The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(78)

I smiled. I’d thought about it, ever since the night of our senior prom, but I also didn’t want to screw up our friendship, especially with Mickie leaving in the fall. If we both went to UC Davis, things might be different, and maybe I’d have the chance to be Mickie’s boyfriend. But if I chose to go elsewhere, I didn’t want to try to get through college and think about the boys she was dating.

“You’re going to be a great dad someday, Sam.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Don’t know that you’ll be great?”

“Don’t know about being a dad,” I said.

“Why not? You had a great role model, and you have so much love to share.”

“Maybe. Maybe someday I’ll adopt.”

Mickie stepped back, squinting at me. “Why would you say that?”

“You know why. I’d be worried my children would be like me, you know. Have my eyes.”

“They should be so lucky,” she said.

“Lucky?”

“Yes. They made you the person you are, and I happen to believe you’re a very good person, Sam Hill. And I know Joanna feels the same.”

Then Mickie pushed away from the jamb and gave me a warm hug that felt as sweet as Joanna’s and made me think that maybe I could be a dad someday, and Mickie a mother. Maybe they’d be our kids.





14

By the time I arrived at home, my parents had long since gone up to bed. My mother had left the kitchen light on for me, as was her habit. I heard the television in their room filtering down the darkened stairs, opened the fridge, and poured myself a glass of milk. As I did, I saw a white envelope on the tile counter addressed to me. The return address was in red ink.

OFFICE OF UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Twenty-four hours earlier, I would have torn that envelope open like a presenter at the Academy Awards, but now I just held it, thinking the envelope was too thin to contain an admissions packet, and I was in no mood to be rejected once again. That envelope reminded me of the bright, sunny morning when my mother and I walked to the mailbox on our street and found the envelope from OLM. She’d been so excited, but I recall even then that I’d held back my enthusiasm. Maybe it was just a young kid fearful of attending school, or maybe I was thinking of the cruelty and the mistreatment of which my father had spoken. Whatever the reason, I’d had my doubts. I held the Stanford envelope up to the light but could not see through it. Finally, I turned off the kitchen light and carried the envelope upstairs with me.

“Sam?” my mother called out to me when I reached the top step. I could have taken off my shoes and crept up those stairs quiet as a burglar—I knew the location of every squeak in every board, and where to step to avoid it, yet my mother would still call out the moment my foot touched the landing.

I walked into their bedroom. The blue-gray glow of the television cast shadows across their bedspread and flickered on the wall behind it. My father lay propped on two pillows, watching a show. He had been feeling under the weather, more tired than normal, and had been going to bed early. My mother was sitting up, rosary beads in hand.

“You got an envelope from Stanford,” she said with practiced calm.

I held it up.

My father turned his head. “What did it say?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

My father pushed himself to a seated position and clicked on the lamp mounted to the wall on his side of the bed. The light accentuated his gaunt features and the dark circles beneath his eyes. “You know, son, it’s not the school that makes the student.”

I didn’t want to hear it, but I refrained from saying anything.

“Open it, Sam,” my mother said. “Whatever it says, it’s God’s will.”

And I really didn’t want to hear that.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

THIS IS TO ADVISE THAT YOUR APPLICATION HAS BEEN ACCEPTED.

I shrugged. It was like the buildup to a movie climax, then being let down. “They got my application. I guess they don’t decide on the non-football players for a while.”

I left the letter on the bed and headed for my room. I got as far as the doorway when my mother started yelling my name. “Sam! Sam!”

I rushed back in. “What is it?”

My mother sat crying. “You got in, Sam.”

“I what?”

“It says your application has been accepted. Accepted! Sam, you got in.”





15

The morning of my graduation, my elation at having been accepted to Stanford and the realization that I would be rooming with Ernie had not subsided. I’d been walking on air ever since that night. The news had even tempered my disappointment at having been passed over for valedictorian. My mother, of course, was convinced that it was all a part of God’s will for me, that it was all part of the extraordinary life God intended me to live.

I stood at my dresser futilely trying to use the mirror to knot a tie when my mother’s high heels clicked outside my bedroom door. My father wore a Windsor knot as tight and perfect as any tied by the king of England himself. My attempts had produced a lump that looked to be strangling me and had caused the collars of my shirt to stick up like airplane wings.