December 21, 2013
The final buzzer resonated in Rupp Arena with the scoreboard at 102-76 and the Kentucky crowd on its feet, but the locker room that followed did not have the explosive energy of difficult victories. It was something calmer, more satisfied, the quietness of a team that had done its job well and knew it.
Aaron entered the locker room, left his bag in his locker, and took off his jersey carefully. The bruise from the game against Providence had gone from dark purple to a greenish-yellow in recent days, which according to Trainer Simmons was a sign that it was healing well. It still hurt if someone pressed it directly, but it no longer hurt to breathe.
Julius entered behind him with a towel over his shoulders and that energy of his that did not shut off even after forty minutes of a game.
"102," he said, as if the number by itself were enough comment.
"Belmont is not Michigan State," Andrew responded from the other side of the locker room.
"Nobody said it was. But 102 is 102."
Aaron Harrison, from his locker, raised his eyes for a moment and went back to what he was doing without adding anything. The twins had that dynamic: Andrew talked, Aaron processed.
The game had been what was expected from a rival like Belmont: good energy, some uncomfortable three-pointer in the first stretch of the first half, and then Kentucky taking control gradually until the score stopped being an interesting conversation. Aaron had finished with 26 points, 11 rebounds, and 4 assists in 28 minutes just before Calipari benched him to rest his legs with the game already decided.
Julius had finished it off with 29. And James with 16 points from the perimeter. It was the type of game that did not generate big headlines but confirmed that the machinery kept working.
Coach Calipari entered five minutes later, when most were already changing. He gave a quick review of the game, pointed out two or three things about the defense that he wanted to see better in the next game, and then changed his tone.
"You have until the twenty-seventh free. I want to see you here on the twenty-eighth at nine in the morning fresh and ready. What you do with those days is your business, but come back in condition."
The group responded with that specific energy that the word free generates in a college locker room.
"Plans?" Julius asked Aaron while tying his laces.
"I'm going to New York tomorrow."
"Family?"
"Family."
"I'm going to Texas," Julius said. "My mother already has the list of meals she expects me to gain weight on in five days."
Andrew along with Aaron Harrison smiled from their corner.
"Us too," he said, referring to his brother with a nod of his head. "Texas. My grandmother has been asking for three weeks when we arrive."
"And you?" Julius asked James.
"Michigan. Home."
The locker room kept emptying in the usual order. Aaron was among the last to leave, as always, without a rush but without staying behind either.
December 22, 2013
The flight from Lexington to New York took an hour and forty minutes. Aaron slept the first forty, read something on his phone the next twenty, and spent the rest of the journey looking through the window at how the Kentucky landscape gave way to clouds and then to the uniform gray of the northeastern sky in December.
On the flight he thought about the season. 12 games, 12 victories, each one with its own rhythm and its own difficulty. The one against Michigan State was still the most important in terms of what it had signified. The one against Providence the most personal. Belmont the most comfortable.
He also thought about Drew, with whom he had been talking on the phone for several days. About Hannah, with whom he spoke before boarding the plane, and about everything that remained of the season after January.
Then he fell back asleep until the flight attendant announced the descent.
He landed at JFK at 2:15 in the afternoon.
Hector was waiting for him in the arrivals area with his hands in his coat pockets and with a calm expression that had not changed since Aaron was twelve years old and Hector was the guy from the neighborhood who appeared on the courts to bet on his streetball games.
"Welcome back," he said when Aaron came out with the bag on his shoulder.
"Thanks for coming."
"Your mother asked me not to let you take the subway loaded down."
"I would have taken the subway anyway."
"I know. That's why I came."
Hector's car was the same 2009 Jeep Patriot that Aaron remembered from forever: the tree air freshener on the rearview mirror, the crack in the upholstery of the copilot's seat that someone had tried to repair with duct tape at some point without too much success, and the radio that caught FM stations poorly but AM stations perfectly, which Hector considered an advantage because the AM ones did not interrupt conversations with music.
They left the airport and took the highway toward Queens. The traffic was dense but flowing, with that specific rhythm of the city before Christmas that does not come to a complete stop.
"How is the season going?" Hector asked.
"Good."
"I saw it on TV. Your last game against Belmont."
"It was a good game."
"26 points with 11 rebounds is not just a good game."
"Don't exaggerate."
"I'm not exaggerating."
Aaron smiled without responding. Hector looked at him for a second out of the corner of his eye and returned to the road.
Aaron looked through the window while Hector spoke, watching the streets of New York pass by with that specific sensation of someone who returns to a place that he has spent months seeing only in his memory. The supermarket on the corner of Jamaica Avenue. The dry cleaner's with the broken sign that had been broken since Aaron was ten years old. The park where he had spent more hours than in any gym during the first years.
Everything remained the same. He was the one who had changed places. Not in a dramatic or irreversible way. He was still from here. But there was something about returning after months that made you see things with slightly different eyes, like when you see a photo of yourself from some time ago and recognize the place but no longer completely recognize the person.
They spoke about the neighborhood, about a couple of things that had happened since Aaron left for Kentucky in September, about how the heating in Melissa's apartment had given trouble in November and that the landlord had taken two weeks to send someone to her. Aaron listened without interrupting, processing the familiar texture of that conversation, the type of daily details that from where he was arrived filtered and reduced to two lines in a phone call.
They parked in front of the building at three-thirty.
Three floors up to Melissa's apartment. The elevator had been broken since October according to what his mother had told him over the phone, so he went up the stairs with the bag on his shoulder and the sound of the television from the second floor filtering out from under the door.
Aaron heard the music from the hallway.
Christmas carols. The same Christmas album that Melissa put on every year since Aaron had memory, with that slightly deficient audio quality that the CD player he had never replaced possessed.
He opened the door with his key.
The apartment smelled of cinnamon and artificial pine. The living room was partially reorganized to make room for the Christmas tree that occupied the corner next to the window, still half-decorated, with boxes of ornaments open on the floor and a string of lights coiled over the sofa waiting for its turn.
Melissa was in a chair with a box of baubles in her lap. Paola was standing next to the tree with an ornament in her hand, looking where to put it. Mia was sitting on the rug surrounded by wrapping paper and a red ribbon that she had decided was more interesting than anything else in the room.
The three of them looked at him when he entered.
"Honey," Melissa said, standing up.
The embrace was long. Aaron let himself be embraced without the instinct to shorten it that he sometimes had when he was tired.
"You are skinny," Melissa said when they separated, with the same diagnosis as always.
"As always, Ma."
"As always skinny, yes."
Paola embraced him next with the usual effusiveness and then looked him up and down with that inventory look that she shared with Melissa.
"The bruise," she said.
"It's almost healed."
"Almost healed is not completely healed."
"Paola."
"I'm just saying."
Mia looked at him from the rug with wide eyes, the red ribbon in her hand, without moving. Aaron crouched down to her height.
"Hi, princess."
Mia extended the ribbon toward him with the solemnity of someone who makes an important gift. Aaron accepted it with the same seriousness.
"Thank you."
Mia responded with something that was not exactly a word but clearly meant you're welcome, and went back to exploring the wrapping paper around her.
Aaron took off his coat, hung it behind the door, and rolled up his sleeves.
"Where do we start?"
The next hour and a half was spent decorating the tree with that apparent order that Christmas has when each person in the family has an opinion on where each thing goes. Paola had a system based on the distribution of colors that Melissa respected in theory and subverted in practice every time Paola turned around. Aaron put the ornaments where there was free space without consulting anyone. Hector placed the lights with the methodical precision of someone who had done it enough years to know that if they do not get well distributed from the beginning, there is no way to fix it later. At one given moment, the four of them were arguing simultaneously over whether the red baubles should go distributed all over the tree or grouped at the bottom, a conversation that had no possible solution and that was resolved the way those things are resolved in a family: nobody yielded but everyone kept decorating.
Mia participated in her own way: crawling between the boxes, nibbling on a foam ornament that nobody saw in time, and applauding at apparently random moments that nevertheless always coincided with something that the closest adult had done well.
When the tree was almost complete, only the star was missing. They put it on every year in the same way: Melissa took out the box, opened it with the same care, and whoever was closest placed it on the tip while the others watched. When Aaron was small, he did it standing on a chair because he still didn't reach. Then came the year when he reached without a chair. Since then, it was a routine without history.
This time it was different.
It was the same one as always: a gold plastic star with a bulb in the center that blinked slightly if you gave it a tap at the right angle. It had been in the family since before Aaron was born.
Melissa took it out of its box with the care with which she took out that same thing every year.
Aaron looked at Mia.
"Shall we put it on together?" he told her.
Mia did not understand the question but extended her arms toward him in that way of hers that meant she wanted to be picked up, which was sufficient answer.
Aaron picked her up, raised her to his height and then a bit more, with Mia clinging to his neck with both hands while she looked at the tree from that new perspective. Melissa passed him the star.
Mia grabbed it with both hands.
"Up there," Aaron told her, pointing to the tip.
Mia looked at the tip of the tree. She looked at the star. She looked back at the tip. Then, with a concentration that would have been comical in any other situation, she extended her arms and placed the star.
It did not end up perfectly centered. It ended up slightly tilted to the left, with the bulb pointing at an angle that was not exactly the one Paola would have chosen and that Melissa looked at for two seconds before deciding in silence that it was fine like that.
Nobody adjusted it.
Paola took out her phone and took a photo before anyone said anything.
Melissa looked at the tree with her arms crossed and an expression that Aaron knew: it was not the type of happiness that is expressed out loud.
It was at that moment when Aaron's phone vibró in his pocket.
Aaron unlocked the phone.
Drew: man when do you arrive
Drew: just landed at JFK
Drew: when it works for you let's meet and you tell me everything that is happening because I swear to you following you from here is crazy
Aaron smiled reading the messages.
Drew: seriously man I've been watching your games with Sam for months even she already knows more about college basketball than I do
He wrote the response while Mia tried to climb his leg from the floor.
Aaron: I arrived a little while ago. This week whenever you want.
Drew: tomorrow?
Aaron: tomorrow.
He stowed the phone and lifted Mia from the floor before she got any higher.
"You and I tomorrow in the park," he told her, with no particular reason to say it to her. It was more for himself, like when one says something out loud to confirm that he is going to do it.
Mia looked at him with that serious expression of hers that appeared when she processed something she didn't completely understand, and then patted his cheek with her open hand.
Aaron interpreted it as a yes. With Mia still in his arms, he turned toward the tree and looked at it for a moment from that height, with the star tilted on the tip and Hector's lights blinking irregularly on the left side.
It was perfect.
Authors thought
What did you think of today's chapter? Give me your opinions and thoughts.
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