All those life lessons our parents forced down our throats have been kicked back up in Kelby’s case. I deal with her a couple of ways. I never expect too much, and I keep a safe distance. She’s wrapping up her last few semesters of grad school, then lord help the poor soul who gets her next.
Then there is Kass, my little brother and my hero. He is also a mirror image of our mother, but that works for him. Tall and strong, Kass is like the guys on the Abercrombie & Fitch murals at the mall. Ripped muscles, broad shoulders, long legs, Kass is the total package. Throw in a couple of perfectly placed dimples that look like God gave his cheeks a quick pinch before sending him down here to earth, and Kass is just about perfect. He also happens to be the best man I know.
When we were little Kass was always the one who wanted to linger at the soup kitchen, who stood up for the nerdy kid who couldn’t catch a baseball with an eight-foot net, and really took to heart the pious message our parents preached from the time we were old enough to hold our own sippy cups.
If there were one family member I would consider dropping this news on first, it would be Kass. He would rush to my side, hold my hand, and spew forth well-intentioned happy lines that I know he would honestly believe. That I would be fine, that this would make me stronger, that my chemo-ravaged hair would grow back better than ever. I know he would be there for me, but I don’t want him to have to be. I want him to continue on his journey of good will, to stay shiny, happy, and untouched by the shower of shit that is about to pour down on me.
Kass may look like my mother, but everything else was transferred directly from my father’s DNA. Good genes have delivered to him a bomb of a right arm, so it took no time at all for Kass to blow right by kids his own age in every sport he ever tried. By high school, the buzz on him exploded. Recruiters would line the metal fences of the baseball field, or the upper bleachers at the Friday night football games, scratching down notes or whispering into their cell phones. Not that there is not hard work involved, although I think that if there is any percentage of a successful outcome that depends on the hand of fate scooping up your ass at just the right time, the fingers are permanently cupped for Kass. Not too long after being drafted into the NFL, he shut down the critics who said he was nothing more than an entitled kid with overinflated expectations. This boy can play!
Sometimes Kass will bring his government issued cell into the postgame press conferences, dial up the White House and put the phone on speaker so the Sunday afternoon VIP crowd gathered at the other end can hear the whole thing.
He’s a regular chip off the old block. My father could not be more proud, and honestly neither could I. On game days, I am always the last phone call Kass makes before he drifts off or gets on the plane for the trip home. For a while, he would try to put in a call to Kelby but always got voicemail and no return call, so he figured he’d catch her later. I told him the later, the better.
Even though he and the rest of my family will have to know eventually, I decide that Lauren will be first.
I figure the best way to do it is face-to-face. With that, I start looking at my schedule.
How soon can I book a flight to Los Angeles?
Chapter Two: Dezi
“You’re an asshole, and don’t think I won’t tell everyone I know how much you suck,” the lovely woman with the angelic face bellows at me from the opposite side of the kitchen. That’s pretty much what she’s become, a fine object to look at but way too prickly to touch. I focus on the path of least resistance to get her the hell out of my house.
“Listen, Bridget. Sometimes things just don’t work out and I should have told you sooner I wasn’t ready to live together.” I make a quick decision that now is not a good time to mention that I think she needs a therapist more than a husband.
My goal is simple. Get her out, don’t get smacked in the face, make sure all her shit is gone so she doesn’t need to come back.
It takes another fifteen minutes for her balloon of rage to lose its air. Then, as the tears begin to trickle down her chiseled cheeks, her bottom lip quivers and she thrusts herself at me hoping to meld her curves into me and bring this dispute to a close right there on the kitchen floor. I should be all over the invitation for a self-serving quickie but all I can see is a twisted, sad girl who needs to be someone else’s problem.
I gently pull back, hold her shoulders and tell her it’s time to go. Five more minutes after that, with several broken dishes scattered about and a stream of insults trailing behind her, Bridget exits my life. Jesus Christ! By the skin of my teeth, I survive another round of girls gone wild. I look down at the shattered glass and my eyes trail up to the screen door pulled from its hinges. If this is all the damage done, I got lucky again. I know it won’t always go my way; one of these days my luck will run out.
I vaguely remember hearing my cell buzzing on the coffee table as breakup chaos was unfolding in my kitchen. I walk carefully over the glass to check my messages. Melissa, my secretary, was letting me know she had booked a shoot in Los Angeles this coming Friday. Not just any shoot, this was the shoot. My hand grips the phone, my stomach doing a quick spin as I listen to her voicemail detailing the job. This is a deal I have been working for months now, an exclusive spread for Time magazine featuring the senator from California who had been caught shagging his staffer. There had been such a strong early buzz on this guy, pundits were talking presidential potential. He blew it, quite literally, and now the schmuck actually agreed to sit down with a reporter and have his mug splashed across the cover.
Of course, he’ll been doing it simply for the right to tell his side of the story, which we all know by now means blabbing about how his marriage had been cold and distant for years, but he couldn’t imagine putting his young children through a heartless divorce. Sure, it’s so much better for the tykes that you sniff around your assistant rather than be straight up with their mother.
Whatever.
I don’t care what sorry excuse this dog has for fucking up, it isn’t my problem. All I need to worry about is taking a photo of him that has the perfect mix of apologetic, shadowy angles that will entice the average grocery shopper to stop at the checkout and throw the magazine into the cart.
I feel my eyes narrow as I begin to set the shot in my head, already noting how the light needs to hit from the side, his chin down, eyes looking straight ahead. I will make this asshole look like a million bucks. It’s why I got the call; my stuff is rock solid and I know it.
It’s not like a life calling or anything like that. It’s not brain surgery or rocket science and I’m not saving puppies from the high-kill shelter. It’s more of a comfortable fit. I have an eye, I suppose.
Once I blew out my right knee during a college football game I had to find a Plan B for the rest of my life. Sure, I had dreams of the big time, worked my ass off from the time I hit puberty and realized I could grow muscle. While the other guys were out smoking pot, funneling Bud, or getting laid in the back seat of their parents’ car, I was at the gym. My body was strong and lean, but my mind thought it knew it all. I was a naive, stubborn bastard. I totally dismissed the trainers and coaches when they would tell me to pack on more body fat, add some weight to support my overworked muscles. I’d laughed at them when they told me to focus on what they all believed to be my true God-given talent, if you can call it that. I resented them for thinking I couldn’t make it, or for suggesting a sport that I had long dismissed because it wasn’t nearly sexy enough to handle everything I had to offer.
Baseball, they had all told me. Your future is with baseball. Make it work, Dezi, listen to your body.
Instead,
