Ray didn’t watch the games. He’d wait for the two of us in the parking lot, drive home without speaking, drop us off in the driveway, then drive away and not come back until after curfew, long after Mom gave up and went to bed and left Dad awake and worried and me hiding in the hallway making sure that the world didn’t come to an end while Lola slept.
The morning after those nights, Mom would ask Lola if she had a good time at the game. Lola would tell Mom about every basket I scored, every foul shot I made, every time I looked at her and waved.
“Sounds like you had a good time,” Mom would say to Lola.
“Make sure your sweaty clothes aren’t on the floor,” Mom would say to me.
During our last game that year, I broke a school record. I hadn’t told anyone how close I had been to it, but Lola must have been keeping track. That night, after the game, she hobbled into our room with celebratory Little Debbie snack cakes and soda, and we stayed up late enough for Ray to come home. He had to walk past our door on the way to his room. Lola waited for him in our doorway.
“Nina has scored more baskets in one season than any player in the history of our school. We’re celebrating.”
She gave him a cake, and he stood in the doorway to our room and ate it. He nodded at me. He smelled like beer, even from across the room. There was a store in town that would sell to underage kids for an extra ten dollars. Lola waited for him to finish the cake and then hugged him around the waist. He put his arms across her back and turned his face to stone. She let go of him, and for a second, they stood looking at each other. When she gimped back across the room to the bed, he closed his eyes.
He couldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done, and he’s worked his whole life to get the punishment he thinks he deserves.
On Ray’s thirty-ninth birthday he went to jail. Not for the weekend or overnight. Jail.
“I did it,” he had said on Lola’s voice mail. “I won’t get off easy this time. I’ll get a year, maybe eighteen months, maybe two years total.”
He sounded drunk and happy with himself.
“What am I supposed to do?” Lola said to him through the phone when she and I went to visit Ray in county lockup that preceded his court date and future incarceration.
“Call Dad,” I said. “Like Ray should have done. Dad will call a lawyer.”
“Don’t you dare call Dad,” Ray yelled at the protective window, pointing at me where I stood behind Lola. “I’m a grown man. I don’t need you calling my daddy.”
Lola’s face was puffy, and her eyes were fat from crying. I probably just looked put out, like Ray was keeping me from some pressing engagement. That was my way even then, to shut out what was happening—to not deal with it.
“Don’t look sad,” Ray said to Lola. “I’m happy now.”
“Please stop, Ray,” Lola said, seeing through him even then, seeing through his stupid attempts to make himself believe that he wanted to hurt.
“I can’t stop till I’ve made it up.”
“What is there to make up? It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” Ray said, looking intensely at her.
Over the years, Lola’s memory of certain things had come back to her, but the events just before the accident were still a blur. She knew Ray blamed himself, but she never asked him why and he never told her.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she said into the prison phone. “I like who I am now. I’m this person because of that day.”
“I’m this person,” Ray said, pointing to himself in jail, “because of that day. You limped around and missed out and got picked on and hurt because of me. You turned out to be someone else. You missed out on who you could have been.”
“I’m the one who stepped in front of the car,” she said. “You’re not the one who hit me.”
She had been told she was hit by a car. Whether she actually remembers the series of events, we don’t know. She never said—and still hasn’t.
Ray didn’t accept that and after that day, he wouldn’t take visitors. Mom and Dad and I went a few times, but gave up when he refused to see us. Even though he wouldn’t see her, Lola went every day until the trial was done and Ray was moved to another facility. Lola went there, too, but he still wouldn’t see her.
She picked up Ray when his time was over. He slept on her couch for a few weeks, but the way she circled jobs for him in the paper and talked about him getting back on track and pretending like nothing had happened must have been too much pressure.
I never would have guessed in all that chaos that Nicole was pregnant and abandoned. I wish that she had told us. Given us a chance to help her. She’s younger than Ray, but more mature by far. Feisty and determined to make it on her own. I guess you have to be that way if you love someone like Ray.
I return to the kitchen and sit down on a barstool to watch the
