Beyond Lucky

by Sarah Aronson

  He pointed to the Home of Wayne Timcoe sign. There was Coach, huddled up with Mischelotti. Mac said, “If he names him captain, I’m out of here.” It was no secret—both Mac and Mischelotti wanted that honor bad.

  I didn’t remind him that Coach had yet to even say hello to me. “Stop acting like me. You’re the obvious captain. He’d be crazy to give it to Mischelotti.” Coach might be a little on the eccentric side, but he’d been Sam’s coach too, and Sam said he was fair. I told Mac there was no reason to be pessimistic. “You know Coach never names a captain right away. He’s just trying to—”

  “Heads up!”

  Umph!

  A ball hit me square in the back. Mud flew everywhere. I looked across the field. “Biggs! I’m going to make you pay.” I was just joking. Now my shirt was dirty. I looked like everyone else. When Coach called us to midfield, I ran as fast as I could.

  “Listen up, men. I mean, men and Parker.” Coach had a deep, scratchy voice. “Plant your feet. Watch out for the puddles. If you pull up a piece of carpet, please do me a favor and put it back where you got it.”

  Someone said, “Did he just say please?” There were thirty-six of us and only twenty-two spots. We weren’t used to Coach being gender neutral. Or polite. A few of the guys laughed. It was sort of funny.

  Not Parker. She raised her hand and volunteered to help him set up the cones for our first drill of the day. Mac rolled his eyes. “Look at her. She runs like a girl.”

  Mischelotti pushed Mac in the shoulder. “Stop talking and line up. If we’re going to make a run at the state championship, we have to play together. You got that, MacDonald?” He acted like he was already the captain.

  “Got it.” Mac stepped on my foot. Hard. He was acting like me—letting everything and everyone get to him.

  I crossed every one of my fingers behind my back, listed wartime presidents, and hoped that all of yesterday’s repenting and praying and talking about missed opportunities would amount to something good. My horoscope that morning had told me to stop swimming with the current and take chances. It said: “Go forth, and explore.” So when Coach caught my eye, I did something I had never done before: I raised my hand and asked him if he would like me to take a turn in the net too.

  Unfortunately, Coach was Episcopalian. He was not in tune with the idea of giving me a new opportunity for the Jewish New Year. He was in no mood to take chances or explore. He said, “I might need you to play sweeper.” In other words, you are the backup. Dribble around the cones just like everyone else.

  I hate dribbling around the cones.

  The first time around, Mac scored. Parker dribbled surprisingly well, but lost control when she got close. I sprayed six players with mud and dirty water. “You’re finished, Salmon Head,” Mischelotti said.

  On the second turn, Mac scored again. Parker kicked a nice shot just over Mischelotti’s head. My ball flew straight into his hands. “You have to attack the corner,” Mac said. “Place the ball just out of reach. Mischelotti won’t dive this early in the morning.”

  On my next turn, I took Mac’s advice. I dribbled left to right, and it would have worked out great, but when I tried to plant, I slipped in the mud. The ball skidded off to the side. I fell flat on my face two feet in front of the net.

  Mischelotti clapped his hands. He came out of position and stood over me in the famous Wayne Timcoe pose: hands ready and knees bent. Then he flexed his biceps and growled, just the way Wayne did after every great save. He said, “Ari Fish, you’ll be lucky to be anything but a sorry little backup.”

  Mac told me to stand up and get back in line. “If Coach would put Fish in the net, you’re the one who would be the sorry little backup.”

  Before I could walk away, Mischelotti grabbed my shirt and pushed me hard. “Fish in the net?” he said. “That’s funny.”

  Lucky for me, I did not fall. Luckier than that, I got out of the way. In retrospect, it was probably my best move of the day. When Mac and Mischelotti are mad, anything can happen.

  That doesn’t mean what happened next was premeditated. Mac would never take out another guy intentionally. He isn’t like that. The truth is, it was a freak accident.

  Or maybe it was fate.

  As I got out of the way, Mac charged the net. He slipped in the mud and took off. Really, he flew. Top speed. For a second, he looked like a human airplane.

  A missile.

  On target.

  Headfirst.

  I will never forget that sound.

  Like wood on fire or my uncle Leo’s old air gun.

  The impact of Mac’s head on Mischelotti’s leg sounded like shin guards snapping. An explosion.

  Crack!

  When I had the nerve to look up, Mac was heaving into the mud and Mischelotti was lying on his back. Everyone was crying.

  Mischelotti’s leg bone was sticking out of his leg.

  The rest happened in slow motion.

  Coach fainted. Mac wouldn’t stop crying. I tried not to look at Mischelotti.

  This was nothing like my dream.

  In my dream, Coach stays upright. Mischelotti walks off the field. Coach tells the entire team, “Ari Fish will be our starter,” and he says it like he’s beyond happy, like I had always been part of his master plan.

  In reality, Mischelotti was in surgery for three and a half hours. When Coach called, he said, “It looks like Abel will miss the entire season.”

  He did not say, “Get ready to start.”

  He did not say, “You are the man.”

  He did not say, “I have confidence in you.”

  Instead, he sounded like his season was going to be one of missed opportunity—over before it began. He sounded like, if he had the chance, he’d take anyone over me.

  Even a girl.

  THREE

  “You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his

  way of eating jelly beans.”

  —Ronald Reagan

  When I get home, a plate of cookies sits on the kitchen table. They are my favorite cookies—black and whites—with thick icing, half chocolate and half vanilla—and white cakey bottoms. They are arranged in a circle with one in the middle. They look a whole lot like a soccer ball.

  There is popcorn, too, and I bet a million dollars and a two-goal lead that there are glasses frosting in the freezer and a pot of homemade chicken soup in the fridge, the kind with lima beans, onions, and carrots, and little flecks of fresh parsley floating on the top.

  Dad is the chef and owner of Central Station Fish and Steaks, home of the forty-two-ounce sirloin. He has always been a firm believer in the healing effects of food.

  My favorite book, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents, sits on the table. It is open to Gerald Ford, the only president not to be elected. His most controversial decision was granting a presidential pardon to Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal.

  “Hey, champ.” Dad points to the plate of cookies and digs his thumbs into the muscles right below my neck. “Try one out. They’re from the new bakery. Fresh.”

  Only a fool would let a fresh cookie go to waste. I take a bite. White side first.

  He says, “We’re thinking of ordering them for the cookie table at the oneg.”

  The oneg is the reception immediately following my bar mitzvah. My big day. The day I become a man. It is kind of like a big Jewish birthday party, except in my case, I will already be thirteen. My birthday is in February. My bar mitzvah’s in May. This is because at Temple Emanu-El, the rabbi tells all the people with birthdays in winter to choose a date in spring. He says the travel is too iffy. For such an important occasion, God will understand.

  I take another bite.

  “What do you think?”

  I think the white side should be slightly more lemony, but the texture of the cookie is perfect. “Isn’t it a little early to start thinking about the lunch?” I have barely begun learning to chant Hebrew from the Torah.

  Dad digs into the popcor
n bowl for the partially popped kernels at the bottom, which he swears are a delicacy. “It is never too early to start thinking about lunch.”

  Crunch.

  With a big let-me-be-your-hero, I-understand-what-you’re-going-through smile, he turns his chair around and rests his hands on the top of the bars, like he’s Sam and not Dad, and he wants to talk sports and not failure. “So. Could you put your old man out of his misery, and tell me what happened? How did it go?”

  I shrug. “It was fine.”

  “Fine, fine?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Not fine as in great?”

  “No, Dad. Just fine. As in fine.” As in, let’s talk about something else. He has to know that fine is the word people use when they don’t want to talk. “Did you know that Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger?”

  “What is the world coming to when we can elect someone like that?” My mother walks in, kisses his cheek, my head, and throws her keys on the table. “What a day!” She slumps into her seat and shakes her hair out of the blue nurse practitioner’s net. “Three accidents. One facial laceration. And a pretty ugly grade three concussion.” She zeroes in on my muddy footprints, takes the rag, cleans up the mess, and goes to the stove to boil water. “Adrenaline junkies.” Her yellow scrubs are stained. Dark under the pits. A splattering the color of rust on the front. She washes her face in the kitchen sink.

  My dad hands her a cookie. He no longer asks her where the stains come from. “Try this.”

  She eats the chocolate side first, gives it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Do you realize that’s sixteen accidents this month? All men. Eighteen to twenty-four. It makes me crazy.” After a few more case reports, she either smells me or notices my dirty soccer jersey. “How was the scrimmage?”

  Dad shoots her the don’t-ask, I’ll-tell-you-later look, but she doesn’t get the message loud or clear. “Well? What happened?”

  “It was a disaster.”

  She squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know soccer means a lot to you. You worked hard for today. And I know you thought that you had a real solid chance.” I stare at Gerald Ford’s large forehead. “But if your best isn’t good enough for Coach,” she says, letting go and picking up another cookie, “well then, so be it.”

  So be it—the loser’s mantra.

  The teakettle whistles.

  Dad jumps up to pour her a cup. He says, “I know you won’t believe this, but Sam used to go through the same drama every season. Remember, Marjorie? Every year, he’d sit by the phone, sure he’d messed up and that he was going to be cut. He would tell us about some other player who was bigger or stronger, and he looked exactly the way you do now. But the point is: He never was cut. He was always—”

  “Dad, don’t you get it? I lost. Five to two. To Parker Llewellyn.” They should understand how bad that is. “All my friends are going to start except me.”

  My dad sighs in defeat. Mom sips her tea. She tells me, for about the hundredth time, that people excel at different rates and at different times of their lives and that it would be awful if the best time of my life was happening right now. When this does not perk me up, she says that just because Sam did something well doesn’t mean I have to follow in his footsteps. And that if I don’t make the team, it could be a blessing in disguise, which, in my opinion, is one of the worst, most overused expressions in the entire English language.

  I say nothing.

  So she tells me that there are things more important than soccer. Like school. And Hebrew. “You need to call Rabbi,” she says. “Have you even started studying your Torah portion?”

  I should just say yes. Yes, I have. I should say I am well on my way to making them the proudest parents in Temple Emanu-El history. But I cannot lie, so I stare at a green spot on the table while she talks about things like commitment, preparation, and not putting myself behind the eight ball.

  She says, “You need to get your priorities straight.” And loosen up. And then, in my spare time, stop and smell the roses. But most of all, I need to stop comparing myself to Sam. “You have your own fantastic, worthwhile strengths.”

  That’s enough. I grab this morning’s newspaper, the one I should have read earlier, a couple of cookies, and stomp up the stairs. Slam my bedroom door shut.

  From my room, I hear her yell, “Ari, come back! What did I say?”

  Neither one of them better follow me up here. Or say anything about a silver lining or learning from my mistakes. Sometimes there’s no good side.

  Sometimes it’s easier to face the facts.

  I lost.

  Parker won.

  Sam is great at everything.

  I’m not.

  Alone, I refold the newspaper, so I can open it the way I would have, if it had arrived on time.

  The front page is all about bad news. The president has made a speech. The economy looks bad. One hundred and sixty-two fires are burning in California alone. The paper reports the worst one is near Yosemite, and already a lot of people have had to evacuate their homes. Since Sam is a smokejumper, I know he’s not anywhere near that fire. Sam says that smokejumpers hardly ever fight the big ones that make the news. They mostly jump into small remote fires—the kind that two or three men can overcome. When I think about it, smokejumpers are sort of like keepers. Their job is to catch the fire, or contain it, before it gets big.

  This is pretty ironic, because Sam and I are nothing alike. Even though he loved Wayne Timcoe as much as I did, he would never have played keeper. “Play offensive midfield, or at least, the wing,” he said when he first saw my gear. Of course, Mac agreed. “I hate to break it to you, but the only time anyone notices the keeper is when he messes up.”

  Mac could have held off on that last goal.

  I turn the page. More bad news. In the middle of page three, there is a hole in the paper, a large square cut out and loose ends.

  Every time a young person dies—in war, fire, or other selfless act—my dad cuts out the obituary and saves it in the top drawer in the kitchen next to the silverware. Last time I checked, he had seventeen. I guess it’s his version of knocking on wood—warding off bad luck. Most are from the wars—Iraq and Afghanistan. But one lost his life fighting a huge fire near L.A. He was from Framingham, and he got a bridge named after him, which would be sort of cool if he didn’t have to be dead to get it.

  After my dad reads about a death, he always goes to the kitchen, and if he thinks no one’s looking, he cries. He cooks something comforting. Like stew. Or he roasts a chicken. Then he writes the family a letter. He says that parents want to know that someone has read about their child, and he must be right because most of the time, the people write back. They thank him for writing and honoring their son’s or daughter’s sacrifice. A few times, they sent pictures. Smiling faces on sunny days. Often with a girlfriend or a dog or a brother.

  Once, the dead soldier reminded me of Sam. Same wide forehead. Same crooked smile. Same cocky expression.

  I don’t like thinking about that soldier. I don’t want to know if he had a brother or a girlfriend or a team. I don’t want to know if my dad thinks that someday we will get a letter about Sam. If that is why he cries. If he thinks it is just a matter of time.

  My parents never tempt fate directly. The what if’s and the why’s are strictly off-limits and out of bounds. When people ask, “How can you stand to let your son fight forest fires? I thought he wanted to go to med school,” my dad clenches his fists. My mom walks away.

  They never say “Shut up,” or “Why do you need to know,” which is what Steve the Sports Guy suggested to someone in the same boat. They never say “We wish he hadn’t volunteered.”

  But when I read about walls of flames or fire tornadoes or smoke inhalation or helicopter crashes, my hands shake. I wish my brother could be a safer kind of hero.

  I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. I hope Sam is okay.

  I will never forget the night Sam decided to fight wildfires. He
was already in college and everything he did seemed gigantic. His muscles were big. His hair was big—like a girl’s—long and shiny and tied back in a ponytail.

  At first, it was just supposed to be a summer job.

  Back then, Mac lived with us, to help out his mom, who supposedly went away to school. I now know this was a white lie. That actually, she was in some kind of program that no one talks about.

  I didn’t mind. I liked having Mac sleep on the cot in my room. Every night, we snuck downstairs to raid the refrigerator. We spent each afternoon and weekend kicking the ball or fishing or hanging out at the playground. We made an entire fleet of paper airplanes. We talked a lot about Sam.

  The night he made his big announcement, my parents sent Mac and me outside. We ran around the yard and saved each other from imaginary burning houses. Mac thought Sam was the coolest, most exceptional person in the universe, and he could not understand why my parents were so mad. “Firefighters are heroes,” he said. “They’re like Superman and Batman, except they’re real.”

  I had to explain to him: Sam was not like Superman. He was Superman.

  Later, after my mother had stopped crying, we all sat around the kitchen table, and stared at the map of California. Sam pointed to a spot in the middle of the state and drew a large red dot. “Please Mom, don’t wig out. I can handle it. Besides, it’s just for the summer.”

  The dot bled.

  Sam had been a volunteer fireman, but he hadn’t seen any real action. He said, “It’s a great opportunity. I’m tired of people who think we should leave this job to someone else.”

  Dad grilled steaks. Mom talked about the virtues of responsibility and hard work. She said things like, “Just promise me, Samuel, you won’t do anything stupid.” After dinner, Mac grabbed a soccer ball, and we took turns playing one-on-one with Sam until it was dark.

  Sam never came home. As soon as he could, he went to jumper school.

  I go back to my desk and the newspaper with the missing obituary. The hole in the paper is the size of my fist. I don’t want to think about it.