Chapter Thirty-Four

Driving through Kansas during the second day of my trip, I called Collison.

Of course he’d heard about the bogus rape charge and the cash handed to potential recruits. “But none of that had anything to do with you, Elliot. You’re clean, so why do a stupid thing like resigning? I mean, you’ll never even come close to getting a big-time coaching job.”

However, after I explained the win-now pressure and the entire heroin situation, he said he understood. “The trouble is that you can’t put that heroin story on the wire, so you’ll still be blackballed.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway . . . where do you go from here? I don’t see any way that I can I help you.”

“This is what I’m looking for . . . I’m done playing, but I think I still want to coach. Somewhere where money isn’t an issue. Where everything is totally honest. Where nobody has to lie about anything. Where the pressure to win doesn’t twist the game into a carnival. I don’t know, man. Maybe I’m just looking, hoping, for something that doesn’t exist.”

“Ha! Not at all. I mean, the only really above-board programs in D-One are in the Ivy League, and you have no chance there. But I think there is one situation that might suit you. . . . D-Three basketball.”

“Really? I don’t know anything about it. Tell me.”

“Well, I don’t know much, because I’ve never represented a D-Three player or coach. I know that they don’t give athletic scholarships and that there are a lot of them, mostly in the Northeast.”

“Sounds good so far.”

“Still, there’s only six days to go before preseason practice begins, so it’s extremely doubtful that there’s an opening somewhere. However, I will make some calls and see what’s what. Okay?”

“Yeah, man. Thanks.”

Driving that BMW was dangerous because the car was so stable and the ride so smooth that zooming along at 80+ mph felt like I was barely approaching the various 65 mph speed limits. Although I fed a couple of Grateful Dead and Neil Young CDs into the player, my mind was buzzing too much to pay much attention to the music. Ditto for whatever scenery I passed.

“Trucking back where I belong.”

Wherever that was or would be.

I was picking at a burger-and-fries plate that was soggy with grease at a diner across the highway from a cheapo motel, when I got a call from . . . guess who?

Monica.

“Elliot. It’s me. Monica.” She was sobbing, trying to keep from all-out crying.

“Monica.”

“Elliot! Oh, my god. Elliot. I fucked up big-time. I betrayed you. I betrayed us.”

Of course, I knew what she was talking about. The fucking cunt.

”I don’t know why it happened. It just did. It only lasted two weeks and, I swear, I never loved him. . . . I’m a fucking idiot, I know.”

Now she was noisily slobbering.

“Monica.”

“No, no. Let me finish. . . . But I was the one who broke it off, and do you know why?”

I couldn’t, and didn’t really want to, think of something hurtful to say.

“Because it made me realize how much I love you and how much I really want to be with you. It’s true . . . Elliot. Oh, Elliot. I love you so much!”

“Monica. I don’t know what to say. But you really did hurt me.”

“Say that you still love me and that you’ll forgive me. Please, Elliot. Forgive me. I beg you to forgive me. You must forgive me because I know that you still do love me. Elliot! Please!”

Ah, shit. Could this be true? Was it possible, probable that I did still love her? What the fuck am I going to do?

“Where are you, Monica?”

“In San Diego. Substitute teaching in a couple of high schools and trying to get a college job for next September. . . . My god, Elliot. . . . I’m lost without you.”

“Monica . . . I mean, I really don’t know what to say. This is all so sudden, you know?”

“Where . . . where are you?”

“I quit a head coaching job at USA and I’m driving back to New York. I guess I’m like you. Also looking . . . Fuck. There’s another call. . . . It’s, uh . . . from my agent. I recognize his number.”

“Elliot! Please! Forgive me!”

“Monica. I have your phone number here. . . . But I need some time to figure things out. I’ll get back to you as soon as I do. I promise.”

“Please, Elliot!”

“Really, I’m confused. I don’t know. . . . But I promise to get back to you. . . . Good-bye, Monica.”

“Elliot . . .”

I left the waitress a $20 tip on a $6.95 bill, then got into my car and drove away, my mind dizzy with a thousand possibilities, a thousand scenarios, and I discovered that my eyes were tearing. So I pulled off the road and turned on the flashing red hazard lights.

How appropriate.

Collison’s beeping had long since ended, so I blew my nose, took a deep breath, and clicked on his voice-mail message.

“Call me ASAP.”

So I dialed his number. He picked up immediately.

“I think we may be onto something, Elliot. Here’s the deal. . . . A guy named Gene Paul Harkey has been coaching at Central Vermont University since Christ was a pup. He was planning to retire after this season, but his wife had a fall and broke her hip, so he quit to take care of her full-time. And they’re desperately looking for someone to take his place ASAP. Okay? So I just spoke with the AD, a guy named Eric Mann, who’s supposed to be a straight shooter, and he went bananas when I said you might be interested. I also hooked him up with Milt Richardson as a reference. So this guy Mann wants you to call him right away.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“If you do come to an arrangement with him, I won’t take any percentage. But I’ll still collect my percentage from what’s left of your Nike deal. Okay? All right. Are you ready to copy his number?”

“Umm. Wait a minute. I’ll copy it into my cell.”

“Good luck, Elliot.”

I waited until I checked into a motel just a few miles down the road before I made the call.

“Hello?”

“Eric Mann? This is Elliot Hersch. Gordon Collison said I should call you.”

“Mr. Hersch! Wow! This is already a great pleasure. Mr. Collison said you might be interested in the varsity coaching position here at CVU. And Mr. Richardson was very complimentary about your knowledge of the game, your integrity, and your ability to communicate. Having a bona fide NBA player coaching here would be—”

“Hold on, now. I was barely an NBA—”

“No, no. That’s like a woman saying she’s barely pregnant. Either she is or she isn’t. And whatever other circumstances were involved, you were definitely an NBA player. But, as I said before, that’s not the only reason we’re interested in you. So, Mr. Hersch, we’d be absolutely thrilled if you’d be willing to head our basketball program.”

“I might be, but I don’t know anything about your school or about D-Three basketball.”

So he related all the pertinent details:

There were precisely 440 colleges participating in D-Three basketball competition, none of them allowed to grant athletic scholarships. Winning was preferable but not mandatory. There’s absolutely no pressure to win on the part of alumni, administrators, parents, or local media.

“The college radio station does our games,” Mann said, “but there’s no TV whatsoever. We have a beautiful field house, but we’re happy to get two or three hundred fans at our home games. That’s out of a total student population of just over a thousand.”

“Who are the players? Where do they come from and why are they there?”

“Kids who just love to play. Who value the camaraderie, the competiveness, and the social identity. Kids who have no NBA aspirations and just want to play organized ball for four more years after they graduate from high school. That’s why they’re all very coachable. Because we also have a very high graduation rate, getting a degree is another incentive.

“Most of the players have played high school ball in the area, with Albany being our farthest source of recruiting. The tuition is twenty thousand dollars per year, with usually a fifty percent discount available for various academic scholarships and grants. With literally no endowments, the only way the school makes money is from enrollments.

“I must confess that, as far as academics are concerned, we’re rated around the middle of the pack among colleges of our size. So most of our students have parents with deep pockets. Even so, it’s really something of a communal effort here. Two years ago, the coaching staff and dozens of parents got together to hand-build the locker rooms. It’s kind of a quaint situation here, you know?

“CVU belongs to the New England Conference and plays a twenty-eight-game schedule. All of the opponents are situated within a two-hour bus ride, so there are no overnight stays. A postseason tournament determines which school qualifies for the D-Three nationals. Something that hasn’t happened for us in twenty years.”

Only about one-third of D-Three basketball programs have full-time assistant coaches. “We have one, Frankie Sanders, who gets paid twenty-five thousand. Plus a part-time assistant, Ralph McPherson, who teaches English at the high school and gets eight thousand.”

And what would I get?

“The most we can afford is seventy thousand and we’d be happy to give you that. Plus maybe three years guaranteed, with an out at any time by mutual consent. But there’s no car and you’d have to pay about seven hundred dollars to rent a nice two-bedroom on-campus home that the school owns. Plus, you’d pay for all utilities. If you have a wife and children, there’s also a three-bedroom house available.”

“Nope. Just me.”

“I don’t know what else to say. . . . We currently have thirty-four buildings, including dorms, on a beautiful seventy-five acres that border the Green River. We’re on the outskirts of Rutland, a manageable city of about fifty-two thousand and we’re also about sixty miles due north of Bennington. So there are several excellent restaurants, a ShopRite, and an organic grocery, all within a twenty-minute drive. . . . Does any of this appeal to you?”

“It all does. But I need some time to think about it. Give me an hour, okay?”

“Great! Terrific! We’d be honored to have you coach our boys! But as I’m sure you know, we’re in a major time squeeze, what with the unfortunate accident suffered by Coach Harkey’s wife. I mean, if it’s a go, how soon could you get here?”

“I’m in a motel outside of Altoona, Pennsylvania, right now, so how far away am I?”

“It’s maybe about four hundred and twenty miles. Something like that.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you ASAP.”

“Great! Terrific!”

I lay back on the bed and tried to replay what Monica had said. Yes, I did believe, in spite of my residual anger, that she still loved me. But did I still love her? And even if I did, could I ever forgive her?

Okay, I had to admit that I still did nurture the stubborn red-hot embers of love for her. Her intelligence. Her laugh. The melding of our bodies when we had sex.

SEX!

Ah, but I couldn’t help imagining her fucking this John Roth guy, whoever he was, whatever he looked like.

“FUCK! Let it go!”

Remembering, too, the way she shot her sidearm layups. . . . ‘A,’ my name is Anna, and my husband’s name is. . . . Our Chaucer connection. . . . How happy we seemed to be. No, how happy we were.

Forgiveness.

Bah! Was I so fucking pure and innocent? How much did I resist taking those bullshit classes at ASU? Or that bogus transcript to fool my father? Or letting Marty Taylor arrange for me to get those no-show A’s? Or how greedily I pocketed the money left in my locker? Or taking the illegal money from Collison? Telling Carlton Lee that I was going back to school?

And if I forgave Monica, who else would I have to forgive?

My father? Not a fucking chance, because it was he who really killed my mother.

Lee? I guess so. He was only doing his job, right?

Fuck me.

Thinking. Remembering. Above all, feeling.

Yes, hidden deep within the wellspring of my heart, of my soul, I was holding so much anger, so much pain. Too much.

What? Where? How?

Sneak into a confession booth. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

That in itself would be a sin.

Chaucer never said anything about forgiveness.

Ah, but guess who did?

Of course. Alexander Pope.

“To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Was forgiving the only way to heal my anger? To, at least approach becoming divine?

Then, suddenly, it came to me: In order to forgive Monica, to forgive anybody . . . including maybe even my father. . . . Maybe . . . someday . . . maybe not.

And I said it out loud, “I’d have to forgive myself.”

Not easy to do, but after weeping for a while, certainly doable. At least this awareness was a first step.

“Hello? Mister Mann? This is Elliot Hersch. I’ll take the job on one condition.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“My fiancée has a doctorate in Medieval Literature.”

“Okay.”

“If you can somehow get her a job starting in the fall semester, then I’m in.”

“Okay, Let me make a phone call and I’ll get right back to you.”

He called an hour later.

“Here’s what we can do. Give her a part-time position for the spring semester and for all of the next academic year. That’ll be two courses in our English-major program over the course of the next three semesters. Her remuneration would be fifteen hundred dollars per course. Then, for the next year after that, we can offer her a full-time position.”

“Sounds good enough. . . . So, let’s do it.”

“Wonderful! Terrific!”

“Did you say I was about four hundred miles away?”

“About four twenty.”

“Okay, I’ll leave early in the morning and get there by dinner. You’re buying, right?”

“Right! But, please, be careful. Drive safely. I’m perfectly willing to buy breakfast the next morning, too.”

“It’s a deal.”

I called Monica. We both bawled and swore (once again) our eternal love.

I felt better already. Cleaner. Naked to the world, to her, and to myself.

I’d pick her up when she flew into Montpelier in two days.

And then . . . ?