Every day, after practice, he practiced more.
And more, and more.
He shot, he feigned, he practiced passing the ball against a cement wall of our garden and demolished a vine I had growing up it.
I didn’t say a word.
I can always plant another vine.
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
Here’s how my first scrimmage went: like crap.
Here’s a picture of a horse taking a crap.
Here’s a picture of a dog taking a pee.
Here’s a picture of a slice of brain. I need my brain to play basketball better.
I tried to ignore the scent of death in my greenhouse when I cut and blended herbs and spices during Herbal Therapy on a freezing cold evening.
I had made my decision. Tate could play ball. I did not think the death scent was for him anyhow. I thought that because I didn’t want to think it was about him and because there were many other people the death scent could be for, including myself or Brooke. After our visit, and how poor, physically, Brooke appeared, it could easily be her.
Maybe the herbs were wrong, too. Maybe.
I knew they weren’t.
They hadn’t been wrong ever, even when it was one person killing another.
My mother says this particular skill of mine is because of the witch in me. “Once a witch, always a witch,” she sings at me. “Faith built this house, her spells are all around. Plus, you have the red hair, Faith’s blue eye, and Grace’s green eye.”
The very thought of witches in our family line is simply entertaining to me. But that my mother, super-smart, rational, and reasonable in all other areas, believes in a “royal witchly past,” and “ancient spells,” and “thimbles, charms, needles, and gold timepieces with power,” makes her even more endearing to me.
Most of us have our bizarre quirks and irrational beliefs that directly contrast with our other beliefs. This is hers. I indulge it. She calls me a “pretty witch in denial.” I call her a “pretty lady who erroneously believes she’s a witch.” We laugh together about it.
In terms of my own beliefs clashing, I know I am not a witch because there are no witches. She says that because I can smell death in spices I am denying my own truth and being a hypocrite.
Yes, I can smell death during Herbal Therapy in my greenhouse. I smelled it three times before this. I was right each time. That’s not normal. It doesn’t mean I’m a witch.
I swept, with shaking hands, all the herbs and spices off my cutting board and into the trash, made myself a cup of tango tea and thought about my meeting with Brooke.
Brooke was up when the sun started to rise over my mother’s hacienda home. We had slept in our old bedroom the night before, our beds with the pink and yellow striped comforters five feet apart. We talked until our eyes fluttered shut.
I try not to see sunrises. Nothing against sunrises, but you’re either up way too late or you’re up way too early. I heard Brooke leave our bedroom. I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t.
I wrapped the white lace robe my mother keeps for me here around myself, slipped on white slippers, and padded out to the patio, near the pool with the waterfall.
Brooke was staring at the sunrise from a wrought-iron table with a cup of coffee in her hand. She stood up when I came out and hugged me, then insisted on getting me coffee with cream and sugar, the way I’d always taken it.
“Thanks, Brooke.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Why are you up this early?”
She didn’t say anything for a minute, her nervous fingers fiddling with her cross, heart, and star charms. “I went to rehab. I went to Mom’s place.”
I was stunned. “Mom’s place” was called “Faith and Grace Rehabilitation Center.” It’s associated with a local hospital that has had impressive success with drug rehabilitation. When my mother learned they were expanding, and constructing their own center, she made a massive donation. The committee offered to name it after her but she declined. She did not want to embarrass Brooke.
Brooke’s struggle with drugs had already been in the newspapers and magazines many times because she was the daughter of famous parents. It had made a tragic situation more tragic for our whole family because of the publicity. “Rebel daughter of Rowan and Shel Bruxelle, Hollywood’s golden couple . . . enters rehab again . . . accused of . . . found on a park bench . . . arrested for prostitution . . . arrested for possession . . . jailed . . . inebriated and high on cocaine . . .” People loved to read about our family’s devastation.
“Does Mom know you were there?” The golden globe of the sun was peeping higher, pastel colors streaking over the horizon. I looked away from the two trellises full of honeysuckle. It brought back too much pain.
“She does now. I told her. They couldn’t tell Mom I was there, it’s confidential, so they didn’t, but I stayed nine months. They wanted the daughter of their largest donor cold-stone sober and highly functioning before she left.”
“Did the rehab work?”
“Yes. I’ve been clean for fifteen months. That’s more than a year now. I still go to Faith and Grace daily for meetings and counseling. Anyhow, when I was there I watched the sun rise. I have to know that it’s there.”
“It’s always there. It doesn’t usually go on breaks to the Bahamas or the Keys.”
“I have to prove to myself that it’s there. I figure if the sun can come up one more time, I can get through one more day. I’m still struggling with a whole bunch of issues.”
I could only imagine. “What’s the worst?”
“Tate. Tate’s the worst. I think of him all the time, I always have, except when I’m trying to block him out because I feel guilty down to my core for leaving him. I walked out and you walked in. You were nineteen.” She reached for my hand. “I’m sorry, Jaden. I am so sorry. I’m sorry for . . . everything.”
We talked about that “everything” for a long time, then moved on to additional appalling things.
“I destroyed a lot of lives to make money.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes dead. She had gone to a bad, bad place. “I am up nights wondering how many people I killed who took the drugs I sold them. I am up nights wondering how many pregnant women took my drugs and what that did to their babies. I am up nights wondering how many mothers’ sons are now addicted to my drugs, how many fathers’ daughters are drugged out and doing scary things with terrible men because they’re addicts, like I did.”
“That would keep me up at night, too,” I snapped. I was sickened.
What had happened to her?
Had she lost all of her morals? It’s one thing to take drugs, it’s another to sell. You’re bringing sheer hell, and possibly death, to someone else’s life, and to the lives of their families and friends.
“If it had been only me that screwed up, I could live with that. But what I did has clobbered other people. I abandoned Tate. I destroyed our whole family, other people, their families, that’s what I struggle with. Black, sticky, corrosive memories follow me. It’s part of the reason I didn’t want to get clean. Because I knew if I sobered up I’d have to deal with my reality, and I don’t like my reality at all. I don’t like me at all.”
“Then start over, Brooke. Please. Keep going to counseling, talk to me, talk to Mom. I love you and I’m your sister and I want to help you. Move forward. Volunteer, help others, try to atone for what you did. . . .”
“I get pricked with images of me doing something awful and sometimes I feel the drugs calling me back, so I can disappear into them for a while and block it all out.”
I wanted to reassure her, to comfort her, but I couldn’t say, “It’ll get better,” I didn’t know if it would. I couldn’t say, “It’s okay, Brooke,” it wasn’t. It is not okay to sell drugs and destroy families. I couldn’t say, “Don’t feel bad, Brooke, that’s over. You won’t do it again.” It’s not as if she stole a box of brownies. She fed drugs to vulnerable people who smashed up their lives.
That’s not a simple one.
“I can’t seem to shake my past at all and all that I did that was wrong, cruel, demeaning to someone. I can’t get rid of it, can’t put it behind me. I don’t know if I ever will. Maybe I shouldn’t ever put it behind me. That’s an appropriate and deserved punishment.” Brooke rubbed her hands over her face. “There’s nothing like wanting to get a fix. Nothing. You can’t see anything beyond that drug.” Her voice was so ragged, glass and bricks.
We drank our coffee for a while, listening to the rushing waterfall in my mother’s pool, watching hummingbirds flitter and birds land in the orange trees.
“Tate says that when problems are too much, you should deal with them the same way you eat Skittles. One by one.”
“Smart boy.” She sniffled, then reached for my hand. “I’m begging you, Jaden, tell me about Tate.”
It took a long time. My mother joined us. Later we had Chinese food delivered and chocolate cheesecake. I showed Brooke a few photos I always kept in my purse of Tate, and my mother showed her photo albums. I showed her his blog, which she loved. I told her about his basketball team, about General Noggin, Billy and Bob, Bert and Ernie, his friends Anthony and Milt, his experiment room, and how Tate joked about women beating down the door to get to him. She was emotional the whole way through.
“I love you, Jaden, and again, I’m sorry—”
“I love you, too, Brooke. I always have.”
“And I love you both,” my mother announced. “We need to go shopping! We must fix Brooke’s monstrous clothing faux pas. It’s a disgrace! A sobering reminder of how slothful and frumpy people can get in a hurry when they don’t attend to fashion-forward thinking and design detail!”
Brooke and I rolled our eyes at our mother.
“What?” She wobbled her head at us, as in,
you silly girls.
“Brooke has lost her style compass! It doesn’t point true north anymore, it points to the testicles of a redneck, beer-slugging, burping convict! This will not do, not do at all! Dress like a lady or dress like a Dumpster, which is it, Brooke?”
We laughed. Our mother is quite clever, particularly when she is covering up acute distress over her youngest, beloved daughter.
I hoped Brooke would stay sober. The black stickiness that followed her alarmed me greatly. Mostly it alarmed me for Tate’s sake.
I eyed the honeysuckle. One day I would sit beneath it. Not today.
12
F
or Tate’s first official game, which was at another school’s gym, complete with a band and cheerleaders and dance team, things went somewhat better.
My mother flew in and wore the team colors, orange and black, only she wore an orange designer dress and four-inch black stilettos. Caden came, huge and intimidating, carrying Hazel, who was dressed as a frog. Heloise was dressed as the sun, and Harvey was dressed as a piece of chocolate cake with a cherry hat. Damini wore a short ruffled orange skirt my mother had bought her especially for this game, a black T-shirt, and a jean jacket.
I wished Ethan was there. I pictured him beside me, then I made myself smash the image. I could not continue to do this to myself; it made me too upset.
When we were in the bleachers, about three rows up from the bench, my mother squealed, “He’s so handsome! Tate! Tate! You’re so handsome!”
Tate went in during the second quarter, and the coach played him for four minutes. He only gave up one pass. His defense was no longer a joke. He put full pressure on his opponent and forced the other guy to turn the ball over twice.
We cheered wildly.
He tried to shoot from about ten feet away from the basket, but didn’t make it. I could tell he was flustered by the opposing team swooping down on him.
This game was not as bad as the first in terms of obnoxious young people, but not perfect. I still heard the following things: “God! What is wrong with that fucking head?” and, “Has he not evolved? That is wrong, man, wrong!” And this gem: “Hey! Creature from the blue lagoon!”
It was not my fault that I walked along the bleachers and my drink went straight down the backs of those three kids. They whipped around, startled, and I stood, towering over them. “Sorry about that. When I heard you saying such cruel things about Tate, I thought you needed cooling off.”
One of them jumped to his feet and said, “Man! Shit!”
And Caden, who had come up behind me, said, “Man! Shit! I hear one more word out of your mouths about my nephew, and I will, man shit,” he mocked them, “make your life unpleasant. Are we clear, man?”
Hazel, who had hopped about as she followed Caden over, yelled, “Man shit!”
Harvey said, “Damn!”
And Heloise said, “Stink!”
Damini said, “Why do boys always have to be such immature jerks?” The immature jerks were smart enough not to say another word.
I picked the frog up, Damini grabbed the sun, Caden picked up the chocolate cake, and we went back to sitting with the other parents.
“I’m going to get the parents going. Then Tate won’t hear all the meanness,” Caden said at a time-out. He marched down the bleachers and yelled to the parents, “We’re gonna cheer for this team.”
I have mentioned that Caden is huge and seems sort of scary with the black ponytail and muscles and all, but everyone knows him, likes him, and appreciates his unique flower arrangements.
He had the parents spell out the name
BEAR CATS
. He had them do the wave. He had them yelling for our team, in a chant, first at a whisper then louder and louder until they were screaming. He had them stomping on the bleachers and clapping, then doing a combination of both while calling out, “Bear Cats!” And whenever he heard someone saying something nasty about Tate, he had the parents yell louder.
Tate played four minutes in the third quarter.
Marked improvement. He even shot the ball from inside the key, missed both times, but he tried.
Even so, I could tell he was not feeling great about his game.
Tate went back in for about two minutes at the end of the game. He made one basket. It did not alleviate the stress and disappointment in his game. I saw him turn his head and glance up at the boy who had been harassing him during the game. The boy stuck his middle finger up in the air. After the game Caden went over to the boy, the triplets dancing around him, and said, politely, “If you ever flip my nephew off again with that tiny dick of a finger of yours, I’m going to break it off.”
The boy gulped, and he agreed not to do it.
Caden is gentle, true, and kind, but he loved Tate, so he lost it, a wee bit, as I did, in his quest to protect him.
I left the game aching for my son, for the courage it took to even be out on a court in front of that many people, some of whom were demeaning and rude. He had character, he was brilliant, he was trying, but they wanted to ruin it for him, to intimidate him, to tease and mock him into submission and defeat. They were so mean. It is enormously hard to see your kid ridiculed and harassed and not lose your head.
Tate’s reaction to that game?
He practiced.
And practiced.
And practiced.
This went on and on.
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
I can’t say that my basketball games are going good because they aren’t. I have to try harder. I have to be better. I have to study the graphs I’ve made of the pros shooting. I have to practice outside more. I have to practice better. This is embarrassing. I think I would take a lot less harassment with General Noggin on my neck if I could play like a decent kid.
Here’s one word to describe how I’m feeling about my game: Shitty.
Here’s a photo of brain waves.
Here’s a photo of the triplets at the game.
Here’s a photo of a model of a brain I made from clay labeling all the different sections. I know, geeky, isn’t it, that’d I’d sit around and do that. Whatever.
Tell me about a time that things went bad for you so I’ll feel better.
After reading some people’s responses on his blog, Tate did feel better. Then he ate six Heart to Heart Chocolate Chocolate Mush Mush Cookies.
“You don’t have to play, Tate.”
Tate’s head jerked up from the breakfast table. It was early, he was studying an article about the latest research in brain operations, and was on his third bowl of cereal.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” I stumbled about. “The kids aren’t nice to you during the games.”
“So what?” His eyes were innocent, inquiring.
“So what?”
“Yeah. So what? They’re not nice to me. It hurts my feelings for about a millisecond, but I have Bert and Ernie block it out and I keep playing.”
“But . . .”
“But what? But for butt? But for bottoms? You could say buttocks. Or ass. Or bum or fanny. Hmmm. Buttocks and brains. Do they have anything in common?”
“Aren’t you funny, Tate? I don’t want you to get hurt—”
“Mom, I live with General Noggin and we’re good friends. I’ve got Billy and Bob to help me when kids want to knock me out. Plus, I’m huge. They say mean things because they want to scare me. I’m not going to let anybody scare me or push me off the court or get rid of me. No way. I ain’t no wimp.”
I was, once more, humbled by his courage. I had always been humbled by his courage. “You are one stud of a brainiac, Tate.”
“I’m not a stud. Okay to the brainiac part. But this is the way I am. They can deal with it, not me. I’ve already dealt with it. General Noggin and I have a lot of brains, and I needed more room to put them in, right?” He smiled at me, then snuck out a Skittles bag, tossed three into the air at one time, and caught two. “Darn it. I almost have that down.” He picked up the one on the floor and ate it.
“No Skittles at breakfast.”
He put the bag in his pocket.
“You’re going to play through the noise and I’m going to sit in the bleachers wanting to pound some of those kids into dust.”
“Don’t, Mom.” He became serious. “You know, you’ve always been way more mad about this stuff than me. Always. You’re ten times angrier than me about it. I let it go most of the time. I don’t like getting hit, but it does give me a chance to hit back and get rid of some of my energy. I imagine smashing my fist into a molecule. I picture the molecule, then I set the molecule on fire or sandblast it and it’s incinerated. You gotta do that, too.”
“I’ll try. But I’m your mom, so it hurts me—”
“Mom, you and I are Tate and Boss Mom. We have Nana Bird, Uncle Caden, Damini, and the triplets who dress way weird.” He grinned. “I have everything I want. I even get to play basketball with real live people now. Nothing, not one thing on the surface of this continually moving, shifting, volcanically erupting, heating-up earth is going to make me quit playing.”
“No, it wouldn’t. You’ve never quit anything.”
“As Nana Bird says, balls and tarnation, hell no. I don’t quit and I’m not quitting now.” He tossed three more Skittles up. Caught all three. “Ha! Did it! Now I have something worthwhile to put on my college résumé: Multiple Skittle Catcher.”
“I am proud of your Skittle eating skills.”
“Yup. Can I have scrambled eggs with cheese, green onions, and mushrooms and the Special Bruxelle Gold Sauce? I’m starving.”
“Okay. I put your lunch sacks by the front door.”
“Did you put in one of those cinnamon rolls from last night? How about two? I’m sooo hungry at lunch.”
Sometimes seeing a family member you haven’t seen for a while brings to mind another family member who is long gone.
That’s how it felt when I saw Brooke. I thought of my father, Shel Bruxelle. He called me Aquamarine, because of my blue and green eyes. When I was younger, I grew interested in cooking with lots of spices, so he bought me cookbooks with lots of spices in the recipes, which I still use. When I was interested in roller-skating, he bought us all roller skates. When I was interested in tea, we went tea shopping together. He bought me a pink tea set, which I still have. I loved walking around our ten acres, watching how the seasons changed it, and he would come walking with me.
“The best way to figure out life is to walk in nature daily,” he told me. “Seasons are like life. Some seasons are better than others. Some have more sun and rainbows. Others have storms and tornadoes. Some have both. You have to accept that, bring color and light to the season you’re in as best you can, and always look forward to the next season.”
He had not come from any money; in fact, he always struggled for the basics growing up. His parents were potato farmers in a small town in Idaho.
His father drank himself to death and his mother married four times after that, each husband worse. He had a front-row seat to all kinds of pain and barren loneliness. That pain and loneliness morphed into his scripts. Humor often comes from loss and aloneness, from not belonging, and it did for him. That’s why people laughed at his shows and movies: He
got
it. He got the full spectrum of the human experience.
“I could let my childhood crush me or I could get the heck out of Idaho,” he told me once. “That’s what it came down to when I was eighteen. I opted for getting the heck out of Idaho. I met your mother in Hollywood the first month we were both there, and that was it. She was it for me. I loved her on sight.”
My parents played the Hollywood game because they loved what they did. He loved to write stories, she loved to take part in them and transform herself.
But they never bought in to it. Never bought in to Hollywood. Their first priority was our family, and they stuck hard and high to it.
If you knew my dad you loved him. My mother, Brooke, Caden, and I loved him most of all.
It was shocking when he died that night.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the shock.
Tate’s third game, initially, was another mess.
The game was at our home gym, which made me feel a bit better.
Caden had taken it upon himself to make orange T-shirts. There was a picture of our team on the front. To advertise his floral business, there was a snapdragon with a fierce face curling around the team. It was hilarious. Printed on the back were the words MID COURT MOB.
“We’re the Mid Court Mob,” Caden told Tate and me. “Ha! We’re going to deafen the competition, deafen them, my boy!” I knew why he wanted to deafen the competition. He wanted to deafen the effects of the heckling on Tate.
He is such an excellent older brother I became a tad emotional.
My mother and I passed out hundreds of Mid Court Mob T-shirts that my mother had insisted on paying for. “We’re going to support our Tate and his teammates, and if they’re mean to my Tate, I might toss a snake down their throats.” She smiled a toothy, pleasant smile as if she’d said, “I love tea and crumpets!”
Caden led the cheers from the floor to the parents in the bleachers. Damini was next to him, as were the triplets who were dressed, for once, the same. They were ladybugs.
Tate did not start the game. Coach Boynton told me later that he regretted that decision. “I could not have foreseen what would happen, Jaden.” He wiped sweat off his brow. “No one,
no one,
could have foreseen that except the basketball gods.”