The snap, p.23
The Snap, page 23
I shifted in my seat. “Thank you. I mean, that’s nice to hear, Mom, and I love you, but it doesn’t take away the rest of it. We’re just—not close. We never have been.”
“Poppy, your father had an affair.”
The world tilted. A thousand images flashed behind my eyes—my dad in his windbreaker, clapping chapped hands together on a November sideline, yelling out plays across a field at night. My dad lifting me up onto his shoulder after a Sectionals win. His shirt was still wet from where his players had dumped a Gatorade cooler all over him, and it soaked through my dress and made my leg sticky. My parents at the end of their driveway as I drove away for my first day at the Bobcats, Dad’s strong arm around Mom as she hid her face in his chest.
Red had assaulted me, and my father had an affair.
I swallowed. “What?”
“I can’t believe this is where I’m telling you. I wasn’t planning on ever telling you, I know how much you worship your father, the last thing I want to do is take that away from you. But I’m so tired. I’m so tired of being the second favorite, I’m tired of covering for him. It was a teacher at the school—a little English teacher, with pencil skirts and big doe eyes, who carried around books about poetry. Like your father’s ever read a goddamned poem. I found out when Luke forgot his lunch. There was construction on the main road, so I went in the back way, by the soccer fields. Your father’s car was parked there, half in the woods. And I saw them.”
My mind was reeling. This didn’t make sense. It was like she was telling me he’d blown up the moon.
“It happens, and we got through it. But our whole lives spun around him, and his job and his football, and when it became your favorite thing I just…saw red. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to have you, too. I tried making special little traditions for just you and me—remember how we’d make Thanksgiving dinner together, the two of us? But I was forcing it, and you could tell.” She offered a wobbly smile. “You were always too smart by half.”
I wanted to calcify myself. I wanted to harden each inch of my skin, cell by cell, until I was safe behind a protective shell. I didn’t want to know this about my father. I didn’t want to have to understand my mother. Everything—everything—I’d believed to be true about my family life was wrong. It was more than I could handle.
I wasn’t about to be held more accountable for his bad deeds than he was for committing them. Like mother, like daughter.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I said. “Dad’s upstairs with a stent in his heart. Am I supposed to go yell at him for cheating on you thirty years ago? Am I supposed to not yell at him, knowing he cheated on you? What—tell me what to do?”
“I don’t know.” This time it was her hand that slammed on the table, causing my coffee to slosh out of its cup. Seeing her mimic my exact gesture—realizing that, actually, I was probably mimicking hers—shocked me as much as anything else had that day. My mother was practically a stranger to me. How could I carry her gestures in my hands?
“Parents are just people, Poppy, we mess up. Haven’t you ever wished you could take something back?”
Abby.
She sounded as exhausted as I felt. I was, as it turned out, too tired to keep holding this grudge. There were other mistakes I would have to carry forever, but this—this one I could put down.
I walked my fingers back and forth across the tabletop. “Could we…start small? We don’t have to do, like, a spa weekend, do we?”
Her lip trembled, then stretched into a smile. She gestured toward the table. “How about a cup of coffee?”
* * *
*
I’d booked a hotel, but my mom insisted I stay with her for the night. “No funny business,” she promised, “I won’t make you look at photo albums with me or anything. It’s just a place to lay your head.”
We had a quiet dinner of creamed tuna fish, a gelatinous mass of fish in cream sauce served over biscuits that instantly transported me back to my childhood. The kitchen was still the same—white Formica countertops, hard wooden chairs—and if I closed my eyes while I ate, I could imagine that I was twelve years old again, wolfing down dinner between ballet class and Jeff’s practice.
“It’s nice to see you eating,” Mom said.
“I eat.”
“I meant—it’s nice to see you eating here. Maybe you could stay for the holiday? I’m sure you have to work, but—”
My phone buzzed.
I thought I’d see you today. Are you out of detention?
Omar Kadeer. He must be in town for that blessed rescue dog calendar. I stared at the text for a minute and realized I was disappointed to miss a visit. Back tomorrow, I replied. He liked the text.
I let Mom’s question go unanswered, and she knew not to follow up. We chewed in silence for a few minutes, and then I asked, “So what happens now, with Dad not coaching anymore?”
Mom got up to refill her water glass and gestured toward mine, mostly empty. I waved her off. “I guess he’ll have time for some hobbies now,” she said from behind the refrigerator door. “Maybe he’ll start coming to tennis with me. Although, maybe not. I don’t know if he’d be able to manage those swings with his heart. It takes a lot of power.” She returned to the table.
“What did you say?”
“The swing?” She mimed hitting a ball. “It kind of pulls across your chest, you know, like this? I don’t know if he’d be able to do that for a while.”
Tennis. A powerful swing. It didn’t make sense, though, because of the height…
“Poppy?” Mom rapped her knuckle on the table. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I wiped my face with a napkin. “I should really leave tonight, Mom, I told my boss I’d be back in the office tomorrow.” Her face fell, but she recovered quickly and smoothed the front of her cardigan. “Things are still pretty tough after what happened with Coach,” I added apologetically.
“No, of course. I understand. It was so good of you to drive all the way out here.”
I scraped the remains of my dinner into the garbage and put my plate in the sink. Then I walked back to the table, hesitated, and bent to peck her on the cheek.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Sarah and I were meeting for dinner.
We were both in Indianapolis for the Scouting Combine in March, which meant I’d been in my new job a little more than a month. By that time I’d stopped heading for the intern desk by habit and moved confidently toward Brent’s old office—my office—in the mornings. Like magic, once I transitioned from intern to staff, Neil from accounting stopped knocking me into walls. The other day in the break room I’d heard him tut-tutting over a story about an NHL executive who had exposed himself to female staffers in the elevator. I was sure old Neil felt that story affirmed that he fell safely in the land of office high jinks, because he didn’t do that, he’d never do that.
The steakhouse was only a few blocks from my hotel near the Convention Center, and so I decided to walk there. There was no snow, but the ground was frozen. Even the sidewalks somehow felt harder beneath my feet, and I walked with my hands shoved into my pockets, where I felt my cell phone vibrate. It was my mother.
“What’s up, Mom, I’m on my way to dinner.” I hated the way my voice automatically got short when I spoke to her, but she had such a knack for inserting herself. I was on my way to meet a work colleague. I didn’t want to be mothered just then.
“Oh, a team dinner?”
“No, with this woman I know who’s here too.”
Now her voice was the one to change. “It’s just the two of you? You’re taking a cab?”
“I’m walking, Mom. It isn’t far.”
“Honey, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Dad and I will pay for cabs, you’re a young girl, and you shouldn’t be by y—”
“I’m not a girl, Mom! I’m an adult. With a job. I can pay for my own cabs, and I can decide if I want to walk. I don’t need you hovering over me all the time. You think all these bad things are going to happen and they’re not. I’m not helpless, I’m not stupid. Just stop.”
For a full block after I hung up, my feet slammed against the sidewalk. Throwing a fit was not the way to show my mother I was older than she thought, but she was always, always talking down to me, especially when it came to anything that had to do with football. I knew what I was doing. I knew how to take care of myself. The restaurant’s awning came into view, and I drew deep, full breaths to calm myself.
Sarah was waiting outside, her hood up against the chill, and as we hugged I said, “There are more steakhouses in this neighborhood than trees.” I forced my mind past the conversation with my mom. This had nothing to do with her. She didn’t understand this.
“Basketball and beef,” Sarah said. “Hoosiers love ’em.”
Inside was dark and clubby, with red velvet booths deep enough to be stagecoaches. The black-paneled walls held a collection of photos, mostly black-and-white horses, and oil portraits of what looked like nineteenth-century oil barons. The restaurant was packed with football people, and as we followed the hostess we passed a group of scouts I recognized sitting with a young woman I didn’t. She raised her fingers in a tiny wave, and Sarah nodded back.
“Who was that?” I asked once we were seated. My feet didn’t touch the floor.
“Nisha Khatri. Seattle just hired her.”
“As an admin?”
Sarah smirked. “As a scout.”
“No way!” I couldn’t name a single female scout in the league, and that woman looked young, about our age. “How…?”
“Because she’s fucking good,” Sarah answered. “I introduced myself when I saw her in a press box earlier this year. She’s from L.A. Kind of mean. You’d like her.”
“I want to meet her.” I leaned out of the booth to look again and caught her looking back at me. I colored and gave an embarrassed little nod, then turned back to Sarah. “So you’re on a beat. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, thank you. I’m moving to Philly next month, so it’s closer to home, which is cool, but it means breaking up with the guy I’ve been seeing.” She spread butter on a roll. “Whatever. It’s not like I was going to marry him. There’re guys in Philly.”
“Good for you.”
The waiter arrived with our drinks, and I took a long sip of my whiskey, then coughed into my hand as it burned. Sarah was right—there were guys all over, and if they saw us as interchangeable, we might as well take the same approach.
Two weeks ago, I’d asked James if we could talk.
“Yeah,” he’d said, kissing my neck. We were on the sofa at his apartment with college basketball on in the background. “I love talking.”
I’d gently pushed him back and sat up. I was wearing the black sheath dress I’d bought with my first official paycheck, which I was convinced made me look like Addison from Grey’s Anatomy. The week before, James and Mo had helped me move out of my creepy little apartment and into a proper starter unit with a roommate I was learning to tolerate. My hair had been recently cut, my nails were done, and I felt like the adult woman I was, with a job, an apartment, and hopefully…
“I think we should, you know. Make things official. This.” I’d moved my hand back and forth. “Us.”
James had run a hand through his hair, which was un-mussable. He’d looked like I’d asked him to solve a particularly complicated math problem in his head. “I mean, yeah. Like, we are.” He’d laughed. “I don’t really know what you’re asking here, Pop.”
“Well, okay.” I’d shifted to face him. “So right now, if we go out to dinner, we both feel kind of stressed that we might run into someone from the team. And I just feel like, if we were a known thing, that wouldn’t be the case. Like it might be…just easier.”
Please understand what I’m saying, I’d thought. If we were just hooking up, it meant I was sleeping my way through the office. But a relationship, a proper one that happened in front of people like we weren’t trying to hide anything, would have the opposite effect. There’s no credibility for a young female professional like being in a relationship, because then you’re neutralized. You are no longer a threat.
He’d leaned toward me and kissed me slowly. I’d closed my eyes and sighed in relief. And then, an inch from my mouth, he’d whispered, “Don’t you think the secret is kind of what makes it hot?”
So that was that. James, apparently not very heartbroken, had moved on almost immediately to a ticket office intern who came in Tuesdays and Thursdays while finishing her senior year of college. They weren’t subtle about it, and he and I hadn’t spoken since.
“You know,” I told Sarah now, “thank you for the heads-up on that guy James. What an asshole.”
“Totally. He’s such a skank.”
She’d tried to tell me, and I hadn’t wanted to listen because it was new and exciting, and I didn’t want to believe it. But a lot had happened since then, and I could see the value of having someone to watch your back. Of helping watch someone else’s.
“Can we…” I hesitated, not sure how to say what I was thinking. “Can we do this? Have dinners and talk and stuff? There just aren’t that many women, especially our age—”
“Oh my gosh, I know. Honestly, I was so happy to run into you that day. Like, mentors are great, so I love meeting older women in sports, but especially with the Creep Defense Initiative, it’s just not the same. Guys do not take the same kinds of liberties.”
“Cool. So let’s do it. And maybe Nisha…”
“I’ll ask her.” Sarah held up her glass.
We clinked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NOW
My townhouse was cold, the smart thermostat having reset itself—again—to sixty-five. I climbed into bed without washing my face and stared at the ceiling. Since the last time I’d been here, my entire sense of self had changed.
I was chilled by the proximity to tragedy. If my father had died today, would my mother have ever told me the truth? Maybe she’d also realized how close Dad had come to being gone, and maybe she knew that once he was she’d have to carry her secret forever. I wondered how she was sleeping tonight, alone in her bed for the first time in forty-five years, but no longer carrying the weight of our disconnect.
I tried box breathing to slow my heart rate, to try to rest after driving ten hours in one day, but my head felt pinched. My dad had almost died today. It was the kind of near miss that made you question everything. Were you living your life or just letting it pass? Had you built something, left a mark, and was it the kind of legacy you could be proud of? What would remain of you after you were gone?
I didn’t like the answers. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
With a sigh, I threw back the covers and ran downstairs to pull my laptop from its bag by the front door. I brought it back up to my room, climbed back into bed, and typed in Abby’s name. In all the years since I’d last seen her, I’d never searched her out on a social networking site, I’d never Googled her name. I was too afraid of what I might find. I was too afraid of what I’d done, and of what I might have caused, and that was when I’d been so sure that I made the right call. Now nothing was certain. I didn’t know how to trust my own memories.
I paused. Cringed. Hit Return.
The top result was an attorney with a white-shoe law firm. I would have scrolled right past it, except for the image preview. It showed an attractive blond woman in a white blouse and black suit. Her arms were crossed in front of her in a power stance, and she was flashing every tooth she had in a broad, confident smile.
It was her. According to Abby’s bio, she’d started law school less than a year after she’d left the Bobcats. Her résumé was a dizzying collection of academic articles and professional accolades. She was, apparently, a “clear future leader in the field of intellectual property rights” with “oral advocacy skills that far outpaced most of her peers.” She was an adjunct professor. She was married, with two kids and a dog named Barkley. I went back out into the search results, found her husband’s name, matched it to a voter registration record, and found their address. I typed it into Zillow and saw a stunning white colonial with five bathrooms, a three-car garage, and lush landscaping.
I closed the laptop. Abby was killing it. Her life was going great.
And mine?
I picked up my phone, opened the text chain with Omar. I’m sorry I missed you, I typed, then deleted the first part.
I missed you.
But in the end, I wrote, Are you up for breakfast?
* * *
*
“The All Night Eggplant.” Omar examined his menu. “I don’t think I’ve ever had breakfast in a short story before. And we’re sure there’s no hyphen in that?”
“You are about to experience a Syracuse institution.” It was seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving. In the past day I’d driven ten hours and slept for none, and this no-frills, unironically eighties diner was exactly what I needed. Everything from the paneled walls to the tables and chairs was wood, and everything not wood was orange. A stack of seven high-chairs sat ready to service the restaurant’s fifteen or so tables, which at this hour held a collection of blue- and white-collar workers.
I hadn’t really expected Omar to say yes—or maybe I did, I was too tired to turn around and examine my own motives. All I knew was the world was spinning and chunky monkey pancakes would help.
When the waitress filled my coffee cup from an orange-topped industrial pot, Omar put his hand over hers. “Oh, regular for me, please.”
