or so he said. These days it’s just pickup soccer or basketball games after school—or as he puts it, “Nothing involving a uniform.”
Come to think of it, those games are gone, too. You can’t do after-school sports if you’re not in school.
I was never much of an athlete myself, so it always both puzzled and delighted me to be the father of a star. There’s a lot to it, hauling the kid to games and practices all over the place, and then one day it’s all over and you can’t help wondering if any of it meant anything.
“I can’t believe you still have my trophies.”
Apparently that gleam of light hit Jake in the eye, too.
“Of course I still have them. They’ve always been on the windowsill. What did you think I’d do, throw them away?”
“Of course not. I’m just a little surprised that they’re still on display.”
“Why?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Excuse me, but you’re not even old enough to use the term ‘a long time ago.’”
“Funny.”
“Your ‘long time ago’ is my yesterday.”
“It wasn’t yesterday. I was ten years old when I won that baseball trophy.”
“Do you remember what it was for?”
“Baseball, I assume.”
“Very good. But not just that. Look.”
I get up and get the trophy. With my thumb I rub the dust off the little tarnished plate in front of the trophy, which says ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. I bring it to show Jake, who’s now lying there with one hand behind his head and the other clenched around the Rolling Rock, which rests on his chest. His mother should see him now.
He squints to read it—Jesus, could he need glasses?—then grins and rolls his eyes.
“Rookie of the year. Yeah, I remember. I had such promise back then.”
“You were a good player.”
“I was all right.”
“You were more than that.”
“Dad. Calm down.”
I put the trophy back in its place, return to the little bed. On a normal father-son weekend I wouldn’t ask what I’m about to ask, but we said good-bye to normal hours ago.
“Jake,” I say, “Why’d you quit?”
“Baseball?”
“All of it. All the sports.”
I can feel my heart pounding. I’m going about it awkwardly, but you lose your subtle communication techniques when you’re a divorced father. Back when I lived with Jake I knew what was going on in his life just by being there. The casual comment, the look on his face, the whatever it was that was bugging him eventually came to light, and I could wait for it. That’s the beauty of being there. You’re a fisherman with all the time in the world, awaiting the tug on the line, the twitch of the pole.
But all that goes out the window when you get divorced and move out. You’re not a fisherman anymore. You’re a cop on a tight schedule, resorting to the least effective communication technique there is—good old Q & A.
Jake does not answer my question. I ask him again, softly this time: “Why’d you quit?”
He smiles at me in a strange way, a blend of pity and sympathy. “Is this part of your ‘Let’s talk about everything, let’s not be afraid of anything’ plan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Because if it is…” He pauses, drains the last inch of beer down his throat. “If it is, I could use another beer.”
I get us two more Rocks. It’s not yet four o’clock in the afternoon, and my seventeen-year-old son and I are on our second round. In the little bit of time that we’ve been home, that magical narrow beam of light has begun to shrink with the turning of the world. Suddenly the light vanishes completely, and just like that the house is back to its old shadowy self.
Jake feels the jolt of it, too. He looks out the darkened window and says, “It’s like an eclipse.”
I hand him a fresh beer and return to the little bed. My hand is shaking so much that I almost chip a tooth, lifting my bottle to my lips. I’ve already asked my question twice, and I’m not going to ask it a third time. He knows what I’m waiting for, and at last he responds, at the end of a long, leisurely yawn.
“Well,” Jake begins, “it’s not as if it’s because I was afraid to compete.”
“I never thought you were. I saw every game you ever played, and you always wanted the ball.”
“Yeah.” He chuckles. “I wanted it too badly. Remember the time I stole the basketball from my own teammate?”
“Jesus, that was funny.”
“He didn’t think so. The coach didn’t think so, either.”
It actually happened, at a game on the Upper West Side. Jake was maybe twelve years old at the time, playing on a team with mostly black and Hispanic kids. It was a local league, a far cry from the white-bread private school team he also played for.
The star of the team was Eduardo, a lanky Puerto Rican who had all the tools—speed, shooting ability, the works. But he never passed the ball, ever, so once he had it his teammates might as well have sat on the bench and waited for him to do whatever the hell he planned to do.
Jake just got tired of it. One day, as Eduardo stood there bouncing the ball while glaring down five opponents, Jake slipped behind him, stole the ball, dribbled to the hoop, and scored a layup.
The whole gym exploded in applause and laughter. Eduardo stood stunned for a moment, then ran to Jake, fists flying. The ref and the coach grabbed him before he could land any punches, and then Eduardo was tossed from the game for unsportsmanlike conduct. In the history of that league, I’m sure it was the first and only time a kid ever got bounced from a game for unsportsmanlike conduct against a teammate.
I laugh out loud at the memory of it, and hoist my bottle toward Jake.
“Here’s to Eduardo,” I say, taking a pull. “Wonder whatever happened to that kid?”
“He’s dead, Dad.”
The shock of it hits me like a mallet to the back of my skull—shock over the news, shock over my son’s casual tone.
“Dead!”
“Uh-huh.”
“How?”
“He tried to hold up a bodega on 115th Street. He got into a shoot-out with the cops.”
