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But he’d felt the same anxiety that day when Coach Joe Miller had pulled into his driveway and said, “Here it is.” Griff had looked at the house with the welcome mat on the threshold and the blooming ivy crawling up a trellis and felt as out of place as a turd in a punch bowl. He didn’t belong here. But he’d die before he let on that he felt inferior.
Sullenly, feet shuffling, he’d followed Coach up the steps and through the front door. “Ellie?”
“In here.”
Griff had seen Coach’s wife at the games. From a distance, she looked okay, he guessed. He’d never really given her a second thought.
She turned to them as they entered the kitchen. Her hair was in curlers, and she had bright yellow rubber gloves on her hands.
“This is Griff,” Coach said.
She smiled at him. “Hi, Griff. I’m Ellie.”
He kept his like-I-give-a-shit frown in place so they wouldn’t guess that his heart was beating harder than it did before a fourth-and-goal play, and in the hope they wouldn’t hear his stomach growling. He’d glanced through the open door of the pantry. Besides at the supermarket, he’d never seen so much food stored in one place. On the counter was a pie with a golden crust, oozing cherry juice. The aroma was making Griff’s mouth water.
Coach said, “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”
If this news came as a shock to Ellie Miller, she hid it. “Oh, well, good,” she said. “Welcome. Now, can you give me a hand, Griff? That pie leaked sticky stuff all over this oven. I’m trying to get the racks out so I can clean it while it’s still warm, but my gloves will melt if I grab hold. Pot holders are there in the top drawer.”
Not knowing what else to do, he’d got the pot holders and removed the hot metal racks from the oven. With no more ceremony than that, he moved into the Millers’ house and into their lives.
He always suspected that Coach and Ellie had discussed the possibility of this before Coach came to get him that morning. Because he was shown into a room set up for an adolescent boy. It had a double bed covered by a red-and-white blanket with the image of the high school team mascot on it—a fiercely scowling Viking. Other sports pennants were tacked to the wall.
“That’s the closet. Let me know if you need more hangers.” Ellie glanced down at the small duffel bag Griff had brought with him but didn’t comment on how little it would hold, how little he had. “You can keep your folding clothes in this chest. If anything needs washing, the hamper is in the bathroom. Oh, goodness, I haven’t shown you the bathroom.” It was so clean, he was afraid to pee in the toilet.
They all went to Sears that afternoon so Ellie could “pick up some things,” but what they came home with was new clothes for him. He’d never had food like Ellie cooked, including the pie they ate for dessert that night. He’d never been inside a house that smelled good, that had books on shelves and pictures on the walls.
But he learned from the oven-cleaning experience that such luxuries didn’t come free. He was expected to do chores. Never having been required to do a damn thing in his life except stay out of the way when a man was in the bedroom with his mother, Griff found that this aspect of family life took some getting used to.
Ellie’s rebukes were gentle and usually included some reproach to herself. “You forgot to make your bed this morning, Griff. Or did I forget to tell you that sheets aren’t changed till Friday?” “You won’t be able to wear that favorite T-shirt tomorrow, because I didn’t find it under the bed until after I’d done the laundry. Be sure it gets in the hamper next time.”
Coach was less subtle. “Have you finished your history paper?”
“No.”
“Isn’t it due tomorrow?”
He knew it was. One of his assistant coaches was Griff’s history teacher. “I’ll get it done.”
Coach turned off the TV. “Right. You will. Now.”
Whenever he was disciplined, Griff muttered rebellious plans to leave. He was sick and tired of their harping. Do this, do that, clean up this, carry out that. Only dorks went to church on Sundays, but had he been given a choice? No. It was just expected. And what did he care if the car was washed and the lawn mowed?
But he never followed through on any of his threats to leave. Besides, his muttering was largely ignored. Ellie chatted over it, and Coach either turned his back or left the room.
Coach didn’t go soft on him at practice, either. If anything, he was tougher on him, as though to assure the other players that Griff was nothing special to him just because he was lodged under his roof.
One afternoon, still mad over being denied access to the TV the night before, Griff sloughed off during drills. He didn’t connect a single pass to the receivers. Running backs had to come take the ball from him because he didn’t scramble to get it to them. He fumbled a snap.
Coach watched him; despite his scowl, he didn’t blow the whistle on him, give him a pointer, or chew him out.
But at the end of practice, when everyone else headed for the locker room, Coach ordered him to stay where he was. He placed a blocking dummy thirty yards away and tossed Griff the football. “Hit it.”
Griff threw the ball with no more effort than he had put into the rest of the practice and missed the dummy. Coach glared at him. “Try again,” he said, tossing him another football. Again he missed.
Coach handed him a third football. “Hit the damn thing.”
“I’m having an off day. What’s the big deal?”
