Truths of the Heart (7 page)

Sport's Talk by Bud West

GET THE HOOK

Last night's so called football game was a laugher. The Lions couldn't
beat Madison High. But worse yet was the Lions' new color commentator, Carl
Bostich. At one point in his career he might have been a big star at throwing
the pig skin, but last night he didn't know a cheerleader from a tight-end or
the umpire from the referee. Maybe the Lions could find him a job as equipment
manager. Better yet, Gatoraid Boy. Get a job!

“Uh, oh, Mr. Eliot.”

T.S. looked at her stoically.

“Don't look at me like that.”

He went back to his Fancy Feast and Rachelle began mind-crafting a response
to the Bud West article for Carl. Then she thought,
Maybe it would be better
to just not have seen the article. I think yes, good idea, what article? Is it
a lie to tell a florist her ugly floral arrangements are beautiful? I think
not.

She finished the paper, stashed cup, saucer and utensils in the
dishwasher and, T.S. in front of her, ascended the spiral stairs to the bedroom
loft. She showered, dressed in her running gear—white shorts, white Adidas
shoes, etc., for she planned, after paperwork at her campus office, to take a
long heart pumping jog along the Red Cedar.

Her pony tail secured by a thick rubber band, looking more like a
teenager than a professor, she skipped down the spiral staircase.

In the kitchen, poised like he had ancient Egyptian relative, T.S.,
knowing the routine, looked up at her and yawned. She said, “You be good and
stay out of Carl's shoes.”

He yawned again.

In the garage, she pressed the garage door opener and, as the door clattered
upward, morning sun gleamed off the polished silver of Carl's BMW. She had
dropped him off at the Lansing airport Saturday morning for his flight to San
Francisco. He had grumbled about small commuter planes, short flight to
Detroit, connecting flights, the Lansing boon-dock airport and stubbornly refused
to park his BMW in the uncovered Lansing airport lot.

Coaxing her Saab to life, Rachelle backed out of the garage, pressed
the remote, the door closed and she headed, fifteen minutes away, to Michigan
State University.

Flowing with the traffic, her thoughts scattering, she focused on Com. 501.
She remembered the singular item that had triggered her interest in the
subject: a reading of William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Parts of it were part of her:

...this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work
in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for
profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which
did not exist before … the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the
problems of the human heart in conflict, with itself which alone can make good
writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat
… the basest of all things is to be afraid … forget it forever, leave no room
for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal
truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity
and pride and compassion and sacrifice … the poet's, the writer's, duty is to
write about these things.

Thus, the kernel of an idea born, the course would, through written
communication, investigate (because, she reasoned, science, by its very nature,
must ignore these immeasurable subjects) abstract thoughts such as beauty,
truth, trust, compassion and sacrifice.

Stopping for a red light, an obnoxious driver almost hitting her rear bumper,
her thoughts careened to Detroit, Ford Field, a million people watching on TV,
65,000 raucous fans in the stadium. She tried to dismiss the gremlin jitters,
but inkling doubts wandered to an impending disaster. She recalled her triple-threat
(mental, emotional, physical) fantasy, the significant males in her life:
premature Tom, alcoholic Ed, in-love-with-his-fist Anthony, no-show Allen.

She signed, “Alas, perhaps my knight doesn't exist.” She glanced at herself
in the read view mirror, “Z, how do you get yourself in these never-ending
amour melodramas?”

The light turned green, she pulled away, sighed.
Carl, a release, convenient,
someone to go to the faculty Christmas parties with, lacks the first two
attributes but, makes up for it in the rack.

“Dr. Zannes!”

Relax, that triple dream is a figment of your imagination anyway.

Then came to mind her uncanny dark-side attraction to Carl: she had realized,
since Psychology 101, that she was cursed with low self-esteem, a need to be
dominated. Her father had been intensely protective of her, but he exited
without paying the bill. She had, since his suicide, straddled life's
nothing-hereafter mystery with a reason for her condition: somehow his death,
all that ugly loss, must have got twisted into a need to be secure. She knew
one thing for sure: deep down she desperately missed her father. She often
wondered if there was a hereafter where those who took their life dwelled. The
life after death dredging brought to mind a matrimonial schism. Carl wanted
her, so they could be married in the Church, to convert to Catholicism. She
remembered her father, Catholic, her mother wouldn't covert. The Church refused
to marry them. Hello.

That aside, she had major problems with the Church's bureaucracy, ostentatious
vestments (she recalled Christ was usually depicted in sandals and a ratty
ankle-length robe), ceremony, rules and regulations. Not to mention, over a
nude bite of apple, if one slipped up, eternal damnation. And then there was
the flood story. Every living thing on an old man's leaky boat? No, she
couldn't get from here to there, couldn't accept the Judeo-Christian version of
the never-ending drama.

Her cell phone began to ring. ID: Carl. She answered, “Long time no speak.”

Carl: “Where are you?”

She rolled her eyes, “Driving to campus.”

“For what?”

“Going to pick up a pizza.”

Pause. “Not funny.”

“I have a zillion things to do, classes start August 26, rememb—”

“I called the house, you AGAIN forgot to turn on the answering machine,
sweets.”

“Oh, rats, I'm sorry, I keep asking T.S. to pick-up but he keeps
saying, not my job.”

“Not funny.”

“Oh Carl….”

“Don't forget, I get in at 5:30 this afternoon.”

“United, right.”

“No! Northwest! I told you that.”

“Oh, that's right, sorry.”

“Geez all mighty.”

“Carl….”

“You might want to get there a little early.”

“Right.”

“Got the jitters?”

“About picking you up?”

“Ha, ha, next Saturday.”

“No, do you?”

“I'm the quarterback, babe, playing for keeps, love the fifty yard
line, see you at 5:30, bye.”

Tone.

She put the phone on the seat and said, “Wait 'til Mr. Playing-for-keeps
reads the Bud West article in the Lansing State Journal.”

She stopped for a red light and her cell phone rang again. She knew who
it was, answered, “And….”

Carl: “Hey, babe, I didn't remember if I told you, plane gets in at
5:30.”

She rolled her eyes, “You told me.”

“Where are you now?”

“What?”

“I wondered if you stopped for gas?”

“No, couple miles from campus.”

“Gotta go, see you tonight.”

Putting the phone down, she smiled at Carl's behavior.
He cares,
that's all.

The light turned green, a horn behind blowing, she waved, waited an
extra five seconds, then pulled away.

Driving, thinking of Carl’s phone quirks, she remembered a night at Max
& Erma's, Carl said he was going to pin a phone pager on her butt. Laughing
that off, he explained, not a loser, never was, never would be, he loved her
madly.

Then, there it was again. That uncanny feeling, a hairline crack in the
porcelain. A fear that someday that crack might lead to a violent end. But no,
that couldn't be, TV news stuff, she wouldn't allow it, she was too intelligent
to allow that to happen. In any case, one thing she had resolved, there would
be no children. To assure that, meticulous with the management of her body,
leery of pills, she relied on cervical caps.

Nearing campus, she gripped the steering wheel with both hands, smiled at
a thought: Nothing in reality ever seems to match up with what you dream or
think or create in your fantasies. Something like that … on with knowledge.