The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (28 page)

In just days she'd made fast friends with the girls on her floor, knew the secret back ways of campus, and was one of the first to speak out in her classes, even the big ones. She took to all of it like a fish to water.

 

A few weeks after Padeen started school, I rode home with Mom and Brendhan from a swim meet in Helena. The plains were dark as lead but for pinpricks of stars above and the rare flash of headlights coming the other way. For once I wasn't annoyed with Brendhan, already asleep next to me, head propped on the seat divider and mouth open, snoring. His bad ears and tonsils kept him from swimming much, but he was often hauled to practices and meets.

My mother said the rosary softly from the front seat.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
. I closed my eyes, faking sleep, not wanting to do anything holy in that way. I fingered the ribbons in my lap, only one of them blue. My hero was Mark Spitz, the swimmer who never seemed to lose. Even at the Munich Olympics, where 11 other Jews died in a deluge of bullets, Spitz snatched fame from doom, taking gold seven times. I thought about luck and fate, and what part skill might play in salvation. I rubbed each ribbon between my fingertips, seeking a difference in the blue, but they felt alike.

I opened my eyes. My mother's voice grew louder when she caught sight of me in the rearview mirror. I joined in, but so quietly I could barely hear my voice above the tires.
Blessed art thou amongst women
. A strip of winking red lights appeared between the highway and the stars; the big smokestack was coming into view, meaning we were nearly home.

 

That same night Rory and three CMR buddies were at a bar on 10th Avenue owned by a former teacher turned barkeep. The drinking age in Montana was 18 then, and Rory, Ryan, Scott, and Tom had been going to bars together since high school. There was nothing delinquent about it, or wild. Rory had a few beers, so did his friends. Typical night.

But Rory missed Padeen; he could hardly shoot pool for talking about her blond hair, her wicked laugh, her Spanish and books and big ideas. By midnight the other guys had had enough. “Jesus, Rory, go see her already.”

Scott's Camaro was parked out back and they all piled in. They headed west on 10th, crossed first the Missouri and then the Sun, outgunning the falls and smokestack and smelters as they headed out past Fort Shaw, past Square Butte and the ancient Ulm buffalo jump out there somewhere in the dark, before turning south and climbing the Continental Divide. Roger's Pass was in bad shape already in October—it had been snowing at that elevation for weeks—but they made it through just fine. The long drop into Lincoln should have been the easy part.

One by one they fell asleep in the warm hum of the Camaro, until even Scott at the wheel drifted off. Their car skidded sideways along the highway some 800 feet before it left the road, taking out a utility pole a hundred feet beyond that. The car flew on for another hundred feet before sticking fast in the Lander's Fork of the Blackfoot River. When the maintenance man from Montana Power showed up that morning, tragedy stretched the length of a football field from first skid marks to where they found Ryan's body, 135 feet downriver. Rory and Scott were thrown nearly as far. It's conceivable that Tom, the only one of them wearing a seat belt, might have survived the crash, but water filled the small car within minutes.

Clocks in Lincoln stopped at 3:50
A.M
., October 4, 1975, 28 days before Rory would have turned 20. He died at the same age as his brother, from an accident in the same make of car, alongside the same number of friends.

 

John came back for Padeen just three weeks after he'd dropped her off. He took along a six-pack of Rainier, and they drove all the way to Great Falls that way, silent and drinking. When Padeen edged near the end of a bottle, John balanced a fresh one between his thighs and cracked it one-handed with the opener he kept on the dash. It was the best he knew of chivalry, and solace. He kept a slow beer going for himself as well. The boys in the Camaro were John's friends too, and a decade on he'd name his first child after Ryan.

Most of the town had turned out for the memorial service at the CMR theater. Long-haired girls staggered and wept, boys with shoulders so naturally broad that they looked suited up for the front line turned their chiseled faces to the ceiling so tears couldn't escape. White-faced adults held balled-up Kleenexes and whispered in little clumps on the landings and near doors. Padeen was cried out. She sat dry-eyed and hunched next to Rory's mom in the front row. Mrs. Bosch, a mother who offered comfort even from her own hell, kept Padeen's narrow hand in hers. She nodded to the stage, where a big photo of Rory in his football uniform was propped against a folding chair alongside his friends. “I believe you two are spiritually married,” Mrs. Bosch said, squeezing hard on Padeen's hand to make sure she took it in. “You were destined for each other.”

I sat alone with Brendhan while our older brothers served as ushers. Diane sat two rows behind Padeen with her girlfriends, their faces streaked with running mascara and concealer. Mom and Dad were taking condolences in the crowd, their exact position in things confusing for everyone. All around Brendhan and me the same conversation thrummed in slight variations around the same theme.
Marked for death . . . As if neither Bosch boy could live a day beyond that one . . . Same age, same make of car, same number of dead . . . Chosen by God, but why?

I tried not to hear. It scared me that the world could hold such horrible symmetries, or that destiny could mean tragedy as much as fame. I concentrated on my sneakers—I'd refused to wear a dress or nice shoes, with no one in any mood to struggle—which were grabbing at something sticky on the floor. I turned to Brendhan, who hunched next to me, his blond eyebrows pinched to nearly touching. There were dark slashes under both his puffy eyes, making him seem even paler than usual. White as a ghost. I wondered if I looked like that.

“There's snot under my shoe,” I said to him. Brendhan giggled. Heads whipped our way, and I heard someone hiss
Quinns
. A tall woman nearby shook her head, her thin lips pinched white against leathery skin. I turned my back to her, shielding both of us as best I could, and went on mashing my sneakers into the mess.

 

A few days after Rory's funeral, I was playing on the spiral staircase leading up to my sisters' rooms. I slid sidesaddle down the twisting banister and jumped where it ended, landing hard on both feet, then flinging my arms up like Olga Korbut. The floor shook, rattling the skeletal stairs, until Padeen came to the landing and asked what I was doing.

“Playing,” I said.

Padeen started down. “Sometimes it really seems like you don't care,” she said. I was mid-staircase, but she kept walking, her face partly covered by one hand, a small duffle bag in the other.

“What should I do?” I said, and it was a real question.

Padeen stopped a few steps above me. “Nothing,” she said after a pause. “This, I guess.”

“I can balance all the way from the top,” I said as she edged past. She didn't answer. Her hair was loose and stringy around her face. Her jeans were worn to white threads in one knee, and she had on hiking boots that we called wafflestompers, like some backpacker heading into the wilderness. Padeen glanced up to where the staircase met the landing and sighed.

“What?” I said.

“I forgot my purse,” she said.

“I'll get it,” I said and took the stairs two at a time, not waiting to hear if I had permission to go into her room. The nylon sack she called her purse was alone in the middle of the made bed, but I stopped short before grabbing it. The many photos, ribbons, and awards, the half-used makeup and bits of clothing, were all gone. A few books still lined the low bookshelf in the wall—her Central and CMR yearbooks, two fat paperbacks of
Don Quixote
and
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, and a dog-eared copy of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
—but I didn't notice them until later.

I walked slowly back down the stairs and held out her bag. “Where are you going?” I said.

She undid the drawstring and looked inside. “Back to school,” she said, without looking up. John was already gone, so she was getting a ride from a friend of the Mitchells, someone she'd never met. She closed the purse without touching anything inside, then turned the corner to the kitchen without saying good-bye. I could hear her talking to Mom, but I didn't try to listen. I'd overheard too much already, things I wanted to forget.

I tiptoed back up the staircase and into Padeen's room, where I found the books, then an old curling iron in the bedside table drawer with a cord so twisted the wires poked through in places. Tangled up with it was a green-and-gold graduation tassel with a plastic '75 attached to the topknot. The dresser drawers were empty but for two shiny plastic shells that once held pantyhose and a pair of bike shorts balled up in a dark corner of the bottom drawer. I didn't dare open the hope chest yet.

I crawled across the bed, then kneeled at the brass headboard as if it were a communion rail and pressed my cheek flat against the glass, waiting for a strange car to come down the driveway. I knelt there a long time, patient but expectant. I wanted to see Padeen do it, to bear witness to my sister, that strong swimmer, rescuing herself in the wake of fate. Striking out alone for a new destiny.

ALLISON GLOCK

FROM ESPN: THE MAGAZINE

 

Part 1

 

M
ALIKA WILLOUGHBY LOVED
Rosalind Ross. She loved her from the moment she saw her, when Willoughby was only 14, playing summer league basketball, and Ross, 17, already a local star full of swagger, approached her and complimented her game. Ross told her she had potential, looked her right in the eye, and smiled. After that, Willoughby was seized with a sense of recognition so jarring that she could not stop thinking about Ross, about how Ross made her feel and what that might mean.

Rosalind Ross loved Malika Willoughby too, but she was cagier. Three years older, raised in Milwaukee's rough Harambee neighborhood, Ross had seen some things. She'd heard her father talk about “faggots.” Seen what happened to those kids, the ones who were different, like her younger brother Spencer, who played with her dolls and knew how to double-Dutch jump.

When Ross and Willoughby met, Ross had a boyfriend, Kevin. He and Ross later attended the prom, where she'd wear the third dress of her entire life and pose for the camera, smiling, head tilted, demure, the way she knew she was supposed to be. Kevin was handsome and kind, but he was not Willoughby. He did not make her laugh or cry. He inspired no feeling at all, not like Willoughby, young and beautiful and hungry for Ross in a way neither of them fully understood.

“I'm not gay.”

“I'm not either.”

So they told each other, even as they courted, exchanging passionate letters, then kisses that Willoughby said made her “lose her mind for two days.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

So they told each other, and no one else, knowing what would happen if they did.

 

By all accounts, Rosalind Ross was a radiant baby. The family charmer who quickly became the family poster child, the hope. The eldest child of two high school dropouts, reared in a neighborhood where crime was wallpaper and dreams were for dummies, Ross dreamed anyway. Mostly, she dreamed of basketball.

Tall, strong, and attractive, with a wide, open face and cheekbones like switchblades, Ross stayed in school and out of trouble, devoting herself to making grades and mastering her court skills, which she told her parents would be “my ticket out.”

A talented five-foot-nine guard, she played with monastic dedication, disregarding all temptation until the afternoon she spied Willoughby running down the court, all flop and fury, and broke into a grin so wide it hurt. Coyly, she suggested they play together, improve each other's game. “Okay,” Willoughby agreed, mumbling, chin sunk to her chest.

From then on, the two teenagers spent every day and night together. “Best friends,” they told everyone. “Sisters.”

Ross taught Willoughby to drive. Told her she was beautiful. Gave her a ring. Before her senior season, Ross pulled her brother Spencer aside (also gay and then closeted to everyone but her), confiding that she “really liked Malika.”

Spencer smiled.

“No,” she repeated, her face flush. “I
really
like her.”

These were the puppy love years: Ross and Willoughby alone in their bubble, planning their future in another, better world. Then one day, while going through her wallet, Ross's father, Willie, found a mash note from Willoughby. The bubble popped.

Willie was not reared to tolerate homosexuality. When Ross was a girl, Willie was the one who pinned her hair, ironed the creases in her slacks. The two had been tight as ticks, both larger than life, turning the attention in any room. “She was always the favorite,” Spencer says with amicable resignation. “If we had a $100 budget for shoes, Rosalind's cost $80.” Then Ross hit puberty, and with it, feelings unwelcome in Willie's home. The afternoon he discovered the letter, Willie confronted his daughter in a lather. The argument escalated, ending with Willie telling Ross she would have to leave home if she ever saw Willoughby again.

One month later, Willie found Willoughby sneaking away from the house. He demanded that Rosalind go with her.

“Growing up, my father was very hard on us,” says Spencer. “He had so many expectations of Rosalind. After he kicked her out, she disassociated from him. They stopped speaking. He thought he was right.”

Ross's mother, Pamela, did not share Willie's views but felt powerless to act. She could not choose between her husband and her daughter, and anyway, it was his house.