The Mothers(34)
“I mean a real one. Not that restaurant crap.”
“And what about your leg?” his mother said. “What happens when you get hit again?”
“It don’t hurt that bad.”
His mother shook her head. “Listen, I know you love football but you got to be realistic now.”
“When are you gonna take some responsibility, Luke?” his father said. “When?”
Maybe he was being irresponsible, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to be good at something again. By June, he was going to the park every day to run drills. CJ couldn’t throw a tight spiral but he learned the routes, the sharp angle of a post, the soft curl of a buttonhook. He knew where to put the ball and he joked that if Luke could catch balls thrown by him, he’d be able to grab the ones thrown by a real quarterback. CJ wasn’t as bad as he thought, which annoyed Luke; he envied CJ, even with his mediocre talent, because he had a body that worked right, that followed orders without complaint, not one that had splintered apart.
“I’m slow as shit, man,” he said, huffing.
“I mean, you fucked up your leg.” CJ plopped on the grass in his gray gym shorts from high school, which still had his name written on the thigh in marker. “It’s gonna take some time.”
“Ain’t got time,” Luke said. “Let’s go again.”
After evening workouts, he bought CJ a beer and they drank outside Hosie’s, watching girls in bikinis trail in from the beach, sand clinging to their legs.
“You still talk to your girl?” CJ asked one night.
Luke took a sip of lukewarm beer, always slow, tiny sips, wanting to make it last.
“Who?” he said.
“That high school chick you was fuckin’ with.”
“She’s not my girl,” Luke said.
“I heard she’s living in, like, Russia right now.”
“Russia?”
“Or some shit like that. She’s living in Russia and fucking with some African nigga.”
Luke sipped his beer again, swishing it around his mouth. When she’d first left, he used to obsess over the college boys Nadia was touching. He imagined them, never athletic boys like him, but preppy boys in Michigan sweaters, who scurried around campus, stacks of books clutched against their chests. Now he had a name. Shadi Waleed, some Arab-sounding motherfucker. At Fat Charlie’s, he searched him on the computer in the staff room and found pages of articles Shadi had written for some newspaper called The Blue Review. A blog post—of course he blogged—about, Luke was surprised to discover, football. Football as in soccer, but he was shocked that Shadi was interested in regular things like sports, although the blog post was about how France’s World Cup hopes rested on their Muslim forward and wasn’t that ironic? Luke didn’t understand what was so ironic, but it must’ve been another thing that Shadi Waleed knew that he didn’t.
He finally landed on Shadi’s Facebook—his breath caught when he saw the profile picture. Shadi lounging on a black chair outside a restaurant, Nadia Turner on his lap in a long, floral sundress, smiling behind sunglasses, her hand gently draped across Shadi’s shoulder. She looked older now, her face more angular, her cheekbones sharpened. She looked happy. Luke flipped through the other photos—mostly posters for campus events, a few of Shadi hunching over a woman in a headscarf who must’ve been his mother—but he always returned to the one of Nadia in Shadi’s lap. Her life had gone on like nothing had happened, but Luke was stuck, wedged in the past, always wondering what would’ve happened if they’d kept the baby. Their baby.
“Who the fuck is that?” a busboy asked Luke, pointing at Shadi’s smiling face. “Your boyfriend?”
He cackled, but Luke shoved away from the computer so hard, the desk shook.
—
WHEN HE JOINED THE COBRAS, Luke thought his anger might finally subside, but instead, he felt it growing. Football was a safe place to be angry. Every time he laced up, he cupped his anger, keeping it safe. The first time he got hit in practice, he saw a white flash, his mind washed over with pain, then he pushed himself off the ground and hobbled back to the huddle. That hit made him feel like himself again. He started shit-talking, taunting men double his size, who could cripple him with another blow.
“That’s all you got, bitch? Come on, motherfucker, try me again!”
The next play, the same linebacker came loping toward him and Luke cut inside, breezing past him as the ball smacked into his hands and he sprinted into the end zone. He felt almost disappointed he hadn’t been hit again. His anger belonged here. Hell, all of the Cobras were angry. Everyone had a story of near fame and missed chances: the coach who’d fucked them over, the family debt that forced them to drop out and get a job, the recruiter who never saw their full potential. No one’s anger was more welcomed than his because the team pitied him the most. He was the youngest, the one most robbed of his future, so the other players were kind to him. Roy Tabbot invited him on fishing trips. Edgar Harris changed his oil for free. Jeremy Fincher loaned him a tux so he didn’t have to rent one for a friend’s wedding.
“Don’t fuck it up either, dickbreath,” Finch said, handing over the garment bag. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for Luke in months.
When there was no practice, Luke went to team barbecues. He stretched on white lawn chairs as the Cobras crowded around grills, arguing about the best way to marinate a steak. Finch said that steaks didn’t need marinade at all, none of that foo-foo pussy shit, just eat the goddamn meat like you’re meant to. Ritter said sorry, he didn’t want to eat the steak straight off the cow, it meant he wasn’t a fucking Neanderthal, not that he was a pussy, and Gorman said of course Finch knew a lot about eating meat. The wives carried out bowls of potato salad and macaroni and cheese, sometimes joining in the group and jibing the men, and Luke thought, I could have a life like this.