The Catch

A Short Story

Photo by Victor B. on Unsplash.com

Eric sat at the kitchen table drinking beer from a bottle and munching pork cracklings while he reviewed the news feed on his laptop computer. In the adjoining family room, his wife visited with her mother over the phone. He couldn’t see her, but he heard her defensive responses. Her mother critiqued everything she did.

Soon the conversation would end, and Monica would join him at the table to vent. Eric wanted to be supportive, but this had been going on for eighteen years with no resolution. Every Sunday afternoon, Monica called her mother, endured endless criticism, hung up frustrated and beat down, and vented with Eric.

Why did she keep calling her mother? Eric wondered. Why did she keep asking for abuse?

He had become engrossed in a news article that described how the Russians used pornographic websites to hack into government databases when Monica slumped into the chair across the table from him and began shoving pork rinds into her mouth.

“You want a beer with that?” Eric looked up from the screen and smiled.

“Yes. She did it again. Made me feel like crap. I can’t do anything right according to my mother.”

Eric grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, and handed it to his wife.

“I don’t know why I bother to call her.”

Monica kept talking, but her voice faded from Eric’s consciousness. His mind took him back 25 years to a Friday night high school football game late in the fourth quarter. Eric stood on the sideline as he had his entire football career at Reed High School. His team led by four touchdowns and had the ball on the other team’s 27 yard line, first and ten, the result of a fumble recovery.

The head coach, a tall, thin alumnus who still held school records for yards gained and career touchdowns, prowled the sideline, reviewing his charges.

“Third string offense! Get in there!” the coach barked. “Show us what you’ve got.”

Eric ran onto the field with his teammates, relishing the heady exhilaration of being in a game. They huddled-up. The quarterback, a talented sophomore transfer, called the play: a pass to the wide receiver.

They broke the huddle with a unified clap of the hands. Eric trotted to his position on the right side of the line, split out ten yards from the tackle. He crouched into his stance and signaled with an outstretched arm to the line judge to confirm he was onside. The line judge nodded.

Everything around Eric slipped into the background. It felt as if he were alone on the field. Relaxed and confident, he stared straight ahead as he listened to the count.

On the second “Hit!”, Eric shot forward. He sprinted ten yards down the field, planted his left foot, and cut at a 45-degree angle toward the flag in the back corner of the end zone. When the defender committed to the outside, Eric planted his right foot and cut back at a 45-degree angle toward the goalpost.

He looked over his left shoulder and spied the ball, illuminated by the stadium lights, spinning in a perfect spiral, arcing through the night sky toward a rendezvous in the end zone. Eric raced to meet the ball as it fell from the pitch black above him. At the last second, before the inflated pigskin sailed over him, he leapt with arms outstretched above his head and palms facing outward. The ball nestled into his grasp. He clutched it to his chest and landed in full stride in the middle of the end zone. Touchdown!

The referee took the ball from Eric. Shouts and cheers from the stands and his teammates exploded in his ears.

The play had taken seven seconds from the snap of the ball to the referee’s whistle. To Eric, it seemed as if it happened outside of time, the passing of an instant and an eternity all at once. His body acted of its own accord with no conscious thought on his part. During those seven seconds, he knew a serenity and a connectedness he had never experienced before or since.

Whenever Eric relived the catch, he remembered that surreal, out-of-body sensation of watching himself perform. He came to understand it as an act of surrender. The instant he took his position for that fateful play, he let go, and the Universe took over.

Eric became aware of his wife’s puffy, tear-streaked face looking at him from across the table. She sat with her head tilted to one side, clutching a crumpled tissue in her hand.

He always listened without speaking when Monica vented about her mother. It wasn’t his place to comment; what could he say that would make a difference? Maybe he had been wrong. He stood on the sideline of her pain and despair for eighteen years. Maybe it was time to get into the game.

“What do you think, Eric?”

His number had been called. Eric straightened in his chair, took a deep breath, exhaled, and relaxed. Monica’s puzzled expression and the ordinary sounds of the house vanished from his consciousness.

“I love you, and I understand how your mother’s constant criticism frustrates and angers you. But you are letting her do this to you. You equate approval with love and that gives her criticism power.” The words flowed out of Eric as if someone was speaking through him. “Monica, your mother loves you. You don’t need her approval. She loves you. Criticism is her way of remaining relevant as a mother. It’s her way of holding on to her child. Ignore her criticism. She loves you or she wouldn’t bother.”

His speech completed, Eric sat in a state of ecstasy.

Monica rose from her chair as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks and walked to Eric with open arms. She pulled him to her. He felt her body tremble and her warm, moist cheek. She released Eric, stared into his eyes, and then kissed him with a passion he had not known in years.

“I love that you care so much for me,” she cooed and then sniffled. “I’ve wondered if you actually listen to me when I bitch about my mother. You look like your mind is somewhere else. I shouldn’t have doubted. What you said is comforting. I want to believe it. Maybe someday I will. But Eric, darling, when I asked what you thought, I meant what did you think about going out for dinner tonight. That’s what I was talking about.”

“Oh.”