“You already had something to say about it, Coach,” I say. “The Athletic Council already voted. It was unanimous.”
“It was unanimous because no one knew what you were up to,” he says. “It can be brought back for a vote.”
The trick to being a good smartass is knowing when to call it good, and I figure now is about right for me to take my leave. It always feels better to let the other guy get mad-a sensation I don’t get to have too often. “So, am I out of here, then? No assault rumors against Barbour, no subversive articles about the football team on steroids?”
Morgan says, “Yeah, Mr. Jones, you’re out of here.”
I’m in Simet’s room before Morgan’s door slams. “Benson wants another Athletic Council vote on our letters,” I say. Man, the last thing I want is for my guys to miss out on their jackets. Points and wins have been scarce and nonexistent in that order. The jacket remains the prize.
“Don’t worry about it,” Simet says. “When this whole thing started, I was a little skeptical about your plan to get Our Gang into letter jackets. But there isn’t another group of jocks in this school that works as hard as we do. The wrestling team would come closest, but even they have some slackers. Our guys put out every minute of every workout. I’ve never coached a team like this before. There isn’t a kid out there who doesn’t deserve a letter.”
“Yeah, but Benson is going to argue that we pulled the wool over the council’s eyes. He’s pissed, Coach.”
“Then I’ll be pissed, too. It’s all relative, like anything else. If we keep this team together after you’re gone, the requirements will get stiffer, plus this ‘better on every swim’ thing is finite. This was a good call.” He gets a firm grip on my shoulder. “And by the way, anything you hear in this room stays in this room, right?”
“Hey, I’ve signed a confidentiality oath,” I tell him. “’Course, I might have to charge you.”
When I get home from school, we have a new houseguest, and Heidi is beside herself with glee. My mother and Georgia and the caseworker have put their heads together and decided it’s best to put Alicia in foster care along with Heidi. That way she can’t make decisions that will put Heidi in danger and Heidi doesn’t have to lose her. Of course, that also means we have her twins. Alicia has sworn she won’t tell Rich she’s here, and she knows if she does anything to put the kids in his care, she goes and the kids stay.
Dad tells me we are going to implement the Marshall Plan, which, if you know your American history, is a pretty good pun. Our Marshall Plan is simple. If you see Rich, or if he calls the house, dial 911. There is a restraining order on him for Alicia and the kids, as well as for us. “If I know Rich Marshall,” he says, “he’ll know where everyone is by this time tomorrow night. Whether he comes around depends on how much jail time he wants to log.”
It’s a pretty wild evening, with Heidi so glad to see her mother and all three kids fighting for Alicia’s time while her fuse smolders and she tries not to blow up at them in front of my parents. Mom seems to understand she’s on a short leash and helps with Heidi, while Dad distracts the boys, who I call Thing One and Thing Two. This is probably the first time Heidi’s been in a house with her mother and brothers where she’s been afforded equal footing, and she’s taking full advantage. By the time the kids are in bed, Alicia looks exhausted, and she steps out onto the front porch for a cigarette. I see her standing there, back to the door, a curl of smoke winding its way lazily toward the porch light. I pull on my coat and step out, dusting the skiff of snow off the porch swing to sit.
“Hey.”
She doesn’t turn. “Hey.”
“Guess we’re going to be family here for a while.”
“I guess.” She sounds cold, protected. “You okay with it?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She still doesn’t turn around. “You know, Rich and all. Heidi.”
I say, “Heidi and I are tight.”
“I know, T. J. That’s my point.” She sounds irritated.
“Could I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“What keeps you with a guy like Rich?”
She is quiet.
“I mean, you don’t love him, right?”
“What do you know about love? You’re a kid.”
“Yeah, Alicia. I’m maybe five or six years younger than you.”
She takes a drag on the cigarette and finally turns to face me. In many ways, she’s a lot more than five or six years older than me. She says, “You must hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I just don’t get it about Rich, and about Heidi.”
“I don’t either, T. J. I know what they say in my therapy groups, and what my counselor says. They say I feel worthless, and I have to prove the things to him that I could never prove to my dad. They say I have an overwhelming need for approval, and all he has to do to keep me around is not approve. They say I tell myself he cares about me because he wouldn’t get that mad at someone he doesn’t care about. They say the only way I think I can get power is to let him hurt me so he’ll come crawling back, begging me not to leave.” Alicia flicks the cigarette out into the snow.
I ask how much of that is true.
“All of it. But knowing it and doing something about it are two different things. I’m hoping living here will make the difference. I want to quiet my insides, get back to some feeling I can tolerate.” She sighs. “I guess some girls don’t feel complete unless they have two assholes.”
I watch her; listen. Under those hard times on her face, she’s a really pretty woman, and she has to be smart or she couldn’t have laid all that out for me. That makes it harder to understand.
“I just can’t be with anybody, that’s all.” She pauses, shaking her head slowly. “It was different with Willis, Heidi’s dad.” She chokes a second, remembering. “I mean, he was good to me but he could keep me interested.” She pauses again. “But then he was gone and I came back to Rich, and except for the fact that Rich won’t let me forget that I slept with a ni-Willis, it’s like he never existed, like maybe I dreamed it.”
“There’s Heidi.”
She looks me in the eye. “Things are going to get bad around here, T. J. I told your parents that. Rich will find me whether I let him know where I am or not; he always does. And you need to know he really hates you. He’s accused me of fucking you. He’s accused you of trying to take Heidi away from him. He hates that I’ve been with a black man, and his worst fear is that I want to be with another one. That’s the one thing he’ll never forgive me for. You want to watch out for him. You see only the very tip of what’s going on with him.”
I tell her thanks for the warning.
“Well, let me give you one more. I’m going to try to make it work here, I really am. I feel strong right now, but I know how I am. When the stars line up right, I’ll lie and protect him and deny this conversation ever took place.”
Man, this shit makes absolutely no sense, but all I have to do to believe her is look in her eyes. “That must drive you crazy.”
She looks at me like “No shit.”
We talk a little about Kristen Sweetwater, and she says about what my parents said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You can be a pretty little cheerleader who looks like she owns the world, or you can be that funky little guy on your swim team that Mike hates so much, or you can be me. Deal is, if you’ve been treated bad, you’re going to have to find a way to get over it.”