Chapter Forty-Two #2
Heads bob around the circle. Okay, progress.
I plod on, if not somewhat awkwardly. I know no one here is over the age of thirteen, and yet I feel like I’m talking to a group of adults.
‘But y’all … I know that Theo asked what happens if we lose.
That is a valid question. Losing happens, and it really, really sucks.
It does. You’re all big enough to understand that.
It’s just that the opposite can be true. What if we win? What then?’
My last word is followed by a thoughtful murmur, wide eyes that are not so devastated.
I can see the wheels turning. Good, I think to myself.
You’re doing good. ‘So instead of playing and asking yourself what happens if you lose this, I want you to think, what happens if you win it? Because we will.’
The smile I give the kids is still somewhat strained, kind of wavering, but it’s coming back stronger. I stick my hand in the middle of the circle and, one by one, they follow suit, until we have a stack so high that Theo can barely reach it.
When we break, the cheers are fortifying. I exhale heavily, and as the team jogs back onto the field, I can feel a tangible change in the atmosphere. They resume their places as we choose to set up in a defensive plan this time.
And yet, the game runs down to the wire. For the next half an hour, we watch Whittaker score on Boston, and then Boston swing back. It’s a teeter-totter of a game, during which Rod and I continue to keep our distance, but for the sake of the kids, we pull it together enough.
By the second-to-last minute, we are tied 5–5 with Boston, and the deciding goal of the game is in the air.
The smell of barbecue is thick in the stands and all over the sidelines.
The sunlight glitters against sparkly lit-up Fourth of July headbands.
Grill dads are practically roaring at my back as I wave an arm towards the goal, yelling plays frantically, yelling anything I can to keep morale up in these last seconds.
My sneakers crunch through the grass, veering dangerously close to the white spray-painted line I’m forbidden from crossing.
I follow the ball all the way up until it winds up in Jake’s stick, and I think he is going to go for the goal like the ball hog he is, until he passes.
The ball makes a beautiful arc through the air, and it lands square in the head of little Theo’s stick.
‘WIN, THEO!’ I nearly scream. I foist my clipboard towards the goal so hard it starts to slip from my grasp.
Theo is both small and fast. He weaves around a Boston defender and, just like he’d done that first week of camp, he whips it.
Every second is agony. The ball is in the air for a minute or two, it feels like, appearing to travel in slow motion.
I don’t rest until it shoots past the goalie, a kid about double Theo’s size, and slaps the back of the net with a swish.
That, for everything I’ve seen in my time playing, is a game-winning goal.
All at once, there are kids everywhere. Tucking themselves in the crook of my arm, arms wrapped around my torso.
They leave their dirt and sweat and warm breath everywhere, but they consume the hole I’d been carrying around in my heart for the past few days, fill it up.
I give little Theo a great big hug, and his eye black smears against my cheek.
He giggles. ‘We won, Coach Jordan. What now?’
His laugh is the purest sound I’ve ever heard. He hasn’t seen loneliness and heartbreak and pain. There’s something about it, back when riding and playing lacrosse were so simple. Everything was so simple. When did opening your heart become so complicated?
‘Well, Theo, now …’ I give his helmet a pat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rod, to whom the kids run, too.
He’s also awash in a sea of children, among which is his own, Tali.
She’s on his shoulders as per usual, best seat in the house.
Despite it all, there’s no denying that he is a phenomenal father. That much will never change.
I find myself blinking away tears I didn’t realize I was on the verge of shedding. ‘Now you can go and celebrate. Go see the fireworks.’
Theo gives me one last squeeze before running to his parents. I exchange grins with the middle-school girls, accept a peanut-butter-scented embrace from Jake. If I take anything away from this summer, maybe it can be these kids. They gave me so much, anyway.
Once the last of the children has peeled away, I begin packing my backpack.
My clipboard, whose papers are all creased and nasty at this point, slots in nicely on the side, just behind my practice stick.
People are still cheering around me. Barbecue tongs have been discarded in favour of red, white and blue pom-poms, cross-camp T-shirts are being distributed.
Declan exchanges a begrudging handshake with Rod.
‘Till next year,’ I hear him say. Whittaker Lax Camp, at least, will live to see another summer.
I draw the zipper of my bag shut and sling it over one shoulder.
The kids will hang around, enjoy the carnival rides that are set up a ten-minute walk away, bury their faces in funnel cake, and then come back out to watch the fireworks once the sun dips below the horizon.
They’ll wave sparklers and stomp on Pop-Its to see whose will make the loudest noise.
Rod will carry on doing all those things with Tali, and maybe Charlotte will do them, too, which will be good for Tali in any case.
And instead of living my life in the same chaos I’ve always enjoyed, I’ll finally choose to pull myself away from it all and sit in the dull, droning white noise of an airplane until I’m far enough away that I don’t have to pretend leaving isn’t tearing me apart fibre by fibre.
‘Jordan?’
I’m about halfway to my car, at the gates, when I hear the voice, unusually quiet for its owner. Backpack still over one shoulder, I sink to my knees so that I’m eye to eye with Tali.
‘What’s up, honey?’
Her hair, still in the two little space buns her dad has done for her, quivers as she finds the words. She fidgets with her tiny hands, and then, tongue in cheek, she says, ‘Please don’t leave.’
What do you even say to that? What do you say when a kid begs you not to leave, all puppy-dog and this close to crying?
I can still see my dad’s truck rumbling down the road, still hear Mom wailing behind him, all kinds of curses and maledictions.
Remember how hopeless it felt to pray that he’d come back before I went to bed, remember when I stopped doing it.
Praying and hoping and everything. Yet here I am, no less than Benjamin Hawkins, leaving everything and everyone behind without a care in the world. Leaving a kid behind.
‘Tali.’ I take a deep breath to steady myself. ‘I … I think that I need to leave. It was going to happen eventually, wasn’t it?’
‘He’s never really been happy.’ Tali’s lower lip quivers.
She wrings her hands harder. Her freckled nose scrunches.
‘Daddy had a really hard time. Sometimes he looks happy, but I know that’s not true.
Auntie Bia would talk to him, but he would still be sad.
And I wouldn’t miss my mommy. Not really.
But I wanted one so bad, and …’ She bats at her eyes with the palm of her hand, shaking her head. ‘I don’t want you to go, Jordan.’
Tali may do her darnedest to convince me she’s grown, but this is a baby.
She’s a baby who’s had to deal with so much more than any child should, who’s watched her dad juggle all the things, all her life.
In a way, she is grown: she had to grow up too quickly.
She found constants, but there was just the one part to the puzzle that was always missing.
I watch her space buns turn into twin braids, a small brown cowboy hat embroidered with roses atop her head.
Her cross-camp shirt becomes a dusty white top, her shorts become jeans, her sandals become worn boots.
But her eyes stay the same. They’re still lost, still looking for that one puzzle piece.
I take her hands in mine, and squeeze gently. ‘Don’t cry, baby girl.’
She does, though. The tears are a cascade, flooding her face as she buries it in my shoulder and I hold her tight.
Her little back shudders under my hands, and she sniffles against my shirt.
I bite back the same emotions that had overtaken me with Theo, but this time, I fail.
Am I denying her the same thing I have been searching for all my life?
Maybe. Maybe I am perpetuating this cycle, but I can’t do it.
I finally gave my heart away, to feel so unsteady, so broken all over again.
As if everything I built – the understanding I share with this child, an understanding like nothing else – was tainted from the start.
Maybe I should turn back and talk to Rod.
Some parting words, some bandage to smooth over how we’re leaving things.
But any attempt to dull the damage will only make it worse.
And I can’t feel like I’m the one doing something wrong any more. I just can’t.
‘I’ll miss you.’ Tali’s words eventually come out through sobs. They shred at my heart. To ‘miss’ is suddenly an understatement.
‘I’ll miss you, too, honey.’
Letting go is the hardest thing. I stand up, and Tali seems so much smaller than she actually is as I walk to my car.
I feel so much smaller. I wipe the tears from my own cheeks, and I turn around to look back.
I watch her retreat to the gates. Once I’m sure she can’t see, I slip into the driver’s seat of my car, put my head between my knees, and scream.