The Long Wait for Tomorrow Page 16

  Patrick watched him disappear around the back of his house. He turned to Kelly, found him staring in the same direction, absently scratching the back of his head.

  “You did your best,” Patrick said, unsure of what that even meant.

  “We’re just getting started,” Kelly informed him, nodding with a slow certainty.

  “And we had a deal.”

  Kelly took a look around, a barely audible sigh bringing him back to the sights and sounds of the everyday. Afternoon sunlight cut through the trees, a brief history of time shared by all. Kelly tilted his head up toward the branches. He nodded once more, as though acting on silent orders from the shallow rustle of leaves, and turned to Patrick.

  “We had a deal,” Kelly agreed, pulling out his car keys. “It’s game time.”

  enna had been waiting for them, sitting on the curb in her cheerleading outfit.

  Kelly parked in the street, pulled the brake.

  Patrick leaped out, playbook tucked under his arm. The proud memories of Edmund’s smile began in the presence of Jenna’s wounded scowl. “Jenna … What are, uh … what are you doing here?”

  “I want a lollypop!” she cried, voice shrill.

  Kelly and Patrick exchanged a look, almost lost in the early evening.

  “I got lost,” Jenna continued to whine sarcastically. “I got lost on my way to Candyland, and no one will help me find my daddy!”

  “Uh …”

  “I got a ride from someone!” She jumped to her feet, pigtails bouncing. “After you two left school without me. After an entire hung over day without seeing you!”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Kelly said earnestly. Slipping back into his poorly researched role as the old Kelly McDermott. He popped the trunk, removed a large bag with his football equipment in it. “Pat and I had some things to take care of. You know how it goes.”

  “How it goes? You disappear this morning, show up again acting like nothing’s wrong. You get into a fight with Cody, then disappear again, and now you’re here talking about how it goes? What could that possibly mean anymore?”

  “Maybe this should wait until after the game,” Patrick intervened begrudgingly. Growing a little tired of being Kelly’s public defender. Certainly losing his touch. “I mean … you know, state championship and all.”

  “The game, huh?” Jenna put her hands on her hips, the classic starting position for any cheer. Patrick almost expected more sarcasm, maybe an ironic tirade in the form of a saccharine chant. Instead, she just laid out a hypothetical. “It’s third and eight on the fifty-yard line. Wellspring’s trailing by one with thirty seconds left in the second half. Wilson’s caught on to your running game, and Cody’s asking for a deep fade, left. Do you call it, Kelly?”

  Kelly didn’t answer.

  Patrick had to resist the urge to peek into the playbook.

  Jenna caught him eyeballing it, and rolled her own. “Yeah, you two are a pair of regular, all-American, USDA-approved football stars. You want to tell me what’s going on, Kelly?”

  “I’ve got to get dressed,” Kelly said, heading up the driveway.

  Jenna didn’t like that, and the two of them argued their way along the driveway, up the stairs, and across the deck without a second glance at the destructive results of the previous night’s romp.

  By the time they entered the house, Patrick found it was becoming nearly unbearable. He hung back in the kitchen. Watched them head along the downstairs hallway and up the stairs, flared passions sufficiently apparent in each thudding footstep.

  Patrick groaned and retreated to the den.

  He could still hear the stomping of feet, trace exactly where they were, almost what they were doing. Their voices poured through the air vents, filtered through minuscule cracks in the ceiling and floors. Taking charge of his life via remote control, Patrick turned on the TV, pumped up the volume, and clicked over to BET J.

  There wasn’t much time to enjoy it.

  “You can’t even get dressed without my help!” Jenna was spewing, hopping down the steps, arms in the air. Kelly followed her down, dressed in full football regalia. “You tried to wrap your shoulder pads around your legs!”

  “So I’m a little fuzzy on details!” Kelly took the bag he was carrying, now filled with his street clothes, and tossed it at Patrick. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be hungover?”

  “No!”

  “There is no such thing, Jenna!” Kelly put up his hand in a dismissive block. “There is no such thing as the New Kelly McDermott.”

  “Well, that’s too bad …,” Jenna said, arms crossed. “Because I’m breaking up with the Old Kelly McDermott. I’m dumping him for the new one, because I like the New Kelly McDermott better!”

  “There is a scrappy minority that seems to believe the same thing,” Patrick offered, switching sides without even realizing it.

  “You want me to win this game or not?” Kelly snapped.

  Patrick closed his mouth.

  Jenna glanced between the two of them, just another suspicion to add to her list.

  And with an impending conflict of interest about to explode in his face, Patrick did what he had always considered to be an airtight retreat in times of distress. Excused himself to the bathroom with no real need to go. Just headed through the kitchen and up the stairs, covering his ears as their voices began to collide once more.

  Patrick dropped the toilet cover, sat down with a hefty grunt.

  Closed his eyes, hung his head. The flotsam and jetsam of the past day and a half whirled in the darkness. Patrick felt he could fall asleep right there, like a victim in shock. His head began to buzz in rhythmic bursts. On again, off again. He thought about popping an aspirin when the buzzing simply stopped.

  Undoubtedly, the most precise headache he’d ever experienced.

  The buzzing started up again, and Patrick opened his eyes.

  Lifting his head, he realized that this wasn’t simply in his head.

  Just pretty damn close.

  He reached out, grabbed hold of the white wicker laundry basket, pulled it between his legs. The entire basket was vibrating. Patrick tore off the lid. Peered into the pile of sweat-encrusted clothes and began to rummage violently like a rogue bear.

  When his hand finally wrapped around it, Patrick didn’t make the immediate connection. The buzzing tumor was removed, and all at once, he remembered. That first morning. Kelly taking his fully charged cell phone and dropping it in there without a second thought.

  Patrick flipped it open as the buzzing stopped.

  15 MISSED CALLS.

  Thumbing the arrow pad, he navigated to the call-history menu.

  Scanned the list, landing on the last three missed calls.

  His heart skipped a beat, and he thumbed his way to voice mail. He skipped every message up to the one that had him praying.

  “Kelly, it’s Mom …”

  Patrick leaned back against the toilet tank, recognizing the tone. One that might have passed for concern had it been anybody else’s mother. Patrick knew better.

  “Your principal called us today. He didn’t realize we were out of town, but I told him we were glad he did. Call us back, we’d like to have a talk with you.”

  “Love you, too, Mom,” Patrick muttered on Kelly’s behalf.

  The next message was from Kelly’s father. One that might have passed for concern had it been anyone else’s father. Patrick knew better.

  “Well, Kelly, we’ve cut our stay short for you. We’ll be arriving on the 7240 on American. It should land at four p.m. Don’t know if we’ll make it in time to see your game. We still want to talk to you.”

  Patrick had an urge to bolt from the ceramic throne. He would, in a moment, but there was the matter of that last message. Never mind that he had a good idea what it would be, what was about to happen. He stayed glued to his seat, phone bolted to his ear.

  “Hey, Kelly. We were hoping you’d be there, help us with our luggage. If you feel like cal
ling back one of these days, you can tell us when your game starts. We’re about a block away, guess we’ll see you or we won’t.”

  There it was, another nice little disaster.

  “To erase this message, press nine. To save, press seven. To replay—”

  A high-pitched scream found its way from downstairs and under the door.

  Patrick was almost sure that message wouldn’t need re-playing.

  First, there was the matter of the bottles outside.

  Kelly’s parents walking around the back, wheeling their black rectangular carry-ons behind them. Maybe even getting past the steps, halfway across the deck before coming to a full stop. Unprepared to find the green iron-mesh table converted into a wet bar. Taking in the exodus of their entire liquor cabinet. Caps and corks lying on the ground like spent ammunition; a couple of bottles lying on their sides, passed out as though they’d had a bit too much of themselves.

  Patrick missed all of that, still checking Kelly’s messages at that point.

  When the scream hit, he tossed the cell phone back in the laundry basket. Slammed the cover back on, an automatic attempt to undo what was about to happen. Patrick was out of the bathroom and down the stairs in three seconds flat, bursting into the kitchen to find Kelly’s mother rooted to the spot. Trembling in her tan-colored power suit. Hands pressed against her face, horrified scream still frozen on glossy lips as she stared across the kitchen. Past the second set of kitchen doors, through which the remains of their once-great collection of crystalware lay shattered across the decimated cabinet, table, and coffee-stained rug.

  From down in the den, Patrick could hear an argument in full swing, the booming voice of Kelly’s father, repeating demands for an explanation without breath or pause.

  Kelly’s mother let out a wounded squeak, just getting warmed up herself.

  Patrick smelled the usual cocktail of beer and white wine on her breath.

  “Mrs. McDermott, just to let you know, that was entirely my fault,” he began. His words came out fast and measured, without the slightest thought as to whether there was anything that could save them now. “Kelly was making some coffee and he offered me some. I overreacted, I guess, and I slapped it out of his hands, a little hard, I guess, and it just went …” Patrick held out his arms stiffly in the direction of the dining room, an artist unveiling his worst piece of work to date.

  With a few choking exhales, Kelly’s mother found her voice. “And you’ve been drinking!”

  Patrick remembered the table of debauchery and prepared to launch ahead with another explanation. He didn’t get beyond the words We were just when Kelly’s father barked from the other room, demanding that Kelly’s mother get in there right now!

  “Kelly, what is going on?!” she cried out, stalking toward the den.

  Patrick saw her descend the steps. A despairing knot wrapped itself around Patrick’s stomach, pulled him against his will toward the sound of hollered accusations. He was already certain of what would be waiting there.

  What he found instead was Kelly’s father, inexplicably on the defensive. An older version of Kelly McDermott in a pinstripe suit. Hands on his hips, unable to comprehend how he had ended up in this position.

  “You’re saying this is our fault?”

  “Who cares about this?” Kelly spat out. His eyes were wide, torturous. The veins in his neck bulged, his whole body straining against itself. If the couch and glass coffee table weren’t between him and his parents, it would be disturbingly easy to imagine him marching across the room and strangling them both.

  Jenna stood to one side, forgotten in the chaos of the moment.

  “Kelly!” his mother cried out. “That’s our family’s crystal! Your grandfather got those—”

  “You think I care about your plates and goddamn cups?” Kelly shouted, vocal cords scraping against each other. “You left me! You just disappeared! Leaving me on my own like that, you don’t get to tell me anything! Call yourself parents! You just left me! You left me there, sitting there waiting for years without a single call, waiting for you to come visit me in that goddamn prison!”

  It wasn’t until Patrick heard the word visit that he understood.

  This wasn’t about what was or what had been.

  Kelly was railing about things to come. Stuck in that institution, locked away behind the white walls of an unnamed crazy house. Left to wonder what had become of the only two people with an unwritten duty to take care of their own. An abandonment so unimaginable that his parents hadn’t even begun to contemplate what they would someday be capable of.

  And Patrick couldn’t bring himself to stop the accusations.

  It didn’t matter that it was impossible. That to allow this diatribe to continue was a tacit acceptance of all that Kelly believed to be happening. Every word was pure merit. The unspoken facts of Kelly’s present life, a flawlessly decorated reflection of Patrick’s own existence.

  And so Patrick welcomed, gladly welcomed Kelly’s madness, reveled in watching Kelly’s parents draw close to each other in a terrified embrace.

  “Kelly,” his mother begged. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll find out,” Kelly said, picking up his helmet from the fireplace and tucking it under his arm. “You know where the drinks are. Go help yourself.”

  He stormed out, past Patrick and out the back door.

  Jenna was hot on his heels, and Patrick didn’t bother dwelling on the McDermotts’ inarticulate faces. He snatched up Kelly’s gym bag and ran out to the car. Found Kelly starting it up, Jenna in the passenger’s seat, waiting for him to join the fun.

  “We’ve still got a deal,” Kelly told him. “But just a warning, Patrick. I don’t even know if I remember how to play this goddamn game.”

  “Just do your best,” Patrick said, revolted at how meaningless it sounded.

  He jumped in the backseat, wondering how Kelly would ever bring himself to come back to that house. Shoving the thought aside, he buckled his safety belt. If there was still such a thing as later, he’d worry about it then.

  Time being, there was the game to worry about.

  t was quite a night for Wellspring Academy.

  The stands were packed, brimming with spectators. Not just those from Wilson, a whole contingent of people had appeared just to see the state finals. Local news crews dotted the sidelines, along with CNN, ESPN, and MSN affiliates.

  The school marching band was playing at full blast, cheerleaders for either side kicking their legs up and somersaulting their way into people’s fantasies. The time was drawing near, and Redwood had gathered the team together for a last-minute motivational tirade. Even Patrick, the team’s unofficial, glorified gofer, was allowed to sit in on the prelude to blood, sweat, and tears.

  “Starting now, we forget everything that’s led up to this!” Redwood barked. “I don’t care whether it was the blowout in Charlotte last week, or the game that got called for lightning last year. I certainly don’t give a shit about any of your goddamn personal conflicts, even if they happened THIS AFTERNOON!” Redwood’s face ballooned into a red ball of pure, ambitious wrath. “Everything has been leading up to this, and as of this moment, none of it matters anymore! None of it happened as far as I’m concerned! I am calling for each and every one of you to say to yourself. I DO NOT MATTER! WHERE I’VE BEEN DOESN’T MATTER. All that matters is the game. Nothing matters, except the game!”

  As Redwood continued to talk, Patrick felt an unpleasant taste rising in his chest. More of a potent sensation, like fire water. Clear, toxic liquid that couldn’t be tasted. It could only be felt as it scorched the back of Patrick’s throat. Spread to his thoughts, turning them poisonous.

  Once you’ve gone too far, once the world is no longer the one it was yesterday-Patrick’s angels reflected on what Bill had told him that afternoon—it’s very hard to go back.

  “Nothing matters, except the game!” Redwood repeated.

  He’d heard it so many times
, and never once believed it. Just accepted it, only now acceptance wasn’t enough. Patrick found that he could barely tolerate it. Redwood’s words weren’t pep, weren’t simple cuts of overused inspiration. They had become gospel. The word of God, coursing through the mind of every last player in the huddle, wet on the waiting lips of a packed stadium. The game was all that mattered. Sportsmanship, teamwork, the noble tradition, none of it would be enough to replace the hysterical need for a win.

  The shills for Wellspring Academy began to belt out their fight song:

  “FIGHT, FIGHT, OUTTA SIGHT! KILL, PANTHERS, KILL!”

  Patrick looked up into the stands, a swelling tide of faces, squirming larvae.

  And right at the fifty-yard line, just a few seats up from center stage, were Patrick’s parents. Dressed in school colors, wearing football jerseys the school sold along with bumper stickers sporting peace signs and selected quotes from MLK and Mahatma Gandhi. Grinning in anticipation, waiting for their substitute progeny to carry Wellspring Academy into the big time.

  And Kelly’s parents were nowhere to be seen.

  In a single fluttering motion, everyone stood up and placed their right hand over their chest.

  Patrick turned back to the huddle, only to find it had broken up. All team members side by side along the out-of-bounds line. Redwood standing at the end, face solemn as the crowd grew quiet. From far down the field, over by the south post, the marching band’s conductor brandished his baton.

  Drums rumbled, preparing the band for the first bars of the national anthem.

  Patrick positioned himself directly behind Kelly and Cody as everyone began to sing.

  Oh, say can you see …

  Patrick saw Cody turn, ever so slightly, toward Kelly.

  “You’re not going to fuck this up, Kelly,” Cody told him, lips barely moving. Barely sounding, just loud enough for Patrick to hear. “This ain’t your house anymore. This ain’t your game, this is mine. Don’t make me take it from you. You hear me, Kelly? Don’t make me take it. Don’t make me do this, I’ll take your little girlfriend for myself. Make her know she ain’t yours anymore, Kelly.”