by David Wright
“I don’t think she knows he’s here. And I haven’t told her.”
“Not Moose?”
“Just you, just now.” Then he smiled. “If it was your father just showed up like this on leave from Baghdad after you’d done something like what I did, he’d be coming to kick your butt, right?”
I hadn’t told Matt about Pops. I wasn’t thinking I would. I mean, it wasn’t none of his business. Besides, Pops had made me a man. I knew that his death was my weight to carry. Mine alone.
I said instead, “I expect your pops is here to make sure you’re all right. It’s all good. Don’t sweat it.” I pushed off up the street. “Holler at me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”
At the corner I turned back, and he was still standing there, facing the entrance to the hotel, strangely lit by the pale glow coming from the lobby—part shape and part shadow, kind of like a ghost. A doorman pushed open the door, and Matt walked in.
Naw, I remember thinking. If it was Pops that had showed up like that, it wouldn’t be about scolding me, about calling me out. He’d be about making sure I was good to go. He’d come by a game, and he’d see that I was wearing 49, his high-school number, instead of 17, like I did back home. He’d even help out with the team, the days he was here. Maybe he’d take an extended furlough, stay the whole season, coach the Diables. And he’d take me around places. Versailles, Normandy, a TGV back to the Alps.
The clock on the corner by Georges and Françoise’s building said it was quarter to nine. I sat on a park bench between streetlights in the almost-night, looking up to the lit windows of their apartment. Nine ten, nine thirty-five, nine fifty-five…I waited until the apartment went dark.
When I got upstairs, I snuck quiet-like past Georges and Françoise’s room. In my room I took from the desk the letter I’d been writing to Mama. Not email, a real letter—paper and pencil, like in the Hemingway book. I’d been working on it for days—writing a sentence and scratching out another, erasing and replacing words, scribbling in the margins—but now I finally knew how to write it.
I’d known it was cowardly to not go back at the end of the class trip, to not try and help Mama out some way. I did! But I’d also known something felt right about staying. Making my own way, living in Paris, getting to see something more—going places, like Pops had said. And I’d known Mama wouldn’t say no to me staying. She hadn’t protested about me coming on the trip in the first place. She didn’t do anything.
» » » »
Auntie Constance drove in from New Orleans after Pops died, and it was her who called the Army Casualty Program and the life-insurance people and the funeral home. Mama sat on the sofa beside her, silent. After the funeral, everybody who had come in flew out. Auntie Constance took Tookie and Tina back to New Orleans. It was just me and Mama, our house suddenly so empty.
I heated up Hungry Man fried-chicken dinners that first night, even though the fridge was full of leftovers from the buffet at the wake. I told Mama, “It’ll take us days to eat through all Aunt Joanie’s deviled eggs and the meatloaf and the Hoppin’ John that Grandma Jessie left. We’ll be okay for a good stretch.”
Mama “mm-hm”ed.
There was still all kinds of stuff to get done, filling out forms and whatnot, insurance and pension stuff. I told her, “If you need me to, I can stay back from school. To help out.”
She shook her head no and dropped her face, tears shining her cheeks.
I didn’t insist. I let it be.
A little while later she came into my room, wearing an old shift and house shoes. “I think I need to go to Connie’s too,” she said. “Be home in a while.”
And I remember thinking, Home? It ain’t here?
But I told her, “Yeah, of course. Go ahead. You should go.”
She just stood there, framed by my bedroom doorway, eyes sunken, black and heavy. “You’ll be fine,” she said, “with Ms. Glassman.”
Ms. Glassman?
I’d been lying on my bed, so I sat up. “France, Mama?” How was I supposed to head off to France with Pops gone and Mama like that?
“And when you get back, it’ll be just about time to get you to Iowa.”
“I’ll be fine here on my own,” I told her. “Winter break starts in a few weeks. I can join you at Auntie’s.”
But she said, “I’ve put together a little money—for pocket change over there.”
Seeing Mama like that, I remember thinking, Forget Iowa. Forget UT. There was Alamo Community College, right there in San Antonio. I could work construction and take classes at night, be close by to take care of Mama till she got right.
“For real,” I told her. “I’ll be fine here till I can come get youall in New Orleans.”
And she lost it. “Dammit, Freeman!” Her neck was a twist of muscle, a vein popped at her temple. “I just can’t worry after you right now.”
Whenever we’d Skype after I came to France, she’d be smiling, and I’d smile, and I’d let her know that I was fine. I’d say that we had beat the Ours or whoever, or that Georges and Françoise were real nice, and she’d always be like, “That’s wonderful, Freeman. Have a good time.”
Have a good time, she’d tell me.
But the thing is, I was having a good time. It felt like I shouldn’t be.
I got back to the letter. I wadded it up and started from scratch on a new piece of paper. Dear Mama, I wrote. I told it like I would to Pops, like when I was walking around pretending he was with me and I was his tour guide, showing him the things I was learning about the city. I wrote all the details so she would see and smell and taste it. I told her about the roasted chestnuts they sold at Montmartre and how, from up there, you could look out over the entire city. I told her about Mont Blanc and fondue, about the classic A-frame chalets, the whole town smelling of woodsmoke. I told Mama how big my world was, and how I had her and Pops to thank for it.
To close, I wrote:
I know you don’t like me to go on like this, but I need you to know that I know I’m not doing what I should. I’m not doing what Pops would do, if it was him in my shoes.
Youall are my family, my only family. I promise to never quit you like this again.
Love,
Me
MATT
The question my dad kept returning to was Why? Why did I leave Montreal without giving him a heads-up or an explanation? Each of the three days after his arrival, we’d walk the city and he’d pepper me with questions, but always, ultimately, it was back to that one question. I guess my answer was never quite satisfactory.
Maybe because I didn’t quite know the answer myself. The divorce? Mom’s new boyfriend? The pressure to go to Orford, to “succeed”?
Walking around the Friday night before his departure, he asked the question a little differently. “So tell me,” he said, “what is it about Paris that you find so grand?”
I recited the words I’d been rehearsing since the night before, after reading an op-ed in Libération, a local newspaper. “I read somewhere that Paris is a stage where we’re all actors. Ever since I got here, I feel like I’m free to decide what role I want to play. For the first time in my life!”
He didn’t respond but strode ahead.
White stone walk-ups lined the street. We were meeting Moose for dinner at L’Auberge Esclangon, a restaurant my dad had read about, over by Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, the famous flea market.
(Free and I had gone to the Puces one Sunday morning. After his shock at the mass of humanity and his fear that every other person was a pickpocket, he ended up negotiating for a boxful of battered Astérix comic books. He boasted about his “mad haggling skills,” but to me, his purchase seemed a good deal only for the woman that had sold him the books. He paid 90 percent of the price that he could have had he bought them new at the FNAC bookstore, and got some that had been written in or were missing pages.)
“So tell me, Mathieu, what role is it you’re playing on this…stage?”
“I don�
��t know, Dad.”
The street was quiet, even though we were only a few hundred yards away from the noisy, polluted ring road and the brassy shopping centers that ran along either side of it.
“Star quarterback,” I said.
“You were that back home.”
I was. That was the key word: was, past tense.
“Over here, I get to call my own plays,” I said as a joke, to change the subject.
“It’s great to be in a position to call your own shots,” my dad said as we approached the restaurant, where Moose was waiting out front. “Coming here was the first of millions of decisions that will shape the rest of your life, that will determine the type of man you will become. So let me give you a piece of advice: Don’t lie to yourself. The truth is a much better friend. You stole money. You ran away from your responsibilities. Face the man in the mirror.
“And by the way,” he added, “I read the same article.”
My dad looked genuinely pleased to see Moose again. He pulled him into a big hug. “I don’t know if I should embrace you or put you over my knee for luring my son to run away from home.”
Moose looked really happy to see my dad too. “I’d agree, I deserve the latter,” he told him, “but I can’t take credit for Matt’s actions. You know that better than I do, Monsieur Dumas. Matt’s his own man.”
“You look great,” my dad said to him. “Like a flamenco dancer.”
In fact, Moose was way more dressed up than usual. With his hair slicked back, wearing dark cords, a cardinal-red shirt and black bomber jacket, he had the allure of a Spanish movie star.
Moose and my dad had gotten close in Montreal. Lots of French Under-20s players came every year for our training camps, but Moose was the only North African. My dad took him under his wing. He spent hours teaching Moose how to read defenses and run good, precise routes. Moose said it was my dad who made him realize that he wanted to be a teacher, helping kids from his neighborhood.
My dad asked him now, “So how’s prep for graduation exams going?”
“The bac? So-so.” Moose made a face. “My dad rides me about spending too much time on sports. He doesn’t believe there’s much of a future in it.”
“Well, I’m not going to disagree. I tell Matt the same thing. There’s more to life than sports.” Before I could even say the thing about the pot and the kettle, he added, “Parents want better for their kids than they’ve had themselves.”
Inside the restaurant, Moose stiffened when the maître d’ greeted us. Moose never really seemed comfortable outside Villeneuve, which was probably why he rarely left it. He loosened again once we were alone at a table in the corner.
“It’s too bad your friend Freeman couldn’t join us,” my dad said.
“He had a big dinner with his host family,” I explained again. It was like my dad didn’t remember what I’d already told him. “Georges, the father, invited some family friends to meet him. A government minister or something.”
Moose looked surprised, though I’d assumed Free had told him too.
“What does his host father do?” my dad asked.
“A big businessman. For a telecom company, I think.”
In fact, I knew he was an exec for the national telecom company, Orange S.A. I’m not sure why I was being so evasive. Maybe it was Moose’s smirk, like this information confirmed something he’d always suspected about Freeman.
“Still, I’d have liked to meet him,” my dad said.
He sounded as suspicious as Juliette originally had been, as judgmental as Moose now looked.
“Freeman is a good player,” Moose said. “He’s also very American and a bit moody.”
“Look who’s talking, Mister Personal-Foul-Who-Blows-Up-at-the-Ref-Every-Other-Play,” I said.
“I’m not moody,” Moose said. “I’m spirited.”
My dad interrupted. “What do you mean, very American?”
“You know,” Moose said. “He’s kind of what you’d expect. His father is in the army in Iraq, and he believes America is the world’s savior and that all Muslims want to fly planes into American skyscrapers.”
“What?” I said. “He doesn’t think that”—even though Free kind of did—“not any more than you consider all Americans oil-thirsty capitalists.”
“Aren’t they?”
“That’s like me saying that all North Africans think the same. Like me calling you Moroccan when you’re Algerian.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m French,” Moose said.
“Are you two finished?” said my father, putting on his reading glasses and passing around the menus the maître d’ had left in a stack on the table.
We read them in silence. I didn’t know why I was defending Freeman so aggressively. I guess I didn’t want my dad to disapprove of my friendship with him, even though he’d probably never meet him.
After the waiter took our orders, my dad asked Moose, “Do you plan on coming back next summer?”
“To Montreal? I’d love to, but I still have to reimburse the Diables Rouges the money they lent me for last summer’s trip.”
“Just know that you’re always welcome to stay at my house,” my dad said. “I have a spare bedroom.”
Then he added, “To pay off your debts is very important. Staying free of debt, that’s the only way to be truly free, free from the control of others.”
And I couldn’t help it: I laughed.
“Someone trying to send a message?” I said.
“You’d do well to take heed of it, petit gars! The world’s not just fun and games, and it sure as hell doesn’t revolve only around you.”
I was as surprised as Moose seemed to be by the outburst. I stared off into the room.
The rest of the meal went like that, me mostly silent, Moose and Dad seeming to have a pleasant enough time without me.
» » » »
When I showed up at his hotel the next morning to accompany him to the airport, my father was already standing outside, the old backpack he’d had since his traveling days in the ’80s at his feet. I was carrying my gear bag with me; I wouldn’t have time to go back to the apartment before our game that afternoon. We walked toward the Arc de Triomphe to catch the RER.
“What about those Anges Bleus?” my dad asked. “Are they any good?”
I knew he was genuinely curious, but by his tone of voice I could tell he was also trying to make up for his outburst at dinner in front of Moose.
“They’re ranked two higher than us. And they’re big—Gold’s Gym types. One-on-one, any one of them can pancake any of our guys.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“They have this QB from Ottawa, likes to fling the ball around.”
“Anyone I’ve heard of?” he asked.
“Alain Laplante or Lamarque—I don’t remember.”
He paid for our tickets at the kiosk in the RER station and shook his head, not recognizing the name. We walked toward the platform.
“They always start him in the first half,” I said. “Try to run up the score. To protect their lead, they hand the ball off to their star running back in the second.”
The train arrived, and we boarded.
“So what will you do, then?” my dad asked.
“Mix it up. The coaches and Free and I came up with the idea to shut down the pass in the first half. We’ll line up in our nickel and dime packages on defense and give them the run. Then I come out slinging in the second half, when their Canadian QB’s on the sideline and they can’t play catch-up.”
“That’s one stone-cold bluff,” he said.
“It’s a stone-cold world,” I said, sounding like Freeman.
“I wish you luck.”
We were switching trains at Les Halles station, from the A to the B line, struggling with our bags in the rushing mass of people.
“Don’t we make our own luck?” I said. “Isn’t that what you always taught me?”
He didn’t say anything, just pushed forward thr
ough the crowd.
We were sitting side by side on the train. My dad still hadn’t responded. Finally he said, “Promise me, Mathieu, that you’ll never run away again.”
He stared at me until I met his gaze.
“It’s okay to run after things, but not away from them. They always catch up to you.”
We sat in silence. The train we were on, an airport express, zoomed by Villeneuve-La-Grande but didn’t stop.
I pointed to the Cinq Mille projects. “That’s where Moose lives. Our field is right behind those buildings.”
“Now I understand why you prefer to live at Juliette’s. It looks like East Berlin before the fall of the Wall.”
You start to forget after a while, I thought. The bleakness just becomes normal.
I pointed to the parabolic antennas riveted to what seemed like every other window. “At least they all have satellite TV.”
“Great. They can watch Al Jazeera.”
“You sounded like Mom just then,” I told him.
My dad laughed. “I did, didn’t I?”
» » » »
I had to leave him at airport security. We stood there. I tried to act like I wasn’t choked up. Dad wasn’t even trying.
An old Air France 747 rolled by the giant plate-glass windows, on the other side of the metal detectors and X-ray scanners. I told him, “Between what I’ve gotten from the team and what I took, I still have about $450, tucked away at Juliette’s. I could send it to Mom as a sign of good faith.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s a little late for good faith.”
He removed his wallet from his back pocket and handed me one of his credit cards.
“In case of emergencies,” he said. “But only in case of emergencies.”
We hugged each other a long time before he finally let me go.
ANGES BLEUS (2–1) V. DIABLES ROUGES (2–1)
MARCH 14
MATT
At halftime, the score was 24–14 for the Anges Bleus.
“The greatest game plan in the world don’t mean squat when you’re losing by ten,” Free said as we exited the locker rooms at the Beach.
