Loser's Bracket

  “It’s like football,” Walter says. “Got your play set; there’s a way it’s supposed to unfold. Then the ball gets hiked.”

  Wiz laughs and nods. “It is very much like football.”

  “But touchdowns do get scored,” Walter says.

  “Unfortunately, by both sides,” Wiz says, and grips Walter’s shoulder. “I just want you to know that whatever happens, you won’t be touched. If things go too far south, I’ll fall on the sword. It’s starting to look like time for that second career anyway.”

  I say, “Wiz. Frankie’s my relative. Like I said before, I’m the only person here who’s technically a juvenile, and I could think of a good story. Probably a great story.”

  “Not happenin’,” Wiz says. “I work for child protection.”

  Walter says, “Let’s all take a breath. No need to start solving problems that might never occur.”

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  “All my plans are shot to shit,” Sheila says from the backseat of Leah’s car. She texted me three days ago to pick her up at the bus station—“an’ by god you better not tell anybody I’m coming”—so she’s already mad that we’re in Leah’s car, even though I told her my access to transportation is pretty much consigned to my bike since the onset of the Howard’s civil war. I took a chance and, with Walter’s blessing, had brought Leah up to speed on the whole enterprise.

  “Somethin’s fishy,” Sheila says.

  Leah asks what she means.

  “You just drive,” Sheila says. “Ain’t none of your business.”

  Leah shrugs. “Fine. All I care about is your son.”

  So I ask Sheila what she means.

  “Kid disappears into thin air. I go beggin’ on TV for whatever scumbag took him to bring him back. Nothin’ happens. I give up an’ go off ’cause I’m startin’ to hear all this negative shit about myself, like how I didn’t watch my kid . . . and abra-fuckin’-cadabra, he shows up. At social services, for chrissake, right where they were fixin’ to take him away from me in the first place. He ain’t harmed, nobody done nothin’ nasty to him? Then somebody figures out Yvonne might know where I am an’ next thing I’m hearing from you. Like I said, somethin’s fishy.”

  I say, “What do you think it is?” Contradicting her would only etch her belief deeper in stone.

  “Hell if I know,” she says, “but when I find out, heads are gonna roll. An’ I’ll betcha some of them work for the state, an’ if I find out some social worker had something to do with it . . .”

  “C’mon, Sheila, you sure that’s where you wanna focus? Are you gonna spend all your energy getting even? Or are you gonna do what it takes to do right by Frankie? Seems like right now a social worker would be your best friend. And I’m the one who figured Yvonne might know.”

  “Ain’t no social worker ever been my best friend. They were gonna take him.”

  I say “They weren’t going to take him until he disappeared, Sheila. Somebody saw his arm and you were about to get a visit, but if he’s not bleeding out, they don’t pull him. Just because there was a CPS report doesn’t mean a kid gets automatically yanked. However, take those bruises along with him disappearing from under your nose . . .”

  “Fuck you.”

  Leah grips the wheel. “That’s where Frankie learned to talk like that.”

  “Fuck you, too,” she says again. “Somebody’s gonna lose their job.”

  Leah glances into the rearview mirror. “Somebody’s gonna lose their kid.”

  Sheila whacks the back of my head. “Where’d you find this bitch?”

  I say, “Pulled her out of the deep end.”

  Sheila sits back hard in the seat. Folds her arms.

  Leah says. “Where to?”

  Silent contempt covers Sheila’s face.

  “Come on, Sheila,” I say. “We can’t just drive around all afternoon. Your old place is rented out. You want to go to Nancy’s?”

  It takes a second but she finally says, “Yeah. Nancy’s.”

  That’s a reunion I’m going to be happy to miss.

  “I hate that bitch.” Sheila’s once again in the backseat.

  I say, “Good thing we stayed around.”

  “Yvonne’s?” Leah says.

  Sheila grunts.

  We weren’t at Nancy’s five minutes before Nancy accused Sheila of abandoning Frankie after she “sucked up all the damn TV sympathy” and Sheila was accusing Nancy of . . . well pretty much everything up to and including global terrorism. Their only point of agreement was the future firebombing of social and health services. And after all that, when Sheila said she was going to Yvonne’s, Nancy said she could stay.

  Now in the car, Sheila says, “Minute she heard I was going to Yvonne’s, all of a sudden she changes her tune.”

  I laugh. “Nancy thinks Yvonne is turning you away from acceptable Nancy Boots behavior.”

  “Ma’s a fuckin’ bigot.”

  I refuse to explain the concept of irony. “Sheila,” I say, “you gotta quit doing dumb things. You gotta get clean, get a place, keep all the Butches in your life away from Frankie till he’s eighteen.”

  No answer. I turn to see tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I’m not gonna get another chance with Frankie,” she says. “I got nobody.” She’s quiet another minute, then, “I never done right by Frankie ’cause I never even knew if I wanted ’im. Only when they said they was gonna take him. That’s when. And I don’t know if I love him or I just didn’t want somebody takin’ one more damn thing from me.”

  It kills me when my sister’s shell cracks. It’s so much easier to do battle with a hard-ass. “Look,” I say. “I know you’ve always hated me, and I’ve always hated you. But you had the right and I didn’t. I got put someplace where they took care of me. And they took me back when things fell apart. You went to foster homes where people who should have never have gotten their hands on you did. You took way more shit from Nancy because you were first; she’s always been meaner to you.”

  “Just shut up, Annie,” she says.

  “No. When this is all done you’re going to hate my guts again, and that will make me hate you right back. So I’m getting it said. You’ve got one shot, which means Frankie has one shot. Remember, you’re the one who said neither of us could afford to turn into Nancy.”

  She drops her head and the tears fall straight to the floor. “I am fuckin’ Nancy.”

  Leah pulls to the curb and turns around in her seat. “Not yet.”

  “Leave me alone. You don’t know me.”

  “Actually,” Leah says, “I’m starting to.”

  “Well,” Wiz says, “looks like my long career pretending to protect children is drawing to a close.”

  We’re gathered around a wooden table in a conference room at children’s services; me, Wiz, Walter, and Momma, who Wiz is still hoping will step up for permanent placement. We’re a day past the return of Sheila.

  I say, “What happened?”

  “Got ratted out.”

  “By who?”

  Wiz smiles. “Me.”

  “Does this fall into the category of ‘sabotaging behavior’?” I ask, calling up a term Wiz used on me throughout my grade school years.

  “I’m gratified,” he says, “that the entirety of my wisdom wasn’t flushed down the toilet with my job.”

  “Does it?” I wait.

  “Willful sabotage,” he says, and sits back. “You know how they say most criminals are caught because they don’t think of half the things they need to think of before they commit the crime?”

  Great minds think alike. “Can’t tell you how many times I heard that when I was little, when Nancy was still with Rance.”

  “I’m supposed to be smarter than Rance,” Wiz says. “I guess if I take them up on the five free therapy sessions included in my retirement package, I’ll discover I knew all along where this was going.”

  “What happened, Wiz?” Momma says.

 
“Humphries, the Review reporter, did his job. Officer Graham was more than willing to let it die, but Humphries kept pumping in the oxygen.”

  Walter says, “You being charged? Hell, man, let me take the hit for this. It was my doing.”

  Wiz shakes his head. “Naw, this story is a snake eating its tail. No way I can extract myself from it completely, so there’s no reason for both of us to go down. I told RoyAnne, my supe, the whole story, without using your name, of course, and she’s sympathetic, but she had to do something; rumors were flying around the department like drones. If Sheila is going to have a chance to pull it together, we can’t let the public know definitively that Frankie was about to be removed. None of their business anyway, but you know what social media would look like. So I resign, RoyAnne says mistakes were made but the person who made them is no longer with us; can’t discuss any further because of confidentiality. If Sheila doesn’t get oral diarrhea, there’s no one else for Humphries to talk to. We’ll weather him and the TV folks for a few weeks and all will be well.”

  “Except you are out of a job,” Walter says.

  “Best part of it,” Wiz says. “I’ve got retirement built up, some in savings. Wife works, and she’s wanted me out of this business since before I got into it. Gives me enough cushion to get into a fast-track master’s program in education and go where I can do some real good.”

  Momma says, “You wouldn’t say all this just to make us all feel better, would you Wiz?”

  “I would,” he says, “but I’m not.”

  Momma says, “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Margie Waters has been assigned the case. Her fingerprints aren’t anywhere on it. If we can get Frankie into foster-adopt . . . well, that’s the best we can do. Sheila gets it together, she gets her shot. If not, he’ll be somewhere permanent.” He turns to Momma. “Which I was fantasizing would be your place.”

  “And as I said earlier, my place may not be permanent even for me, but if you can hold off a little while, I’ll give you a better answer.”

  “You set your play, then someone hikes the ball,” Wiz says.

  Momma looks confused.

  Walter says, “He just means a lot of plans don’t work out the way you expect.”

  “I promised Jack I’d give therapy a chance,” Momma says. “That puts us on hold at least three months.”

  “We can keep him that long,” Wiz says. “This is all on the QT, so we didn’t lose our foster license over it. I’ll be a stay-at-home foster dude for a bit. Shouldn’t be any new surprises.”

  “No surprises except for maybe the smell,” Walter says.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Wiz says one of the scariest things about human beings is what slaves we are to habit. He did all the things needed to give Frankie a running start before he resigned, and then the ball got hiked, right around the time Sheila went into substance abuse treatment.

  Margie was walking Sheila and Frankie down the long road toward reunification with great care and great love, way more than anyone’s ever given her. Margie got her to agree that nothing good was going to happen until she was clean and sober, then placed her in inpatient treatment down in Yakima, where she could get away from all the people she’s been dirty and messed-up with.

  For a month she was in blackout: no visitors so she could focus on herself and her treatment. She got one phone call a week, which she didn’t use because she didn’t have anyone she wanted to call.

  How pathetic is that?

  After that month she still doesn’t have anyone she’s dying to talk to . . . so my phone goes off.

  “Hey, Sheila.”

  “These assholes say I can have visitors now.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Great. Who would I want to see?”

  “Me.”

  “Don’t mess with me.”

  I say, “I’m not. You want to see me.”

  The line is quiet, then, “Okay. You.”

  On Saturday we don’t have a game, and Leah had early workout. Tim is busy at home, so Leah and I make the three-hour drive to Yakima in two and a half. Leah scouts out coffee places where a girl can read for a couple hours while her BGF hangs out with her sister in drug treatment.

  “So how is it?” I ask. We’re in the main lounge, me in an overstuffed chair and her across the table on the couch.

  “How do you think? It’s drug treatment.”

  I am not doing battle. “Relatively speaking, then.”

  “Relatively to what? It’s the only drug treatment place I’ve ever been in, if you haven’t noticed.”

  I’ve noticed. “Sheila, I don’t know how you want me to ask the question. Are you gonna make it?”

  “My counselor says I’m doin’ pretty good.”

  “That’s great. How long do you think you’re gonna be here?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Of course I’m going good. I can’t get my hands on anything.”

  “The brochure says you get individual and group counseling. Are you making any friends?”

  “When have I ever had a friend?”

  “Yvonne.”

  “Yvonne. I’m still pissed she told you where I was. I would never have texted. . . .”

  “Come on. She was trying to help.”

  “An’ she’s like a weak little baby anyway. How is someone like Yvonne gonna help me through this? She uses as much as me, an’ hell, I’d rather have me as a mother than her.”

  “I wasn’t saying you should hook back up with Yvonne, even though she uses weed, and you use . . . whatever. I was saying if you can make one friend, you have the ability to make another, somebody who’s, like, a little more together.”

  Sheila slaps the cushion. “This couch is more together than Yvonne.”

  I’m not helping. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Aren’t you in touch with your caseworker?”

  “No, I’m not in touch with my caseworker, other than she sends notes of ‘support.’ Bitch . . . get a job at Hallmark. Besides, when I wanna know what’s really going on, I’m not askin’ somebody who works for the state.”

  “Well,” I say, “Frankie’s still in at Wiz’s place, waiting to see if the Howards are going to get it together as a permanent place.”

  “I’m a permanent place. What the hell do they think I’m doing in this shithole?” She says it loud and other patients glance over, then away when they catch Sheila’s threatening look.

  “You are a permanent place. But they have to have a fallback position in case you blow out.”

  She puts her head down, fiercely massaging the bridge of her nose. I don’t know a whole lot about drug treatment, but Sheila’s got a long way to go. If she got out of here today, she’d be flyin’ by dinnertime.

  “What about Ma?” she says.

  “What about her?”

  “You talk to her about all this? Me?”

  “Little bit,” I say. “You know Nancy. She blames it all on social services. When she’s not blaming it on you.”

  “Yeah, well, I blame it on her.”

  I’m surprised she asked about Nancy at all.

  She waits, then, “You think she’d come down here?”

  “You mean to go into treatment?”

  “No, dummy, to . . . do some sessions with me.”

  Wow.

  “Somethin’ they look for is resentments,” Sheila says. “I got plenty of those. My counselor says it might be good if Ma came to a couple of sessions. Down the road, I mean.”

  I take a deep breath. “She might.”

  “Yeah, well, if you wanna make yourself useful, find out.”

  “She wants me to drive all the way down there and sit in a room with someone what’s on her side so she can bash me?”

  “That’s not how she put it.”

  “A course that’s not how she put it. You remember when your therapist roped me into coming
in with you?”

  “Uh-huh. Right after you brought a Level-three sex offender into our basement. ‘He seems like a nice guy. I’ll keep an eye on him.’” I’m wicked with the imitation.

  We’re in the mostly empty bleachers following a Friday night basketball game Nancy saw almost all of. Walter and Leah are about twenty yards away, each waiting to escort one of us home. Pop isn’t here to criticize my play or keep me away from my family “lowlifes” because since he and Momma have been going to therapy, there’s a moratorium on jumping my shit.

  “Well,” Nancy says, “I didn’t bring no sex offenders down on your sister.”

  “I read the note the therapist gave her to give you. She’s not bringing you there to get bashed. She wants to give Sheila the chance to get her feelings out and you the chance to respond.”

  “That’s just a fancy way of sayin’ I get one more chance to hear what a shitty mother I am.”

  I take a page from Seth’s book. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

  “You mean one that don’t make sense.”

  “No. It’s like a what-if question. If you knew that sitting through a few sessions would give Frankie a chance to live with his mother—like help him avoid what we all went through—would you do it?”

  “You mean if I knew it would help?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She shakes her head as her shoulders slump. “I guess. But I got no way to get there.”

  “Leah and I’ll take you. Walter can come, too, if he wants. We’ll go to dinner after.”

  “Sounds like some miser’ble double date,” she says.

  “Exactly. A miserable double date, only Leah’s boyfriend might take exception to that description.”

  I hear intense conversation through the heat-vent walkie-talkie in Marvin’s room—Momma and Pop closed in their bedroom, wrestling over some therapy issue.

  “. . . is not on the table, Jack. That girl has had more losses than any three kids should have had to suffer, and I’m not giving her one more.”

  “She lies,” Pop says. “And then does whatever she pleases. I can’t have that. What kind of message does that send to Marvin?”

  “Jack, have you heard a thing we’ve talked about in therapy? And not that you’ve noticed, but Marvin is totally capable of deciphering all incoming messages. And you may have noticed he’s so mad at you he can’t see straight.”