The Proper Words for Sin

The Blazer Sestina

161 THE BLAZER SESTINA Paul’s mother died at 2 p.m. the afternoon of November 22, 1963. “Kennedy died before her,” my mother said, while she listened to Walter Cronkite announce the time of his death. “It doesn’t matter what Cronkite says,” she went on. “Kennedy was a Catholic, so they pretended he wasn’t dead until a priest could give him the last rites.” Paul’s mother wasn’t Catholic. She wasn’t anything, as far as I’d ever heard her say, which made her the only mother I knew who didn’t go to church. She would have sent a priest away. She would have told him to mind his own business if she hadn’t had something blow up inside her head. “I have such a headache,” she’d said, according to Paul, and then she’d stood up, taken two steps and fallen flat on the floor of the kitchen where she’d been eating toasted cheese sandwiches with Paul because he’d stayed home sick from school to miss our American history test. “An aneurysm,” Paul’s stepfather said. “His real father wouldn’t even have noticed she was dead,” my mother said. “By two o’clock Tom Sherba would have been drunk. What a shame, and him living only five miles away, not even decent 162 THE BLAZER SESTINA enough to fade into the sunset after he ended it with her by not taking care of himself.” My mother kept watching the six o’clock news while she talked. “And Lyndon Johnson—my God,” she said. “We’re in for it now. Just look at him, like something the cat dragged in.” I thought Lyndon Johnson looked sad and old. He looked like somebody who could die without being shot in the head. * * * Saturday morning our high school team had an intersquad scrimmage scheduled, and nobody was absent except Paul. Our first game was Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and this scrimmage was supposed to help Coach Rodman decide who was starting and what order he’d use to substitute. Without Paul at practice, I got moved to backup center and had to guard Jim Vail, who was four inches taller than me and a sure thing to start. Playing out of position like that, I knew I wasn’t a candidate for first forward off the bench, that Coach Rodman had me penciled in for garbage time because Jim Vail was going to chew me up while two other guys sweated it out to see who would play while the game was in doubt. I pushed and shoved Jim Vail until he swung his elbows after he came down with a rebound. One sharp elbow scraped under my chin like a prehistoric razor, and I backed off next time down the floor, Jim Vail taking a pass so close to the hoop his jump hook left his hand a foot from the rim. “Think yourself big,” Coach Rodman shouted at me. “Winning’s a choice, not a chance.” I plodded along. I pretended I was setting up outside to draw Jim Vail away from the basket, but without a position at stake, my goal was to get off the floor with my jaw intact. “Obstacles are opportunities,” Coach Rodman hollered as I clanked THE BLAZER SESTINA 163 a twenty-foot jump shot off the back of the rim, but I stayed outside. Thanksgiving was coming; there was turkey to eat. Unless somebody sprained an ankle or broke a leg, I wasn’t going to play unless we were more than twenty points behind or ahead. So I was happy when, an hour after we started, Coach Rodman called practice off. “Everything’s half-assed,” he said. “This Kennedy thing. Paul’s mother. And everything comes in threes. Next thing you know one of you will break his neck.” The name Jim Vail popped right up for me, but I trotted to the locker room with my head down as if I were as disappointed as one of the starting five. By the time I’d showered and dressed I’d decided Coach Rodman had made up his mind about this team the week before when he’d posted the cut list and six guys had cleaned out their lockers while the rest of us jogged upstairs to run our fifteen laps. My mother, when I got home, was...