The Squared Circle (24 page)

“I could play, you know,” said Willie Joe. “Once upon a time.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I've seen the rotation on your shot,” Sonny answered.

Willie Joe made another ten-footer. The pinned overalls twitched ever so slightly when he released the ball. Sonny returned it to him by means of a soft bounce pass. Willie Joe said, “I played with Charlie Vaughn. Can you top that?”

Sonny laughed. “I play with Luther Cobb.”

“We'll see about Luther. Charlie played eight years in the NBA; give Luther a little time, then we'll see. I didn't actually play
with
Charlie, I played against him. But we were friends.”

“Charlie Vaughn scored thirty-six hundred points in high school,” said Sonny absently.

“How you know that?”

“I just know,” Sonny replied. He could have added, Because
he's the only player in the state who ever scored more points than me
. But he didn't. He remembered a conversation he once had with Brother Rice, when the coach underscored for him the supreme importance of Charlie Vaughn's place in the cosmos.

Before he took his next shot, Willie Joe said, “They're gonna retire your number, huh, Sonny?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Jesus Christ, think of that.”

“Come on, Willie Joe, stop it.” This was embarrassing.

“They gonna retire your number and y'all ain't even black. Jesus.”

It gave Sonny a chance to laugh, which reduced the embarrassment. Willie Joe returned to the Charlie Vaughn agenda: “Charlie could play, no doubt about that.”

Sonny sat down beside him. “You could play, too, before you lost your legs. You must have regrets, big time.”

“Sure,” said Willie Joe with a shrug. He had out a tin of Kodiak smokeless tobacco, evergreen scent. The offer he made to Sonny was only out of politeness. Sonny shook his head. “Sure I have regrets.”

“You can tell me if I'm being too personal.”

“No problem. It was one of those things. You try all kind of bodacious things when you're young, even goin' up against a train.”

“You wouldn't do it again though, right?”

“Hell no. But losing out on basketball ain't the end of the world. I've got a good life mostly. Millions of people a lot worse off than me.”

“You find other things.”

“You do find other things. Ain't no use cryin' over the piss that misses the pot.”

“You find other things,” Sonny repeated, this time while staring down the railroad tracks to watch them disappear in the heavy timber of Giant City State Park.

Sissy was wearing a skirt. “You want to put one up, Sissy Sue?” Willie Joe asked her.

“Put one up what? Is this a code?”

“I'm asking you if you want a shot.”

“What if I told you that shooting your basketball was very low on my list of priorities?”

Willie Joe laughed loud and long. Sissy thanked him for the use of his workshop. “You've been uncommonly generous with your space. Now we'll be out of your hair.”

“You ever heard me complain?”

“No, but I have breeding and manners, so I thank you.” Then she said, “You should see how toasty our studio is, now that the wingman keeps the woodbox full. He splits logs like Abe Lincoln.”

They lingered in the clinic coffee shop while Sissy drank her coffee. She said to him, “The first time we bumped into each other was here.”

“Mhmm.”

“Did they make you piss in a bottle, Sonny?”

“That, too. What they didn't do would be more like it.”

Elbows on the table, Sissy gripped her coffee cup with both hands. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail, which made the gray more evident. “Could they give you any results?”

“Not yet. Kelso is supposed to tell me all about it in a couple of days.”

“It seems such a shame, poor
Liebchen
. Poked and probed while your teammates bask in the limelight of nationwide media attention.”

Sonny made a face. “Maybe that would be a bigger pain in the ass. There's nothing wrong with me, not physically, anyway.”

“Maybe there's nothing wrong with you at all.”

He was impatient. “Can we go now?”

“What about my coffee, Dear One?”

“You want a cigarette worse. Besides, it's not every day they retire your number.”

“Fair enough, but you have to drive.”

A light rain was starting, so Sonny turned on the wipers. Just enough moisture to make them squeak. She lit up while he thought to himself,
I feel great. There is nothing wrong with me
. It was dusk, so he turned on the headlights. They were a mile out of town when he asked her, “Did you ever have an EKG?”

“A couple of times. Most recently at the end of last summer, when I had my surgery.”

“You never told me what the surgery was.”

“And you never asked.”

“Maybe I thought it might be nosy.”

“Maybe you did. I had other people in my life for that kind of sharing. You and I were just getting acquainted.” She rolled down the window far enough to toss out her cigarette butt. “Do you want me to tell you about it?”

“I guess I do.”

“Okay then, I had a complete hysterectomy. They took out every reproductive organ in my body.”

Her tone of voice provoked Sonny to glance in her direction, to see her expression. But it was too dark. All he could see clearly was her profile. She went on, “They weren't going to take my ovaries but the surgeon decided it would be risky not to.”

This information subdued him. He wondered why he'd never asked. “It makes you sad,” he said.

“After the operation I was depressed. I suppose it was the full realization that I would never be a mother. It was grieving over loss.”

He knew she was looking at him now, but he kept his eyes on the road. “I never knew you wanted to be a mother; it seems out of character.”

“It was never a conscious goal of mine to be a mother, but when the door is closed, when the possibility is utterly excluded …” Sissy stopped talking long enough to take a Kleenex from her bag and blow her nose. “I wasn't prepared for my own reaction.”

“Are you okay?” Sonny asked her.

“I'm fine.”

“We don't have to talk about this.”

“Talking about feelings is good, Sonny. You should try it yourself.”

“What would I try it on?”

“How about your current condition, the thing you call the float?”

“What could I say about it?”

“Tell me what it's like.”

Impatiently: “I think you already know what it's like. When I play in a game, I'm losin' it. I get this like sickness. I don't know what the hell's goin' on, but I either have to fake it or take myself out of the game. Never in practice though, so maybe Warner's right.”

“Who is Warner?”

“He's a sportswriter. You should see the NCAA investigation. They treat you like a criminal. All I wanta do is play.”

“I know.”

“I don't know shit about doctored transcripts or drugs or money changing hands. All I want to do is play, but now whenever we have a game I end up gettin' sick. You tell me.”

“No, Sonny, you tell me. What do you think is wrong?”

The only answer he could think of, he hated to say out loud. When he did speak, he didn't look in her direction. “I think it's in my head.”

“In your head?”

“Yes,” he growled. They were approaching the city limits of Anna. “I think it's psychological.”

“Let me ask you something, Cousin.”

“Go ahead. Ask me something.”

“When was the last time basketball was fun?”

“Fun?” It really did sound preposterous.

“That's the question.”

“Basketball fun? When was the last time it was fun?” Then he thought to add, “When was it ever fun?”

In the parking lot at the Clyde L. Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, Sonny left the engine idling. The flower beds were bare, but he had seen them red and white with bloom many times. Even in the dark, even with naked sycamore limbs and wet pavement, he knew how attractive and serene the spread-out grounds of the hospital seemed.

“Are we waiting for something?” Sissy inquired.

“I was just thinking. It looks like such a beautiful place but all the lives inside are so fucked-up.”

“I think that's called appearance versus reality. There seems to be a lot of it going around.”

“Things aren't always what they seem to be.”

“Let's go inside, Sonny.”

Clad in pale green hospital garb and accompanied by a nurse, his mother landed in her usual chair by the picture window of the sitting room. Stared like stone into the dark great beyond on the other side of the glass. When it was plain that neither Sonny nor Sissy had medical questions, the nurse left.

If it was possible, his mother looked thinner. But then, didn't he always think that? The skin on her hands and wrists, where the prominent veins snaked in high relief, was white as china. Glazed like pottery baked in a kiln.
If you squeezed her fingers, would they break like china?

Sissy took a brush and comb from her carpetbag. Standing behind his mother, she began brushing out her long hair, which reached to the middle of her back. It seemed like his mother's reddish hair was gone completely to gray and pale yellow. Sonny might have felt the urgency to get to the Abydos gym for the ceremony, but Sissy's brushing, slow and measured, tripped his memory to a time four or five years earlier.

It brought to mind a November evening when he sat on the balcony of their apartment listening to the distant ringing of One Gram's basketball as it spanked on the concrete of the alleyway. Sonny thought to himself, if he knocked on his mother's bedroom door she would be tired.
I don't have any plans for supper
, she would say.
I seem to be so tired all the time
, she would say.

But it was after six o'clock, so he knocked on her door anyway. When he went in, she was seated on the edge of the bed, wearing her bathrobe. She was staring out the window in the direction of the dim streetlight. Her hair was down and loose; in her lap, her hands held the heirloom hairbrush.

Sonny switched on the dresser lamp so they wouldn't be in the dark. She turned to look at him. “I'm afraid I don't have anything planned for supper, Sonny. It's nice to have a job, but it makes me so tired.”

Sonny sighed. He said to his mother, “It doesn't matter, we've got stuff for sandwiches. We've still got some of the sliced ham.”

“You're so resourceful, Sonny. Sometimes you make me so proud.”

What was that supposed to mean?
he wondered.

She lifted the hairbrush almost like it was supposed to be a visual aide. “I've been doing some thinking. Sometimes it seems so cruel the way moral dilemmas are visited upon us, unexpected and gratuitous even. Through no fault of our own, just … circumstances you might say.”

Sonny had no idea where this was headed, but it was clearly a prelude to something, and it gave him the funny feeling.

“There was this special on
Discovery
last night about elephant poaching. It was set in Africa, but I don't remember which country. After these men kill the elephants, they cut off their heads with chain saws. That's so they can get tusks and everything out in a hurry, in trucks; by taking the whole head, they make certain they don't lose even one inch of the tusk.” Now there were tears running down her cheeks, but she still sat erect. “They had pictures of these poor headless beasts humped up on the ground and covered with buzzard droppings. I just can't tell you how unthinkable it all was, and how desperate.”

It
was
sad, hearing her describe it, but what could he do? Maybe he should just ask her if she'd like a sandwich now.

His mother took some Kleenex to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. So when she spoke, it sounded like she had a cold: “My hairbrush is made of ivory. This very one handed down to me from my own grandmother.” She stopped long enough to blow her nose again, while her fingers traveled the long, sculpted handle.

“That means some poor innocent beast had to suffer and die, maybe even die horribly, simply to make a hairbrush. A hairbrush is a thing of vanity, Norman, any old brush would do as well, even one made of wood or plastic.”

She turned to look at him. He felt uncomfortable and impatient. “The fact remains though, that my brush is a treasure. It has a history of generations in my family, so I can only see it as a precious possession. Do you see what I mean by unwanted dilemmas? It seems so unfair.” She began to cry again.

Sonny felt helpless. He finally told her, “Whatever tusk was used to make your hairbrush, it came from an elephant that was killed a long time ago.”

She sniffled some more before admitting, “I keep telling myself the same thing, Norman. It's
true
, isn't it?”

“You can't feel guilty about an elephant that was killed before you were even born.” His own voice sounded cold. He stood up, impatient. “I'm going to get the ham out.”

That was then. Now, watching Sissy lift with her left hand and stroke with her right, Sonny knew there would be no conversation involving his mother. No discussions of dilemmas or anything else. Sissy lifted and then she brushed, slowly and then slower still, as if she could go on forever. When the large body of hair was shiny and full and symmetrical, she began to braid it. Her strong but gentle hands were expert as they sectioned and tucked.

Sonny found himself captivated by the tranquillity. It was his cousin who finally reminded him, “Hadn't you better be going?”

“Probably.”

“It isn't every day you get your number retired,” she said with a smile.

It was funny enough to make him laugh. With the absence of urgency still prevailing, he took his mother's small, cold, dry hands in both of his. He tried to warm them without squeezing. “I'm going to the gym in Abydos, Mother; they're going to retire my number.”