Chapter 55: Mostly Sweet, Some Bitter

Saturday, November 12, 1983

Ang and I spent much of the day doing homework and working on papers that we’d deferred during rehearsals. We had quite a bit of catching up to do.

I found the Madison vs. Memorial game in the paper. We’d actually trailed 14-17 at halftime. Madison had intercepted Graham for one touchdown and recovered a fumble that set up their go-ahead field goal.

The second half was all Memorial. The defense had been mostly fine in the first half, but they tightened up in the second half and the offense got going, making the final score 31-17.

Andy had wound up with two touchdowns, while Cal had two sacks and several tackles for loss. In a game that probably had a fair number of recruiters present, those were the sorts of numbers you wanted. Graham was probably fine, too. Winning cures everything, and he’d passed for three touchdowns to at least offset that interception.

Our next game (and the one after that, should we win next weekend) would be played at the Astrodome. We all planned to be there. Next week we’d be playing Sterling. They’d won a narrow victory over Washington. Hopefully it’d be a good game — and hopefully we would win!

Jess found me in the parking lot as Angie, Jas, Paige, and I arrived.

“Hey,” she said. “I wanted to thank all of you again.”

Angie grinned and hugged her. “No thanks needed! You make us all better.”

Paige nodded. “You kicked ass last night!”

“It’s really been a pleasure,” Jas said.

“What they said,” I said, smiling. “You know as well as we do that the team comes first.”

She grinned. “On my team, it does, anyway. Seriously, though, last night was amazing. I feel like I get ‘in the zone’ when I’m cheerleading, but last night was that, squared. It was almost like I disappeared when the lights came up and didn’t reappear until the curtain call. I mean, I was me — I’m conscious of everything I did and all of that — but I just lost myself in the lines and the movement and the characters.”

Paige nodded. “We’ve all been there. More for musicals than plays, for me...”

“And me,” Angie said.

“Me, too,” Jas said.

I started to nod, then stopped. “Last night was like I’ve been in the musicals, I think. I intentionally took a minor role in ‘Harvey’, and that probably kept me out of the zone. Even in ‘The Sound of Music’, I wasn’t on stage all that much. Last night ... well, you were out there more, but I had to be Fitzwilliam Darcy or fall on my face, pretty much.”

She giggled. “I kinda wanted to slap him for calling me ‘not handsome,’ except I was being ‘not handsome’ right then. Still! The nerve of that man!”

“He turned out okay,” Angie said.

“They all need a lot of work, but a lot of them can be trained,” Jas said, giving me an elbow.

“Hey! I resemble that remark!” I said.

All of the girls grinned.

“We gave up on training them,” Angie said, giving Paige a (somewhat daring) smooch right there in the parking lot.

“Yes, we did. Well ... we’ll still help Jas with that one,” Paige said, nodding to me.

“My parents are coming tonight,” Jess said. “I think I’m more nervous than I’ve ever been, even after all of the times they’ve watched me cheer!”

“You’ll blow them away,” Jas said, giving Jess a hug. “Seriously!”

“Thanks,” Jess said. “I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you all. In a lot of ways, I really am friends with my girls in cheer, but I’m always the boss. I think this is really the first time I’ve just had friends since junior high.”

That brought about a round of hugs.

Jess was, perhaps, laying it on a trifle thick, but I believed it was coming from a place of honesty. She’d been right that Drama could have been ... well... ‘dramatic’ if Jess had been viewed as an interloper, but we were past that now. No one was going to gripe that she got the choice role or that she did well at Michigan. She’d worked her ass off to do well in that role, and she’d worked her ass off to do well at Michigan. She made us all better, and she was also fun to be around.

I hoped we’d be friends for a long, long time.

Tonight’s show turned everything up a notch. Perhaps it was simply that we’d settled into the roles, perhaps it was that it was the last time most of us would perform these roles (as always, tomorrow was all about the understudies, as it should be), or perhaps it was that most of us had our friends and family in the audience.

Whatever it was, we turned it up to eleven. Oh, I’m sure a professional theater critic could’ve found a dozen things to nitpick in the first ten minutes. We weren’t Broadway actors, and we didn’t have a Broadway budget, either.

For a high school theater troupe, though, we were damn good, and we knew it. On a level playing field, I’d have to hope that most critics would give our performance a lot of respect. I knew Steffie would hate watching our particular group of seniors leave, but she really did have a lot of talent coming up, and (as with Debate) I had high hopes that the grade point change would let even more people explore their options.

We spent almost two hours mingling in the lobby after the show. I was nearly overwhelmed by how many people had come out. Family, of course (I hung out with Mom and Dad for a bit, and with Camille and Francis, too, and with Paige’s parents, who might be family one day), and friends, and then so many people who weren’t quite friends but were allies and partners and important. People like Principal Riggs, several members of the School Board, and some of the people who’d become donors to Debate and Drama, and so forth.

Dave Mayrink and his family were there, and he’d brought his girlfriend, too. She seemed really cool. I might have said ‘too cool for Dave,’ but this Dave was no longer the guy that I’d known before. She seemed a good fit for the guy he’d become this time.

Anderson and Rita were there. Mike was not, nor Trish. We commiserated about how things had gone. I thanked Anderson again for his recommendations, and told him I’d be meeting with Martin Connelly soon. Travel plus rehearsal had put everything on hold.

Curtis wasn’t there, but Marsha was, and had clearly loved the show.

It went on and on. Nearly everyone from Study Group was there, and almost all had their parents with them. Cammie’s parents seemed pleased with the whole thing. I guess ‘Pride and Prejudice’ worked well enough for them. Nothing subversive in it at all (except, of course, for a whole lot of subtext that I think they entirely missed). Mel’s parents enjoyed it, too.

Most of my teachers had shown up as well. Of course, most of them had multiple students in the play, and it’s generally good form to show up for that sort of thing.

Jess had most of the cheerleading squad there. I think many of them were blown away by the whole thing. It was a side of her that clearly very few of them had ever seen. Sam had, of course, and Linda had seen some of it, but that was about it.

Darla came with her parents. I had the feeling that Clara might be getting a bit closer to letting her off the leash, or at least loosening her grip on things a bit, but what did I know? We’d kept to being friends for now, and most likely that was all we’d ever be.

A bit later, while walking around the lobby, I saw Jess just as she met up with her parents. The look on her mom’s face would’ve convinced me that we’d done the right thing in welcoming her, had I ever had any doubt at all. Her dad was all smiles, but her mom was in pure bliss, it appeared. I knew very little about the Livelys, but I knew Jess and her mom were close, if occasionally a trifle adversarial in the usual way of mothers and daughters.

It occurred to me that I’d never seen that between Angie and Mom, but there were so many factors there that I couldn’t begin to guess why. Mom and Dad treated her much as they’d treated me both times: with guidance and love and respect, allowing me to be the person I was becoming. Perhaps it was that Angie and Mom didn’t have thirteen years of history that most mothers and daughters have, or perhaps it was that Angie was incredibly mature (though they’d certainly tussled over clothing for quite a while before Mom gave up). For whatever reason, they’d skipped the usual mother/daughter drama almost entirely.

As I was watching, I heard a voice I hadn’t heard for a couple of months. “Marshall! There you are!”

I turned and laughed. “Marshall! Long time no see, man!”

He stuck out a huge hand and we shook. “Man, you can’t be callin’ me man, man! That’s just not done!”

The grin on his face made it clear he wasn’t at all serious.

“How’d you wind up here?” I said, smiling.

“Cal gave me a call and let me know this was on. He knew I’d be interested.”

“I’ll have to thank him for that. It’s good to see you. How’s life?”

He shrugged. “Football’s over. Maybe for good, maybe not. I’ve got some offers. Mama says I should see what’s out there for me. I’ll probably get an academic scholarship, which makes her a lot more happy, but some of those football offers are sweet deals.”

I nodded. “At least you won’t be one of those kids struggling to meet the minimums.”

“Man, some of those kids are dumb,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Football really is their only way out. It’s almost unfair to expect them to pass those tests.”

I nodded. “I’ll defer to you.”

He grinned. “Yeah. I can say that, you can’t. Just how it works.”

“Besides football?”

“I’m qualified for State, of course. We don’t have the budget to go chasing Tournament of Champions, but I can get to San Antonio for Nationals, so ... fingers crossed.”

I nodded. “I gotta root for my friends, but after that, I’d love to see you do great.”

“Gotta stick with your friends, man. Always! No shame in that. Speaking of — and I already said this to Cal since he can do something about it — kicking Sterling’s ass next weekend is mandatory! I’m pissed at them! I swear they intentionally took a couple of our guys out. They’re going to be okay, but they might not have been.”