The Crossroads of Logan Michaels

by James Roberts

  “As a girl I suffered with depression. I still do. I think that my depression took a toll on your father. He couldn’t make me happy, nothing could—except having you boys. Separating from your dad will help him in the long run. I am hoping it will help me as well.”

  Chapter 5

  SOMEBODY WAKE ME

  The divorce was very hard on the whole family. Dad was moving out to get his own place while Jared and I would look after my mother. My father was moving right down the street in town into a one-bedroom apartment, but not seeing him every day after he came to our house from work and on Sundays watching football kind of hurt. I tried to keep strong for Jared; he was only twelve and too young to really know what was happening here.

  I knew that my parents fought over money and such, but I never thought it would affect their love for each other. My parents had been together for almost twenty years; they had spent their adolescence together, had raised two beautiful kids, and had spent warm nights together on Cape Cod… and now, in the blink of an eye, it was all gone. I am a product of a divorced family and now another statistic, I thought to myself, and I grew angry at my parents.

  At school, it was hard to walk down the hallways with a happy face. I kept it a secret from everyone that my perfect family was not so perfect. I walked down the hall slowly, thinking of Jared and what he might be thinking, wondering if he even cared.

  The first time my father picked me up after basketball practice, after they broke the news to us, was weird. I couldn’t even look him in the eye; it was almost like we were strangers because he was not living in the house. He had Jared in the back seat and I sat in the front and told him about practice.

  Jared and I would stay over at his one-bedroom apartment a couple of nights a week. He would cook us hot dogs and beans—just what you would expect from a bachelor in his mid-thirties. Silently, we’d watch TV from his small couch, and we never really talked about the situation or the fact that he and my mother were no longer in love. He bought another single bed so Jared and I didn’t have to share the couch. Some nights, I would think about how happy our family had been, and how everything was over now; my life was broken.

  •••

  The basketball season would be starting soon, but my mind was so unfocused; it was hard to play with the whole situation at home. Coach Lasell started to lose faith in me because I wasn’t performing to my “full capability,” he said. All I could think about was my lonely mother, studying all night to better herself.

  Coming home from practice was tough, because sometimes Jared wouldn’t be home and my mother would be studying while also trying to cook dinner and figure out where Jared was. My little brother seemed to be handling the situation differently; he tried not to be home ever—maybe avoiding the house helped him forget how our lives used to be when we were a full family.

  No more family dinners, so I would usually eat and watch TV while Jared would eat at the table, and my mom would pick at the food later, once she cleared our plates and did the dishes. No more nights of family movies with Dad sipping a cold Sam Adams. At times, I would wonder what my father was doing. Was he sitting in his apartment by himself? Did he enjoy being alone, without his family? Thinking of this often made me depressed. I had never struggled from depression until now; I mean, I had had my dark days when basketball didn’t go my way, but now I was finally starting to see the dark in the world.

  School frustrated me, especially when a teacher would call my name. I just wanted to be left alone, and as they stared at me, waiting for the answer, I would think, Leave me alone. Then I would reply, “I don’t know the answer.”

  Coach Lasell lost faith in me, and for our first game I was on the bench. He would put me in as the sixth man, which was not the worst. But my star had faded; I was no longer the revered “Ice” who scored twenty points a game. I didn’t care too much, though; after all, I had no one supporting me in the crowd. My mother was at night classes taking finals, my father didn’t show up to most games, fearing that he might see my mother, and Jared was at a friend’s house doing God knows what. I had no one to impress. My heartthrob Katie paid me no attention, either. I had been deluded to think she ever would.

  After each game, I would usually need to get a ride home from my buddies. It was kind of annoying to watch all of my friends hop in the cars with their families. I would sit quietly in the backseat, listening to how happy their parents were, driving their Mercedes and living comfortably, and it made me sick. I would just smile and thank them for the ride, but secretly, I hated them. Or did I really hate my parents for splitting us up?

  Two months into the basketball season and I was officially on the bench; Tim had replaced me as the starting shooting guard. I had too much hate in my heart to care about basketball anymore. I would only see my father on the weekends and I didn’t know who he was anymore. Jared and I would see each other after school and would walk past each other like we were strangers. He would always be out with his friends and it was hard for my mom to keep an eye on us because she was either selling Mary Kay products or studying for school.

  My sixteenth birthday arrived and it was the first time since the split that I saw my family together again. It was awkward to see my Dad walk in wearing his new jeans and blazer and sporting a sharp haircut; he looked younger each day. It was almost as though he was happier without a real family. Maybe Mom was right: Maybe they are happier apart. It made me depressed to think that maybe we were all just a mistake and that maybe I was never supposed to be here.

  Jared and I sat at the table as my parents awkwardly asked one another how they were doing. My mother, of course, had a smile on, but I could tell it was fake and that my father’s was fake, too. I just wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible and not look back; it made me sick to be around them when I knew that it was all a lie.

  After my lonely “sweet sixteen,” I just wanted to leave the house. My dad pulled away and Jared went to a friend’s house as my mother studied for her last final exam. Whenever I would get depressed, I would walk over to the Thompson School to shoot hoops, which is what I did that night. I would shoot and think of last year and how happy I had been and how things had changed so much. I could play for hours out there, just thinking about life in general and how I desperately wished I could change it.

  “Logan?” I heard from the distance. “What’s up, man? It’s Rory.”

  We started to shoot hoops and chatted as we played; I don’t know if I was feeling vulnerable, but I started talking about my parents getting divorced and how much it sucked. He told me that his parents were divorced and that it sucked for him, too, but that allowed him way more freedom now and he loves it.

  “I never thought of it that way,” I said.

  “Listen, man, I have a hoop at my house, so if you ever want to come chill at my place and watch TV or something….”

  Maybe Rory wasn’t as bad as I had thought; I mean, he actually understood what I was going through here, unlike my other friends with perfect lives and perfect families.

  “Yeah, man, that sounds good,” I replied, this time meaning it.

  I saw Rory in school over the next week and we started to chat more and more, laughing in class together. The teachers had to tell me to stop talking in class instead of Rory, but I kind of brushed them off disrespectfully. I’d started to shy away from my basketball friends because they didn’t know what I was going through and I didn’t even bother to explain it, knowing they wouldn’t understand. Practice was boring, since I wasn’t a starter and was slowly becoming a permanent fixture on the bench; my heart was not in the game anymore.

  The first time I went to Rory’s house was later that week. He only lived two blocks away, so I would walk across the Thompson School yard and cut through a couple of neighborhoods, through the Little League field I used to play on, and his house was right there. It was a medium-sized, but old, and it had a couple of broken-down cars in the driveway along with a crappy old basketball hoop
that wasn’t even regulation size.

  He also lived with his mother; she was an older woman who smoked cigarettes and looked as if she had lost hope in this world. I prayed that my mother wasn’t going to look like that one day. We played basketball outside in his small driveway. He had a couple of Adirondack chairs out in the backyard that we would sit in. His buddy Tyler came over, and when I first met him, I thought, He’s a short, sarcastic little punk. He was hunched over and had a cigarette in his mouth at all times. He joined us and then sat on the chair texting on his cell phone.

  “Rory, do you know anyone who has weed?” he asked. I laughed, trying to look cool, even though I never had tried it before. Tyler asked me if I smoked and I told him, “No, I’m not into that.” He laughed at me, lit up another cigarette and then offered me one as Rory lit one up, too.

  “Can I have the lighter?” I asked. They didn’t have to persuade me at all; Screw it, I thought, there was no reasoning behind my choice, I’d just wanted to try one. COUGH! After I had inhaled my first drag, I said, “What a terrible taste; these things are disgusting.” They laughed as I inhaled another drag slowly. It felt good this time; my head felt light and my eyes shut a little bit. What a wonderful feeling. I was hanging out with a couple of guys who never judged me and who came from similar backgrounds; I didn’t have to impress them with a jump shot or curveball. They understood me for me, and I liked that.

  Later that night, I headed home after spraying on some of Rory’s cologne, so I wouldn’t smell like cigarettes. My mother had a smile on her face that I hadn’t seen for a while. “I passed,” she said modestly.

  My mother had achieved her dream of getting her nursing license while going through her divorce and trying to raise two young men. I was so proud of her, and things started to look up again after the news. It made me realize that if my mom could be this strong, why couldn’t I get back into basketball on the starting lineup again? Come on, Logan; you’re stronger than this.

  Her graduation ceremony was planned for right before Christmas at Northern Essex Community College, which had one of the most rigorous nursing programs around. I wondered what my dad would think; even though they had been separated for a couple of months, would he care to show up?

  Jared and I visited him the next day and gave him the good news and told him how proud we were of Mom. He smiled and said, “I know, I was with her.” I’m not sure if he was truly happy for her, but he looked like he was.

  •••

  Over the next couple of weeks, I was focused on basketball and was making progress toward the starting lineup. The season was almost over and Coach Lasell appreciated my effort, even though I still wasn’t there yet. I figured that I had all summer and the rest of the year to practice for my junior year, and that I would come back ten times better than before.

  Rory, Tyler, and I would hang out a couple days a week, late after basketball practice. It would be dark out when I’d walk through the fields and through the neighborhoods to get to Rory’s house. They would smoke marijuana every day, whether it was with a joint or out of a bowl. They still couldn’t get me to smoke weed after asking many times, but they never forced me into it. I would smoke cigarettes with them here and there, but I wasn’t addicted to nicotine.

  December arrived and my mother wore her white nursing gown and cap. She looked so happy and beautiful. Her dad was there in his green sweatshirt, along with my uncle and aunts. My uncle looked very happy for Mom, as he breathed heavily and shook his knees in his seat. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and he couldn’t believe how grown-up Jared and I were. I looked at the auditorium entrance anxiously every second to see if my father would walk in proudly with his blazer and slick haircut.

  Dad never walked through that door, though, which made me sad. How could he miss my mother’s proudest moment? Was he ashamed to see her family, or did he just not care? This carried with me as I went from happy to sad, back and forth, like a rollercoaster of emotions, throughout the whole ceremony. I hugged my mother so tightly after the ceremony was over; if Dad wasn’t there for her, then at least I would be—always. She will never lose me, I thought as I squeezed her tighter.

  The following weekend, Jared and I visited our father. I didn’t even want to mention Mom’s ceremony and how he had missed it last week; it would upset me too much. He told us that he had gone on a date with another woman. My face flushed as I started to sweat. How could he move on so quickly and forget about Mom? I thought about how one day, if he decided to remarry, I would have another woman in my life. I need to get away from this, I thought as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

  This would officially be the first Christmas that Jared and I would sleep until noon on Christmas Day. I mean, what was the point of waking up if our family was broken? There would be no more days of my mom and dad sitting tiredly by the Christmas tree, watching us open presents before my mother made coffee for my father and breakfast for us. No more of my dad guessing what was under the wrapping and always getting it right. The holiday was depressing now.

  •••

  I was looking forward to getting my learner’s permit soon; finally, I would have some freedom from all of this nonsense. My mother had found a career as an LPN at a senior living home for elderly patients. I’m not sure why, but she loved helping people; she was the sweetest woman in the world. Every time I was down, she knew exactly what to say to make me smile again. She had a career now, so there would be no more selling cosmetics; she could support her two sons without a husband.

  At one point, however, my father told us we were going to have to sell the house, and when we did, my mother would need to find an apartment, but that it was going to take a little bit of time. My mother and father also told me that I would need a job if I was going to have a car and would be buying gas to run it.

  Over the next several weeks, I applied for basic job positions so I would have a little cash while I had my driving classes that started soon. I filled out applications to supermarkets, landscape companies, anything, really. I didn’t care what I was doing, I just needed to have cash to have freedom to drive.

  My first real job was at the supermarket down the street. It was convenient because I could walk there after school and work for a couple of hours, which ended up being about twenty to thirty hours per week. Just enough money to take home two hundred dollars a week, which would be enough for gas money and spending money. The job was boring and simple; I was a bagger, which consisted of putting items in bags for customers. While doing that, I was also taking driving classes a couple of nights a week. Sometimes I would see my basketball friends’ parents at the store. I would smile and put their food in paper or plastic for them. Their kids, my friends, didn’t need jobs, since they were all wealthy and already had nice cars lined up for them, which I resented. Everyone told me that working builds character, but I always thought that was just what people said who already had money.

  My baseball tryouts had started after basketball came to an end. It was time for “Catfish” to shine. Mr. Hillfield was at tryouts, talking to the varsity coach, bragging how perfect I was, as they watched me pitch strike after strike. He smiled at me like I was his golden boy, but I wondered if he knew that his golden boy was struggling in his personal life.

  The varsity coach came over and talked with me about how they wanted to keep me as a backup pitcher and possibly bring me up to the team, but that they already had a lot of seniors who were strong pitchers. He said that he would keep an eye on me and watch how I pitched this season for Mr. Hillfield.

  I was excited to hear that I was still going to be a starter for my baseball team, at least. Most of my teammates were kids I had played with last year, and we had a solid-looking team. The only difference between this year and last was that my family would not be at all of my games, so I had no support. My mom was working all the time, and sometimes through the night. Day shifts ran into night shifts, and sometimes Jared and I didn’t see Mom for a couple of days. It seeme
d like she was always either working or sleeping.

  My mother never got to see how good her son was at baseball anymore, which kind of made me sad. My father would attend as many games as he could, but most of the time I would walk to my games in my uniform, alone. I think that I was good at pitching because when I was on the mound, it was just me. I would put my emotions and all of my problems into the baseball and throw it as hard as I could, channeling all of my hate and anger toward the world. I could be completely focused, and I blocked out both the crowd and the world when I was on the mound. I hoped that one day I could be a college pitcher, and that my mother and father would get back together to watch their son play.

  I continued to hang out with Rory and Tyler, and they also introduced me to a couple other friends, Jake and Mark. I had my baseball friends who were all about sports, and then I had my other friends who mainly smoked weed, drank, and skipped classes. I was stuck in the middle way; I still wasn’t into the whole party scene and never felt tempted by booze or weed, but I liked some of the kids who were.

  My grades had started to slip a bit because I was also working at the supermarket and finishing up my driving classes. Whenever I had free time, I would walk over to Rory’s to hang out with the guys. I would say I was about a C student at this point, compared to the honor-roll student I had been.

  •••

  The day had arrived; my mother drove me to the RMV. I was as nervous as could be to take my road test. This meant so much to me—I needed to pass the test and get my license: the freedom was too important to lose. I had been practicing for weeks and had become a pretty confident driver. The test consisted of a cop and me sitting in the front seat, while my mother waited in her car. The cop held his clipboard and took notes as I tightened my seatbelt and adjusted my mirrors. I slowly backed the car out of the parking spot and could feel my heart racing as I saw my mother watching in the background. I steered the car down the street as I cautiously signaled my blinker on and then came to a full stop at an intersection. We arrived at a side street and I parallel-parked; the policeman then had me finish the rest of the drive back to the RMV.