Family Affair (12 page)

Naturally, we thought at first it was the product of a bad argument, and we did our best to assure her that Brett must be either kidding or not in his right mind. But while I stayed with her, there was a knock on the door, and it was Brett. Evelyn, sure as I’m born, he wasn’t even sorry, really. He kept insisting we listen to “his side of the story,” and then he and Bill yelled at each other in the front hall. Bill came back looking somewhere between angry and downcast, and I knew. Brett and Layla had fought before—what couple hasn’t, other than Bill and me, *wink*—but this was different. Brett said he was through. And you remember how impossibly determined he is, once he gets committed to an idea. His best quality and his worst quality all in one, just like his father
.

Needless to say, I’m beside myself. It feels as though someone or something has died. I spent most of the night on the couch, clutching my Virgin Mary—the little plastic one you gave me with the painted flowers on her robe. Let me know if you think it would help for me to take out one of those Saint Jude ads in the paper
.

I will tell no one, absolutely no one, that we talked, and I hope you’ll do the same. Hard to say what they’d think if they knew I was reaching out to you again
.

Ever your loving sister,
Ginny

I just got the Heisman from my family. The Heisman is an award given each year to the most outstanding college football player. The actual trophy is a bronze statue depicting a player in action-arm thrust forward—stiff-arming some unfortunate would-be tackler who is unaware in that moment that he’s being shoved aside by greatness. But I didn’t get a trophy for being outstanding. Instead, I’m just out. I got the stiff arm when I tried to go see my parents—
my
parents—to tell them what went down with Layla.

She beat me to the punch. Probably got on the phone with them thirty seconds after we left that quack’s office so she could start “spinning” like a presidential campaign manager. Great. Who knew I married Layla friggin’ Stephanopoulos. And now they’re all mad at me. So in the absence of a loving family, I decide to turn to my friends. First stop is Doug’s house. He’s only about a mile from my folks’ place now, and we need to clear something up.

But Doug doesn’t answer the door. Aimee does.

“Hey, Brett,” she says, but she doesn’t motion me in.

“Hi, Aimee. How are ya?”

“I’m good,” she answers, and then closes her mouth, lips pursed.

There’s a long, long awkward pause, and I’m reminded why I don’t hang out at Doug’s more often. Although, in Aimee’s defense, this is bitchy even for her.

“Fantastic,” I say. “Is Doug home?”

“Doug!”
she screams, seemingly at me, since she’s looking me square in the eyes, but she can’t be mad at me because I just got here.

Finally, he appears behind her. “Hey, buddy,” he says, as he steps outside to join me and closes the door behind him.

“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to just show up.”

“No worries, man. You’re always welcome.”

“Was I interrupting something? Like a fight? Aimee seemed a little upset.”

“Yeah, she is,” Doug says, and looks down.

“Well, join the club, dude. I think you and I need to have a beer.”

“Yeah…I can’t go, man.”

“She’s already mad,” I rationalize. “And you haven’t even done anything yet. I say you double down on this thing. And you kind of owe me.”

“No, man. She’s mad at
you.”

“What’d I do?” I ask, but before I even finish my sentence I realize exactly what I did. News sure travels fast in these circles. “Oh, you guys heard?”

“Yeah, we did. Are you okay?”

I look at my watch. “That’s gotta be, like, record time. I mean, it just happened. How the fuck did you hear?”

“Layla called Aimee. She wanted to arrange a time to return a mixing bowl that she borrowed. She was very emotional. About a stainless-steel half-quart mixing bowl. It … came out.”

“Wow. Chicks.”

Doug just nods. Then Aimee separates the blinds from the window and sticks her face through, bugging her eyes out at Doug. It’s a cue for him to get his ass back inside.

“Go ahead, man,” I say. “It’s cool. I get it. We’ll catch up soon.”

“I am here for you, though, buddy. It’s just a little raw right now. And since you seem okay, I’m going to calm Aimee down.”

It’s raw? For
Aimee?
She’s not even that close to Layla. Maybe it’s part of that female mutual defense pact. Or maybe Aimee is projecting, wondering if she’ll get the dinner “talk” next. Whatever. She’d deserve it.

• • •

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Jared says. It’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth when I arrive at his front door. “You heard, too, I see.”

“Do you have any idea of the level of awesome that is your wife?”

“Well, awesome is relative.” I picture Layla for a second, but the thought quickly transforms into a disturbing family portrait, with her at the center and me nowhere to be found. “And right now, awesome is not someone who turns all your relatives against you. I have a frickin’ side in this, too.”

“In all my years,” Jared starts. “In all my years, I’ve met a lot of guys’ girlfriends, and some of those guys got married to these girls, but not one of them was as cool as Layla. Layla is like the holy grail of wives. I mean, if you had
any
idea of what goes on in my innermost thoughts about
your
wife—”

“Dude,” I cut him off. “There’s a reason they’re called your ‘innermost’ thoughts. Because they’re mostly supposed to
stay
inner.”

I let out some air in disgust, turn around, and walk back to my car. It’s clear that I’m not getting any sympathy from the guys, who all are siding with my wife. They all want to sleep with her—
or have already slept with her
, I remind myself. Before even I did.

I’m driving aimlessly, stressing over heading home because
I’m not sure what the protocol is. Just when my stress is about to cross over into full-blown anxiety, I remember that my razor broke this morning, so I pull over at the convenience store to buy a disposable one.

Curious name, “convenience store,” since the only thing that seems to be
conveniently
located there is liquor. So I grab my three-pack of razors, which is going to cost as much as a bottle of fine wine. As I walk to the counter, I notice Dustin Caldwell, one of my younger cornerbacks, haggling over the price of something he has no business purchasing: a liquor cabinet’s worth of vodka, gin, whiskey, and some dreadful apple liquor. To top it off—as if it needs topping off—he smells as though he’s already been sampling the goods.

Seeking to head off this budding scandal, and thanking God for the supreme coincidence that I’m there and not some administrator, I kindly intervene in favor of the law against selling alcohol to minors and insist on driving him home.

He is
adamant
that he walk. But I remind him it’s nearly ten blocks, that he’s obviously a little “under the weather,” and that it’s absolutely no trouble. Especially since I can use all the bonding I can get in these hard economic times.

Dustin pulls at the zipper on his hoodie and stares out the window for most of our ride, and then a block before we get to his frat house, he perks up. “You can just let me off here.”

“Dusty, it’s only one more block. We’re not exactly going out of my way.”

“Yeah,” he says, and zips his sweatshirt up again for the sixtieth time.

Before we’ve even reached our destination I hear a cacophony of party sounds and music so loud I’m pretty sure I can feel the bass in my car.

“Oh, look at that!” Dusty says, as if he’s surprised. “A couple friends must have popped over. I better be going now.” He already has the car door open and one leg out.

“Not so fast, kiddo,” I say. “What’s going on in there?” As soon as the words slip out of my mouth I regret them. Bad enough that I have to play bad cop when I’m trying to bond a little with my team; I have to sound like an idiot on top of it? It’s very clear what’s going on. It’s a party. They’re all drinking. I’m pretty sure the legal drinking age is still twenty-one. And unless they’ve flunked a couple years, no one in that frat house is tall enough to get on that ride.

“Uh—” Dusty stammers.

“Tell you what,” I cut him off. “How about I come inside and hang out with you guys a bit?”

“Like a chaperone?” he asks.
Man, am I really this old? Yes
. “No.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Dusty says, although his eyes have avoided mine pretty much since I bumped into him.

“I’m sure you’re not. That said, I’m responsible for you guys. I’m here. I’ve found you guys doing things I can’t technically allow. I’m not judging, but I have to be available and make sure nothing bad happens.”

• • •

“Coach Foster!” I hear Kevin Bateman shout as I enter the house behind Dustin.

“Came to check out what you ladies call a good time,” I say.

The party is your typical Friday-night let’s-get-crazy gathering. Loud music. Plastic cups and beer bottles everywhere. Snack foods burrowed into the carpet. (Layla would have a fit.) Girls dancing like they’re training for the Pussycat Dolls. Guys dancing halfheartedly, trying to balance the willingness to please the girl they’re dancing with by dancing at all and the crippling fear that they might look uncool. And eyes. Hungry teenage and barely post-teen eyes darting around in search of that night’s hookup.
Now they’re all turning to see a football coach strolling in, certain that he’s about to call the police and bust up the whole affair.

I sidle past a few students and try to ignore the creeped-out looks and “Oh my God, what’s the coach doing here?” whispers.

But I power through and tell a few people that I won’t bust the party as long as they keep the noise reasonable and the drinking doesn’t get out of control. I ultimately manage to have a decent conversation with Ronnie Sidwell about watching
The Wizard of Oz
set to Pink Floyd’s
The Dark Side of the Moon
, and then I destroy any and every opponent who dares to challenge me at Guitar Hero.

I’m walking out of the kitchen when Anya Hendrickson, an exceedingly well-built cheerleader, appears before me, blocking my path.

“Hey, Coach,” she slurs.

“Hello, Anya,” I say. I know her name because she’s one of the newer (read: freshman, possibly not even eighteen) cheerleaders; she’s one of the girls I hear the team talk about incessantly.

“Having a good time?” she asks, her head cocked sideways, her eyes trained on my lips, which start to feel dry, like the rest of my mouth.

“I am.”

“I’m bored,” she says.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply, as I dig my hands into my pockets and try to take a step to my right, edging ever so slightly forward, signaling that I’d like to pass. She doesn’t budge.

But she does pull a small bottle of schnapps out of her pocket and takes a sip. “I hate beer. Jody got busted for selling her little brother’s Adderall, and beer literally makes me yack.
Blegh!”
She mimics an aggressive vomit session and then recovers, coyly passing her hand through her hair as she holds up the bottle of schnapps like she’s posing for an advertisement. “So it’s this or nothing.”

I think of those fake commercials they do on
Saturday Night Live
and picture Anya vomiting all over the place and then someone handing her a bottle of schnapps, which she takes and then smiles. The voice-over booms, “When your Adderall connection evaporates and beer just makes you blow chunks: schnapps. It’s this or nothing.”

“Want some?” she says, as she holds out her tiny bottle.

Schnapps is one step removed from NyQuil. I remember the last time I actually drank some. Seventh grade. I was on a ski trip and Skip Dougherty brought peppermint-flavored schnapps in his parka. We knocked it back on the lifts, and the mint liquor combining with the cold air made our throats feel like we were guzzling Freon.

“No, thanks,” I say.

She shrugs and takes another swig. “College guys are so lame,” she then announces with a roll of her eyes. “It’s part of their charm.”

“It’s not charming. It’s pathetic. They’re boys. Not men.”

It’s getting warm in the kitchen doorway. I’d like Anya to move so I can get the hell away from this potential train wreck.

“They’ll be men soon enough,” I promise, as I turn sideways and try to squeak through the space between her body and the entry. She doesn’t move, and I inadvertently brush against her on my way past.

She grabs my arm. “Soon enough for who? Because it’s not soon enough for me.”

I look around the party and spot John Crooks. He’s about six-four, built, one of my best players. “What about Johnny C. over there?”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “He’s a good-looking guy. Tall.
Manly
.”
What am I saying?
I’m even creeping
myself
out. “What about you?” she asks point-blank.

“I’m a hundred years old,” I say. “I bet you’re not even thirty.”

“I will be in December.”

She leans close, and her hair falls on my shoulder. “I’d like to give you an early birthday present.”

I instantly perform a snap cost-benefit analysis on the chalkboard in my head. On the plus side: She’s hot and I haven’t been with a woman other than Layla since … ever. On the minus side: My career would be ruined, my family would be disgraced, Layla would never speak to me again, I’d probably have to leave town after I got out of jail for statutory rape, and I’d never be able to teach or coach again.

It’s a very close call.

Luckily, I’m saved by a quick vision of the headline in the local paper:
Condor Coaching Cad Caught Canoodling with Curious Coed
. I awkwardly turn Anya down with some line about seeing what’s going on around the pool—though the house doesn’t turn out to have one—and as I’m leaving the party I notice Dusty Caldwell and some kid I don’t know snorting lines. I clap a hand on Dusty’s shoulder to get his attention and he whips around looking guilty.