“Hey, looks like God’s a Bears fan, too, huh?” I said.
His face crinkled, as if he were searching for something interesting in the plowed fields. He locked his eyes on mine in the mirror. He waited.
“The sun, it’s making everything orange. You know, the Bears’ color. Look around.”
He looked back out the window, supremely unamused. Not that I could blame him. It’s a long way from Green Bay to Chicago, even longer when the Bears smack the Packers around. I knew it was going to be bad when Gary Berry was laid out for five minutes on the opening kickoff. And it was. Favre’s first pass picked off. Marcus Robinson looking like Randy Moss. Cade McNown — Cade McNown! — looking like Dan Fouts. That boneheaded onside kick. We had listened to the blow-by-humiliating-blow recap on AM 620 until I heard Coach Sherman credit his team for almost coming back.
“You don’t brag about almost coming back against the Bears! At home!” I turned off the radio. “Sorry.” Andy hadn’t said anything.
Less than fifteen hours from walking into the office. I could already see the wannabe-hip systems guy grinning at me through his wispy Fu Manchu. “Too bad about your Packers,” he’d say, to which I would respond: “Yeah, I guess it wasn’t our day.”
All this from a putz who couldn’t name the Bears’ starting O-line.
Andy wouldn’t get off as easy, I knew. He was only seven when we moved to Wilmette from Milwaukee five years ago, but he still bled green and gold, as they say on AM 620. That was my one accomplishment as a parent, I told my neighbor John Doolin. He laughed, but I hadn’t been completely joking. I worked at it. I bought a dish so we could watch games together. I’d tape the game if I got stuck with clients in the corporate box at Soldier, and we’d watch it later. I’d call him from my hotel room when I was on the road and he’d give me the highlights. Andy’d put up with a lot of crap on the playground over the years for staying faithful. Last year had been the worst, after Walter Payton’s ghost blocked the Packers’ last-second field goal attempt and delivered the Bears a victory at Lambeau.
Andy still confided in me back then, so he told me what the kids said. “Cheesehead” became “Cheesedick.” “Packers suck and Favre swallows.” “Favre’s a bigger pussy than you are.”
That one hurt Andy the most. And they knew it. Skinny and small as he was, Andy wanted to play football. He didn’t because we wouldn’t let him. It killed him. “I want to!” His eyes would be red and wet. I always gave the same answer: “You’re not big enough.” “You played and you were shorter than I am.” Swallowing my first response, “This one ain’t my call,” I’d point out my glorious career as a junior high receiver ended after racking up zero receptions and two concussions in two games. I thought Andy had good speed for a corner, but it wasn’t a fight worth having.
“Well, we’re back in Illinois now. Better get ready for all the shit we’re going to have to take, huh?”
I looked in the mirror again. He wasn’t going to humor me, even with my just-us-boys vulgarity. And I couldn’t blame him. The shit he had to take went beyond abuse about the Packers. He’d get it for not having a credit card. Or for not having a cell phone. Or for having sneakers that cost only two figures. All these appurtenances apparently were standard issue for sixth graders at his school. He’d go to Natalie on this stuff and she’d come to me. I wouldn’t have it. Natalie would point out we weren’t in Milwaukee anymore. I’d walk into another room. She’d follow me. This apparently was a fight worth having.
I budged once. I told Natalie he could have cell phone when he was in seventh grade. That was a mistake. “Why wait if you already agree in principle?” And she wondered why I left the room when we argued.
The fields gave way to trees. I looked at the clock and gauged how far along the DVD must be.
“Fourth down?”
He looked at the TV. He’d begged us to get the TV with DVD-player option when we bought our paramilitary suburban vehicle. And after that he’d begged me to transfer my Packers videotape library to DVD so he could watch games on road trips. An hour outside Lambeau I put this one on as a surprise. I thought it’d be just the thing to get him out of his funk.
“Yeah.”
November 5, 1989. Packers vs. Bears at Lambeau. The Packers were down by six at the Bears’ 14 with forty-one seconds left. The Packers lined up in a four-receiver set and Majkowski went under the center. I was watching the game in a bar with friends from work. No one was breathing.
“Man, that was a good game.”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t as good as the one Grandpa took us to.”
That would have been December 18, 1994. The last game at Milwaukee County Stadium. No, not many games were better than that one. Not that the Packers played well; they should have put the Falcons away early. Despite all this “greatest fans in the world” hype about Packer backers, boos came lustily from the stands. And I could feel the chilly fear around me when the Packers lined up at their 33 with 1:58 left and them down 17–14. But people went nuts when Favre hit a stumbling Chmura for a twenty-five-yard pass; the crescendo of foot stomping and screams hit a peak as the Packers called for a time out at the Falcons 9 with twenty-one seconds left. And when Favre dove into the end zone with fourteen seconds left, it was as if the Holy Spirit had come down. The people around me started shrieking in tongues and weeping and kissing each other. They would never be able to watch the Packers play in cramped, rickety County again, but it was all right. They were close to the promised land.
No doubt Andy remembered the County finale for Grandpa. Grandpa explained the plays to him. Grandpa explained the penalties to him. Grandpa explained that he’d probably never see a better quarterback than the guy wearing No. 4, so watch him close. When Andy needed to go to the bathroom, he asked Grandpa. He knew Grandpa would cut a wider path through the howling crowd than his scrawny dad. Grandpa still had the body of the linebacker who’d played for Washington High School during the ‘50s and of the Harnischfeger worker who had shaped giant mining shovels with his hubcap-sized hands. Andy was too young to notice how Grandpa’s walk was a shuffle instead of a stride. He couldn’t see the way Grandpa squeezed his eyes shut every few steps. And he probably didn’t realize Grandpa’s hand on his shoulder wasn’t guiding him; it was resting on him.
I’d hoped seeing the Packers beat the Bears would make Andy happy. I’d hoped spending all this time together would make him talk to me. I’d hoped, and I realized this as I saw the sign for the toll booth, to hammer life into the shape of an uplifting movie. Instead, Brett Favre screws up and Mike Sherman talks about making a good comeback.
I wanted him to see the Packers win because I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make him happy. That would make him realize he wasn’t a wimp. Because my own dad had been able to do that. The morning after my second concussion — blindsided by a freckled safety with the ball bobbling in my palms — I woke up to see dad at the end of my bed. He’d just pulled a shift and was still wearing his coveralls. I could smell his armpits and the Pabst he’d knocked back after work. “Hi,” I said.
“You’re not big enough,” he said. “But you are tough, and you know, you can be tough in other ways. The way you study — so hard? — that’s being tough. Not everyone can do that. Reading long books, that’s tough too. That’s stuff I can’t do that you can do. And if you do that, you’re going to be able to do some things I can’t.”
So I hit the books harder than Ray Nitschke. Dad’d find me sitting at the kitchen table at 2:00 in the morning and pat my head. When he saw my report cards he’d hit me so hard on the shoulder I’d bruise; we’d smile at each other while I tried to rub away the pain and not squirt a tear. I wanted to be tough. I kept at it through high school and as I pursued my business degree at Marquette University. That’s where I met Natalie, who got me with the blond patch in her dark-brown hair and her ability to talk for hours about something called “branding.” She needed less sleep than I did. A consulting business hired me after graduation and she went to work for a cheese company. Not long after that we went for our MBAs at Kellogg. She went to one of the world’s biggest packaged goods companies, I went to a well-known consulting firm with offices in every major city around the globe. She now spent her every waking hour trying to give personalities to frozen foods; I was the reason my boss issued a no-poaching order to the partners. Nat was looking on the Web for homes in Winnetka.