Read Online Home Leave: A Novel by Brittani Sonnenberg - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Brittani Sonnenberg
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the hotel room door; to Chris’s pounding heart, greeting a conference room full of foreign customers the next day, hoping the words come out right.
What he likes best of all, though he would never admit this, is exiting the airport’s baggage claim in a foreign city and seeing his name on a handwritten sign—typically black marker, all caps—held high by the chauffeur. A curt nod from Chris, and the driver assumes his heavy luggage, leads him to lush leather seats. Chris relaxes, savoring the city humming silently by, the feeling of easy power, even if it leaks away as soon as he exits the car. That first glimpse of his own name seems to confirm everything, the same way seeing his mother’s handwriting on his T-shirt tags at 4-H camp, in her cramped cursive, gave Chris a safe assurance of return. Those signs the drivers hold now remind him he is heading somewhere big, somewhere inevitable.
There is a certain kind of luck that Chris has learned, over the years, to hone. An instinct in his gut, the kind you can’t overthink, because it might dissolve. Chris played basketball from middle school all the way up through college, and that’s where he first learned about the luck and how to milk it. When you walk onto a court with that light certainty in your insides, your hands shaky with eagerness to palm the leather, the one thing you cannot, you must not, do is meet the eyes of this luck. The trick is not to question it and not to believe too strongly in it. It’s like a shy dog or a pretty girl: let them know you’re interested, and you can forget it. Instead, focus on grabbing rebounds and making sharp passes, get back quick on defense, and soon enough the luck will wind its way into your jump shot. Then you hold your follow-through, hear the swish, feel how scoring makes your calves go weightless. Luck paid Chris’s tuition at the University of Georgia, gave him an engineering degree and a bad knee.
Chris realizes he’s had a lot of luck so far. Getting out of Chariton, Indiana, for one. Not waking up at four a.m. every day like his father, not breaking his back trying to coax fertility out of the stubborn, cold ground, or rain out of sullen skies. Meeting Elise—stroke of luck number two—on the night of November 17, 1977, at a party after a basketball game. Elise was primly sipping 7UP, while everyone around her did keg stands and took generous bong hits. Chris, still elated from the night’s victory against their rivals, Georgia Tech, floating on a three-beer buzz, had sauntered up to Elise and struck up a conversation, all casual confidence. He was shocked by her delta drawl; she’d looked so alone and vulnerable, leaning against the wall, that Chris had assumed she was a foreign exchange student or at least a fellow midwesterner. Her sweetly sassy attitude (it turned out she was a Georgia Tech fan and lived in Atlanta; she’d been dragged along to this party by a girlfriend) combined with her unabashed beauty (he’d noticed plenty of other guys checking her out, taking gulps of whatever they were drinking, trying to summon courage for the kill) and the irresistible innocence she exuded, sucking her straw like a ten-year-old, culminated in what Chris’s coach would have called a “triple threat,” against which Chris, who had just played one of the best defensive games of his life (four blocks, five steals, fifteen rebounds), was utterly helpless.
To Chris’s astonishment, their talk that night led to a date a week later, which led to more dates, in Atlanta and Athens, which led to writing letters every day when Chris left to study abroad in Stuttgart, which led to Elise visiting Chris, Chris proposing, and everything that has unfolded since: marriage, a tiny row house in London, a chilly apartment in Hamburg, a baby girl, a small brick house in Philadelphia. Chris is still unsure why Elise chose to be with him, aside from his aforementioned luck. Elise doesn’t know the only girlfriends Chris had
What he likes best of all, though he would never admit this, is exiting the airport’s baggage claim in a foreign city and seeing his name on a handwritten sign—typically black marker, all caps—held high by the chauffeur. A curt nod from Chris, and the driver assumes his heavy luggage, leads him to lush leather seats. Chris relaxes, savoring the city humming silently by, the feeling of easy power, even if it leaks away as soon as he exits the car. That first glimpse of his own name seems to confirm everything, the same way seeing his mother’s handwriting on his T-shirt tags at 4-H camp, in her cramped cursive, gave Chris a safe assurance of return. Those signs the drivers hold now remind him he is heading somewhere big, somewhere inevitable.
There is a certain kind of luck that Chris has learned, over the years, to hone. An instinct in his gut, the kind you can’t overthink, because it might dissolve. Chris played basketball from middle school all the way up through college, and that’s where he first learned about the luck and how to milk it. When you walk onto a court with that light certainty in your insides, your hands shaky with eagerness to palm the leather, the one thing you cannot, you must not, do is meet the eyes of this luck. The trick is not to question it and not to believe too strongly in it. It’s like a shy dog or a pretty girl: let them know you’re interested, and you can forget it. Instead, focus on grabbing rebounds and making sharp passes, get back quick on defense, and soon enough the luck will wind its way into your jump shot. Then you hold your follow-through, hear the swish, feel how scoring makes your calves go weightless. Luck paid Chris’s tuition at the University of Georgia, gave him an engineering degree and a bad knee.
Chris realizes he’s had a lot of luck so far. Getting out of Chariton, Indiana, for one. Not waking up at four a.m. every day like his father, not breaking his back trying to coax fertility out of the stubborn, cold ground, or rain out of sullen skies. Meeting Elise—stroke of luck number two—on the night of November 17, 1977, at a party after a basketball game. Elise was primly sipping 7UP, while everyone around her did keg stands and took generous bong hits. Chris, still elated from the night’s victory against their rivals, Georgia Tech, floating on a three-beer buzz, had sauntered up to Elise and struck up a conversation, all casual confidence. He was shocked by her delta drawl; she’d looked so alone and vulnerable, leaning against the wall, that Chris had assumed she was a foreign exchange student or at least a fellow midwesterner. Her sweetly sassy attitude (it turned out she was a Georgia Tech fan and lived in Atlanta; she’d been dragged along to this party by a girlfriend) combined with her unabashed beauty (he’d noticed plenty of other guys checking her out, taking gulps of whatever they were drinking, trying to summon courage for the kill) and the irresistible innocence she exuded, sucking her straw like a ten-year-old, culminated in what Chris’s coach would have called a “triple threat,” against which Chris, who had just played one of the best defensive games of his life (four blocks, five steals, fifteen rebounds), was utterly helpless.
To Chris’s astonishment, their talk that night led to a date a week later, which led to more dates, in Atlanta and Athens, which led to writing letters every day when Chris left to study abroad in Stuttgart, which led to Elise visiting Chris, Chris proposing, and everything that has unfolded since: marriage, a tiny row house in London, a chilly apartment in Hamburg, a baby girl, a small brick house in Philadelphia. Chris is still unsure why Elise chose to be with him, aside from his aforementioned luck. Elise doesn’t know the only girlfriends Chris had
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