Shame (27 page)

When I looked up, Bill was standing over me with his fists clenched, but when he saw me hobbling to my feet, he groaned, opened his hands, and said, “Not your ankle.”

“Yes, my ankle, you stupid—” I began, which brought Bobby Ray and Oz scurrying in between us again, although there was no reason anymore. Bill turned away, shaking his head, and I hopped off to the concession stand to get some ice, which was what I should have done the last time this happened.

It's hard to sustain a practice when the off-court intensity outshines the on-court play, and nothing got accomplished after that. Bill had disappeared by the time I came out, Bobby Ray apparently had gone after him—maybe to try to keep him from doing a Phillip on us—and Oz remained behind to minister to me.

“Is it swollen?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

We sat in silence. The loudest noise was the drip of melting ice onto the floor beneath the bleachers.

“Were you really over at the Mathis place?” Oz asked, as though he could not—would not—believe it of me. He just looked at me, the most decent man I knew, and I felt hot embarrassment rising in my cheeks.

“Yeah.” I nodded. There was no point in protesting my innocence. Even if I hadn't been there doing what everybody might think, innocence is a relative term. I was guilty of other, perhaps equally damaging things.

“It's wrong, John,” Oz said. “No good'll come of it.”

I turned to take a good look at Oz. I remembered the boy he had been—gangling, reclusive, a social misfit. That boy would never have dared to say these things to me. I guessed it was almost as difficult for the man, so I didn't argue, and I didn't get angry. I just said, “Thanks, Jim,” and patted his shoulder. “You're a good friend.”

Oz patted mine in return, exhausted, I think, from the strain of carrying on a running discourse, and climbed to his feet.

Light was failing by the time I felt ready to leave the gym, and I drove home gingerly, trying not to put too much pressure on my ankle. As I listened to the stereo and thought about Sam's proposal—for such it seemed to me—I finally understood the message Bruce Springsteen had been trying to pass on to me in his music: These things I thought I wanted could only be found in the darkness at the edge of town.

If I really wanted to have Samantha, I would never stand in the light in this town—or maybe anywhere else—again.

Was I ready to spend the rest of my life in darkness? Were there enough pleasures and joys to compensate for that?

After getting off the blacktop, I drove the section line road toward the house, and there was enough daylight left for me to see that the gap closest to our house, the one leading down to the pond, had been left standing open. I pulled the truck over, looked up and down the road to make sure no cattle had wandered out, and then closed the gap and drove home.

Dad had always told us that a man never leaves a gate open. Never. The way he talked about it when Trent and I were kids, you might have believed it to be one of his articles of faith: Serve God, save your money, and always, always, close your gaps behind you.

Had he been unable to close it? Or had he simply forgotten?

Either way, it sent a sliver of pain into my heart.

“We're having fish,” my mother announced when I walked in, as if the aroma of frying catfish wasn't sufficient to inform me. “Your father had a good day at the pond.”

“Great,” I said. “The girls back yet?”

“They called and said they'd be in around seven.”

I was not displeased that they were taking their time. It was actually shortly before eight when headlights came down the driveway and they came in jabbering and giggling about the sales they'd raided and the money they'd saved.

“To be truthful,” I said, “it's impossible to save money by spending it.”

“You're always better off saving than spending,” my dad affirmed from the recliner. “That's sound advice.”

“We got some really cute stuff,” Candy said. “And wait 'til you see the baby clothes—”

My dad looked at her with horror.

“—for Michael and Gloria,” she finished.

That night after everyone had cleared off to bed, things were quiet, strained in our room. Michelle asked, “How was your day?”

“Not so good,” I said. “My mail delivery was pretty much return to sender.”

“Practice?”

“We didn't get much done. I hurt my ankle, although it's feeling a lot better.” I had it propped up on a pillow.

“Where'd you go for lunch?”

I remembered our promise, the most abiding promise we had ever made to each other—absolute truth, no matter how potentially hurtful.

I remembered the nighttime confidences shared, the trust Michelle had always had in me, the love she had always had for me.

I remembered all this. I remembered it, and I took a deep breath, and I opened my mouth to speak.

“I had lunch at KFC,” I said.

“See anybody you knew?” Her voice seemed deliberately light, as if it were a matter of no consequence, as if my answer wasn't about to commit me to everlasting damnation.

I shook my head. I didn't dare to try my voice. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd been lying to her all along, all these years, that not telling a lie was not the same as telling the truth, that the things left unsaid, the desires and wishes I had kept secret from her—or tried to keep secret—were also lies, and that by finally uttering a conscious untruth now, I had simply put myself in the place where I must have truly belonged all along.

Darkness.

What Could Have Been

“Let's go up to school and shoot some baskets,” B. W. offered when he saw me moping around the house, watching a talk show about wives who had affairs with other women. Michelle was up at school helping decorate the cafeteria to look like the retro restaurant in
Pulp Fiction
, which she had seen seven times that previous fall and claimed had changed her life; my parents were getting in the last of their visit with Candy and Arturo before they ventured across the Texas Panhandle and into Nuevo Mexico; Lauren was in her room with headphones on, listening to Michael W. Smith, a hunky Christian singer with a perpetual five o'clock shadow and eyes that smoldered out of one of the posters over her bed in such a way that they might evoke more complex feelings in young girls than simple devotion to God.

“You sure?” I asked him. “I know you've got other things you'd rather do. And this is pretty interesting stuff.” It looked like two of the wives were getting ready to fight—or kiss.

“Dad, this is trash,” he said.

“Right. But interesting trash.”

“I've got to get out of this house,” he said in a stage whisper. “And clearly you need to too. The sooner the better.”

The gym was cold when we got there and smelled of ammonia; the cleaning staff had apparently given it a once-over the night before, the obligatory cleaning during the Christmas break. The floor, too, had been waxed, because it was both glossy and slippery.

“I can see myself in the shine,” B. W. said, dribbling out to center court. I would have thought he was too young to remember those commercials.

“You just want to shoot, or you want to play one-on-one?”

“Let's warm up and then play a game or two.”

We dribbled to the west basket. “You doing this for fun or to humor your old dad?”

“A little of both.” He sank one from the top of the key and watched as it bounced almost straight back to him, propelled by his beautiful backspin. We shot for about ten minutes until we were warmed up, and then we played three games of one-on-one, the three games necessary because I won the first on the strength of half a dozen deep outside shots that fell before B. W. was convinced he was going to have to guard me out there. B. W. won the other two, as he should have; he'd been playing better ball than I since he was fourteen, and at first that was a hard thing to swallow, although I suppose if one has to lose something to someone, to lose to a talented son at least means you can take pride in his accomplishments.

And, I thought as we dribbled, laughing, over to the bleachers after the last game, all this could be lost—the simple pleasure of a basketball game with a dutiful son, the joy of seeing children blossom into adults with skills and talents that mark them as special, the wordless rapport possible with those who share the blood coursing through your veins.

Afterward, we thought about showers, but the locker rooms would have been as cold as the gym, since no one had been in to turn on the heat, and so we decided just to sit and cool off a little before going outside.

“Hey, Dad, how you holding up these days?” B. W. wanted to know after we'd sat for awhile, panting in silence. “Isn't it hard not seeing Michael?”

I nodded.

“I'm sure it'll change someday. He's not gonna be like this forever. He'll come back to the family. I mean, he did want to see Gram and Poppa when they got into town, and he's been seeing Grandma and Grandpa Hooks every week or so. Grandma said sometimes he and Gloria come over for lunch on Sundays.”

“He always did love roast beef,” I said. We used to go over to the Hooks' every Sunday after church until the kids got too old or we got too busy or something of the sort, and it became occasional instead of regular. Maybe not all traditions were bad; one could do worse than roast beef.

“I think everything's going to be all right,” he said, and he waited for me to agree. “We're just going through some rough times right now. As a family, I mean.”

“You may be right,” I said. “I hope so.” Then I laughed—more of a disgusted snort, really. “Your mom says that Phillip One Horse and Michael have been spending some time together. I can't get close to either of them, but they've managed to find each other. Crazy.”

B. W. rose to his feet. “Should we check up on Mom before we go?”

“We're not going to make a very good impression on the other folks there,” I said, indicating our sodden, stinking selves.

“I know,” he said. “But she said she was worried that everything might not be ready.” I don't know how much he knew, but B. W. was a keen observer. “This dance is pretty important to her, you know.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.” I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, tried not to think about walking into a room where my wife and my potential lover were hanging crepe paper. “Okay. Let's go over and see how things are going.” We put on our sweats and jackets and locked up the gym before walking across to the main building and into the long and cavernous hall heading to the cafeteria.

“Sure looks different with the lights out,” B. W. said, and it did. The halls that looked laboratory sterile under fluorescent light looked downright spooky. Our footsteps echoed, and if I didn't know the walls were lined with steel lockers, I could almost imagine we were wandering into some monster's den.

Then when we turned the corner we picked up light and music coming from the cafeteria and walked gratefully toward it. Although you may know rationally that mad killers are almost exclusively a creation of Hollywood screenwriters, it's still hard not to imagine one creeping up on you in the iron dark. We stepped into the cafeteria, which was bright and frenetic—although not, it turned out, as bright and frenetic as it needed to be.

“Hey,” Michelle called from up a ladder where she and June Four Horse were hanging balloons. Across the way, doing something with the skirting of tables against the wall, was Samantha, who looked up, smiled, then turned back to her work. Caroline Osbourne and a few other ladies (and some duly-deputized husbands) hung banners, carried chairs, fiddled with the sound system, which was blazing “Dancing Machine,” the Jackson Five from back when Michael Jackson seemed cute and normal.

Michelle climbed down and crossed to give us head-averted hugs for the sweat impaired. “I'm so glad you're here. We've got a problem. I need you to run to the City.”

“What for?” It seemed a little late to set off on the hour and a half one-way trip to Oklahoma City when the dance itself was only some hours away.

“The programs for the reunion aren't in from the printer. They said they'd had a holdup because of a job in front of us that took longer—anyway, they're just now finishing them up. They said we could pick them up this afternoon at four.”

I checked my watch. “Which means leaving right about now.”

“Why don't you let me go after them?” Sam called over from her tables. “I'm not really doing anything important. I'm sure John has better things to do than fetch programs from the City.”

“That'd be real nice of you,” Michelle said in the tone of voice that means it's decided, but then she pursed her lips and thought a moment. “Except this printer is sort of hard to find—it's down in the Bricktown part of town that wasn't anything but abandoned warehouses when you moved to Texas.” She looked at me as though she'd had a brilliant idea, and when she spoke, her voice was brilliant, although the joy didn't reach her eyes: “John, maybe you ought to go with her, help her find her way.”

Sam, B. W., and I all turned to look at Michelle. Probably everyone else who heard did too. “Well,” Michelle said, meeting my gaze, “
I
can't go. There's still too much that has to be finished up here. And if you take Samantha's car, B. W. won't have to sit around up here all afternoon because he doesn't have a ride home.”

“I don't mind,” B. W. said. He looked back and forth between us. He knew something big was happening.

Michelle put her hand on my shoulder; someone who knew her less well might have even seen the movement as playful. “Please, John,” she said. “Help Samantha.” Her face was grave and her eyes bright.

I turned to look at Samantha, whose eyes were shining too, if not perhaps for the same reasons, and then back to Michelle. “Okay,” I said. I looked at her again.

Michelle nodded softly—she was sure, whatever her reasons—and wrote down the address for us. I gave B. W. my keys, answered his “See you at home” with another quiet “Okay,” and gave Michelle a quick hug when she came back.

“See you in a little while,” I said. She didn't say anything.

Then I followed Sam out to her car, that big blue Buick Century, accepted the keys from her, and slid into the thick cushioned seat behind the wheel.

“She knows you don't have to go with me,” Sam said as we clicked our seat belts shut. “I can find an address on my own. I'm a realtor. I find addresses all day every day.”

“Yup,” I said.

“But she's sending you with me anyway.”

“Yup.” I started the car, and we glided out of the parking lot. It was so quiet inside the car that I could hear Samantha breathing.

“Do you know where we need to go?” she asked as I headed south out of Watonga toward the interstate.

“No idea,” I said. I laughed. It was crazy. “There's absolutely no reason for me to be going.”

We sat in silence again as I drove south through Geary, around the curves and up the long hill leading up out of the Canadian River Valley on old Route 66. Sam was deep in thought, and I remembered from the distant past that when she was trying to solve a problem, she preferred quiet to chitchat. She'd hold it in her head like one of those Rubik's cubes, turning it this way and that, trying to picture it from all the angles.

I looked at her there, next to me, the two of us driving away from everyone in my old life and in the direction of something I didn't know yet. I had always wondered what it might feel like, and now that I was doing it, it was strangely unsettling, good and bad feelings mixed like volatile chemicals in the beaker that was my stomach.

“Do you think she knows that you and I might just keep going and never come back?” Sam asked, still turning things over in her mind.

“I think she knows.”

“And yet she put us in a car together.” She shook her head, turned the cube to another angle.

I nodded as I slowed to turn the big Century onto the ramp leading to the highway. The car accelerated like a Saturn V rocket—as slow as geological time at first, and then as the huge mass built up speed, like something you'd have to crash into a nearby planet to bring to a halt.

At last Sam shook her head and said, “I give up. It'll come clear to me soon, I think. For now, I just want to enjoy being here.” She snaked her hand across the seat, found mine, and gave it an affectionate squeeze before I raised it to tune in something more appropriate on the stereo. Sam was listening to a country station, 101.9, which was playing Garth Brooks's “Friends in Low Places,” and while I'd been known to listen to country when forced to, mostly when I was dancing to it, it was not my music of choice, certainly not the music Michelle and I listened to at night as we read or wrote. I found an oldies station, which seemed an acceptable compromise, especially when the Cars' “Drive” came on three songs into a half hour of commercial-free light rock.

“The Cars. Remember our last dance?” she asked. “I've thought about it some nights, late, staring up at the ceiling, remembering your hand on the small of my back—”

She broke off as I swerved back up onto the highway, which I had neglected to pay attention to for the past few seconds and as a result failed to notice the slight curve. I laughed nervously and cleared my throat. It had become suddenly very warm in the car, and I tugged the collar of my sweatshirt to vent a little heat.

“Good to know I can still have an effect on you,” she said. “John, do you ever think about me that way?”

“Sometimes,” I said, although I immediately felt that I must say, “It's not Michelle's fault. She's a wonderful lover. A wonderful wife.” Okay, that wasn't at all awkward. “I just remember, that's all.”

“I like the way you stick up for her,” she said. “I've never hated her. I've always been jealous. But I've never hated her.”

I smiled. “I wish I could say the same thing about Bill. I've hated him since the first time you went out with him.”

“Well,” she said, “you never liked him much to begin with. I remember of all the guys, you liked Oz the most. You said you thought Oz would always be your best friend.”

“Turns out I was right. Although I wish I'd treated Phillip better,” I said, passing a slow-moving pickup. “Maybe things could have turned out different for him if I'd been a better friend.”

“Some people are meant to amount to something,” she said, “and some never will.”

“What have I amounted to?” I asked.

“You've done the best you could with the hand dealt you,” she said. “You made one mistake.”

“Maybe Phillip just made one mistake,” I said.

She shook her head. This was not the way she saw the world, I guessed. There were good people and bad people. Bad people made their lives bad. Although bad things happened to good people occasionally, it was not because of who they were. That's just how things were.

“I don't want to argue,” she said. “Phillip is small potatoes.”

“Not to me,” I said, and now I was feeling a tightness in my gut that would shortly translate into anger. “That's one of the things I've learned by coaching: People are all valuable. Anybody can make a contribution if they find their niche and develop their talents.”

“That sounds like a wonderful locker room speech,” she said, and I could feel her steering us to safer territory. “I know you're a good coach. Would you like to keep coaching?”