The Sidekick, page 13
Shortly after that Harvey and his dad moved out, back to Taylor, where Tony was trying to patch things up with his wife. I didn’t see him again.
*
Burleson faced Lockhart at home in the first round of the playoffs, and Caukwell let me into the locker room before tip-off—so I could write about the game.
There was a shower area, with three or four stalls, and an open doorway to the main room, which had two tiers of rusty gray lockers running along the walls. The atmosphere was, like, urinal and humid. Even the wooden benches felt slick to touch. I noticed a smear of some white pasty substance on the floor tiles. Marcus was actually in one of the stalls, taking a shower, and when he came out again and put a towel around his waist, you could see how skinny and muscular he had become.
“What the hell’s that?” I said, pointing at the mess.
“I threw up.”
“I mean, what is it?”
“Bounty. I didn’t like my energy flow so I had a couple candy bars. Don’t write about this,” he said.
But when the game started, Marcus seemed fine. Lockhart had this short barrel-chested point guard, who was strong but not that quick. John Linehan just hounded him up court, so that the Lockhart kid had to use his butt to keep him off the ball, and constantly shift direction, like a sailboat tacking against the wind. Marcus played two guard for us. At one point in the second quarter he slipped his man and timed it so that just as the barrel-chested kid reversed field Marcus picked his dribble off the bounce and strolled in for a dunk. All on his lonesome; nobody came near him. He cupped the ball against his wrist and swung his arm midair from his hip to over his head. For some reason they call this rocking the cradle. Everybody went nuts.
After that Lockhart advanced the ball by committee. It was a three-man job, and their bigs had to come back to set screens.
We were up nine at the half. Marcus had seventeen points and something like eight rebounds. He picked up a lot of defensive boards by swooping in after the shot and jumping over people—he liked to keep the ball in his hands and afterward push the pace. Even as he caught the ball, his body was turning … and midway through the third, he landed hard on nothing and ended up in a heap like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. Caukwell ran out to help him off the court, but Marcus pushed him away and limped back to the bench himself. Then he sat for the next few minutes. At the end of the third, our lead was down to two, and Marcus used the break to run up and down the sideline, warming up. For some reason, Caukwell let him back in the game. He didn’t think you could run on a broken foot.
And when Marcus walked out again to start the fourth, everybody stood up, three or four hundred kids … who roamed the hallways with him and sat through class together, who wasted their lunch hours in the same cafeteria … rose to their feet and began to stamp the bleachers. Later, Marcus got used to this kind of thing. Maybe it’s no big deal, when you’ve had the Boston Garden call your name in a single voice, to feel the heat of admiration fill Weizenkamper Gym at Burleson High. But Boston hadn’t happened yet, and Marcus was just a sixteen-year-old kid. He didn’t look up or even react, but there must have been a certain amount of internalization going on. All right, all right, you’re getting there. That view you have of yourself, which you’ve been clinging to, maybe isn’t total self-delusion.
He couldn’t really run and let Linehan bring the ball up; mostly he hung around the three-point line, looking for kick-outs. The first time he caught the ball, he head-faked and planted (I can’t imagine how much that hurt), took two hard dribbles and knocked down a fifteen-footer. Which kept the defense honest; I don’t think he drove again. But his presence was enough, and we hung on. Triesman-Smith had a hell of a game, too. After the final whistle, Marcus started hopping to the bench, and somebody had to lend him a shoulder so he could make it to the locker room. Then Caukwell personally drove him to the ER, with Selena in the front seat and Marcus stretched out by himself in the back.
The X-rays showed a broken metatarsal, and they put him in a cast—it’s not the kind of thing you operate on. But his season was over, and two days later Burleson lost to LBJ, with Marcus sitting big-white-footed on the bench.
15
Even after the season finished, I used to see Caukwell because he taught Health and Driver’s Ed. One day after class he asked me to wait for him, and kids were like, ooh, Brian’s in trouble, what did Brian do now. Brian didn’t do nothing, Caukwell said. Run along and mind your own business. I just need to ask him a question.
You didn’t want to mess with Caukwell, which is why, even when he was teaching a class of thirty bored kids, he never raised his voice or even spoke all that clearly, but just kind of mumbled and expected everybody to pay super-close attention.
“Walk with me,” he said.
The lunchtime rush was on, but he took the first exit into the outdoor air—onto a pebbled concrete patio behind the school, with a few picnic tables where kids could eat their packed lunches.
Caukwell sat down and put his Health textbook and leather briefcase on the metal picnic table. If the breeze picked up you could see it in the little shadows of the leaves, and then feel it on your face.
“How’s Betsy doing?” he said.
My sister had graduated the year before. “She’s all right. She’s at Oberlin now. I think she’s having a good time. When she calls she talks to my mom. Nobody tells me anything.”
“Worst driver I ever taught,” he said. “Bar none.”
“She loves driving.”
“That’s the problem.” And he didn’t say anything for a while. I sat down and waited. You could hear the kids in the hallways on the way to lunch; some of them came outside, saw Coach Caukwell and kept going toward the football field.
“I’m asking because I thought you might have a spare room,” he said eventually. “Marcus’s mom is moving back to Dallas this summer. But he wants to finish his education here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought maybe he could bunk with you.”
“Oh.”
“You guys are friends, right? I thought you were tight.”
“We hang out sometimes. I mean, sure.”
“Maybe you could talk to your dad about it.”
“Did Marcus—I mean, did he ask …?”
“I’m just trying to work something out. His situation is a little up in the air right now. Talk to your dad. And your mom. Your parents are people I don’t need to worry about, I know that.” He wanted to say something else, but didn’t. “All right, Brian,” he said. “Go get some lunch.” But then when I was walking away, he said, “Tell your dad to call me, if he wants to talk it over.”
The first thing I thought, when I got back into the air-conditioning, was like, whatever … this is kind of funny, because I was in school mode, where everything is kind of funny, and about to have lunch with Mike Inchman and Max and Andy and Jim DeKalb (Frank was already at Swarthmore). I had to stop by my locker, and they were sitting down already when I got to the cafeteria, at the same blue table we always sat at, by the window overlooking the scenic parking lot. You’ll never guess what Caukwell just said to me, this phrase kept running through my head. So when I actually saw them, all I had to do was open my mouth. “You’ll never guess … he wants Marcus Hayes to move in with me next year. He can sleep in Betsy’s room, that’s what he said,” and I looked across the cafeteria and saw Marcus with Breon and Triesman-Smith, the other black kids on the team, and for some reason the fact of it suddenly hit me. Marcus was still on crutches, which he rested against an empty chair.
But I asked my dad anyway when I got home—half-expecting, even hoping he would say, forget about it, there’s no way. But he took it as a realistic proposition.
“We can make a real difference in this kid’s life,” he said. And for some reason I felt like, what about me. I mean, like other people were taking over my friendship with Marcus, and leaving me out.
“That’s so patronizing,” I told him.
After school, I always ate a pair of Eggo waffles and watched The Bob Newhart Show, so this conversation was taking place against the background noise of the television and the whole seventies stage-set of their sitcom apartment.
“He hasn’t had the advantages you’ve had.”
Dad was staring at the TV, too.
“What advantages? I spend the whole time chasing balls for him.”
“I don’t think you’re thinking about this seriously.” Then he sat down with me and watched the show. I thought it might blow over unless I pushed it but then at dinner Dad brought it up again.
Mom said, “What do you think, Brian? Is this something you want?”
I realize that my mother hasn’t played a big role in this story so far and that’s not because I didn’t love her. She was my mom, you can’t describe your mom. (Her name was Eileen.) She worked in the vice president’s office at the University of Texas. Her job title was something like, senior administrative associate.
“I don’t know, Mom. It’s just something Coach Caukwell asked me to ask you about.”
“But is it something you want? It’s a big deal, having a strange kid in the house, looking after him, being responsible for him.”
“He’s not a strange kid, he’s my friend.”
And my dad chipped in, “If Brian wants to help out a friend, I don’t think we should discourage him.”
A few days later, Marcus came out of the cast and we started shooting hoops again before class. One morning I asked him, “Coach Caukwell said you’re moving to Dallas?”
“Well, my mom is.”
“He said, maybe you’d want to live with us.”
It was easy for Marcus not to talk because all the time we were talking we were also shooting basketballs, concentrating on that, chasing them down, while the echo of the balls was like a soundtrack or background music that meant nobody had to say anything.
“Where would I sleep?” he said eventually.
“In Betsy’s old room. Except maybe when she came back for Christmas, or stuff like that.”
“I guess at Christmas I’ll stay with my mom.”
And that was that. At this point the adults took over. Caukwell must have contacted Selena, who stopped by our house twice that summer. Once to just like check it over while the arrangements were being made. And once to deliver her son unto us and say goodbye.
She came on a Saturday morning, just after breakfast, but dressed to the nines, like she wanted to make an impression. Red high heels, a slinky summer dress, bright makeup, heavy earrings. She could hardly move in the shoes and the dress though at the same time, like, you could see her moving.
My mom had been cutting bamboo, which sprouts like grass in Austin backyards. She liked to do the yardwork early, before the sunshine went vertical and the heat of the day set in.
So when Selena clicked up the porch steps and rang the bell, Mom was just sitting down to a second cup of coffee and a piece of toast, in Dad’s old Fordham T-shirt, with her hair sticking to her neck and forehead. She had totally forgotten that this thing was happening this morning. I think she thought, who the hell is this, and said, “Can I help you?” when she opened the door.
“I’m Marcus’s mother,” Selena said. “I just come to introduce myself.”
I was sitting in the kitchen and could see them through the arch to the living room, which was also the front room, where the TV was. Our house isn’t very large. When Selena walked in you could smell her perfume.
“Hi, Brian,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again.” And maybe it was a sign of her nervousness that she reached out and shook my hand.
That was the first visit; I don’t remember much else about it. “I really just come to say how grateful we are.” That’s the kind of thing she said, and the kind of thing we said was, “It’s just nice for Brian to have a friend around, now Betsy’s gone.” And my mom showed Selena Betsy’s room, like a real estate agent. “This is where Marcus will sleep. He’ll have to share the bathroom,” and everybody laughed, and Selena said, “That’s all right, he’s used to having woman’s things around,” and we all laughed again, like sitcom people.
At one point she turned to my dad, maybe because she figured, he must be the breadwinner. She said, “I don’t have much I can give you.”
“For what?” he said.
“For room and board …”
My dad is good at these interactions, maybe it’s one of those things you learn by not being a great success. “Please,” he said. “Let’s not hear any more about that, okay? Marcus is welcome here.”
After she was gone, my mom said, “I don’t understand that woman.” She could form sudden and passionate judgments and aversions. “I just don’t understand her. Leaving her son for another woman to look after him.”
“Mom, he’s seventeen. I don’t know how much looking after he needs.”
But you couldn’t talk to her. “Parading herself like that. Who’s she trying to impress?”
It didn’t occur to me that she felt threatened, or ashamed, in her dirty T-shirt and uncombed hair.
“She impressed me plenty,” Dad said.
*
The next time Selena stopped by the house was midsummer. School was out; she was in the middle of packing up their apartment.
Marcus carried a suitcase up the steps, still limping. His foot sometimes took a while to warm up. “Give me that,” I said and dragged it to Betsy’s room. (She was staying with a friend in Bloomington and working for Habitat for Humanity. When she came home, Marcus moved in temporarily with me, until the semester started and she moved back to Ohio.) He didn’t know whether to follow or not. Everybody was just hanging around the kitchen.
Mom had made iced tea and a tray of blondies. “Why don’t we all sit down and cool down,” she said, having dressed up herself for the occasion. I mean, she actually wore a dress. With her red Irish hair, which she couldn’t keep straight, she sometimes looked like something she wasn’t, relaxed.
Selena wore adidas track-suit pants and a gym-rat tank top, so you could see the straps of her bra, unless she adjusted her shirt, which she kept doing. She said, “I still got a lot to do.”
“Give yourself a break.” My dad picked up a blondie. “Moving is like a marathon, you need to keep eating and drinking, you need to keep your energy levels up.”
“I really gotta go.”
Marcus wore jeans and his Members Only jacket, even though it was ninety-eight degrees outside. I guess when you’re packing you just kind of put stuff on. Selena pulled at his sleeve and he let her, like a boy and a girl at a dance, where he doesn’t like dancing and she’s trying to get him on the floor.
“Let’s not make this a big deal,” she said. They were talking only to each other.
“It’s no deal.”
“I’ll come back in a couple weeks, see how you’re doing.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“And if you want to call me, you call me. That’s what I got you the calling card for.”
“I got it.”
“When we get settled you can come for the weekend. I’ll send you the bus money.”
“Okay.”
“Anytime you want.”
“Okay.”
“Watch out for that foot. You don’t want to overdo it.”
“Mom.”
“Listen to me. I’m a nurse. This is what I do.”
“Okay.”
“Okay okay?” and she bent down to look up at him. “Okay.”
My dad finally cut in. “We’re all just standing around here, let’s sit down,” and Selena said, “I really gotta go, no point dragging this out,” and she kissed Marcus on top of his head (after pulling him by the neck with two hands so she could reach him) and then had to walk the length of the hall to get out the door.
My mother followed her out.
“Good luck,” she called through the screen door, as Selena got in her car. Then my mom turned around and said, “That was a dumb thing to say, I don’t know why I said that.” She looked at Marcus. “Do you want to unpack? We can help you settle in and then have some lunch.”
“Maybe,” I said, “we should just go to the park and shoot around.”
So that’s what we did.
16
On the flight from LA I wrote a first draft of the piece:
For Jabari Moore, it started out as one of the best days of his life. You show up at Pauley for a summer workout, and guess who’s warming up, Marcus Hayes. You’re a nineteen-year-old kid, and you don’t know what’s what. You want to guard Marcus, you want to be able to tell people afterward that you guarded Marcus Hayes, that you held your own. You want to call your mom. And the first time down-court, you see him come off a high screen and plow into the lane. You slip your man and meet him at the rim, and when the shot goes up, you pin it against the glass. Goal tending, Marcus says, and because he’s Marcus Hayes that’s what it is. But now you’ve got his attention. You want to show him what you can do. So when he picks you up at half-court, nobody calls out the back screen, and you cut hard and the ball is where you need it to be, and the next thing you know, you’re hanging on the rim. It’s going to be the best day of your life.
But it’s like the man said in Blazing Saddles, the old Mel Brooks’ movie—if you shoot him, you’ll just make him mad. Marcus calls for the ball, and he calls for you, and dribbles slowly up court. Just to show he doesn’t have to break sweat, he pulls up from twenty-five feet and the shot touches nothing but net. And then the next time down he does it again. And the next time down he does it again. Welcome to the big time, kid. Now get off the court. Game over. Who’s got next?
*
When I pulled my wheelie suitcase up the porch steps it was six o’clock in the late summer afternoon and Dad and the boys were sitting on the couch and watching Sesame Street. Because of the angle of the sunshine you had to close the curtains over the side window, otherwise you couldn’t see the screen. They were sitting in semi-darkness.
