Basketball (or Something Like It) (2 page)

“I’ll pay you,” she blurted out.

Jeremy looked up.

B
ut the next morning Jeremy was sure he didn’t want to play basketball.

He didn’t know why. Even if it had been about the commitment, Jeremy wouldn’t know it. He didn’t have the words, but sometimes his skin felt too tight on his body. It was almost as if he couldn’t bear the feeling one more second. Sometimes he’d notice that his fists were balled up for no reason. When he shook out his fingers, his hand hurt. He’d wake up in the morning and his jaw would ache from clenching his teeth all night.

“Are you awake, Jeremy?” his grandmother was calling from downstairs. She worked at the post office, and she had to leave before the middle-school bus came.

Her voice sent the memory of whatever Jeremy
had been dreaming about right out of his head. He lay under the covers for a while. Nothing was familiar yet. Not the ceiling, the light, the window. The smell of this room. Nothing felt right.

“Time to get up,” his grandmother tried again.

Just a couple of months ago, back home, Lannie wouldn’t have bothered calling for him. She would have still been sleeping when Jeremy had to get up for school. The noise from the street would have wakened him. Or a siren outside. Or a dog barking. Or someone in the apartment above slamming a door. Usually Jeremy just woke up on his own, startled by the hope that his father had come home sometime during the night.

But of course, he hadn’t.

Now Jeremy could hear his grandmother coming up the stairs, slowly. She was kind of old, and it was probably hard for her. Old people are always saying they hate stairs.

Just as she got to the door, Jeremy called out, “I’m up. I’m getting up.”

She must hate having to do this all over again. Have some dumb kid in her house, even if it was her only grandchild. She didn’t want him here in the first place. You could just tell by the way she had asked Lannie where Jeremy’s father was. That was the first thing out of her mouth.

“Okay.” His grandmother’s voice moved back down the stairs. “I’ll be home early. Your lunch is on the counter.”

Jeremy waited until he heard her footsteps start down the stairs again.

He shouted, “Thanks!” She wasn’t really so bad. She was trying pretty hard. She was a real good cook. She made really good sandwiches. But still Jeremy knew he couldn’t stay.

Not here.

Jeremy wondered if she would be upset when he left. Probably; grandmothers are like that. And now, well, he’d have to stay at least until after those stupid basketball clinics because he had promised. Jeremy looked over at the brand-new clock radio his grandmother had just bought for him and felt guilty. He hadn’t just promised. He had gotten paid to promise.

Maybe he’d even stay and try out for the basketball team, but then, after that, he’d leave.

He’d have to do it soon. Before they got too used to each other.

M
aybe it was her name, Anabel. What an awful name. A perfect name to ensure that you are
never taken seriously, although Anabel doubted it would have made much of a difference. What made a difference, at least to her father, was Michael. Michael playing basketball and being good at basketball, and Anabel hated basketball.

It wasn’t exactly the game she hated, or even the ball or the dusty, echoey gyms she had been dragged to since her earliest memory. Actually, basketball was fun if you took out the parents, the arguments, the tension, the expectations. No, it wasn’t basketball she hated. It was the importance of it.

The sheer magnitude.

Basketball came before everything. If her brother had a practice, or camp, or a clinic, or (God forbid) a
Game,
everything else could (and would) wait. Except eating, since you had to eat to play well. And shopping, as long as you were shopping for the right sneakers, compression shorts, or quick-drying sports socks.

For Michael.

Maybe it had gotten worse when their mother stopped coming to the games, but surely it had started long before then. Anabel could remember her father screaming from the bleachers at basketball games as early as second grade, and before basketball became Michael’s sole focus, it had been soccer. Before that it was baseball. But first it had been T-ball.

Back then, they both played. Michael and Anabel. Except when Michael turned six (Anabel was still five), T-ball became unacceptable. Unacceptable for Michael. Their dad called the league president.

“I’ve been pitching to my son from the mound since he was three years old, for Christ’s sake,” Mr. Morrisey insisted. “So for Michael T-ball would just be a complete waste of time.”

Wasting time was a dreadful sin. Missed chances. Precious skill-building opportunities were not to be taken lightly.
Opportunity
being the operative word here.

In reality, Michael was only eleven months older than Anabel. But they ended up in the same grade, Anabel being one of the youngest and Michael the oldest. Being the oldest didn’t hurt when it came to athletics, but it did mean Michael missed the August fifteenth cutoff date to turn seven and play official Little League.

The president of the North Bridge Baseball Association wouldn’t budge, and Michael was condemned to another year of organized T-ball. Only shortly thereafter, Michael Morrisey and his photocopied, semilegible birth certificate turned up at Little League sign-ups in the next town over.

“Yes, of course he’s seven years old,” Mr. Morrisey told the guys at the sign-up table. He said
it with a clear-conscience, straight face that Anabel would never forget.

Of course, Anabel couldn’t play T-ball in North Bridge anymore, although it wasn’t ever entirely clear why. Was it because the logistics of getting Anabel and Michael to two different games in two different towns would be too hard? Or was it simply because Mr. Morrisey was blacklisted for that entire year in North Bridge?

So instead Anabel sat in the grass and played with her Legos while her brother stood terrified with the bat on his shoulder for three months. Anabel remembered her mother bringing sandwiches and drinks in a red-and-white cooler. She liked baseball because it was outside. She loved picnicking with her mother and playing at the schools that had playgrounds by the baseball field.

She will always remember that summer as the last summer her mother had nothing better to do than lay in the sun and braid Anabel’s hair. It was the summer before her mother started working. Anabel and her mother watched the clouds glide smoothly across the darkening sky, sprayed bug spray all over their bodies, and cheered on Michael’s team.

Looking back, Anabel was sure she had been just as happy, just as content, even
relieved
that it was her brother rounding second, getting thrown out at third,
with two outs, down by one, in the bottom of the sixth inning. Even when her brother was winning, kicking the winning goal, or shooting a basket to tie the score, Anabel was relieved it wasn’t her.

It was easier to sit in the grass, munching on pretzels, than to risk finding out you’re no good.

T
hings started really going downhill the year Michael won the fourth-grade hotshot contest at the Hoops for Heart fund-raiser. Mr. Morrisey felt he had found his son’s real athletic niche. That was two years, hundreds of spectator hours, countless concession stand lunches (sometimes dinners), and several demanding phone calls later. It was also the year Anabel and Michael’s mother got her big promotion and started traveling for work.

Anabel’s mother said she had thought about it for months. Should she? Or shouldn’t she? It would mean she’d be away from the family a lot. But it was a lot more money. And it was a great opportunity.

(There was that word—
opportunity
—again.)

After their mother took the position, Anabel and Michael’s father never talked about it again. Whether it had been a good idea or not. Whether it was working
out for everyone or not. It didn’t matter.

The tunnel he had begun digging, through which Michael would dribble, pass, and shoot, was now big enough to bury them all inside. Basketball was everything, and somehow Anabel got relegated to the sidelines. Her territory was reading directions to the games and then reversing them to get home. Sometimes running out to the car for an extra bottle of Gatorade. At halftime or before a game, when she had finished her homework or her one hundredth paperback book, Anabel might dribble around and shoot a little. And wait to go home.

Basketball was everything.

And it was all done in the name of Michael.

What Anabel’s father did not seem to notice was, because she was spending so much time in gyms and basketball courts, his daughter could pretty consistently go ten for ten from the free throw line and had a solid 40 percent three-point average.

In fact, Anabel herself barely noticed.

N
athan left the house that morning with his sneakers in his backpack, his basketball shorts in his lunch bag, an extra T-shirt folded in his math
book, and a plan. He told his mother he was going to the library after school and that Jason Burke’s mother was picking them up (so they could do homework), giving him dinner, and bringing him back to the school for a band meeting.

“You can pick me up around seven fifteen … no, seven twenty,” Nathan told his mom.

“In the back?” she asked. She had Nathan’s little sister, as expected, in her arms, pulling on her hair and spitting green baby food on her shoulder. Perfect.

“No,” Nathan said. “In the front. It’s in the front. Band practice is in the front. That’s where the band room is, Mom. God.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this meeting before?” she asked.

“Mom, I’m going to be late,” Nathan answered. “I did tell you. Last night.”

She looked at him.

“Mom. Band is really important to me,” he said. But that was a mistake, and as soon as it came out of his mouth he knew it.
Band is really important to me?
God, did he really say that?

There was a pause. Even Nathan’s baby sister was silent for a second, as if to show exactly how entirely pitiable that excuse had sounded.

Just then Nathan’s dad came into the kitchen.

“Nathan, aren’t you going to miss the bus?” his dad asked, and right on cue the baby started screaming, just for no reason. And in the next beat, Nathan’s father rolled his eyes like he was really annoyed. He
was
really annoyed. Nathan’s father liked things, liked
everything,
a certain way, and that way was neat and quiet. And orderly.

Grades were really important to him. Even shoes were really important to him. Nathan wasn’t allowed to wear sneakers to school. A practice virtually unheard of since the early 1960s, nevertheless Nathan had to wear shoes. Real shoes. Or boots. Sandals in the summer. But no sneakers. Sneakers were for the gym only, or better yet, the tennis court.

Nathan’s baby sister was now arching her back like a gymnast and flailing her arms around. She caught Nathan’s mother in the cheek with a fist. You could tell it took all their mom’s strength to hold on to her.

“What’s wrong with her?” Nathan’s father asked.

“She’s a baby.” Nathan’s mother looked like she might cry. She forgot all about Nathan and his undying love of middle-school band practice.

I might like this kid after all,
Nathan thought as he ran out the door.

“‘Bye, Mom,” he called out. “See you at seven twenty.”

S
o it was a bad plan.

It had a million holes in it. What if Nathan’s mother called Jason Burke’s mother? What if she came early and saw there was no band meeting? What was he going to do from 2:35 dismissal to 5:00, when the basketball clinic started? He’d be hungry.

But it didn’t matter. By the time his mother found out, he’d be playing basketball, and at the very worst she’d realize how much he wanted this (he had already convinced himself of this). His sheer determination would be taken into consideration. That would count for something. She’d give in. And then she’d work on Dad. Besides, his mother was mad at his dad for not “ever, ever” helping with the baby. That would certainly work in Nathan’s favor.

And what was the problem with playing basketball? What was such a big deal? Didn’t Nathan’s uncle play professional ball? Didn’t he almost make it to the NBA without even going to college? Nathan had never meet his father’s brother, but he knew about him. He was a great basketball player. A small forward who could really leap.

However, anything Nathan had been able to find out about his uncle he had to dig for.
Really
dig for. Nathan’s father never wanted to talk about it.
Sometimes little pieces slipped out when Grandma Estelle was visiting. Little pieces here and there, over time. Like that fact that Uncle Troy never got to play one minute in the NBA. There was something about violations. And then something about losing a scholarship. Something about a car accident and then drugs. Even something later, long after the basketball dream was vanished, about jail. And now, Nathan knew, Uncle Troy lived somewhere that might as well have been a million miles from North Bridge, and it was unlikely that would ever change.

What Nathan knew most of all was that his father didn’t want basketball or anything that had to do with basketball in his life at all.

But that was too bad, wasn’t it?

It was just too bad.

E
ven knowing he wouldn’t be staying around much longer, Jeremy hated North Bridge. He hated most of the kids. He hated this clean, shiny gym. Suddenly twenty bucks from his grandmother didn’t seem worth it.

He was still standing against the wall when the coaches—at least he figured they were the coaches—
started organizing all the kids. Boys. They were all boys, except for one blonde, skinny girl who had been warming up with everybody else. She had a nasty three-point shot, but when the parents were getting thrown out, she went with them. Jeremy still hadn’t touched a ball. He squatted down against the wall. This was so different than he was used to. It was too clean, too new. The lights were on too bright.