Left Out (3 page)

They walked home after lunch. Landon's mom was at the kitchen table surrounded by boxes, writing on a notepad and looking busy. She smiled when Landon's father set down her spinach salad. Landon didn't have to hear to know what his sister said as she threw her hands in the air. He snuck a look.

“Landon took off his ears!”

Landon cruised peacefully past them all, headed for the living room and his favorite reading chair, which the movers had positioned near the big window looking out over the pool and lawn. It was a heavenly place dappled with sun shining through the trees, and he took it, iPad already out. The smell of polished wood and the hint of warm dust filled his nose. He knew he'd be spending some serious time in this spot.

His mother usually gave him some space when he pulled the plug on his ears, so he jumped when someone tapped his
shoulder. It was her. She motioned for him to reconnect. He stared at her for a moment to make sure she really meant it. She did. Moving slowly, he removed the gear they called his “ears” from his pocket and hooked it all up.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Genevieve is a maniac,” he said.

“She's very protective of you.”

“She knocked over everyone's drinks and made a big stink.” Landon glared at his mom. “You and Dad teach us to walk away.”

“It's harder to do that when it's against someone you love,” his mother said. “It's easier to walk away when someone is making fun of you than of someone you're close to.”

“Why?” Landon tilted his head.

“Because . . .” She threw her hands up. “I don't know, Landon, but it
is.
You just, you need to cut her some slack.” She paused for a minute. “Do you want to see your room?”

“I like where they put my chair.”

She swatted him playfully. “Who do you think had it put here?”

She sat down on the arm and hugged Landon to her. He hugged her back, but separated when it got too tight. She looked tired and sad.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

“I'm fine, Landon.” She sighed. “I want you to be fine.”

“I'm always fine, Mom. You know that.” He got up. “So, where's my room?”

She studied him for a moment before rising and leading him into the front hall and up a big wooden staircase. Down at
the end of a wide hall, they went right and into a long bedroom with its own bathroom. Part of the ceiling slanted at an angle and the whole room was paneled in wood. His desk and bookshelf stood empty on one side, and his bed lay on the other side beneath three rectangular windows. His computer sat on the desk. Boxes were everywhere.

“You like it?” his mom asked.

Landon climbed up on the bed and looked out the windows, smiling. “It's like the inside of a pirate ship.”

“There's a park just a few streets away.” His mom pointed out his window. “The school—did you see the school?—it's not far either.”

“I did.” Landon thought about the boys and the school, and then his face brightened. “I can walk to football practice! That'll make things easy for you guys.”

“Landon . . .”

“Yes?”

She sat down on his bed and patted the spot beside her. He took it.

“I've been thinking about football.”

“It's America's sport, Mom.”

She stroked his hair and he made a big effort not to back away. “It's harder than it looks, Landon. You're not a violent person. You don't get angry very often, and when you do, you . . . you . . .” She pointed at his implants. “You unplug.”

“Just because I don't push people into other people's tables doesn't mean I don't
want
to. In football, you're
supposed
to push the other guys. It's part of the game.” He pulled away from her touch.

His mother stood up and went to one of the boxes. “I'll say this once and only once. Be careful what you wish for, Landon, because you just might get it.”

From out of nowhere she produced a razor-blade box cutter and with one quick motion slit open the top of the biggest box. She began taking things out and setting them carefully on the bookshelf. He knew working calmed his mother's nerves. She placed several ceramic animals in a small cluster Landon could see—a lion, a tiger, a bear, an elephant. She stepped back to review them before fussing some more.

While she worked on arranging the cluster, Landon taped a Cleveland Browns poster to the wall.

His mother took a picture from the box, examined it, and smiled before showing him. “Remember this?”

It was a picture of the four of them—Landon, Genevieve, and his mom and dad—plummeting nearly straight down on Splash Mountain, the best ride in Disney World. His sister and his parents had their hands in the air and their mouths open, screaming with joy during that scary final plunge. Landon gripped the seat, ready to endure the fifty-foot drop. It wasn't his idea of fun, but he had wanted to prove to himself he could do it. He'd insisted they get the photo, to record the experience, and whenever he looked at it he was glad he'd taken the ride.

“That was a fun time.” Landon glowed with pride.

She smiled warmly and set the picture on the shelf.

Landon removed his football from another box. It was his best present from his dad last Christmas, an official NFL ball, and he placed it next to the Disney World picture. His mom paused to study it.

“You know, I've been thinking . . . ,” she said, “you can be part of a football
team
without actually having to be out there with people bashing your noggin where you've already got some sensitive equipment.”

He tilted his head at her. “What do you mean?”

“Well . . .” She adjusted the picture. “You can help out the team and be a part of it. Every team has one of these . . . well, it's a manager, a team manager. All the big-time college programs have them, a student manager, and high schools do too. Lots of sports teams have managers, and they're very important, and I think it would be a super way for you to fit in.”

She left the picture alone and stared hard at him.

Landon's mouth sagged open as he processed everything she was saying. She had actually devised a plan for him to be on a football team without
playing
football. It was diabolical. He shook his head violently and reached for his ears, ready to pull the plug again because . . . and he had to say this out loud.

“Mom, no. No way!”

Ten days later, Landon was sitting on an exam table in a hospital gown and his boxer shorts while Dr. Davis, a cochlear implant specialist, studied his medical history.

The doctor set the folder down and then took Landon's head in his hands, squeezing like it was a melon in the grocery store. As his long, cool fingers searched around Landon's implants, circling the magnetic discs, he asked how Landon communicated.

Landon watched his mom clear her throat and explain. “His SIR . . . uh, Speech Intelligibility Rating—”

“Of course,” said the doctor.

“He's a seven point two,” his mom boasted. And Landon was proud of that score. He'd been going to speech therapy every week for years, and as a result, people nearly always understood what he was saying.

The doctor's pale green eyes stared at Landon's face. “What did you have for breakfast, Landon?”

“Uh, eggs and bacon. I had some cinnamon toast too. And juice.” Landon knew from a lifetime of wrinkled brows or snickering grins that his speech didn't sound like most people's. “Garbled” was how it was mostly described—off base, not normal.

The doctor pressed his lips, looked at Landon's mom, and then turned back to him and said, “You've worked hard on your speech therapy, haven't you?”

Landon blushed and nodded. He couldn't help feeling proud, because here was a man who knew his business when it came to the way deaf people spoke.

“Yes, your impediment wouldn't keep anyone who's paying attention from understanding you.” Dr. Davis looked back at his mom. “How does he understand others?”

“He gets a good deal from sounds, and he's good at lipreading, but he does best with a combination of sounds and lipreading, unless you shout.”

The doctor asked, “No sign language at all?”

Landon's mom's back stiffened. “We made a conscious decision to concentrate on auditory focus and lipreading.”

“Also, coaches don't know sign language,” Landon blurted. “So it's good to be able to read lips.”

“Sports?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “What do you play?”

“Football.” Landon glowed with pride. “That's why I'm here.”

“Okay, on your feet.” The doctor took out a stethoscope
and began to look Landon all over, from head to toe.

Landon stood there in his boxers, his feet cold against the tile floor. A slight trickle of sweat escaped his armpits.

“But football . . . with the implants, how safe can that be?” Landon's mom seemed to sense the tide going against her.

“Most of that concussion business has to do with the pros, maybe college. And riding a bike can be more dangerous than junior league football. Breathe deep.” The doctor speckled Landon's back with the chilly disc, listening to his lungs before he snapped the stethoscope off his neck, folded it, and tucked it away in his long white coat. “And this boy is healthy as an ox.”

The doctor put a hand on Landon's shoulder. “He'll need a special helmet, of course, for the ear gear. And you need the skullcap under it.”

Landon was ready for that one. He took his iPad off the chair where he'd set his clothes and showed the doctor what he planned to get.

“Yes! That's the best one.”

“His . . . the implants?” Landon's mother worked her lips, maybe rehearsing arguments in her mind.

The doctor was a tall man with thick glasses, and authority had been chiseled on his granite face. “There's a risk to any sport, but with the helmets they make today . . .”

The doctor shook his head in amazement at modern technology as he scribbled some notes on Landon's chart. “Clean bill of health and ready to go. Just get that helmet before tackling.”

“But . . . ,” his mom got ready to protest. “Wouldn't something like soccer be safer?”

The doctor snorted. “Soccer? Mrs. Dorch, look at your son. He's built for football, not soccer. Anyway I'd have my kid in football with all that padding and a helmet any day before I'd have him running around full speed knocking heads or having a ball kicked in his face. Like I said, nothing is without risk, though.”

“It's just that you hear so much about football . . .” Landon's mom was losing steam.

The doctor ignored her, stepped back, and surveyed Landon. “One thing's for sure: he could use the exercise.”

Landon looked down at his gut and blushed. He was working on it, cutting back on the SmartChips, no matter how healthy they were, and on the second and third servings at meals despite his mother's urgings to eat more.

“Good luck in football, Landon. And remember that helmet!”

That night Landon waited until dinner had been cleaned up and his mom was locked in her home office, busily working away on her laptop, before he tiptoed past the doorway two down from his bedroom and sought out his dad. His father didn't need to lock himself away to do his work. His desk sat downstairs not far from Landon's chair, in the middle of the living room in front of the big window overlooking the backyard. His father kept the surface of the massive claw-foot desk clear except for the iMac he wrote on as well as two leather books held proudly upright by marble busts of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Landon's father declared that he liked to be in the center
of their home because it let him draw from the lifeblood of their lives for his own work. Landon wasn't exactly sure what lifeblood was, but he presumed it had something to do with the heart. He wondered also at the strategy since it hadn't earned his father anything for the first two books but a box full of rejection letters that he saved as a source of motivation.

He passed Genevieve's room. Ten days in and Genevieve already had friends like Megan Nickell. With a father who was president of the country club and a mother who was a partner at Latham & Watkins, SmartChips's law firm, Megan easily won the approval of Landon's mom. Genevieve was with Megan right now for a sleepover. The house was quiet. He could feel the cool air flowing through the vents—the weather outside had taken a hot turn. Landon's father sat slumped in front of his iMac, fingers on the keyboard, but idle.

“Dad?” Landon tapped him on shoulder to get his attention.

His dad turned and smiled like someone had sprung the lid on a treasure chest. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing? Finish your book?”

“No, but I wanted to talk to you.”

“You got it. Want some ice cream?”

“Häagen-Dazs?”

His father wore a look of mock concern. “Is there another kind?”

Landon laughed and followed his dad into the kitchen area, which was separated from the living room only by the rectangular table where they ate. His father yanked open the freezer door and studied the shelves. “Hmm. When you don't know
which one, choose both.”

He removed a quart of butter pecan as well as one of vanilla, tucked them under his arm, and then grabbed two large spoons from the drawer. “I'd say let's sit out by the pool, but this stuff would be nothing but drool in five minutes flat.”

They sat at the kitchen table, scooping out large hunks of ice cream and passing the quart containers back and forth in an easy rhythm until Landon held up both hands.

“Gotta go easy,” he said. “Football.”

“Ah, yes. The discipline of the Spartan.” His father held up a giant scoop of butter pecan and inserted it into his mouth.

“What's that mean?” Landon asked.

“Well . . .” His father worked the ice cream around in his mouth and swallowed. “Discipline is you sacrificing—giving up something—for a greater cause. The Spartans were Greek warriors known for their harsh training. They were even crazy enough, I believe, to forgo butter pecan.”

“I know Spartans.”

“And now you've become one.” His father bowed his head toward Landon.

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about.” Landon glanced toward the hall, nervous that his mother might interrupt them. “Everything is going good. I passed my physical. The doctor said I could play. My implants are fine. Heck, he even told Mom playing football would be
good
for me.” Landon patted his gut.

“Wonderful.” His father took another big bite.

“But I need that helmet, and the special cap that goes under it,” Landon said. “Football starts next Wednesday. The first
five days it's just conditioning and running through plays, but helmets go on next week, and then the week after that we start to hit. But I need the helmet before so I can get used to it.”

His father's eyes widened.

“I told Mom we gotta get my helmet and she keeps saying she'll work on it and how expensive it is, but next Wednesday will be here before you know it, and you can't just snap your fingers and have a helmet fall out of the sky. It's like she's trying to sabotage the whole thing by delaying, making it so I won't have enough practices to play in the first game and then I
will
end up as the manager.”

His father put the spoon down and looked at it. “Yes, that's a problem, and I've seen this kind of strategy before. I wanted to see
Carmina Burana
. It was playing at the Cleveland Opera Theater, and your mom said she'd be happy to go and that she'd get the tickets through her office because they were sponsors. Well, I thought that sounded good because we could be in the pit or maybe even a box. Then the day before, when I asked, she snapped her fingers and said she was on it, but that night at dinner she announced that it had been sold out.” Landon's father blinked at him. “Your mother hates the opera.”

“Just like football.” Landon looked down and rapped his knuckles on the table before looking back up. “Can you help me, Dad?”