Jim responded, “And if it does?”
Wood pointed to Audrey, who reached in the purse next to her chair, pulled out a knitting needle, and showed it to the audience.
Jim smiled. “Will all of this change you?”
“I sure hope so. I would like to build a house with a soft mattress, air conditioning, a fridge in every room so I can eat whenever I want, and a shower that I don’t have to share with a bunch of sweaty, hairy men.”
More laughter.
“First purchase?”
“We’re talking to an agent now about buying an apartment in Athens.”
“Georgia?”
I nodded.
Jim smirked. “Care to tell me why?”
While Dee had chosen where he’d like to play the next four years, none of us had spoken of it. Walking onto the set, Dee asked me if I thought it’d be okay to let the cat out of the bag tonight, or if by doing so did I think he was attempting to steal my thunder?
Told you I love that kid. Albeit, a big kid.
I thought it was a great idea, and I told him so.
So when Jim asked, I turned to Dee. Dee smiled and spoke with the charisma for which he was becoming known. “So they have a place to stay when they come to watch me play.”
More raucous applause from the audience.
Jim didn’t miss the opportunity. “Is that official?”
Dee responded, “Yes, sir, that’s official.”
Jim crossed his legs. Signaling a turn in the conversation. “Where do we go from here?”
I pointed toward the EXIT sign. “Same place we were going last time you asked me that.”
Jim nodded. “Touché.” A measured pause. “Last week, the league structured a combine, just for you. A first in the league. Word is you scored as high as any quarterback ever. How do you respond to that?”
“They need to check their equipment and bring me some analgesic.” The audience laughed. I leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. “I’m currently the oldest rookie in the history of the NFL. So, for starters, I’d like to make the team. Coach Ray tells me they’ve already written ‘Geritol’ above my locker and stocked it appropriately.” More laughter. “My dad gave me a gift when I was younger—he taught me to love this game we call football. And I do. For reasons I can’t express well, I do. A bunch of guys are thrown onto a field and given the right to run with reckless abandon between two painted lines. I love it. I love everything about it.”
Jim motioned to an assistant, who carried an easel onto the stage. Three magazines sat lined up on the ledge of the easel. Jim stood, allowed the cameras to follow him, and motioned to the first, which quickly flashed onto the large screen above us. Jim continued, “SI has covered your career from the beginning.” He picked up the first, flipped through, then held it up for the camera to move in close. “This one hit the shelves some sixteen years ago.” The camera focused on the title, THE GOD OF FRIDAY NIGHT. He weighed his head side to side then nodded in approval. “First time a high schooler ever graced the cover.”
Audrey squeezed my hand as we stared up at a much younger me.
Jim tapped the cover with his finger. “You look a bit younger.”
I nodded. “That was BP.”
Jim raised both eyebrows. “BP?”
“Before Prison.”
Everybody laughed.
He picked up the second—released the week I was drafted—sucked through his teeth, and again the camera focused in. I’d always liked that picture. The angle had been taken over my shoulder, looking out across the field with the goalposts in the background. I liked it because it focused on the game. On what could be. He read the title out loud: CAN THE GOD OF FRIDAY NIGHT REIGN ON SUNDAY? He set it back on the easel and glanced over his shoulder at the audience. “Didn’t really get to answer that one, did we?”
Audrey spoke up loud enough to be heard by the audience. “Not yet.”
Several in the audience whistled. Some clapped. Jim raised a finger and said, “Well played.”
Finally, he picked up the third, which was obscured by a black cover. He held it up in front of him. “This hits the stands tomorrow. I’ve asked if we could unveil it here. SI has graciously agreed.” The camera zoomed in. Dee sat up straight. Mac in the control room played a drum roll over the sound system. When Jim lowered the black sheet, I was staring at the audience. I wanted to see their faces.
Their individual and collective expression told me what I wanted to know. As did the immediate standing ovation.
SI had contacted us last week and asked to shoot some new photos for this week’s cover. I’d agreed, but with a stipulation. At first, they’d balked, and pretty soon I was having conversations pretty high up the food chain but when I explained, they agreed to come take a look. Once they arrived, we showed them around and they got rather excited.
It would be another first.
We’d not seen the picture until now. We had spent the morning at the prison, shooting pictures of me in my cell, throwing with Gage, throwing through the electronic window, etc. These were all filler pics for the story. Not the cover. The cover they’d shot late in the afternoon with the sun going down. The light was magical.
During the shooting, the totality of what we were experiencing hit us, and both Audrey and I had become overwhelmed. We shed tears often. None more so than in these last few pictures. The emotional dam that she’d built up over the last twelve years had started to crack and crumble. More and more pieces broke loose as the days passed, and that photo shoot took out a big chunk. The result meant that our eyes were teary. We looked like we’d been crying because we had. A vein had popped out on Audrey’s temple. As a result, the camera captured a vivid, raw, and honest emotion.
It was my favorite picture. Ever.
The picture on the cover showed Audrey in her garden. She was wearing my high school jersey, standing next to her scarecrow. Stick over her shoulder. The dove hung at the base of her neck. A football at her feet. Dirt on her knuckles. The photographer had stood on the wall and angled the camera down, taking in most of the garden, the oaks and clock tower in the background. The title read:
DO YOU BELIEVE IN REDEMPTION?
Below that, in small letters, the subtitle read:
The Life and Times of Audrey Rising
The nearly fifteen-page article was our story—Audrey, Dee, and me—as seen through Audrey’s eyes. What she saw, felt, and experienced over the last eighteen years from our meeting on the training table to our last meeting in prison to discovering Dee to planting her garden. Three publishers in New York heard of the article and have already made offers to buy her story. She’s told them she’s talking it over with her agent and that she’ll be in touch. Wood thinks it’s worth more than their offers so he’s taking his time, which is fine with her. They’ll come around. She told us that she’d tell it for free. Wood and I agreed it’d be our secret.
Jim flipped through the article, then spoke to the audience. “Folks, it’s the first time SI has ever devoted such space to the wife of a player.” He looked at Audrey. “And the first time a wife has ever landed on the cover.”
Audrey held back the tears as long as she could, but when Dee hugged her, another chunk broke off.
For so long, Audrey had stood in my cheering section, rooting for me, screaming my name, leveling linebackers and getting escorted out of the stadium, that I relished a role reversal. I loved cheering for my wife.
Jim returned to his seat while the audience quieted, and Audrey dabbed her eyes with a tissue. He crossed his legs and looked at me. “Well…” Seconds passed. The dance wasn’t quite over. Ever the professional, his voice rose. His finger rested on the title while his eyes looked at me. “Do you?”
A long pause. “A few weeks after I was sent to prison, my wife retreated to a convent, where she bumped into a little boy who stole what remained of her shattered heart.” I patted Dee once on the knee. “He filled the hole that my absence left. So, like any go
od mama, she dug into his file and discovered the truth of who he was: he’s the son of the woman who destroyed our life. Audrey knew this about four weeks after I’d gone to prison, so I’d say the wound was pretty raw. At that point, she faced a decision.” I gestured to Dee. “Does she cast him off? Shove him aside? Make him pay for what she believed that his biological mother and I did to her?” I shook my head. “Audrey held his hand, wiped his nose, cradled him in the dark, taught him how to throw, showed him—of all people—videos of me, and shared her love with him.” I turned to Dee. “Look at his eyes. Whose are they?” The camera focused close on Dee’s face. Ginger’s picture appeared next to him on the screen. The resemblance was obvious. I continued, “I think Audrey knew that the moment she first saw him. It’s why she checked his file. She had to know.” I shifted in my chair. Audrey looked down.
Jim interrupted me. He spoke softly to Audrey. “Is this true?”
Audrey glanced at Dee, patted him on the leg, and attempted a smile, nodding slightly. A long silence settled over us and the audience.
I continued. “Several miles down the road”—I shifted in my seat—“two hundred and forty four, to be exact… I was staring up through bars and drowning in my own hatred. Rotting from the inside out.” I held up my hands. “I wanted to kill Ginger, and if they’d have let me out…” I nodded.
I pointed to Gage in the audience. “Then one day he reached down in my cell and asked me a real simple question. He said, ‘Tell me what you love.’ ” The camera panned to Gage. A long pause. “I remember struggling to remember, to get the words out. I said, ‘I love my wife.’ ”
I remember him nodding, unlocking my cell, and telling me, “We can build on that.”
I glanced across the audience. At smiles. In the booth at Mac. At Wood. Dee. And finally at Audrey.
The world had come full circle.
I spoke slowly. “The bars of my cell were toothpicks compared to those inside me.”
Silence.
I turned to Jim. “My wife fell in love with a little boy that she had every right to despise, and I walked out of prison having laid my anger down. No bars on my heart. I didn’t do that to me and I didn’t do that to her. Only one thing does that.” I paused. “You asked me a question the first time I sat here, and the answer I gave was true then. It’s true now. My favorite moment in any game occurs in the huddle, when the faces behind those face masks are all staring back at me. Silently, intently, asking me what I’m prepared to do. Amid their pain and sweat and often the reality of getting their tails kicked, they want to know if they can believe in me. If I’m worth their hope. Strip away all the exterior polish, the gloss, the commentary, and all the conversations, and that’s the wonder and majesty and magnificence that is this game we call football. The ones I love need to hear something from me, and what they need to hear is not where things went wrong, not where something could have happened that didn’t, but what I know to be true.” I shrugged. “Jim, I know I love my wife, I love Dee”—I pointed at Gage and Ray—“I love those men sitting there.” I pointed at Wood. “I love that big teddy bear there.” A pause.
Jim interrupted me. “And Ginger? Do you hate Ginger?”
I spoke softly. Simply. No need to elaborate. “No.”
“What emotion do you feel?”
“Pity.”
He raised both eyebrows, asked again. “Not hatred?”
“Hatred is a commodity I couldn’t afford in prison. Too expensive then. Too expensive now.”
“How so?”
“I couldn’t live every day with that stuff bubbling up inside me.” I pointed at Gage. “Gage taught me that. He found me in a bad place. Picked me up. Showed me I had a choice. I couldn’t change my circumstances, but I had a lot to say about who I was in the midst of them. And who I became. Gage helped me, showed me, how to lay it down.”
“The DA has not decided, but the word is that you two are not pressing charges against Ginger.” He looked at Audrey. “Is this true?”
“It is.” Audrey chose her words. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m dealing with what happened. I have to fight back being angry. At what was taken. Stolen. From us. And much was stolen.”
The audience stood to their feet and cut her off with applause. Jim joined them. Me too.
When we sat, Audrey continued. “So, no, I’m not putting her on the Christmas card list, but when I look inside…” She pulled my hand to her. “When I look at what we need—at what I need—we don’t need Ginger in prison. It accomplishes nothing for us. I can’t speak to what the DA will do or not do, but my question for you, Jim, is ‘to what purpose?’ ”
He looked at me and thumbed over his shoulder at Audrey. “Wow, she’s good.”
I smiled. “She’s just getting warmed up.”
He laughed. “You agree?”
“I do.”
“Most of the United States wants Angelina Custodia’s head on a platter.”
I nodded. “And there was a time when I’d have put it there for you.”
“When I called and spoke to Angelina Custodia just a few hours ago, she was, let me say, emotional. I’d say even broken, by the fact that you have said publicly you have no intention of sending her to jail for the rest of her natural-born life.”
I shook my head. “Ginger’s been living in prison a long time. Steel bars won’t change that.”
“So you really have no problem letting her off the hook so she can fade off into the sunset with her billion dollars and the dynasty that she built on your back?”
“It didn’t buy her happiness then. Won’t now.”
“You’re not jealous? Envious?”
I held Audrey’s hand. “I have everything I need and everything I’ve ever wanted.” I held up a finger. “And remember, if my life had gone the way we had initially scripted it, I’d have never met”—I put my hand on Dee’s shoulder—“Dee. And,” I nodded to Audrey, “as tough as it is to say, I wouldn’t trade him for twelve years that followed my script.”
Jim looked surprised. “You mean that?”
“I do.”
The audience stood and stayed there a long time.
My emotions had risen into my chest, and the words were slow in coming. Holding Audrey’s arm with one hand, Dee placed his other hand on my arm and spoke for the three of us. Kindness framed in confidence. “Their love did what her hatred could not. And never will.”
Jim waited for my answer, but my throat had choked off my voice so I just pointed to Dee, nodded, and shrugged. Doing so shook loose a tear that trickled down the right side of my face. Audrey brushed it with her thumb. I grabbed a tissue from behind me, wiped my nose, and tried to poke fun at myself. “I need to get off this stage before I turn into a soaking-wet mess.” The laughter helped me find my voice. I figured we needed to end this so I tried to speak with a tinge of finality—and hoped Jim would let me get away with it. He did. “My coaches tell me that I’ll make my starting debut three weeks from Sunday against last year’s league-leading defense.”
Not quite finished with me, Jim chuckled. “That’s called ‘baptism by fire.’ ”
“Feels like it, too.” Not wanting to break my rhythm, Jim proffered, making room for me to close. “The thing is this… my life is complete. I am content if I never play another down.” I looked from Mac to Wood to Gage and Ray, from Audrey and Dee to Jim. Finally, my eyes came to rest on the three magazines propped on the easel. Our life in black and white. “There is a God of Friday night, but I am not Him.” I let out a deep breath and sat back.
Jim paused, shook his head once, and turned toward the audience. “Folks, Audrey and Matthew Rising.”
While the audience stood again and filled that room with raucous applause, Audrey pulled my cheek to her lips, kissed me, and whispered in my ear. When she spoke, one hand touched my face, the other traced the lines of the dove. “That’s the thing about hope.”
Audrey, Dee, Ray, Wood, and I rode the elevator down to the basement parkin
g lot where Wood’s hired limo waited. The driver opened the door, they filed in, and I stood staring at Wood. He whispered something into his secret-service earpiece and I said, “Nice touch. We could’ve walked.”
Wood eyed the car then wiped his eyes with the back of his suit sleeve. “Shut up and get in the car. I’m hungry and all this talking and crying like a bunch of women hasn’t helped any.”
Following the party, Audrey and I returned to our room where we lay awake, talking, staring at the lights of the city and at one another. It was a lot to take in. And I’d be lying if I told you the emotion didn’t catch up with me and I didn’t shed more than one tear. I did. I cried like a baby. We both did. We laughed, too.
Seems like I’d just fallen asleep when my alarm went off at three a.m. I hit snooze and lay there. Waking up. Thinking about everything before me. The enormity of it all. Audrey hooked her bare right leg around both of mine and then wrapped her right arm over my chest, tucking her right hand under my left arm. She wiggled her left hand beneath my right arm, clutching my bicep. The dove around her neck rested on my chest. The spider monkey was perched. A crowbar could not have pried her off me. When she spoke, her voice betrayed her smile. “Don’t even think about it.”
I laughed. “Honey, I—”
She cut me off. “You think that guy in prison was tough? Try and step one foot out of this bed.”
“I told Dee I’d meet him—”
“And I told Dee to sleep in.”
“But the guys I’m competing against are—”
“I don’t care if you’re lined up against Zeus, sitting atop a winged Pegasus, and he’s throwing lightning bolts.”
“You’re really not letting me out of this bed, are you?”
She slowly readjusted and tightened her grip. “Think of it more like an audible at the line.”
I turned off the alarm and closed my eyes. A good call.
A Life Intercepted Page 27
