The Truth About Aaron

by Jonathan Hernandez

  Aaron was quiet but seemed content, satisfied, ready to head home and enjoy a relaxing evening at his condominium. Aaron got in the driver’s side. Aaron usually let others do the driving, but tonight he felt like being in control of the vehicle. I took a seat in back.

  Aaron flipped on the ignition and pulled out of the lot at a slow roll. We approached a police officer directing traffic. Aaron inched closer until the officer extended his hand, signaling for us to stop.

  The wheels at rest, the engine idling, I noticed Aaron’s eyes moving back and forth from the officer to somewhere to his right. He looked like he was panicking. Then, without saying anything, Aaron slammed down on the gas pedal, nearly striking the cop in front of us and the oncoming traffic.

  I turned my head back at the officer Aaron had almost hit. “What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled to Aaron from the backseat as I watched the officer rush to his cruiser. “Pull over. He’s coming. His lights are on.”

  The officer was twenty-five yards behind us. Aaron hit the accelerator harder, causing my head to snap back, the engine now in full thunder. Suddenly we were speeding down a dark and narrow back road with a police cruiser chasing us. Aaron jumped from lane to lane to race around the cars in front of us, while also dodging oncoming headlights.

  “Stop the car, Aaron, please stop the car!”

  Aaron ignored my words; it was as if he were alone in the vehicle. I again looked back at the oncoming officer, who was now only a few cars behind us, the red-and-blue lights flashing in the dark night. One of Aaron’s friends thought it was funny and was laughing.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Pull over,” I pleaded. “Why are you running from the cops? Aaron, you’re going to kill us!”

  I jabbed Aaron on his right shoulder—he didn’t say one word.

  After a few minutes, Aaron took a hard right—my body was thrown to the left as Aaron snapped the wheel down. I squeezed the front passenger’s headrest with my hands, bracing myself, fearful that the SUV would tip and roll.

  He slammed on the brakes—I could feel the SUV slide until it came to a standstill, just to the left of a dark storage unit. Aaron turned off his car and stared in the rearview mirror.

  “What are you thinking, Aaron?” I yelled.

  “Calm down,” he said, as the cop zipped by and disappeared into the distance.

  He turned the SUV’s low beams back on, grabbed the steering wheel, backed up over the gravel, and then drove off. He never said another word about it.

  From the backseat, I was consumed with one question: What is going on with my brother?

  Chapter 18

  FEBRUARY 5, 2012

  ARRIVING AT OUR SEATS, I couldn’t sit down. I had butterflies in my stomach: my brother was playing in the Super Bowl! Kelly Clarkson was introduced to sing the national anthem. The drums rattled and the crowd quieted. Her powerful voice echoed. Aaron and I had watched her compete on season one of American Idol; now my brother stood fifty feet from her.

  Looking up at the Jumbotron, I saw Tom Brady, his eye-black neatly swiped, mouthing the words of the anthem. I scanned the crowd, looking at all the cameras flashing. Then I lifted my gaze back up at the Jumbotron. There was my brother on the big screen, slowly swaying back and forth, like he had before his thousand-point game in high school.

  I thought about all the times Aaron and I watched the Super Bowl in our living room, on our version of a big screen. Before the game we would watch our dad prepare his own special recipe of chicken wings, Frank’s hot sauce, a stick of butter, and several shakes of garlic salt. Then we would unfold our four wooden trays in front of our spots on the sofa. Nibbling on the wings, as a family, we would embrace the Super Bowl action together.

  THE PATRIOTS LED 10–9 at halftime. Early in the third quarter, facing a second and two at the Giants twelve-yard line, New England lined up with no running backs in the backfield—an “empty” formation. From my seat, I could see that Aaron would be isolated against a linebacker in the middle of the field. Aaron loved one-on-one matchups because it gave him the ability to use his quickness and athleticism in the open field. My eyes were glued to him as the ball was snapped.

  Aaron fired out of his stance to press the defender back on his heels. Aaron stopped on a dime, then gave the linebacker a hard juke and head fake to the outside before cutting underneath him to the inside. Brady delivered a quick strike to Aaron, who turned up the field and crossed the goal line for a touchdown. The Patriots led 17–9.

  But New England couldn’t put the Giants away. With less than a minute remaining in the game, New England trailed 21–17 and had the ball on its twenty-yard line. On first-and-ten, Brady and Deion Branch couldn’t connect over the middle. On second-and-ten, Aaron dropped a pass across the middle from Brady.

  Then Brady was sacked, forcing New England to take their final time-out with 36 second left. On fourth-and-16, Brady eluded the rush, flipped his hips, and fired a pass down the left sideline to Branch for a 19-yard gain before stepping out of bounds, stopping the clock with 32 seconds.

  The next play, Aaron caught another ball from Brady, this one an 11-yard gain to the Patriots 44-yard line. Nineteen seconds remained.

  Two plays later, with five seconds left, New England had the ball on its own 49-yard line. There was time for one last play.

  “Please, Father, help us,” I prayed.

  The ball was snapped. Brady shuffled around in the pocket, avoiding the three-man rush, and then heaved it as high and as far as he could. I looked to the end zone: Aaron was preparing to catch the Hail Mary.

  Aaron set his feet to jump in the middle of the end zone as five defenders collapsed around him. Aaron leapt and extended his arms, but one of the New York defensive backs hit the ball just before it touched Aaron’s fingertips. End over end, the ball fell to the turf. The game was over. New York won 21–17.

  Aaron, who had caught a team-high eight passes for 67 yards and one touchdown, dropped to the ground. I watched him closely; it was as if the loss had caused his body to fall limp. He sat in the end zone in shock. His teammate Rob Gronkowski helped him to his feet. It was more than a game.

  Later that night I stood in a long line outside an Indianapolis hotel with other team family members waiting to attend a postgame celebration. I was with my wife and mother.

  “Hey, where did you sit?” I asked my mom. I had tried to find her in the stands before the game started but I couldn’t see her.

  “I was so embarrassed,” my mother said. “I sat down and here comes Aaron’s friend Bo with a prostitute. And they sat right next to us. It was ridiculous. Why would Aaron invite them and why would he sit them right next to me?”

  I was taken aback by this news. Minutes later, I spotted Aaron exiting a vehicle with Tanya and his friend Sherrod. Aaron and Sherrod wore matching outfits: blue Gucci shirts with little G’s scattered in a pattern, the same pants and similar shoes.

  I caught up to Aaron and told him that we had a spot saved in line. He said to follow him. I ran back and told my wife and mother that Aaron said to come with him.

  A few hours later I saw Barry Sanders, the former Detroit Lions running back who had been my favorite player growing up. Starstruck, I put my Bud Light bottle down at the nearest table and asked him for a picture. “Please, Barry, you’re my favorite player and you’re one of my brother’s as well,” I said.

  “Who is your brother?” he asked.

  I told him.

  “He’s a good player,” Barry said. “Go get him and we’ll get a picture of the three of us.”

  I ran to grab Aaron. I told him that we could take a picture with Barry Sanders. We bolted to his side. We thanked Barry at least five times. Walking away, we stared in wonderment at the picture on my phone like the adoring kids we still were inside.

  Aaron never acknowledged our mother or spoke to her that night, so she left early. “I had to leave,” she said. “I was so upset and angry, I was burning up inside over how he treated me.”


  Chapter 19

  SPRING 2012

  AFTER THE SUPER BOWL, I resumed my life in Providence as the quarterbacks coach at Brown University. My entire identity was wrapped around football. The game kidnapped my mind and my heart. Everything else was secondary. My wife would talk to me and it was as if she were conversing with a wall. “Are you still thinking about football?” she’d ask. I would hang my head and say, “Yes.” At the time, I didn’t realize how mixed-up my priorities were.

  My wife and I had been together for seven years and married for one. She had been with me as I weathered the storm of my father’s death and helped me overcome my mother’s betrayal with Jeff. She was the family I needed when my own family was falling apart.

  On the weekend of our one-year anniversary my wife and I decided to celebrate in New York City together. I had to work on Friday night, and that evening she told me she planned to stay at a friend’s house.

  The next morning we drove two hours to Manhattan, to a hotel in the Theater District. I asked about her evening, but she didn’t share many details, other than to say it had been a “low-key” night. Then, twenty minutes into our drive, she was out cold, in a deep sleep, her head resting against the passenger’s window.

  As I continued to drive I sensed something was wrong. I didn’t understand why she was so tired.

  When we reached our hotel, I pretended that everything was fine. That night we went to the musical Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre—my first Broadway show. We had a great time, but I couldn’t shake this lingering feeling that something wasn’t right. I remember thinking, It’s probably just me and I’m overthinking the situation.

  On Sunday night we returned to our apartment in Providence. On Monday morning I gave her a kiss before heading to work. When I reached the office, I couldn’t concentrate. I started to think, Is she seeing someone else?

  I needed to figure this out. I logged on to our shared AT&T account and scanned our call history. One number stood out because it had been dialed more often than others—and at odd hours.

  I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote the number down. At first I pushed in a few digits, but then talked myself out of calling, even getting mad at myself for not trusting my wife. But then I did it: I entered the numbers into my cell phone. The knot in my stomach turned tighter as the phone rang. I prayed that a woman would answer.

  “Hello?” a male voice said. I hung up, and immediately found myself struggling to breathe.

  Despite the evidence, I didn’t want to accuse her of anything without gathering more information. Every night I would go home and try to build up the courage to ask her about the number, but I couldn’t because I feared the truth.

  For a few weeks, I tracked her calls. Then one evening, while she was in the bathroom preparing for another evening out, her cell phone vibrated on her nightstand. The message from an unidentified number—the same one I had noted in our call history—read: “Am I going to see you tonight?”

  With her iPhone in my hand, I paced around our bedroom. I started taking deep breaths—so deep that I grew light-headed and had to sit on the edge of our bed.

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I finally went into the bathroom to confront her. She was in the shower. I slid the curtain open and held up the text message she had received. After wiping the water from her face, she looked at the phone. Her chin dropped and her eyes turned toward mine.

  I was shaking as I asked, “Who is this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I asked again.

  She then claimed it was a friend.

  “Why don’t you have this friend’s number saved in your contacts like the rest of your friends?”

  She looked at me for several seconds—and said nothing.

  At that moment I knew my marriage was in trouble.

  Several days later I called my brother. “I think my wife is seeing someone else,” I said.

  There was a long, silent pause on the phone. Then, “Damnnnnn. Are you okay, D? Where are you?”

  “I am driving back to my house right now,” I said. “I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

  “Come over to my place,” he said.

  I packed a few belongings and drove to Aaron’s, thirty minutes away.

  Aaron greeted me at the front door. He was alone that night. We walked inside and he showed me to the second-floor bedroom. I hung up my clothes and then went to his family room, where Aaron was watching television.

  Aaron kept telling me, “D, you’re young. You will get through this.”

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about the lack of love and attention I gave her. I couldn’t stop beating myself up for choosing football over my wife.

  I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen to boil a pot of water for macaroni and cheese. Aaron went to his bedroom. Once my food was ready, I went to see what he was doing. Entering the room, I saw the bottom drawer of his dresser open and stuffed with bags of marijuana. I grew nervous. He started introducing the bags by name as if they were people with personalities. I couldn’t believe it.

  After shutting the dresser drawers, Aaron peeked out his blinds and looked at the surrounding windows of other condos. I thought he was about to get busted for having so much weed.

  “If I ever get caught around this shit, I’ll be done,” I said. “I’ll be fired from Brown and there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to get another job.”

  From the other side of the room, I spotted a big kitchen knife in the top drawer of his nightstand. It was to the left of his bed, close to the window he was looking out of.

  “Aaron, why the hell is that big knife in your nightstand?” I asked.

  “I sleep with it because people are after me,” he said. “I’ve got it for protection.”

  “Who is after you, Aaron?” I asked.

  “Everyone,” he said. “The FBI, everyone.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  I was very confused by his paranoia: he genuinely believed someone was out to get him and he couldn’t communicate why. At one point, he went back to the window and said, “They are probably watching us right now.” I assumed he was acting this way because of the marijuana.

  We walked back outside. I had to get a few more belongings out of my car and he had to throw his trash in the dumpster. We continued to talk, but in the middle of our conversation, he shifted his eyes to the left, to look at the neighbor’s windows he had been staring at before from his bedroom. But he wouldn’t lift his head up to look; he only moved his eyes. He whispered, “They are watching us and listening to us right now.”

  Aaron’s actions were starting to make me paranoid, enough that I told him I was going to head back home.

  “D, don’t worry,” he said in his normal voice. “Everything’s fine.”

  I looked at him closely. I couldn’t figure him out. I decided to stay. I walked back up the stairs and went to bed.

  After work the next day, I drove to Aaron’s, packed my car, and told him I was going to sleep at home. He asked me to stay with him another night, but I said I couldn’t.

  “Is this because of last night?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Everything is fine,” he replied, and started laughing at me. He didn’t realize how scattered his thoughts were as he worried about the people who were after him.

  I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to leave.

  I returned home and went directly into the spare bedroom.

  Chapter 20

  SPRING 2012

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, AS my wife and I were going through divorce proceedings, I was walking across Brown’s campus when my cell phone started to vibrate in my pocket. It was one of my former UConn teammates who was now a graduate assistant at the University of Miami. “The Miami coaches would like to meet with you,” he told me. “There’s an opening as an offensiv
e graduate assistant on the staff. Would you be interested in flying down here for an interview?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  After hanging up the phone, I immediately went into the office of my head coach to make him aware of the job opportunity at Miami.

  Then I phoned Aaron, asking for his advice about interviewing with the Hurricanes.

  “Follow your heart, D,” he said. “Plus, Miami is beautiful. You have to go look at it. Miami is big-time.”

  Next, I called Coach Edsall at UConn. He thought I should stay at Brown. “There are too many guys jumping around from job to job,” he said. “If you do a good job at Brown, everything will work out.”

  I phoned other coaches for their advice and got even more conflicting opinions.

  I dialed Aaron again. “Some coaches are telling me to leave Brown if I’m offered the position and some are telling me to stay,” I said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “D,” he said, laughing, “this is exactly how I felt when I was in high school trying to decide between UConn and Florida. I had so many people telling to me to stay at UConn and so many others saying it would be best for my career to go to Florida. It’s crazy how things work out. But if you accept the job, I have a place you can stay in. It’s right on the beach and it’s a penthouse. You could stay there for a few months until you find a place of your own.”

  I decided to interview for the position, and I was offered the job. I went back to my head coach’s office, my wedding ring no longer on my finger, and told him I was heading to Miami. He was concerned that I was running away from my failed marriage.

  Days later, as I packed my belongings into the back of a U-Haul for the twenty-eight-hour drive south, Aaron stopped by my apartment.