Memorizing You (31 page)

I’d taken the first step to trying something different. I sent in my entry fee for the amateur bodybuilding contest that would be held in January. I was surprised my news was met with so much enthusiasm. I’d expected a few deriding, sarcastic remarks, but there were none. My dad and mom were proud. Connor took all the credit for the idea. Rosemary reminded everyone what a scrawny kid I used to be. Ryan just smiled.

The new football season brought a lot of changes. Two being: a new coach and assistant coach. The new coach, Mr. Henry, was an older, heavy-set man with a permanently ruddy complexion. He was balding, always looked to have a foul disposition. He wore large black glasses, dressed in gray slacks and$ I’d di. My mind shirts, and entered a room like everything was in his way. He was hardcore. His assistant was a young red-haired man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. He was built like a soccer player, had eyes just a shade darker than the freckles that covered every inch of him. They called him, Mr. Nick.

Everything changed under Mr. Henry and Mr. Nick. They liked to construct a team that looked intimidating on the field. They didn’t think Ryan was as intimidating as Connor, in spite of his record. Connor became the new captain, the lead quarterback. That happened the first week of practice.

Rosemary was the one who told me. I was happy for Connor, of course, because Ryan had predicted it all along. Had even inspired him to work toward it, which had prompted our workouts together. Connor was very gracious about it. There was no gloating. He knew who had propelled him toward it. Who was his friend. Still, I felt badly for Ryan. I knew his dad would not take that news well.

The team looked and seemed stronger, and I thought it was because of the tight bond they’d built together while working for my dad and me. They weren’t just individuals on a team. They’d became fast friends who cared for one another. One mind with a one goal rather than separate egos. That was an imposing force. And it showed on the field. They’d won the first three games in a row. Connor developed a flawless throwing arm, and ran like a thundering wall. Ryan was as great as always, but there was no getting around the fact that Connor overshadowed everyone with both his size and agility.

Even though I’d entered the contest, I found it difficult to get fired up doing my workouts alone in my basement. It just wasn’t the same without Connor’s constant prodding and the deafening music. I was merely going through the motions. I knew it was going to take more than that to get me contest-ready. I began scouring the Yellow Pages, looking for the neighborhood gyms that would be most geared to the bodybuilding mentality. I found one just on the other side of Maplewood called the American Athletic Club that boasted being owned by a three-time Mr. America champion.

It was a nice place. Large. Built in a former Firestone tire store. Two massive rooms. One with weights. One with equipment. Showers were in the back. There were no women. Most of the guys were my age. Looked more to be power-lifters than bodybuilders. Stocky, thick, tough-looking. Black and white posters of bodybuilders had been pasted along the walls for inspiration. Only one wall in the room with the weights had mirrors.

It wasn’t expensive. It was better than being alone in my basement. I joined. At least if I needed a spot, I knew one of these guys could handle it.Z:as the

I also began studying to get my driver’s permit, and when Dad and I had time, we began shopping the used car lots of the neighborhood for something affordable. Because of his background with cars, he could check them out for me, could tell which one was in good shape. I was excited about this. We had our eye on a blue AMC Hornet hatchback in a lot near the Sinclair station at the end of Manchester. Dad was enthused about teaching me to drive. Adding another driver would make it easier for our business.

We lost the next two games. Ryan was partially responsible for it with two overthrows. I was part of the collective groan from the bleachers. Rosemary covered her eyes like doing that would make the awful spectacle erase itself. His timing just seemed to be off.

I caught sight of his dad seated a few rows down from me. The look on his face would have turned Medusa to stone. But it wasn’t Ryan he was looking at. It was Connor. Those eyes watched Connor replace his son time after time on the field. You could feel the contempt come off the man like heat from an incinerator. Rosemary followed my line of vision, made a look of distaste.

“He’s Creeple Peeple,” was her assessment.

That was a vast understatement.

He turned and looked at us. Or, rather, specifically…me. If looks shot bullets, I would have been dead. I stared him down. He didn’t like that. He probably thought the weight of his glare would crumple me. He was wrong. If I wanted, I could deck his ass with one punch to his self-righteous jaw. He finally looked away.

I scoured the bleachers for Ryan’s mom. She was nowhere to be found. I didn’t blame her.

I’d made my way to the locker room when I saw the despicable man enter. I was sure he had waited to make certain I’d see him. If so, it had the desired effect. I had no intention to follow him in and cause a scene in front of his son. He was hoping I’d do something, anything to vindicate his opinion of me. I knew I could see Ryan later. It was better to just leave.

Rosemary and I went to Ted Drewes for a frozen custard to kill time.

“I can’t imagine how Ryan lives$“ aup with a dad like that,” she made the observation. “He makes it real hard to not wanna give him a foot enema!”

“Great idea. Would probably lobotomize him.”

I’d wondered about a lot of things since the beginning of the football season. Particularly the bruises that kept turning up on Ryan in places that wouldn’t have anything to do with the game. Like the grip mark of a hand on his bicep. A fist-sized shoulder bruise. The semi-black eye you couldn’t get wearing a helmet. I said nothing. But I had suspicions. Ryan would never tell. I would never inquire.

They won the last game, tying us in fourth place with DeSmet Jesuit. Ryan had sat out the entire game, surprising us all.

As the team marched off the field, we saw Ryan’s dad beeline down the bleachers and across the field toward Mr. Henry and Mr. Nick. He had the stance of a man about to commit murder…or something akin to it. His mouth twisted around curse words with every foot crash. Rage radiated off him like waves of summer asphalt heat. There was a confrontation brewing.

Dashing down from my seat, across the field and to the side door of the school, I knew I could be in the corridor to the locker room by the time the forces collided. Most of the team was in the locker room by the time Ryan’s dad caught up with the coaches. His hand caught Mr. Henry’s in an attempt to spin him around. It only succeeded in moving the shoulder. The man, himself, turned around to face the assailant. The bulldog expression was enough to throw someone off-stride. But not Ryan’s dad. Grinding teeth, hands worming back and forth into fists. The perfect portrait of defiance. Mr. Nick felt the fire and turned to face it.

“What the holy hell do you think you’re doing keeping my son sidelined on a bench? What kind of commie, liberal-ass piece of a con-job do you think you’re gonna get away with, you lousy draft-dodging piece of shit?”

I was actually horrified by what I’d heard. It was well-known that Mr. Henry had not been drafted because he had one leg perceptively shorter than the other. That Ryan’s father had construed this as part of a reason to keep him out of the game made no sense and seemed cruel beyond words.

Mr. Henry looked over his glasses at him like he was evaluating a lunatic. “You Ryan’s dad?” is killing me.”

“You knew there’d be scouts in the audience, didn’t you? You godforsaken Baptist. You didn’t want a good Catholic boy to get a chance, did you? So you throw in another goddamned Presbyterian as a quarterback this year. Just, all of a sudden, my son isn’t good enough. Just like that. You think I didn’t catch onto that? Did you think we all wouldn’t catch onto that?” he screamed, veins swelled in his neck. Spit flew everywhere.

“Do you have any idea what you sound like?” the coach asked him in a carefully modulated, excruciatingly calm tone.

“I sound like a father who’s caught onto another liberal, democrat, heathen asshole who thinks he can keep good people down by hiding them on the sidelines!”

“We didn’t keep Ryan on the sidelines.” Mr. Nick tried to say.

He was cut off with a finger poking toward his face. “Shut your putrid a-hole up, you red-headed wimp!”

By this time the noise had reached the locker room. The door opened and the players poked their heads outside to see what was going on. Curious faces turned to shocked.

“Don’t think I’m not going to the principal and acquaint them with your little plot. And if I have to, I’ll go the mayor. He’s a good Catholic. He’ll see what you’re up to. I intend to set this thing right. I assure you!”

Ryan stepped out into the hallway. He was in a towel. He had an Ace bandage wrapped around his ankle. He went white when he saw what was happening.

“Ryan sprained his ankle.” Mr. Nick pointed to him in the door. “He asked us to keep him on the bench. He could barely walk.”

Flaming eyes turned upon his son. Trailed down the leg to the bandage. His face went slack for a second. Then the jaw clenched again. This time not at the coaches, but at Ryan.

I was five yards behind them in the corridor and could still feel hell freezing over. Glowering eyes were everywhere. Ryan’s we is killing me.”

The object of everyone’s disaffection spun on his heel and marched toward me. The aim of his body imparted he intended it use it as a battering-ram through me toward the door. I stepped out of the path in the last second, just in time to feel what scotch-imbued spit felt like while spewing the word “Faggot!”

I saw the threads of Ryan’s life unraveling that night. I just didn’t know how much had come undone. How much more would fall into tangled disarray.

It was all there in his father’s face when he’d seen his son’s bandaged ankle. Determination had transmuted into something fiercer. Something…dangerous. Destructive.

I walked into that autumn chill with a sense of dread I’d never known before. Not fear of what had just transpired. But what was to come. And I knew it. I knew it was indisputable. It gnawed inside. But I kept walking, believing I could outrace it, be free of the cold pall that was dropping like winter itself.

I waited beside my bed with the window cracked the entire night. I woke to a gray morning and a cold room. He never came. He wasn’t in any of his classes either for the next three days. I worried.

*

As my dad taught me to drive, we cruised the truck past Ryan’s house twice, inconspicuously of course, just to see if there was any activity. I had hoped to see him in his garden. He wasn’t there. But his dad’s Cadillac was. The windows to his room were dark. As was my mood.

Rosemary had learned that the principal had issued orders that Ryan’s dad would only be allowed in the bleachers during next year’s games. Police officers would be there voluntarily to make certain he never approached the field or the school building, specifically the locker room, ever again. He was persona non grata. The student body began referring to him as ‘psycho dad’. I could understand why Ryan wanted a reprieve from the prying eyes of peers.

Connor joined the American Athletic Club to workout with me. We’d developed too much of a method to our workouts to be separated for long. It didn’t take him long to make us the spectacle to the panties.

I called Ryan’s house twice and hung up when his dad answered. I had Rosemary ride her bike past his house three times a day to see if she could catch sight of him. I knew he couldn’t stay away from his garden for too long a time. But she never saw him. I was having a severe case of separation anxiety.

The weather had grown markedly colder. Winter was moving in. We’d have to get the trucks ready for snow.

I was checking the tire chains in the garage when the sense of dread that had been building in me for the last few weeks got the better of me. I pulled on my winter jacket and stocking cap and began my walk to Ryan’s house. If he didn’t answer the door, I had the key. One way or another, I had to see him.

It was well after dark, the skies blue-gray threatening snow, when I arrived at his doorstep. The light in his room window was on.

I knocked. No one answered. I slid the spare key from my pocket to the lock and pushed the door open. Something didn’t feel right inside.

I was about to call out when I heard the door open upstairs where Ryan’s room was situated. King Kong footfalls boomed on the wood floors above me.

“You’ll do what I say, or I’ll park your ass in a military school where you will learn the meaning of discipline!”

It was Ryan’s dad. He was still home. I hadn’t seen his car, had assumed he was gone without checking. Diving into the living room, I took refuge behind the sofa. A blinking Christmas tree faced me. Carefully wrapped presents winked in colored lights beneath this. They bore the obvious delicate hand of Ryan’s mom.

“This is my house, and as long as you live in my to the panties.

I peered through the dining room and into the kitchen. Ryan’s mom was nowhere to be seen. I’d stumbled into an argument between Ryan and his dad.

“I never asked much from you. I let you play with your namby-pamby flowers and pretend you’re Tinkerbell with your little fairy friend, but it’s time for you to give me a little payback for everything I’ve done for you.” The feet paced. “You’ve got one last year to prove yourself. To get this thing together. To earn your chops on the field and show the world what you can do in that game. You’ve got to earn this for me…for us. This scholarship is everything. It’s why you’re here on this planet in the first place. You’re not good for any damned thing other than this game and you know it.”

I heard Ryan mumble something. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it brought a fresh rise of hostility out of his parent.

“Don’t you talk back to me, you queer little piece of shit!” A fist slammed into a door. “The only reason I tolerated your deviant behavior is because of my investment in you. I want to see a return on that investment, because I guarantee you, if I don’t get what I expect from you, don’t think you’ll get one more thing from me. I’ll throw your faggot ass out on the street to fend for yourself. And if you think I’d dig in my own pockets to put you through college for anything other than football, you’re sadly mistaken. I’d rather see you homeless in a gutter before I foot the bill to finance a future fairy florist!”