Father Breen changed the subject. He locked his fingers around the knee of his crossed leg and said to Sonny, “We have lots of activities for young people, Norman. As a matter of fact, in November we’re having our spiritual life retreat. We always welcome guests.”
His mother was silent. What did she expect from him? Sonny turned to her and said, “Mother, maybe the muffins are done.”
“They must be,” she said quietly. “Please bring some. Father Breen, would you care for a blueberry muffin?”
“Straight from the oven? It would be hard to resist a thing like that.”
With a small measure of relief, Sonny went to the kitchen where he took the tins from the oven, then brought his mother and the priest a half dozen of the muffins on a large plate. Back in the kitchen, he gobbled down three of his own, laying on the butter in thick squares. He wouldn’t have to spend any more time with the stranger-priest; it was simple enough to leave, by way of the balcony and the fire escape, straight from the kitchen.
Even before he reached the bottom step, Sonny could hear the basketball spanking on the concrete at the far end of the alley. The boy’s name was Warren something, but everyone at school called him One Gram. Sonny stood at a distance and watched self-consciously while One Gram shot baskets on the goal bolted to the garage. The backboard was a transparent rectangle; it was made of thick plastic, but looked like the real thing.
As uncomfortable as he felt just standing and watching, Sonny didn’t want to return home where he would have to deal with the priest. Eventually, One Gram asked him if he wanted to shoot some hoop. Sonny was grateful for the invitation, even if it did seem mostly obligatory. Sonny shot some baskets for the better part of thirty minutes, mostly running one-handers, but his skills were nowhere near those of One Gram; the only sport Sonny had ever played was football, and that only on the playground.
One Gram informed him that in Abydos, basketball was king.
“It is?” Sonny asked.
“You’re damn right. The high school team usually makes it to the state tournament and the ninth-grade team usually goes to the Final Four. What’s the name of that town where you used to live?”
“Busiris,” Sonny answered.
“I never heard of it,” declared his new friend.
“It’s real small; it doesn’t even have its own high school.”
“Basketball is king here,” One Gram repeated. “You’ll see.” Then they went one-on-one for awhile, but Sonny was overmatched. He didn’t care; he felt accepted.
Before he left, One Gram told him, “Come over any time you like; we’ll shoot some more hoops.”
“Sure,” said Sonny. “That would be great.”
Immediately following the priest’s visit, and the entrée established to the pipe organ, his mother escalated into a hyper period (the first official diagnosis they ever got on her was manic-depressive). She was suddenly a participant in Sonny’s life, even in the early-morning hours. When he sat on the edge of his bed at 4:45 A.M., rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he could see the hall light creeping under his bedroom door, and he could hear his mother’s singing voice:
And He walks with me
And He talks with me
And He tells me I am His own
When Sonny got to the kitchen, he found a blaze of lights bouncing from countertops and appliances. His mother’s hair was cut off; what was left was like a boy’s, but the cut looked so amateur he wondered if she had done the job herself. She was in motion around the stove, poking at bacon strips that were popping in the skillet. “Biscuits in the oven, Sonny Boy,” she sang gaily. “Homemade, right from scratch.”
It was more than Sonny could comprehend. He always ate his breakfast by himself. Without speaking, he headed back down the hall toward the bathroom, but he could hear her singing hymns again.
He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, but his head was full of questions. Why was she up? Where was her hair? Was she taking the nerve pills? Was she taking too many? And what about the booze?
In the glare of the kitchen his mother set the feast in front of him, framed by a perfect knife-and-fork table setting on a yellow place mat. Orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon. He started eating while his mother put the skillet to soak in the sink.
Waiting for her tea to steep, she sat beside him and folded her hands on the tabletop. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Things are going to be different from now on around here. Everything is going to be much better.”
Since Sonny’s mouth was full, he didn’t need to talk. But in his confusion he was sure he didn’t know a good sign from a bad one.
She repeated herself: “A whole lot better, I can promise you that.”
He waited a moment. “Mother, where is your hair?”
“I got it cut. Do you like it?”
“I’ll probably have to get used to it, it just doesn’t look like you.”
“This is called a pixie cut. When I was a girl, it was a very popular hairstyle. Do you like it?”
How could he smell liquor on her breath when there wasn’t any in the house that he knew of? “It’ll take a while to get used to it because it’s so different,” he said again.
Getting her tea, she said, “I know it looks somewhat rough cut, but in 1960, this was very stylish, believe me.”
“I believe you, but where’s your hair now?”
“It’s on the cutting-room floor, I suppose, except by now it’s probably all swept up.” She sat down again, with her full cup. “Why do you insist on knowing where my old hair is?”
“I just thought you’d never want to part with it. What if you have second thoughts? You can sell hair, too, people buy it and make wigs out of it.”
“That all seems like such vanity.”
“We read a story about it in English class.”
“You probably read ‘The Gift of the Magi.’ I’ve read that story, too. Too much attachment to things like glossy hair is worldly. It may even be sinful because it’s so vain.”
“Whatever,” said Sonny, deciding he liked breakfast better by himself, minus the confusion. You couldn’t press his mother on a subject anyway.
She asked, “How’s the breakfast?”
“It’s real delicious,” he said.
“I’m so glad. You have no idea the distress I feel thinking of you out there alone in the dark and cold, delivering newspapers.”
“It’s not so bad. If I get it out of the way, it leaves me free for basketball practice after school.”
“Basketball is such a nicer game than football, isn’t it? It’s just the thought of delivering newspapers to people who aren’t up yet. While the world is still sleeping—it seems so out of joint with the universe.”
It was one of her mysterious trains of thought. He was about finished with his toast and it was nearly five-thirty, so he would have to be leaving soon.
“If you do it,” she added, “I’ll feel so much better knowing you’re doing it on a full stomach.”
“I always eat breakfast before my route. I have cinnamon toast.”
“That’s not a real breakfast, Norman. This is what you need, something nutritious and protein-rich.”
Protein-rich? Did this come from a TV commercial? “Does this mean you’re going to fix breakfast every morning?”
“Indeed it does. Haven’t I already told you that things are going to get much better around here?”
“I guess you did say that. I have to go now. Thanks for the breakfast.”
“I love you, Norman.”
That was then. It seemed long ago and yet it seemed recent. Sitting with her now, in this hospital lounge, watching Aunt Jane give her Christmas gifts she couldn’t comprehend, Sonny had to wonder if the time would ever come when she would rejoin the human race. His mother turned her head to look in his direction, but her sunken eyes, which focused on his chest, seemed to stare right through him and out his back.
Aunt Jane had a Christmas basket of fruits a
nd nuts and jellies, while Sonny had a blue sweater. His mother didn’t seem to acknowledge the gifts, but a bubbly nurse’s aide made a big fuss and talked baby talk.
Aunt Jane said, “The snow is so deep, your parking lot looks like Pike’s Peak.” Sonny told his mother how well the team was doing.
They stayed about 40 minutes. When they were leaving, the aide told them, “I’m sure she’ll enjoy her presents.”
“Right,” said Sonny. If she even knows she’s got them.
“Sonny, you drive. I hate winter driving.”
“Okay.” When they were east of town, Aunt Jane said, “I had dinner with Sissy last week in Carbondale. She told me how the two of you have been working together on the mural restoration.”
“And?”
“I think it’s wonderful.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yes. Not just the art project, but the fact that the two of you are getting an opportunity to spend time together.”
It made sense that his aunt would appreciate the development. “Let’s take the interstate. It’s out of the way, but it’ll be clearer.”
“Fine. You’re so young, Sonny, you have no idea how much family pain there is when a parent shuns his own child.”
“I don’t?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put it that way.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Jane.” But he felt a little hurt.
“What I should have said is that children have their own lives because they make their own choices. Seth expected Erika to get married to the right man, bear children, then become a good wife and mother. I guess I expected the same things, but I’ve never been disappointed in her. She’s a very successful person.”
Sonny wondered if his own father ever had any expectations for him. He wondered how anyone could be disappointed in a woman who was a Ph.D. and a professor in a university. He tried to imagine Sissy in the wife and mother role, but he couldn’t.
“Not that Sissy has ever worked very hard to mend the fences either, but she’s tried harder than Seth has. She’s very headstrong, but she’s so capable.”
It was the first time Sonny saw clearly how caught in the middle his aunt Jane’s life must be. He said to his aunt, “You have to get to know her,” but it sounded so simple-minded.
“Yes, you do. She can be so aggressive, the way she won’t ever back down, but there’s a lot of love in her, too. It just doesn’t come out with a lot of sentiment.”
After a long pause Sonny said, “You know what, Aunt Jane? She’s so intelligent, she’s scary.”
She laughed. “It’s true, isn’t it? I don’t know where the IQ comes from, but I know she didn’t get it from her parents.”
Then Sonny laughed. “Because of her intelligence, you’re tempted to put her on a pedestal, like a god or something.”
“Like a goddess you mean. I can’t tell you how many times she’s lectured me on the fact that the first gods were women.”
“Yeah, me too. Did you tell Uncle Seth?”
“Did I tell him what?”
“About your dinner conversation. About Sissy and me working together.”
“No, indeed, and I don’t intend to. Not unless you want some new stress in your life.”
“No thanks.”
A warm front pushed through the day after Christmas, bringing rain and slush. Sonny drove out to the high school to see if it was open, but it was locked. Among the many memories that passed through his mind in the parking lot, foremost seemed to be the regional championship against Collinsville when he was a junior, a game in which he scored 41 points.
In a state of mind uncharacteristically aimless and restless, he took the Mazda onto wet secondary roads to “see what she could do” on hills and curves. He fiddled with the range of digital dashboard goodies to establish all their functions. He fishtailed around some agricultural curves, then righted his vehicle smartly. Bored and stupid, he thought to himself.
His desultory path made its way eventually to the town square, where he parked the car. The falling drizzle slushed and dirtied the snow around the aging gazebo bandshell, but it was such a memory place it put a lump in his throat. For the briefest moment he thought about calling Barbara; she was no doubt on vacation, too. But that was stupid, that was the past.
Why was it, he wondered, that his developing habit of hypnotic reminiscing, his “lapses in concentration” as he was wont to call them, seemed mostly to target her, and that freshman year? Was it important? Did it have anything to do with Sissy? But how could it? I walked on air in the Butler game.
He decided to find out if the old junior high was open. It was only three blocks, though, so he wouldn’t take the car; he could walk easily enough. He found the building unlocked because the janitors were waxing some of the floors.
He shot baskets in the gym for about an hour, by himself. In due time, he found it to be an unsatisfactory set of conditions: The lighting was poor and there was no one else to play with. Why should those things make any difference? Am I losing it? When he took a seat on the first row of bleachers, well-worn and highly polished planks bolted permanently into their concrete base, when he looked at the chain-link barrier fastened along the high-up windows like a cage, he saw instead that first ninth-grade practice, more than four years ago. It was Brother Rice all over again.
Vividly, he recalled how he had intended, and succeeded, to be first one in the gym. Rice, wearing shiny pleated pants and a gray sweatshirt, was sitting on the first row of bleachers. He was writing on a clipboard, but Sonny went over anyway.
With no expression on his face, Rice looked up from his notes. His gray eyes traveled Sonny’s frame from head to toe for the briefest moment, then he tipped his head toward the other end of the gym. “Start running.”
“Laps?”
“Yeah, laps. Start running.”
To begin with, his feet pounded an echo around the empty gym, but in no time at all he was joined by more and more players. Eventually, the number was 30. Only 12 would make the final cut. Of the 30, more than half were bringing experience from the seventh- and eighth-grade teams. Only a handful were like himself, out for an Abydos team for the first time.
Rice seemed preoccupied with his clipboard, but Sonny ran hard laps all the same, in case the coach ever looked up. Julio Bates was doing a little clowning as he ran, swivel-hipping like a girl; some of the guys were giggling, but it made Sonny nervous. From everything he’d ever heard, you couldn’t clown around where Rice was concerned.
When he blew the whistle, the coach told them to stop the laps and take a seat on the first two rows of bleachers. Sonny sat next to One Gram. As soon as Rice stood up to speak, it got silent as a church. When he started talking, he only needed a quiet voice: “It’s obvious already that some of you are lazy. If you cut corners with me, I’ll cut you off this team so fast you won’t even see it coming. You’ll be spending your afternoons down at Goldie’s playing video games.” Then he picked up the clipboard again to write something brief.
So he was watching, thought Sonny. He must have been watching from the corner of his eye. Sonny was breathing harder than he should have been; part of it was nerves.
No one talked while Brother Rice was writing. It was the first time Sonny had ever taken a long look at him. He was over six feet and more than 300 pounds. He was bald, except for some slicked-down hair above his ears. He had to be in his sixties, at least. His glasses had wire rims, and his long, sharp nose didn’t seem to fit with the rest of his fleshy face.
After Rice put down the clipboard, he got a basketball from the ball rack. He stood in front of them again. “There are a few things each and every one of you had better understand right away. If you can’t get yourself straight on these few things, then don’t bother showing up tomorrow; we’ll just wash your ass out of here right now.”
He paused for a moment, spinning the ball in his fat hands. No one made a sound.
“The first thing you have to understand is that as
basketball players, none of you is worth a shit. Absolutely not worth a shit. Make certain you understand this simple premise. Do you?”
No one uttered a sound, especially not Sonny.
“I said, do you?”
“Yeah,” muttered the boys meekly.
“Then say it.”
Still, no one spoke.
“All of you. Say, ‘As basketball players, we are not worth a shit.’”
Keeping their eyes lowered and using quiet voices, they all repeated the sentence.
“That’s the first thing,” said Rice. “I’ve seen most of you play, on last year’s team, or in P.E., or even on the playground in some cases. You might think you’re hot stuff, but you’re not. You’re not worth a shit. If you bust your ass in practice every day, which I will make certain that you do, if you listen and learn something about concentration, you might be worth a shit by the end of the season. But right now, you are not worth a shit. Say it again.”
They said it again. “I am not worth a shit,” said Sonny.
“You start with humility and there’s a chance you might learn something.” He spun the ball some more.
“Second. We’re not here to have fun. We’re not here for a good time. We are here for one purpose and only one, and that is to win. We are here to win every game. If fun is what you want, go join the Boy Scouts or diddle your girlfriend.”
It was Rice’s pattern to make frequent pauses so that things could sink in. Sonny couldn’t take his eyes off the seams of the rotating basketball.
“In the past four years,” the coach continued, “the Abydos freshmen have won ninety-two games and lost eight. The eight losses disgust me; I resent them. In the past four years, we have won two state championships. I find it annoying that we didn’t win all four years. What are we here for?”
“We’re here to win,” the boys responded.
“Don’t mumble, say it loud.”
“We’re here to win!” Sonny could feel his own surge of adrenaline, even though he feared he wouldn’t make the cut.
“Make certain you understand that. I’m not interested in a lot of horseshit about sportsmanship, or doing your best. Leave sportsmanship for the girls; if the cheerleaders want to deal with it, that’s their business. Your business is finding what it takes to win, and nothing else. Is that perfectly clear?”
The Squared Circle Page 10
