Page 112 of On Merit Alone
I just nodded, happy to hear that. I decided not to bother her too much about the appointment, just in case she was mad at me for making it for her. But the whole time we journeyed to the car, even as we strapped the kids in, I felt her eyes on me.
I didn’t have time to ask her about the looks she was sending me. Not with Liv on the loose, shaking me down for the ice cream I promised her and begging me to take her somewhere fun. When I asked them where they wanted to go, Liv had said the fair.
I did not want to go to the fair—not with two kids and bigcrowds who would most definitely notice who I was. Merit immediately understood and supplied that she knew a place that was sort of like the fair but different. I was intrigued, since Merit knew exactly two places: her apartment and the arena. Liv was an easy sell once she learned that they had ice cream.
And that’s exactly how we ended up at Clyde’s Circus Funhouse at one in the afternoon on Sunday. I’m pretty sure the fair would have been better, but one look at the excited faces of both Merit and the four-year-old dragging her toward the life-sized clown mouth that was the entrance to this monstrosity and I couldn’t say no.
Inside, Maddox and I hung back. Watching curiously as the two of them zipped around the place. Playing games, climbing all the obstacles, even trying out the acrobatics ropes (and giving me a heart attack in the process). I swear we were in there so long the baby had an entire bottle, took a nap with his face smashed against my chest in the wearable baby carrier, and woke up again before the girls were done.
We’d finally agreed that this was their last stop, the mirror maze, and I followed behind cautiously as the girls entered hand in hand. Merit let Liv guide her, tugging her the whole way through. Me and Maddox trailed close behind as I held onto his head and made sure not to bump the baby into any unsuspecting mirrors.
I got little laughs out of them continuing to meet dead ends. I reminded Liv to be careful whenever she moved too fast so she wouldn’t hit the mirrors too hard and got distracted more than a few times by the huge round eyes Maddox got whenever he recognized himself in the mirrors. We were all cool.
That's why I was taken so off guard when Liv suddenly screamed that she knew the way out. Instead of walking like she’d done theentire time, she started sprinting toward what she thought was the exit.
Merit at least had the sense toknownot to run in the maze, but her fault came when trying to save Liv from her bad choices. Shewent after the little girl in a cautious jog so she could scoop her up before anything disastrous happened. I called out to them both to tell them to stop running. But it was all too late. Just before Merit got a hold of my niece, they both smacked clean into another mirror, and simultaneously crumpled to the floor.
And I got the whole thing on video.
Iris and I both chuckled deviously as we watched it over again standing at the edge of the living room and I could swear there were tears in her eyes as she rewound it and played it again.
“Ira!” my sister whispered as she cracked up. “You took avideo?”
I wiped my own eyes. “I was documenting the experience. It’s not my fault they decided to run straight into the mirror.”
“Hard,” Iris added.
“Sohard. I couldn’t believe the size of the bumps on their heads.” I laughed and we both dissolved into more evil snickers that the two victims would never know about.
After a while Iris took a long breath that she let out in a sigh, settling. I could see how her eyes tracked over the scene in front of us, lingering on the way Merit had fallen asleep rocking her baby.
Whispering, she said, “I like her, Ira.”
I slipped my hands into my pockets, my shoulders moving up and down in a slow shrug. “I like her too.”
“You more than like her,” she scoffed. “I’ve never seen you like this before. She’s got your number.”
Another shrug is all I gave her.
She looked at me again. “Please tell me why she doesn’t want you to retire. I like her, but I don’t like that she hurt you. I want to understand.”
I sighed, looking at the girl on the couch rather than at my sister.
“She didn’t hurt me. I mean at first she did, when I was falling into feelings with her and she up and punched out my heart by blowing up at me. But that was before I knew her. Now I understandthat she reacted that way because she was feeling something for me too,” I said.
“Ira,” she scolded. I was speaking a language she didn't understand. With no context it still looked pretty bad from the outside.
I sighed again, my heart squeezing as I looked at my sister and swallowed. I absolutely hated repeating this. I hated that this was a reality that anyone had to face, especially this person who had appeared in my life out of nowhere and made it a kind of better I didn’t know I needed. She hadn’t done anything grand. She simply existed in a way that was perfect for me. One that had become a necessity for me.
I wanted to exist in ways that made her happy too. I hoped to God with every new second that I spent with her, I did.
“I met her earlier this year at the gym. Late at night. She was shooting there alone after a game and I talked to her. After that, I only saw her here and there on the court. We played a little and that was it. Even then I don’t know why I liked her so much, I just… did. I wanted to see her more and I tried, but with her it was always basketball, all the time,” I said. “After we got closer, I told her I might want to move on and she acted like I slapped her, Iris. She acted like I told her I hated her or something. I thought that was it, I mean, I wasn’t going to put up with that, but…”
“But?”
“Come to find out, she doesn’t have any family. Shehasn’thad any family—anyone—since she was fourteen years old. But you know what she has had?”
“Basketball,” she said, connecting the dots as she spoke. Her eyes flying to Merit as she slept on the couch.
