Page 148 of On Merit Alone
He might as well have given me a superpower with that kiss. Poor Isaac didn’t stand much of a chance to begin with. Add on the fact that Ira was enjoying this just as much as I was and let’s just say I could have been playing little Olivia out there and there wouldn’t be much difference.
In fact, after Isaac shook my hand with his siblings snickering in the background and his wife rubbing his shoulders comfortingly, we did play with little Olivia. Me carrying her on my back as we took on our opponent, a faking Ira. We beat him and after, he spent the next who knows how long directing her on how to shoot her small ball into her small plastic hoop with very real technique and drills.
The sight fostered visions of a future Ira surrounded by a slew of kids lining up to run drills with him. Him with a whistle, shouting directions down the court with a smile on his face. And not for the first time I realized what he meant by maybe wanting to do something else. We still hadn’t had time to talk about his future all that much, or maybe he was still stalling. But, watching Ira now, I don’t know how I’d ever missed this.
He was a great teacher, a great mentor, and a natural coach. That’s basically how I met him after all. I still didn’t think he should be done quite yet. He was too much of a talent for that. But I didn’t doubt that once he was done, he would have an immediate place in someone’s corner, supporting them and pushing them further, much like he’d done for me. And not just with my game, but as a person too.
As the day went on, we ate, played, laughed, and got to know each other. Iris snuck me up to Ira’s childhood room, and his mother pointed me in the direction of the family photo jackpot in their basement den. I was peppered with shop questions by his dad and his brother-in-law, Neil. And his older brother, who was actually just a sweetheart with an annoying younger brother, spent the whole time sending apologetic looks my way as he snuck them from across every room.
When the sun set, the guys pulled out the “fireworks,” which were really just a series of sparklers and popping crackers that sparked along the ground of the street in glimmering ember.
Each sibling had their thing. Iris set off this thing that resembled a flower in the way it rose up from the ground and curled over in an arch of light. Isaac chose a spraying shooter that started strong and fizzled out just as fast as it began. Ira chose a slow rolling smoke bomb that emitted multiple colors but none at the same time, which meant it took a while, but by the time it reached the sky it painted it in a pretty sherbet haze.
All of their choices mirrored their personalities. It made me wonder how far these traditions went back and how long they would go forward. These people had once been smaller people together. They were still doing the same things they used to, yet they were undoubtedly changed in ways I would never know without knowing the first versions of them.
It made me sad to realize I would never know the evolution of seeing someone from the first version of themselves to their last. I know that in the end, the way my life worked out probably would have just torn a sibling away from me anyway. But being around Ira and his family sort of made me wish that, at the very least, God could have left me a little brother or sister to love the way the Kings loved each other.
Now we were standing at the edge of the driveway holding long sticks of sparklers out to light. Ira was doing the lighting and apparently we all had to hold the ends of our sticks together in the middle so they could light at precisely the same time (or so they said).
I trusted them much less after my simple question of‘But won’t that make them spark too much and catch fire?’was met with nothing but blank stares. They obviously had never thought about that. But I might have worried him a little by the way Ira warned me to, “Watch your fingers, Mer. Don’t hold it so close or you’ll get burned.”
I was less concerned about my fingers and more about my hair. So, subtly I tucked it behind me as the Kings lit up the sparklers and soon the spray of erratic fire on a stick captured the remains of our attention.
We all marveled at it for a second, giggling when the initial light was so large, everyone cast nervous glances at each other. I was just smiling at them though. Watching the siblings interact—just being around them—had been great. And even though at times I felt that envious pull nagging at my gut, I also had this warm feeling that I couldn’t equate to anything but happiness. I recognized it as such from being around Ira, but now it was from being around all of them.
Funny how the Kings found a way to infiltrate my defenses in a single day.
Breaking away from each other, the other two Kings went to find their families while Ira and I ventured off to the edge of the driveway together. He held both our sparklers as I sat on the curb and handed them off to me as he did the same. Once we were settled, each holding our crackling fire again, Ira let a long breath seep out of him.
Gray-brown cast a glance my way. “You alright?”
When he spoke, his voice was soft in a worn sort of way. Like he’d been laughing and talking all day. It made me think this would be how it sounded after hosting a long party or even after his own wedding. And that made me pause, because why was I thinking of that right now?
“Fine, why?”
His eyes flickered around me before landing on my face. “You’ve been quiet for the last few hours.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I’m mostly quiet.”
“Yeah, but I just wanted to check on you, I guess,” he said. Moving his attention to the balls of light in front of us, he nodded. “Ever played around with this stuff before?”
I shook my head.
“Not even with Grandma and Grandpa J?” he asked.
A corner of my mouth lifted at the way he talked about my grandparents like he’d met them before. The way he adopted saying bye to them at my front door just like I had. The way he was always snaking his way more and more into my heart without even noticing.
“My grandparents were old, Ira. They already had to raise a second child unexpectedly after becoming seniors. We did things, but they were tame things,” I said. “So no fireworks in the street for me.”
“What did you do on the Fourth of July?” he asked instead.
I smiled again. “I grew up in Virginia, remember? So, we'd drive out to the moorland beach and have a picnic. Grandpa would say he wasn’t going to, but every year he’d stop on the side of the road at these shacks to buy shrimp… from a roadside cooler.”
“The same guy every time?” he asked, a lilt of disbelief in his voice.
My smile broke free and I laughed. “Nope. He trusted any shrimp stand that close to the swamps. He always said that they‘probably picked them up this morning’and would get a hoard of them even though he knew Gram and me wouldn’t eat them. We’d already seen him get sick once and it was enough for us.”
His chest bounced as he laughed, “Grandpa J was a guy I could get behind.”
