Safety Net (13 page)

There was something wrong with
telling Dale, too, though Erick couldn’t put his finger on what. He figured it
was because Dale wouldn’t believe him and would laugh it off. Even if he could
convince Dale of the seriousness of his emotions, he imagined Dale would tie it
all up for him with, “Well, homeboy, you’re not gay, and neither is Lowell, so
I guess you’re just screwed.” And Erick knew this already, and didn’t need Dale
to tell him that.

Erick didn’t tell anyone and
discovered he could live with it. In a weird way it was liberating. He looked
at Lowell and loved him and didn’t have to worry about Lowell loving him back
or what the hell they could actually do about it.

-----

Ken Wotoa looked around Erick’s
room before coming inside. “Are you alone?”

Erick frowned at Ken’s seriousness.
“Yeah. I don’t know where Anson is, but Paul’s already left for the break. What
is it?” He sat down on his bed and invited Ken to pull up a desk chair.

Ken chewed on his lip. “One of my
friends from high school, he goes to Rockridge.” He looked at Erick and added
in an explanatory voice, “He and a bunch of our friends come to our games when
Rockridge plays away, supporting me and stuff. And of course the Hammer Game.”

Erick was still waiting to know
what needed to be explained. About half of the team was from California, and
they all had friends at rival schools.

“Okay. Yeah?”

Ken rubbed his hands on his knees. “He’s
seen Dale. At Rockridge. And the thing is, he saw Dale with this guy... Like,
all of Rockridge knows this guy is gay. He’s like in the gay student organization
and stuff. And my buddy -- he recognized Dale. And he said they looked
friendly. I think Dale might be gay.”

Ken looked at Erick, and Erick
wondered how Ken was expecting him to react. His reaction, which he kept to
himself, was,
Dale, what the hell? You’re dating a guy the whole Rockridge
campus knows is gay?

When a moment had passed and Ken
saw that Erick wasn’t going to say anything, Ken said, “I’ve been practicing
with him for two years now, and he’s an okay guy and all. But he’s never
mentioned a girlfriend or any girl. So when I heard about Rockridge, it sorta
made sense.”

“Did you come to me because I’m
Dale’s friend, or I’m the quarterback, or--?”

Ken grimaced. “Both, I guess. We
talked about going to Coach Miller but I thought it had better be you.”

“‘We’?” Erick’s gut tightened.

“I went to McIlvaine, Perry, and
Adams first” -- the junior and senior wide receivers -- “’cause I couldn’t
believe it. Wanted to ask them what they thought.”

“What about the others?”

Ken shook his head. “No need to get
it in among the froshs and sophs, if it’s not a big problem.”

Erick’s gut untightened slightly. “I
guess that’s my next question. How big a problem is it? If you were thinking of
going to Coach--”

“That was Perry’s idea. We didn’t
like it.” Ken sat back in the chair. “I don’t like knowing this. It makes me
think less of Lennart, to be honest. But it’s like McIlvaine said, right now,
the team doesn’t need this. We need players. We’re just turning this team
around.”

Erick released a heavy breath. “What
I need to know is, can you all still work with Dale? Train with him, practice
with him, travel with him? Shower with him? Talk to him? Trust him? Because
that’s the bottom line: trust.” He watched Ken’s face while Ken thought about
it, not happy and faintly disgusted, he supposed.

“Before you answer, though... Dale
must have a reason for not telling the team, and I’m pretty certain that reason
is because he wants to play football for Crocker more than anything else in the
world.”

“I guess I can see that,” Ken said,
frowning.

Erick sighed. “There are guys on
the team who do things off the field I personally don’t like, don’t approve of,
wish they wouldn’t do.” He didn’t mention the defensive backs’ video stunt;
knew he didn’t need to. “That’s them, that’s their lives. All that matters to
me is how they behave on the team and whether they’re going to help us win
games. And when it comes down to that, you know, I trust every single one of
our guys, including Dale Lennart. No matter what they get up to off the field.”

Ken nodded once and said, “I’ll
talk to the guys. I gotta think about it, but I see your point. McIlvaine’s
thinking the same as you. Adams I don’t know about, but he’s not a
troublemaker. And Perry left for home this morning, so he’s probably forgotten
about it already.”

Erick thought this unlikely but
didn’t contradict him, wanting Ken to be right. He said, “Well, I can’t tell
you what to think. Nor do I want to. And I can’t tell you what to do when we’re
off the field.” He smiled to make it a lame joke. “But I wish, really wish, you
wouldn’t spread this around. That could make it more of a problem. If it is a
problem.”

“Oh shit, no, Erick,” Ken said
firmly. “Frankly, I’d prefer to never talk about it ever again. Ever.”

Erick walked him to the door,
saying, “Yeah, me too. Thanks, Ken.”

Anson came in as Ken was leaving
and asked Erick, “What’d Wotoa want?”

“Nothing. A wide receiver thing,” Erick
shrugged it off.

“Not about Lennart, is it?” Anson asked,
and Erick’s stomach knotted. Shit, was it all over the team already? All over
campus?

Erick looked at him and asked
carefully, “What do you mean?”

Anson’s manner changed. He had
caught that he’d said something Erick didn’t like. He flopped onto his bed,
shaking his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” He glanced at Erick, gauging, and
said, “I’ve heard some stuff, that’s all. Rumors. Probably all bullshit.”

Erick’s stomach unknotted, but only
out of the bleak hopelessness of keeping this situation under control.
Oh,
Dale, what the hell were you thinking?

He sat on his bed and picked up his
phone, toying with it. “Yeah. Probably bullshit. There’s a lot of that around.”

“I don’t see how you’re friends
with him,” Anson said abruptly. “I don’t like the guy. Even if the rumors aren’t
true.”

Anson’s sudden harshness invoked a
knee-jerk defensive anger in Erick, but he locked it down. Anson glanced at his
non-reaction and elaborated, “‘Homie’ this, ‘cribmate’ that. Like he’s so
downtown when he’s this little white boy from Ohio.”

That’s kind of the point. The
absurdity of it
, Erick thought, frowning at this completely unexpected
turn.

Anson retreated a little. “Eh, you
guys are friends, whatever. But the way he talks, I find it racist and
offensive.”

“Racist? Dale’s not racist, I’m
sure of that.” But saying it, Erick couldn’t remember them ever talking about
it one way or the other. He couldn’t see how anyone could be a football player
and be a racist, especially at a place like Crocker, where the football team
was even more of a melting pot than his high school in Dallas had been.

“Like I said, he’s your friend,
whatever. I just don’t like him,” Anson said, ending the conversation.

Erick thought about it off and on,
and brought it up with Candace when he visited her over the winter break. It
was the morning of their third day together, housesitting her sister’s condo
outside of Boston. Candace cocked an eyebrow at him while stirring her coffee
and said, “This kid Anson, he hates Eminem and all those guys, too?”

“I don’t know,” Erick said, already
feeling some comfort that Candace didn’t immediately agree with Anson. “He
listens to rap... I don’t know who.”

Candace paused, smiled, and reached
across the table to pinch his cheek. “Oh, you! You are so cute.”

Erick wasn’t sure what that was
about, but it made him laugh. He took a sip of coffee and said, “But... Do you
think it’s offensive? Dale’s, yeah, about the whitest person you’ll ever meet, but
I don’t think he means anything by it, just the way he relates. Trying to, I
don’t know, find a brotherhood.” He didn’t mention why Dale would have problems
finding a brotherhood naturally and work so hard at it.

Candace sat back with her coffee. “Me?
I don’t think it’s offensive. And I’ve never met Dale, but he’s a close friend of
yours, and it’s hard for me to believe you’d have a racist friend. With or
without your black girlfriend,” she said with a broad smile. “But I’m not a
young black man,” she added soberly.

When Erick waited for her to
continue, she waved her coffee cup and said airily, “Oh, I’m not saying it’s
all fun and games being a young lady of color. You’re shocked, I can tell.” She
smiled around her sarcasm before saying with a sigh, “But for our young men? A
whole other set of problems. This kid Anson, he’s there on a football
scholarship?”

“He is,” Erick said, wrapping his
hands around the coffee cup, frowning. “But even to be considered as a
recruit... I mean, you should see the applications. No one on the team is a
dumb jock. You have to meet Crocker’s requirements, and there’s this set of
standards you have to sign that they call the ‘scholar-athlete contract,’ and
on the SAT you have to get at least--”

“Babe, that’s my point.” Candace
set her cup down and reached across the table to take both of his hands in hers.
“Here’s Anson: young, smart, gifted athlete, middle class, scholarship to a
top-tier university. Try to imagine how many people may be thinking -- and have
probably said to him -- he’s only at Crocker because of football. Not that he
deserves to be there, but implying that Crocker lowered its standards to let
him in because he’s black and he can play football.”

Erick held her hands, marveling at
how she was so good at making him see things differently. He tucked away plans
for after the break, what he could say to Anson, what he could say to Dale.

After they finished breakfast, he
said, “You have to be one of the smartest people I know. I know you could get
into Crocker. Even if they didn’t accept all your credits, if you took summer
classes, you could graduate half a year behind me. Pumpkin...”

“Babe,” she said warningly. She
flapped her hand at him as he cleared the table. “We talked about this already.”

Erick loaded the dishwasher,
fighting down the disappointment, the useless anger. “So your heart’s set on
that Oxford thing,” he said flatly. “The whole year.”

“I’m doing it.” She rubbed his back
and slipped her arms around his waist. Her chin bumped him between his shoulder
blades. “It’s what I want to do. Honey, I’m going to miss you like crazy. I’m going
to miss my family like crazy. But I gotta do this. For myself.” She rested her
head against his back. “Just like you have to play football. For yourself. To
become the man you’re going to be. I want to become the woman I’m going to be.”

Erick turned around, pulled her
into a hug and held her tightly. “I know. I do know it. Just keep reminding me
of it, okay? When I’m being selfish because I just want to be with you.”

She tickled his ribs. “Oh, don’t
you worry. I’ll keep reminding you.” She grinned up at him. “It’s okay to be
selfish, just don’t be a jerk about it.”

That night, Erick held her in bed,
feeling her sleep, and remembered everything she’d said about Anson. He could
imagine having nearly the same conversation with Lowell, though Lowell would’ve
phrased things differently.

Erick smiled, thinking how he loved
two incredibly beautiful and smart people. Loved them both so much it was kind
of tearing him apart inside. But it was also filling him up, making him more
complete.

-----

Now that he had a major, Lowell was
amazed at how settled he felt. Like he finally belonged at Crocker University,
not just on its football field. He liked most of his classes. Found them
interesting enough to bury himself in until spring training started. And even
after that, he liked the balance of training, drills, and working out, reading,
studying, and writing papers. Well, he hated writing papers. But he could make
himself get through it.

Erick came back from winter break
confident and optimistic, from which Lowell drew two conclusions: (a) Erick had
been needing to see Candace again since summer, and (b) Erick and Candace were
definitely fucking. All Erick needed to ditch his moroseness was to get laid.
And Lowell, even though he’d never met Candace and knew little about her,
wanted to give her a hug and a high-five for being so good for Erick.

Lowell was a teeny-weeny bit
envious. He was making concerted efforts to date and find a girl he could
connect with on the same deep level Erick had with Candace, but he was finding
it hard. The super pretty and smart girls usually bored him, and the sporty
girls were either football groupies veering toward, if not skankiness,
no-strings-attached easy, or they were competitive and sort of annoying. Lowell
gradually came to the conclusion that the problem was with himself: he was more
shallow than he thought he was.

His shallowness would explain a few
things, anyway, like why he couldn’t curb his libido. He knew one of the
reasons he couldn’t make lasting connections with girls was because he fell
into bed with them too soon. He saw the pattern clearly, yet couldn’t keep from
repeating it.

And shallowness might explain why,
when Lowell first caught up with Erick after winter break and saw how relaxed
and contented he was, like he’d just had a week of great fucks, the threesome
idea plunged back into Lowell’s imagination. He kept it at arm’s length through
spring training. He shoved it into an alley whenever he and Erick were chilling
by themselves, studying or watching movies or tossing the ball together. He
finally (he thought) kicked it to the curb by indulging in it as a jack-off
fantasy a bunch of times, borrowing Emma (
her fault for bringing it up
)
to play the starring role.

What should have been the starring
role.