Every Time I Think of You (21 page)

Did Holly want my mailing address to send more heart-wrenching photos of him, pictures that would only remind me of what I’d lost? The ones I had were filed away in a sealed envelope at the bottom of a desk drawer. Several times I had considered just mailing them to myself back home, wishing I’d left them hidden away.

Pacing around my room, unable to either study or nap, my steps turned into a walk out of the dorm, which became a run, a sloppy aimless tear. I wasn’t even dressed properly; in jeans, a shirt, a jacket and sneakers that weren’t for running. Exhausted, panting, one of my calves spasming with a cramp, I found a quiet glen of trees and lay on the ground amid a carpet of brilliant orange oak leaves.

Once I’d hobbled back to my room, I peeled off my sweaty clothes and donned a towel as I headed off to the communal showers. Letting the hot water almost scald my back, I told myself I was letting the remnants of concern for Everett circle the drain. My skill at telling minor lies, taught by him so expertly, worked best when self-directed.

Almost parboiled from the shower, I returned to my room. Eric would probably be back soon. I would have a little time for privacy.

“It’s not that, Reid. He refuses to so much as look at the application forms for Carnegie Mellon. Dad’s pissed off. Mom is livid.”

“Well, it is, sort of,” she agreed. “And I understand. I even offered to move to another apartment, you know, first-floor without stairs, so he could live with me. Mom said she’d already made sure they had an accessible dorm room for him. But she’s planning –get this– to move to Pittsburgh if she sells the house.”

“I visited him a few days ago, and he’s really getting himself together. But we were gabbing away, it was getting late, and I mentioned you, and he just cracked. He’d been holding himself together, being brave, but he just started sobbing out of nowhere.”

“He’s really sorry about the fight you had,” she said. “He misses you a lot. A lot. When you guys visited me, it wasn’t just some mini-vacation. He was bringing you to meet me for approval, something he could never do with our parents. He’s never done that before.”

I wondered how many other events we’d shared meant more to him, and why I hadn’t seen behind his casual attitude.

“You have to understand,” she said. “From here on, people are seeing the wheelchair first. You’re not like that. We’re not.”

At that moment, as the expected rush of emotion and the fought-back tears emerged from months of bottled-up longing, my roommate Eric bounded into our room. I didn’t even need to signal him. Seeing the phone in my hand and the contorted look on my face, he just plopped his backpack on the floor and closed the door behind him as he retreated.

A few days later, a card arrived in the mail, one of those corny store-bought themed cards with a bashful cartoon character holding a tiny bouquet of flowers.

Folded into the envelope was a flyer for ‘The Fourth Annual Thanksgiving Weekend Wheelchair Basketball Tournament.’

Beside the date and address was scribbled:

Please visit. Miss you.

XO, Monkey.

PS: I’m much better! No more rage fits.

And bring a swimsuit.

Chapter 32

Greg tossed the basketball with a flair some NBA players might have envied, considering he had a few feet more to reach. His shaggy brown hair clung to his brow with sweat. The tattoos on one arm, exposed by his sleeveless jersey, and his Doobie Brothers mustache added to his handsome charm. The way he wheeled himself across the court with such flair and abandon drew me to him.

A Vietnam veteran who had started the roving basketball league years before the rehabilitation facility even existed, Greg was clearly the most experienced player on the court. With only four men for each team –actually one of them a woman, Grace, whom I would also meet that day– the competition was more compressed than those I’d watched in high school, and the game was accented by the tire squeaks and metal clash of wheelchairs.

Grace was one of the few players who fell hard during the course of the game. When it happened to Everett, I felt a lurch in my chest.

But each of them struggled, then finally got back up, and the game continued. The few times Everett got the ball, he sped up, fumbled, but improved as the game continued.

The game over (Everett’s team lost by a few dozen points, but didn’t seem to care), they wheeled themselves over to various friends and family members who sat on the bleachers. Several other outpatients, who had formed a loose line along the front row, wheeled into smaller congratulatory circles.

Everett and I high- or, more precisely, mid-fived, but his arm caught my side and pulled me lower toward him. I attempted a hug, but he held me closer and pushed a sweaty kiss that landed closer to my neck than its intended target. His scraggly attempt of a beard itched, but felt good.

I hadn’t realized or even considered the possibility of being openly affectionate with him in front of others there. With sweat clinging to his hair, which had grown out into curly ringlets, his face beamed, despite his team having been thrashed. He grabbed me closer and gave the kiss a do-over.

“So, is this the biped you’re dating?” Greg teased as he toweled off near us while sizing me up.

“Yep,” Everett grinned.

Considering we hadn’t seen each other in months, dating wasn’t exactly the best definition. While I was hoping for a passionate reunion, I had prepared myself for a disappointing shift of our bond to being mere friends. But I didn’t correct him.

“Well, to each his own,” Greg sighed. He caught me looking at his flexing tanned arms as he raised one, then the other, switching hands with the towel as he wiped his pits. “Better keep him on a short leash,” Greg said as he tossed his towel at me. I caught it as I chuckled, a bit embarrassed.

“
Quisque comodeus est
.”

“She and the parents were up here on Thursday for Thanksgiving; took me out to some fancy restaurant. God, the waiter made such a fuss. What a queen. He probably would have cut up my food if I’d asked. Besides, I wanted to save today for you.”

His invitation had brought such a surge of anticipation into me that the seven hours spent on a train from Philadelphia to home that week put me in such a hopeful mood, my parents mistook my joy for a cured bout of homesickness.

I’d waited until after Thanksgiving dinner to tell them of my weekend plans. The series of expressions my mother made at the table had shifted from confusion to dismay to a resigned false indifference. It was clear she wanted to protect me from any pain, but knew I’d go anyway. My dad merely offered his car, saying, “The trains are probably too slow over the holidays.”

After I got to Pittsburgh, we’d only had a few minutes to talk and re-establish some kind of connection before Everett had to take to the court for his eventual joyful defeat. He’d met me in the lobby of the facility and I’d followed him across the street to the gym. He had acted more open and energetic, but the situation prevented any closer connection.

“I need a shower,” Everett said as he placed his small towel in his backpack, then reached around to hang it on his chair.

This wasn’t the depressed, angst-ridden soul who’d dismissed me only a few months before. His body pumped with vitality and color. It was sexy, life-affirming. He was transformed.

“A shower?” I asked. “What do you do, just ride under them in the locker room?”

“Bad joke,” he said in mock disdain. “You’ll have to do better. Why don’t you come up to my room and help me?”

And then I saw that flirtatious glint in his eyes. Before I was able to ask if he meant what I’d hoped, a short young Indian woman approached.

“Oh, this is Daya, my physiotherapist.”

“Reid.” We shook hands.

“Pleased to meet you.” She knelt down to inspect Everett’s arms, then his legs. “How are you feeling? Do you think you got any injuries?”

“We’ll take care of you at reception. I get a free room pass a few times a month. You probably have to sleep in a guest room, though.”

“I could just take the bus back to Holly’s,” I said, my expectations on hold.

“Suit yourself.”

Following him across the campus and up to his room, it seemed obvious that he had come to terms with his situation, even if I hadn’t.

After we’d closed his door, he tossed off his sweaty jersey, at least making that shot into a laundry bag. The weather that day had been warm for November, and late afternoon sunlight gave the room a golden tint.

“This is new,” I said, gesturing toward a pull-up bar that had been installed over the bathroom doorway.

“Oh, yeah. Check it out.” He turned and backed under the bar, then pulled himself up and down more than a dozen times before plopping himself back down to his chair. His chest muscles, tightened from the exertion, glistened with sweat.

“Damn.”

“Yeah, it’s good for the guns.” He flexed his arms. As my memory flashed back to that first Polaroid he had sent me, he leaned down and removed his shoes and socks with some minor effort.

“You might as well get naked, too,” he smiled as he wheeled into the bathroom. The wide door led to an even wider bathroom and toilet with steel bars at each side. “Gimme a few minutes. I gotta empty my pee bag and stuff.”

“Well, no, since I can’t feel my dick,” he called out from the bathroom. “Besides, I got a different one, called a Texas catheter. It’s like a rubber; doesn’t go inside. Wanna see?”

“Not just yet!”

“Okay!”

Relieved that Everett had achieved a degree of patience with my ignorance, I looked around his room as I slowly undressed. Finally, once again, we could be alone together, with a closed door and quiet. But my stomach knotted. What would we do? What could we do? What did he want, desire? What were his limitations?

The amusing humming from the bathroom assured me that Everett was doing fine. Stripped down to my shorts, I nosed around at some of his books, a pile of cards from his schoolmates at Pinecrest Academy, handbooks and how-to guides for the newly handicapped. Next to them, a large shoebox tempted me. Knowing I shouldn’t snoop, nonetheless I did.

Under the shower, a built-in plastic seat with metal bars was Everett’s intended goal. Beside the toilet, a plastic bag and tube lay empty.

“Okay, this is where you can help me,” he said, reaching for his sweatpants with some difficulty as they tangled at his knees. I helped him finish, ducked back outside the bathroom to drop the sweats into the laundry basket. With a strange combination of awkward bashfulness and desire, I peeled off my shorts and socks, and stood naked in the doorway.

I fought back tears, pressing my lips together tightly, as if some stupid comment might burst out of me, some bleat of lust, pity or shame.