Chapter Eleven

 

            The break with Matt was clean. Geri wondered about that expression: “a clean break”—what an idiotic idea. She felt jagged inside. Not having him around left her feeling somehow unfinished and raw. There was nothing “clean” about life without Matt.

But he was gone now. Several hours away at college. And if he was coming home for occasional weekends and breaks, she wouldn’t know it. She never saw him. When basketball season started up again that winter, she half-hoped he would come to a game, especially over Christmas break, when she knew he had to be in town.

            Though she searched the crowds when she ran out onto the court and while listening to Coach Thorpe’s instructions in the huddle, she didn’t see him. He had a whole other life now. And she was right—a high school sophomore girl didn’t figure into it.

            But at one of their games, someone had showed up, someone she had not expected. The season was going well, and the team was 9-1, and the one loss was to a 6A school in the Tulsa East Central tournament. Since Fishinghawk was a 3A school, Geri didn’t feel too badly about that one. They hadn’t even beaten them by much. Johnna was the leading scorer, averaging seventeen points a game, but Geri was right behind her with fourteen.

            After one of the home games, when Geri was sitting up in the stands watching the boys’ game with Bird, a man walked up to them and leaned over her.

            “Hi, Tang. Bird. I was wondering if we could talk a minute.”

            Geri’s initial reaction was shock. Who was this person calling her “Tang.” No one but Coach Thorpe did that. She involuntarily scooted a few inches away, and then she realized who he was. Her father.

            She didn’t know what to say. She stared at him, as did Bird.

            “I’ve been to every one of your games. You are really good. You’ve got a knack. I should have known way back when you were a little girl just messing around in the backyard with that ball.”

            He somehow made room between Geri and the next person over and squeezed in beside her. She moved over a few more inches until she was practically in Bird’s lap.

            “I guess it’s a bit of a shock seeing me now. I haven’t exactly kept in touch.”

            “Not exactly,” Geri finally managed to say. Not that she had wanted him to. He and his lovely, real-estate-selling bleached-blonde wife had no time for her when she was a kid. He had not shown an inch of interest in her life in the eight years since she had seen him. He had given her up to strangers.

            Geri refused to look him in the face. Her whole body was turned toward Bird.

            “Listen, I’m not trying to come barging back into your life.”

            After a silence that seemed to stretch on like an endless bounce of a yo yo, he sighed and said, “Well, I just wanted to say hi.”

            He seemed to sigh or mumble something and then pushed past the knees of those lining the row and walked down the bleacher steps. Geri only turned his way when he was out of the bleachers. He walked with a kind of limp and he was skinnier than she remember. She wondered where she got her height. She couldn’t remember how tall her mom was. Maybe she would ask Ganny.

            “How did he know your name?” Geri asked Bird.

            Bird flushed, making her dark face a ruddy color.

            “What?” Geri punched her in the side.

            “Oh, at the game in Adair last week, he came up to me when I was out at the concession stand.”

            “What for?”

            ‘He said he could tell we were friends, and he just wanted to know how you were doing.”

            Geri swallowed, trying to keep anger down. She didn’t like being spied on or discussed behind her back.

            “What did you tell him?”
            “I don’t know. I didn’t tell him anything. I mean, what did he expect me to tell him?”

            “Asshole.”

            An older couple sitting in front of them both turned and looked at her at the same time. She put on a fake smile, but it was a look that said, “What the hell are you looking at?”

            Her dad and his family had been so far removed from her mind for so long that Geri had never considered that she might run into him someday. Ganny never talked about him. He had stopped having any contact with her years ago, after the first foster home didn’t work out. After he and his wife had started their own family. His second family. The real one.

 

            The next day, after-school practice had just let out, and Geri left the locker room. Though she had her license, she didn’t have anything to drive, so she was dependent on others for rides. She usually got a ride home with Jeff, a junior who stayed after school most days working on the school newspaper that he edited.

“Tang! Need to talk to you a minute!” Coach Thorpe hollered at her from across the gym.

            “I have to catch a ride.”

            “They won’t leave you. Come here.”

            Geri reluctantly dropped her backpack from her shoulder and walked slowly over to him.

            “You look like you’re expecting me to get onto you,” he said, with as much as a smile as he ever made.

            She shrugged and said nothing.

            “Listen, Tang, I have nothing to complain about. Right now anyway. You’re playing top level. Some college scouts have already made a little buzz about you, and I’ve never had that happen to a player who was only a sophomore. You got a bright future ahead.”

            What was this? Geri had never gotten such a pep talk from Coach Thorpe. Was he turning over a new leaf? She wasn’t sure she liked it. She had come to rely on the old gripey, never-satisfied, screaming in her face Coach.

            “You do intend to go to college, don’t you?”

            “I guess,” Geri mumbled. She always felt like a sullen little girl in front of Coach.

            “I know you and your grandma don’t have much, so a scholarship is going to be handy. . . . I don’t expect your dad is helping you out much?”

            “Helping me out?” Geri repeated. “He doesn’t do anything. Far as I know, he’s never paid a dime of child support to Ganny.”

            She wanted to add, And what’s it to you? But she didn’t feel quite audacious enough.

            “Hard to believe,” Coach mumbled. “Scott and I were schoolmates. I would never think he would abandon his kid like that. When we talk, he always”--

            “Jeff is waiting on me,” Geri said, so anxious to get away she wasn’t really listening. She knew Jeff wouldn’t care what time she came out to the parking lot. She knew he had a crush on her, and while she wasn’t mean about it, she was going to use it for what she could.

            “I talked to your dad recently.”

            “So?”

            “He would like to . . . I guess . . . just reconnect with you somehow.”

            What was it with this guy—using everybody around Geri to get to her?

            “He tell you this?” Geri asked..

            “Yes. Listen, I’m not any good at this kind of stuff. He wanted me to sound you out and I said I would as a favor to an old friend. But he’s on his own now. I relayed my message.”

            “Okay. We done?”

            He didn’t answer, just turned away with a sigh and headed to the coach’s office. Geri ran across the court, not caring that she was wearing her outside shoes. The gym, as cavernous as it was, felt like it was suffocating her. She had to get outside so she could breathe.

            Jeff was standing beside his Jeep, watching the front door. He had curly brown hair cut short and was not quite as tall as Geri. His wire-frame glasses hid green eyes that were his best feature, Geri thought.

            “Sorry! Got caught up,” she said, working hard to put the whole conversation, the whole idea of her dad out of her mind.

            “No problem,” Jeff said. He smiled and got behind the driver’s seat. The Jeep had been running and was warm.

            Geri sighed. “Nice and toasty in here.”

            She mentally punched herself in the head. She didn’t know why, but being around Jeff made her say the stupidest things. She wasn’t attracted to him, it wasn’t that. But she found these corny things continually coming out of her mouth when they were together.

            “How’s the paper coming?” she asked, wishing she had something more intelligent to say.

            At least he was as hard pressed for conversation, too. They rode most of the way to her house in silence, with occasional comments about the weather, basketball, and newspapers.

* * *

 

            The subject of her father was not going to go away. That night after dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn—all of Geri’s favorites—Ganny brought it up.

            “Warren tells me that Scott has been comin’ to your ballgames.”

            Geri appreciated the use of “Scott” rather than “Dad.”

            “Apparently.”

“What’s he want?”

Geri liked that. Ganny would always get right to the point.
            “He was harassing Bird and Coach Thorpe, like he was trying to get some kind of scoop on me from them.”

            Ganny scowled. “Well, don’t ya let him bother ya. He can’t just come waltzin’ back into your life at this point.”

            “I agree.”

            Geri idly flipped through one of Ganny’s gardening magazines. Ganny was crocheting something light green.

            “Warren says you’re a right good ball player. Course, I already knew that. Says ya shouldn’t have no problem getting’ a scholarship somewheres.”

            “We’ll see. Never know. I might lose it somehow in the next two years.”

            “The only way’d ya lose it if ya got as crazy as . . . well if ya went overboard like . . . .” Ganny put down her crocheting. “Ya do have her tendencies, and still . . . I think ya got a bit more common sense.”

            Every once in a while, they talked about Louise. And now, they could talk about her without using her name.

Geri could feel Ganny’s eyes on her, like she was weighing whether to continue.

            “Ya ain’t still goin’ down to that creek place, are ya?”

            “Not lately,” Geri said. She had been there just the week before. The fall rains had washed away all her messages and symbols from the creek bed rocks, but she was starting new ones. When she sat on the creek bed now, she could feel the coldness spread through her like a disease, and she never stayed long. She couldn’t stop coming to the spot. She wasn’t necessarily a believer in ghosts, yet she half-hoped that Louise would appear to her someday there.

She felt there must be something she needed from Louise. Didn’t she have something to ask her? When do you ever know if what you feel is what you should do?

Chapter Twelve

 

              Christmas break passed uneventfully. Geri spent a lot of time with Bird—going shopping with her mom, just hanging around her house, driving around town with her and two of her brothers. Coach Thorpe had the team practicing for two hours almost every day except Christmas. Ganny couldn’t quite believe it, but she knew how much it meant to Geri.

              More than anything she wanted to get the team to the state tournament.

              “Why are you so obsessed about it this year?” Bird had asked her. “You’ve got two more years after this one that you can win the tournament.”

              “I don’t know. I just feel that way. I feel like . . .” But the words wouldn’t come for Geri.

              What she felt was an unrelenting kind of excitement tightly wrapped up in a ball lodged in her stomach. A spinning ball, always in motion, always yearning to be moving. And what she wouldn’t admit to Bird, because she didn’t know where it was coming from herself, was the feeling that this was her only chance. She wasn’t looking ahead to her junior and senior years. This was it. The future was the next few months when the district, regional, and state tournaments would be played out.

              She saw Matt twice during the break, the first time on a Saturday night when she was driving around with Bird and her brothers. Fishinghawk was so small, it had nothing to offer teenagers for entertainment. Driving around town, out to the lake, sitting on cars at the park at the edge of town—that was the extent of it.

              They had stopped for gas at Ernie’s QuikStop, and she jumped out with Bird and headed for the door before she saw him. He was with a group of guys he had gone to school with, all home for the holidays. Bird pinched her, and she stopped laughing and slapping at her when she saw him. He was already looking at her.

              Geri’s heart felt a sudden rush. He looked so good. Even taller, if that were possible. His hair had grown out some and flipped up at the ends, an inch below his collar. He was wearing a white thermal undershirt and a plain green shirt over it, faded jeans. As she walked toward the door, he broke away from the other guys and came her way.

              “I’ll get your pop,” Bird said and passed her into the store.

              They both said “Hi” at the same time and both laughed quickly.

              “You look good,” Matt said then. His eyes took her in, and she blushed. “You’ve lost weight though. Coach Thorpe to blame, I guess, huh?”
              “Yeah, something like that,” Geri said.

              She knew she had lost weight. Ganny had remarked about it, too. She would have liked to keep it on. It seemed like losing the pounds in her hips and stomach just made her large chest that much more pronounced. Although she had been wearing loose shirts to try and compensate, Bird had made her put on one of her own that night, telling her she looked like a homeless woman in her baggy one. The shirt was really too small, and Geri found herself tugging at the shirt, pulling it down as she looked at Matt.

              “So I imagine you’ve got State in your plans?”

              “I think we can do it.”

              Geri was afraid to venture more than one sentence at a time. She didn’t want to blabber and risk looking like the nimrod she felt she was. She felt . . . too much, too many emotions she had been successfully kept locked away. Until now . . . seeing him again. She could see his truck beyond the group of guys he had been talking to, and she wanted to grab his hand and run to it, get in, and drive away together.

              “Am I keeping you from something?”

              Geri mentally shook herself and forced herself to look at him. His blue eyes sparkled, but he was frowning.

              “No. No, we’re just driving around.”

              Was he going to ask her to go with him? And if he did, what the hell was she going to say?

              “What are you”—Geri started to ask, when one of the guys yelled his name, and Matt looked over his shoulder at him. Geri followed the glance and noticed that the guy was standing with two girls now, and the other guys were in their cars already. All three of them were staring at Matt, and then one of the girls looked at Geri, her eyes narrowing.

              Geri vaguely recognized the girls as seniors at the town ten miles down the road. The one glaring at her was a cheerleader. Geri had almost squashed her against the gym wall during a game a few weeks before when she was running full speed toward the basketball for a layup and sped out of bounds after putting the ball up.

              “I’m coming,” Matt said and turned back to Geri.

              So much for asking her to take off with him. Geri forced a fake smile on her face.

              “Gotta go.”

              “Hey, wait, will ya?”

              He grabbed her elbow as she started to walk past him, and she stopped. Her heart was pounding so loud in her ears, she wasn’t sure she caught what he said next. It sounded like “I miss you,” but she couldn’t be sure. And she found she couldn’t respond. She just stared at him, until he released her arm and walked away.

              She ran into the store, not wanting to see that cheerleader get in beside him.

              Later that night, when Geri had been quiet for a long time, Bird said, “I wish you would forget about him and just go out with Jeff.”

              Jeff had asked her out a couple of times, and she had made excuses both times. She had to concentrate on her game, she told him. And it was partly true. And partly . . . she longed for Matt. And partly . . . she didn’t trust herself. She didn’t trust her body, something she had no way of explaining to Bird. Bird was a virgin and intended to stay that way, she had said once, at least until she was eighteen. While Bird knew that Geri wasn’t squeaky clean, Geri couldn’t bring herself to talk about her past.

              She could barely bring herself to think about her past.

              The other time she saw Matt was at a home basketball game. The gym was packed for the girls’ game because the buzz was all over the county that this team was bound for State, but as they were warming up before the game, she noticed him walking down the bleachers toward the sidelines. She quickly looked away and tried not to think about him. She didn’t stay for the boys’ game, when she might have had a chance to talk with him. She had noticed that he was with a couple of other guys, no girls.

              When she left the locker room, the boys’ game had already started. She walked quickly to the front entrance and thought she was going to make a clean getaway. And her father caught up with her.

              He had been coming to all of the games, even the out of town ones. He managed to grab the opportunity to say something to her at every one of them. She tried to be nice, at least not combative, but she also stayed on the move and didn’t give him a chance to get a conversation going. Did he really think he could just waltz back into her life after abandoning her? After all she had been through because he didn’t want her around?

              Warren saved her by finding them and pulling Geri away, saying he had to get her home. He said hello to Scott but didn’t erase the scowl from his face.

              In the truck on the way home, Warren asked, “How many points you have tonight?”

              “Twenty-five, I think.”

              “Yep, sounds about right. You were on fire.”

              “Yeah,” Geri mumbled. She pressed her head against the passenger window and let its coolness chill her cheek.

              Ganny was asleep when Geri got home. She put on her warmer coat and got on her bicycle. December in Oklahoma could be cold, mild, or warm. It was rarely frigid. It rarely snowed.

              She cycled quickly to the creek, passing no one on the lonely country road.