The Sidekick, page 30
*
On New Year’s Day, a receptionist called from the Austin Regional Clinic to book me in for another scan; and a few days after that, I drove out to Westlake again so someone could look at my balls. A part of me thought, don’t go. You’re fine; don’t go. This kind of thing only leads to trouble.
It didn’t take long. The radiologist this time reminded me of my sophomore year roommate, Martin Zwicker, who quit the cross-country team fall semester because organic chemistry was kicking his ass. He had sandy-blond hair, pimples, just a nice serious kid. In the middle of these boring, tense situations you get odd associations.
A nurse prepared the bed and drew a curtain around it while I pulled down my pants and boxer shorts. She said to lay the penis pointing up across your stomach, and gave me a cloth to fold over it. Then she came out and the Zwicker guy came in. He didn’t say much but applied the gel to my scrotum. “This will feel a little cold,” he said, and pushed the microphone thing against it, and moved it around, and looked at the screen, and moved it around again.
“The right testis looks fine,” he said, after a few minutes. “There’s some …” and he used a word I didn’t recognize. “Basically, like varicose veins. Not unusual to find them … as you get older. They may cause some discomfort.”
“I haven’t noticed anything.”
He spent a little longer on the left testis. Eventually he said, “Okay, you can get dressed,” and I sat up.
“Did you see anything?”
“I’ll send the report to your doctor, which you should get … in a couple of days.”
“Is there anything to worry about?”
And again, the guy was my roommate, Martin Zwicker, who hated to intrude himself on the conversation. Late twenties, maybe it was his first residency. I don’t know how often you have to give bad news, or at what point you develop strategies for it. He said, “There’s something there … I don’t know what it is,” and turned the monitor toward me so I could look. “These are cysts,” he said, but then he pointed to a black spot on one of the small … orbs, glowing gray against the gray background. “I don’t know what that is,” he said again. “It’s not vascular, which is a good sign.”
“What’s the next stage? I mean, will I need another procedure?”
He gave me a towel to wipe the gel off my scrotum. But you can’t really wipe that stuff off; anyway, you feel like an idiot, dabbing around between your legs.
“I don’t know; maybe.”
“What kind of procedure?”
“Another exam …”
“Surgery?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” And then, as I pulled on my shorts and pants, “It’s nothing to worry about.” He opened the curtains and stepped out into the room beyond, and closed the curtains again, so I sat on the table in the artificial half-light for maybe a minute alone. By the time I put on my shoes (I didn’t bother tying them, just squeezed each foot under the tongue of the Rockports and let the laces drag), he was back at his desk, looking at the computer. He had other problems. I felt like the guy at a party who doesn’t know, should he say goodbye to his host or just go.
*
Dr. Henschel gave me a name to call at UrologyAustin, which had more specialized facilities. So I called and made an appointment. Meanwhile I tried to get on with my life. Classes at UT started up on the 14th and Quinn came back on the Thursday before.
We’d had two slightly awkward communications over the break. On Christmas she sent me an email with a photo of herself standing next to the tree in a new dress. I can’t really describe dresses, but it looked like a prom dress or a bridesmaid’s dress, it had frills and folds and fell away from one shoulder. Her father gave it to her.
I had the feeling something intimate was being communicated but didn’t know what. Was the point that she looked nice in this dress and wanted me to see her in it? Like a Christmas present, all wrapped up. Or that her dad had no clue, and for two weeks she was stuck at home pretending to be Daddy’s little girl? I remember what she said at the coffee shop, that she loved her family but sometimes had to protect herself against them.
My phone makes a ding when emails come through, which sometimes wakes me up. So I lay in the dark of my rented apartment and looked at this image. Quinn wore her hair down, all brushed and heavy and long, and it’s almost like the real person I was looking at wasn’t the person in the photo but somebody else who took the photo and wanted to show it to me. But I didn’t understand it. In the morning I sat over my computer for half an hour, writing and erasing a response, which in the end I cut down to, I’d send you a picture but nobody got me a dress. I miss you. There was more after that but that was the gist.
The second communication was worse. On New Year’s Eve, I called her cell and her brother picked up. She must have left it lying around. Anyway, I got flustered and said, “Is Shelley around? I mean, Quinn,” and then after a minute she came on the phone. But I was still flustered and she was just on her way out to a party, which her brother was driving her to, because it was his friend from high school who was throwing the party. We had a two-minute conversation, because they were already late and in the background I kept hearing him say, Quinn, let’s go, Quinn, come on, let’s go. The person I was talking to seemed totally incapable of the subtleties or intricacies I had been trying to read into her photograph. She seemed straightforward and young, and like somebody who had a party to go to on New Year’s Eve and was already excited about it.
“I’ll call you when I get back,” she said, and I didn’t know if she meant, after the party, or when she returned to campus. But that’s what she must have meant because I didn’t hear from her again.
*
There’s a kind of understanding among beat writers that you don’t talk about the players’ private lives. But occasionally something comes up that it’s your job to ask them about, which is a category that included J. P. filing for divorce. Nobody wanted to do it, so Alana Sissons took one for the team. She actually said beforehand, you owe me guys, because we had a conversation during the game about who would do it and she volunteered. “I don’t know what you owe me,” she said, “but some day, and that day may never come, blah blah blah. But it’s gonna be good, that much I know.”
It’s one thing to joke about it in the press box, but it’s another to look Marcus in the eye and ask him something you know he doesn’t want to talk about. The Sonics had just beat Denver ninety-seven to eighty-three, which was their best win since Kaminski got fired. Marcus had scored thirty on twenty-two shots, and after the game, in his brown Armani suit, he faced the usual bouquet of microphones outside his locker.
When the questions dried up, Alana cleared her throat and said, “Do you expect the divorce proceedings to have any effect on your preparations for the second half of the season?”
It was a softball pitch, the softest she could throw and still have it get over the plate. Marcus looked at her, still sweating from his shower. The room had filled with steam and people; the atmosphere was what my mother used to call close.
“Alana Sissons,” he said. “Alana Sissons.”
He liked to repeat people’s names, to stall for time and show he remembered them. Every day hundreds of people said hello to him, whom he’d never met before. So if he knew your name he liked to use it, because for a lot of the people he said hello to, that made their day.
“You’ve known me since I came into this League,” he said. “Have I ever let my personal business get in the way of playing basketball?”
There was a silence; everybody waited for him to go on. He leaned forward into the bristle of microphones with their various logos and symbols: KXAN, FOX7, KEYE, CNN, ESPN. Most of the reporters who held them out were a head shorter than Marcus, and just to carry the weight of the mics wore them down. After a few minutes if you looked closely you could see their arms beginning to tremble.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
In the end there was nothing else she could do. “No,” she answered quietly.
“Next question.”
Afterward, when we stood outside in the parking lot and argued about where to eat, she said again: “You guys owe me.”
*
I emailed Kyla, Quinn’s friend, to see if she could put me in touch with her sorority sister—the one she told me about at the party, who went to Burleson and knew Cheryl Dillard. In the end I offered to buy them both lunch.
We met at Kerbey Lane Cafe on Guadalupe. Just an old house with a porch and a couple of front windows overlooking the Drag. When she saw me walking up the steps, Kyla said, “Notice anything?” and gave me a big smile. I stared at her. “My braces are gone. Don’t you remember. I had these braces that made me feel about ten years old.”
Her friend was called Tash, a dance major, one of these big-boned, skinny women, where you could keep loose change on the shelf over her collarbone. It’s lucky that Kyla came along because it meant the two of them just talked and I could listen in.
Tash played basketball in high school. Caukwell didn’t coach the girls’ team but she knew him anyway. He got along pretty well with Coach Sanders, and sometimes they had to share the gym. What happened with Marcus Hayes was … Caukwell asked him to talk to the school, and they had this big assembly in the gym, and Cheryl played piano and for some reason they asked her to play for the assembly. They dragged out this grand piano onto the middle of the court. She played “Clair de Lune.” She was really pretty good, but it’s a long song, and while she was playing Marcus Hayes started spinning a basketball on his finger. I don’t know why it was funny. Marcus was looking at Cheryl, and spinning the ball, and people started laughing. Not to be mean or anything, but just because it was funny. Maybe you had to hear the music.
Anyway, Cheryl didn’t know what was going on. Her piano teacher, Mr. Hammenasset, kept turning the pages but then Cheryl heard people laughing and looked up and saw Marcus spinning the ball. Honest to God she had no idea who he was. I guess she thought the whole assembly was gathered together just to hear Cheryl Dillard play “Clair de Lune.”
So she stopped and people laughed and then everything got quiet and Cheryl said, “Do you have to do that?”
I don’t know if he was embarrassed or just pretending to be embarrassed. But everybody was laughing again, and Marcus said, “No, ma’am,” and she said, “Thank you,” and waited for people to settle down and then actually finished the song. I mean, she just started playing from where she left off. That’s how they met.
A few weeks later there were these rumors that Marcus Hayes and Cheryl Dillard were going out, but I didn’t believe them. Then I saw this guy in a black suit waiting outside a Hummer after school, and Cheryl getting into the car. That’s really all I know for sure.
But Coach Caukwell was really upset about the whole thing. He really didn’t like it at all. Even if—I mean, Cheryl was seventeen years old. She was not somebody who did anything she didn’t want to do. But she was also just … extremely competitive. About everything. And if she went out with Marcus Hayes then I figured, that’s because she made it happen. But that’s not how Coach Caukwell saw it, and that’s not how Coach Sanders felt about it either. But teachers always think, kids are so innocent, especially girls, where, when you actually go to class with these girls, you know what they’re really like.
I don’t have any problem with Cheryl, we got along fine. But she was not somebody I trusted. Not because she lied or anything or was phony, because she wasn’t. But because she was one of those people who just doesn’t care what anybody thinks about her, because she thinks she’s better than they are, or holds herself to a higher standard. That’s how she comes across anyway. Like someone who doesn’t expect other people to live up to her standards—not like, she’s disappointed in them, but like, that’s why she’s nice to them. Anyway, she can keep it to herself.
The rest of what I heard is just what people said about her, because Cheryl was somebody everybody talked about anyway, especially after she started going out with Marcus. Then she stopped coming to school. After that, I did worry about her for a bit. But she must have made alternative arrangements because she graduated with everybody else. It was our last semester anyway, we just had a few months left. What I heard was, Coach Caukwell talked to her family, and talked to Marcus, and had to kind of negotiate between them. But that’s just what I heard. There was a story she got pregnant, and Marcus paid the Dillards to have an abortion, which they wouldn’t want to do. Her family is very Christian. But I don’t know about that. Cheryl’s dad is pretty rich, he owns a lot of property in East Austin. But then the crash came and I heard they had money problems, too.
People were not as nice to her as they could have been when she showed up at graduation. But she used to annoy them beforehand anyway. She looked like a model, even in high school. All the guys wanted to go out with her, and she wasn’t that nice to them about it. And people took their side, I mean, the guys’. And then it’s like, the first guy she goes out with is Marcus Hayes.
My phone was on the table the whole time, in record mode—between the syrup pitcher and the coffee pot. But this is a condensed version. Kyla asked a lot of questions, too.
I told Tash, “I don’t believe she didn’t know who Marcus Hayes was.”
“Well, you don’t know her,” she said. “Anyway, he’s not like Michael Jordan.”
Lunch lasted about an hour. It was funny paying for them afterward, because they were both super-polite about it, like kids. Like, thank you very much. You’re very welcome. I couldn’t help myself, before she left, I said to Kyla, “How’s Quinn? Have you seen her lately?”
And she said, “I don’t know. I think she gets back tomorrow. You should give her a call.” So for the rest of the day, I wondered what that was code for, if Kyla had some kind of inside information.
*
Some of the stuff Tash said I could verify. The Celtics’ Texas road trip that year came in the middle of March. They played at San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, with a day off after the Rockets game.
It’s less than a three-hour drive to Austin from the Toyota Center. An appearance at his alma mater might get a mention in the Statesman, which is where I found it—along with a picture of Marcus in a suit and tie, with a basketball in his hands and a crowd of kids filling the bleachers. Off to one side, you can see the outline of a grand piano.
The financial element was harder to track down. Caukwell was dead. And I didn’t feel like asking Charles Dillard about it either. But some of his company’s transactions were a matter of public record. CDC Development LLC filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 in February 2008, just as the Economic Stimulus Act came into force. That summer, the court discharged the case; Dillard had paid his debts. Their portfolio included Su Casa Apartments, on the corner of Chestnut Avenue and East 17th. Dillard tore it down and built a row of clapboard and corrugated-metal single-family homes on the site. That’s where the market was heading before it collapsed.
Anyway, none of this gave Marcus much time—from March 19, when he showed up at Burleson to do Caukwell a favor, to Friday July 4, when Stacey Kupchak announced his retirement in the Boston Globe. Three and a half months, and for most of that time he was on the road, playing basketball. He never had more than four days off, until the season ended; but maybe he didn’t need much time. He was looking for a reason to quit. Did he take her out to dinner the day they met? When did Radko pick Cheryl up in the Hummer—in the break before the playoffs started in mid-April? Did they sleep together then? She was a teenage girl, who presumably had to explain to her parents where she went after school and what time she got home.
Did they talk on the phone every night, like high school sweethearts?
If Cheryl got pregnant, the media attention would have made ordinary life for her impossible. Even if it became public that Marcus Hayes was going out with a seventeen-year-old girl … Maybe he quit to withdraw from the public eye, so he could pursue the relationship. It made as much sense as anything else. But in that case, why come back? Because he figured she was old enough now for them to get away with it?
Kyla over lunch told another story about them. Cheryl lived in Prather Hall, which has a restricted visitation policy. So if Marcus came over after dinner and wanted to stay the night, they had to go downstairs to register his presence at the 24-hour desk. Maybe he wanted to live like a college kid again and sleep in a dorm. Anyway, what Kyla heard was (because a friend of hers lives in Prather), one night they must have had a fight because her friend saw Marcus standing in the hallway knocking on Cheryl’s door, saying, “Come on, baby. Let me in.” The security guard had to escort him from the building. Marcus went quietly; apparently, the guy asked for his autograph, but all of this is thirdhand information.
*
I still hadn’t told anyone about the blood in my urine or the unknown black spot on one of my testicles. My dad would only worry, and at his age, you don’t want to have to think about the mortality of your son.
Meanwhile the whole prognosis progressed almost comically slowly and sporadically. Dr. Henschel referred me to Dr. Kleinman at UrologyAustin, a sixty-year-old Jewish Friar Tuck type, with a roll of fat under his chin and a wrinkle of fat on his bald head.
When I came into his office, he said, “So you’ve got a lump on your ball.”
“Do I? I don’t know.” All of these conversations made me feel like you do when the curtain comes down across your computer screen, because a virus has hit or it’s running out of power. Outside forces are taking control of your intimate life. “The radiologist just said there was something on one of them, he didn’t know what it was. He said it was non-vascular, which he said was a good sign.”
You find yourself arguing with these people, as if the explanation makes a difference—like the cancer is listening, to see who’s right. Kleinman asked me how often I went to the bathroom. To piss? The normal amount, I said. What’s that? Six, eight times? Probably more than that. How’s the flow, do you get a strong flow? That depends, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s better than others. How long when you stand in front of the toilet does it take for you to make water. Do people measure this, do they count the seconds? Just give me an estimate. Ten, fifteen seconds? Is that a long time? It’s longer than normal. I don’t really know, I said, and tried to explain myself. I work at home, I sit around all day, I watch TV. Sometimes, when I don’t have anything else to do, I get up and take a leak. It doesn’t mean I have to go.
