“Remember your logic course. Just because all assholes are straight, not all straight guys are assholes.”
“Hell yeah. I’m cool, for one. Not so much my dad.”
“You’re not giving him much slack.”
“He reeled it all in,” Marvin says, “when he tried to get rid of you.”
ChapterFourteen
“Appreciate the ride,” Walter says as Leah pulls in front of his place. We treated him to dinner and a showing at the Magic Lantern of a documentary on Bill Russell, the legendary center for the Boston Celtics of the late fifties and all of the sixties.
“Any time,” Leah says. “You know the good places.” Who’d have thought Walter was a basketball fan.
“Put it on my gravestone,” he says, opening the door. “And the next time you all have a ‘hero’ talk at your book club, add Mr. Russell to the mix. The man never backed down. You all can have your Jordans an’ LeBrons and Kobes. Give me the old-timers.”
“Big surprise you’re an old-timer’s fan,” Leah says. “What are you, like a hundred and ten?”
Walter is right about Bill Russell. According to this documentary, the guy stood for justice as much or more than any athlete of his century. The documentary inspired me; I’m going to see if I can get the group to read Second Wind. If I have trouble, Leah will push it through. I mean, Bill Russell started out in the NBA when the unwritten rule was that you kept more white guys on the court than black; when northern teams traveled to the south only to discover they needed two sets of team accommodations. Russell, arguably the best player in the world, threatened to sit out, or leave, whenever and wherever equality wasn’t embraced. Leah is a black swimmer, and while she doesn’t face that kind of discrimination, she’s aware there have been two—count ’em, two—American black Olympic gold medalists, and she knows plenty of history to understand why. When the starter gun fires, every other swimmer in the race sees second place as a win.
We watch Walter saunter up his walk, then Leah takes me home, where things have remained in flux. No one actually left after the big fight, but it’s been chilly around here for the past week and a half. I still have a room and a place at the dinner table, but Pop doesn’t speak to me unless he has to, and his wife and son are barely speaking to him. Momma and Pop are in counseling, but I’d hate to be the therapist. In the late night, I’ve heard bellowed versions of “. . . all I’ve done for that girl!” accompanied by “. . . undermining my authority,” followed by a door slamming and the sound of footsteps fading toward the living room. I have a feeling Pop is going to get tired of sleeping on the couch. The one word I hear over and over from Momma is “narcissist,” which until recently I’d never even heard. I guess the best definition is, “It’s all about me; like, all about me.” I mean, how else can you explain the fact that he doesn’t understand what a big deal finding Frankie was. The minute he heard he was safe, all he wanted was to make sure nobody related to Frankie ever got back into our lives.
When I asked Momma if things would be better if I found a place, she said, “Things will get better when Jack gets his head out of his ass, and he best speed it up. You just hang tough, sweetie.”
I think Pop believes that if he continues with the silent treatment, I’ll come around with a big apology, and I have apologized for escaping to Revel right after he grounded me to my room, but I can’t apologize for my life; if I’m going to make that one, my apology needs to be to me. My draw to my mother, and to a lesser extent, to Sheila and even Rance, was a real thing. Maybe it wasn’t good for me, but it was— and is—real. I’ve told myself a million lies, way more than I’ve told Pop—how that need wasn’t really important and how stupid I am for even having it and how I’m tough enough to live this double life.
And it’s worn me out. It’s hard enough remembering what lie you last told so you don’t rat yourself out with the next one, but it’s hard-times-ten making yourself believe that what you want to be true is true when it is so clearly not.
Marvin is still rooting for the crack in the family fabric to split wide open. “Every other weekend with him would be just about right,” he says.
We’re at a back booth in Morty’s—Wiz, Walter, and me—having early—as in before school—breakfast. “Official business,” Wiz said when we ordered. “Eat up. Could be our last meal on the state’s dime.”
I say, “Are you in trouble?”
“Let’s just say it’s possible I could have thought this out better,” he says, smiling. “Officer Graham knows Frankie’s reappearance isn’t legit, but he’s playing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I’m supposed to talk with the regional supervisor at work later. We came up through the system together and she thinks a lot like I do, but this won’t pass the smell test for her. Jeff Humphries from the paper is hounding her for answers I won’t give him. That guy can smell a rat.”
“What are you telling him?” Walter asks.
“Stonewalling with my original story: Got a text from an unknown party, went downstairs, found Frankie in the lobby, tried to locate his absent mother, and when we couldn’t, placed him in receiving care.” Wiz laughs. “Way too pat for Humphries.”
“Bet he gets tired of hearing that,” I say.
Wiz nods. “We’ve done a faster-than-ever home study, got an emergency license. The caseworker is assigned, and we’re setting up therapy. This would be a good time for a local serial killer or a hotel fire to give Humphries something else to do.”
Walter runs his face over
