You might have heard of my dad, Jim Blair. He’s six five and played a year of good basketball in the pros before tearing his knee up in his second year. The knee took forever to heal and was never quite the same again. Still, he played pro ball in Europe for five years before giving it up and becoming an executive with a high-tech company.
Dad loved basketball and hoped that one day I would play the game. He taught me a lot, and I was pretty good until the accident. It was raining and we were on the highway, approaching the turnoff toward our house in Hartsdale, when a truck skidded across the road and hit our rear bumper. Our little car spun off the road, squealing as Dad tried to bring it under control. But he couldn’t avoid the light pole. I remember seeing the broken windows, hearing Mom yelling, amazingly bright lights flashing crazily in front of me. Then everything was suddenly dark. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. There were surgeries and weeks in the hospital, but the important thing was that I wasn’t going to be walking again.
I didn’t like the idea, but Mom and I learned to live with it. Dad took it hard, real hard. He was never much of a talker, Mom said, but he talked even less since I was hurt.
“Sometimes I think he blames himself,” Mom said. “Whenever he sees you in the wheelchair he wants to put it out of his mind.”
I hadn’t thought about that when Mr. Evans, an elder in our church, asked me if I wanted to join a wheelchair basketball team he was starting.
“We won’t have the experience of the other teams in the league,” he said. “But it’ll be fun.”
When I told Mom, she was all for it, but Dad just looked at me and mumbled something under his breath. He does that sometimes. Mom said that he’s chewing up his words to see how they taste before he lets them out.
Our van is equipped with safety harnesses for my chair, and we used it on the drive to see a game between Madison and Rosedale. It was awesome to see guys my age zipping around in their chairs playing ball. I liked the chairs, too. They were specially built with rear stabilizing wheels and side wheels that slanted in. Very cool. I couldn’t wait to start practicing. At the game, Mom sat next to me, but Dad went and sat next to the concession stand. I saw him reading a newspaper and only looking up at the game once in a while.
“Jim, have you actually seen wheelchair games before?” Mom asked on the way home.
Dad made a little motion with his head and said something that sounded like “Grumpa-grumpa” and then mentioned that he had to get up early in the morning. Mom looked at me, and her mouth tightened just a little.
That was okay with me because I didn’t want him to talk about the game if he didn’t like it. After washing and getting into my pj’s I wheeled into my room, transferred to the bed, and tried to make sense of the day. I didn’t know what to make of Dad’s reaction, but I knew I wanted to play.
The next day at school, tall Sarah told me there was a message for me on the bulletin board. Sarah is cool but the nosiest person in school.
“What did it say?” I asked.
“How would I know?” she answered. “I don’t read people’s messages.”
“Probably nothing important,” I said, spinning my chair to head down the hall.
“Just something about you guys going to play Madison in a practice game and they haven’t lost all season,” Sarah said. “From Nicky G.”
“Oh.”
The school has a special bus for wheelchairs and the driver always takes the long way to my house, which is a little irritating when you’ve got a ton of homework that needs to get done, and I had a ton and a half. When I got home, Mom had the entire living room filled with purple lace and flower things she was putting together for a wedding and was lettering nameplates for them. I threw her a quick “Hey” and headed for my room.
“Chris, your coach called,” Mom said.
“Mr. Evans?”
“Yes, he said your father had left a message for him,” Mom answered. She had a big piece of the purple stuff around her neck as she leaned against the doorjamb. “Anything up?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. My heart sank. I went into my room and started on my homework, trying not to think of why Dad would call Mr. Evans.
With all the wedding stuff in the living room and Mom looking so busy, I was hoping that we’d have pizza again. No such luck. Somewhere in the afternoon she had found time to bake a chicken. Dad didn’t get home until nearly seven-thirty, so we ate late.
While we ate Mom was talking about how some woman was trying to convince all of her bridesmaids to put a pink streak in their hair for her wedding. She asked us what we thought of that. Dad grunted under his breath and went back to his chicken. He didn’t see the face that Mom made at him.
“By the way”—Mom gave me a quick look—“Mr. Evans called. He said he had missed your call earlier.”
“I spoke to him late this afternoon,” Dad said.
“Are the computers down at the school?” Mom asked.