Divisions (Dev and Lee) (34 page)

It’s all too much thinking-about-the-future for Christmas, really, but I have trouble getting my mind out of those spirals sometimes. Father manages to do it for me, sort of, when he says, “It’s about the time I told Eileen I’d call. You’ll say ‘Merry Christmas’ to her?”

“Sure,” I say. I want to add, “Happy Gay Christmas,” but I know better than to cause trouble like that.

“And I think I’m going over there this weekend to pick up my stuff. You don’t need to. I know Devlin has the game on Sunday…”

“I can go up Saturday, fly back Saturday night, if that would work.”

He nods. “I think so.”

I reflect that it means I’ll miss the t-shirt ritual with Dev, and that was kind of a fun thing I was hoping I could do every week. Can’t be helped. I want to make sure I get my things, all that history. And more, I want to see my mother in person.

Father walks off with his phone, and Angela comes back with a tray of cookies. “These are amazing,” I say, taking one. It’s ginger, sharp and spicy and still warm, reminding me of the chai I had in the coffee shop, which reminds me of Brian.

“Old family recipe.” She flicks her ears toward me and smiles, one of those pitying smiles. “I was sorry to hear about your parents. So glad we could have your father here. I know it’s not the same as a family Christmas.”

“Lots of families here.” I look over at Gena and Fisher and their cubs. “Why aren’t Gena and Fisher at home?”

“Fisher,” she says, and her voice tightens. “He misses the team so much.”

“I’m glad to see them again.” I take a bite of the ginger cookie, finish it in one more, and pick up a sugar cookie. “These remind me of home.”

Angela watches me and smiles. “I’ll send you home with a recipe or two.” She turns back to the room. “I don’t envy Gena. I hope Gerrard keeps on with football—he wants to coach, but of course, that would keep him away from the house even more. I already feel like a single mother.”

“Why don’t you envy Gena?” I’m trying to keep up with her talking, and feeling a little bad because she’s talking so much. I think she doesn’t get to talk to people a lot.

“Look at her and Fisher. He’s bad-tempered, restless. She told me she’s having such trouble in the house because he’s tolerable around the boys, but he snaps and sulks all the time. When he retires…”

“He’ll have to find something to do.” I watch the curling and flicking of Fisher’s tail, more active and, yes, restless than Dev’s usually is. “Has he…” I stop, not sure if I want to go down this road.

She tilts her muzzle, and then lays her ears back. “Go on. I’ve probably been thinking about it too.”

“I’m just wondering if she’s mentioned—if you think he’s hit her at all.”

Angela looks their way again and lowers her voice. “She hasn’t said anything. I wouldn’t be surprised, though. Gerrard’s…well, he’s never hit me, but when we had a fight, he broke a lamp. That was years ago, though. We haven’t…” She seems about to say something else, and then just shakes her head. “I don’t know. Tigers seem more violent. I’m sure Devlin isn’t, though. He’s sweet.”

She seems to be waiting for me to confirm or deny, so I just say, “He is. So how do you not get snappish and sulky? What else do you do? What did you study in college?”

“I didn’t go to college.” Her ears go down. “I had a job out of high school working in a restaurant near Moon University. Gerrard used to come in with the football team after games, and we started dating. I’ve been with him ever since.”

“And you don’t want to go back to being a waitress.”

“I only really wanted to be a mother, and a wife.” She looks at her husband, but not quite completely at him. Sort of through him. “I knew there’d be sacrifices.”

“It sounds like the sacrifices are worth it.” My own problems pale. I don’t think I’ll have to give up my career at all. “You have two lovely boys.”

“I do.” Her smile returns, but not full force. She lowers her voice. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“It’s a little…well, you don’t have to answer it.” She drops her head to look me in the eye. “Do you think Devlin, when they’re on the road…I know some of the players have girls…”

“I don’t think Dev messes around on the road,” I say in a low voice, trying not to look at Vonni and Daria. “I know it’s naïve of me. But I know him. I don’t think he does.”

She nods. She doesn’t look happy. “I hope you’re right.”

I want to ask her about Gerrard, but looking at her expression, I don’t have to.

Father comes over just then with his phone. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “Family.”

Angela nods and drifts off, and I’m stuck staring at the phone he’s holding out. With a sigh, I grab it. “Merry Christmas,” I say into the extended mic, and hand it back to Father without waiting for a reply.

He doesn’t take it from me. From the speaker, Mother’s voice rings out, but I don’t focus on it, so I miss the words. I mouth, “I’m done,” and shake my head.

He just shakes his head back and points at the phone.

I roll my eyes and put the phone to my ear, glaring at him. “…talk to me on Christmas.” Her voice is trembling.

“I’m here, Mother.”

“Wiley.” She pauses, and when she talks again, her voice is more collected. “How is your Christmas?”

“It’s fine. I’m here with my family. How’s yours?”

She pauses. “I’m glad Harold came down there to see you. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“You know everyone calls him Brenly,” I say.

“I spent Christmas with the Romanos,” she says as if I hadn’t said anything. “Kailee is five now and she’s just adorable.”

“Not with Mrs. Hedley?” I say.

There’s another pause, and then she says, “I just want Christmas to be nice, the way it used to be.”

“Christmas isn’t ever going to be the way it used to be. I’ve changed. You’ve changed.”

“I haven’t changed,” she insists.

Father frowns and leans forward. I think in a moment he’ll take the phone away. “Really? You’re going with that? It’s all on me?”

“You’re the one who stopped coming home. You’re the one who left. I tried to stop you, but in the end I had to just watch you go.”

“Father managed,” I say. “He’s here. He likes me and my friends. Looks like you’re the one who walked out on this family.”

“Just for one day,” and her voice gets sharper now, higher, “can we have peace on Earth? Good will toward all?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Ask the King family.”

“I don’t know why you keep harping on that,” she says. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Maybe you should find out.”

I hold out the phone to my father. He shakes his head at me, but takes it and puts it to his ear. “Eileen,” he says, and then just listens. I try to find something else to do, but I can’t help my curiosity.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. He faces me, but his eyes are far off. “No,” and then, “Then you should tell him that.” Now he focuses on me. “I think he will.” He looks away again and shakes his head, slowly. “No, that’s fine.”

When he hangs up, he says, “She just wants Christmas to be Christmas. But she doesn’t want all of this other stuff to come into it.”

“I’m her gay son. She has to deal with that sometime.”

He sighs. “You’re not making it easier.”

“Well, her joining an anti-gay religious group didn’t make it easy on me.”

“If you’re going to be like this,” he says, “maybe you shouldn’t come up to get your things this week.”

“Look,” I say. “She’s bought into this group, but she’s afraid to confront me with it. You know some of the things they have out on their website? Charming stuff about how all gay people want to legalize…” I catch myself and drop my voice to a fox-whisper so only he picks it up. “Pedophilia. About how gay people are trying to remove the whole institution of marriage. About—”

He holds up a paw. “This is a nice Christmas, okay? Let’s just enjoy the rest of it. We can talk about your mother later.” When I glare back at him, he says, “Or much later.”

I tamp down the fire in me, but it doesn’t go out. “How much later is never?” I murmur under my breath, and my father pretends not to hear me.

By the time we’re ready to leave the party, I’ve almost completely forgotten Lee’s comment about that damn Vince King guy. Strike, thank God, had to take off almost right away—more parties to ruin for people, no doubt. Pace leaves around four, and I’m getting hungry then. I grab Lee and ask if he’s ready for dinner, and he says yes. His ears are mostly up, so I suppose he’s saving up the conversation for us to have later, when there aren’t all these people around and it’s not Christmas.

His father exchanges a few words with Vonni and his wife, and Lee chats with Kodi as I’m saying good-bye to Fisher and Gerrard and those guys. “See you tomorrow,” I say.

Fisher grumbles. “Next week.” He cracks his knuckles. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t seen him in a while, but his fingers look swollen. No, he always had big paws. “Fuckin’ playoffs. I got maybe one more year, two tops. We got to do it this time, boys.”

“We will.” I shake his paw, firmly, and everyone else crowds around him.

“Nice to have a party without everyone being in a cast,” Vonni says, walking us to the door. “So, Brenly, I’ll have my guy give you a call.”

Brenly thanks him, and we walk out into the foyer, Angela behind us. As we stand around the door, the piney scent of the wreath filling the air, she holds out both paws, with a stack of little cloth bundles, red and green, each tied with a silver string at the top.

“Thank you for coming to our Christmas,” she says. “Please, everyone take one.”

I grab a green one, Lee a red. His father and the other foxes take theirs. It’s light, and about the shape of a couple cookies, which I confirm from the smell. “Thanks,” I say. “The cookies were delicious.”

“So was the eggnog,” Lee says. “Thanks for the cookie recipes.”

Angela’s tail wags, and she gives him a bright smile. “Let me know how they come out.”

“Merry Christmas,” Vonni says, and I notice Daria. Now I wonder what Lee said to her. Vonni came over to me when he saw them talking, freaked out cause he thought Lee might tell her about the leopard, hissing questions at me about whether Lee was hung up on fidelity and I had to tell him not to worry.

He said again that blowjobs don’t count, but I don’t think he’s had that talk with Daria. In any case, it looks like Lee didn’t say anything about the leopard, because the two foxes are holding paws as they leave.

In my truck, Lee leans forward from the back seat to ask his father, “Vonni’s guy is going to call you? What guy?”

“Finance guy.” Brenly looks very satisfied with himself. “Vonni and Gerrard both admitted they weren’t doing a lot with their money, so I offered to take a look at their accounts free of charge.”

“Gerrard seems like a guy who would have all his money organized.” Lee rubs his muzzle, smoothing his whiskers back. “Nice job, though. Maybe you can be the official financial advisor to the Firebirds.”

Brenly laughs. “Not a bad gig if I could get it.”

“Gerrard wouldn’t care about his money,” I say. “He cares about football and that’s it. I imagine he has it basically in a savings account.”

Brenly’s ears go back. “Not too far off, from what I understand. I guess Angela doesn’t manage very much of his money.”

“She’s managing the family full-time,” Lee says.

“Those cubs, that’s a full-time job.”

“Almost.” Lee leans against my seat and sighs.

I reach up to caress his cheek fur. “Enjoy your time off before you have to go to make my job harder.”

“Thanks.” He rubs against my paw. “Is that if I take the job in Yerba, or if I don’t?”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Brenly coughs. “You have to take the job that’s best for you. Don’t base it on getting back at—”

“I know,” Lee interrupts his father. “Enough life lessons for the day, okay? I’ll make a choice. I just want to make sure it’s the right one.”

“Choices.” Brenly stares ahead at the road. “You know, it’s possible to overstate the importance of a choice. You can always start over. You’ve got a long life ahead of you.”

“You’re the one who warned me about getting stuck in a job.”

“Right.” He grins. “And you should worry about that. If you can save five or ten years of your career, you should definitely do it. But you also shouldn’t think that this is the only choice you’ll ever have to make, or that this choice will define the rest of your entire life. You have years to look ahead and figure out what you want to do, and what you want to do might change. You never know. What you have now, what you’ll have five years from now, what you’ll want ten years from now…you can guess, but you can’t predict with any certainty.”

The truck gets pretty quiet after that speech, and Brenly seems to realize that he’s been pretty heavy, because he says, “Okay, so where are we going for dinner?”

“Just home. I have some ostrich steaks and a new recipe to try.” Lee leans back into his seat.

“Ostrich?” I say.

“There’s a farm south of Chevali. Supposed to be healthier than beef.”

I squint up into the rear view mirror at him. “I like beef.”

“I thought I’d try something different,” he says, and before I can answer, he holds up his phone. “You guys have new phones to set up while I’m cooking.”

I let him change the subject. I’m not really worried that he got some health-nut ideas from Strike. “Oh, so I’m getting your cast-off phone?”

“No, I’m keeping the one you got me, and you can have the one Strike got me.” He nuzzles my ear. “Sound fair?”

“Sounds fine.”

“By the way, what did you do with his gift to you? You didn’t leave it there in the house, did you?”

I shake my head. “I asked Angela to throw it out, but she was worried the cubs might see it.”

“It’s not like it’s—” He hesitates; I feel the motion of his whiskers toward his father. “It’s not something that’s inherently sexual.”

“The box was pretty bad.”

“I didn’t think so,” Brenly puts in. “But I don’t think I would leave it around for the cubs anyway. It would create questions.”

“I was asking questions about sex at that age.”

Brenly laughs. “If I recall, your questions were more along the lines of ‘Why does Adam Jensen like Callie Ferguson more than me?’ Not so much ‘Why is that bear tied up?’”

“Maybe if you’d brought home a set of cuffs—”

His father turns and catches my eye, grinning. “Who says we didn’t?”

Lee’s quiet for a second. I look up at the mirror; he’s got his paw over his eyes. “Okay,” he says, “I don’t want to hear about how you tied up Mother.”

“Interesting that you would assume she was the one tied up.”

I cough. “They’re in the back. I snuck out and tossed them in during the party. And I’m impressed you remember the names of Lee’s grade school friends,” I say just to forestall the rest of the conversation.

“Oh, Adam Jensen came over for a couple years. Slept over once or twice, as I recall. Which we wondered about, later.”

Lee snorts, a warm puff against my shoulder. “He’s straight. He didn’t even want to play any interesting games like Lev Ponston did.”

“I don’t think I want to know about this,” Brenly says.

“Who was Lev Ponston?” I ask.

“Summer camp buddy, after eighth grade, so, what, ’98? Cougar. Wanted to see how we were different, you know,
down there
.”

“Seriously.” Brenly turns to Lee. “This ‘no talking about stuff’ works both ways.”

“That’s all that happened. We just looked.”

“Uh-huh. You want me to start telling you stories from my childhood? I was in the Scouts, you know. Camped out.”

I feel the flick of Lee’s ears as they sweep back. “So, how did you like Dev’s teammates?”

“Everyone was very nice. Not everyone really talked to me very much, but Vonni did, and Fisher was nice enough to spend some time.”

“Fish is my best friend on the team,” I say automatically, and then I wonder if that’s really true anymore. He was, for a while, but he’s been gone, and I’m close to Charm, too. I think maybe I’m putting too much weight on the species thing. I mean, I still like Fisher and all, but he didn’t ask me too much about how things were going with Lee, with the publicity. We talked about it for maybe ten minutes and then he was off on how much it means to him to get back for the playoffs. Gerrard never asks me about Lee, but Gerrard only cares about football. (I think. I don’t want to think about the coyote ladies in the hotels, not now.) Gena was the one who asked me how things were going, while Fisher listened, or pretended to.

No, that’s not fair. He was listening, but he was distracted and he wanted to talk football. He’s missed it, and I understand that. Having gotten the chance to start, finally, I’m sure I would be just as impatient if I were injured or if I couldn’t play for whatever reason.

Lee, if anyone, would be able to ask if I really mean what I just said, but he just goes, “Mmm,” and then, “Vonni’s marriage seems to be doing pretty well. Far as I could tell. I mean, he loves his wife.” He pauses, and when neither Brenly nor I chime in, he says, “She must be really good in bed.”

“I bet there’s some things she doesn’t do.” I grin back at Lee in the mirror and he raises his eyebrows, giving his lips a quick lick that his dad doesn’t see.

“I thought she was nice,” Brenly says.

“She was just kind of stuck up,” Lee settles back a little. “And condescending about us being gay.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Brenly turns to me. “How has the team been?”

“Generally good. There are a few guys who still don’t like it. But it’s not a problem. It’s not really an issue at all.”

“Except with Strike.” The words come softly behind me.

“It’s not an issue with him.” I half-turn to the back seat. “I mean, maybe it is, but it’s not my issue.”

“Uh-huh.” Lee isn’t really looking at me, but I feel him accusing me of not taking my gayness seriously.

“Everyone already knows about me on the club,” I say, maybe a little defensively. “He doesn’t have to put a fucking spotlight on it the whole time.”

“Spotlight kind of comes with the territory,” Lee says.

Brenly maybe notices the tension. “So how do you feel about the Hellentown game? Lot on the line. It’d be nice if it wasn’t quite as exciting as the last one.”

“Right, you were there, weren’t you?”

“Owner’s box.” He smiles. “Courtesy of your owner, which I hope Hal thanked him adequately for.”

“You want to see Hal while you’re in town?” Lee speaks up. “I think he wouldn’t mind seeing you again.”

“My plane’s at eight—work tomorrow—but if he has time for a cup of coffee, I wouldn’t mind saying hi.”

“I’ll give him a call.” Lee taps around on his phone. A moment later, I hear him asking Hal if he’s free, that his father’s in town, and then, “Great. The Starbucks by the airport. See you then.” He hangs up and then says, “I picked the Starbucks for you.”

“Thanks,” Brenly says. “I do want to squeeze in every Starbucks I can before we get back to Hilltown where they’re so much harder to find.”

It’s really interesting listening to Lee and his father. I see so much of where Lee gets his mannerisms from, and I think, I couldn’t use sarcasm that regularly if my life depended on it. And then I’ll think some sarcastic remark and I’ll realize that being with Lee for a couple years really has made a difference, in that and probably many other ways.

We don’t have a lot of time back at the apartment. Brenly drives back to his hotel and Lee and I head to Starbucks to wait there for him and Hal.

I spend most of that drive quiet, thinking I should say something to him like “lay off the Vince King already.” But I don’t think he’d react well to that, and anyway, I already sort of said that with my reaction at the party. He reads me pretty well. Even if he doesn’t agree, he knows how I feel, and that’s enough. Well, knowing Lee, it’s just enough to get him to goad me some more about it; I don’t have the illusion that the argument is over. But we don’t need to re-hash it.

“So,” he says at one point, “you want to keep those cuffs?”

It breaks into my serious train of thought. I turn to see if he’s smiling, but there’s only a little turn up at the corners of his mouth. “Not particularly.”

“I just thought you might like to try something a little different.”

“If I’m going to tie you up, I don’t want to do it with something Strike gave me,” I say.

He leans back and grins. “Interesting that you would assume I’d be the one tied up.”

“You think you could keep me down?” I put a growl into my voice.

“Well, no,” he says. “That’s the point of the cuffs.”

“Maybe sometime,” I say. “After the season.”

Then he gets quiet, and I wonder if he’s thinking of all the other things I promised for after the season. But it’s too late to take the words back, so I just stay quiet too, until we get to the Starbucks.

Since our flight from Lake Handerson to Hellentown, when I was more occupied with Lee, I’ve only seen Hal a couple times in the press room after games. He takes me aside while Lee and Brenly are saying their good-byes and asks me for an off-the-record evaluation of Strike’s contribution to the locker room, and so I give him the same sort of sanitized version I gave everyone else. It doesn’t satisfy him, so I add the detail about the commercial and tell him when we’re filming it. He asks about me and Lee, and I say things are going pretty well.

And then Brenly’s heading off, so I say good-bye to him. Lee and Hal set a lunch date, we all wish each other Merry Christmas, and then Lee and I head home.

We stay quiet on the way home, too. When we get to the apartment, I ask if he wants to play football or watch a movie, and he picks a movie: Die Strong. It’s a mindless action movie, and he doesn’t talk much while we’re watching it. So I think about practice and what I’m going to have to do tomorrow, and Friday, and Saturday, to be ready for Sunday.

When we go to bed, he’s affectionate, and I might almost think there was nothing wrong, except that there isn’t quite that lift to his smile that there is when nothing is wrong. He’s still thinking about things, I guess. That’s okay. He’ll talk to me when he’s figured it out.