Chinese Handcuffs

  Dillon had made reservations for nine-thirty at Archie Brennen’s, a classy three-story restored historical landmark home that had been converted into one of Spokane’s finest restaurants—with prices to match. The game had started at an uncharacteristically early time—six-thirty—so Jen had plenty of time to shower and wind down before they headed over. She was to change in Coach Sherman’s office as soon as the other players were gone.

  The gym was empty except for the janitor, sweeping up the portion of the floor that had been earlier covered by the collapsible bleachers; Coach Sherman, who sat at the empty scorer’s table, working up the team stats; and Dillon, who waited patiently, if nervously, for Jen to get changed.

  “You guys are going someplace nice, huh?” Coach said, appraising Dillon’s leather sports coat and newly pressed jeans.

  “Yeah, Brennen’s.”

  “Ooh. Big spender.”

  Dillon raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He’d been on plenty of dates in his time, but this one made him jittery, even to talk about.

  “Gonna have her in by team curfew?” Coach teased.

  “Easy,” Dillon said, glad to have Kathy keep things on a light note. “Wouldn’t do to have the trainer undermining the team rules and regs.”

  “Rules and regs are off,” Coach said more seriously. “Unless you make more money than I think you do, you’re in for a major capital outlay. You guys just have a good time. It won’t hurt Jennifer a bit to lighten up a little.”

  Dillon blew out a sigh. “Won’t hurt Dillon a bit to lighten up a little right now either,” he said. “This might be a big mistake. My gut is hopping around like a rabbit on an anthill.”

  Coach shrugged and smiled. “Could be love,” she said. “Whatever that is.”

  At Brennen’s Dillon ordered steamed clams for an appetizer and their best nonalcoholic champagne, pulling out every trick of etiquette his father and mother had drilled into his head from the day he was old enough to drop a spoonful of mashed peas three feet to the rug. He was smooth as polished leather, except he couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound like elevator talk.

  “Pretty good game,” he said over the salad.

  Jen smiled. “Pretty good. Not much to it really.”

  “Rather have a tougher game going into the tournament?”

  Jen shrugged. “I don’t know that it matters really. Once the tournament starts, I can’t even remember the season.”

  Neither could take that conversation much farther, nor did they have better luck with the weather, the SATs or Jen’s summer job prospects. Looking across the table at her, with the light so soft on her face and her hair falling easily on her shoulders and over her silky blouse, Dillon felt, clearly for the first time, the beginnings of a physical attraction, the part that had been missing, and his attempts at conversation became immediately more difficult. An hour and forty-five minutes from the time they were seated Dillon was better than fifty bucks in the hole and the “date” was a monumental bust.

  When he pulled up in front of Jen’s house, Dillon shut down the engine and turned toward her, his back against the door, elbow resting on the steering wheel. He said, “Maybe this wasn’t as great an idea as it seemed when I had it.”

  Jen’s head was down, staring at her hands in her lap. “It wasn’t you. I think I don’t play this part very well.”

  Dillon stared out the front window a second, tapping his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, thinking. “So what do you want to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know for sure. The day I met you I had this really strong feeling of connection, almost like I already knew you. It was like I used to have with Stacy when I was a kid. I guess I just naturally thought I was supposed to do something about it.”

  “Well, you have. We spend a lot of time together. I feel the connection, too, Dillon.”

  “So,” Dillon said, looking back at her, “what’s wrong with this picture? I see you. You see me. We’re attracted to each other. You’re pretty—beautiful, actually—and there are uglier guys in the world than I. We’re both smart; we like the same things. I’m a boy; you’re a girl. Everything works out like a storybook until we go on a date, where we treat each other like extraterrestrials.” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Jennifer looked at him, and her face softened. “There are things about me you don’t know, Dillon. I’m not going to tell you what they are, not now anyway. But if you knew, they would help it make sense, I think.”

  He nodded slowly, looking into her eyes. He trusted what she said, and the way she said it let him know not to push.

  “What I need for you to do is not to make some big complicated deal out of this, okay?

  Dillon said okay without knowing exactly what he was saying. It was a complicated deal.

  “I need you to be in my life,” Jen said. “But I can’t let us be in love. At least not like most people think of it. Not physically anyway. Not now. I can let you touch my heart, you’ve done that from the first day; but I can’t let you touch my body, and I guess that’s what ‘dates’ are all about.”

  Dillon put his hands flat on the ceiling. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Just what you’ve been doing, if you can. Care about me. Spend time with me. Fix my wounds on the court.”

  Dillon sat, bewildered. Finally, when Jen remained quiet, he said, “Hell, I can do that. I been doing that.” He squinted as if that would help him see things more clearly. “Jen, would you tell me something?”

  “If I can.”

  “Do I appeal to you? I mean, do you think I’m good-looking or funny or any of whatever it is that attracts girls to guys?”

  She laughed. “Of course I do. I think you’re all those things. I’m not blind and deaf. I’m just screwed up.”

  “That’s all, huh, just screwed up.”

  “That’s all.”

  “Will you make me a deal?”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “Will you tell me about it someday?”

  Jen looked down. “I don’t know. Someday maybe.”

  Dillon hesitated, his head nodding like a toy dog in the back of a ’55 Chevy. “I guess I thought we’d be more than friends.”

  Jen touched his hand, held it a second, and said, “There’s no such thing as more than friends.”

  There is when you’re as horny as I am, Dillon thought, but he only nodded.

  “So, how did your date with Jen go?” Coach asked. Dillon stood in the back of her office, folding towels, while Coach sorted out uniforms.

  “You remember high school, Coach?” he asked.

  “Vaguely. But I asked you first. How did your date go?”

  “I’m going to tell you,” he said, “but I need to put it in context.” He walked to her desk with a pile of towels and dropped them on the top. “When you were in high school, did things turn out like you expected them to?”

  “Well, I expected to get a D in Latin, and I got it. What things do you mean?”

  “Any damn thing,” Dillon said in exasperation, continuing to fold. “The date was a bust. The second we were ‘going out’ neither of us could think of a thing to say. Imagine me not thinking of something to say. That’s like A. J. Foyt being afraid to drive home from the track. I blew fifty bucks on a meal I can’t even remember the taste of because I was concentrating so hard on how shitty things were going.”

  “You should start slower,” Coach said. “Next time go to Burger King.”

  “No kidding. But we had a good talk afterward, and I thought things were fine. I mean, basically she said she wanted me to be her friend, and isn’t looking for any others, really, but we just can’t act like one of us is a girl and one is a guy.”

  Coach laughed. “Cuts down on your chances for contracting anything unpleasant, in a genital sense, I mean.” She thought a second. “You don’t have an agreement that you won’t go out on dates, do you?”

&nb
sp; “No,” Dillon said. “But I don’t really feel like it. For one thing, I started getting these really strong feelings—you know, like sexual—somewhere there in the main course. That’s never happened before with Jen. I can’t tell if I’m screwed up because something’s wrong with me or if I’m screwed up because of circumstances. The only other girl I’d consider going out with is in love with my dead brother.” He shook his head. “I think there’s a fairly good chance I’m going to end up in some obscure religious order.”

  “Might have to clean up a little of your impulsiveness,” Coach said.

  “And speaking of girls in love with my dead brother,” Dillon went on, intent on exploring the rest of what seemed just a little bizarre in his life, “guess what else I think I found out.”

  “What else do you think you found out?” Coach asked, stacking the jerseys in one pile and starting in on the shorts.

  “Have you seen Stacy Ryder’s adopted brother?”

  “Once,” Coach said. “She brought him to school.”

  Dillon pulled out a wallet-sized snapshot. “Does this little booger look familiar?” he asked.

  “It looks like Stacy’s brother,” she said.

  “Yes, it does,” he said. “Want to know who it really is?”

  “You’re telling me it’s not Stacy’s brother,” Coach said. “So who is it really?”

  “It’s goddamn me,” Dillon said. “And you know what? I’ve seen Stacy’s cousin, and she doesn’t look one little bit like me, and neither does anyone in her family.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying that ain’t no adopted baby. I’m saying that’s my brother’s baby. Ryan Ryder is my freaking nephew.”

  Coach stopped sorting. “Dillon, you don’t know that. You should be a little bit careful before you fly off with some wild idea. A lot of babies look alike.”

  “I’m not flying off,” Dillon said. “I mean I’m not going to do anything about it. I can’t do anything about it. But I can sure check it out with Stacy.”

  Coach shrugged.

  “Do you think I should?” Dillon asked.

  “Don’t we have a counselor at this school?” Coach asked back. “Why are you asking me all this?”

  “Yeah, we have a counselor. They sent me to her after Preston killed himself. I think she’s better at helping kids choose a college.”

  Coach put her things aside and sat on her desk, motioning for Dillon to sit in her chair. “So, what do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Advice,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t do that. I never do that. You know a minute ago when you asked me if anything turned out the way I expected it to?”

  “Yeah.”

  Coach Sherman watched Dillon for a moment, searched his eyes as if struggling with whether or not to go on with this, then: “Dillon, why do you think I’m not married?”

  “I don’t know. Never found anybody good enough, I guess.”

  Coach smiled. “Is that what you guess? It’s a good thing you’re cute, Dillon, because you’re not going to make it with insight. I’m not married because I could never make a relationship work; never found anyone who had the same expectations that I have. All my life I was told by my parents and my teachers and my friends how women were supposed to be, but I could never pull it off because it wasn’t how I was.” She shook her head and laughed. “High school was a horror show for me. I spent the whole time thinking something was wrong with me because I wouldn’t play the game the way it was laid out. One of the reasons I became a teacher was to see if I could change that for some kids.”

  “What about that TV guy? Wayne whatever. You guys get along pretty well, don’t you?”

  Coach nodded. “We get along fine. But you’ll notice you don’t see us together all that often. It’s certainly not what you’d call a full-time relationship. I love it this way. And so does Wayne. But it’s certainly not what’s considered ‘normal’ and it’s certainly not what I expected I would want at forty-two years old back when I was in high school.”

  Dillon felt the need to put Coach’s information into a context he could understand. “So do you think you’ll get together—you know, completely?”

  “Dillon, what do you want from me?”

  “Like I said, I thought I wanted advice.”

  “About what?”

  “About Stacy. About Jen. Things just seem so out of control.”

  “It would just be bad advice,” Coach said. “But maybe I can help a little.”

  “A little is better than nothing.”

  “Dillon, all you have in this world, really, are your responses to it. Responses to your feelings and responses to what comes in from outside. You know how adults are always trying to get you to ‘take responsibility? That’s all responsibility is, responding to the world, owning your responses. It isn’t about taking blame or finding out if something’s your fault.”

  “Okay,” Dillon said. She always made him think.

  “You have no control over the world. You have no control over anyone but you. You can’t control how Stacy feels about you or whether she had your brother’s baby. You can’t control what’s gone on in Jennifer’s life or how she’s reacting to that. There’s nothing in the world outside yourself you can control. Winter’s cold, summer’s warm. Things fall from high places, they break. You lie, trust goes. Truth stays the same, Dillon. Truth is simply what is. It doesn’t have to be believed to exist. Only our responses change.”

  “I know this helps me,” Dillon said, “but I don’t know how.”

  “You always want to fight, but you never want to fight at home, you always want to fight on foreign soil. The wars with Caldwell, the wars about your brother, about your mom leaving. The war to make things fair all the time, to make Stacy and Jennifer fit into something you’re familiar with. All things you have no control over. That’s not where the war is, Dillon.” She pounded her chest lightly with her fist. “The war’s in here.”

  Dillon looked down. Though he didn’t completely understand, something hit close to home because he was embarrassed, like back in the fourth grade when he found he’d been beating on a kid for fifteen minutes who hadn’t stolen his bike.

  “Your responses are all you have,” Coach said again. “It’s exactly the same thing I tell the girls in basketball, but it’s easier to understand there because there are rules and an identified playing field. In basketball, when you respond well to what you see, you play a good game. You play a great game when you’re able to respond to something you’ve never seen before, something brand-new.”

  The light switched on briefly. “You mean like falling in love in a way nobody ever told you about?”

  Coach smiled. “I mean like falling in love in a way nobody ever told you about.”

  Dillon took a deep breath. “But I don’t know how to respond well to that.”

  Coach shrugged. “So I guess you go by feel. The good part is, you go with whatever works. There’s no precedent, so as long as you agree with whoever else is involved, you can’t be wrong. That part I can tell you from experience.”

  Dillon’s mind reeled. He’d been looking for simplicity. This was simple, though certainly not what he thought he’d asked for. Finally he said, “You’re basically saying I’ll do what I’m going to do, right?”

  “Right. And that you need to own up to it, to yourself. You can be active or passive about your choices, and you can even trick yourself into thinking it’s all out of your control, but every move you make is yours.”

  As usual, when Dillon spelunked in Coach Sherman’s dimly lit spiritual cave he came away with artifacts he didn’t immediately understand. He finished folding the towels and stuffed them into the footlocker in silence, though a very busy conversation rattled on in his head. He started to leave, then turned around at the door and walked over to Coach and hugged her.

  “You’re one tough chick,” he said.

  “Watch it,” s
he said back as he ambled out the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dear Preston,

  Well, brother, old Dillon decided to take the bull by the horns and get this all out on the table—aboveboard, as it were—just to see what the hell it looked like in the light of day as opposed to inside the bottomless caverns of my paranoic imagination. I billed it as a friendly get-together, a chance for my two best friends to meet and begin to get to know each other, secretly hoping that one area of conversation would lead to another, with my expert guidance, and I’d get some information out and some questions answered.

  I’ve been absolutely haunted for the past few days, since figuring out that Ryan Ryder is really Ryan Hemingway and following a conversation I had with Coach about—for lack of a better description—how life works or doesn’t work. I was really intrigued by her idea that if I keep my mind on myself and my own reactions to the world, I can have complete control, that trying to control everything outside me is what keeps me stuck and completely out of control. Opposites at work, I think, maybe Stacy’s Chinese handcuffs. Who knows? I may be the world’s next really great philosopher. Then again, I may be the world’s next really great jerk. It’s a crapshoot, I tell you. But it can’t hurt, because there exists in this the possibility that I’ll be able to put you in your rightful place.