Physical Therapy by Z. A. Maxfield Read Free Book Online Page B

found something fascinating there. “No. I"m sorry. You didn"t put your foot in it. I"m…I guess I"m overreacting to every little thing.” I saw his brother"s attention snap back at this.
    “It"s all right. That"s probably natural,” I said. “I"ve worked with people who are coming back from injuries. Some who have had strokes. There doesn"t seem to be a single normal way for anyone to behave. I"m sure you"re adjusting in your own time. It just takes a lot of it. More than they ever tell you.” I said that without thinking. I didn"t know what they"d told him, but healing of any kind took a long time.
    “I"m sure you"re right,” he said. He pulled smoothly away from the curb. I had actually been worried that his driving would be less than optimal despite what I"d said.
    It seemed I had nothing to fear, though, because he maneuvered through the quiet streets of St. Nacho"s with ease. We drove through Wendy"s for fast food to take with us, not a bad choice, at least not the worst for me. At some fast-food places I would starve. I ordered a side salad, a broccoli-cheese potato, and a Frosty, and when I pulled out my wallet to pay, Ken waved me off. We drove in near silence until we came to Mark"s school, and we parked near the field.
    Mark trotted—with his bag of snacks—toward the field where his fellow teammates stretched, and I carried dinner while Ken and I made our way to the bottom of the bleachers where we could sit, eat, and watch them run through their drills and scrimmage.
    “I take it you went to high school here?” I asked, mostly just to have something to talk about.
    He was concentrating on walking over the uneven ground, and he didn"t answer right away. “Yes.”
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    Z. A. Maxfield
    I thought maybe the subject was painful for him, so I didn"t press. We sat down, and he put his crutches aside. He shook his hands out, opening and closing them, and I fought the urge to help. He pulled out his chicken sandwich and gave me my potato.
    We each had a salad and Frosty. He looked to where his brother was dribbling his soccer ball through an obstacle course of orange cones and flags.
    “You don"t eat meat?”
    “No.” I looked down. “This is kind of a strange dinner.”
    “Not really. It looks good. Broccoli.”
    “I like it.” A silence grew between us. Mark was fast, agile, and seemed to be fearless. He was a great ball handler. “Mark"s got serious wheels,” I remarked. “Look at him go.” I looked at Ken then, realizing that maybe hearing his brother praised might make him feel his own shortcomings more sharply. He had a faintly satisfied smile on his face.
    “He"s really remarkable. He thinks quick, right on the dime, and can get through a defensive line like he"s coming out of a fire hose.” Pride was evident when he spoke of his brother. “I have two sisters who skate competitively, a brother who plays soccer, and another who"s destined to be the baseball player I would have been. Could have been.” He swallowed hard. “My parents were athletes. My dad coaches track at this school. My mom was an Olympic swimmer. She medaled, bronze, in two events.” I remained silent. My own throat burned a little, and I didn"t trust myself to speak.
    What could I say to that? I could hardly tell him that I"d lost my own best event, competitive stupidity, at about the same age he"d lost his. That I"d overachieved in drinking and fucking around and that it had cost a three-year-old boy his life. That I"d had to reevaluate my crappy, unhappy history in the same way he was reevaluating his, and that I"d had to re-create myself in exactly the way he would be required to re-create himself. That I"d also had to ask myself the same question, over and over, what now?
    It was hardly comprehensible to me, but there it was. I knew exactly how he was feeling. I had been there; I understood. I"d had the added fillip of mind-numbing guilt, and yet I was pretty certain that if I dug my hand around in his pain and