Hey, Coach! ch. 11

"I went to Jimmy Fargo's for the afternoon. I came home at four o' clock. I found my mother standing over the dinner table mumbling. Fudge was on the floor playing with my father's socks. I'm not sure why he likes sock so much, but if you give him a few pairs he'll play quietly for an hour." from Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing








Dad was coming home for the weekend after being away for a long week.  This last one was a trip down to Mexico City somewhere.  He had facetimed back home most nights, right at bed time, so that he could Scotty and Little Brother and then talk to mom alone.  The reception would cut in and out depending on whether he was in his hotel room or at a cafe of some sort.  He said there were so many people that you'd get caught in crowds everywhere you went, no matter what.  It felt like relief to get back to the actual plant because at least it was built out along a countryside mountain.  Scotty felt funny that he was off playing girls at HORSE and having Little Brother cook spaghetti, all the while his dad was in another country away from everybody.  He had asked if he could go along on the next trip and maybe learn the business.  Dad said that sounded great and that maybe, just maybe, he could take his place, kidding.  "How was basketball? Got a team yet?" There was no way that Scotty could fully answer that with anything other than a no, no yet, but we are working on it.  "I think if you can just get Matt and Tyler," dad said, "that the rest of them should come around. It's just fifth grade basketball, right?" Dad downplayed it all over the phone, but he had played all the sports himself, and Scotty knew what his hopes were. "We'll see you this weekend," he had said, "and you can show me some of those new moves." Scotty badly wanted to tell the story of near triumph in front of the school against The Girl, but it might all sound like nothing if you hadn't been there.

The next day, saturday, mom was on a mission.  The house had become not quite a house but a laundry and dish junkyard, little piles everywhere, to the point that even the two boys, gasp, had started to clean up because they couldn't walk a straight line from kitchen to bathroom to TV. That was always the last straw.  Dad was coming home.  Mom's job, she said, was going well. She carried a little illustrated book along with her everywhere showing a variety of massage techniques.  Once in a while she would randomly walk over to Little Brother and begin to put two fingers along his temples as practice.  Little Brother had swimming in half an hour, Scotty was supposed to go along so that he could get Little Brother ready afterward and then play in the game room for half an hour after so that mom could quick dash off to the grocery store.  That would be the time they would need to call the team players to get together.  By monday, they had a coach, a good one, and a court, but no players.  It's always something Scotty thought, always something.