The phone at my desk rang at about three, and I saw my home phone number come up; expected the call to have come from IT, but no matter, figured Sheila had rung in to ask me to pick up something or other on my way home.
It was Bailey on the line.
"Dad?"
"Yeah."
"Riley hid the remote again and he won't let me watch TV and also he slapped my stomach and he's being a jerk."
OK.
Bailey, a little more than a month away from his thirteenth birthday, will occasionally call me at work with seemingly meaningless information like this; usually it means he wants to talk about something else.
"Bailey, I'm at work. I can't come home and find the remote right now."
"But Riley's being a jerk!"
"Well, bud, he's five years old. You kinda can't reason with him too much right now. I told you, being the oldest sucks sometimes, I was the oldest, they don't understand things very well. Put him on the phone, he'll tell me where the remote is."
"Uh..."
"So how was your day? Didja get that social test back?"
"Uh...I dunno."
"Well, did you get it back, or not?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"Sixty-six."
I suppress a sigh of frustration and disappointment; his confidence is fragile enough as it is.
"You need to start studying for these tests more than just the night before."
"I'm stupid, Dad. I tried my best. We studied together, you know I tried."
"You're not stupid. You know, you didn't tell me you had the test until the night before. We could have studied every night for the last few nights, if we had I know you would have done better than a sixty-six."
Pause.
"So my chorus teacher hates me now, too."
"I doubt she hates you."
"I don't even know what she got mad about. I asked for my old desk back and then she started yelling at me and said what did you ever do for me and I said, well, I wanted to say, I gave you three solos last spring bitch."
This made no sense to me. Last I knew the chorus teacher loved him and he did in fact give her solos at the spring concert, he tore it up, actually. I sensed he was overwrought, and pressed him for more information, but he spoke in pre-teen gobbledlygook and I couldn't get at what happened.
"I'm glad you didn't say that to her, you know I don't like that word and you know I don't want you disrespecting people like."
"But it's not fair, I wasn't even doing anything, I was just talking to Mark and then I asked for my old desk back and no one even likes me and even Riley hates me, he wouldn't even care if I was dead."
Tough to come up with an answer for all that, I mean, the kid leaves me reeling with stories that zig and zag and with pre-teen lingo that leaves me looking for answers I can't seem to find.
"C'mon, you know that's not true."
"So how's work?"
"Eh. Busy. Kinda crazy, but it's alright. I'll be home in a coupla hours."
"Alright."
And then he hung up.
&&&&
Later on, around five thirty, not long after I got home, Sheila went out for a bit. The baby cried, I tried to get dinner ready, tried to fold some laundry, tried to clean up the kitchen. Bailey and Evie and Riley argued over who'd get to hold the baby next. Out of desperation I let Bailey take the baby out of the bouncy seat. He cradled her in his arms and shushed her. Miraculously, she went quiet. Bailey walked her in circles around the kitchen.
"When's mom getting home?"
"I dunno. Why?"
"Remember? At six o'clock coach is gonna put up the sheet on the gym door so we can see who made the team. We gotta be over there by six."
"Well, I'm sure he'll leave the sheet up there, we don't have to get there right at six, and mom'll probably be home soon."
"Where'd she go?"
"She needed a little break. I think she went to get a flu shot."
Bailey had played CYO basketball since third grade, since the year his mom died. She was in the hospital when that season started. She never made it out of there, and to this day, on random occasions, Bailey will pensively mention that his mom never got to see him play, not even once.
This year, unfortunately, a ton of kids went out for the seventh and eighth grade team. Bailey was one of three seventh graders to even sign up. Tryouts went down on Monday and Wednesday night. After the second night of tryouts he came home and said he'd performed poorly. Said he'd gotten nervous, missed all his foul shots, got stuffed by an eighth grader.
"Probably not gonna make it," he said after the second night.
&&&&
Sheila got back home around six-twenty and Bailey and I hopped into the car shortly thereafter and drove over to the gym. He got out of the car and I drove toward the backside of the parking lot and turned around. Please, I thought. Please let him make it. He's not great at it but he loves the game. We've had good teams around here forever, his fifth and sixth graded team went 22-2 last year. He'll be happy to sit on the bench and play a few minutes during the inevitable blowouts. He just likes being on the team, and the practices, where they run the kids ragged, are good for him.
Please, I thought. One time. Give this kid a fucking break, his mother died a month before his ninth birthday, he's got two, no, make that three, now, younger siblings that everyone makes a big fuss over, he loves basketball, c'mon.
I got situated into a parking spot and then I saw him coming toward me.
He gave me the thumbs down sign.
I felt sick to my stomach.
He got into the front seat next to me. I turned off the radio, and we drove home in silence.
&&&&
An hour or so later, after he'd walked in and gone straight to his room to sulk for an hour - a sulking I figured he was entitled to and which I did not want to interrupt - I went in to see him.
"I made fish and sweet potatoes for dinner, I know you like it, if you're in the mood later, I put some away for you."
"I dunno. I'm not hungry yet."
"Well, when you are, it's there for you."
He didn't say anything.
"Look," I said. "I'm not here to blow smoke up your ass and tell you to try harder next time or whatever. I know you're disappointed, I know it sucks."
I hugged him. "Love ya buddy," I said.
He nodded and smiled.
"You too."
&&&&
Later on, he seemed to have calmed down. He and Sheila studied for tomorrow's Spanish test for awhile, and he finished his homework. He came in to the kitchen and for a long while we listened to the Jets-Broncos NFL game on the local ESPN affiliate. Unfortunately for him, I have passed onto him my lifelong devotion to the living, breathing embodiement of failure and disappointment known as the New York Jets.
But I figured the Jets could take the Broncos, and I thought a nice little win, listened to together, would give him some sort of comfort on a tough day.
At some point in the fourth quarter of a dismally-played game, the Jets took a 13-10 lead. A moment or two later, the Jets punted the ball away and pin the Broncos back on their own five-yard line with a little over five minutes left in the game. It was past eleven here in the Eastern time; he has a firm 10:30 bedtime on school nights, so I hustled him off to bed. He begged to stay up for the rest of the game.
As he laid down in bed, I told him, look, the game's over, the Broncos are down on their own five and they haven't done anything with the ball all night and Tim Tebow is absolutely the worst starting quarterback in professional football, it's over, don't worry, you got school and a Spanish test tomorrow and it's late, you need to get to bed. I'll wake you up if something bad happens, but otherwise, go to sleep and assume the Jets won.
He smiled, we hugged goodnight, said our I-love-you's, and that was that.
Or so I thought.
Somehow, a few minutes later, much to my disbelief, I found myself opening Bailey's bedroom door.
He was wide awake.
"Um, Bail, um..."
"What?!?!?"
"Somehow the Jets gave up a ninety-five yard drive to Tim Tebow and they're losing and there's about a minute left."
I let him get up and come into the kitchen. We listened to the last desperate, depressing, futile minute on the radio. No miracles here, the Jets couldn't score on their last possession and they earned a much-deserved loss.
I hustled him back to bed, tucked him in again, wondered, now that he's almost thirteen, how much longer he's going to want me to tuck him in.
"Dad," he said, "this really is the worst day ever. I don't wanna go to school tomorrow. Everybody's gonna make fun of me for getting cut from basketball and they're gonna make fun of me for the Jets losing to the suck-ass Broncos."
What can you say to that? It's all true. He's gonna take it on the chin tomorrow. I did think, well, son, this is not the worst day ever: the worst day ever happened four years ago Monday. The worst day ever was the day I sat down with you on the floor of your Aunt Deb's living room, with aunts and uncles and grandparents and siblings all around, and I had them sit you down next to me and I said, you know how I told you your mother hasn't been doing well, and you said, no, no, no, no, don't even say it, and I actually never did, but you knew she was dead, the next thing you did was to pick up your baby brother, your brother Riley, in your arms and say, well, buddy, we don't have a mother anymore.
Yeah, THAT was the worst day ever.
But I didn't say any of that.
To him, in this moment, today was the worst day ever.
He's hurting. And there's not a whole hell of a lot I can about it, and to tell you the truth, that's leaving me feeling a little down in the mouth at the moment.