Getting Real (Getting Some #3)(60)

Because sports are woven into the fiber of my family’s DNA—we’re like working-class Kennedys—we’re competitive and like to win.

And Violet Robinson fits right in.

She jumps up with a grace that still surprises me and spikes the ball over the net toward Ryan. He dives for it with a splash . . . and misses.

“Eat it!” Violet shouts like a baller.

“Niiice!” I hold my hand up and she slaps it high five.

“Did I mention I was the captain of the girls’ volleyball team back in high school?”

“You didn’t,” I chuckle. “But I’m glad you were.”

Ryan groans, “We’ve been hustled.” He waves his team in. “Huddle up! Time for a new strategy.”

My three-year-old nephew, Will, talks shit like a chip off the old block from where he’s sitting atop Garrett’s shoulders behind me.

“We’re gonna beat you, Uncle Ryan!”

Ryan points at him like a WWF wrestler accepting a challenge.

“We’ll see about that, little man. It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Twenty minutes later, it’s over . . . and we beat them. Afterward my championship team basks in the sweet glow of victory as we all sit around the patio table eating and drinking and talking.

“Dad, can we pleeeeease get a trampoline this year?” Spencer asks. “I’m ten now—that’s double digits. I’m way more mature than when I was just nine.”

As an emergency medicine doctor, there are certain items I’ve sworn never to own—in my mind it’s a vow just slightly less sacred than the Hippocratic Oath. A garbage disposal, a motorcycle, and a trampoline are the top three—because they’re disasters waiting to happen. Most people think falling off a trampoline is the biggest risk, but they’re wrong. The bone snapping, ligament-tearing rebound and midair collisions are the real hazards.

“Not happening, Spence. Not now, not ever.”

Plus—I have three boys. They’re not exactly known for thinking through the consequences of their actions.

It was only last summer that I caught Brayden and two of his friends carrying my weights up from the basement, that they were going to tie to their ankles because they wanted to see how many pounds it would take to sink them to the bottom of the pool . . . and keep them there.

Yeah—that actually happened.

I don’t even want to contemplate what they’d do with a trampoline and their bikes, their skateboards . . .

“But this one has an excellent safety rating!” Spencer whines, holding up his phone to display a trampoline marketed as “safe” that looks exactly the same as the rest of them.

In the chair beside me, Violet shakes her head gently.

“If you saw some of the gnarly trampoline injuries that come into the hospital, you wouldn’t want one either, Spencer.”

I’m not sure if she says it purposely, but few things will distract a ten-year-old faster than the detailed description of horrific injuries.

“Really? How gnarly?”

“Well, there was that time a guy came in with hyperextended knees in both legs—he needed surgery.”

I nod. “That was a memorable one.”

“What’s hyperextended mean?” Spencer asks.

Violet demonstrates with her hands. “It means the knee bends backward.”

He reaches down for his own knees. “Knees do that?”

“They’re not supposed to.”

“What else?”

As Violet recounts the tale of the mom and the multiple skull fractures, Brayden calls to me from the lounge chair by the pool.

“Hey, Dad!”

“What’s up?” I call back.

“Mom texted me. She’s going to Joyce’s and wants to know if we want to go to dinner with her after.”

Stacey was supposed to see the boys this past Saturday but she canceled the day before because she said she got called into work. It used to piss me off when she canceled on them—mostly because it bothered them. But it doesn’t bother them anymore . . . and I can’t figure out if that’s good or bad.

“Tell her I’m a no,” Aaron says from the diving board. “I’m gonna hang here a little longer and then a bunch of us are going to Smitty’s house for an end of the summer party.”

On the days she doesn’t cancel, I leave it up to the boys if they want to go with her or not. At their age, I think it’s important to give them that sense of control over their own time.

“It’s your call, Bray,” I tell him. “If you want to go to dinner with your mom, it’s fine with me.”

He scans the backyard, filled with his uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents.

Then he shrugs. “I’d rather just stay here. If I go, I have to get changed.”

Changing clothes is apparently a real burden for teenagers. Right up there with making sure the fitted sheet is actually on the mattress and not amassing a collection of empty water bottles under their beds.

“Mom texted me too, Dad,” Spencer says. “I’m gonna tell her I want to stay here tonight. But I’ll go with her this weekend.”

I give him a smile. “Sounds good, Spence.”


*

A few hours later I’m at the grill, cooking up another round of burgers and hot dogs for the crew. Through the hazy, fragrant smoke, my eyes find Violet across the yard—standing next to Callie and my mother, her hair in a long dark braid down her back, her face tilted up to the sun, laughing at something one of them said.