Moving Forward in Reverse (22 page)

25

Right below the fold on the front page of the Spokesman-Review, a
title of an article prompted:

What
disability?

Above the headline was a black-and-white snapshot of me standing
behind one of the Gonzaga players on the soccer field. The rest of the team
stood in a scattered line to our backs, squinting into the sun as I
demonstrated how to stand when defending an opponent during a corner kick
(stationed between the goal and your opponent with your hips turned to allow
you to see both the ball and the opponent; and never flat-footed). In the
grainy image you can just make out the right myoelectric hand, poised in
mid-air and mid-sentence.

The Spokesman-Review staff had run the article as part of their
Creative ’98 project, a series of feature stories which highlighted the
‘passionate, inspiring and energetic people’ in the Spokane community. I was
October fifth’s ‘passionate, inspiring and energetic’ person.

So between an article on the possibility of formal impeachment
proceedings against President Clinton and one titled in ominous, bold typeface,
‘Global Economy Worsens’, was a story about me:

Give Scott Martin an ordinary wooden spatula and he’ll convert it
into a device for tucking in his shirt.

Present him with one of those plastic drawstring clasps you see on
Windbreakers and he’ll use it to tie his shoes.

Place him on the soccer field where he’s a rare disabled coach
among a swarm of able-bodied athletes and he’s not even fazed...

Without his innovative homemade tools – and others such as his
buttonholer – Martin would be unable to wear dress shirts or shoes with laces.

He has accepted the fact that things take longer for him than they
used to.

This is reality for Martin now, the painful truth that he will be
putting on his arms and feet each day for the rest of his life along with his
shirts and socks…

The staff writer, Janie McCauley, had been kind to me. The article
went on to depict my devastating journey in terms of accomplishments and
triumphs. According to her, I was an inspiration to those around me, an
innovator, and a “humble conqueror who chooses his words with a care that shows
he is an equal and nothing more. ” I tried to read the prose without an
encroaching sense of unworthiness and self-doubt, but I so seldom felt like all
the things she and the people she’d interviewed – she’d even called Ellen –
were touting me to be. In the end, it just made me cry.

When the tears had cleared, I scanned the twelve-hundred word
article again, this time looking for one thing in particular. I found it – the
sentence – six paragraphs from the end of the piece:

He would like to fill the school’s head-coach spot next year when interim
coach Melissa Ziegler steps down, thus fulfilling his dream of coaching at the
Division-I level.

That was all I had wanted from the article: to make my intentions
clear. And now, between the article and my earlier conversation with Mike, I
knew I had done all that I could. Now there was only waiting. And hoping.

~~~

It took a month for the seeds I’d planted to jostle something else
into motion. I was hunched over one of the two long tables that filled the
sterile space referred to as the Graduate Assistantship Office. A rectangular
closet of a room, really, as if someone had taken a storage closet, grabbed it
by each end and pulled until they had just enough space for the tables and
chairs currently crammed within. Then, upon realizing this left those in the
grad program (people like me who were employed by the university athletics
department but compensated in credit hours as opposed to a normal salary) with
a rather austere and unwelcoming place to work, someone had had the forethought
to tack two bookcases on the long walls and line the floors with blue
carpeting. Still the room fell far short of inviting. But perhaps this had been
the intention: a constant reminder to those working within its walls that they
were here to accomplish something and to not be distracted by the alluring
grandeur of the campus and surrounding areas.

With my nose in one research book, and three more stacked to my
left, waiting to be addressed, I had thoughts only for my graduate thesis. When
a motion in the doorway caught my eye, I glanced up solely out of reflex and
without bothering to lift my head. Some part of me not preoccupied by my work,
however, registered that there was something significant about the shadow being
cast over the threshold. I did a hasty double take. This time when I looked up
my eyes focused on the narrow man in the dark suit who had just strolled into
the room and recognized Mike Roth.

I slowly lifted my pen from the paper and straightened in my chair
as Mike crossed the room towards me. He grabbed the back of the blue plastic
chair to my left and tugged it away from the table. Realizing he intended to
sit down, I shifted my stack of books to my right side and tweaked the angle of
my chair so we could semi-face each other. He glanced at my books, silently
dawdling while I watched him keenly from the corner of my eye.

To me, Mike was like the CEO of a major corporation. I knew his
goals were to generate revenue in order to upgrade our facilities, which would
in turn generate more income. Simply put, he needed to produce two things: wins
and income. The question was which category was he here to discuss with me now?

At long last, he hiked up his pant legs, leaned against the back
of the chair, and said point-blank, ‘A sports writer named Joe Avento called
and is trying to reach you.’

‘Holy cow!’ I gaped at him. ‘Joe and I played college soccer
together.’

Mike nodded, his straight eyebrows inclining in the middle to
create an open-topped triangle like a volcano waiting to erupt above his nose.
While I was trying to decide if this peaked expression was an invitation to
continue elaborating on my relationship with Joe Avento, a thin-lipped smile
began to form on Mike’s face.

‘That was a nice article you had,’ he said, leaving Joe for me
to reminisce about on my own time. ‘Good coverage – even
USA Today
picked
it up.’

I lowered my chin in a noncommittal acknowledgment of his words.
My eyes strayed to the stack of books at the edge of the table. The position
for head coach of the women’s soccer program was officially open; I’d come to
campus today with a printed copy of my resume and the intention to hand it to
Mike later in the afternoon. The resume was now tucked beneath the pile of
books as incentive to complete my studies first.

Mike had read the article so it was time to harvest what I’d
planted:
He would like to fill the school’s head coach spot next year when
interim coach Melissa Ziegler steps down.
The old, cocky me had been
returning slowly, so I decided to skip to the chase scene and pulled out the
folder.

‘I was going to present this to you later today.’ I said as I
handed him the papers which summarized my nearly twenty years of coaching and
administrative experience with soccer. The resume was solid. I was confident it
would at least get me an interview.

Mike took the folder and opened it. ‘I was wondering when you
were going to submit this to me,’ he said. His eyes skimmed the top page. Then
he dropped the bomb: ‘I know you’ve been the one training the team. Some of the
players have approached me on your behalf.’

With an audible sigh, he placed both hands on his thighs and
pushed himself up from his chair. As he slid the chair back under the table and
nestled the folder against his side, I felt the warm weight of a hand settle on
my left shoulder.

‘Stop by the office later and schedule your interview,.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Ah, the power of the press.

~~~

There was a small noise from the other end, the sound of
everything lining up, then Ellen’s voice galloped across the phone line as she
exclaimed, ‘You got the job?!’

‘Well, not yet. Officially. He’s just asked me to interview.’

‘Scott, that’s fantastic!’ I grinned=. Like a kid who made final
cuts for his first sports team, all I wanted was to celebrate but the real test
had yet to begin.

Before I could humbly segue into another topic, she proclaimed,
‘I’ll come out this weekend to celebrate… and look at properties.’

Look at properties.
The words echoed across my mind like a blanketing hug.
Look at
properties. Look at properties.
It was really happening, everything I had
wanted: Head Coach at a Division-I university, working towards my Master of
Arts in Sport and Athletic Administration. Even some things I had barely
thought to hope for were coming true, like a wife, a home, cat, and dog.
How
suburban,
I thought and wiped my eyes on my sleeve.
How wonderfully
suburban.

‘You’re sure?’ I asked around a thick clog in my throat.

For so long mine had been a journey of wavering highs and
depredating lows. For every foot I gained, it seemed a mile was latterly lost.
And now, here I was, about to gain ten miles, monumentally altering not only my
life, but my wife’s as well.

The clog in my throat plummeted and sank into the arteries of my
heart. As Bob Fitzsimmons so cannily put it,
The bigger you are, the harder
you fall
. It was a subtitle that could easily be applied to my life, though
perhaps more accurately as:
The higher you are, the farther you have to fall
.
Ten miles was a lot to gain, but also a lot to lose. Worst of all, it was no
longer only me who had to suffer through such losses. Ellen was going to be
here, by my side, through all of it. Did I really have a right to ask so much
of her?

‘This is what you worked so hard to achieve. You deserve this.’
she affirmed, making me wonder how many of my thoughts I had uttered out loud.
Of course this was Ellen I was talking to. It was more likely she had known
what I was thinking before I had even thought it.

‘Thanks,’ I said softly. She didn’t seem to hear.

In the same assertive tone, she threatened, ‘And I’ll be damned if
I’m not there to see you achieve it.’

My lips curved into a smile and I felt the obstruction in my chest
gradually shrink. Leave it to Ellen to fight for me even when I could not.

‘Now stop moping and find us a place to live.’

~~~

I had scheduled my interview with Mike for a week from Tuesday,
figuring I’d be in top form after a weekend spent at home in Olympia with
Ellen. In the meantime, the days resumed their usual evenness. I kept my
thoughts on the upcoming weekend and the trip home, and worked through the
hours with alternating enthusiasm and banality. Perhaps the sole aspect of my
routine that’s repetition never wore on me were my nightly calls with Ellen.

It was Wednesday – or maybe Thursday – that she broke the news.
She had been uncharacteristically soft-spoken for most of the call, and there
was a tension to the pauses between us that spoke volumes. The stops and
starts, uncertainties and hesitations in her tone reminded me of the first
phone call I’d ever received from her. Just as when she’d asked me out for
coffee, I knew now that she wasn’t saying what she had called to say. And like
then, I simply waited, trusting that she would tell me when she was ready.

At length, after a stumbling recount of the events of our days and
procrastinating conversation that spiraled around the silences, she confessed,
‘I missed my last period.’

‘Mmm,’ I said noncommittally, breath frozen in my lungs.

‘When I noticed I was spotting I went to see my gynecologist.’ She
was talking so softly yet with clear determination that every word should be
made clear.
She’s afraid,
my mind told me.

Afraid of what?
I asked it in return.
Of me?
No. That wasn’t possible. What
would make her afraid of me?

In the same instant as she spoke, my mind gave me the answer:
She’s
afraid of telling you.

‘I’ve had a miscarriage.’

‘What?’ I sputtered, speaking out of reflex.

‘I was pregnant, but I lost it.’ I could hear the anxious pain in
her voice and cringed at the way she said it, like a woman from an eighteenth
century period piece.
I lost it.
I
lost it.
As if it were her
active doing that caused this and her fault alone that it had occurred.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m fine. It’s just the baby…’ Her voice hovered across
the line like a blank that needed to be filled.

‘That doesn’t matter. As long as you’re okay.’ Quiet, throbbing
and febrile, bubbled up like a boiling liquid between us.

I held my tongue until she whispered with a weary sigh, ‘I’m
okay.’

‘Good.’ I took a breath to stabilize myself and relieve the
tension trembling in my chest. ‘I know we’d talked about maybe having children,
but it wasn’t a plan.’