Double Blind, Chapter Three: Collision

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The patch has taken away my depth perception, adding a technical challenge to an already tricky situation. Kelly is dangling ass-up from a trapeze-style sex swing as I receive her pink slot on my prick like a schoolboy catching apples on a knife. On my seventh foray I misjudge, and jar my member on her left cheek.

            “Ouch! Damn.”

            Kelly’s smile appears somewhere near her left knee.

            “Dontcha mean ‘Ahrrr!’?”

            “Oh!” I complain. “Poking fun at the disabled.”

            She lets out a girly titter. “Seems more like the disabled is poking me. But you really do look like a pirate, Hoppy. Maybe we should go out and buy some costumes.”

            “Whatever you want, hon. But for now, could you give me a little massage?”

            She tumbles forward into a handstand and flips to her feet.

            “Damn, woman!”

            “Used to be a cheerleader.” She rubs a handful of oil between her palms, then applies it my injured penis.

            “Ah, thank you.”

            “Can I see it?” she asks. I lift up the patch to reveal my stitches.

            “Aigh! That bitch. How could she do that?”

            “Don’t you think I kinda deserved it?”

            “Hoppy. A kick in the ass, maybe. Laxatives in the coffee, okay. But no one should go for the eyes.”

            “She didn’t do it on purpose.”

            “Or so you think.”

            “Yeah, okay. She’s definitely getting… edgy. I worry about my kids.”

            She stops the rubdown. “I worry about mine.” Then she eyes my penis, which has regained its vigor.

            “Lie down, honey. Let me do the work.”

            Quite a cowgirl, my Kelly. She knows all the angles, when to work the tip, when to grind it in, when to treat me like a carnival ride. I’m gone in five minutes. She frigs herself off as I shrink inside, then tumbles next to me, fingering her nose ring like a genie with a wish.

            “I’ve got an idea.”

I arrive at the soccer match in a bitter, distracted mood, not exactly the ideal sporting parent. The team makes matters worse by playing in a sloppy, uninspired fashion. Even Pietro is off; he blows three chances in a row by lofting the ball over the bar.

            “Pietro!” I shout. “Keep it low! Make the keeper play it!”

            I have broken one of my own rules: don’t coach unless you’re the coach. Our actual coach, the Norwegian import Nils Arntsen, gives me a look that’s hard to read.

            Just before the half, our sweeper, Jackie Marchetti, catches a cleat and stumbles, leaving their middle striker a clean path to the goal. Marcus follows the textbook, charging forward to cut down the striker’s angle. But then he stops, five feet away, and is back to his usual reactive stance. The striker – who is not center forward for nothing – taps the ball to his left, swings his foot around and boots it in. Marcus is disappointed, but not enough. When halftime arrives, I meet him halfway to the bench.

            “Marcus, where are your eyes in relation to mine?”

            He looks at me, taking a measurement.

            “Same… level?”

            “Yes. And do you know what that means?”

            He ducks his head, like a dog who thinks he’s in trouble. I cup a hand on his shoulder.

            “Son, it means that you’re a really big kid. And everyone out here knows that. Do you realize that you could have thrown yourself at that kid’s feet and taken the ball away? He wouldn’t have done a damn thing.”

            Marcus scrunches up his face. “But Dad, that doesn’t seem very…”

            “Fair, Marcus? Was it fair that your defense left you stranded? Was it fair that that striker can shoot with either foot? It’s not fair or unfair, it’s just using what you’ve got. Life will throw shit at you every day, and I want you to learn… to take advantage of your strengths. Listen, I don’t ask too much of you, right?”

            “Sure.”

            “You know how we make you try all the food on your plate? Well, now, I’m asking you to try this. The next time you get hung out like that, I want you to leap at that ball and steal it away. But I’m warning you, it’s just like lima beans. You might end up liking it.”

            He smiles, and I feel better. The kid’s so damn nice, I worry about pushing him. He jogs to the bench and grabs a quartered orange. As the second half starts, I drift down the sideline toward Nils.

            “Sorry, Coach. Don’t mean to be a buttinski. But I used to be a keeper.”

            “Oh!” says Nils, flashing that great big-toothed grin. “Usually it is only the parents who know nothing who butt in.”

            Marcus’s second half is largely uneventful. Pietro has regained his form and is controlling the game, setting up beautiful give-and-gos with his wingers. He receives one of these at the top of the penalty box, punches it to his right and – as if he has actually paid attention to me – hits a screamer across the grass. The ball touches down in front of the goalie and skips crazily, rocketing under his arms and into the net.

            That one ties it up, but then the defenses clamp down, turning the game into a neutral back-and-forth in the middle third of the field. With five minutes remaining, their winger makes a dash down the left sideline and sends a low cross to the top of the goalie box. The right striker makes a nice leaping header, but Marcus is ready, diving full-out to swat it away.

            He doesn’t swat it far, however; it settles ten feet away, to the right of the goalface. The two nearest players, Marcus and the right striker, are horizontal, but not for long. Marcus claws forward with all four appendages, looking all the world like a charging bull. The striker springs to his feet, takes two steps and slides forward, hoping to jab the ball toward the goal.

            They meet in a pile. The ref blows his whistle. The striker gets up, holding his knee. Marcus stays down. Nils grabs his first-aid kit, and we’re off. I pick my way through a ring of players to find Marcus in the fetal position, his body curved protectively around the ball. He grips it in both hands, eyes closed in pain. Nils is pounding a chemical ice pack into activation. Marcus’s right shoulder is not where it should be. I kneel and touch his arm.

            “Marcus. You can let go of the ball now. They called time-out.”

            Marcus opens his eyes, squinting against the sunlight.

            “I got the ball?”

            I laugh. “You damn well did, son.”

“Oh God, Dad. It hurts!” Marcus is balancing his weirdly sloping shoulder on the passenger-side door, trying to keep it from moving.

            “Son, remember how I asked you to try something new today? I want you to try something else. I want you to swear. Swearing is good for pain.”

            “I don’t know, Dad. Mom says…”

            A car cuts into our lane and I hit the brakes, jamming Marcus’s arm against the door.

            “Fuck! Shit! Hell’s… bells!”

            “Jesus, Marcus. You been watching cable?”

            Marcus manages a sheepish smile. “Pietro gets all the movie channels. Hey, Dad? I think my shoulder slipped back in. Sick!”

            “Good, Marcus. I think that’s good.”

            “But it still fuckin’ hurts.”

            “Son, let’s not get carried away.”

            He snickers, as we pull up to the emergency room.

A young Japanese nurse comes to take X-rays, then slips out to process them. They return in the hands of Lisa Pisarro. She spots my pirate patch and smiles.

            “Well! The Grinder family is having a week.”

            “Yes,” I say. “But this one came in a moment of glory.”

            She eyes Marcus’s cleats. “Did you win the battle?”

            Marcus grins. “Yes.”

            Pisarro clips the X-rays into the reading light.

            “You’re lucky it went back in. Otherwise, I would’ve had to pop it in myself, and I’m already banned in three states due to certain… excesses of my ultimate fighting career.”

            Marcus is such a gullible kid, he doesn’t quite catch the joke. Pisarro signals the jest with those big eyes of hers and manages to get a chuckle out of him.

            “However,” she continues,” we still have some issues. You see, when your shoulder separates like that, it stretches out your tendons. We’re going to give you a sling that holds your shoulder up to the collarbone, so your tendons can tighten back up. Should take about three weeks. After that, however, you still need to take it easy, because these things have a tendency to repeat. I’ll send Keiko back to rig you up. Meanwhile, Jolly Roger, try to keep the rest of the family from maiming itself, okay?”

            “Will do,” I reply, and give her my best schoolboy smile. Pisarro leaves us in a half-dark room. Minutes creep by, and no Keiko.

            “Hey Dad.”

            “Yeah?”

            Marcus smiles. “I did kinda like it. Taking the ball away.”

            “Good.” First Pietro, now this. I should quit genetics and go into coaching.

            “Dad?”

            “Yeah?”

            Marcus chews on a thought, gazing at the image of his warped shoulder on the far wall.

            “Is Mom gonna be all right?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Wuhl, like, when she cut your eye last week? I sorta… wasn’t surprised. I mean, like, sometimes I’ll ask her something? Something easy, like, What’s for lunch? Or, Can I go to John’s house? And she gets all spastic, like, waving her arms around and stuff. And then she starts talking about wasting her life, and she just can’t handle it, and why don’t you ask your father. I can’t even talk to her, Dad. And sometimes, I really want to.”

            My huge kid, the one who’s borne a separated shoulder without crying – he looks terribly small.

            “You’re not gonna leave, are you, Dad? Pietro’s dad left, and he never came back.”

            I place a hand on his good shoulder and look him in the eye.

            “I’m never leaving, Marcus. I won’t ever do that. Your mom and I are going to get some help. You just hang in there, and be real nice to her, okay?”

            He sniffles and nods. I bend over to kiss the top of his sandy blond mop.

            Keiko arrives to fit Marcus with his sling, then hands him a couple of analgesics and a cup of water. We exit the ER to find the entire soccer team gathered in the parking lot, weaving passes between SUVs and Beamers. When they spot Marcus, they break into that raucous tribal barking that I thought had gone out of style.

            “Did we win?” says Marcus.

            “Nah,” says Pietro. “But we tied. We put Wehner in goal. He was pathetic.”

            His teammates laugh and poke Wehner in the ribs. He swats them away like gnats.

            “But he did make a pretty good save,” Pietro allows.

            “Hey, Marcus,” I say. “Why don’t you guys stay here and make fun of Wehner some more...” I pause for laughter (twelve-year-olds are my best audience). “And I’ll go get the car.”

            “Okay,” says Marcus. As I leave, he’s giving gory details of his injury; his teammates respond with obscurely hip adjectives. I walk along the ER windows, lined with miserable faces, and wave to Nils, who’s standing at the front desk (and probably looking for me).

            I sit in the car, and gaze at the green lights of my cell phone, hooked up to the cigarette lighter.

            Does anybody use these things to light cigarettes anymore?

            It’s a phony thought. I’m stalling, because I need to give my wife a full report. It’s getting dark, and she is certain to be gathering anxiety like valence electrons. This will undoubtedly be my fault. Never mind that boys get injured in soccer games every day. Never mind that I have granted my son his first moment of fearlessness. My place of residence will continue to be hell. Because I have gone and made my son a promise. I take a deep breath and press the buttons.

            “Kelly. It’s Hopkins. Let’s do it.”

Photo by MJV