Our Heart (29 page)

It was an eerie feeling as two separate times of my life converged. The swing had come to a stop. I was both here and back at Matt’s reliving that night all over again. One moment I could see the backdoor to my grandparents’ house, then it was gone, replaced by the basement at Matt’s. I was no longer here on the swing,
nor was I standing in the kitchen of my present,
but
instead,
a specter watching a scene from my memory unfold once more. I was my younger self and my current self, both at the same time. I felt and saw all the same things I did then, but I also had a different perspective, and my feelings were fresh and intensified in my current self.

Grandpa Jake paused, as he reached the bottom landing. He pulled his shoulders back, trying to stand a little taller. He now held his fedora in both hands, and I could see them shake. The room had become silent as the three of us waited for my grandpa. He took a deep breath then turned to face us. The look on his face and his red eyes said all that needed to be conveyed. My heart did a flip-flop and all of the air rushed out of me. I couldn’t breathe and, as I stared back at him, the tears welled up in his eyes. I jumped out of my chair, knocking it over, oblivious to the pain where the chair hit my shin. I moved toward him
like I was drugged, my feet not wanting to follow the signals from my brain. I knew that something very bad had happened. Someone had been seriously hurt and, by the look on his face, it was my mom or dad. When I got near him and could see his pain close up, my stomach sank and I began to cry. He stepped towards me and opened his arms, reaching out to me. My entire body convulsed with sobs, and the tears streaked down my face. I could not make it the last two steps, and he came to me. As he wrapped his arms around me I managed to choke out, “Who?” in between sobs and gasps for air.

Grandpa Jake pulled me closer and held on to me tight. With a voice, barely audible and racked with his own personal sorrow he responded, “Your mom….car…accident….she’s…she’s…gone.” I held on to him as tight as I could. The two of us cried together, until the numbness of great loss deadened the tears. We hung on to each other, neither of us wanting to relinquish the small comfort of our hug. Somehow, he managed to get us both up the stairs. Matt’s mom, through her own agonized sobbing, helped me with my coat and wiped my face with a warm washcloth. The rest of the night was pretty much a blur, me sitting in the living room of my grandparents’ house, waiting for my father to come home, and later, falling into a dead man’s sleep, still waiting for him to show up.

People would hug me from out of nowhere for the next several weeks, always telling me how sorry they were. They said and did the usual things people do during times of grief. One comment always brought more irritation than any of the others, “At least she didn’t suffer.” I wanted to scream back at them, “How do you know?” I imagine that most people think they are really helping, but for me, I would have preferred not to hear it or any of the other standard phrases of compassion they offered. All I wanted to do was find a dark place and hide away.

My dad was “out of it” for lack of a better way to put it. He hadn’t spoken ten words to me in the last week. He finally managed to make it home the next morning after the night of the accident. He didn’t say anything to anyone and just motioned for me to come with him. We walked home together in silence. All that day, he sat at the kitchen table drinking one cup of coffee after another. The phone would occasionally ring, but he wouldn’t answer it. Later that night, I saw a bottle of whisky on the table, gone was the coffee cup. Not long after the funeral, the bottles started to pile up. I tried to sit down and talk to him one morning. It was a couple of days after the funeral and all he did was stare right through me, as if I weren’t even there. Grandpa Jake seemed to be the only one who could get any response out of him, and Grandma Sarah did her best to make sure we had food to eat and the house stayed picked up.

One thing would not stop running around in my mind, and I finally found the courage to ask my dad that morning, “Where was Mom going? Why was she driving so late at night?” The pain that raced across his face is something I will never forget. In his eyes, I saw a tremendous amount hurt etched there. I had hit upon the demon that was haunting him as well. All he could do was raise his glass, with hands shaking uncontrollably, and ever so slightly move his head from side to side. He didn’t have the ability to answer me then, and I never found the courage to ever ask him again. After nearly a month, he and I started moving forward, trying to make our way back to a much altered, somewhat normal life together. We even started to talk to one another, but many nights I would, more often than not, find him glassy eyed and in deep conversation with
Jack Daniels
or
Johnnie Walker
. I began spending more of my time and nights with my grandparents. I was losing my dad, and the pain was every bit as deep as the total, sudden loss of Mom had ever been. I could do nothing but watch as my father slipped further and further away, choosing to live his life inside a bottle of whisky.

My fifteenth birthday passed without much fanfare, no parties…no father. My grandparents made supper for me, and we shared the cake and presents without my dad. He eventually showed up long after midnight and without a clue. I would find moments when my dad would be somewhat normal, or as normal as I could expect. We could do things together, mow the grass, watch TV, or do laundry, but our conversation was never again meaningful between us. As long as the subject matter was kept to the mundane things like the weather or sports we could communicate. But if I ever directed it towards Mom or more serious matters, Dad would get that look on his face, and I knew with certainty, his new friends Jack and Johnnie would be paying a visit later.

I had so many questions and no one to answer them. I tried a few times to talk to Grandpa Jake and Grandma Sarah. They did their best, many times telling me to give my father some time and to keep trying; I shouldn’t give up my efforts to talk to him. My father needed it desperately, even if he didn’t know it. I gave it every attempt, during the sober times, to keep the conversation away from Mom. The sober times became fewer and farther in between, seeming to disappear altogether by the time school started in the fall. I threw myself into football and then basketball over the winter. Surprisingly, my grades improved, and I found solace in my friends. I participated in as many activities as I could, which helped me keep my mind off of Dad. Slowly, my smile returned, and I even found a way to laugh again. Dad and I spent a happy Saturday together watching the Iowa game on television. It was the closest thing to being us again, and it felt like maybe we had turned a corner. I started to believe my dad was coming around, but then, shortly after Christmas, things went downhill.

As the first anniversary of Mom’s death came closer, Dad turned back to the bottle more and more. I chose to spend more time with my grandparents, rather than face the life at home. It was hard being the parent to my dad. It was getting old, picking up after him and dealing with him in his drunken state. By Valentine’s Day, I think I had more clothes at my grandparents’ place then I did at home. They even fixed up one of the rooms upstairs
for me. Dad and I went days at a time without any interaction. In a way, it may have been what eventually did him in. Alone, with only the booze, he drank even more, until he began missing days at work. Eventually, in March, they fired him after he declined to go to rehab. I’m sure there was probably more to the story, but I had come to the point where my sympathy for my dad had been replaced. I was hurriedly walking down the path towards rejection and anger towards my father.

I kept my head down and avoided the stares that came my way from all of the people in the know about my dad and his problems. If it wasn’t for Matt, I think I might have pulled back from the outside world too, but he kept me focused on the here and now, dragging me to parties and always trying to fix me up with one of the girls at school.

Having a father, who was a drunk, curbed any desire I had to explore alcohol during my high school years. After Dad lost his job, he disappeared from town for nearly a week. I remember after the second night, my grandfather started driving around looking for him; he wasn’t anywhere in town. I could tell Grandpa Jake and Grandma were getting more worried as the days went by. The tension in the air became thick with the expectation of what the next phone call we received would entail. It didn’t have to be said; we all somehow knew that my dad would be somewhere, dead drunk, and we all hoped it was the
drunk
and not the
dead
. Towards the end of the sixth day, his car pulled up out front of my grandparents’ house. We were in the middle of our supper when we heard the sound of Dad’s familiar truck engine.

None of us wanted to be the first to move from the table, relieved and afraid all at the same time. We didn’t have to; Dad opened the front door and made his way down the hall and into the kitchen, where we were eating. He didn’t sway or bang against the walls; his footsteps fell with more of a purpose and, when he walked into the kitchen, his eyes were as clear as I’d seen them in a long time. His face still had strangeness about it, but he was smoothly shaved and wearing clean clothes. He didn’t sit down. He chose to remain standing and faced all of us.

I could tell that the words he spoke where well rehearsed, over and over, until they could be said without much emotion or feeling put into them. In two quick minutes, he let us know that he was moving away from town and I would be staying with his parents until he came back. He apologized, first to me, and then to Grandma Sarah and Grandpa Jake, but he let it be known that, if he stayed here, he wouldn’t be able to get on with his life. With the only true emotion I saw, his left hand nervously jingled the coins in his pocket, as he told us he was moving so he could make a fresh start. When Dad had said that, I felt a hurt more intense than the pain of my mom’s death. Leaving me here meant that I was not to be part of his fresh start. Even though we hadn’t been much of a family this past, year he was still my dad and I never imagined a life without him in it, even if it was a troubled life. To hear that he needed a life without me hurt worse than all of my past pains, put together. The tears had already started to fall from my Grandma’s eyes.

When he was done with the prepared speech, he asked Grandpa if they could talk alone outside. They spent the next half hour out in the driveway. Grandpa continually rubbed the back of his neck with one hand or the other, as my father continued his speech, this time with much more animation than what had transpired in the kitchen. His face was full of emotion, and his hand gestures emphasized every word he spoke. Grandma and I stood by the window, looking out, both of us silent. We would catch a word here and there, but we stayed inside. Grandma kept one arm around my waist and used her free hand to continually wipe her tears away.

By the end of the week, my dad had loaded his truck with his personal belongings. We barely spoke to one another those final few days. It was if he’d already left and didn’t want anything here to keep him from his destination. I was angry and not about to even try to stop him. I wanted him to leave, so I could get back to my friends and the things that were the most important to me. The day he left, I stood in front of my house and watched him back the car down the drive and onto the street. Neither of us had said goodbye, only his, “Take care,” and my, “Okay.” He didn’t wave as he put the car in drive and headed down the road. I didn’t offer one either. When he was out of sight, I let the first of what would be many tears, roll down my cheeks.

Over the next couple months, we moved some of the furniture from my house to my grandparents’. Somehow, we found a way to make most of it fit in the clutter of the basement. There were a couple pieces of furniture that Grandma found a spot for upstairs. Some of the boxes they packed they stored away in the space over the garage. It was decided that I would take my Grandparents’ room upstairs with the full bath. I was given the green light by Grandma to decorate the room any way I saw fit, within the scope of decency that was. By the time my junior year started, my house had been sold, and I was officially an orphan. My father hadn’t contacted me once in the last four months, and I no longer had any tears to cry for him. Life moved on, and I found laughter in my friends and comfort in my grandparents.

Sitting on the swing, one thing was clear to me, Allison had given me reason to believe I could be close to someone again. She had brought out more feelings of happiness in the past few months than I had felt in the last three years. I didn’t feel quite as lost as I once had, and I was beginning to see how my life had been going along on autopilot for too long. She brought out the true smile, the one that came from within. I’d been moving through life with a plastered smile on my face. I had found a way to avoid all the concerned questions that might have been directed my way. Smile, but not too much, just enough so people would believe you were doing okay. They couldn’t help it; in a small town, everyone wanted to know everything about each other. Who needs the soap operas on television to get a daily fix of drama? You only had to look as far as the neighbor across the street.

I was beginning to wonder what the future might hold in store for Allison and me. I knew with every fiber in my soul that I wanted to pursue the music I loved, but…Allison was becoming more important to me every day. A couple of the guys on the football team had approached me about singing with them in a band, and I thought that maybe I would…for now. I’d hoped to hear more from Justin’s band, but so far it looked like they were content to go with just their current members.

Time crawled by, as I swung back and forth waiting for Allison to come home. I’d been out here for a long time and could tell it was getting fairly late in the night. Up and down the street, the traffic noise became less, and the lights throughout the neighborhood went out, one by one, as neighbors called it a night and headed off to bed. I knew that it had to be well past midnight, and I had an early practice in the morning. I was feeling low, not getting a chance to see Allison, but I needed to go to bed. I figured maybe Allison wasn’t coming home, probably spending the night with either Dani or Melissa. I eased myself out of the swing and went back into the house. The kitchen light over the sink was the only light still on. Grandma and Grandpa had long since gone to bed. Tomorrow was a new day, and I would make sure to spend as much of it with Allison as I could.

It was hard to stay focused on football the next morning; my thoughts were about Allison, and it showed on the field. I had my worst day ever, throwing to everyone, but not who I was supposed to. I fumbled a couple of the snaps from center. By the end of practice, I was on the sidelines, next to the coach, while Matt had taken my place with the starters. I didn’t care; it gave me more time to concentrate on Allison and the apology I badly needed to give her today. I was glad when the coach finally called practice, and we all headed to the showers. He asked me on the way to the locker room if there was something other than football on my mind today. I honestly answered him, yes. I said it would be taken care of today and I’d be one hundred and ten percent tomorrow. He just nodded and moved ahead of me to talk to one of the other players.

It was ten o’clock by time I got back home. The heat index was rising fast, and the coach canceled the afternoon practice because of it. I stopped at Allison’s house, knocked on the door, but no one answered. Frustrated I’d let things slip with her, I plodded back to my house to sit and wait once more. I could always call Dani or Melissa’s house to find her, but I didn’t want it to come out wrong on the phone. I really wanted to see her in person. I had to wait until nearly two o’clock for her to make it back home. I spent most of my time on the front porch with my football playbook, though I didn’t get much of it memorized. I was glad most of the plays were the same as last year and only a few new ones were added while others had been tweaked, here and there.

Allison was walking home from, what I guessed to be Dani’s, based on the direction she came from. She saw me sitting on the porch and picked up her pace. A big smile lit up her whole face and my heart was once again swept away.

“Hey, good looking,” she playfully called to me as she made her way up the steps of my front porch. She tossed her bag from the mall on the empty chair and fell into my lap, nearly knocking over my iced tea. I barely managed to scoot my playbook out of the way, before she sat on it too. She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me one of the best, “I haven’t seen you in awhile” kisses, ever. I hugged her tight and kissed her with just as much enthusiasm.

It was hard, but I broke away so that I could say what had been on my mind and eating away at my insides. I looked up into her eyes and said with sincerity, “I’m sorry that I’ve been putting football ahead of you. I hope you forgive me for being such a jerk. I want you to know how important you are to me, even if that means quitting football. You are where my heart and mind want to be.”

I could see in her eyes that I had touched her deeply, and she swallowed hard a couple of times before she said anything back to me. I saw the wheels clicking inside, and I was more than just a little worried about her reaction and what she was thinking. I didn’t need to be.

When she finally spoke, it was in a soft voice, and she held my gaze with her tantalizing eyes. “You don’t know how much that means to me, and I feel the same way about you, but…if I’m going to be dating the starting quarterback of the football team, I’m prepared to cut him some slack, so he doesn’t get his butt sacked!” She emphasized the last part and gave me a smile that was one hundred percent mischievous. Her grin just kept getting bigger and bigger as I sat there dumbfounded, with my mouth hanging open and not being able to say a thing. She relished every moment of it and then started tickling my sides, leaning in close to my ear and whispering, “I’m dating a football stud.” Through her laughter, she started kissing my face until I began to laugh too.

The only thing running through my head was that I had found the absolute, undeniable, best girlfriend in the world. I attacked back at her sides with a vengeance until both of us were laughing hysterically. I didn’t have to ask her how she knew about me starting at quarterback. She must have heard it from Dani, who must have gotten the news from Matt. Coach Harmon would have told Matt the same day he told me.

While I played quarterback, it was Matt who was my primary receiver. We completed several great pass-plays together, and I could tell he was enjoying the receiver position as much as I did the quarterback spot. I started to visualize the two of us making the greatest throw and catch ever to win the State championship game. There would be two beautiful girls waiting for us in the end zone, unable to control their excitement, ready to celebrate our triumph. I didn’t believe my life could get any better, and I kissed Allison with all of my heart.

When school finally started, Allison and I tried to work out our class schedules so we could find some time to see each other during the day. With her being a junior and me a senior, the only time we had together, during the whole day, was our lunch period. I would find creative ways to make sure I could stop by her locker or walk with her to her next class. I was getting a lot of looks from the other girls; some because they found out I was the starting quarterback and others because I was off the market. Allison got her own share of stares, and it wasn’t just because she was the new girl and extremely pretty. We would share our experiences at night, laughing about it together as we did homework, or just taking it easy and enjoying our time with each other. By the end of the second week of school, Allison had been firmly entrenched into the circle of friends, which included Dani and Melissa. She got along with everyone and was widely accepted and liked by all. She enjoyed several conversations with the other girls about dating me, especially the one with Jenny, who I’d most recently dated in the past year.

It was Friday, the day of our first football game, and I was more nervous than I let on. We opened the season against the defending conference champs. The coach was working us hard at practice and, by nine o’clock at night, it was all I could do to stay awake and concentrate on Allison. She never once complained, and I never talked football when we were alone…unless she brought it up first. I woke up early on Friday and took a long, hot shower. It was a tradition at school that all players wear dress slacks, long sleeve shirts, and ties to school on game days. There was going to be a pep rally in the afternoon so our principal could give all the students his cursory speech on good behavior and sportsmanship. It was also Coach Harmon’s chance to shine, as he pumped up the crowd for support and introduced this year’s football team. Matt, Tyler Kinston, and I had been voted team captains by the rest of the team. We were going to be the last three introduced, and each of us would have to say a few words.

I know I spent most of the day with a perpetual blush on my face. The guys rode me hard about being named captain, and the girls kept telling me how great I looked. All the while, Allison managed to keep close by with a protective arm wrapped around me. I was tired of waiting and wanted to get the season started. The pep rally began at two o’clock, and everyone packed the gymnasium. After the band played the school song for the umpteenth time, the principal stepped to the microphone and began his speech. For the first time ever, he kept it fairly short and got a resounding applause for it.

The coach went next, and he gave the crowd everything he had. By the time the football team was introduced to the assembly, the students were up on their feet and getting louder by the minute.

Matt was the first of the captains to be introduced and all he said was, “Go Eagles!” while raising his arms in the air and pumping his fists. That sent the crowd into an even higher level of enthusiasm.

Tyler was introduced next ,and he attempted to say something funny, but it was lost in the noise of the gym. He could tell that it didn’t go over, so he decided to do what Matt did. He raised his arms high, hands made into fists and both of his index fingers pointed skyward, to signify number one. With his arms held high, he lowered his head until the noise level started to drop as everyone waited to see and hear what he was going to do next. When he raised his head to look at everybody he had a grin that only the devil would appreciate. He punctuated the look on his face by saying, “The Eagles will be eating Dawg tonight!”

The crowd burst out in cheers and someone started chanting, “Dawg food, Dawg food,” until everyone had picked it up and they were stomping on the old wood bleachers and yelling it out in unison. The football players were eating it up and egging the crowd to ever higher, intensity. Even the principal had gotten sucked in as he swayed side to side with a smile on his face. The cheering continued for the better part of the next five minutes, and I stood patiently off to the side, waiting for the coach to introduce me. I had many thoughts running through my head, none of them good. What was I going to say? Would I bomb up there?

The coach stepped up to the microphone. “Every year before the first game, all of the players are asked to vote on the three individuals they believe exemplify the qualities needed to be a strong leader, both on the field and off. As a coach, I sometimes see things differently than the players, but they are the workhorses of a successful season and deserve to be led by those who they have the greatest faith in. For the first time, in my fifteen years as the head coach, I couldn’t agree more with the choices of this team, and I believe that these three players will show the leadership expected of them, come game time.”

As the coach talked, the gymnasium became quiet, and my stomach felt like it had gone from butterflies to bats. I had no idea where the coach was going with this extra speech and why he waited to give it before introducing me. I felt flushed and tried taking several deep breaths to calm myself. I already felt the pressure of talking to the crowd; now I had to follow the coach and the impact he was having over the audience.