Page 47 of ClickBack

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to stand up and draw on the floor.”

Mom makes a sound that might be a laugh if she were less worried. Beside her, my father offers an opinion about the defense. It is a reasonable one. I resent being relieved by that.

The game settles into work. Cole gets a rebound between two men and finds Ronan. Nico hits a shot that makes Aunt Pat forget her feet hurt. Von gets downhill and makes the simple pass. The next time he has space, he takes it. I clap before the ball goes through.

By halftime, San Antonio is down six. Von has eight points, and he looks toward us on his way to the tunnel. I lift my hand. He keeps moving.

At nineteen, after his team went out of the college tournament, he called me from a hotel bathroom so nobody would hear him. He talked about the shot he missed at the end, then the one he should have taken earlier, then a pass in the first half nobody else was going to remember by morning. I stayed on the line until he had worked his way back through most of the game. The next day he wanted to know where he could get into a gym.

I recognized the impulse. That didn’t make me like hearing it from him.

My phone vibrates.

Vonnie: Stop looking worried.

I glance toward the tunnel and laugh.

Me: Stop looking at me. You have a game.

Vonnie: Mom okay?

She is looking at her phone without scrolling. I lean close enough to ask whether she wants anything.

“Six points,” she says.

Me: She wants six points. I told her you’d see what you could do.

He sends back a laughing face, then nothing else. I put the phone away and let him go to work.

The second half comes back a possession at a time. A stop. A loose ball they might not have reached in the first quarter. Von catches on the wing and moves it before the help arrives. When it comes back, he is ready. The shot drops, and Mom gets to her feet so quickly I have to catch her phone sliding out of her lap.

She doesn’t sit again for the next several minutes.

By the fourth quarter, I have stopped pretending I can watch this calmly. My father and I argue the same foul at the same time, then look at each other. He smiles. I look back at the court, but I am smiling, too, a little. I don’t know what to do with it beyond let it happen.

With forty seconds left, San Antonio is up one. Von has the ball. The defense crowds him, and I feel Mom take hold of my wrist. Cole moves into position. Von waits, takes the dribble, and puts the ball where Cole is going to be.

The dunk brings the whole row up.

I shout something I cannot hear over everybody else. Mom is jumping beside me. Graves has abandoned every professional reason for looking unbothered and is clapping over his head.

Seattle misses. San Antonio draws the foul, makes both free throws, and uses up the remaining seconds. I watch the clock until there is nothing left on it.

Then my mother begins to cry.

I put my arms around her. She holds on to my shirt, saying my brother’s name against my chest, and I remember her in much smaller gyms, standing until somebody told her the people behind her couldn’t see. All the drives, the seats near an exit because she had somewhere else to be afterward, the nights she had to believe one of us when we said we didn’t need her there. I want her to have every second of this without making room for anything else.

On the court, Von stands with both hands on his head. A teammate grabs him, another jumps onto his back, and his face changes from disbelief to laughter so quickly I feel it in my own.

He finds us. I lift a fist. He points toward Mom, and she pulls away from me to blow him a kiss.

Two championships. My baby brother has two.

I have wanted this for myself since before he could shoot at a regulation basket. The wanting is still there. So is the fact that I would not trade a second of what I’m seeing for the chance to make it mine. I stand beside my mother with confetti catching on my shoulders and let myself be proud without checking what that leaves me.

My father takes out his phone to photograph her. For once, she doesn’t notice somebody has a camera. He lowers it after the picture and shows me the screen.