The Mothers(39)

He taught Aubrey to play poker, then blackjack. She picked up both games surprisingly quickly, and he told her that they should go to Vegas someday and play in a real casino. She laughed. She’d never been before.

“Why would I go to Vegas?” she said. “I don’t party. Or gamble.”

“Because it’s fun,” he said. “There’s food. And shows. You like plays, don’t you? We could go. When I get out.”

She smiled a little, plucking a card from the middle of her hand.

“Sure,” she said. “That sounds good.”

She was just being nice, but he still clung to her words, marking them in his planner that night.

—

“WHAT YOU GONNA DO when you get out of here?” Bill asked.

Luke had just graduated to crutches and he was hobbling around the hallway, giddy and awkward. He’d progressed faster than anyone had expected, Carlos told him. He’d given Luke a tiny pedometer to wear when he walked down the hall, and within a month, he had already logged 50,000 steps. Carlos printed him a certificate that said MVP: Most Valuable Pacer. Aubrey helped him hang it on his wall.

“I don’t know,” he said. Fat Charlie’s didn’t offer sick leave—they’d replaced him weeks ago. He needed to find a job or he would have to move back home with his parents, who had already spent their own money paying for his last month at the rehab center. He hobbled down the hallway, calculating how much it must have cost, and felt overwhelmed by the thought of it. Just another thing he owed them. He would have to find work soon, maybe another restaurant on the pier. What else did he know how to do?

“Nah, nah,” Bill said. “You got to want more than that.”

Luke laughed. “Like what? I’m supposed to wanna be president or some shit?”

“That’s the problem with you brothas,” Bill said. “You got lazy. You know why? Because you know these young sistas will pick up the slack. Grown men living with their mamas, whole mess of kids running around, ain’t got a job. Somewhere along the way we became a race of men happy to let women take care of us.”

Luke had grown up listening to old folks at Upper Room make similar speeches, about how they’d fought so hard just to watch his generation throw any progress away. As if he owed them somehow for being young and ought to personally repay them for their humiliations. Still, he liked hanging out with the old men in the hallway, listening to their stories and imagining their lives. Bill never listened to the trainers when they tried to guide him through his exercises. He was too stubborn, too softened, over the years, to pain. Who could blame him? He was old with no one waiting for him on the outside. He just wanted to talk shit with his buddies and look at pretty nurses. Luke was the only one who could get Bill out of his wheelchair.

“You’re pretty good at this,” Carlos told him.

Luke had convinced Bill to finish his quad stretches, cheering him on until the old man plopped back in his wheelchair with a huff. In the doorway, Carlos looked impressed.

“You should look into physical training,” Carlos said. “Shit, you been here long enough.”

Luke told Aubrey, and the next day, she printed out a list of qualifications he needed to become a physical therapy assistant. Two years of school, which discouraged him, but Aubrey said the time would pass anyway—why not spend it chasing after something he wanted? She’d squeezed his shoulder and he felt himself relaxing. She was right, and besides, if he had learned nothing else in rehab, he’d learned how to be patient. He’d spent the past few months relearning how to walk. He felt that he could wait for anything.

When he was finally released from the rehab center, strong enough to lean on a cane alone, time seemed to rush at him. He missed the soft seconds in the center, days that blurred into one another, time marked only by mealtimes and exercise routines and Aubrey’s visits. Out in the world, he felt time racing past him and he could never catch up. In the center, he’d been a fast learner, nimble compared to the others, but at his parents’ house, he felt like he was moving in slow motion, like every effort to get out of bed and shower, to dress himself and cook breakfast, took three times as long. During the day, he worked on his applications to physical therapy programs and tried to find a job. But he didn’t have any real skills and most unskilled jobs required that you at least be able to lift fifty pounds. Finally, he asked his father if there was any work he could do at Upper Room.

“Maybe I can do something around the grounds,” he said. “Pick up trash. I don’t know. Something.”

Luke felt embarrassed, begging for pocket change, but his father placed a warm hand on his shoulder and smiled. He had probably been waiting for this moment for years. When his only son would return home, humbled, and ask to help out the ministry. Maybe he’d imagined this moment when Luke was born—a son who would inherit the church someday. A son standing beside him at the altar, leading teen Bible studies, following him through the halls of Upper Room. How disappointed his father must’ve been, given instead a son who worshipped pigskin, who spent his Sunday praise in front of the television, who hadn’t been called by God to do anything but run and catch.

“The church is growing,” his father said. “Getting older. We could use someone to visit the sick and shut-in.”

“I can do that,” Luke said.