Different Circles

“I told her that me and the rest of the family were here in town,” he said. “All of us, including little Evie.” He took a breath. “She told me that we had been instructed long ago to never come here, to stay in Pocatello and live our own lives.”

“That just warms my heart,” Laura said sourly.

“Yeah,” he said. “And then I told her that the reason we were here was because you and Jake had invited us, that we were visiting you because you were family and because you were pregnant and there was soon going to be another member of the family, another grandchild.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said she knew that you were pregnant, that she had read all about it in the papers, and that the child you are carrying is most certainly not part of her family.”

“Really?” Laura said, not terribly surprised, but hurt all the same.

He nodded. “She said it was Satan’s spawn at best, some nigger’s lovechild at worst.”

Laura’s eyes widened for a moment and then she actually giggled. And then the giggles turned to laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Joey asked, confused.

“That she thinks that having Bigg G be the father is worse than Satan being the father,” Laura said. “That’s fucking hilarious!”

Joey looked at her in astonishment for a moment and then started to understand the humor of the situation. Soon, he was laughing with her.

Meanwhile, out in the backyard, Jake was swimming in the pool with Grace and Chase. He had set up the water volleyball net and the two teens were taking him on, two to one, and losing quite badly thanks to Jake’s familiarity with the sport, his familiarity with swimming, and his keen athleticism that came from his daily runs and the fact that he had spent a good part of his life performing aerobic exercise night after night up on stages.

“You could at least let us win once,” Chase complained after he beat them for the third time, with scores of 11-1, 11-2, and now 11-4.

“Why would I do that?” he asked politely.

“Because it’s the nice thing to do!” she cried. “We’re just kids, and girls, and you’re a friggin’ adult man!”

“But you outnumber me two to one,” he countered. “You should have the advantage.”

“That’s not the point!” Chase said.

“Perhaps not,” Jake agreed. “But I never let anyone win anything. It’s a rule that will carry you far in life.”

“Not even a stupid game of pool volleyball?” Chase asked, indignant.

“Not even that,” he said. “Suppose I had let you win. What impetus would you have to try to improve your skills at the game?”

“I don’t need to improve my skills at this game,” Chase insisted. “I’m not trying to be a professional pool volleyball player. I’ll probably never play this stupid game again until the next time we visit you.”

“That is not the point,” Jake said, using her own protest against her. “The idea is to nourish your competitive instinct and motivate you to learn and improve. That skill does not just apply to pool volleyball, but everything in life. No one is ever doing you any favors by taking it easy on you, by letting you have an easy out, an easy victory, an easy path through the proverbial forest. For instance, look at how you improved in just the three games we played. In the first, you were completely uncoordinated with each other, unable to work as a team to take advantage of your numerical superiority over me. You only scored that one point because of a lucky shot. But on the subsequent games, you started to learn to coordinate, to play as a team to some degree. You started to pick up on the strategy of one of you luring me over to one side while the other hit the ball to the other. It was rudimentary, and I’m not sure you were consciously aware you were even doing it, but that is how you scored one of the points in the second game and three of the four in this last one. I have no doubt that if you were to stay here another two days and we played ten or fifteen more games, you two would be mopping up the pool with me.”

Both girls considered his words carefully. “Do you really think so?” asked Grace.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Want to try again and put the theory to the test?”

They did not want to, pleading fatigue. Instead, they ducked under the net and paddled over to the underwater sitting ledge in the deep end so they could sit down and rest for a bit. Jake paddled over with them, giving them the ledge while he put his back to the edge of the pool and secured himself by spreading his arms wide while he lay on his back, his legs floating out before him.

“It’s such a bum that we have to go back home tomorrow,” Chase pouted.

“All good things must come to an end,” Jake quoted.

“True,” she said. “Pocatello is going to seem so boring after California though.”

“Maybe,” said Grace, “but it will be nice to get back home, back to our own room, our own things, the normal routine.”

“The normal routine bites,” Chase said. “I wish I could stay here forever.”

“This would quickly take on the routine of normal life and you’d be bored with it as well,” Jake suggested.