The Off Season (21 page)

She laughed. "Only with chili."

After we got our food, she sat with me at a table with an L3. I was really glad that he was lumbar and not cervical because if I'd had to watch him struggle away with one of those spoon tools, I would have lost it for real. He and Maryann didn't talk to me too much—I guess they could tell I was on the far side of fragile—they just chatted about PT and wheelchairs, this new model he was thinking of getting, while I worked through my vegetarian chili and tried my hardest not to cry.

Bill and I would sit with Win, hours passing without us saying a word, or Bill would spell me. I took mornings and nights, and he was there in the middle of the day because he's stronger and could help more with the transferring. So I'd have long, long stretches pretty much alone, with so many thoughts inside my head that I worried sometimes my skull would just explode right off my neck, like a balloon pumped with too much air. Especially when I thought about Brian.

I couldn't believe that Brian and I were ... I didn't know what we were, actually. It was more than a breakup, because our friendship was over as well. Our so-called friendship. I didn't want to be friends with him, not for a long while anyway. Because even if he promised he'd change, and promised to defend me to all his friends or take me to the movies or whatever, I wouldn't trust him. Because being embarrassed about someone isn't something you can change, any more than you can change being spooked about needles. Only it was a lot harder to be sympathetic about Brian than it was Dad.

I guess you could say my feelings were hurt.

And Brian didn't call again. I don't know if that makes him brave or wimpy—I still haven't figured that one out—but I was glad. Well, actually I was horribly miserable and spent hours on end wishing I could talk to him. But it was better that he didn't call. No matter what my brain was wishing, I still needed time to figure this stuff out.

Plus now that I was stuck in Minnesota taking care of Win, my life—the life I'd just left behind in Red Bend, for who knows how long—didn't look so bad, even without Brian being part of it. If I was at home, I could be going to school and actually getting help with all my assignments instead of being stuck with a huge pile of books and head-scratching homework that Mom had asked all the teachers to send me, each of them giving me their home phone number like the one thing I wanted to do most in the world was call my Spanish teacher about all the vocabulary words I'd missed, or my world history teacher about China. Every night I'd bring a pile of books and papers to the hospital and sit there straining my brain over math or whatever, sometimes with Win facing me if he'd been rolled on his side, a pillow between his knees to prevent bedsores, but he never once asked me to lob him some algebra problems just to pass the time.

If I was at home, though, maybe Curtis could help me with algebra, he's so smart, and I could cheer him up about the science fair, help him be less intimidated by the kind of kids who wouldn't know a science fair if it bit them on the butt.

If I was at home, I could be getting ready for basketball. That time I'd spent shooting baskets in our driveway, right before Curtis had ended my big forty-five minute day of rest, had been quite a wake-up call, actually. Kind of like when I decided to play football last summer only I've played b-ball my whole life. If I were on the team, scouts would see me, and maybe I'd end up with a scholarship and that college degree everyone thinks is so important. But now, though, that was impossible. No high school, no basketball season, no scholarship, no college, no future.

And I'd think about Amber, who was in St. Paul right now working with Dale. She kept asking how she could help but she couldn't do a darn thing. Heck, she couldn't even help out with Mom's slipped disk because she'd run away from Red Bend just because her moron mother got mad at her and some kids at school said things that someone as tough as Amber should be able to handle. But no, she took the easy route and split, her so-called grown-up girlfriend not even stopping her because all
she
worried about were stupid things like jobs and diplomas, when they both could have worried for maybe two seconds about, well, about me.

Then Amber called to say they were moving to Chicago, and could they stop by to say goodbye.

T
HE THREE OF US
went for lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I'd asked Bill if he wanted to come down—hoping he wouldn't but you still have to ask. He said no. I guess seeing other people's friends would have been too depressing, not to mention the cafeteria itself.

I was pretty used to it by now seeing as I ate at least one meal a day there, even if it was only sandwiches I'd made in our little apartment, or a bowl of cereal. Dale and Amber were pretty blown away by it, though. The place was full of all sorts of wheelchair folks, from the man on the ventilator being spoon-fed by his wife, it looked like, to a couple of muscle guys in pro jerseys who looked like they'd just come off the basketball court, one of them even with a b-ball in a special bag on the back of his chair.

Amber and Dale's eyes got awfully wide, taking it in. Dale looked at me with so much honest concern that tears started prickling my head.

"So ... you in school yet?" I asked Amber.

Which got Amber going because she was even less interested in my crying than I was, which I appreciated, describing this beauty school in Chicago she hoped to get into, which led to a couple funny stories about her hair disasters, most of them on me, that got us all laughing, and got my mind for one minute off our family's problems.

"How's that man of yours?" Dale asked, grinning at me.

I shrugged. "We—I don't know—we broke up."

Amber tried to look sympathetic.

"That stinks," Dale sighed. "He seemed like a nice guy."

"Yeah, he was. He still is, I'm sure."

"Not much of a boat rocker though, is he?" And from the way Dale smiled at me, I knew she understood everything that had happened.

"Yeah, but he was pretty cute," Amber said. Which was nice, her endorsing Brian like that.

It felt so good to be having this conversation, just like when we were all sitting in Dale's camper outside McDonald's. Girl talk. Which I wouldn't be able to have ever again, now that they were taking off.

All of a sudden, these words popped out of my mouth: "Please don't go. Come back to Red Bend. I need you there."

"Well, I can't." Amber scowled down at her tray. "And you know why."

"You can't control what people say about you, you know," Dale said. Which kind of drove home that she wasn't all that unfamiliar with people's stares and nasty whispers.

Amber gathered up her tray. "But I can blow them off. Come on, we got a lot of driving to do."

I walked them out to the camper. I thought about tossing out a Bob the duck line, something like, "Hey baby, can you take me south with you?" But it would have been far too depressing, on every level I could think of. Instead I just waved goodbye to them, and almost started bawling as they drove away from everything I couldn't leave, and from the most honest and heartfelt request I've ever made of Amber. If I ever made it back to Red Bend, it would suck ten times more with them gone. Even if Amber didn't play basketball, it still would have been nice to have her around. And maybe I could have talked her into playing somehow, the team really needed her...

I know I sound pretty selfish—not just my complaining, but also that I'm not really describing Win and what he was going through, which was a heck of a lot more than I was. But you know, there wasn't much to say. He wasn't improving, he was barely talking, and he still wasn't interested in telling the doctors or Bill or me what sort of pinpricks or dizziness he could feel, or in trying to move, or in talking to the psychia-lady—only here it was a psychia-man—about his emotions, or in anything. He just lay there staring at the ceiling, or at the wall if he was rolled that way. And late at night he cried. Which I still helped him with, that one little bit I could do.

Going back up to the room, I remembered one time that Win got punished for something, probably not doing a job exactly how Dad wanted, and when Mom sat down next to him on the couch, he turned his back on her. And she said—because she's a mom and not a normal person who'd call him a jerk—she said he was trying to push her away but she wouldn't let him. And in the end, because she's a mom, he didn't.

Win was doing the same thing now, trying to push us away so he could be miserable all by himself. And I guess it worked with Mom, at least in the sense that her back went out so she couldn't hang around telling him she loved him. And guess what? It was going to work with me too. Because if Win was that unhappy, that absolutely miserable, well, I wasn't sure anyone could change him.

When I got up to our floor, a guy in a Packers jacket was in the hall talking to Bill. Which is odd because this is Minnesota—Vikings country—and a Green Bay fan walking around like that is just inviting attention. Which is why I don't wear my Vikings jersey in Red Bend except with my Vikings-fans family, and pretty much the only good thing about this hospital was that I now could wear that jersey in public.

The Packers guy, though, looked like he didn't care that most people on the floor would cheer if his team lost. He was a big guy, with a gut like old football players get, and he kept looking at Win's door and nodding as he and Bill talked.

Bill waved me over, looking happier than I'd seen him in weeks, and tossed one of his big arms around my shoulders to introduce me. "This is our sister, D.J."

The guy shook my hand and said he was an old friend of Charlie Wright's, and an offensive coordinator with the Packers.

"Oh," I said. I'd never shaken hands with a pro coach before.

"You let your brother know we're serious, okay? Charlie can't say enough about him, and us getting a go-getter like that—I know he'd be a real asset."

"What—you ... you offered him a
job?
"

"It's just an assistant's position with the conditioning team. But we'd sure like to have him." The guy handed a card to Bill. "That's my cell number on the back. We're in town for the weekend."

"But—" I said the first, stupidest thing that came to mind. "But we're Vikings fans."

Bill cracked up. The guy too. "There are worse crimes," he said. "Enjoy the game tomorrow." He grinned at us as he got on the elevator.

Bill stood there holding that card like it was a baby. "Well, shoot. What do you think of that?"

"What's Win say about it?" I asked.

"Dunno. I came back from talking to Mom and that guy was just walking out."

So the two of us scooted over to Win's room, knowing already this would make the difference.

Only it didn't.

"Get out!" Win snarled as soon as he heard us. He could barely talk, he was so angry. Tears ran down his face. "Disappear! I don't want to see you! Don't you get it?"

"That guy just offered you a job," Bill said.

"Yeah, right. A 'job' being the cripple in the wheelchair—'Oh, isn't he brave, look how good football is to him.' It's complete crap."

"It didn't sound like that to me," I put in.

"You're not the one lying here. So why don't both of you just get out of my room. And while you're at it, go home! I don't need your pity, I don't need your help, I don't need anyone." He lay there glaring at us, the collar looking almost like football gear around his neck, and for a moment I thought he was going to climb right out of that bed and start swinging, he seemed so full of anger. So full of life.

And, well, I snapped. All the garbage I'd been through, all the stress of Brian and Amber and Curtis and Dad and my shoulder and Mom's back and our lack of money, not to mention all the stress of Win, all of a sudden exploded right out of me. And that's when it happened.

G
RANDPA WARREN WAS ABOUT
the most nonreligious person I know. He wasn't one of those atheists always complaining about nativity scenes and stuff—those folks are just as pushy as some born-agains. It's more that he didn't care. He only went to church that one time, and while he might mention God in cussing, mostly the higher powers stayed out of his conversation altogether. I asked him once if he believed in heaven, and he said he was a farmer, he was happy just being dirt.

One summer he cleaned out our raggedy old toolshed, which is a huge project, getting all covered with grease and rust and cobwebs, taking a couple beers with him in the afternoons to ease the pain. Well, after a full week including Sunday he got it done, and of course we all went to see because we were curious and also it would have set him off if we hadn't, and we stood there gaping at all those perfect shelves, the tools where they should be for once, the lawn tractor with all its attachments hanging like a store display or something.

"Why, Warren, it's a miracle in here," said Mom.

Grandpa Warren snorted. "There aren't no miracles on Schwenk Farm, Linda. You know that." Then he went on to say that if God had been out there cleaning the shed, He sure had kept His presence quiet, and that next time Grandpa would appreciate a little more participation on the Lord's part, should He be so inclined.

I've thought about this story a lot these past weeks. Of course Win is named after Grandpa and all, but mainly I can't help thinking about it whenever anyone uses that word "miracle." Every time I hear it I nod, or shrug if I'm in that kind of mood, and think that I could have used more of the Lord's participation in those first weeks, and in the weeks following to tell you the truth. I'll probably end up getting hit by a thunderbolt or something, but I can't help it.

And if I don't get hit by a thunderbolt for being sacrilegious, I'll get hit for being just plain mean because that's what I was. I won't lie.

Because what happened was, I stood there glaring at Win lying there so furious, unable even to wipe his eyes and yet still looking like he could jump right up, and I blasted him.