When she left the room, though, William was often alone for hours. He ignored the textbooks and flipped between channels on the television in the corner. He watched Bulls games on mute. Kent had brought William’s mail on his last visit, and William had recognized his father’s spidery script on one of the envelopes. When he’d touched the letter for the first time, an icy sweat covered his skin. William had thought that he’d deadened himself to hope in regard to his parents, but with the appearance of the letter the emotion had shot, unwanted, through him. He’d stuck the envelope under his pillow while he worked to shoo the hope out of him, like a bird out a window. William had always accepted the fact that his parents didn’t want him in their lives. He’d felt mostly calm while he and Julia phoned his mother about the wedding, because he’d known what the result would be; his only concern that evening had been for Julia and her disappointment. But his parents would have had time to consider everything, in the wake of that phone call, and now they’d gone to the effort of writing him a letter. They couldn’t know he was in the hospital—how would they have heard? The university was covering his medical bills, and when the surgeon had offered to speak to William’s parents, he’d said that wasn’t necessary. William thought it was possible that his mother and father had written to him because they felt some remorse. Now that William was a man and getting married, perhaps they’d realized how much of his life they’d missed. Perhaps they wanted to be part of his adulthood. He hoped—again, the hope showed itself in an icy sweat—they might have written a long letter, one that included an apology for having been so uninterested in him for so long. The letter might ask for William’s forgiveness and for the chance to attend his wedding.
William switched off the television and pried open the envelope. He could tell right away that there was no letter inside. There was only a check. On the memo line, it said: Congratulations on wedding/graduation. The check was for ten thousand dollars. William looked at the zeros and thought, It’s really over now. He wouldn’t deposit the check—he knew that immediately. He wouldn’t touch their money. William’s heartbeat slowed to a murmur in his chest, and he had to breathe in a funny way to keep from crying. He was surprised by how upset he was; it felt like something had broken inside him.
* * *
—
William’s basketball team and coach visited between the two surgeries. His teammates, several of whom had to duck as they walked through the doorframe, were wearing team sweats. Everything inside William sank while the group gathered around his hospital bed. It felt like his insides—his self—had narrowed to the point of a pencil. All color and lines vanished.
Every visitor wore a careful smile intended to cheer him up.
“You’re okay,” Kent said. He was nearest to William, and he tapped his shoulder twice, as if to hammer in some kind of certainty with the words. You’re okay.
I don’t think so, William thought.
The coach cleared his throat and said, “Son, you were lucky to have it happen when it did. You made it to the tournament and got that experience. You served us well during the meat of the season. And I hear you’re getting married soon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wonderful news. That’s the real stuff. See, everything is looking up.”
You don’t mean that, William thought. You know I won’t be able to play anymore. You know I’m finished.
Their point guard, Gus, handed him a get-well-soon card they’d all signed, a couple of guys made jokes about hospital food, and then, thankfully, they filed out.
The physio—a bearded man named Arash—hung back, though, and approached the hospital bed. He frowned and said, “What was the history with that knee?”
William nodded in appreciation of the question; the knee did have a history. The pencil point inside him softened, and he was able to gather enough air to breathe. “I broke the kneecap my junior year in high school. During a very similar play, actually.”
“I thought so. So the kneecap shattered the way it did because of an earlier weakness.”
Arash had the X-ray in his hand; he looked down at the image. William’s kneecap looked dustier, messier, than the bones above and below in the X-ray. The white knob was traced with multiple lines. “Looks like a mosaic.”
“A career-ender,” William said.
“That too. Look, I know you love the game,” Arash said. “I saw that, and I saw your weak knee. You can stay in basketball, you know. You can coach or be a trainer or play another role. Look around at all the support staff and see what appeals to you. Basketball is a big machine with a lot of parts.”
William leaned forward. “What do you mean, you saw my weak knee?”
Arash was a stocky man with powerful-looking forearms. “You protected it once or twice. I could also see how you used your other side to pivot and jump. That’s what happens when an injury occurs at a young age. The knee doesn’t operate in isolation. The hip and ankle start to get used differently, and your overall balance is thrown off. There’s interplay between the various joints, and no one told you to build the weak leg back to full strength. I bet you came out of the cast last time and immediately returned to the court without changing anything, right?”
William nodded.
“That’s what I thought.”
Julia arrived a few minutes after Arash had gone. She scanned William’s face; she could see he was riled up somehow. “Did something happen?”
“My knee is killing me.”
“You poor thing. Try to think about something else. Think about the wedding. You have something wonderful to look forward to, right?”
“That’s what Coach said too.”
She brightened. “How nice!”
She handed him her clipboard, which had pages of plans: the guest list, floral arrangements with taped photos of different flowers, a minute-by-minute schedule. A timeline of things to do and dates to have each item done by. A spreadsheet to show who was responsible for what. Almost every box had either Julia’s or Rose’s name beside it.
William flipped through the pages. The wedding was nine weeks away. It was a concrete event he could comprehend, like the reality of his knee. He needed to show up for one and be careful with the other.
Julia smoothed William’s hair; her touch felt good.
She was talking, so he tried to focus. “When I went into the history department to get your work, I asked around about teaching-assistant jobs. Turns out there’s a position for next fall that hasn’t been listed yet. Should I hand in your résumé for you?”
William would start the graduate program in history at Northwestern in September. He’d been surprised and relieved when the program accepted him. He thought of himself as a mediocre student, but the truth was that studying alongside Kent and Julia for the prior four years had changed that. His friend and girlfriend had modeled hard work and taught him how to study effectively. These skills, combined with William’s constant fear that a low grade-point average would knock him off the basketball team, had vaulted him onto the dean’s list.
The PhD application had required him to declare a historical period to focus on, and he’d struggled with the choice. His favorite part of history was its breadth, the sweeping connections between events and figures. How Leo Tolstoy had inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who had in turn inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. William didn’t see how he could confidently plant his feet in any particular century, continent, or war. When he’d discussed this quandary with Kent, his friend shook his head and said, “You already have an area of focus, dummy. You’re writing a book about the history of basketball.” This surprised William—it hadn’t occurred to him—and he said, “I can’t study basketball. That wouldn’t be seen as a serious academic subject.” But he’d applied to study American history from 1890 to 1969, a time frame that would allow his private interest and his legitimate work to at least exist side by side.
William would need teaching-assistant jobs to provide him and Julia with some income during the long PhD program. He arranged his face to show that he was paying attention to his fiancée and her plans, but somewhere inside was a repeated whisper of wedding, knee.
“Sure?” he said. “But I’m not sure my résumé is ready to go out.”
“I’ll clean it up; I’m good at that. I read so many résumés for Professor Cooper last summer, remember? You need a haircut when you get out of here.” Julia touched his arm. She paused and then said in a low voice, “I wish I could climb into bed with you.”
William imagined her curves fitting against his side. He imagined what would happen when he pulled the sheet over their heads.