The world played chess, p.13
The World Played Chess, page 13
She wasn’t brushing me off. I know that now. She was just being practical. But I wondered again how long ago she and the boyfriend had broken up. Maybe that frontal cortex was finally starting to kick in—when I really didn’t want it to.
She must have seen this inner monologue in my facial expression.
“Vincent, I’m sorry . . .” She stumbled to find words.
“Forget about it,” I said using my New York accent, which made her smile. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine and Amy could tell, which only made my pain worse. She went from looking sorry, which was bad enough, to looking at me with pity. Then her eyes widened. “This wasn’t your . . . first time, was it?”
“What? No. No, of course not,” I said, but it must not have been very convincing.
“Vincent, I’m so sorry. I didn’t . . . Oh my God. Please tell me you’re eighteen.”
“Don’t,” I said, taking a step back. I shook my head. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make me feel like some kid.”
“I’m not trying to, I just . . .”
“I’m not a kid,” I said. But, of course, I was. And I had acted like one this night, just as I had acted like one that night at Ed’s party. Act like a child and you will be treated like one. My mother’s old refrain.
“You worked and played softball with those guys . . . I just thought you looked young.”
She was right. It wasn’t her fault, and I wasn’t blaming her. I had given her every reason to believe I was older. I had played the lead role in this performance, and I’d done it convincingly, but now I had shed my costume and makeup and forgotten my lines, and Amy saw through the facade and my ad-libbing.
“I just thought we could have some fun,” she said.
“It was. It was fun,” I said. And it had been. So much so that I’d just hoped there would be more. “I better go.”
“We could listen to another album,” she said.
“No. I better get home.”
“Spend the night,” she said.
I smiled and gave away still more. “I can’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“I wish I could.” I turned for the sliding glass doors, then stopped and turned back to her. “I’m going to collect on that bet.”
Now she smiled, pensive. “Never,” she said.
I grabbed my jacket off the chair and stepped inside the sliding glass doors. When I turned around, Amy wasn’t chasing after me, like in the movies. She remained at the pool’s edge with a look of regret and both arms wrapped around the bathrobe.
From the speakers came the gentle keys and guitar strings of Springsteen’s “New York City Serenade,” as well as his admonition. Sometimes it’s better if you just walk on. Leave the past behind.
He was right. I wasn’t about to stay to hear the end of that song.
Or see Amy ever again.
So I thought.
As the years passed, I realized what it felt like to be dumped by someone you thought you loved, and I understood better what had happened with Amy that night. Amy’s longtime boyfriend had dumped her, and she was in pain. Her trip to California was no doubt intended as a trip to get away, to have a little fun with her cousin, as she had said. And I’d certainly led her to believe I could provide that fun, for an evening at least.
I didn’t see Amy DeLuca Monday morning when I returned to work, and I didn’t tell William or Todd about what had happened in the pool. When William asked me, I said Jennifer and her parents had been home when I dropped Amy off, and now she was back in New York, going to work.
He didn’t ask any more questions, like whether I’d gotten her phone number. Maybe he knew better. Maybe he knew it was just one night in a lifetime.
Ironically, I did see Amy again. Even more ironic, I was in my third year of law school at the time. I was dating a woman from New York, and we’d gone back east to ski. We went into Manhattan to a comedy show at Catch a Rising Star on First Avenue between East Seventy-Eighth and Seventy-Seventh Streets. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the original club where many famous comedians started their careers. On my first visit to New York, I was in awe of the entire spectacle, the snow falling between the tall buildings, all the cabs, and all the people. The evening had been great, incredible food at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and comedians who kept me laughing all night. One, Ronnie Shakes, made me laugh so hard he stopped his routine, bought me a drink, and asked me where I would be laughing next. I looked him up thirty years later hoping to take Elizabeth to see this comedian whose bits I could still recite. Turned out Shakes died less than a year after that show. He had a heart attack while jogging. He was just forty years old.
When the comedy show ended, I stood and looked to my right. Sitting at the table were a woman and a man. The woman stared at me with a look of recognition. She was older, early thirties. Her hairstyle had changed, but she had those same electric-blue eyes. Her look was so certain, I was sure she had noticed me much earlier in the evening, maybe when Ronnie Shakes called me out, and perhaps she had been racking her brain until she figured out how she knew me. Maybe she’d remembered that evening also.
When her husband—she had a diamond on her left hand—turned for the door, she hesitated, as if she wanted to say hello, then likely wondered how she would explain me to her husband. She looked uncertain, then lowered her gaze.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She glanced toward the door, to where her husband had been swallowed by the crowd. Then she turned back.
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t resist,” I said.
She smiled, closemouthed but genuine. Her electric-blue eyes sparkled. “Refuse,” she said. “As an Italian, you should know the line is ‘I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.’”
“I should,” I said.
We both smiled. Then Amy DeLuca stepped into the crowd, glancing back one final time before the mass of people also swallowed her.
“Do you know her?” my girlfriend asked.
“No,” I said. “She was just correcting . . .” I was going to say “a mistake,” but that would have been wrong. “She was just reciting a line from The Godfather.”
PART III
WHEN YOU COMING HOME, SON?
May 1, 1968
Dying is hardest on the living.
Chapter 10
February 17, 2016
Eventually Beau got over their loss on the football field, though he seemed to have some lingering resentment about how their season ended. Serra had lost to a team in the Northern California playoffs, a team they had drubbed earlier in the year. This time, however, they played without Chris. Art Carpenter’s fear had been a premonition. Chris tore his ACL in the second-to-last game of the year when an offensive lineman fell on the side of his leg. Chris had had surgery, and while successful, it had been involved. Doctors were optimistic Chris would be able to rehabilitate to the point of playing again, but that didn’t help Serra.
Worse, the Division I schools revoked their scholarship offers or stopped calling, including Stanford. Coaches told Chris to enroll as a regular student and rehab his knee. If the knee returned to strength, and Chris returned to his prior playing level, they’d consider putting him on scholarship.
Art and Josephine Carpenter were equal parts devastated and angry that schools would be so quick to “change their tunes” and “abandon” their son. Many of the schools were no longer financially realistic.
I thought of my own college situation, my disappointment, and I thought of William Goodman losing his wrestling scholarships after injuring his shoulder and losing interest in school. Chris wouldn’t end up in Vietnam, but I took Beau aside and told him to keep an eye on Chris anyway, and encourage him to keep up his grades and not give up on his dreams at such a young age.
Without Friday night football we fell into a different routine. Elizabeth and I attended Mary Beth’s basketball games. I had suggested to Beau, more than once, that Mary Beth would be proud to have her big brother attend, but Beau did not want to miss a night out with his friends. Beau also had a girlfriend, which I never had in high school, and he had confided in me that sometimes he resented the commitment.
“Guys talk about what they did over the weekend, and I feel left out when I’m not there,” he told me one night as we sat in our remodeled family room.
“I know the feeling,” I said, and I did. “But do your friends ever do anything really epic, or is it just the same stuff every weekend?”
“I don’t know. But, I mean, it’s my senior year. Some of these guys, like Chris, will be my friends for life, but others I know I won’t see again.”
I didn’t want to tell Beau that I used to think Mif, Billy, and Cap would be the best men at my wedding, and that we’d remain lifelong friends. We did not even attend each other’s weddings. Like most guys, I was not good at staying in contact. Nor were they. Some friends moved away, and we all had our own commitments with spouses, children, and jobs. Beau’s comment also made me think of William’s journal, how his corporal, Victor Cruz, advised him not to make friends in Vietnam, that it was easier that way when those soldiers were killed.
The issue of Beau going out with his friends came to a head in late February, as Elizabeth planned Mary Beth’s sixteenth birthday. I was in a protracted trial in San Mateo County and not much help. Elizabeth wanted to surprise Mary Beth and take her to Tadich Grill in San Francisco. When the kids were young and I worked in San Francisco, Elizabeth used to dress them up and they would ride BART into the city. The four of us would have dinner, usually at Tadich Grill. The 150-year-old restaurant had a special place in all our hearts, and Mary Beth thought of it as magical. Elizabeth had called six weeks in advance to get the reservation. While we were away at dinner, my older brother, John, and his wife would drive their Honda Accord to our house and leave it in the driveway affixed with a pink bow. John’s four kids had driven the car to school and put 158,000 miles on the odometer, but it still ran well. My brother just wanted the car off his insurance, and I just wanted Mary Beth to have wheels to get to school, as Beau had. Mary Beth’s school was less than two miles from our front door, so it was not like she’d be driving the car on cross-country excursions.
I didn’t want to buy either of our children something new and fancy just because we could afford it. I wanted them to know how difficult it could be to make a buck, as I’d had to learn, so they would appreciate what they had.
The problem that soon developed, however, was Elizabeth made the dinner reservation on the night of Serra’s infamous Jungle Game against their basketball rivals Saint Ignatius. The inaugural Jungle Game had been in 1975, when my brother John played for Serra. The game received its name when the Saint Ignatius coach was quoted in the newspaper saying, “We have to go down to Serra, and it’ll be a jungle down there.” The next year the entire all-male cheering section stormed into the arena wearing white T-shirts and carrying palm leaves. They chanted, “SI. Welcome to the jungle.”
The game had grown in infamy and was usually hard fought and exciting. I had been to many games over the years, and truth be told, I was sorry to miss this year. But family was family.
Beau and Chris had become Serra’s head cheerleaders for the basketball games, and they planned to make the night memorable. I felt for Beau, but I had my own problems with a complicated trial, a difficult client, and a lot of money at stake. Admittedly, my fuse was short, as it usually was when I was in trial.
The conflict came to a head in the family room when Mary Beth was out with her cousin.
“You can’t miss your sister’s sixteenth birthday, Beau,” Elizabeth said as I entered the house after another long day. “We’ve had these plans for weeks.”
“Change the night,” Beau said.
“I can’t change the night. I had to make the reservation six weeks in advance. And Friday night is her birthday.”
“Then change the restaurant.”
“I’m not going to change the restaurant. This is a special night and I want Mary Beth to feel special.”
“Well, you should have checked with me before you made the reservation,” Beau said. “This is the biggest game of the year, and I’m a head cheerleader.”
I knew exactly what was going on without being filled in. I didn’t like Beau’s attitude with his mother, but I didn’t want to escalate the situation. Softly, I said, “Beau, I understand—”
He turned, his eyes burning holes in me. He clearly had been preparing for this confrontation.
“No, Dad. You don’t understand. You say you do. But you don’t. You didn’t play sports in high school. You were the editor of the school newspaper. It’s not the same thing. You don’t know what sports represent.”
It was not the first time Beau had lashed out at us that year. He wasn’t a child anymore, and he didn’t want to be treated like one, though he still occasionally acted like one. At eighteen he could vote and he could be drafted. He wanted to make his own decisions. I tried to remember what it had been like for me, turning eighteen and being an adult chronologically, but nowhere close mentally. I used to blame my underdeveloped frontal cortex for all the stupid things I did, but it was just immaturity. As my father had once said, If you want to be treated like an adult, then act like one. Easier said than done for young men at eighteen.
Many times, I worried that Elizabeth and I had made Beau’s landing too soft because we could. I had to grow up quickly because my parents were spread so thin. I had to care for those younger than me, as my older siblings had cared for me. That meant doing laundry, making dinner, then cleaning the house before my dad got home from work. But my landing was nothing compared to William’s crash landing in the bush of Vietnam. He’d had no choice but to grow up if he wanted any chance to come home alive.
It was the conundrum of every parent with a boy becoming a young man—loving your child enough to let him make his own decisions and his own mistakes, and not stepping in to rescue him.
So while I didn’t take Beau’s comment personally, I wasn’t about to let Beau ruin his sister’s birthday.
“First of all, don’t take that tone with me or your mother,” I said. “Second, you’re not the only one sacrificing. I’m in trial and your mother also has a lot on her plate.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Beau said, defiant.
“You’re damn right, it’s not. My job pays for you to go to that school and puts food on the table and a roof over your head. You’re talking about just another game.”
“Like Bellarmine was just another game?” Beau said.
“Don’t put that on your father, Beau,” Elizabeth said. “You had a concussion.”
“This is the Jungle Game,” Beau said, ignoring reason and common sense.
“Bellarmine was just another game,” I said, my voice rising in volume to match Beau’s. “So, if you’re trying to make me feel guilty about choosing my son’s health over a game, forget it.”
Elizabeth stepped in. “There will be more games, Beau. This is family. You don’t sacrifice family for a game. These are memories that will last a lifetime.”
“There won’t be another Jungle Game, just like there won’t be another Bellarmine football game.” He turned to me. “You ruined that game for me, and now you’re ruining my last Jungle Game. These are the memories I’m going to take with me for the rest of my life, not some dumbass birthday for my sister.”
“Your sister has been to every one of your birthdays, Beau,” Elizabeth said.
“And she attended every one of your football games,” I said. “You can’t even make it to one of her basketball games.”
“My birthday isn’t on the biggest game day of the year, and she attended my games to be with the guy she likes, not to support me.”
“That’s not fair, Beau,” Elizabeth said.
“It is fair. You’re not being fair. I’m not going. Period.”
Beau started for the door and I stepped in his path. “Don’t you talk to your mother that way,” I said.
“Get out of my way,” Beau said. “I’m done talking.”
He stepped past me and I grabbed his shoulder. He swung his arm and knocked my hand away. I took a step after him, but Elizabeth stepped between us.
“You walk out that door tonight, don’t come back,” I said, and I regretted the words before they had left my mouth. Italian temper.
“Vincent,” Elizabeth said.
“I’ll sleep at Chris’s,” Beau said.
“You’re not sleeping at Chris’s,” Elizabeth said.
At that moment Mary Beth and her cousin came into the room. Mary Beth had been crying and it was clear from the anguished expression on her face that she had heard the argument. “You don’t have to go to my birthday, Beau,” Mary Beth said. “I really don’t care.”
“He doesn’t mean it, Mary Beth,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, he does. He never wants to do anything that involves me. I went to every one of your stupid Little League games every summer. All the stupid tournaments on the Fourth of July and all your stupid football games.”
“I didn’t ask you to go,” Beau spit back.
“That’s the point,” Mary Beth said. “You didn’t have to.”
We stood in stunned silence. I didn’t know if my daughter had ever said anything so profound. Beau didn’t have to ask her to go. She went because he was her big brother and she loved him and was proud of him. He was also the only brother she’d ever have, and she his only sister. They wouldn’t have nine siblings to choose from. They had only each other.
Mary Beth sobbed and went upstairs. Beau remained upset, but I could see that Mary Beth’s words and her tears had pierced a hole in his shield of anger.
“You do what you want,” I said.
“Don’t guilt me,” Beau said, but his tone had changed, now soft and regretful.
“If I wanted to guilt you, you’d know it,” I said. “I mean it. You do what you want. Go or don’t go. But I don’t want you there if you’re going to ruin your sister’s birthday. We’re going to make this night special for her, with or without you.”
