Illegal Motion g-4 Read online

  “Carter might want to take advantage of the halftime and make some calls for a job in the Knoxville area,” Clan cracks.

  “He bet on the wrong horse. I almost feel sorry for him. What’s he really like? He looks like he’s a hundred years old.”

  I watch Carter on the screen trotting with his head down to the visitors’ dressing room. His eyes appear to be almost shut and his lips moving.

  “He’s praying for a stroke,” Clan hoots, “so he won’t have to come back out on the field.”

  “That or a drink,” I say, marveling at the pressure men put themselves under. No wonder we die sooner than women.

  “He’s probably not a bad guy, just in over his head like the rest of us. He gave me the impression that he cares about Dade, but who knows? He’s got a lot riding on him.”

  “Like you, huh?” Clan says softly. I have told him how much I would like to negotiate a pro contract for Dade.

  “Like me,” I admit.

  In the second half the Razorbacks play like a different team. Dade catches six passes in the third quarter alone and runs like a wild man, scoring twice, and with the second extra point the score is tied at 14 to 14. In the fourth quarter Dade takes some sickening hits as the Vols’ safety, gambling now that he isn’t going long, time after time explodes against his back just as the ball reaches him.

  “He’s going to need a bone surgeon just to scrape him off the field,” Clan says, wincing after a particularly brutal tackle. Still, Dade holds onto the ball.

  “What did Carter tell them at halftime?” I ask, delighted with the change in their play.

  “He’s a genius, all right,” admits Clan.

  “We can’t even get Julia to take her turn at making the coffee. Maybe Carter can come to the office and give a talk on motivation.”

  With Tennessee leading 17 to 14 with five minutes to go, the Hogs begin their final drive from their thirty.

  Double-teamed now, Dade is used as a decoy until in the final minute, he slants across the middle and catches the ball without breaking stride and reaches the three when he is crushed by two huge tacklers. After a timeout, with the entire crowd on its feet, according to the announcers, Jay Madison sends Dade, followed by three defenders, into the left corner of the end zone and then practically walks in untouched for the victory.

  Clan and I yell and give each other high fives, startling Woogie, who watches from the end of the couch.

  “God, this was great,” Clan says, “and I don’t even care.”

  I am limp and almost hoarse from yelling at the TV screen. How odd that this should matter so much. I, and most of the rest of the state, will be happy the rest of the day. In large part, we have Dade Cunningham to thank for that. I hope people will remember it.

  Totally out of character, Saturday night I bring Amy flowers.

  “Why, Gideon, how nice!” she says, obviously flabbergasted but pleased as she opens the door.

  “You don’t seem the type to buy a girl play pretties.”

  “It’s pretty rare,” I admit.

  “I’m basically cheap and unromantic but still very lovable.” I hand her the flowers and wander around her living room. Amy lives in an apartment just off the freeway. It seems inevitable that I compare her to Rainey, whose living room was filled with books. I don’t even see a bookcase, just pictures by artists I’ve never heard of. I liked Rainey’s house better, with its hardwood floors and plants. But what did books ever do for our relationship?

  “I didn’t know you were into art,” I say, staring uncomprehendingly at an abstract poster.

  “Still sorta, kinda, a little, I guess,” Amy says, coming up beside me.

  “I got a degree in art history at college. Really dumb a rich girl’s major. My father was a retired factory worker in Jefferson County. He worked overtime at a paper mill in Pine Bluff so I could study in the East what Picasso was thinking about during his Cubist period. I’d come home from college every June, and Daddy would ask me what I’d learned. I think I gave him a little stroke every year. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him to pay for law school.”

  “How’d we do it?” I say, remembering my own exhaustion during those years. Amy worked in the circuit clerk’s office during the day, and walked across the street to go to school at night.

  “I didn’t do it very well,” Amy admits.

  “My grades, you remember, were average.”

  “Better than mine,” I point out. Amy is a good lawyer.

  In fact, she was a rising star in the prosecutor’s office until she got pregnant a couple of years ago and had an abortion. Her boss, a right-to-lifer, disapproved, and Amy left shortly afterward.

  At Amy’s suggestion, we drive out Damell Road to eat at the Greenhouse, a Mexican restaurant open only on the weekends. Dressed in jeans and an old Clinton-Gore T-shirt, Amy teases me as we get out of the car.

  “Who is celebrity lawyer Gideon Page escorting tonight to the fashionable Greenhouse restaurant? Why it’s that cute, pixieish Amy Gilchrist! What a darling couple they make! A blend of ancient history and hot-off-the-press slut puppy. Page is taking her arm; no, he’s leaning on her. She gently touches his face; no, she’s wiping it. She murmurs sweetly into his right ear. He cups the leathery, Perot-size orifice and shouts: “What? What did you say?”

  ” Walking into the restaurant beside her, I laugh and nudge her with my elbow.

  “Do we look that ridiculous?”

  My voice is plaintive, my worst fears activated.

  “If they bring a highchair for me” she snickers “try to take it in stride.”

  The Greenhouse is about as plain vanilla as restaurant decor gets. With its bare concrete walls, sturdy Formicatopped tables, and iron chairs, we won’t, despite Amy’s running commentary, make it into next week’s society section of the paper, but the food, chicken enchiladas for both of us, is delicious and reasonably priced.

  “I was afraid you’d want to go out to a classy joint and spend my money,” I say over bread pudding and a cup of decaf.

  Amy, who is still nursing her first and only beer, shrugs.

  “I knew better than that. As cheap as you are, you’d pout the rest of the evening. If I were truly liberated I’d offer to pay half, but I just talk a good game when it’s to my advantage.”

  I laugh at this woman, putting me in mind of Rainey at the beginning of our relationship before she got so serious. Or maybe I was the one who got too serious. Nothing is off-limits with Amy. In the fading moments of the late June twilight we drive further out Highway 10 to Lake Maumelle and park overlooking the water, where she asks me about Rainey.

  “What happened, Gideon? I thought she had you headed onto the kill floor for sure.”

  Marriage as slaughterhouse. I snicker at the image. As we get out of the Blazer, I wonder how to respond.

  “Every time we got close,” I say, thinking I see a sailboat in the distance, “one of us would push the self-destruct button. It wasn’t meant to be. We had our chances but wouldn’t take them. She still calls occasionally to ask about Sarah.”

  Amy picks up a rock and throws it into the water.

  “She’s probably still in love with you. If we start dating and I tell my friends,” she says glumly, “I’ll probably open up the paper and read you two have taken out a marriage license.”

  What an imagination this woman has!

  “Nope, that’s over with. Actually, Rainey liked Sarah better than me.

  What she liked was to rescue me. It was easier than loving me.”

  Amy turns and says primly, “I’m not much of a rescuer.”

  “Well, I’m not drowning.” I kiss her then. It seems as if we have been doing it for a long time. We stand in the darkness and nibble each other until the bugs get into the act, and then we drive back to her apartment where I accept her invitation to come in for a beer.

  Amy seats me at her kitchen table and opens her refrigerator.

  “You’re not going to believe this,
” she says.

  “I forgot I was out.”

  I come around behind her and look. The inside is as bare as my own. What do single people eat? She has three Diet Cokes on the bottom rack, and a jar of orange juice on the top with nothing in between.

  “I cleaned out the refrigerator today in case you tried to inspect it,” she adds.

  As with so many of her remarks, I don’t know whether this one is serious or not.

  “I think the point is,” I say with mock solemnity, “there is supposed to be food in here, but I’ll give you an “A’ for effort. It’s really clean.”

  “Whew!” she says, shutting the door and leaning back against me.

  “I was afraid I wasn’t gonna pass.”

  “You passed,” I concede. We resume kissing then, and after a few moments she leads me into her bedroom where we make love. Amy is as passionate as I thought she would be. She seems pleased with my efforts, too, afterward, lying back against her pillows and smiling contentedly in the soft glow of the lamp beside her bed. I think I’m going to like this woman.

  At home, in my own bed, I wonder why Rainey and I never made love all those months. Too complicated for her own good, she spent a lot of time picking at life as if it were part of the DNA chain she had to unravel. Amy is more direct and so much less analytical. What did Amy and I talk about tonight? The game, the Razorbacks, her work, not much really. Rainey could get so damn moralistic I’d like to keep things with Amy simple for a while if I can. It’s a nice change.

  7

  Sunday and Monday the news from Fayetteville is mixed. As I work to rearrange my schedule so I can get up there the last part of the week, it is obvious that the pressure on the university to discipline Dade is building.

  According to the Democrat-Gazette, war’s Sunday night rally attracted a crowd of four hundred people, including faculty members. The administration was denounced as “totally and irreversibly sexist,” and Paula Crawford, war’s leader, demanded that Coach Carter and Jack Burke, the athletic director, resign. Yet, there is no doubt Dade’s performance against Tennessee has helped him. In the letters-to-the-editor column two self identified “fans” recite Carter’s argument that if Dade is kicked off the team or disciplined now, he will be denied due process of law. University officials were quoted as saying they would have a statement later in the week.

  Monday night I notice in the mailbox a letter from Fayetteville in Sarah’s neat handwriting. I open the door and let Woogie out in the darkness by himself (he is hungry and will be back within fifteen minutes), and mystified, I sit down to read the letter at the kitchen table over a beer. I never get a letter from her at school. On her word processor, which I am still paying off, she has written:

  Dear Dad:

  As you know, I’ve been going to some meetings sponsored by WAR, but I’ve also attended a couple of workshops they put on over the weekend. You could call them “consciousness-raising” sessions, I guess. As I’ve told you, I never identified with the term “feminist” before, and I’m still not sure I know what it means, but Paula and some of her group have made me think about some things that I hadn’t realized before.

  Since it is hard for me to talk to you sometimes (you can be real intimidating!), I thought I’d try to write about them. Here goes:

  Did you ever realize that I’ve spent half my life on a diet? Ever since I was ten, I’ve thrown away good food and then got hungry later and ate junk. Then, I’d have to diet some more. All my friends in high school were like that. Do you remember Amber Norworthy? She used to make herself throw up in the bathroom at high school after her mother caught her doing it at home. I can see now in retrospect that Betty Davenport was anorexic. Lots of other girls I knew were close to it.

  Ever since I was little, I’ve spent my entire life worrying about how I look, how much I weigh, and how I measure up in comparison to other girls. I know Mom looked great all the time, but I don’t think she liked all the emphasis on her appearance as much as you did.

  She was from a culture even more macho than the U.S.

  In South America women are even more objects than we are here. You should know that.

  The Women’s Movement was supposed to make us free. Well, we aren’t! We are slaves to cosmetics, body surgery, diets, pornography (look at the ads in magazines), and violence against women. I didn’t understand any of this before I joined WAR. I thought women who joined groups like this were just bitter because they couldn’t compete against women who were more attractive. That’s not true! They just quit accepting all that garbage about how women are supposed to look and act in society.

  Even before I went to school. Mom painted me up like a little doll. My fingernails, my toenails-I wore makeup even before junior high! You probably don’t remember because you never really paid attention. You just assumed that was the way it was supposed to be. I don’t blame Mom. She was just too brainwashed by her culture before she got over here.

  Dad, I would really like for you to talk to Paula. She is so smart. I know you’re a big supporter of individual rights and free speech, but I bet she could convince you that all pornography ought to be banned because it’s harmful to women. She says it can be banned because it can be interpreted as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. I don’t understand the legal arguments but you would.

  I know some kids (guys, mainly) resent the new sexual harassment policy on campus, but all it means is that if you sexually harass somebody, you’re denying them an equal opportunity at an education. I know I sound simplistic, but Paula and some of the others can explain these things really well.

  I know what you’re thinking-that I’m going off the deep end again-like the time I joined Christian Life.

  Please don’t have a knee-jerk reaction like you usually do. You always overreact to everything!

  I want you to do something for me: I want you to ask the judge to let you no longer be Dade’s attorney if you become convinced that he is guilty. What if it had been me he raped? Would you want him to go free?

  Please don’t make any more cracks about women burning their bras! This group is not like that.

  Love, Sarah P.S. I’ve quit jv cheerleading even though I think I had a good chance of being a Razorback cheerleader next year. It’s really just kind of a sex show-women in skimpy, tight outfits performing for men. I want to have more control over what happens to me instead of just reacting to the prevailing culture, which, you’ll have to admit, is pretty sick. I’ll see you later this week.

  I read the letter twice. I should have seen this coming, I think, as I swallow more beer. Sarah is always vulnerable to whatever comes along at the moment. If I hadn’t been so nuts after Rosa died, none of this would be happening.

  What gets into her? How does she think I’m going to make a living if I defend only people I know are innocent?

  And what is wrong with being beautiful? Actually, it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if she didn’t feel as

  8

  If she had to spend as much money on clothes as she does. Unless she shaves her head, she’s going to be gorgeous, no matter what. I scan the letter again. I never knew she worried about being fat. She never has been even close to being five pounds overweight. And if researchers have proved a direct casual link between pornography and physical violence against women, I’ve missed it. Up until now it’s always been the right wing that wanted to ban porno shops and movies. This is ridiculous! My apolitical daughter becoming left wing and going so far around the bend she’s meeting conservatives on the other side. I can’t believe she’s quit cheerleading. Regardless of the cost, I was all set to make every home game for the next two years just to see her.

  Damn these groups! They get their teeth in you and won’t let go until you’re a carbon copy of them.

  Desperate to find out what this all means, I call Amy and launch into a feverish description of what Sarah has been doing.

  “It just sounds like they’re trying to
make her feel guilty about being who she is,” I say, without letting Amy get a word in edgewise.

  “In one paragraph she goes from screaming about the cosmetics industry to pornography.

  I don’t get it. It sounds like if you’re beautiful, you should burn yourself at the stake to make these women happy. What the hell’s going on up there?”

  “Whoa, boy!” Amy commands, giggling at my hyperbole.

  “I suspect you’re like a lot of people, including women, and are pretty confused by what’s going on today in what passes for the women’s movement. I’ll grant you it’s pretty weird. At one end you’ve got

  people like Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor, who truly believes there is a relationship between pornography and violence against women and would ban it; but, then there’re women like Camille Paglia who say that women are buying into a victim psychology that wrongly defines us as weak and powerless. I can identify especially with the part about her physical appearance. I’ve spent my whole life trying to look, as my mother says, perky and cute, since I don’t have a chance of looking like the Sarahs of this world. As a case in point I’ve barely eaten anything since I gorged myself Saturday night, so I know how Sarah feels.”

  “But she’s never been fat a day in her life!” I say, remembering all the times when Sarah complained about her appearance although she looked perfect.

  “Society has made us worry about it constantly,” Amy responds.

  “You’d have to be a woman to really under stand it.”

  I sip at my beer, which I have brought into the kitchen.

  “I don’t see why she quit cheerleading,” I gripe.

  “That seemed harmless enough to me. It’s not like they got out there naked.”

  “I admire her for it,” Amy claims.

  “It took guts to give it up. Most of us don’t do anything but talk.”

  A lot of people are better off that way, too.

  “When this dies down,” I predict, “she’ll regret it.”

  Amy says, quietly, “It sounds to me like you don’t take Sarah too seriously.”