Physical Therapy (6 page)

“Mmhmm,” Ken said. “Mark never remembers to tell us until we"re on our way there.”

“Where is practice?” I asked. I hadn"t seen a soccer field yet in my wanderings.

“It"s up about six blocks past Day-Use. It"s real easy to miss it,” Ken told me.

“Because it"s small. The elementary school is right next to the middle school, and behind it is the playing field.” Ken pulled out his wallet and paid the cashier.

“And the whole thing backs up to the high school.” Mark grimaced. “It"s like we go to the same school all our lives.”

“If you want, you can come with us if you think you"d have trouble finding the place.”

“Yes, that would be good. I"m on foot anyway. I walked to Izzie"s from the motel. I was just wandering around before I go back.”

We left the small store and walked down the street to where Ken had an SUV

parked. We deposited our groceries in the back. The air was cool and crisp. It was still light out and would be for a while, but not as late as it would have been in River Falls. I missed the twilight from the upper Midwest, but since I"d traded it for some pretty spectacular sunsets here in California I didn"t feel too cheated.

This close to the coast, though, it seemed a blanket of fog was likely to roll in to obscure the view about half the time. I didn"t mind. I liked the way it felt on my skin and the eeriness and allure of a fog-shrouded coastal community spoke to something a little dark in my personality. The day"s rain had turned out a perfectly beautiful, crisp early evening, with high, fat clouds that moved quickly inland. Maybe we were due for more rain. It felt like it.

I was looking around when I realized that Ken was holding the passenger door open for me. Mark had gotten into the back without a word.

“I"m sorry,” I told him. “I was looking…”

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He shrugged and closed the door. When he made his way around, he opened the backseat first and deposited his crutches, then opened the front door, bracing himself on the side of the car as he slid in. He noticed me watching him.

“I"m a motor moron,” he said, almost pleasantly, “but you"re perfectly safe. I assure you I wouldn"t drive if I weren"t capable of doing so, and certainly not with my brother in the car.”

“I wasn"t—”

“It"s a perfectly valid question. The mechanics of walking still elude me. I"m relearning a lot of things. But I still have the ability to drive and rather good reaction time.”

“That must be a relief,” I said.

He shot me a dark look but said nothing.

“Look,” I said. “I don"t want to put my foot in it every time I say anything. Maybe we should just—”

He sighed. In the mirror on my side of the car, I could see his brother looking out the window as though he found something fascinating there. “No. I"m sorry. You didn"t put your foot in it. I"m…I guess I"m overreacting to every little thing.” I saw his brother"s attention snap back at this.

“It"s all right. That"s probably natural,” I said. “I"ve worked with people who are coming back from injuries. Some who have had strokes. There doesn"t seem to be a single normal way for anyone to behave. I"m sure you"re adjusting in your own time. It just takes a lot of it. More than they ever tell you.” I said that without thinking. I didn"t know what they"d told him, but healing of any kind took a long time.

“I"m sure you"re right,” he said. He pulled smoothly away from the curb. I had actually been worried that his driving would be less than optimal despite what I"d said.

It seemed I had nothing to fear, though, because he maneuvered through the quiet streets of St. Nacho"s with ease. We drove through Wendy"s for fast food to take with us, not a bad choice, at least not the worst for me. At some fast-food places I would starve. I ordered a side salad, a broccoli-cheese potato, and a Frosty, and when I pulled out my wallet to pay, Ken waved me off. We drove in near silence until we came to Mark"s school, and we parked near the field.

Mark trotted—with his bag of snacks—toward the field where his fellow teammates stretched, and I carried dinner while Ken and I made our way to the bottom of the bleachers where we could sit, eat, and watch them run through their drills and scrimmage.

“I take it you went to high school here?” I asked, mostly just to have something to talk about.

He was concentrating on walking over the uneven ground, and he didn"t answer right away. “Yes.”

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I thought maybe the subject was painful for him, so I didn"t press. We sat down, and he put his crutches aside. He shook his hands out, opening and closing them, and I fought the urge to help. He pulled out his chicken sandwich and gave me my potato.

We each had a salad and Frosty. He looked to where his brother was dribbling his soccer ball through an obstacle course of orange cones and flags.

“You don"t eat meat?”

“No.” I looked down. “This is kind of a strange dinner.”

“Not really. It looks good. Broccoli.”

“I like it.” A silence grew between us. Mark was fast, agile, and seemed to be fearless. He was a great ball handler. “Mark"s got serious wheels,” I remarked. “Look at him go.” I looked at Ken then, realizing that maybe hearing his brother praised might make him feel his own shortcomings more sharply. He had a faintly satisfied smile on his face.

“He"s really remarkable. He thinks quick, right on the dime, and can get through a defensive line like he"s coming out of a fire hose.” Pride was evident when he spoke of his brother. “I have two sisters who skate competitively, a brother who plays soccer, and another who"s destined to be the baseball player I would have been. Could have been.” He swallowed hard. “My parents were athletes. My dad coaches track at this school. My mom was an Olympic swimmer. She medaled, bronze, in two events.” I remained silent. My own throat burned a little, and I didn"t trust myself to speak.

What could I say to that? I could hardly tell him that I"d lost my own best event, competitive stupidity, at about the same age he"d lost his. That I"d overachieved in drinking and fucking around and that it had cost a three-year-old boy his life. That I"d had to reevaluate my crappy, unhappy history in the same way he was reevaluating his, and that I"d had to re-create myself in exactly the way he would be required to re-create himself. That I"d also had to ask myself the same question, over and over,
what now?

It was hardly comprehensible to me, but there it was. I knew exactly how he was feeling. I had been there; I understood. I"d had the added fillip of mind-numbing guilt, and yet I was pretty certain that if I dug my hand around in his pain and felt for it, under all the anger, grief, desolation, and feelings of hopelessness, I"d find a big, hot ball of guilt inside of Ken as well.

I looked at him sitting there, trying to swallow it all down. It"s not like I could see his aura, but damn. Izzie was right.

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Chapter Five

We continued to watch Ken"s brother, who was now wearing an orange vest and scrimmaging against some of his teammates. Overhead, the dark sky filled with more clouds. I could see the boys" breath on the air as they ran the ball up and down the field.

Ken was right; Mark did seem to be a gifted player, and it was obvious he was lightning quick both in thought and motion. He was going through players right and left, and his feet were nimble and delicate. His upper body rarely betrayed where the ball would go.

“He really is good, isn"t he?” I asked after a while.

“Yeah.” Ken gave an indulgent smile again that I thought almost looked parental.

“I think maybe he has a future.” I wanted to say,
Everyone has a future. Not all of us have
the one we planned
. I remained silent for a little bit, thinking.

“That"s cool,” I finally said when I realized he was expecting me to say something and I couldn"t think of anything else.

“I"m going to hit the head.” He got to his feet, taking up his crutches, and walked away. He picked his way slowly over the track and through the gates until I couldn"t see him anymore. My Red Hat ladies said he"d had his accident six months ago. I wondered again how much he would come back from his injuries. Sometimes it was a matter of learning to do old things in new ways, walking using different muscle groups, retraining the brain. At other times it was a matter of strengthening old muscle groups and practice. In the case of something like this, a brain injury that occurred with the kind of physical trauma that requires surgery, maybe with broken bones, it was probably a matter of both.

I was still thinking about that when the boys took their break and Mark came over with a couple of handfuls of orange wedges. He handed me one, and I couldn"t resist making a stupid orange wedge smile.

“My brother talks to you,” he announced.

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I guessed he meant it more in the sense that his brother doesn"t talk much to other people rather than it being unusual that his brother would talk to me.

“Maybe.” I didn"t know either one of them well enough to make any inferences.

“I try to get him to talk to me, but he gets all irritable and snaps. He apologized when he snapped at you, though.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes people are nicer to outsiders. Maybe he knows you won"t hold it against him.”

“But I do. He"s mean to everyone now. The doctor even said if he worked hard he"d probably be able to coach, maybe even play ball again. Not professionally, but he could still play. I wish he"d just get on with it.” I"m a pretty impatient guy; my counselors at rehab always told me that I lacked the maturity to wait for things to run their natural course. I suspected that at fifteen, Mark was probably right on target, maturity-wise.

“It"s hard to watch someone you love flail.”

“My mom thinks he should move out. Make new friends. It"s like he came home to live in his bedroom, looking at the same old Green Day posters, until everything is back to normal. But he"ll never be normal again. The only place he goes is to rehab. He should do something.”

“It"s probably pretty easy to guess what a guy should do in a situation like this if it"s not you,” I reminded him. “He"s grieving. He"s healing. It takes a lot longer than you can imagine.”

“Do you think he"ll get better soon? Izzie does. She badgers him.”

“Well, I guess if Izzie"s on the case, it must be true; I wouldn"t bet against Izzie, ever.” I grinned.

Mark grinned back, and we talked about other things, mostly soccer, while he cooled off a little. When Ken came back, he sat down next to me and reached for an orange wedge. “So, did Mark tell you all about me while I was gone?” Mark blushed, and I said, “We were just comparing soccer coaches. Mine thought I should play a little less aggressively. I probably should have.”

“Can I go to Zack"s after practice?” Mark asked. “We"re going to work on math together.”

“You say that, but you"ll end up playing with his Wii.”

“I promise that"s not all we"ll do.”

Ken shrugged. “I guess that just means I don"t have to wait here to take you home.” He got a hopeful expression from Mark. “Just remember it"s a school night, and you need to be home by ten.”

“Zack said his mom would bring me,” Mark assured him.

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“Fine. Who am I to complain about an evening off chauffeur duty?” Ken started to pick up the trash from our food but realized he needed to pick up his crutches. “Throw this in the trash for me, will you?” Mark took it and loped off to join his friends.

It was hard not to try to help Ken while he was getting his crutches on and finding his feet. I supposed that"s part of what was putting his brother on edge. His whole family must be walking around on eggshells, trying to help and not knowing how.

When we were almost back to Ken"s car, I decided to say something. “Do you like living at home?”

Ken sort of laughed as he came to a halt and dug his keys out of his pocket. “I knew he was talking about me; he gets this guilty look. I can always tell.”

“He"s concerned about you and impatient.”

“And he doesn"t seem to mind sharing my business with the world.”

“Sorry,” I said, as he unlocked the car remotely and walked to the driver"s side.

“I"ve only been here one day and I"m already causing trouble. That"s not very surprising, really.”

Ken got in with a sigh and shook his head. “Nah. I know my family"s concerned.” He turned on the ignition. “I don"t know what to tell them. I"d like to say healing will take place in exactly fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds.” He turned and backed out of the parking space. As we got going out of the school parking lot, the first fat droplets of rain began hitting the windshield. “I don"t know if I"ll ever get better.”

“You will.”

“Why
did
you come to St. Nacho"s? You never answered my brother"s nosy question.”

I considered my answer carefully. “I have friends who live here. I thought I"d get in touch with them. I haven"t let them know I"m here yet because I wanted to wait until I was more settled.”

“I see.”

“Maybe you can help me out. I need to find inexpensive housing. Like a room in somebody"s house or a studio apartment, anyplace I can live cheaply. Is there something like that?”

“You could check the grocery store bulletin board. Sometimes people also leave stuff like that on cards on the wall of the Laundromat.”

“Yeah, I"m going to need to find one of those too; I don"t have a lot of clothes.” It wasn"t long before we pulled up into the parking lot of the SeaView Motel. I don"t suppose anyone knew why it was called that. You couldn"t begin to see the ocean from there.

Before he stopped the car, before I could even begin to gather myself and touch the door handle, he turned to me and said, “Do you have to go? It"s early still. Maybe we could get a beer or—”

“I don"t drink.” I probably gave that a little more emphasis than it deserved.

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“Sorry, that was thoughtless.” He hesitated. “I don"t want you to go.”

“Why?” It was my turn to stare. I could see his Adam"s apple bob.