They were doing drills. A pair of boys were released from the center, one dribbling toward the net, the other flapping away in front of him, guarding him. Then, when the dribbler approached striking distance of the basket, another boy came shooting out from the side to take the pass.
Gary Boyd coached the team, the thirds. His Fayer sweatpants were barely held up by a brown necktie and billowed out at the knees, even when he was standing straight. Vida doubted they’d ever been washed. Gary lived alone in an apartment above the post office in Fayer. In the nine years they’d worked together, they’d never spoken more than a few sentences at a time, and always about a mutual student, but when word of her engagement leaked out, he’d given her a forlorn congratulations one night in the parking lot, holding her hand a few seconds too long, as if there’d been an understanding between them she hadn’t quite understood.
When he noticed Vida in the bleachers, he slapped his hands together a few times and called out, “This should be easy, offense. If you’re not making the points, there’s something wrong with you.” This encouragement made the next two groups miss their shots.
Peter stood in the line at the side. She knew from the way he’d shifted his torso away from the bleachers that he’d seen her. He had a large dark bruise on his upper arm. Had he been in a fight? He was doing what all the other boys were doing, letting out a hoarse grunt when a basket was made, then slapping the guy on the back as he sauntered past. Vida enjoyed seeing him like this, in a group, barely distinguishable from the nine others in dress or gesture. Here, he was just a boy, not her hefty personal responsibility. He was looking to someone else to tell him what to do and how to do it. He did not need her. He sprinted out now for the pass. He caught the ball badly, then took a shot. It fell far short of the rim. She was only making things worse by being here. She stood, then sat again. It wasn’t even four o’clock. Where was she going to go? She couldn’t be alone in her office one more minute today. She missed Carol. She tried to remember where she’d put all her notes for that letter. How was it possible she still hadn’t sent it? Tonight she would find the papers, pull it all together. By now Carol would know about her meeting with Brick. What a good laugh they could have had about it this afternoon. God is in my underpants. She knew Carol would be hooting at that one.
Gary blew the whistle and hollered out another drill formation. He glanced up at the clock on the scoreboard in the corner, and his face sank a bit. Fifty more minutes till cocktail hour, she felt like yelling out to him. He liked his martinis, she knew that. Every teacher on this campus was going to be able to sit down to a good healthy drink this evening. Every one of them — except her and Davis Clay. An unfamiliar tingle crept up her arms and settled in her chest. She breathed deeply, and paid closer attention to the scene below.
The boys now stood in three lines at one end. Every ten seconds or so, Gary blew his whistle and a set of three was released. The boy in the middle passed the ball to the boy on the left, then ran behind him and took his place. Now the one with the ball was in the middle and he passed to the right, then ran behind that boy. Like this they weaved quickly and fluidly down the court. She didn’t watch Peter when it was his turn. She didn’t have to watch him to know he was the weak link, that a pass to him had to be exact, and a pass from him would be unpredictable. She saw how the two other boys, younger boys, compensated without annoyance, and felt grateful to them. She’d hoped with her being there he’d try harder, which he did, but trying harder didn’t translate to playing better. Again she felt the impulse to leave and half stood, then worried that her departure would be interpreted as disgust, and sat. She’d slip out once he made a basket. But even though Peter had three turns to make an unopposed layup, he missed each time. Then Gary called them over, tossed half of them red pinnies, and they all took their places for the jump. Vida was surprised to see Peter on the court and not on the bench. Before he threw up the ball between the two tallest boys, Greg flashed an eye at Vida and she realized he’d put Peter in solely for her benefit.
She could endure it no further. Finally she gave her legs the unambiguous signal to stand and they carried her off the bleachers, back along the narrow sidelines, and down the fire stairwell to the parking lot, where she sat in her car with her tingling chest for the remaining twenty minutes.
But removing herself from the scene, putting a windowless wall of concrete between her and Peter, didn’t prevent her from seeing him. His feet were fast; he had no trouble getting free of an opponent. He would be darting in and out of the key, always open, gently calling to the teammate with the ball, “With you, with you,” his eager arms out and ready, always ready. His hair would have fallen over his eyes but he wouldn’t brush it away, wanting to keep his arms out for the pass. His mouth would have that desperate, beseeching shape to it as it became clear to him that his teammate was stalling, dribbling in place, until someone more reliable broke free.
He was the very last boy to emerge from the locker room. He walked out well behind Jason and a few others. And it was only at that moment, when she did not feel the urge to tell those boys to include him, that she realized how angry she was that he was in cahoots with Tom.
Without a word, he opened the door, kicked down his knapsack to make room for his feet, and breathed flatulently through his nose. She did not, as she had done every day since he started pre-kindergarten, ask him about his day. She did not offer him a greeting at all; she simply turned left out of the school driveway and headed fearlessly toward the great test of her character they had plotted together.
Like any decent protagonist, she would pass it. But that, she told herself, did not in any way mean they would have won or gotten the better of her.
By the time they reached Larch Street, their silence was no longer tentative but an established fact. As they approached the house, Vida saw that Tom’s car wasn’t in the driveway yet, which meant hers would be blocked in when he came home. Like the carpet cleaners, like gloomy Mrs. May, she parked alongside the curb. She could feel Peter wanting an explanation but she didn’t give it. They walked up the driveway single file.
From the smell of the house Vida knew that Fran and Caleb had snacked on raisin toast and Stuart had a girl in his room. She heard the window in his bedroom shudder shut; now the girl would be creeping off behind the house. Seemingly oblivious, Peter headed down the hall to his room, which would be thick with sex and incense.
She whistled for Walt. When he didn’t appear, she called, “Here, baby.” She thought she could hear his front paws scraping the floor of the kitchen, trying to get up, but the kitchen was empty. So was the backyard. She checked under the table and in the pantry. Her new bottle of bourbon, still three-quarters full, was there. Walt was not. Stuart had probably taken him into his room as some sort of seduction accessory, but she headed to her bedroom first. It was an unlikely place to find him. The room was dark, and it took her many seconds of stroking the wall to find the light switch. He was lying right in the spot where he had usually lain in their old house: beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up. Perhaps he’d been waiting there all day. Such a long awful day. She thought of the bourbon on the shelf. Just as she was about to call to him, she saw that his head was at an odd angle against his right paw. For a moment she thought it was another dog, some sort of prank of Stuart’s, some misunderstanding, some confusion in the universe. She crouched beside him and swung his head, his beautiful head, on her knees.