Little Did I Know: A Novel (50 page)

I heard a door close in the back of the red house, then footsteps approaching. My heart skipped a beat. Then another. Into view walked Secunda. He was dressed down this early morning. T-shirt and sweats. He also wore a big bruise above his left eye. He walked right past me into the dining room without saying a word. Minutes later, he returned with two cups of coffee. One was black, the other the way I liked it. He sat with me at the table. It was five minutes to six.

We said nothing, and it was painful. The silence, the tension, and what seemed like minutes passing were mere seconds on each check of my watch. We continued on. The sun ticked higher, birdsong greeted the morning. In the distance you could hear the waves lapping the shore. It was now twelve minutes after six.

I heard more footsteps from behind the house, and this time my heart stopped. No one appeared, however, and I figured it was one of the girls returning to her room, strolling down the walk of shame.

It approached 6:30. No ride had come for Zach. I wanted to move, to finally speak with Secunda but was afraid. At 6:42 he got up from the table. “I’ll be right back,” he said and headed toward the red house and the room where Zach Rush slept. In a few minutes he was back.

He sat across from me. “Zach is in his room. He didn’t leave. I woke him. He is not going anywhere.”

“Why didn’t he say something?”

“He said you told him you would see him at rehearsal and it was understood. He told me he thought you would know that.”

“Fuck me.”

“Okay,” said Secunda. There was no rush in this stilted conversation, only relief. “I didn’t give him any money.”

“I know that.”

“How?”

“Because I have faith. And I believe in you.”

Secunda looked at me, surprised. I was quiet. “Okay. That’s a good thing.”

I drank some coffee. He did the same.

“Hey, Josh,” I said, “how about I buy you breakfast?”

“Only if it’s expensive.”

“That’s just fine. You just can’t eat a lot.”

We headed into town to share some eggs Benedict, caviar, and toast bathed in high-end English marmalade. As we drove down Rocky Hill Road, it was good to note that I was breathing again.

T
he final year of my high school football career featured the most exciting game ever played in the fifteen-year history of our school. It came at midseason. We were 5–0 and our opponent was a perennial powerhouse we had never beaten. They stood at 6–0 and were ranked number one in the county. We were ranked a close second.

Considering it was the East Coast and not Texas or Oklahoma, the game was a huge deal. The papers hyped it up all week, as did the local radio. The crowd was practically a sell-out, with nearly five thousand fans in attendance. The game began in inclement football weather; it was a raw, late October afternoon. Whenever the sun tried to make an appearance it was parried, engulfed by dark, ominous clouds that turned into a biting, cold rain before the first half ended. Nevertheless, every play was hard fought, and the crowd—made up of classmates, foes, parents, girlfriends, the local media, forty or so college scouts—was involved big time on every play.

The first time we got the ball, we went three and out and had to punt. I performed the long snaps and had hiked the ball to the punter flawlessly the past three years. This time I failed. The ball soared over the head of our kicker, Billy Kensington, and was recovered in the end zone by our opponents. The game was less than ninety seconds old and we were losing by seven. I was devastated and certain I’d seen some of the college scouts leaving the stands. “Fuck me,” I said.

Sports, like life, offers you grace, redemption, and a second chance. On the next series, I intercepted a pass in the flat and ran fifty-three yards for a touchdown. The game was tied at seven.

It stayed that way deep into the third quarter. The rain was coming down heavy now, in slants. As players, we eschewed the elements and just beat each other into the ground time and again, getting up slowly from the freezing turf. With just over fifteen minutes left in the contest, we had to punt again from the shadow of our own goal line, and my heart beat loud and long as I prepared for the long snap. The quarterback called the signals and I hiked it to the punter.

“Motherfucker!” I did it again! Never in three years, and now twice in the same game. More scouts left the stadium, and my teammates were probably wondering if someone had paid me off. Our opponent recovered the ball on the two-yard line, just six feet from our end zone and a potentially humiliating defeat.

Our defense huddled in stunned disbelief. I went insane and shouted at them as if I had lost my mind. “I suck. I am shit. I suck. Sorry. Sorry! Sorry! Fuck me! I really suck! We have to stop them. We have to stop them.”

And then we did. We actually did!

We stuffed three runs in a row and I made one of the tackles. Then, on fourth down, Pete Laird sacked their quarterback for a nine-yard loss. It was a classic goal-line stand. For all practical purposes, the game was over. True, there were minutes on the clock and the score was still tied, but we knew we had won.

We blew past them after that. The final score was 28–7. For the record, I never screwed up another long snap again, ever.

W
hen Zach Rush had done the right thing and decided to stay, it was in essence our goal-line stand. I knew without a single doubt that we were home, that we had won and nothing was going to dare get in our way. The finish line was just steps away and crossing it would lead us all on to one last celebration. I believed that party would be more profound than raucous.

The remaining days were filled with melancholy, laughter, hugs, and tears. The company played all day and gathered each night in the theater or in the wings. They’d grab a small piece of the house, a spare chair in the orchestra pit, or an open step in the balcony and watch
The Fantasticks
. The little heart-rending show with its simple but ever-so-profound message talked to us every night.

Following the performance, we’d linger on the deck and watch the crowd walk to their cars. Many of us would stay until the taillights of the last customers’ cars disappeared into the night. The air had turned chilly and seemed to make us all vulnerable. No one wanted to let go; we needed to hold on to this as if it was all a first love affair. So in pairs or en masse we all stayed up late and held our lovers close, or looked deep into the eyes, the hearts, and the souls of the friends we had made these past hundred days. Many nights we’d stay up until dawn and then walk to the beach to watch the sun come up, knowing it was one less day we had left in heaven.

One night, as Veronica and I watched the cars drive off into the night, we had our arms around one another and I felt I could stay in that place, in that moment, until the day I died.

“Sam, we’ve made it through the summer. I’m happy again and you made it happen.”

“No, sweetheart,
we
made it happen. You are my go-to girl. Trust and courage and your sensational body all played a part in our lives here.”

“You look rather fine naked as well.”

“Who said you looked good naked? I was just pointing out that you have a rather alluring figure is all. Doesn’t do a thing for me.”

“Shut up, you big goof.”

She said no more, but I could tell her brain was working overtime. And I knew there was something important on the way.

“There’s only one part of the story that I still think you should know,” she said. “But you never asked.”

“Well, then I’m asking now.”

“After I left Barrows’s hotel, I couldn’t go home. I checked into the Parker House Hotel. After all, I was rich with his money. I stayed there for two days. I never left the room. I watched TV and ordered up. I drank too much. Then I called my brother Eddie and told him what had happened.”

As she talked, Johnny Dawst and his family approached us. Johnny owned the local pizza place where we had often gone for late-night snacks. He asked me to sign his program and if he and the family could get a picture. I signed and then we posed. Veronica pressed the flash and I was part of the Dawst family forever.

Veronica jumped back in as they walked away. “I took the bus home. Then I went to meet Eddie at the Moondog. He was there with friends, all the faces I had grown up with, and he called me over to the bar. He hugged me and told me he was sorry, that he’d do something about it and that I wasn’t alone.”

Veronica walked over to the concession stand and brought back one of those airport bottles of brandy. Was it the story, or the lateness of the season and the hour that made it cold? The brandy helped.

Veronica continued. “I thought that was it. Eddie and I just stood there. We drank too much for sure, but we just stood there with Eddie hugging me for comfort. Then Lizzy came in. She was with a couple of girlfriends and she had been drinking. She saw us at the bar but didn’t come over. Eddie called her, but she and her friends went to the other end of the bar. Eddie was upset, so he and I walked over to Lizzy. He asked her what was going on and she didn’t even turn around. Then in an instant Eddie and I both saw what she was wearing on her hand. I was sick to my stomach. Eddie grabbed her and spun her around. ‘Why are you wearing that ring?’ he asked her. He was in her face and shouting. The Moondog got quiet and everyone in the place looked at Eddie.”

ASK and Janet called from across the compound and said they were heading to the Full Sail—Doobie was buying—and we should meet them there. I shouted some incomprehensible acquiescence and waited for Veronica to continue. She untangled from me and leaned across the railing of the deck.

“Lizzy looked at him for a really long time and seemed to spit her answer in his face. ‘I got married, because when your sister walked out on him, the old man called me to say the faucet was off. No more fancy lifestyle, just more endless, nowhere, blue-collar bullshit. But unlike Veronica the nun,
I took the deal
. I got married this morning to Anderson Barrows. I’m
rich
now and that’s what I want. You can’t give that to me, Eddie. You can’t give that to me.’

“Then she turned her back to my brother. The whole bar was eyeing him. It was so sad. I grabbed Lizzy by the shoulder and made her look at me, asked her how she could do that to Eddie, how she could do that to herself. Lizzy glared at me and waved her wedding ring in my face. ‘This is why,’ she said. For a million reasons that will take my lifetime to list I slapped her, then grabbed her hair and pulled her to the ground.”

Veronica was looking directly into the night. It had gotten late, and the compound was empty now. Her eyes welled with tears, but didn’t roll down her face.

“Some stranger at the bar pulled me off of her and threw me away. Eddie hit the guy several times in the face and then smashed a bar stool against his head. He pulled Lizzy off the floor and slapped her so many times you couldn’t count. He looked like he was going to hit her, but even in his rage Eddie couldn’t do such a thing. He just began screaming at her. The guy he had hit was laid out on the floor and didn’t move. The bartender, Joey, leapt across the counter and tackled Eddie, and some of the others held him down. Joey screamed at Lizzy to get out of the place. The craziness stopped, and Eddie started to cry. Forever . . . He cried forever.

“The police came and arrested my brother. Then the EMS arrived and took the guy to the hospital. He was okay, but bruised and had a concussion. He didn’t even press charges, but the new Mrs. Barrows did, with lies about Eddie’s intent and made-up allusions to his abusive past. She perjured herself in court, and Barrows pulled the puppet strings he had threatened when I left him alone in Boston. That’s when Eddie went to jail.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and sighed. I took her hand in mine. “I love you, Veronica.” She turned to me slowly, put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest. About a minute later she said, “I love you back.”

L
ater that night, with dawn just around the bend, I threw on some shorts and a sweatshirt. I walked to the office, sat at my desk and turned on the small lamp. I noticed it was the only light on in the entire compound and it seemed to work a bit hard to light the room. I found some blank paper and wrote the following:

Dear Mrs. Barrows:

Until tonight, I thought I knew everything I needed to know. It is remarkable how wrong I was. Arrogance, I suppose. Not that I have any answers, no secrets or revelations from me. Yet I do believe that wounds run deep as rivers and that they don’t heal without help, a salve of kindness.

So much sadness. So many lost years. And more on the way unless you take the first step. You must lead the way, leave selfish pride to wither and die, replace it with action and truth. Truth stands the test of time. Lies corrode the foundation that we all need to live a decent life. Honesty endures. Help everyone in this maelstrom of pettiness and sorrow find a way home. End this cycle of sadness.

Lizzy, recant. Pull some strings. Make your influence lead to second chances for us all. Think of Eddie. Do the right thing. It is the only part of us we are really able to control.