13. Ned
NED
When he was six years old, his father woke him early one fall morning. At first he thought something was wrong. For starters, his father never woke him up. Not for school or church, and certainly not ever to take him somewhere on a weekend. His father paid homage to the 1950s sense of fatherhood, despite the fact it was the seventies and other dads coached baseball and cooked dinner and drove their kids to school. Providing was his father’s idea of parenting, and also, as Ned would later grow to realize, marriage. Ned’s father did not attend games, or rub his stomach when he was sick, or tuck him in with a story at night. So when he awoke to find his father towering over his bed in the predawn hours one autumn Saturday, Ned’s first thought was that something was terribly wrong.
“Get up,” his father said, his voice gruff. “I’m taking you to the course.”
Ned blinked, taking in the gray light playing at the edges of his window and the man standing by his bed. Wordlessly, he slipped from his warm covers and did as he was told.
Ned dressed quickly, ignoring the rumble in his stomach, and wondered as he passed his parents’ bedroom door if his mother knew anything about this. He’d been half tempted to wake Willy, who snoozed quietly with his thumb still in his mouth, but it appeared Willy was not invited. Downstairs his father was already at the door. “Come on, then.” Fifteen minutes later they pulled the car into the empty parking lot at Mayhaven.
An older man named Lenny met them at the locked front door of the clubhouse and let them in. “Morning, Art.”
“Thanks for this, Len.”
Len was older and grayer than Ned’s father, and walked with a stoop. But his gaze was warm when it landed on Ned. “No trouble at all. You two enjoy the morning.”
Then, as now, Ned walked down the main hall past the glittering display case of trophies and old photos, though it seemed bigger and longer, its contents more mysterious. Len invited them into the pro shop, where he pulled a small golf bag from behind the large wooden counter. “These may be a little big for him,” he said to Ned’s father, sizing Ned up through milky eyes.
“He’ll adjust,” his father replied. Then to Ned, who was looking around the shop with large eyes, “Well? Say thank you to the man. And get your clubs.”
The clubs, he would later learn, were left behind by a young member that summer, never claimed, and saved behind the counter by Len. Ned hoisted the strap over his narrow shoulders and hurried out after his father.
Ned had never heard of Len before; he would later learn that they were old school friends and as a favor on Saturday mornings before the club opened, he would let his father, Art, in to play as many holes as he could before the club opened and the staff showed up. Ned knew his father golfed on weekend mornings, but it had never occurred to him where or how. Or that you had to be a member to play, which Art Birch was not. Mayhaven was not a place his father could ever have afforded belonging to, but belong he did, striding across the fairways as the mist rose in haunting threads about them. As daylight broke over the horizon, Ned had his first lesson.
“The thing you want to remember,” his father said, speaking to him for the first time like an adult, “is that you can’t force your swing.”
Ned did not know what his father meant then, but on other such mornings that followed he would come to. Those Saturdays would become his routine, each season, until the day his father eventually left. “The strongest man with the biggest frame can be outdriven by a wisp of a teenage boy.” Here his father looked at him, his eyes twinkling. “It’s never been a game of muscle. It’s about grace.”
Grace was a word Ned would never have ascribed to the testy man who slammed cabinet doors and stomped in and out of their home, invariably weary of what was for dinner just as he was with his wife and, Ned often felt, his children. There was no evidence of grace in their home, in his aloof nature and constant whiffs of disapproval. But that morning on the golf course it was the word he used to describe a game he was introducing his son to; the first and only real thing he’d ever shared with Ned. And Ned grasped onto it like one does hope.
On the course his father was a different animal; a less threatening animal who cracked smiles and occasionally an odd joke, especially when he played well. His instructions for Ned were spare and simple, and thankfully Ned was a natural who took direction and understood how his body moved through space. His little brother, Willy, sadly did not.
Willy, when he was older, would be brought to the course only twice, and not ever again. Over the years it became something Ned harbored deep and lasting guilt about: spending time with a father who only existed on the golf course, a man Willy would never get to know. But after a lifetime of being sized up and found lacking, Ned clutched the small sense of worth he attained on those outings; it was his only source of nourishment from a father who, until then, had starved them all.
The game of golf was not easy, nor were those early lessons enjoyable. His father was a devotee of rote practice. He began with the techniques of a swing: the art of setting up, the science of the club head striking the ball at its equator, the undeniable ping of good contact when the small white sphere careened through space. Ned was as determined to learn the game as he was to gain his father’s praise. Weekdays, he practiced against a net in the backyard, holding his breath until Saturday when his father would take him out again. It wasn’t long before he became decent, and later, excellent.
“Your father is good to you out there?” his mother once asked, warily. She was washing dishes the night Ned and his father had returned from a junior golf tournament three towns away, toting a trophy. Ned had plunked the trophy on the dinner table for Willy and his mother to admire as they ate. As usual, his father had taken his plate to his study where he dined alone, the faint notes of classical music trickling under the closed door.
“Yes,” he replied. “I bogeyed the first hole but made birdie on three. I won by two strokes!” Ned was talking about his win, not his father, because that was what had come to matter. But his mother did not seem appropriately enthused.
Ned could see that he was speaking a language she was not versed in; his father had left her out, just as he had Willy, and suddenly Ned felt sorry for her.
“That’s good,” she said, finally, returning her attention to the sink.
They were interrupted by a sudden crash behind them, and his mother startled. When Ned spun around, he saw his trophy on the kitchen floor. It had toppled from the table. Willy stood beside it, eyes wide with fear.
“You idiot!” Ned cried, shoving Willy out of the way. It was harder than he’d intended; Willy fell backward, banging his head on the floor. A wail of crying erupted.
Before Ned could scoop up his trophy and inspect it for damage, his mother beat him to it. She snatched it up with one hand and his arm with the other, something she’d never done before.
“Don’t you treat your brother like that!” she’d hissed, tears springing to her eyes. She held the trophy aloft between them. “This does not make you better.”
There was a sound in the doorway, and they’d all looked up to see his father. He surveyed the scene in front of him. A bitter laugh escaped him before he walked away.
While Ned’s mother turned to soothe Willy, Ned scooped up his trophy and ran upstairs to his room, righteous in his win. What followed was a surge of guilt he would spend the rest of the night pushing away from the corners of his sleep.
That memory still plagued him, more than the memory of his father leaving a few months later. By then Ned had come to realize that things were not so black-and-white, and his father’s golden light he’d basked in for so brief a time was complicated.
Ned’s feelings for golf, however, were not. It was a sport he loved, despite the frustration. One day you might play your best round and the very next you could blow up every hole. It was elusive and agonizing and wonderful, just as he’d found life to be. Out there, against the mountain views and sweeping breeze, Ned was reminded of his small place in the world, hopeful and humbled. There was no making sense of the unadulterated glory felt in one shot, and the despair in the next. It was, he supposed, akin to the relationship he’d had with his father.
Ned’s father was an ardent golfer who never belonged to a club; a talented player who could not afford the membership dues and was not afflicted with a need to belong. As much as Ned emulated his father’s game, he would never model his father’s role in their sad little family. The day he married Ingrid, Ned vowed to treat his wife with compassion and respect in equal measure. Should they be blessed with children, he would hold those children; he would tend to hurt feelings and scraped knees alike. He would show up to school plays and cheer loudest at dance recitals and games. He would be the best father he’d never been shown how to be.
When Darcy was old enough to toddle behind him at the club, he bought her a child’s set of clubs so small they looked cartoonish. She loved them. In good weather, they practiced in the backyard. In winter, they practiced in the garage against a net. When Darcy got older, he brought her to the course and taught her everything he could. Later, when she outgrew his expertise along with the child’s clubs, he signed her up for lessons. It wasn’t just the joy of the game, it was the joy of sharing something he loved with his daughter. It was the jokes between holes, the high fives after she crushed the ball, and the sympathetic looks when she shanked it. Being out on the course taught him so much about who his daughter was and what she was made of. It was a privilege to witness her sense of cool on the course, her consistency, her focus. Darcy possessed what his father had talked about: grace, in every sense of the word.
For a few years, it seemed Darcy Birch lived for the game and was destined for greatness. Which is why Ned was mystified when she up and announced she was quitting.
None of them saw it coming. That season she’d been at the top of her game. Trophies lined her bedroom shelves. Scouts began to show up. When she appeared in the living room and announced that she was done, Ned had thought she was joking.
“What do you mean you’re done?” He’d laughed. The previous fall Darcy had won the qualifying round of the Massachusetts Girls Junior Amateur Championship. That spring they were headed to Braintree for the tournament. Darcy had just come home from a simulator lesson with Vince. She had to be kidding.
“I’m not kidding,” she said, arms crossed.
Ingrid followed her upstairs to her room, where they remained behind the closed door for fifteen unbearable minutes talking in hushed tones. She met Ned in the hallway.
“She’s quitting,” Ingrid said.
“But why? Did something happen?” Sure, their daughter was just as prone to irrational teenage moments as any other kid her age; and he and Ingrid had spent their fair share of time walking on proverbial eggshells. But those moments were reserved for friendship woes or boys or failing an algebra test. Sometimes for her exasperation with her own family. But never golf. Golf was the one sacred thing that buoyed her through all of it.
“She says she’s burnt out,” was all Ingrid could say. “I don’t understand it, either, Ned. But I have to say—I believe her.”
“So, what, we give up? We let her just quit?” Ned was trying to keep his voice low and failing. He allowed his wife to pull him down the hall and into the privacy of their own room.
“No, but we do give her time. This is her decision, Ned. It’s her sport.” Ingrid was looking at him like she felt sorry for him. He didn’t like it. “Remember, it’s not about us.”
He knew this, of course. And yet he could not help but feel a sense of failing that he’d been so caught off guard. How long had Darcy felt this way? Had he misread his own daughter so badly? If that was true, what else had he misread? The thought filled him with panic.
“I need to talk to her.”
“Not yet,” Ingrid said. “Let’s wait until later tonight, okay? She’s worried about upsetting you, more than anything it seems.”
“Me? But why?”
Ingrid leveled him with a knowing look.
“Okay, fine. I get it—I’m wrapped up in this, no doubt. As her golf partner and in my line of work, I get all of that. But as her dad, this is different. If she says she’s burnt out, how did we not see the signs?” He sank onto the bed, feeling as if all the bones in his body had just melted.
Ingrid sat beside him. She looked as confused as he felt, but notably not as hurt. “I don’t know,” she said. “Teens can have sweeping emotions. She’s competed a lot this season—and let’s be honest, the pressure at this level is high.”
“She has Braintree coming up. A scout is coming to watch her.”
Ingrid shrugged. “Give her time. Maybe this will all blow over.”
But it did not.
Now, with a new season of golf sparkling before them, Darcy showed no signs of returning to the sport. It left Ned bereft. He missed driving up to the course, early in the mornings before work, with his daughter. He missed walking the course as the mist rose about them, just the two of them. Most of all he missed his daughter. The orbit she seemed to be on these days did not involve him, or her mother, or even very much her brother, it seemed. Darcy’s young adult life seemed to be in a universe all its own, with parties and friends and high school comprising the strange new axis on which her planet spun. Ned knew this was normal; he knew that he should celebrate her independent spirit. But he could not help but feel that he had fallen from a sky they once shared, and her planet was revolving steadily into a dark season, its face turned away from the sun.