The Heights Part 7

"And your point?" Wally Walker asked as he cut off the tip of a Cuban cigar.

"It's not a point. It's a question. What is it in life that you value so much-what work of art, what piece of music or building or natural wonder-could you imagine having a similar effect on you?"

Someone: "That's awfully deep."

Someone else: "Too deep for me."

Philip pa.s.sed the humidor.

I wanted to shout: These people rule the world. They have no concept of wanting to kill themselves!

"Well, okay, then," Tim continued. "Forget the suicide part of my story. Just think about what you find beautiful."

Philip sounded bemused when he said, "Are you asking what we like?"

"I'm asking what you, uhm, hold in awe."

"This wine," Penelope Winston joked.

"And my cigar, Philip, it's like smoking G.o.d."

"Yes," Philip replied, "if only G.o.d could be smoked."

The evening went on to a discussion as to whether Croatia was the new Prague and what to do in Dubai if you have only a day, and then Anna Brody, who sat opposite us, her face flushed from the wine, her eyes partially closed with the glazed look of a really good buzz, spoke: "The cry of a baby."

"What was that, darling?"

"Bach. Sophie, even on a bad day."

Except for the slow rolling clouds of cigar smoke, everything seemed to stop.

Anna closed her eyes and kept going. "A first kiss, my father's cologne, the Gettysburg Address, de Kooning's Woman I, the top of the Chrysler Building, a swim in the warm Caribbean sea or any warm sea, baby teeth, Rilke and Rimbaud, thinking of or touching the giant clams in Palau, the cathedral at Chartres because it's unfinished, Monet's hay-stacks, a ripe peach . . ."

I didn't speak to Tim during our walk home. He asked if I was all right. I said nothing. He wondered if I'd had a good time. He asked if I was mad.

"Mad is a child's word," I said. "Can we just not talk?"

Apparently not, because one block later, Tim started up again: "Hey, didn't it feel like we were invited as some kind of entertainment?"

"And didn't you play your part perfectly?"

"The clown?"

"Clowns are funny. You were something else. Shakespeare couldn't have dreamed you up."

"I think Philip Ashworth will survive."

"Of course he'll survive. He doesn't give a d.a.m.n what you think of him."

"I think he liked my irreverence."

I sighed.

Watching Tim attempt battle with Philip Ashworth and his friends had made me almost irreconcilably sad. Tim had never seemed smaller, like a schoolboy outnumbered and outsized, circled by bullies, except this time I found myself rooting for the bullies. David deserved to be crushed by Goliath. And this time David was.

"We were guests," I reminded him as we walked home. As usual, my legs moved faster than his, and he lagged. But I felt he was testing me to see if I would slow down and walk with him. I didn't. I may have even increased my speed.

TIM.

THAT NIGHT, WHILE TAKING A COLD SHOWER, I KEPT REPLAYING ONE PARTICULAR moment from the Ashworth-Brody dinner party-not that b.u.mbled exchange when I'd interrupted my wife, nor how the light from the fireplace had bathed Anna's face, not the all-alone feeling I'd had during the long silence after I asked the question, not even the flash of relief I felt when Anna gave her poetic and perfect answer-no, what haunted me was the surprising moment after the putting on of winter coats when I turned to Anna Brody, offered my hand to shake, and she pulled me into a hug.

Instinctively, I employed my preemptive strike. Start patting from the moment of contact. This way, when she pats you, you'll know you patted first.

The hug that night was nice and long, and what was funny-or maybe not-was how the more I patted, the more Anna Brody didn't.

THREE.

KATE.

POOR TIM.

The call came in the middle of the night. His sister, Sal, forgetting, I suppose, the time difference, was phoning from the Australian outback, where she and her lover, Red, were in the middle of a monthlong camping trip. "Called when I could," she told me. I pa.s.sed the phone to Tim, who was now sitting up in bed.

Bad news likes to come at night.

"What happened?" he said into the receiver. He listened. Then, as if punched in the stomach, he said, "No, no." He said so many nos, I wondered who had died.

I turned on my bedside lamp. Tim grimaced, either from what he was being told or from the sudden light, or both.

After hanging up with his sister, he called the airline, bought an open-return ticket (not cheap) for the following morning's first flight to Toledo via Chicago. I helped him pack. His best suit. (Really, his only suit.) Enough clothes for three days. Tim couldn't understand how it was that his sister had gotten the news first. Especially considering how findable he was. "Why didn't they call me?" he asked as he zipped up his suit bag. "She had to be tracked down. In Australia!" I tried to comfort him, but whatever I said seemed to be wrong. I stopped midsentence when he covered his ears with his hands.

Seeming more stunned than sad, he said, "You expect your parents to die. You rehea.r.s.e for it. You even practice hearing the news."

"But no one died," I reminded him.

"True, but isn't this worse?"

TIM.

FOR MY FATHER TO RETIRE MIDSEASON MEANT ONLY ONE THING: HE'D BEEN FIRED. How did I know? Jack Welch would never quit. He was arguably the third-greatest coach in the history of women's collegiate Division III basketball. In 1990 he'd been named by then-president George H. W. Bush as one of America's Thousand Points of Light. In the special millennium issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he'd been listed as one of Ohio's living legends, along with former astronaut/senator John Glenn and Dave from Wendy's.

As I got off the plane at the Toledo Express Airport, Coach jerked his arms above his head and, in Richard Nixon fas.h.i.+on, gave an awkward thumbs-up. Normally, I'd be embarra.s.sed, thinking, Why can't my father be like other people? But that day it didn't bother me. I barely noticed he wasn't wearing his usual pink and powder-blue Clayton College Lady Revolvers sweatsuit. In fact, I was so deep in thought, I almost walked right past him. What was I thinking? The same thoughts you'd be thinking if Anna Brody hadn't patted you.

"And that's how you greet your father?"

"Oh," I said, snapping out of it.

Coach was standing before me. "Where's your sister?"

Sal would not be attending the hastily organized retirement party and testimonial dinner. "First of all, it was so sudden," she had explained over the phone. "Of course, if it was a funeral, or to take him off life support, then I'd come. But an honorary dinner, please." I had begged Sal to attend, arguing that only one of us kids needed to go. "I'm a disappointment to him," I said. Since he liked her better than me, she should catch the first flight back to the States. The argument was moot, though, because Sal couldn't make it back even if she'd wanted to.

"She's in Australia, Dad. That's on the other side of the world."

"Her loss," Coach said with a chuckle. "Let me carry your bag."

I marveled at the ease with which Coach slung my overnight bag over his shoulder. It should have been no surprise. Dad was a brick. Hard, lean. A Jack LaLanne type. Sixty-five years old, but if you looked at him from the neck down, you'd swear he was thirty.

"What do you have in this bag?"

"Books. My dissertation so far."

"Oh, that. It's a little light, don't you think?"

Funny, I found the bag almost crippling in weight.

I started to say, "Well, I only brought a section of it . . ." But I stopped, because what was the point? In moments we'd be talking about Coach and only Coach.

"So, Dad, what happened?"

"It's easier to understand if I show you."

He slapped an arm over my back, and we moved quickly through the airport terminal. A well-wisher called out, "Thanks, Coach. Thanks for all the memories." A janitor pus.h.i.+ng a mop said to me, "You must be proud of your old man." I nodded, longing for the moment when we'd be alone, for surely Coach had been staggered by the recent events. I secretly hoped that I'd get a glimpse of the broken and defeated man, the authentic man.

Fired? How can you fire Jack Welch?

My father liked to say: "A man becomes a man when he becomes a father." Or: "When he pays taxes the first time." Or: "When he marries his high school sweetheart, buys a house, and coaches an undefeated team all in the same year."

That day I wanted to say, "Dad, a man becomes a man when he loses everything he loves."

"You were only three and two, they shouldn't have let you go."

"They didn't fire me, son. I quit. And I'm about to show you the reason why."

What became apparent, and why I longed to board the first plane back, was that Coach Jack Welch had already rewritten the events of the last twenty-four hours. His forced retirement had been repositioned as a victory. He was going out on top. "I still have my mind, my health," he said, pleased. "My memory," he half whispered as I noticed my mother, Bobette, sitting in the backseat of the family Cadillac.

"You left Mom in the car?"

"Tim, relax. She prefers the car. But brace yourself-it's gotten worse since your last visit. I'm sure she'll recognize you, but mostly, in public, she panics, worried she won't remember names or faces. I mean, if truth be told, it's why I'm quitting."

"Oh," I said, as that sinking feeling, the Great Disparity, returned. Caught between what would be wonderful if it were happening (retiring because of his devoted love for his dear wife, Bobette) and what was actually happening (fired for a three-and-two record), I felt the squeeze.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

She smiled as if hearing the news that she was a mother for the first time.

"I've missed you, Mom."

"Aren't you sweet?"

No, I wanted to say. "Sweet" visits. "Sweet" calls often. "Sweet" is nothing like what I am.

"You won't believe who's coming. I'm so touched by the out-pouring."

"Just a minute, Dad. Hey, Mom, how are you-"

Coach, interrupting: "Guess who's coming?"

I sighed and then began to list the players most likely to return for the quickly planned festivities.

"Trisha McGuiness?" (5' 9", 145 lbs., All Conference, 14.6 ppg.) "No," he said, as if the thought of Trisha was preposterous.

"Riley?" (Riley Haliburton, a 90 percent free-throw shooter-"Man, could she pa.s.s.") "Not Riley, no."

So I mentioned my father's best players, his favorite players, and finally, Coach snapped, "Stop it! Most of those people live far away."

"But I live far away . . ."

Coach ran over my words, listing five players, two of whom I didn't remember, and I thought I remembered them all, and the three I did know were below-average players, but all of whom still lived in the Cayton area: Tami Long, Karin Hickok, Cheryl Porter.

Meanwhile, I drifted off to Anna Brody Land.

"Did you hear me?"

"Oh, did you say something?"

"I expect you'll want to speak at my party."

I moaned like a disgruntled teenager forced to do a ch.o.r.e. "No, Dad . . ."

"You have plenty to say, I think. From a family perspective."

"I'd rather not."

Coach's smile turned icy. "You-will-speak." Each word said with equal emphasis. There was no choice. I glanced to the backseat. There sat my mother, who had found her own way to manage. I understood now. It wasn't chemical or explainable by a lack of iron or an overexposure to lead. It wasn't dementia or early Alzheimer's. It was pure wisdom. The way to beat the oppressor is to forget his victories, to vanquish all glory moments to an early grave. Bobette Parker Welch had found the ultimate revenge. She'd left without leaving. She'd forgotten because-for some people-if you don't remember, you win.

"Tim is going to speak," Coach said loudly to Bobette.

"Oh," she said. "Who?"

"Tim, your son, is going to speak about how proud he is of me."

He turned the Cadillac out of short-term parking. We pa.s.sed two middle-aged women, one of whom hit the hood hard and shouted at my dad: "Pervert!"