He reached out and touched my jaw.
“Right! Yes!” I wished Karen were here to witness this breakthrough. I was teaching him, stretching him after all. He would be reading and writing soon, then going to college, maybe just a state school, but still. “Very good! Roger has a big jaw. And he’s a cheating slime bucket, but then again, who am I to talk, huh? I’m in an awkward position here, very awkward, don’t you think? I got Rita calling me now. Rita! What’s that all about, do you think? Rita’s going to ruin everything. Stupid Rita!”
“Reeeeta!”
I froze. Another new word. But not a good one. In fact, of all the words in the King’s speech, all of them, this was the one I never wanted my verbally challenged son to master and then yell eighty to ninety times a day.
I paused, knowing my next move was crucial. If I emphasized the wrongness of this word, admonished him for saying it, overreacted, it would be forever ingrained in his lexicon. I had made that mistake years ago with shit, shut up, and idiot. I simply could not make the same mistake with Rita.
“Hey, I got an idea,” I said. “Want to watch the Illini game?”
He pointed a finger upward. “Yes!”
“Good. Illini! Yes, let’s do that. Let’s cleanse our minds with that! Let’s forget everything else, wipe the slate clean. Perfect!” I put on his pajamas and grabbed my laptop.
Years ago my beloved Fighting Illini had staged the most memorable comeback in NCAA tournament history, scoring fifteen points in a frantic, four-minute span to force overtime against the University of Arizona. They would go on to win and advance to their first Final Four in sixteen years. I had attended that game with Sal, we had great seats, and had since watched tapes and rebroadcasts of it dozens and dozens of times with Ethan, the excitement and mounting disbelief of the announcers’ voices, the insane cheering of the crowd, holding his attention like few things could.
I found the last ten minutes of the game on YouTube. By now, Ethan and I both knew every steal, every basket, every deflection, every syllable of the announcers’ breathless narrative. Over the years this game had fused to our consciousness, and we never tired of seeing it one more time.
“There’s Deron—watch him now,” I said. “He’s going to hit the three.”
When Illinois’s star guard, Deron Williams, sidestepped a defender at the top of the key and drained his game-tying shot, a shot that had filled me with the purest form of joy, a shot that reaffirmed my optimistic outlook on life, a shot that helped me get to sleep more nights than I cared to admit, Ethan pounded the bed with his fist and screamed, “Three!”
“Three!” I yelled.
“Go. Illini!”
“Yes, go, Illini!”
We watched the game to its amazing conclusion and slapped each other five several times. The game, the shot, had once again served its purpose, washing me clean of all worry, albeit just for a while.
I gave Ethan a glass of water and watched him drink. He looked relaxed and happy, his eyes shimmering—Ethan at ease. Seeing him so content, I thought the time might be right to share something else with him.
“Hey, I want to show you some pictures. Come on, sit down.”
I returned to the laptop and found the Ocean View Web site. While I had mentioned the home to him in passing a handful of times, I had not made a concerted effort to discuss it, or his future, in any detail. Since I was never exactly sure what he was grasping, I didn’t want to unnecessarily raise his anxiety. I did know that it was best to tell him about upcoming plans with as little advance notice as possible. I thought this might be a good time to start preparing him; we were just days away.
“Here’s where we’re going,” I said, pointing to a picture of Ocean View. It showed a stately, redbrick building with black shutters and a long porch dotted with white wicker rocking chairs. I touched a photo of one of the chairs with my finger. “You can rock back and forth on those chairs. And you can see the ocean from there too. Very pretty.”
Ethan stared at the picture.
I swallowed. “You’re going to stay there. Live there. Maybe.”
Next I showed him the spacious gym with hardwood floors and six different baskets. The gym was a key factor in my decision, a selling point.
“You can shoot hoops there,” I said. “They just built it.”
“How. Many. Me. Make?”
“Fifty.”
“How. Many. Dad. Make?”
“Twelve. You win.” I paused. “But you’ll be playing with other people too.”
“Go. Illini!”
“Right.” I clicked on the link for the swimming pool. “You can go swimming every day there. It’s warm. Heated. You can do that after you play hoops. Hold on to the sides, though. Be careful.”