Game Plan
We could do nothing but watch as the basketball slipped out of his hands and began its lengthy cascade down the hill. Andrew’s house, of course, was situated at the very top of the steepest conglomeration of rickety suburban housing developments in all of southern California, which gave way to just about all the terrible things gravity had to offer. Whether it be punching the gas too hard for Tangerine Avenue’s 45-degree decline or leaving the baby stroller alone for too long, anything that you brought to the top of the neighborhood was sure to come crumbling down. Of course Andrew lived at the top.
So we looked silly and foolish as we stumbled after the already-gone basketball, clamoring with half-panic-half-fun as I hoped and he prayed that nobody’s car would come to squash the runaway ball. Our only hope was the single momentary kink in the great steepness that was Tangerine: a short plateau just past the fire hydrant by house number 21347. If we were lucky, the ball would catch itself, pause, and decide that it wanted to come back. If we weren’t so blessed, it would leave us to eat its dust.
Andrew and I came to an anxious halt as the ball teetered at its plateau. We inhaled sharply in perfect sync, the ball holding its breath too, contemplating whether to book it for an escape or stop its games here. I trusted that it would stay, allowing us to corral it back home and return to business as usual with it and the basketball hoop. My trust was a mistake.
We sighed with frustration when the ball decided to leave, freeing itself from the house at the top of the hill, fleeing from the repetitious cycle of being tossed in Andrew’s basketball hoop, escaping once and for all. We watched helplessly as it rolled farther and farther, its acceleration finally slowing once it reached the bottom of the street and found its way onto the main road. That pesky little basketball stared back at us for just a moment, confident in its decision, before an 18-wheeler rolled past and crushed it flat.
How disappointed Andrew and I were when that truck rolled by, but we recollected and made do with his backyard pool, fixing our wet hair up into funny shapes before silencing our laughter with dad-grilled turkey burgers. And after rinsing our body of SPF lotion and chlorine deposits, we remained giggling far into the night as the moon cascaded over our heads. By the time dreams graced our racing minds, the crushed basketball was far behind.
When Andrew and I parted ways, I didn’t immediately think anything spectacular of it. We’d been apart for over a year, we’d changed immensely, and, given the healthy foundation of abandonments, I hadn’t exactly expected anyone to stay long. The grieving of what was much less our relationship, and much more my tangled web of fly-caught feelings, came at a much slower, yet all the more powerful, pace.
What began as a quiet storm of curiosity regarding how someone could so easily leave you in the dust only grew with time, first blossoming into a thunderstorm of turbulent emotions akin to envy and rage, then festering into hurricanes of hurt—best characterized as a hopeless longing for a version of a person that no longer exists. As more time passed, I could only wonder what led a person to do something so drastic, to abandon someone without a warning of any form, and to not even announce their exit on the way out—to disappear without a trace, jumpstarting a system of negative feedback loops that led their one-left-behind to one conclusion: it’s my fault.
When my father left, it was much different. I’d known it was coming for months, years even, and I’d watched him deteriorate from the man he was supposed to be into the version of himself he couldn’t escape. I’d heard my mother beckon for help in other rooms, I’d heard her lower her voice when she realized I was listening, and I saw how nervous she got when she left me alone. I recognized what it meant when my father was slamming another door, and I knew this couldn’t go on forever, so when he was kicked to the curb, when we packed our things and fled his vicinity, I never grieved my old life, the one with my father. Because I knew it wouldn’t last. And I knew it was his fault, not mine.
I never could be sure that Andrew’s departure was his fault. What had he done wrong aside from leaving me behind? I couldn’t answer that question, and I suppose I still cannot, which was what brought me to the everlasting belief that I’d been the one to soil the closest relationship I’d ever built. Surely, if he hadn’t done anything to harm me, then he was a good person. Surely, if he was a good person, him moving on without me meant I had done something wrong, and I was the treacherous personification of evil that destroyed everything in sight and left heartbreak in its wake. Surely, I was an 18-wheeler crushing basketballs.
I toiled over what could have possibly forced Andrew out of my grasp and into the big, bad world without me, what made him decide that leaving me to wallow in self-pity was the most intelligent route to serenity. I wondered what might have been of us if I was less forward with my personality, if I shaped myself to be more to his liking, if I chose not to pursue my identity in favor of his comfort. I believed wholeheartedly that, if I had been granted the wisdom of an adult, if I had been able to avoid the mistakes and missteps of adolescence, Andrew would still want me in his life.
When I chose to speak to Andrew again, I apologized for destroying him, and he responded with an apology for leaving—without the explanation for why. He was quick to remind me of long-lost experiences we shared, perhaps still tuned into my ever-decaying memory from thousands of miles apart, rekindling conversation with twigs and flint as if he hadn’t already charred me to ashes. All without an explanation for his absence. All without a reason for why I wasn’t enough, how he fled the crime scene with his hands clean. All without telling me what led him to crush me like a basketball.
By the third time Andrew returned to me, it occurred to me that I would never understand his game plan. He never saw a reason to explain a three year disappearance, and by the time it set in that he’d stopped caring, I never saw a reason to beg for it. How strange it was, to now have the one person who could answer all my endless what-if scenarios and racing questions, to be able to ask him directly why he’d gone—and to choose to leave it alone. I had come to discover that, whatever the reason was, it wouldn’t change the simple truth that Andrew and I were new people with new prospects—I didn’t care who was driving the 18-wheeler, because the ball was already flat.
No amount of explanation would change my past, and I refused to let him affect my present any longer. How liberating it was, to watch the basketball roll down the hill, and to finally stop chasing it.
I often return to the memory of our shared hot summer day on Tangerine Drive, pondering what might have happened had we kept our grasp tighter on the basketball. Would it have still been doomed to its fate under the wheels, simply at a later time, or would we still be playing basketball together today? How many more fumbled passes and scraped knees and cursed losses would I have accumulated, and how many more times would he have held his wins over my head? Would we have shared our perfect summer day in the pool? Our restless nights of basking in nothing but each other?
I find the what-if scenarios rather obsolete now. They give too much leeway to possibilities that will never bloom, potential futures I’ll never see, because that basketball is long gone and my summer days have never been better.