Noelle August - Boomerang

“Stan brought this back from Israel,” she says, and I film her as she worries the beads, drawing them over and over again through her fingers. “He spent three hundred dollars on them, a fortune in those days.”

“I guess he thought you were worth it, Nana.”

She lets herself smile, though it collapses into a frown, and she shoves the beads at me. “Take them.”

“Oh, no.” I lay them in her lap, placing her hands back on top of them. “They’re yours. You keep them.”

She rolls them up and drops them back into her purse, which she snaps shut and hugs against her chest. “I just don’t want that girl to get them,” she says. “She comes in here and touches everything.”

“She’s probably just trying to clean or help you put things away.” I make a mental note to ask my mom about this new person.

For now, though, I turn the camera back to my grandmother, try—but fail—to see her through the lens’s more objective eye. I watch her, the wry half-smile on her lips telling me she’s dreaming some secret dream—maybe about my grandfather or about being a young girl whose ambition brought her to the law and to fight for civil rights in the South.

I look around at her jewelry, at her books and dresses and mementos. Next to the photo of her standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Martin Luther King is one I love even more. She sits behind the wheel of an old car—a Studebaker, she told me—with one of my grandpa’s cigars clamped, unlit, between her teeth. Her smile is absolutely dazzling, and she gives the camera a wink like the moment will last forever.

Something snaps to life inside me, and I realize I’ve found my way into my film. These objects—the photographs, the jewelry, the antique perfume bottles lining her ivory-inlaid dresser, all of these things she’s kept through her adulthood, through the loss of my grandfather and her two older sisters, through her journey from an extravagant apartment in Forest Hills to this modest room clear across the country, they can tell her story for her. They can help me tell the world who she is.

“Tell me more about the necklace, Nana,” I say and lift the camera once again.

Ethan

Q: On a scale of one to ten, how would you rank your physical fitness?

How the HR manager from hell wound up leading my team through warm-up drills is a mystery I will never solve.

One minute I was in Century City bumming a ride from Rhett Orland after work. The next, I’m on the Beverly Hills High soccer field watching him run my squad of under-nine boys through a third set of push-ups.

I’ve been standing here for ten minutes, and I still can’t believe this.

“Come on, boys!” Rhett yells. He links his hands behind his back and paces down the line of groaning kids like a drill sergeant. “Put some want to in it! Backs straight, tails down! Feel that, boys? Can you feel the goodness?”

Unbelievable. Feel the goodness? The guy says some epically weird shit.

Tyler, my starting left wing, looks up from the push-up position, his nose scrunched up and his face red. “Coach Ethan, why do we have to do push-ups?”

It’s a fair question. Nine-year-olds’ arms are basically twigs, and I’m getting worried that Milo’s are going to snap right before my eyes. Not to mention that upper-body strength isn’t what I need from them. I need endurance. Core strength. Hell, I just need them to focus for more than two seconds at a time. But today things are different: my boys are helping me out with a little skill called ass-kissery.

“Because if you don’t do push-ups,” I say to Tyler, “Coach Rhett here is going to terminate me from my new employment.”

Rhett stops his verbal assault and grins. “You’re an intern, Vance, so legally I can’t fire you. I can only dismiss you.” His head whips back to the line of grunting kids. “Cameron, I saw you! You can get lower than that! Push ’em out, boys! Two more sets!”

This used to be the best part of my day.

I let Rhett finish warm-ups and then I get the boys running some drills. Juggling. Dribbling. Passing. These boys know what to do once they get moving. They’re young, but it’s a premier league team, with tryouts, tournaments, rankings. The whole deal. I made sure when I picked this group that they’d want to be here. I can deal with screwing around and nose-picking if they show some heart when we get down to actual soccer—and they do. My team has big-time heart.

When it’s time to scrimmage, I join in, partly because it fires the boys up and makes them try harder, and partly because I can’t resist the chance to touch the ball.

“Yo, Vance!” Rhett yells as he trots into the goal. I don’t know when he did it, but he’s gone to his car for biking gloves and a bright yellow, tight—even for spandex—shirt. His attempt at goalie gear, I think. He smacks his gloves together and drops into a baseball-ready stance, hands on his knees. Sweat rolls down his face and drips off his nose even though all he’s done so far is yell, but Rhett’s always overheated, even at the office.

“See if you can score on me,” he says.

That makes me shudder a little. “Nah. I’m good, Rhett.”

I feed a few balls to my forwards, Tyler and Milo, proud of them for getting past Rhett more often than not. Even prouder when they decide to start calling him Coach Sweat instead of Coach Rhett.

I pass to Tyler again, whose left foot is on fire today, but he sends it right back to me. “Come on, Coach Ethan! You shoot this one!”

“You go, Tyler.” I’m not here to put on a show, so I pass it back to him. “Take it.”

Tyler sends the ball to me again. “You, Coach Ethan!” he yells. Then he stops and lifts his twiggy arms in the air, champion style. “Feel the goodness!”

Well, shit. I can’t say no to that.

I drive my foot through the ball, holding nothing back. The shot is a rocket, the ball plunging into the back of the net, exactly where I wanted it. It rolls to a stop before the kids even react, then there are celebration airplanes and chest-bumps everywhere, except for Rhett, who shakes his head.

“You got lucky, Vance! Come at me again! Bring it, baby!”

“Sure, Rhett,” I say. “But I need a minute first. Can you handle this for a little while?”

Running around roused the beast that is my hangover. My brain feels like a water balloon jangling in my skull, and I need something to drink. Might as well take advantage of a short break and make the phone call I’ve been dreading all day.

Rhett genuinely looks touched. “Yeah, yeah. Anything, Vance. I got it.”

“Thanks.” I move toward the parking lot where I can still see the field and sit on the hood of Rhett’s Mini Cooper, which is outfitted with a ski rack, a bike rack, and, of course, racing stripes.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I call home, hoping to catch my dad before the evening rush at the alley.

He answers on the third ring. “Black Diamond Bowl.”

“Hey, old man. It’s me.”

“Ethan! How’s my boy doing? They pick you for the movies yet?”

Dad’s one of those people who sort of yells everything. Twenty years in a bowling alley will do that. He also thinks I’m harboring a secret desire to become an actor, since that’s the only valid reason he can come up with for me to still live in Los Angeles post-graduation.

The crash of pins breaking fills my ear—a strike by the sound of it—and a wave of homesickness washes over me. What I wouldn’t do to be there tonight, polishing bowling balls, un-jamming the vending machines and just hanging with my dad.

“Nope. No movies yet,” I say. “How’re things there? How’s mom?”

“Good! She just called ten minutes ago from Arizona.”

Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten. Mom drove with my little brother to U of A this week. I finished college just as Chris is going in.

Then it hits me: that’s not going to make this conversation any easier.

I got a partial ride to UCLA for soccer, and my parents helped as much as they could, but I still had to take student loans in the amount of $28,000 to cover the rest. Now Mom and Dad have four years of Chris’s school to pay and—

“Ethan?” my dad says.

“What? Oh—that’s good, Dad. Chris is okay? He’s getting settled in the dorm and everything?”

“Yep. They just unpacked the car, and they’re heading to dinner.”

“Cool,” I say, and I’m out of words. I can’t ask him anymore.

The thunderous smashing of pins grows quieter, and I know my dad has stepped into his office and shut the door.

I picture him there, watching his struggling business through the dusty blinds of the large window that faces lanes eight and nine. I picture the piles of bills on his desk—piles that aren’t much different from the ones in the crate in my apartment.

“What’s going on, son?” he asks, his voice growing gentle.

“Dad, I—I know this isn’t a good time to ask this, but I need to borrow some money.”

Silence for a few seconds. “How much?”

The back of my throat starts to burn. “A thousand? This job I got . . . it’s gonna take a little while to see a paycheck.”

“I see. Well. I can’t lend you money, Ethan.”

The words land like a punch to the chest. I stare at the grass by my feet, just concentrating on pulling in a breath and letting it out.

You always picture people who are completely broke pushing shopping carts full of trash, or sitting on a sidewalk with a sleeping mutt and a cardboard sign.

That’s not me.

My cleats are worth $500. My education is worth over a $100K.