Imperfect Spiral (25 page)

I can't go over there. I can't go and kneel by another person who's been hit by a moving object. Besides, what good would I be?

In what seems like forever, but really isn't, a man and a woman who work at the rink—they're wearing matching bright blue jackets—rush onto the ice. The woman is carrying a small machine. She speaks briefly to Justin. The man takes over from Justin. The woman attaches the machine's pads to the ref's chest, the man stops the compressions, and then the woman presses something on the machine. I see the ref kind of twitch, and the man gets back to doing CPR on him. After a few more compressions, he stops.

The ref lifts his head. The people in the bright blue jackets speak with him; the woman squeezes his hand. He bends his knees as if he wants to sit up, but the woman says something to him and he relaxes his legs again. Soon a crew from the Meigs County Fire Department bounds onto the ice. A couple of police officers have arrived, too, but they seem to know that there's no need for them and they don't enter the rink.

Marissa comes over to where I'm standing, which is in the front row right next to the boards.

“I've never seen that happen,” she says. “The ref was completely out—but Justin—”

Where is Justin?

“If he hadn't started CPR so quickly …” She doesn't finish her thought. “He reacted so quickly. Meanwhile, I sat here on the bench …,” she says. The EMTs are moving the ref onto a stretcher. “Where did Justin go?”

“I don't know,” I say.

“He must be talking to someone about what went on,” Marissa says.

But we don't see him on the ice or in the stands. We go to the waiting room to look for him, but he's not there, either. After a while, Marco and his team come out. The remainder of their game has been called off.

“My goal probably won't even count,” Marco says glumly.

“Hi, Marco,” I say.

“It was a beauty,” Marissa says. “But don't you think we should just be praying for that poor referee who got hit?”

“Yeah,” Marco says. “Sorry. He's a good referee. Everyone likes him.”

“We're going to head out,” Marissa says to me. “Tell Justin I think he's a hero.”

“Who's Justin?” Marco asks.

“The guy who did CPR. He's Danielle's friend.”

“Wow,” Marco says. “Super-quick thinking.”

“Make that a superhero,” Marissa says to me. “Tell him.”

The appearance of the Zamboni seems almost offensive after what's happened, but I guess the show must go on. Marco's game may have been called off, but there's a whole lineup of games waiting to be played today, including Justin's. It's funny how an event can totally leave a small group of people in shock—
please
, no pun intended—and yet be completely invisible and irrelevant to the rest of the world. The EMTs and the cops are gone. A small knot of parents from the game are still standing around, no doubt rehashing what we all just witnessed. But basically the rink is back to normal.

I go back to the rink looking for Justin. He's not there. Then out into the main waiting room again, where I sit among its rows of benches and lockers. There are more people here than when we first arrived, but still not many. The rink doesn't open for free skating for a few hours—I think not until 11:00 a.m. on Sunday. The parents have moved to the door of the main office. Now they're reliving the drama with the man and woman who took over from Justin.

“There have been a few cases where a puck, if it hits really
hard just beneath the chest protectors, has basically caused cardiac arrest,” the woman is saying.

“Is that what happened?” one of the parents says. “That's horrendous!”

“I can't say for sure,” she says. “By the time Tim and I got there, that young man—”

“He plays in the rec league, but I don't know his name,” the guy named Tim says. “And Cindy has seen him around, too, but doesn't really know him, either.”

“Well, that young man had begun CPR,” the woman, Cindy, continues. “Jerry had a faint pulse by the time we got there. Did he lose it after the puck hit him? Don't know. But the fact that the defibrillator, when I attached it, determined the need to administer a shock, that tells me he may very well have gone into cardiac arrest. Which would mean the CPR kept him from slipping away until we got there with the machine.”

Maybe Justin needed to go to the bathroom to pull himself together after such an upsetting experience. Should I go into the men's room? Maybe he went home. But without telling me? Sure, if he's shaken up enough. I'm about to text him when he plops down next to me, dropping his hockey bag on the floor.

“You were a hero!” I say. “And then you disappeared. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he says. “I needed to get ready for my game.”

The team changing rooms are down a corridor off this main area. But—the thing is, he didn't get ready for his game.
He's still dressed in his regular clothes, and his bag is still stuffed with his gear.

“But, Justin, you didn't change into your hockey gear,” I say.

“No,” he says. “I decided not to after all.”

“Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine,” he says again.

Maybe he's feeling disoriented. I decide to take a different approach.

“You're amazing!” I say. “You may have saved that referee's life.”

“I know CPR,” he says.

“Knowing CPR and springing into action are two different things,” I say. “And you sprang!”

“Like some sort of action figure, right?” he says.

He seems unusually tense, but how should a person feel after something like this?

“Do you know him?” I ask. “Does he referee at your games?”

He's not really listening. “Look, let's get out of here,” Justin says.

“But your game?”

“I'm going to skip it,” he says.

As we're walking out, Tim and Cindy see us. They hurry out of the office, both extending their hands as they approach.

“Great work, my man,” Tim says, pumping Justin's hand.

“Really quick thinking,” Cindy says, shaking Justin's other hand. “You may have saved a life here.”

Justin hems and haws. But every modest denial on his part
stimulates a new recitation by Tim and Cindy of his wonderfulness. After a few rounds of this, he seems to figure out that if he just accepts their praise, this conversation will actually end. And it does.

“Marissa wants me to tell you that you're a superhero,” I say once we're outside.

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Like Superman,” I say. “Complete with disappearing into a phone booth after the heroics.”

“Thanks.”

“Actually, she didn't say that. About the phone booth. That was me. Please ignore me.”

We walk toward the bus stop without speaking.

“Look, I need to get home,” Justin says. “Can we talk later? Or tomorrow or something?”

“Sure,” I say, thinking that “or something” can have a wide variety of meanings, including “or never.”

“Great.”

His bus comes first. He drags his bag up the steps. He doesn't turn to wave or say good-bye.

I guess this is how a superhero acts in real life.

And that was the last time I saw Justin
.

Is what I fully expect as the bus carries him away.

Fortunately, my expectations are not met.

I have just settled in the seat on my own bus when I feel the phone vibrating in my jacket pocket.

Sorry.

No apology needed.

I think there is. But thanks.

If anyone understands how spooked you must be, it's me.

There's more to it.

I'm listening.

Not really textable. If that's a word.

I'm listenable. If that's a word. In person.

We meet at the park. I get there first, and when I see Justin hobbling along with his big hockey bag strapped over his shoulders, my heart goes out to him as if he were a little boy. What a weight that is to carry around.

“So,” he begins.

“So,” I say.

“Your friend Marissa and her interest in where I'm from,” he begins.

“You have to understand Marissa,” I say. “I started telling you, she has this thing about everyone's ‘culture' and ‘heritage.' Including her own. You can expect to get a
Cinco de Mayo
card from her next year.”

“That's Mexican, not Colombian.”

“What?”

“
Cinco de Mayo
is Mexican, not Colombian.”

“I know. Marissa is very into being Mexican American. Hence the
Cinco de Mayo
card. Actually, now that she thinks you're a superhero, who knows what she'll send you. A signed edition of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. The sky's the limit.”

“Danielle, my point is that Marissa was on to something. My parents are from Colombia. It's not just the place where my long-ago ancestors came from.”

“Okay. Your parents are from Colombia.”

“And they're not here legally.”

I have to admit, I did not see that coming.

His parents came here, Justin tells me, fifteen years ago as graduate students. They came on perfectly valid student visas. Then when they were no longer students, they started taking steps to get documents—green cards—to live here permanently and one day become citizens. They needed to find employers to sponsor them, and they did. But then they both switched jobs before the papers came through, and had to start over again with different companies.

To finalize the whole green-card thing, they needed to leave the country, go back to Colombia, and reenter the United States with their new documents. That's the way the rules said it had to be done, even though it sounds like a waste of a whole lot of airplane tickets. There was never a good time to do it. So they never did. Mr. Folgar's company decided to look the other way, even though they could have gotten in trouble for employing an undocumented immigrant.

“I'm sorry, Justin,” I say.

I am. But I'm not getting why this would make him such a cranky superhero.

“And, see, about what happened today,” he says. “About hiding when the EMTs and cops came.”

When he says the word “hiding,” his eyes turn into two dark platters of pain. Pain and shame. I don't like that he feels ashamed in front of me.

“My older sister and I, we were both actually born in Colombia. In Bogota,” he continues. “So …”

I suppose I'm really dense, but I can't fill in the blanks at the end of that sentence. I'm not getting it.

“So that means we're both here illegally, too.”

Okay. Really didn't see that coming.

“But—” I say, and stop for a moment. I'm reviewing the conversation from early this morning. “But you told Marissa you'd never lived in Colombia.”

“No,” he says. “I told her I'd never
traveled
to Colombia. Which is true.”

True, in a hair-splitting sort of way.

“I don't like to lie. It is true that I have never been back to Colombia. They brought me here when I was a baby. I have no memory of anyplace but here.”

I'm glad he doesn't like to lie, but I think sometimes you're lying even if you tell a technical truth.

I'm being too harsh. None of this is his fault, is it? And he has to protect his parents and sister, not just himself. Do they have an official Folgar Family Lie, a story that they all have rehearsed and consistently tell outsiders? I wonder how it feels to go through your life having to be always just a little bit dishonest.

“So—has something new happened?” I'm still not
understanding why Marissa's questions this morning have made him so upset.

Justin hesitates before answering. “It's not really about Marissa's questions. I'm explaining to you why I disappeared. Why I didn't want to be around when the rescue squad came—because they almost always come with police.”

And he does not want to have any interaction with police. He does not even want to be a hero in the presence of police.

I feel like there's more he wants to say. Although the gear shifts of Justin's brain are not as transparently evident as the clickings and clackings of others, I'm feeling like there's more.

“I'm so sorry, Justin,” I say. “If only—”

“If only my parents hadn't let this become such a mess,” he says. “That's the only ‘if only' that counts. Two adults with master's degrees who speak perfect English, and our life is a disaster waiting to happen.”

He sounds so bitter. So not Justin.

“I hate feeling like I have to hide. I hate that I ran away—and that's after I did something
good
. I have to be invisible. Which is absurd, since the rest of them are so totally visible.”

Okay, now I'm back to not getting it again.
The rest of them are so totally visible
. The rest of
who
are so totally visible?

“Danielle.”

That's my name, don't wear it out.

“They were the ones in the blue minivan, Danielle.”

In
my
blue minivan?

“They were in the car that hit Humphrey Danker.”