Chapter 9

So, on that December day when I left my hometown, I was bound for Kentucky. In just a few hours with the Fergusons, I felt almost like family. I thought the world of the Crawfords, but I still felt like their neighbor — of course the distance might be because I used to boink their daughter. Who knows?

Before I left the Fergusons in November, Ellie (she and Mack insisted on first names) packed me enough food to last me through the winter even though I'd be back in 12 days. Mr. and Mrs. Crawford (who had never asked me to call them by their first names — back to that boinking the daughter thing again) seemed relieved I was moving so close to parental-type people. I gave them my address, said goodbye to the few friends I had and headed West.

Once the NCAA approved my transfer papers, I'd be free to start working out with the team. Tom VandeVender sought me out immediately. I still hadn't gotten a phone hooked up, but the Fergusons were kind enough to let me use their phone. I worried that Tom was going to be an ass because I transferred in intent upon taking his job. He couldn't have been more cordial. He even invited me to stay with his family for a few days at Christmas.

"Dude, seriously," he said. "If you're going to be by yourself, you come down or I'll come up. Promise me, OK?"

I promised him. The Fergusons had invited me to spend a full-fledged Christmas at their house. I wasn't sure what you got your landlords whom you'd just met for Christmas, but I ran by the greenhouse where I had met Ellie and asked for advice. I was told anything green with flowers would be Ellie's cup of tea. I picked out a couple of plants for her in the spring and asked the greenhouse to hold on to them. I got the names so I could print out a picture on the internet and I got her a new gardening set.

Mack was a tougher nut to crack, but when I saw his extensive UK football, basketball and any other sport imaginable collection, I used my not inconsiderable influence with the UK athletic department to score some primo seats to a couple of upcoming basketball games.

My one extravagance I'd allowed myself with the money mom had left had been to buy a 1969 Fiat convertible. It was rusted out and almost all the parts on it now were aftermarket, but I didn't care. It was a great looking car. The body shop class at my old high school was fixing it up and painting it and the teacher was going to drive it down on his way to meet his family for Christmas and drop it off to me.

In exchange, I was going to sign over the title to the 10-year-old Chevy Corsica I'd been driving for two years as the group's next project. It seemed like a sweet deal to both of us. He got two projects for his class for no money and I got to basically trade in my old car for a sporty convertible and the $3,000 the parts had cost.

I'd seen some of the work the class had done before and I knew the boys and girls who completed the body shop class had no trouble finding work when they left school, so I wasn't worried about quality. What I got was better than I could have ever expected. I told the teacher to let the class pick the color scheme. So long as it wasn't burnt orange and pink, I was fine with it.

What they chose was a flat black with tan seats and a matching top. It was amazing. He'd even had the auto mechanics class give the engine the once over and he said it was running great. I thought Ellie was going to pee herself when she saw the car.

For a woman in her 40s, Ellie is put together well. If her daughter looked anything like her mother, I was pretty glad she was staying far away for a while. I had been single for more than a year. Except for the one evening with Suzette, I'd been celibate for that long, too.

I guess I was evening things out for my early teen years. It's also hard to feel romantic when you're worrying about a mother with cancer and a cheating ex-girlfriend in rehab. Suzette really had me worried. I could never pin her down on when her drug use started and it took considerable probing before I found out she wasn't a crack whore. The stripping thing bothered me, too. We'd had unprotected sex, well, as often as we could after she started to WVU.

After she went into rehab, I worried about HIV and herpes and any number of STDs she might have given me. I was relieved when the tests came back negative, but a little less relieved when I was told an STD might not show up immediately.

When I bluntly asked Suzette after my mother's funeral if it were remotely possible she'd given me something, she told me she had never had unprotected sex with anyone but me. She had been honest about everything up to that point, but I wanted to make absolutely sure, so I asked again.

"We're talking about my life and the health of any sexual partner I might have in the future," I told her. "This is not something you can spare my feelings about."

The vehemence with which she replied, "YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON I'VE EVER — REPEAT EVER — ALLOWED TO FUCK ME WITHOUT A RUBBER!" gave me the impression she was telling the truth.

I had a couple of opportunities for quickies a couple of times — including with either of the blondes at the UK game I thought — but I decided to pass. But I was also scared of dating someone again and getting a reprise of Suzette. When you've had one serious relationship and it ended like mine did, you tend to be a little gun shy.

It was a bad situation to be in.

So for now, I'd just ogle Ellie and continue my nightly masturbation ritual in my bedroom. I wondered if there were any bathing suit pictures of good ol' Beth from Boston to add to the spank bank. Thank God for Internet porn! I couldn't wait until after Christmas to get my DSL connection hooked up.

Before the team left for Christmas break, I got the chance to meet most of them and a few of the auxiliary staff. I spent my first Christmas break without my mother with Mack and Ellie. They did their best, but we all knew it wasn't enough to keep me from depression.

I literally felt lost. I was away from anyone I knew and anyone I cared about was either gone or miles away. I wondered openly if this was my penance for all the shitty things I'd done in my early teens.

"Son," Mack said. "I don't know what you did them years — and I don't need to know. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to earn your last year. But you got to find something to focus on. As bad as your life is, always remember there are those worse off."

I knew he was right, but I wanted to wallow in my self-pity for awhile.

Ellie wasn't about to let that happen. The week before Christmas she cornered me at dinner.

"I want to show you some pictures," she said. "I know we hardly mention Beth — we're still pissed at her. But here are pictures of her and her friends."

She handed me some snapshots of a nice looking girl standing by a red sports car. There was no doubt whose daughter this was.

"I see she inherited your beauty," I told Ellie, earning a blush, but I wasn't kidding.

I flipped through the rest of the pictures to find Beth sitting by the pool with two other girls.

"That's the one I wanted you to see," she said. I saw it all right.

The three girls looked like they could lose their tops and pose for Playboy's College Girls section.

"The one in the middle is Alison," she said. "She goes to college at Transy."

Transy is short for Transylvania University — I kid you not. It's a small liberal arts school in Lexington. They don't train vampires there, but they do manage to produce an awful lot of lawyers, professors and researchers. You know, all the other traditional bloodsuckers.

Of course, I didn't know any of that at the time because I had never heard of Transy and the only Transylvania I knew of was the region in Romania.

Ellie cleared my confusion.

"It's a college in Lexington," she said. "She's still in town."

I told her I appreciated what she was trying to do, but I really didn't want her to fix me up with any of her daughter's friends.

"I'm not playing Cupid," she told me. "I'm a terrible matchmaker and I don't really know you well enough to do that if I was a good one. I wanted to show you a picture of Alison so you could have a face to put with what I want to tell you."

I joked and said I hadn't actually made it to her face and I might have to look for a little while longer.

"Alison has a younger brother," Ellie said, unperturbed by my joke. "His name is Aaron. Aaron is very sick. He's at Children's and has been for about six weeks. In six months, he's gone from a carefree 11-year-old boy to a kid who may not make it to see 12."

The smile was off my face in an instant.

"He has cancer," Ellie said. "You know firsthand how terrible that is, not only for Aaron but for his family. You've told me that every small act of kindness you were shown while your mom was sick was magnified in your mind a thousand-fold.

"I don't want to tell you what to do. But it might be a nice gesture for you to return some of the kindness. I don't know about the rest of the kids or families there, but Aaron is a huge UK fan. Imagine the look on his face if you were to show up and talk football with him.

"Even the ones who don't know sports probably would like a chance to have someone read to them or just visit. And think about how happy you'd have been if someone showed up every now and then to spend some time with your mom."

I told Ellie that sounded like a perfect way to spend the month I had before school started. She was right, even a smile from a stranger who had no idea who I was or what I was going through would lift my spirits. When mom's friends would visit and I could get away — even for a few minutes — sometimes was the only thing that kept me from going over the edge.

"R.J.," Ellie said. "This is not all peaches and cream. You're a soft-hearted boy. Don't try to deny it. These kids, most of them, they're going to die. I want you to recognize that. If you volunteer there, you have to know that most of the people you spend time with — well, you're not going to spend time with most of them for long. That's going to be tough for you, considering what you've gone through. So think about this before you decide. There are other ways to help, even if it's not this way."