Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bryan
The phone rings as I walk into the kitchen, but it’s not a coincidence. Mom always calls before seven a.m. on Mondays when the long-distance rates are cheaper. I thought she might skip this week’s call since I saw her Saturday. I grab the receiver off the wall phone and hold it to my ear with my shoulder as I get some milk out of the fridge.
While I guzzle my milk, she tells me Dad’s back is bothering him, but he refuses to slow down and refuses to go to a doctor.
My chest tightens, not because I’m worried about him. Because I hate how much like him I am. My response is a grunt of commiseration.
“Don’t worry,” Mom says.
I snort, and she ignores it. Her theory is that deep down under the crust of our antagonism, Dad and I love each other. Unfortunately for me, she’s right. But the more important truth of the matter is that I’m losing respect for him.
No matter how much I might love him, I’m growing to loathe him.
“How’s English comp?” she asks.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m your mother. I know that class is tough for you.”
“It’s fine.”
“What’s your grade so far?”
“C+,”
I say without thinking, pride getting the better of me because now Mom’s going to ask more questions. I hate questions, hate giving out details of my life. She doesn’t need to know about Susie, my tutor. Because that’s all she is.
Fuck. I’m not supposed to be kidding myself, and I know Susie is more than my tutor. Not that I know what the hell she is. Friend? I don’t think so. Not going to delude myself about that. She’s not a girlfriend because I don’t do girlfriends—not since Liz and not again any time soon.
But we shared too much, and my need to see her, to be with her, to have her in my bed is too strong to think of her as a tutor or a casual acquaintance.
There’s nothing casual about Susie and me. Not since the first day I met her nine years ago.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing. I gotta get going?—”
“What. Aren’t. You. Telling me?”
Her words slow down, and each word sounds and feels like a block of ice. She’s the only person on the planet who can read me, even with as little as a misplaced vowel or a small tick in my voice.
“Nothing. I’ve been working extra hard. Problem?”
“Don’t you give me attitude, Bryan Granger. I get enough of that?—”
“Is everything okay?”
Code for has he kept his hands off her? I keep waiting for the day when he uses her as my substitute.
She sighs. “Everything is fine here. You know Dad isn’t like that.”
Her voice softens. “Not with me.”
“Good. Talk to you next week?—”
“Don’t you dare hang up without telling me what’s different?—”
“Nothing. This call is costing us. Good-bye.”
She groans and huffs because she knows I’m right even if it’s an excuse not to give away much. “Take care of yourself, Bryan. I love you, boy.”
We both hang up then, knowing I’m not going to answer her because we both know how I feel about her. She’s the one person on the planet I love without reservation.
For her, Dad is the one person on the planet she loves without reservation.
And for a fleeting second, I wonder if that’s ever going to change, before I remind myself how much I don’t care because it doesn’t matter.
Football, friendships, romance, none of it matters. Putting food on the table for the family matters.
Or so my old man pounded into me until I’ve absorbed it as a fact of life.
I toss the empty milk carton in the trash barrel across the kitchen.
I need to figure my life out and what the hell I’m doing with football, though I don’t dare believe that there will be football after UConn. Not unless you count playing with Coach and his group of guys at the academy field in the off-season, which I don’t, and I probably won’t.
Because I’m a farmer and from the end of this season on, when I’m done at UConn, I’ll have a heavy workload all spring and summer. In the fall too because Dad will expect me to pick up the slack, to take over the things he’s having trouble doing. He’ll be angry that he can’t do things and blame it on me like he does everything else. Wordlessly. Sometimes with meanness. Occasionally with the back of his hand.
But that shit’s going to stop. I’m not taking his shit, and I don’t care how old he is or how broken he is. The slapping stops. And I don’t mean I’m just going to put up a defense like I’ve been doing for a few years. I mean I’m going to put him in his place so he doesn’t even take a swing or go for his shovel like he did last time.
Susie’s already in her seat when I get to class because I’m late. She’s the first person I’ve ever sat next to on purpose besides a teammate.
She looks up like she didn’t expect me and smiles. “I’m glad you made it.”
I’m close enough to catch a waft of her sweet scent. I don’t know how to describe it except that I’ve never smelled anything like it before on anyone. I’ve been with my share of girls, experienced the scent of the women at church, been around the block when it comes to feminine smells, and Susie’s scent is singular. I could identify her by smell alone.
“We have no game next week,”
I say. Yardly is saying something. It’s not like me to talk in class since I’m not a talker.
That must be why Susie stares at me like I showed up naked. There’s some hunger mingling with her surprise. And hope. Always hope. Shit.
Clearing my throat, I add, “The last game is the week after that.”
Compassion fills her eyes, paralyzing me with horror because I feel more bare than if I were naked, like I’ve shown her my underbelly and handed her a knife.
She nods. “This season has gone by so fast.”
She hesitates. “It’s your last season.”
Bull’s-eye. The words carve a chunk of my gut out, and I hold my breath like I can wait out the excruciating pain, as if it’ll go away in a minute, like after getting hit by a linebacker.
She stares, blinks, and when I don’t speak, she fills in, rushing her words. “Then there’s Thanksgiving weekend, and basketball season starts. I bet we end with a 9-1 record if you win the next game?—”
Her babbling soothes me for no good reason, and I take a deep breath. “There’s a big party at Fletcher’s cottage this week?—”
“He lives in Coventry, doesn’t he?”
She’s not done babbling softly as Yardly drones on, glancing in our direction. I’m aware of my surroundings now and of what I’m about to do, and she is too, and she’s stalling me.
“I think he lives there with three other guys from the team. According to Liz, Fletcher is Dane’s party pal…”
she keeps going, and I let her. She’s right about Fletcher and Dane since I’ve succeeded in resisting Dane’s attempts to drag me out.
“I’m assuming you’re going to Fletcher’s party?”
She finally stops, stares at me with the gold flecks in her eyes, and I keep a grip on myself and reality while I stare back. I can’t ask her to go with me, as if it’s a date.
“Yes.”
It’s all I say, and I know she knows there’s more underneath the one word because she smiles so brilliantly, like she’s full of joy and can’t hold it in.
“They’ll have food, and I need to eat,”
I add, knowing the excuse will dampen her pleasure. I feel mean as the golden sparks in her hazel eyes die down to ordinary specks.
But it’s not all about keeping Susie’s hopes in check. Next to her, my second obsession is with food. I don’t know when the order of importance changed, but I need good food, and it’s damn expensive in the off-season without the team food allowance.
“You should be a dorm waiter. They eat for free all the time. We have waiters at our dorm.”
I nod.
“I’ve thought about it.”
I’m desperate enough to save on food money to consider asking Liz to recommend me for next semester. What’s stopping me is that I’d see her every day, and I have mixed feelings about that.
It would also mean I’d see Susie every day, and my feelings about that are all over the place.
Susie’s listening to Yardly and writing something down. I should be paying attention too, but I keep watching Susie in my peripheral vision and a glance here and there. My obsession is making me pathetic.
When Yardly has her T.A. pass around a handout, Susie turns to me again.
She looks like she’s determined to jump off a cliff. “You know, I think there might be an opening for a waiter at our dorm, starting right away,”
Susie says. I hear the trepidation and hope side by side in her voice, and my chest tightens against the thump of my heart, trying to keep it in place, keep it from beating out of my chest.
I nod, keeping my eyes on her, waiting for her to go on.
“One of the guys has a project that he has to finish for the end of the semester, and he can’t come to campus every day.”
I stare at her as she waits for me to respond, her eyes looking more hopeful even though she thinks she’s hiding it. I see right through her. She wants something from me, and I’m pretty sure it’s the kind of thing I can’t give her—or any girl. I’m no romantic. Not even a little bit.
“I can recommend you if you want.”
Her face flushes pink because she knows what that implies. Maybe she wants to see me every day. Maybe she can deal with the awkwardness of Liz seeing me every day too, of all three of us sharing space, being around each other at the same time.
But fuck, I’m not sure if I could stand it.
I nod as the T.A. stops at our row, the last row, and hands us each a stapled sheaf of papers. It’s the final exam preparation, our last paper. Shit.
Turning back to Susie, I nod. “Recommend me.”
Food on the table is important.