Page 8

“P lease, Dad.Please?”

“No, Kasia. No, I’m sorry, but no.”

“Please?” I tried again, but I had known that it was a lost cause even before I’d asked the first time. “I have to because he’s paying me…” I needed the money for the car, but I also really wanted to go.

“I don’t begrudge you doing it,” my dad said, and I knew that was true. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t feel guilty, though.

“Tyler set everything up. We have a special pass so we can go right to the front and security can meet us at the car to help if we need it. We can also leave early if we want, if you get tired.” I had a lot of good arguments and I rolled through every one of them, but nothing swayed him. He didn’t answer but I knew what his silence meant: no.

I finally wound down. “I can’t imagine being there without you,” I said. “I can’t imagine seeing the Woodsmen for the first time and we won’t be together.” My voice had started to break but I steadied it. “We’ve always watched together. This is such an amazing chance! Please, Daddy.”

“I should have taken you when you were a little girl,” he told me, but now I was the one who stayed silent. I hadn’t ever really understood back then—not only about missing Woodsmen games, but about why our lives operated under limitations that the other kids at school didn’t seem to have.

“Please?” I tried, one last time.

But the answer was no, and that didn’t change. As I left by myself, I tried to feel excited rather than guilty. I shook my head as I drove because I also felt angry at both of us, him for not coming and me for failing, again. I’d always tried hard but I’d never been able to make him happy.

“Pass is on the table,” Tyler had written to me, the same words as he’d sent before, so I stopped at the condo complex on my way to the stadium and hurried toward his unit on the path behind the row of bushes. It was a beautiful day but the sunlight was blocked by the hedge and—

“Sweet Jesus!” Fear spurred me to jump nearly high as one of those plants when I saw the figure standing in the shadows of Tyler’s building. “Cody, why are you here now? It’s Saturday!”

“I’m setting up a dispenser unit for a woman in this block. Special delivery.” He grinned. “I didn’t expect to run into you either, No-Kasia. Do you want one of my special deliveries, too?”

I certainly did not. “Get out of here. It’s bad enough to see you on your regular day. You don’t have to ruin my weekend, too.”

He laughed like I was joking, which I was not.

I stared at him, wishing (as always) that he would disappear, but he only stood there grinning. I didn’t want to go to Tyler’s condo and pique his interest in my activities. So…

“Bye,” I said pointedly as I swiveled, and I went to my office instead. I stood next to the window and waited for Cody to come back down to the parking lot but he didn’t appear and his delivery truck wasn’t parked there, either. After a while, I couldn’t waste any more time. I had to get to the game, so I ran up to the condos again, looking both ways to check for lurkers before I opened Tyler’s door. The pass was right where he’d said it would be, a rectangle of bright orange with the Woodsmen logo of the crossed axes on the back.

And next to that, hanging on a chair, was a white jersey with lettering in the same beautiful shade of orange. It was part of the home game uniform and I held it up and saw the writing on the back of this, too: Hennessy, 62.

Was it supposed to be for me? It was one of the nice ones made of thick, quality fabric that was almost as good as the actual jerseys that the players wore. It was much too small to fit Tyler. Maybe it was supposed to have been for his mother? Or was I supposed to use it now and then return it? I didn’t have time to stand around and ponder, because I wanted to get over to the stadium and meet her there. I looked at it again, holding it up to my body, and then I pulled off the sweatshirt I wore and put it on. I ran back down to my car to drive as fast as I could and…

Stupid traffic! I was plenty early for the actual start, but so were plenty of other people. Tailgating began hours before the whistle blew to kick off the action on the field. That was what I’d heard, anyway, but I’d never actually participated. We had never even been in the area when there was a game and it was crazier than the last time I’d been here for Fan Day, with people absolutely everywhere. Eventually, I did make the turn onto the long driveway, and then my pass allowed me to keep going farther and farther until I was practically up to the main doors. Except those weren’t open yet and I was directed around to the side, to another entrance that didn’t seem like it was for normal fans. I straightened my Hennessy jersey and felt special.

“Kasia and Jerry Decker,” the security guard at that door said, when she scanned the pass Inow carried.

“Just Kasia,” I answered. Yes, my dad should have been here, too. I kept thinking that as another guard escorted me inside, but I was so excited by this point that I was close to jumping up and down. I was in Woodsmen Stadium. On game day. The noise of everything happening in this giant building reached me even here, down in some kind of subterranean—

Sweet Jesus. A door opened in the hallway in front of us and Malachi Hubbard, the best punt returner in professional football, walked out of it wearing his uniform, ready to represent the best team in the world.

“Miss?”

I realized that I was clutching the security guard’s arm. “Sorry,” I told her. “This is really exciting.”

“I understand,” she said, grinning. “It’s hard to believe they’re real. Who did you know to get a field pass?”

“What?” I stared at her. “What do I have?”

She pointed at the paper that I was clutching, but trying not to crumple because I would be putting it in my autograph book. “That’s where we’re heading right now, down to the field. We’re going to walk through the tunnel…are you ok?”

I nodded although no respiration was currently happening and I didn’t think that my heart was beating, either. Somehow, I managed to continue moving forward, and the noise got louder. There were so many voices, people yelling, calling out names, laughing. Then we were in a tunnel and it was the real deal: it was the one I’d seen from a distance on the stadium tours I’d taken and the one I’d watched countless Woodsmen players emerge from on game day. And now I was walking through it.

“It’s ok,” the guard told me, but she was nodding sympathetically as if she understood my overwhelming emotions. “We’ll stay on this side of the field, where the Woodsmen are.”

On the field. I was on the field. Yes, I’d seen the players on Fan Day, and yes, I’d been even closer to them at the practice facility when I’d gone to lunch there. But now there was green under my feet and this was…it was…

“Kasia.” A ball flew through the air in a slow arc toward me and on instinct, I caught it. “Where’s your dad?” Tyler jogged over, frowned, and took the ball back. “Why are you crying? Did something happen to him?”

I shook my head and cupped my hands over my nose and mouth, fully aware that this was nothing like when Shay Galton cried. “I’m excited,” I croaked. She had spoken in a pretty quaver, while I sounded more like a frog.

“You’re that excited?” he asked, and now I nodded. “I bet my mother has tissues. She always does.” He put his hand on my shoulder and walked me over to a lady seated in a wheelchair and wearing a large brace around her leg, which stuck out in front of her. “Mom,” he called, and she turned and smiled. I saw where he’d gotten it, because hers was just the same, like she was spreading sunshine.

“She’s all right,” he said, when her expression turned concerned. “This is Kasia and she really loves the Woodsmen. Where’s your father?” he asked, speaking slowly like my crying had addled me.

“He’s at home,” I answered, and then I told Tyler’s mom, “Hello.” She introduced herself as Gail Hennessy.

“You call her ‘Miss Gail,’” he instructed. “It’s polite in Georgia.” His mother told him that it wasn’t polite to tell people what their manners should be, but I was glad because I hadn’t known it. She handed me a tissue, which I also needed.

“How about a picture?” a photographer asked, and then frowned a little as he saw my condition.

No, I wasn’t camera ready, but I also wouldn’t be posing with Tyler ever again. I scooted out of the range of the shot and he knelt down next to his mother. They both lit up with their amazing smiles.

“Watch her,” he told his mom, and then ran off onto the field. That was wrong, though, because it was supposed to be the opposite. I was here to help her, not the other way around.

“Come here, baby,” she told me, smiling again. I knelt next to her chair like her son had. “I remember when I saw Reba in concert. I cried like this, too.” She hugged me over the armrest.

“Sorry,” I said. “I got overwhelmed.”

Miss Gail handed me another tissue. “You’re fine,” she said. “It is exciting down here.”

It really was. I stayed next to her and we talked about her trip and about her injury, and I pointed out the various players as we watched Tyler. It wasn’t too long before it was time for us to leave the sidelines and luckily another guard came over to show us the way, because it was like a maze in the lower part of the stadium. I saw way more than I ever had on all the Fan Day tours, which I now realized must have included only the tiniest smidgen of what went on here. It was overwhelmingly exciting, and I wished so much that my dad would have come. I took pictures, but it wasn’t the same. He shouldn’t have missed this.

Miss Gail was thinking that, too. “I was looking forward to meeting your father,” she mentioned as we went.

“I couldn’t convince him to come.” We got on the elevator and I positioned myself so that no one could bump against her leg without taking me out, first. Before we went to our seats, though, she wanted to go into the bathroom to “freshen up.”

“Let’s see what I have in here,” she told me, and opened her purse. It was clear, as per stadium regulations, and I could see that she had a lot in there. “Would you like a mint?” I took one and thanked her. “Why did your father need to be convinced? Tyler tells me that y’all are big football fans.”

“We’re big Woodsmen fans,” I agreed. I found myself saying more as she passed out makeup from the pouch that she found under the box of mints.

“He said that he was too tired to come, but that’s not really why.” I dabbed concealer around my nose because I was very red there. “He has this thing about enjoying himself.”

“He doesn’t want to have a good time?” She passed me an eyeliner pencil.

“He does, but he doesn’t think that he can. It was always hard for me to understand,” I said. “When I was a kid, we were doing ok with money. Not rolling in it, but he had a good job and we didn’t have a lot of expenses. That was because we never did anything. We never went anywhere or bought anything, but I don’t think that you have to spend a lot to have fun.”

“No, you certainly don’t.” She took back the pencil and handed over a tube of mascara.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me using your stuff?” I asked, and she said no, no, to go right ahead. “He feels guilty, which I can understand. I feel guilty right now about being here and seeing all this when he’s missing it. He’s thinking about my mom, his wife. She passed away when I was really little.”

“That’s too bad.” She seemed upset so I tried to reassure her.

“I don’t remember her,” I said, because it really did seem to make people feel better to hear that.

But not Miss Gail. “Oh, I’m sorry. My mother passed when Tyler was a baby and I think about her all the time. I wish that you had some memories to hold on to.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I wish I remembered, too. We have a painting of her in my dad’s bedroom and I think of that instead of the real person. You know, like she was just a flat image rather than a mother who was here, talking to me in Polish and forgetting where she put her sunglasses, doing real things.” I looked at myself in the mirror and then asked, “Am I ok now?”

“You’re a beautiful girl,” she said. “Just lovely.”

“Thank you.” I looked down at the Hennessy jersey I wore. “Um, do you think that I should give this back?”

“What? No, Ty left that for you. Let’s get to our seats.”

I held the door and then I stayed there to allow a path for her among the other fans. More and more people were showing up because the main doors had been opened for everyone now. We met up with the helpful guard who showed us to the little platform where there was room for Miss Gail’s chair and also a seat for me. We were so close to the field that I couldn’t believe it.

“Would you like some earplugs for later?” she suggested, taking two pairs from her purse. “Tyler said that it gets very loud in here.”

“Not right now.” I wasn’t sure if I would use them; I wanted to soak up everything. “They’ll be cheering for him as a Woodsmen now instead of booing him as a Seal, so it might be easier to listen to.”

“He had a difficult preseason even with the new jersey on,” she said quietly.

No one here had booed him, as far as I’d been able to hear on the TV broadcast, but they hadn’t been happy with his play so far. “I think he’ll be great,” I assured her. “I know how much he’s been going over the playbook and he’s been meeting a lot with the tight ends’ coach and the offensive coordinator, too. And I also know that he talked a few times with Kayden Matthews, the quarterback. Kayden’s wife owns a bar and I suggested that Tyler go there to hang out some. It really does seem like they’re getting along better now and I think that will help how he’s playing.”

She seemed surprised by my level of involvement, but I had asked a lot of questions as Tyler and I played poker. He had told me once that I needed to ask better questions and then he would answer, but I found that persistence had paid off. Once he’d gotten into a habit of telling me things, he kept on going, and he listened to what I said in return.

“I’m not surprised how he started off on the wrong foot. Ty was always like that with people at first,” she said. “When he was a boy, we had to move fairly frequently, for work and for…other reasons. Whenever he started at a new school, he would get into a fight. Every time.” She shook her head. “I would warn the teachers that it was going to happen and it did. Every time,” she said again. “He was afraid they wouldn’t like him.”

“So he fought them to make friends?”

Miss Gail smiled. “It was more that he was getting in the first lick,” she explained. “You know, hurting them, literally, before they could hurt his feelings. He was such a sensitive little thing.”

We both looked down at the field, where her sensitive son looked as large and tough as an ice-breaking ship.

“It got better when he started playing football,” she went on. “He was always so fast! You wouldn’t believe it now, looking at me, but I ran track in high school. I was a sprinter.”

“Maybe you could again—not sprint,” I corrected myself, “but you could work back up to running. Or maybe you could go for walks, which would also be great,” I added, because she seemed very skeptical. “My dad should get out and do more. He’s supposed to but we’re both afraid of him falling while he’s by himself.”

“Tyler mentioned that he has some trouble with getting around.”

“He does. I wish I could be there to help him, but I have to work and I’m trying to finish school. I was planning to go on to law school, too.” I had been thinking a lot about that, though. It made sense for me to quit spending so much time studying and going to class, preparing for the future. Maybe I needed to give myself more time to focus on the problems at hand, like my dad’s fitness. Like Iva and her baby. Like working more, and making more money right at the moment rather than at an undetermined date.

“We’ll see,” I said, and asked her to tell me more about her son.

Miss Gail had plenty to talk about, because she was very proud of him. He was so smart, she said—he wasn’t only good at football. “He always had such wonderful report cards!” she answered proudly, and she told me a whole lot more, about Tyler’s friends, his first car, his roommates in college, and lastly, his girlfriends. Before I could delve too much into that topic, though, the teams were coming back out onto the field.

It got so loud in the stadium when the Woodsmen ran through the tunnel that I thought about taking the earplugs. I couldn’t hear myself, but I was screaming along with everyone else. It was so fun to watch them on TV—so fun. But this, in person? I felt like I might burst out of my own skin. Malachi Hubbard returned the opening kickoff for thirty-eight yards and the Woodsmen had the ball, and I almost started crying again as the offense jogged out onto the field. Tyler was there, number sixty-two, lining up on the right side of the O-line. I looked over at Gail briefly and she had her eyes closed, like she might have been praying. Just in case, I said one, too. Zdrowa? Maryjo …

He was doing so well. He was doing so well that several people seated near us patted me on the shoulder in recognition of my Hennessy jersey, and by halftime, the Woodsmen were up by three touchdowns. Two of those had been run in by Tyler. I was having more fun than I ever had in my whole life, but I did keep looking at the space next to me. There was room for another chair here, and my dad could have been in it. We were texting back and forth and he was ok, and so was Iva. She sent me pictures of her little guy (still unnamed) and as the halftime show started, I showed Miss Gail.

“Oh, look at that precious baby!” she gasped. “Who is he? What’s his name?”

I told her the story, the outlines of it without getting into gossip…except that I felt like I needed advice, too. “Stupid Dominic is such a—” I had been about to say “booty hole,” but changed my mind. “A jerk,” I concluded. “He treats her terribly.”

“Does he hurt her?”

I had a feeling that she meant more than emotional pain, so I shook my head. “He’s totally unsupportive, though, and now he’s missing. He won’t answer her or me and I don’t know what to do.”

“There are a few ways to go,” she said, and it turned out that she had spent a lot of years working in the court system, and part of what she’d done was help people navigate it. By the time that the Wonderwomen were concluding their routine, we had a plan starting to come together, a plan in which she played a major role.

“You would do all that? You don’t know her,” I pointed out, but Miss Gail said that Iva and her baby needed a hand and she was happy to lend one.

“Anyway, I can’t just sit in that beautiful house listening to the people next door argue about the volume of the bathroom fan,” she told me.

That woman was bananas. “Do you think we can make stupid Dominic respond?”

“We can try.”

The teams came back out then, and we broke off our conversation to focus. I calmed down slightly in the second half and breathed more normally, because the Woodsmen went up by even more. They were enough ahead that the starters were pulled and they sat on their bench or stood on the sidelines not too far from where we were. At one point, Tyler turned around, and both Miss Gail and I waved. I did that very violently, I realized afterwards, kind of like I was trying to dislocate my shoulder, and he nodded back to us. I rubbed my neck, which I had tweaked with my waving, as the clock slowly moved toward zero. I asked a few times if she wanted to go early, but she insisted that she wasn’t tired and we should stay. My dad and Iva still reported that they were fine, so I didn’t feel anything more than the usual pressure to be elsewhere.

As the game ended, we waited until most of the crowd had thinned and then we went to a lobby in that lower level, a lounge kind of place where we could wait for the players to finish all the post-game stuff that I had read about. Other family members and friends were there too, talking and hanging out together, with lots of kids running around.

Miss Gail said hello to several people and made quite a few acquaintances. I spent my time mentally matching families with the players and it did seem like a lot of them, maybe most of them, had people in this lounge. I wondered if the Seals team had the same kind of set-up, and if Shay Galton had gone and fought with the other girlfriends and wives there. Everyone here seemed generally friendly with each other, and certainly no one was pissing to demarcate territory. I looked at Tyler’s mother and decided that she wouldn’t have stood for that kind of behavior.

It took a while for the players to start coming out. I knew that they talked to reporters, because I’d watched all those post-game interviews. They might get treatments from the trainers and they all took showers, which I also knew because when I’d seen them after away games, they always looked spick-and-span. And tired. When they emerged into the lounge now, it was a lot the same. They were back in street clothes and looking clean, but several were walking a little more stiffly than how they’d probably come into the stadium today, and the guys who’d gotten a lot of playing time looked beat. They also looked happy, and there were a lot of little voices saying, “Daddy!” and a lot of hugging and kissing along with all the congratulations for the win.

Tyler came out too, finally. I watched him walk to us and didn’t detect any new injury. He seemed just as tired and happy as the other guys. We clapped and said that he’d played so well.

“That’s my sweet boy,” his mother said when he bent to kiss her cheek. “You were the best football player on that whole field!”

“You’ve said that to me after every game since I started playing,” he told her, but he was smiling. “Did you have fun, Kasia?”

“Yes! Yes, I had so much fun. I can’t believe this has been happening right down the road from me and I never went before. You were so good, Tyler. I agree that this was one of your best games ever.” Statistically, that wasn’t true, since he had rested for much of the fourth quarter because the score was so lopsided. But when he’d been on the field, he’d seemed relaxed and focused. And during the time that he sat out, I’d watched him talking to some of the other guys, so not everyone thought he was a booty hole anymore. I was even more glad about that than I was about how many rushing yards he’d gotten.

“Thank you,” he answered.

“Thank you, too, for the pass, the jersey, and everything,” I said. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Gail, and I’ll probably see you around the condos.” His mom didn’t need me anymore and I didn’t think that she really ever had, not even for companionship. She’d made friends with people in the stands who had been very excited to learn that she was Tyler’s mother. I thought a few of them had recognized me, too, from that unfortunate picture, but no one had said anything.

“Where are you going now?” Miss Gail asked.

“I want to visit Iva and the baby, because she might get discharged, and then I’ll need to get home to make dinner for my dad,” I explained.

“He should come over to eat with us,” she said. “Tyler, I thought you had a plan to cook for Kasia tonight. Didn’t you invite her?” She looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Yes, ma’am, I thought I would do that now,” he answered. “Do you want to come, Kasia?”

I was happy that they’d thought of me, but the answer would have to be no. “I can’t,” I said regretfully. “I wish I could.” I really wanted to see them more, both of them—but mostly Tyler, because there was so much to discuss about the game. Also, I had gotten to like talking to him, and he’d have to be dressed with his mom here. He really didn’t have a problem with nudity and it was physically impossible to have a conversation with him when he wasn’t fully clothed, shirt included. You couldn’t make your brain work when he was uncovered.

“Your father is invited, too. Could he take a car and meet you?” he suggested.

“No, but I could get him. If he’ll come,” I added, and I got excited again.

“I don’t want you to have to drive all over the state,” Miss Gail told me, but I answered that if my dad would agree to it, then I didn’t mind driving anywhere. He needed to get out.

“We’ll see you soon,” Tyler said, and I nodded. I was going to make it happen, if I could.

Iva was ok, as ok as she could have been in a hospital with a preterm baby (who still didn’t have a name) and a boyfriend who remained MIA. But she was going to be able to come home tomorrow, so I would pick her up and at least let her shower and see that everything was clean before she went back to the hospital as a visitor. Her house really was in good shape, since I’d gone over there and cleaned until my phone showed me that the night was gone and it was actually morning. But she would be relieved that it was done and there was one less thing for her to worry about. If Miss Gail could help with stupid Dominic, then that would be a gigantic load off, too.

My next step was to convince my dad to go along with the plan and I sped to my house, calling as I went. At first, he didn’t answer and I had a bit of a freak-out until he finally called back. “Kasia, hello, it’s your father,” he told me.

“I know! Daddy, get dressed. We have to go out to dinner.”

“What?”

“We’re invited to Tyler’s, and he and his mom are cooking. There’s a ramp and the doors are nice and wide and it will be a much better meal than what I could make. You didn’t want to come to the game, but I really want you to come to this, ok?” I was talking fast and if I sounded bossy, it was because I was feeling like this was urgent. He needed to say yes, because we needed to be there. My dad had to leave the house and I had to be at that condo.

“Kasia—”

“Please get dressed and I’ll be home soon,” I said. “Bye.” I was prepared for a fight—well, we didn’t ever yell and scream, but we definitely had disagreements, and I lined up arguments in my head. But to my surprise, he was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table when I arrived, with a clean shirt on and his hair combed down, which was hard for him to reach on the one side of his head.

“I’m ready,” he said, and I tried not to act shocked. He never wanted to go out, and the last time (which had been only to the hardware store) had involved hours of wrangling.

“Great,” I said. “I’ll just clean up, too.” I rushed to do that because I didn’t want him to take it back, but I also wanted to look nice tonight. In the bathroom, I did more of the freshening that Miss Gail had recommended earlier, and I also brushed my hair out of the snaggles that seemed to have formed as I’d cheered and jumped around at the game. I left the jersey on, though. I looked at the orange letters spelling “Woodsmen” across my own chest, like I was part of the team.

“Very pretty,” my dad assured me and we went out together to the car, carefully avoiding any vantage points that might have shown vehicle damage.

He was quiet as we drove and I thought that maybe he was tired, which would have made this a short evening out. But then, after we’d bumped to the end of our road and made the turn toward town, he said something different.

“I missed you today. We always watch together and talk.”

“We can talk about it now,” I suggested. “What did you think about those two interceptions by Devin Diggs in the first half? The defense was on fire.”

He nodded and was quiet for another moment before he spoke. “I should have gone. I thought about it after you left and I was sorry.”

“Daddy, you should have told me! I would have come back and gotten you.”

He waved his hand slowly, dismissing that. “You didn’t need me there.”

“I missed you, too. I really wanted you to come but I think I understand why you didn’t.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“I think that you’re trying to make up for being here and living life.” I sighed.

“You mean, without your mother?”

I nodded. “Yes. You’re sorry that you have to be alone and you wish…sometimes I’m afraid that you wish you had gone with her.”

“Is that what you think? That I would have missed out on raising you? No,” he said. “Never. I wouldn’t have missed one single minute.”

“Not even when I got stuck in the sand dune when you were teaching me to drive?”

He paused. “Maybe not that minute. I tried to tell you not to swerve.”

I remembered him yelling more than “telling,” and I laughed. “There was a squirrel! You got the car fixed, and now…I did it again.”

“You ran into another dune?”

“No, but when Iva called and needed me to drive her to the hospital, I backed up into a light pole. The car needs some work.”

“I was wondering when you were going to tell me.”

“You knew?” I asked. “You let me stew in it?”

“Exactly,” he said, I laughed again. “I wouldn’t have missed a minute, Kasia, not even the sand dune. I love you very much.”

But he still felt guilty, which I understood very well. “I love you, too, Daddy.”

“Next time. If Tyler gets more tickets and wants you to escort his mom, I would go. If I have the opportunity.”

“We will have the opportunity,” I said, feeling certain. I was remembering how Tyler had walked me over to get a tissue, guiding me with his hand. I was also remembering how he’d lit up when he’d seen us waiting for him today—he’d looked at both of us, but I had been included in it.

“We’ll go again,” I promised. I was feeling very good about everything.