Walter felt like he was fading. Slowly seeping out of himself from some unknown wound. The boys and the crowd slowly disappeared like phantoms, losing their outlines and then their ghostly shapes. The noise echoed, diminished, and then slid into silence.
And then there was a loud pop! and Walter sat in the stands again, clutching his ears.
My God, those samples are potent things. Like being in a movie or something.
Walter grinned and slapped his knee. What a day. What a day that had been. He could remember exactly what it felt like to be lifted on those shoulders, like some part of his flesh and bone was still up there. Over the years the victory had faded until all he remembered was his father not being there. One more cross for this father’s memory to bear. It was nice to remember what that day had really been about. Winning the game. Being carried off the court on Al Torreno’s shoulders.
“Hey, that was…”
He turned, looking for Peter, and found his mother up in the stands alone.
Is this the past? Present? Is she a ghost? Am I?
He decided he didn’t care. It was his mother there; a blue beacon among the brown stadium seats. She stared after where the boys had gone into the locker rooms. Her fingertips pressed to her lips and tears were on her cheeks.
She hiccupped, part laugh, part sob, and collapsed into her chair like her bones had liquefied all at once.
Walter took the stairs two at a time to his mother’s side.
Paulina Zawislak was not an attractive woman. But she smelled like sugar and sauerkraut, and she had tried to balance her husband’s unpredictable anger and constant discontent with a steady never-ending stream of hot tea with sugar and brandy.
She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her blue dress and lifted her glasses to wipe her eyes. She laughed while she did it and Walter felt the tidal flow of his pride and a sudden mourning for his mother.
“Hey Mom,” he breathed. He stretched an arm across the back of her seat and studied the plump firm peachiness of her face. He breathed deep the smell of vinegar and baking that had settled into her pores and become, in his memory, the distinct fragrance of motherly love.
Finally, she rested her hands in her lap, her fingers tugging at the lace she had stitched. She smiled.
“Did you see our boy?” she called out, and Walter whirled to see his father standing at center court, looking toward the locker room where the voices of the team could still be heard. There was a particularly loud yelp and Walter remembered the icy blast of water from the shower they had thrown him into.
Vicktor Zawislak punched his beat-up fedora onto his thinning white hair and turned, his hands tucked into the navy work pants he wore every day, including the day he died.
“I sure did,” he said. “I sure as hell did.”
“Where’d you go?” Paulina asked, and Walter heard himself seconding the question.
“Yeah, where the hell did you go? I looked for you!” Walter was on his feet before he even knew it. He ran down the steps to his father before his slow, lumbering heart could beat twice.
“That was pretty tense.” Vicktor shook his head, his attention still on the closed locker room door. “I needed a little room to pace.” His white mustache twitched.
My God, he’s smiling.
“So you saw it? Walt looked up here and when he didn’t see you…”
“Of course I saw it,” Vicktor announced like he was Father of the Year and the question insulted his devoted parenting. “I was right over there.” He pointed with his thumb to the dark corners by the doors.
Walter felt years of righteous anger and indignation burn and smoke in his chest.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Didn’t think the shit had it in him,” Vicktor muttered and sucked on his teeth. “Let’s go, Paully girl,” he called out, using a nickname for Paulina that Walter only heard on his folks’ anniversary or the rare Sunday mornings after his father had done well at the Saturday night poker game. Walter’s mother stood from her chair, her coat and purse over her plump arm.
She put that arm around Vicktor’s waist and the two of them walked out the door. Vicktor even bent to kiss his wife’s golden hair.
“I’ll be damned. I thought the bastard missed it,” Walter breathed.
“I know,” Peter said.
“He never told me he saw the game!”
“Did you ever ask?”
“Are you kidding?” Walter laughed bitterly. “I never asked that man anything, ever. Do you know the shit he put me through?” Walt faced Peter, who was standing next to the green filing cabinet that had ripped a hole in the pale gold boards of the basketball court.
“Some of it.” Peter’s nimble fingers flipped through his files.
“Nothing was ever good enough for that asshole.” Walter was getting mad all over again, like the game was yesterday. Like the daily slices and slashes at his ego and pride were still going on and home was never a safe place.
“I don’t know what he wanted from me, but man I could never give it. I worked with him for two years after I graduated. We nearly killed each other. He always said that I didn’t know what it was to be a man—he told me that when I was six.” Walter rolled his eyes at Peter who didn’t laugh. “But when I enlisted—” He put his hands in his pockets and studied the conference banners that hung from the ceiling. “Well, things were different.”
“Things are not always what they seem, Walter.”
Walter looked around the old auditorium, the seats. In particular, the empty one of his father’s that loomed so large in his memory. “I can’t believe he saw it.”
“He saw it twice.” Peter tucked the file back in the green cabinet and the thing retreated into the ground and the wood healed itself.
“What do you mean, twice?”
The boy’s eyes glowed again and he grew taller as Walter watched, his throat dry, his throat aching.
“When your dad died, this was his day. This was the day your father relived, Walter.”
Walter’s legs gave out and he collapsed into the brown auditorium chair.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.