What they had so loved in Jerome wasn’t what Reverend Reggie and Willie and Annie Bell Brown saw their beloved teammate and son becoming, it was what he was, what he had been to them, a wild spirit, fending off responsibility the way he fought off blockers in pursuit of a quarterback, immune to criticism and the opinions of others—heedless of the future. Ol’ Freight Train had been about living life now, on his terms, while it lasted.

  And the big, awful message of that gigantic bronze coffin being lowered into the earth draped with their colorful ties? Boys, it don’t last forever.

  That, she thought, was the root of this new, grim defiance. Wes was drawing a line. Before he had always fudged the issue, tried to have it both ways, but no more. He wasn’t even going to hide his philandering anymore. Either Erika accepted Wes the way he was, let him have his Amy and whomever else followed, or she had to walk away.

  She grew weary of it, and, for a time, just surrendered. She made him a deal.

  “Do what you will,” she said, “but, I’m asking you now, don’t bring her to the games. That’s my time. Just don’t bring her to the games.”

  ERIKA FINDS HER way back to the seat in the wives’ section as the Denver game is about to kick off. She is sitting with her sixteen-year-old nephew.

  “Wes has his girlfriend here,” she tells him.

  “Where?” he asks.

  Erika points her out, two sections over.

  Wes nearly intercepts John Elway’s first pass; it goes right through his hands. The crowd groans. Erika walks down to speak with Lynn Allen, Eric’s wife.

  “Lynn, as soon as Sara gets here, I need to talk to Sara.”

  Sara White has been a comfort to Erika, a counselor and a friend. Deeply Christian, Sara has prayed with Erika and shared her pain and confusion. They go to Bible study together, and Erika, feeling overwhelmed right now with decidedly unchristian impulses, tells Lynn she needs Sara to help calm her down.

  Sara returns minutes later, and when Erika explains, she says, “You’re not going to believe this! I had a dream that I had a chance to minister to Amy at one of the games.”

  Sara asks Erika if she would object.

  “No.” Erika wants something to happen.

  So Sara heads up the steps and crosses over two sections. Erika follows, her nephew in tow. They stand at the top of the stairs and watch as Sara, a petite woman who radiates stern intelligence and commitment, marches into righteous battle, down to the row where Amy is sitting.

  Erika watches as Sara addresses Amy, and sees Amy stand, and then catches something, something in the way the blonde reacts, the way she reaches and flips her hair—as if she’s giving Sara major attitude—and Erika snaps. She comes flying down the stairs full speed, her sails swelled with outrage, maternal, wifely, and just.

  She clobbers Amy in the face, and the force of the blow and her charge sends the woman reeling. Amy falls and rolls down nine rows to the bottom of the steps, with Erika right after her, then jumps up without even a look back and flees. She bounds quickly up the stairs, with Erika in delayed pursuit, and turns at the top to look back down and flash a triumphant smile.

  At this point, Erika’s nephew takes hold of both Amy’s shoulders, and says, “Wrong way, bitch.”

  He shoves her back toward his aunt.

  By now, the Eagles’ on-field masterpiece is decidedly secondary in this part of the crowded stands. They see a young black man pushing a white girl down the steps, and, in short order, Erika’s nephew gets jumped. She’s still flailing at Amy, screaming for the fans to get off her nephew, when the yellow-jacketed security guards descend, pulling people off one another. Behind them, running, are blue-shirted city police.

  Erika gets grabbed from behind by a yellow jacket, and another pulls her nephew from the pile.

  “I’m Wes Hopkins’s wife,” Erika is screaming. “Get the bitch out of here right now!”

  “Mrs.
Hopkins, please,” the yellow jacket is saying, when she breaks free and smacks Amy once more.

  Amy is loose again now, running, only to be met this time by Lynn Allen, Margaret Byars, and several other of the Eagles’ wives.

  “What’s wrong?” Lynn asks Amy.

  “That woman is after me!” she says, pointing back to Erika, who is gaining on her again.

  “Well, then I’ll hold you until she gets here,” says Lynn, grabbing hold of an arm.

  In the ensuing melee, Amy gets kicked around pretty good. Erika feels this enormous sense of sisterhood with the other wives—helping her out like that—they all understand. Erika can feel great gusts of repressed wifely outrage from her friends. She no longer feels humiliated; she feels empowered. She hasn’t done anything wrong! It’s as though she’s tapped into some reserve of anger in the group. Something is screwy about this whole NFL Star and His Little Woman thing, this whole hypocritical way of life. It’s all grossly unbalanced, sadly out of whack. Erika knows she isn’t the only woman here to have been dragged down this road. So many of them have, that now, seeing Erika actually do something about it, even something wild, futile, and ugly, they’ve risen as one to her aid. It’s about time somebody took a stand! About time one of them howled loud and long about the goddamn fraternity of Team and the Sis-Boom-Bimbos and the glory ride these young men are taking, oblivious to the emotional havoc in their wake. It makes Erika feel suddenly proud. It gives her courage. And later, when she speaks of this awful day, if there is one thing about this whole thing that will always choke her up, it will be this sense of solidarity with the other wives. They are tired of being victims, of living in fear—you can see it in their faces whenever a new novahaired sweetie shows up in the lounge on game day; a trill of panic goes through the room. Who’s that? Who’s she with? And how nobody can relax until the woman is properly accounted for. The brawl of the Broncos game has vented some of it, for sure. One of the wives grabs Amy’s purse in the scuffle, figuring there might be some useful intelligence inside, and Erika hears Amy complaining to the police about it heatedly, accusing Erika of theft. When the coppers unwisely leave Erika unguarded for a moment, leaving the two women alone in the concourse, she laces into Amy again.