CHAPTER FOUR #3
“Well, that is very strange, but I believe that Chip could have willed himself to becoming a successful basketball coach.
You know, he told me and people at the school that he had played at Ohio State.
He said he’d been injured his freshman year and didn’t get a chance to play and ended up quitting the team in his junior year because he couldn’t play anymore.
And, you know, I just didn’t call Ohio State and ask for the roster to see if a red-shirt freshman named Chip Hill was on the team.
What a strange lie for him to tell, but also what a strange thing for a wife to fact-check when you love your husband.
But after he left us, I wanted to find him and I did a little research.
Nope, never played at Ohio State.
So you’re telling me that he never even played basketball, period and, yes, that checks out.
Do not tell Pep anything about this, but I hired someone, and they told me that the Chip Hill that matched the Social Security number I had for him was still married in the state of Massachusetts.
He told me he had been married long before, but said it had been brief and ended in divorce.
Certainly never mentioned kids.
There was a lot that didn’t add up, and I decided I didn’t want any of it to come back on me and my businesses and, of course, Pep.
So I ignored it.
And now you’re here.”
“That’s bigamy,”
Mad said. “He never actually married my mom because they were hippie farmers. But if he was married to Rube’s mom and you at the same time—”
“Well, we never actually got married,”
she admitted.
“His idea.
Or maybe I was okay with it.
I wasn’t much for marriage, but I did like companionship.
Still gave Pep his last name, though, and then ran off.
I am not candid with many people, but I’ll probably never see you again, so I’m just going to say this.
When he left, I felt like a fool, like I had been stupid for loving him.
He hurt me, and I didn’t like that feeling, and I wasn’t going to track him down because I just wanted to forget.
Wasn’t good for Pep.
Probably wasn’t good for me. But there you go.”
Mad suddenly realized that Rube had been standing in the aisle for perhaps a few minutes. He was holding a huge bucket of popcorn and a giant soda.
Cathy saw Mad staring up at Rube, and she turned and nodded at him. “I took your seat,”
she said. “We were gabbing.”
“Sorry about the game,”
Rube said, but Mad and Cathy both said, in unison, “Still a lot of time left.”
Cathy stood and shimmied out of the aisle.
She looked at them, appraising them, and said, “If you find Chip, and you get a sense of what your true emotions are about the situation in that moment, mention me to him.
Tell him that Cathy says hi.
Or if it goes bad, tell him that Cathy says to eff off forever.”
“Okay,”
Mad said, smiling, though she could not imagine saying either thing to her dad.
As she walked away, Rube raised his eyebrows.
“I missed a lot, didn’t I? There was, big surprise, no line in the men’s room, but the concession line was so damn slow.”
“I’ll fill you in later,”
Mad said.
There were only a few minutes left before the second half began.
AS SOON AS THE SECOND HALF STARTED, PEP PLAYED WITH A KIND OF RUTHLESS efficiency that nearly took Mad’s breath away.
In less than two minutes, she had hit three consecutive threes, all from different spots on the court, one time with two players guarding her.
With Daedra out, the lineup went small, trying to speed up the game, and Pep was now guarding the Redhawks’ best player, a power forward, the leading rebounder in the nation, and Pep, even with three fouls, played the woman straight up, using her shiftiness to get inside to grab rebounds and move right into transition.
She hit two more threes, and they were now down eleven points.
The crowd was starting to amp up, fans for both teams realizing that maybe the noise that they generated might have some effect on the outcome.
Rube yelled, “WHOOP!”
after every shot that Pep hit, but Mad couldn’t speak, could not take her eyes off of her sister, who had turned into an assassin.
Every time it seemed like the Sooners could get the deficit to single digits, the Redhawks would storm back, and with five minutes left to go, the Sooners were still down ten points and Pep had scored thirty points without missing a shot in the second half.
With four minutes left, Pep hit an off-balance runner that somehow banked in, and they were down by eight, and the entire Sooners bench was stomping and clapping.
The Redhawks coach called a time-out, and it was strange to see how the demeanor of the teams had changed, how hard it can be, when you feel that shift in fortune, to turn it back.
“Can they do this?”
Rube asked. “I mean, is this rare? Is this how the games typically go?”
“I don’t think this is normal,”
Mad admitted, but she wasn’t sure.
She could not imagine that it was a regular occurrence for a team to come back from a twenty-five-point deficit and win.
She imagined that someone scoring thirty-four points without missing a shot after missing their first thirteen shots was unlikely, something that people would take notice of.
She wondered what the announcers on ESPN were saying.
It would have been nice to have that context, but Mad also knew it might be worse to have experts explaining things to her, to take away any doubt that maybe Mad just wasn’t attuned to the intricacies of the game.
And with Pep doing what she was doing, Mad did not want to be anywhere else but in this arena, watching her sister.
Pep stripped the ball on the next possession and threw an outlet pass the length of half of the court for an easy layup.
They were down six.
Another miss, and Pep ran three different defenders into screens, her legs just constantly moving, and hit another three.
And finally, after showing no emotion for the entire game, she screamed, pumped her fist, and sprinted back on defense.
With a minute left in the game, Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam”
playing again for some reason during a time-out, the Sooners were still down by three. The Redhawks had the ball, dribbling the shot clock down before hitting a jumper to go back up by five. With forty seconds left, Pep was now constantly double-teamed, but she shook off her defenders and raced to the corner of the court and put up an off-balance three that hit nothing but net, and both Mad and Rube screamed with elation.
“I think she can do it,”
Rube said, and who would disagree? The Redhawks were basically leaving every single player except Pep open, and even though her teammates could not hit anything, seemingly shocked by Pep’s outburst, they were still in this game.
On the inbound, the Sooners intentionally fouled and sent the Redhawks to the line.
The player hit both, calmly, like they weren’t in the midst of one of the most epic collapses in basketball history, and there were now fifteen seconds left and Oklahoma was down by four.
Pep took the ball up the court, time ticking off, but the Redhawks swarmed her and she hit a teammate cutting for an easy layup.
There were now five seconds left and they again intentionally fouled.
Even though the attendance felt paltry at the start of the game, so many empty seats, Mad felt like the arena was now shaking from the noise.
Mad had never wanted anything more than for Oklahoma to win this game in her entire life.
It was partly for Pep, but it was also to absolve her of the guilt of maybe having caused this series of events.
Beyond all of that, she just wanted to be present for something so surprising that you could not believe it if you weren’t there.
She wanted something magical, and she was starting to believe it was possible.
The Redhawks player, who had previously hit both free throws under pressure, missed the first shot and she hung her head immediately, like this was her fate and she could only play it out.
Mad watched Pep, and her sister’s hands were at her sides, her fingers wiggling like she was casting a magic spell, so much energy and wildness vibrating inside of her.
The player set for the last foul shot and it clanged badly off the rim, bounced off the hands of a Redhawks player, and somehow ended up with one of Pep’s teammates.
The clock was ticking, and Pep raced to receive an outlet pass, and the entire Redhawks team looked like the Keystone Cops, just wildly moving in all directions, bumping into each other.
Pep tried to get close enough for a desperation heave and just as she was in the motion of shooting, just past the half-court line, the buzzer went off, and then Pep released the shot, which banked off the backboard and fell in.
Rube and Mad, who had been standing, threw their arms into the air with elation, not sure of what had exactly happened.
Every player on the court except for Pep fell to the ground like their batteries had been yanked out of their bodies, exhausted, the game over.
The referees frantically waved off the shot, signaling that it had come less than half a second too late to count, and Pep stood at half-court, defiant, looking up at the scoreboard as if to confirm something she couldn’t quite accept. She nodded, brought her closed fists up to her forehead, centering herself. And she then walked to each teammate, pulled them up off the court, hugged them, and walked past the cacophony of celebrating Redhawks and their fans, down the tunnel, and disappeared.
“Fuck,”
Rube finally said.
Mad still could barely breathe, her chest so tight, the sadness of not getting what you wanted, the acceptance that life goes on. It was a lot. You live on a farm your entire life, spending your life with chickens who have an interior life that is a mystery to you, and then you set off on a quest to find your missing dad and you feel the static electricity of touching someone who shares your DNA, and you maybe ruin their life, and you maybe ruin your own life. Isn’t that a lot? Isn’t that maybe too much for Saturday afternoon in the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas?
“Do you think Dad watched the game?”
she asked.
“I don’t know what would be worse,”
he replied. “But I hope he did. I hope he saw what Pep did without him.”
The crowd was starting to filter out of the arena, making their way down the aisles, but Rube and Mad couldn’t bring themselves to move. Cathy was no longer in the section with the other Sooner fans, and there was still a fair amount of activity on the court, sideline reporters finally getting to do their job. There was another first-round game coming up, and Mad watched as fans dressed in their own unique colors, toting signs, had arrived early to watch warmups, and it was strange to see all that unblemished anticipation right after such a crushing disappointment. She almost hated them, somehow wanted both teams to lose, and then she got a handle on her emotions, which never took long if she tried hard enough, and she hoped that the two teams stayed tied, overtime after overtime after overtime until the sun burned out and the world ended.
“I guess it’s time to go,”
Rube said.
“Where?”
Mad asked.
“West,”
he said, like they were Lewis and Clark. “Just keep going, right?”
“She was amazing,” Mad said.
“Really amazing.”
“I like her, our sister.”
“Me, too. But we have to keep going.”
“I know. But, like, maybe just a few more minutes. There’s still a lot of Redhawks fans milling around and I don’t want them to make fun of my shirt.”
“I totally understand,”
Rube told her. He put his arm around her, the first spontaneous sign of affection between them, and it didn’t seem as strange as Mad imagined it would be. She leaned against him. It was good to hold on, to steady each other as the world spun. And then they would go. They would keep going.
JUST AS THEY PULLED OUT OF THE PARKING LOT NEAR THE ARENA AND BE gan driving back to the hotel, Rube’s phone rang. “Shit,”
Rube said. “Hold on.”
They were stuck in traffic and he was trying to turn against the light, so he handed the phone to Mad. “Could you answer it?”
“Hello,”
Mad said. “This is Rube’s phone, but this is Mad.”
“I wanna come with you,” Pep said.
“Wait, what?”
“Can you come get me? Like, right now?”
“You want to come with us? You want to go find Dad?”
“Yeah,”
Pep said. “But you gotta come get me, like, right now.”
“Okay, shit, okay. Where are you?”
“I’m hiding right across from the arena. I’m at the School of Nursing Building. There’s, like, a bridge or something, and I’m standing near it.”
“Oh, Pep, are you … you’re not … you’re not going to jump off the bridge, are you?”
“What? Are you fucking crazy? Of course not.”
“Okay! Okay, sorry,”
Mad said. At this point, Rube tried to get the phone back.
“Let me handle this,”
he said. “I have experience with this kind of thing.”
Mad didn’t want to get into it with her brother, but she thought he was referring to his own breakdown after the death of his mother and she wasn’t sure that was the kind of expertise required in this situation. And, plus, Pep had emphatically stated that she wasn’t going to do anything.
“Hello?” Pep said.
“Yes, I’m here,”
Mad said, slapping Rube’s hand. “Hang on, Pep. Rube? Turn around. Go back to the arena. Look for the School of Nursing.”
Rube nodded and Mad stayed on the phone with Pep. “You want to come with us?”
she asked. “You’re sure?”
“Our season is over,”
she said. “My college career is over. I might never play basketball again. I don’t want to go back to Oklahoma right now. I don’t want to get on the bus with my team and sit there the whole time thinking about all this. I told my coach about my dad, about the situation … well, kind of. Broad strokes, you know? And I told my mom and she is mad at me, but she can’t stop me. So I’m coming with you. I want to see Dad. If you guys will take me with you, I’ll come.”
“We do want you to come with us,”
Mad said. “I’m sorry it’s like this, though.”
“Just hurry,”
Pep said. “I feel weird out here, just standing here in the middle of the day in my tracksuit, and I think the cops might think I’m up to no good.”
“Okay, we’re almost there,”
Mad said, without checking to see if it was true. “You were so good, Pep. That was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“We lost,” Pep said.
“Still. You were incredible.”
“For half the game, yeah. But, thank you. I was really good. Yes.”
“I see her,”
Rube said. “Tell her I see her. I’m waving. Tell her we’re in a PT Cruiser.”
“I can hear him,”
Pep said. “I see the car. I’m running to it right now. Don’t worry about parking. Just let me get in.”
“Do you have luggage or, like, your duffel bag?”
Mad asked.
“No, I just peaced out of there. It was so fast, and—here, just let me—”
Mad could hear Pep breathing hard on the phone and then she saw her, running from the bridge over to the street, and Rube slowed down so that Pep opened the door and jumped into the car in one fluid motion and then they just kept going, caught in the flow of traffic.
“That felt like a bank robbery!”
Rube explained. “I’m the wheelman and Pep was the robber and, Mad, you were, like, the lookout.”
“I’m starving,” Pep said.
“Okay,”
Mad replied. “We can get something.”
“Drive a little,”
Pep said. “Then take me to whatever fast-food place you can find. I don’t have any money, by the way.”
“It’s on me,”
Rube said.
“I’m going to eat so much,”
Pep announced, and then she slumped into the seat, looking out the window, no doubt realizing that she’d jumped into a PT Cruiser with two people whom she had not known existed a few days previous. It was a lot to think about, Mad understood. They drove in silence, and Mad, still the lookout, searched for a place suitable for her sister to feast.
AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES OF DRIVING, THEY FOUND A PLACE CALLED DAN’S Hamburgers, a diner where they could sit down and reimagine the future. Mad marveled as Pep confidently, without any money, strode up to the cashier and ordered a double cheeseburger (“with hickory sauce?”