I pat Walter on the back. “You do know,” I whisper, “Nancy’s not what most guys would call, like, a catch.”
He gives me a hard glare. “People can’t help how they look,” he says.
Nancy stands on the sidewalk, a smile on her face, holding the Big Gulp in one hand and a Quik Mart cinnamon roll in the other. “Actually,” I say, “to a certain extent . . .”
“You be kind. Under all that trouble, she looks a lot like you.”
“Hey, Nancy!” I call to her.
She sets the giant plastic cup on the sidewalk, carefully removes the straw, balances the half-eaten cinnamon roll on the lid, and opens her arms as I cross the street to her. “Baby! You were great!”
“I was,” I say, “but you only heard about it.”
“I got here for the last game,” she says. “You must not have seen me.”
In deference to Walter I pass on the opportunity to tell her how impossible that would have been, but reflexively roll my eyes. Muscle memory.
“I meant to be here,” she says.
I give in. “I know.”
“Can we go somewhere?” she asks. “Walter, you’d buy us a late lunch, huh?”
“Gotta get,” I say. “Momma’s making celebration burgers for me and the team and . . . well, we’ve got Frankie.”
“Where’s Sheila?”
“Wherever Sheila goes.”
“Want us to take him?” she says. “Social services doesn’t need to know.”
I shoot Walter a quick now-you-really-owe-me look. “Naw, we’ve got him.”
“Baby, I really wish . . .”
“Nancy, if you want to spend time with me, make my games.”
“There should be mandatory visitation,” she says. “Them social service bastards.”
“There was a visitation schedule. You made those less often than my games. And them social service bastards don’t have anything to say about it anymore.”
“Maybe so, but it’s not fair. Your foster parents could . . .”
I punch her shoulder lightly. “Nancy. Come see me play.” I nod to Walter. “You’re free, friend. Go make memories.”
Walter winks and gently takes Nancy’s elbow.
“I feel for Frankie,” Marvin says, “but, whew!”
“I know,” I tell him, “but he’ll only be here a little while, and if we stay vigilant, we can sidestep the olfactory assault.”
It’s past midnight. The team has been here, wolfed down some burgers, and split. I weathered Pop’s repeated admonitions about letting my emotions affect my play, and now Marvin and I are digging in the fridge.
“Man,” he says, “I still don’t know how you survived your family.”
“It’s a wonder,” I say. “But it’s not as bad when you don’t have to count on them.”
“But you did have to count on them, I mean, back before.”
I say, “According to my therapist, they counted on me. I was ‘parentified.’ And pretty much your parents saved me.”
Marvin smiles. “You saved me. Every time you got sent back home, I’d pray your mom would screw up before my birthday. I’d put in my order for castanets or art supplies, and if you were still gone I’d get some kind of ball and a closet full of Adidas gear.”
I glance through the kitchen doorway at Pop laying out the rules for Frankie. Along with all else, Frankie keeps outrageous hours.
“It’s the curse of your gender.”
Marvin’s watching Pop, too. “He thinks I’m gay.”
“I know. He asks me all the time. ‘Does Marvin have a secret friend?’”
“Next time he irritates me, I’m gonna come out.”
“You’re not gay.”
“I know,” he says, “but I’ll come out anyway.”
“You think Pop doesn’t like you.”
“He likes me,” Marvin says. “He doesn’t like who I am. It should be the other way around.”
“What’s the difference?”
“If he liked who I am, you know, the things I really care about, he would automatically like me. But he has this utterly primitive idea of what a guy should be. He knows he can’t change who I am and he’s too thickheaded to know he’ll be blown away by that someday. No lie, I’m gonna rock.”
He will.
“You’re the kid Dad always wanted,” he says, “if you forget you’re a girl. I love you like a real sister because when you’re getting the lecture you just got, I’m not on the receiving end.” He elbows me. “You just want to be sure he doesn’t find about all the sneaking around.”
Marvin’s right. Pop knows I see Nancy at my games; he doesn’t like it, but what can he do? He doesn’t know how often I sneak to see Nancy or Sheila, or even Rance once in a while when I’m feeling sorry for him. I’m as two-faced with Pop as I am with them. It’s not easy to be honest when nobody wants you to be doing what you’re not going to stop doing. Momma knows way more than she lets on, but she gets it, so we have an unspoken deal.
It’s only a couple of days before Sheila shows. I’m sitting on the front steps untying my shoes after a long, slow run when she steps out of the passenger’s side of a Nissan pickup that looks like it should have machine guns in the back. Yvonne sits behind the wheel, cigarette dangling from her mouth, staring ahead.
Sheila looks a little contrite because even she knows it’s not cool to leave your five-year-old for however long you want, with people who could report you with a phone call. But she also knows Momma and Pop want as little involvement with social services as possible. Momma says it’s best to have a relationship with Sheila for Frankie’s sake, and report only if things get dangerous. If we reported every time, he might bounce in and out like Sheila did all her life. Left to his own devices, Pop would put out a contract on anyone named Boots, figure some way to get Frankie into a loving home that isn’t his, and be done with it. Truth is, if Frankie were here full-time, going head-to-head with Pop’s controlling ways, he’d take a dump in Pop’s sock drawer.
“Hey, hot stuff, is the rat still
