The Sidekick, page 33
“I don’t know why you call me that.”
“Because you did a nice thing today. That’s all I mean.”
“You don’t have to push me away like that,” she said.
“Who’s pushing away?”
For some reason the tone had changed, but then the pancakes came and we could eat. I had the impression things were moving into another gear or stage. But what that was, who knows, or maybe I misread the situation. She seemed to me suddenly very young, and I was like this guy with dirty hands, where everything I touched you could see my fingerprints. Sometimes I tell myself on dates, talk about what she wants to talk about. Figure out what that is. So I asked her about Daryl Farnham.
“What about Daryl Farnham?” she said.
“Does he know you’re here?”
“I don’t have to tell him every time I eat pancakes.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“About what? Your prostate problem or whatever. I don’t think he’s that interested.”
“No, I just mean. Have you told your parents yet. About him.” She didn’t say anything. “I’m trying to take an interest in your life, so that we can have some kind of normal interactions … going forward.”
“You have a really weird idea of normal interactions.”
“I didn’t put it very well …”
“It’s not normal to be interested in some other guy I’m seeing, when you go out with a girl. That’s not normal.”
“No, I can see that.”
“Anyway, you don’t have to pretend to be interested in anything.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
The waitress kept refilling my water glass. I was drinking too much and worried I’d have to go to the bathroom again. Also, I had a headache from the ice, and a sugar rush, and various other conflicting feelings.
“What do you want to talk about?” I said, trying to be polite.
Quinn looked at me; under the harsh diner light you could see that her very white skin had little irregularities. My mother got them, too. She called it her rosacea, which always seemed to me as a kid a funny kind of intimate and beautiful name for something like that. She put on a cream at night, which didn’t do much. I used to watch her in the bathroom mirror. It amazed me that she still cared about what she looked like. Her face was my mother’s face, what more could she want. This is the feeling you have about somebody when you fall in love.
“We don’t have to talk,” Quinn said.
I paid the bill, and she didn’t offer. It’s the least I can do, I said, which also seemed like the wrong thing to say. But then on the car ride home the silence took on a different complexion again. She didn’t seem angry anymore.
Eventually she said, “I was asking myself in the waiting room, what would you do if it’s bad news.”
“What do you mean, what would you do.”
“It’s just a conversation I was having with myself.”
But it’s only a twenty-minute drive—she pulled onto MoPac for about five miles, then came off at West 45th and entered neighborhood streets. Once you reach the park you’re basically there.
“Do you want me to come in?” she said, after parking the car. “You’re not gonna collapse or anything.”
“I don’t think so.”
I got out of the car, but then she got out too, and walked with me to the front door. There was a kind of side entrance to the garage—my apartment was on the second floor.
“What are you gonna do now?” she said.
“Probably just … take a shower, and go to bed. I’m pretty wiped out.”
“I don’t want to go to the library,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
“If you ever need anything, just call me. It doesn’t matter what it is. I won’t interpret it as anything else.” This is a line I had prepared beforehand, lying in bed and waiting for the day to start.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to be a problem in your life.”
“You’re not the problem. I’m just glad everything’s all right.”
“Thank you, Quinn,” and I kissed the top of her head.
“Not many guys can do that to me,” she said.
39
Texas entered the season ranked seventh in the AP Poll. Four months later, after winning the Big 12 Conference, they moved up to third and earned the number one seed in the Midwest Regional. The Final Four was in San Antonio, an hour and a half by bus from the UT Campus. They’d practically have home-court advantage—if they made it that far.
A week before the tournament started, Marcus was shortlisted for the Naismith Player of the Year Award, alongside Mike Bibby, Raef LaFrentz and Antawn Jamison.
In the first round, they doubled-up Prairie View A&M—110 to 52. Marcus scored twenty-seven points, even though he sat for most of the second half. Two days later they faced a Bob Knight Indiana team that went nine and seven in the Big Ten and never cracked the top twenty-five.
As hot as Marcus was the year before, that’s how cold he got. The opposite of “the zone” is also a zone, which you can’t get out of. It has its own kind of flow, even if the beat’s a half-second off. Part of what you realize is that there are a lot more ways to go wrong than to be right.
Even so, with thirty seconds left the Longhorns had a chance to win. Down two, Marcus had the ball at the top of the key, drove hard to his right against Bruce Wigmore (who died in a car crash that summer), slipped on a sweaty floorboard or tripped over Bruce’s foot, it isn’t totally clear, and dribbled the ball off his knee. Somehow Wigmore ended up with it and the only thing Marcus could do was foul him. The kid made both free throws, with twenty thousand fans screaming at him and waving thunder sticks. (The game was played in Columbus, and much of the Buckeye fan base hates the Hoosiers.) And that was it.
Texas stayed at the hotel after the game then flew home to Austin in the morning. It was mid-semester, but Coach Menzes let the players take the day off. Megan called Marcus’s apartment in the afternoon, but his roommates hadn’t seen him or heard from him. They didn’t know where he went; I still don’t. Maybe he drove up to Dallas to visit his mom or stayed with his dad in Killeen. In those days, people didn’t have cells, and if you wanted to get away, you could do it without making too big a deal out of it. But for the rest of the week, he didn’t show up to class.
On Friday Megan called again, and Roy Vaughan, who was a senior, and the starting power forward on the team, said that Marcus had come back but wasn’t home. At least, his stuff is on the bed, Roy said. Maybe he went to the Kappa Kappa party.
Did he say he was going, Megan asked, and Roy said, That’s what Tark said, I didn’t actually see him. Tark was Shawn Tarkington, the backup point guard, another housemate.
Every year at the end of the basketball season, Kappa Sigma Chi and Kappa Delta Nu, which were the two main sports fraternities, threw a party to celebrate, basically, the end of training, so everyone could get drunk. It helped that their houses were catty-corner from each other, on Leon and 25½ Street, about seven blocks from the Drag, toward Shoal Creek. Kappa Chi was the football frat, and traditionally pretty white—they’d had some racist hazing incidents that got them national attention a few years back. Kappa Nu was the basketball fraternity, and black. The Kappa Kappa party was supposed to be like an olive branch thing, to show how times had changed. But it was also famous for being totally out of hand. For a certain subsection of the student body, which included many of the sororities, getting ready for Kappa Kappa involved a lot of time, money and effort.
So Megan put on a dress and went to look for Marcus.
She still had to ask her dad if it was okay to go out on a Friday night. Even though he was semi-retired, Megan did most of the physical labor involved in caring for her mother, which included getting her into bed. He said, what time will you be back, and she said, not later than eleven. She just wanted to see Marcus and make sure he was all right. At nine o’clock she got in her old VW Golf, which she actually bought in college, and drove across the river toward campus.
By the time she parked on San Gabriel, the party was in full swing. It was really two parties and took up most of the block. People came and went between the frats. Kappa Chi had the nicer house, a 1930s stone mansion, with pillars over the front door and a long low extension to the side with big French doors, and railings on the roof, so if some guy climbed out drunkenly he didn’t fall over the edge.
I don’t think Megan understood the scale of Kappa Kappa when she set out. For the first half hour, she didn’t accept a drink—just smiled and pretended she couldn’t hear, which was probably true. Megan was partially deaf in her left ear, from chickenpox as a kid, which also explains her slight lisp. Sometimes she even wore a hearing aid, although not on social occasions. At a party like that it would have been useless anyway.
Later, when describing what happened to my mother, she tried to remember as clearly as she could everyone she spoke to or who might have seen her. On that Saturday night, the Final Four was playing in San Antonio. Guys from the team were watching the game—somebody told her to check out the TV room at Kappa Nu. But Megan didn’t know where that was. Students took her in hand and then ran into somebody and started talking, and she drifted off again. It was a warm, late March night, still mosquito-free, really the best time of year in Austin, and just humid enough that even if you felt a little cold you didn’t mind.
Eventually she started drinking. Sometimes it’s easier to accept the cup and sip it and put it down afterward than to keep explaining why you’re not drinking.
What was in these cups, my mother asked her. One of her jobs was to deal with allegations of sexual assault on campus. Don’t mind me, she said. I’m just going to take a few notes.
I don’t know, Megan said. I don’t really remember. A lot of people knew me there, and it became like a thing to get me something to drink.
You don’t remember what was in the cups?
Beer. Some of the girls on the … softball team were drinking margaritas. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. There was a kind of blue punch.
Who gave you that?
I don’t know, some guy. He was pretty big, maybe he was a football player. I don’t really remember.
Was he white or black?
White.
Could you recognize him again?
I don’t think so. There were a … lot of guys who looked like that at the party.
This is how the conversation went on. My mother had to strike a balance between expressing sympathy and figuring out what had happened. In some ways it’s harder than dealing with these things in a court of law, where the roles and rules are more clear-cut. Of course, you can pass cases over to the city prosecutor but then it’s out of your hands, and most universities want to keep them in-house, and my mother worked for the university.
Can you explain why you were there? she asked. Employees are generally discouraged from socializing with students.
I was looking for Marcus Hayes, I was worried about him. I hadn’t seen him since the team got back from Ohio.
Why were you particularly worried about Marcus Hayes?
Because of the way he played against Indiana. I hadn’t talked to him since that game. Normally we talk every day, but he just disappeared.
You talk every day?
He’s my boyfriend, she said. That’s another thing. I don’t know if he’s coming back next year. I mean to school. It feels like all these things are going on with him, and I’m just on the sideline.
Another pause, another tiptoeing act.
You know that … it’s against university policy for any employee to … enter into a relationship with a student without notifying … someone from the university?
Yes.
Did you notify anyone?
No.
Can I ask you how long this relationship has been … going on?
Do I have to answer that? she asked. Marcus just told me, go talk to Dr. Blum. She’ll deal with everything.
I’ll do my best. But if you go forward with this, you may have to answer some of these questions.
I know.
Normally my mother was only involved in this kind of incident at a later stage—after the initial investigation. She could have sent Megan down the usual channels but didn’t want to hand over the problem to somebody who might turn out to be less sympathetic to Marcus.
Her office overlooked a campus street, shaded by live oak. On her walls, she still hung the pictures Betsy and I did when we were kids, including a crayon drawing I made when I was nine years old, of my dad’s head shaped like a basketball. All of the university buildings had gray brown carpeting and seventies-style furniture and metal chairs. The air-conditioning was effortlessly powerful, so that sitting in her office felt a little like being suspended in time.
At some point during the Kappa Kappa party Megan ran into Shawn Tarkington. She asked him if he’d seen Marcus, and Shawn said, Not yet. He said he was coming. But when he left the house he was actually heading to the gym. At least he had his gym bag with him. Megan almost went home then. It was already eleven o’clock, which is when she promised her dad to be back … but she was also feeling incredibly anxious and upset, and the noise level and the people and the different kinds of alcohol she had already drunk made it difficult for her to make decisions. She said to my mom, It’s like I couldn’t … make a new decision, I just wanted to find Marcus, even if he wasn’t there.
What did you do then?
I don’t really remember. It was a party, people kept saying hello. There were some girls who wanted me to dance with them, and I danced for a while. Guys came up and talked to me. I work with the football team, and a lot of guys from the team were there. I started asking everybody where Marcus was, which they acted like was incredibly funny. I had a bad feeling but didn’t want to leave. Plus, I thought, if you just start drinking water maybe in an hour or two you can drive home. I really hadn’t drunk very much.
What happened next?
One of the guys said, I know where Marcus is. And another guy said, yeah, I know where he is. Haven’t you seen him? But maybe you don’t want to know what he’s doing. And I was like, what, what? Tell me. Because I knew they were just … trying to get me to react. But they kept saying, if you want, I can take you to Marcus. I know where he is. Just on and on, and I said, he’s not here, he’s not even at the party, and they said, well, then, why are you looking for him? These are guys I work with sometimes.
On the football team?
One of them was on the football team. The other was a basketball player. So they said, I don’t think you want to know what Marcus is doing. And I was like, what’s he doing? And they said, this is a party … So I said, you guys are so full of shit. They were just laughing. So I said okay, if you know where he is, why don’t you tell me? And they said, I don’t think you want that. But if you really want to know … It just went on like this. Finally, one of them said, I’ll take you to him, but you have to promise not to get mad. Why should I get mad? You have to promise not to get mad at him, they said. I don’t want to get him into trouble. Just take me to him. It wasn’t funny anymore. I was really feeling … I didn’t feel at all well, and I knew I was making dumb decisions but couldn’t stop.
So then they said, okay, and started going up the stairs, and I followed them up the stairs, and when we got to the top, one of them said, he’s in this room. There was a door in the hallway. I said, what’s in that room? And they said, that’s where the party is. You have to promise not to get mad. We don’t want Marcus to get in any trouble. So I said, what are you talking about, and opened the door. But there was nothing in the room. It was just like an office, with a desk, and a couch, and a filing cabinet. Then they pushed me in the room and shut the door.
Are you okay? my mom said. We can take a break.
I’m so embarrassed, Megan said. It’s so stupid. I was just like … out of my mind.
You didn’t do anything wrong. The people who did wrong things were the other people.
It’s not as bad as you think, she said. They were pretty drunk, they thought they were being funny. One of them tried to make me lie down on the couch, the other one was just laughing. But I threw up on him. I don’t know what happened, I really didn’t have that much to drink. Maybe they put something in it. Then the other guy started laughing even more and I actually just … walked out. They let me go.
What time was it?
About one in the morning.
What did you do next?
My purse was in the room, but I just left it. There were some people on the stairs, and I walked past them into the front yard, and there were people there, too. Nobody said anything to me, I didn’t have any shoes on. But then I recognized this girl from the swim team named Linda Lawrence. She could see something was wrong. All I told her was that I lost my purse, which had my car keys in it.
Why didn’t you tell her anything else?
I just wanted to get home. I wanted to get cleaned up.
What did she do?
She loaned me some money. I said, I don’t even have a phone, and she called a cab, and she waited with me until the cab came. She brought me a glass of water and we sat on the curb.
Did you say anything to her then?
No. I was too embarrassed … I think she just thought I was drunk.
Did you feel drunk?
No. I had a headache, but I didn’t feel drunk.
What happened next?
I went home. My dad locks the front door at night, but you can go around the side to our backyard, and he didn’t lock the kitchen door. So I went through the kitchen and went to bed. Actually, I had a shower first. I used the guest bathroom, which is farther from my parents’ bedroom, then in the morning when I woke up, it was about eight o’clock. I realized I probably should have gone straight to the police.
Did you tell your parents what had happened?
No. I didn’t have any money, and my car was still parked outside the frat house. I had a spare set of keys but couldn’t really face going back there. So I just canceled my cards and called Verizon and canceled my phone plan. On Saturday Marcus finally called our home number. I told him what happened, and he picked me up and drove me back to campus so I could get the car.
