One of the outside linebackers was Brandon Melandandri (nicknamed, inevitably and, as it turned out, ironically, Dandy). The best years of Dandy’s life were the years he spent in high school. Once he graduated, Dandy disappeared into drug addiction and homelessness. The last Lizzie knew he was living on the streets in Detroit. It was a pretty undandy ending. The other was Anoush Shashvili, who went on to become a semisuccessful writer of horror films. Because Lizzie felt that real life was scary enough without the addition of the supernatural, she never saw any of his movies. In fact, she made a point of studiously avoiding them, and refused to let George see them either. Anoush’s first film, which received a lot of praise, was Slash/Dot/Vampire Blood. Lizzie thought the title probably said it all.
*?Playdates?*
Lizzie and George loved the weekends most especially during the fall and early winter when it was pretty much all football all the time. Late in August, between James and Marla’s wedding and their own, George surprised Lizzie with season tickets to both the football and basketball games. Saturday afternoons were spent either watching the Wolverines play in the Big House, as the Michigan stadium was known, or else watching the away games on television. Of course it wasn’t just the Michigan games that were important. Naturally George wanted to watch Oklahoma State play, and then there were the postgame shows, and then he and Allan rehashed the OSU game and sometimes the University of Oklahoma game as well. Usually, after talking to Allan, George would call his grandfather to talk some more. The Goldrosens really loved football. Every once in a while Lizzie thought it was ironic that she couldn’t tell George about the Great Game and those twenty-three guys whose names she would never forget.
The Wolverines were only a so-so team in the early years of George and Lizzie’s marriage. Their best season was 1997, when the Associated Press ranked them number one, but Lizzie’s fondness for the game never depended on her team winning. What she liked was learning about the different players. The quarterback who came to Ann Arbor from Selma, Alabama, and spoke with such a deep southern accent that none of the other players could understand him, and Lloyd Carr, the head coach, convinced him to become a wide receiver, where communication skills were not so vital. The linebacker who graduated from hated in-state rival Michigan State and then transferred to Michigan for his fifth year in order to study accounting and play one last season. The cornerback who won every award, including the Heisman Trophy, the first defensive player to do so. The freshman punt returner who was paralyzed the fifth play of the Wolverines’ opening game. That sort of thing.
Sundays were spent watching the pro games. To please Lizzie, George adopted Detroit as his second favorite team. He saw this as an enormous sacrifice, because it practically guaranteed a frustrating Sunday, since the hapless Lions went down to defeat nearly every week. The pain of the Lions losing was always exacerbated when the Dallas Cowboys games weren’t televised. “They’re America’s team,” he’d mutter. “Why can’t those idiots make them the game of the week?” And when the Cowboys lost he was pretty inconsolable for a few hours.
Lizzie especially loved the Sunday-night game no matter who was playing. She’d pop a huge bowl of popcorn, cut up some apples and carrots, and pour them each glasses of beer, and she and George would sit close to each other on the sofa and watch the game unfold, forgoing dinner. Lizzie enjoyed listening to George respond to the action on the field. She liked hearing him analyze different plays. She was happy to let him exclaim over illegal chop blocks, successful blitzes, and missed field goals. She enjoyed his rants about abysmal time management and horrible red zone calls.
George sometimes joked that he was relieved that the Cowboys didn’t play the Lions in the regular season until 2002. He told Lizzie that he wasn’t sure they could have handled being on opposite sides of a football game before then, when they were an old married couple—seven years!—and could deal with all their differences as adults. Lizzie couldn’t tell if George intended this to be a joke or not. She rather thought not.
Lizzie was sometimes of the opinion, disloyally (whether to George or to the basketball team itself was never clear to her), that there were way too many games on the schedule. George wanted to attend as many of them as his and Lizzie’s schedules allowed. She once suggested that they just move into Crisler Center during the basketball season. Lizzie found going to the games—basketball or football—exceptionally relaxing, because she knew that Jack would never in a million years attend a game of either sport, so there was no chance she’d run into him there, and that knowledge was a huge relief tinged with sadness.
One issue Lizzie had with basketball was the last few minutes of close games. To some extent the same was true for football, but the pace of a basketball game made it much more intense. Lizzie couldn’t take it. She worried too much about the players who were under the enormous pressure of making a free throw when the game depended on it, or who were called for walking and were thus responsible for turning the ball over to the opposition. She couldn’t stand it when a coach screamed at a player. George supposed that he understood Lizzie’s feelings, but it still boggled his mind that if the score was close and the clock down to three or so minutes to play, Lizzie couldn’t watch the rest of game. If they were at home she would leave the living room, go into the kitchen or bedroom, and shut the door behind her so she couldn’t hear the cheers or groans. Sometimes she was unable to stay away, but mostly she just waited for George to come and tell her the outcome. It was less painful that way. When they were watching the games in person and Lizzie felt too stressed, she’d close her eyes and cover her ears, trying not to hear or see what was going on. Or if it was too excitingly nerve-racking, she’d make her way to the closest bathroom and sit on the toilet, reading the graffiti on the walls and door until the game ended and she and George could go home. After a few too many evenings in the first year of their marriage spent like that, Lizzie would bring a book to the game.
*?Honeymoon for Four?*