The Case Against William Read online

  "We can't this weekend. William's got a game tomorrow, and I've got closing arguments on Monday. I'll have to drive back to Austin Sunday afternoon."

  "Will you make my games next week?"

  "The case will go to the jury Monday morning. We won't get a verdict until Thursday or Friday at the earliest. But you never know with juries, so I'll have to stay in Austin. Sorry."

  "You know, Father"—when she addressed him as "Father" instead of "Daddy" he knew she had been thinking seriously about something—"if I went to public school, I could play on a good team, maybe get noticed by colleges. With Title Nine, I could get a scholarship."

  "To play volleyball?"

  "Unh-huh. Colleges have to give girls the same number of scholarships as boys. Boys get eighty-five football scholarships, thirteen for basketball, and eleven-point-seven for baseball."

  "Eleven-point-seven?"

  "Football and basketball are head count sports, but not baseball. So they can divvy up the total scholarships, give half scholarships to the players. Anyway, that's a hundred nine-point-seven scholarships they have to give to girls, and we don't have a big sport like football. So girls get scholarships for basketball, softball, soccer, swimming, diving, track, tennis, golf, gymnastics, rowing, field hockey, rugby, equestrian, indoor and sand volleyball, and bowling."

  "Bowling?"

  She nodded. "They've got to match scholarships, and they won't cut football."

  "Good," William said. " 'Cause I want one of those football scholarships."

  The U.S. Congress decided in 1972 that college sports required intervention by the federal government; members of Congress were apparently not busy enough bungling national defense and screwing up the economy. Feminist groups complained that girls didn't have enough athletic opportunities in college. So Congress enacted a federal law that divvied up athletic scholarships between boys and girls. In order to comply with Title Nine, colleges must provide an equal number of athletic scholarships for boys and girls, even if the boys' sports made money and the girls' sports lost money. Hence, bowling for girls.

  "So what about it, Father?" his daughter said.

  "You've already got a scholarship."

  "I do?"

  He nodded. "It's called Daddy. Full tuition and room and board at the college of your choice."

  "Wellesley. It'll cost sixty thousand a year by the time I go to college."

  Frank blinked hard. "You really think you could get a volleyball scholarship?"

  Lupe, their maid, cook, and nanny, walked over and handed Frank a cold Heineken. She knew him well after ten years.

  "Gracias," he said.

  Frank took a long swallow of the beer. He was not a drinker; he had never acquired a taste for wine or hard liquor. Back at UT, he had consumed his share of Lone Star beer; now his alcohol consumption consisted of one cold Heineken with Lupe's Mexican food, a Friday night tradition in the Tucker household. After a long week in court and a three-hour drive, the beer went down easily.

  "Frank," his wife said, "tell Rebecca she needs to go shopping."

  He turned to his daughter. "Go shopping."

  "No."

  He turned back to his wife. "She doesn't want to go shopping."

  "She needs a new party dress for the fall social," his wife said.

  Liz took her place at the head of the table. They were going to the football game after dinner, but Liz was dressed as if she would be competing in the evening gown competition. She sat with perfect posture waiting to be served by Lupe.

  "No, I don't, Mother. Because I'm not going to the fall social."

  "Yes, young lady, you are going."

  "Mother, it's October. Football season. I'm a cheerleader. I play volleyball. I don't have time for socials."

  "Make time."

  Becky gave Frank a pleading look. He turned his palms up at her mother.

  "Liz—"

  "She's going, Frank. And all the girls will be wearing new dresses. Do you want your daughter to feel embarrassed?"

  "Let me think about that."

  "Daddy, I can't stand the boys at our school," Becky said. "They're all rich snobs. Why do I have to socialize with them?"

  "Good question." Frank turned back to his wife. "Why does she have to socialize with rich snobs she doesn't like?"

  "The same reason I have to socialize with rich snobs I don't like."

  "So she'll be written up in the society section?"

  Becky laughed, but Liz did not appreciate his humor. Frank walked over to the sink and washed up. Lupe stood at the stove and filled plates with enchiladas, tacos, refried beans, and guacamole. She wore a colorful Mexican peasant dress.

  "How's your boy, Lupe?"

  She was thirty-five, a single mother with a four-year-old boy. He had been born with a heart defect; fortunately for little Juan, Houston was home to many renowned heart surgeons and his mother's employer had put her and her dependents on his health insurance plan.

  "He's fine, Mr. Tucker."

  William grabbed a plate and sat at the table; he attacked the food. He ate like a horse these days and smelled like one. Puberty will do that to a boy. Frank took two plates and served his daughter and wife then went back for his plate. He returned to the table and sat across from the kids. The house had a formal dining room off the kitchen, but they always ate in the kitchen. It was comfortable. Informal.

  "Did you wash your hands, William?" he asked.

  Through a mouthful of food: "Why?"

  "Hygiene."

  "I'm a football player."

  Frank folded his hands and said, "Prayer."

  His son froze with a taco halfway in his mouth while Frank said the Tucker family dinner prayer. Then his son resumed his assault on the defenseless taco. Frank turned to his wife.

  "Nancy's son deployed to Iraq," he said.

  Nancy was his longtime secretary.

  "Oh, that's neat," Liz said.

  "I doubt it."

  "I looked at a house in the nice part of River Oaks today," she said.

  "The nice part?"

  River Oaks was the richest part of Houston. Old money. New money. Oil money. Inherited money. But most of all, money.

  "I'm not moving," William said.

  "Me neither," Becky said.

  With his head still bent over his plate and without breaking stride shoveling food into his mouth, William stuck a fist out to her. She bumped her fist against his. A fist-bump, a bonding ritual of athletes. Only two years apart, they seemed more like twins. The same hair, the same eyes, the same features. They watched out for each other. They had lived their entire lives in this old house. It was fifty years old with a big yard, the pool, and tall oak trees on a large lot, room for Rusty to roam and the kids to play. They each had their own bedroom and bathroom, which kept the peace upstairs. Hers were always tidy; his looked like a locker room. The house was just under four thousand square feet, small by River Oaks standards, and Frank could easily afford a bigger place, but it was four times as big as the house he had grown up in in a working-class suburb of Houston. And the kids were happy there. But Liz wanted a bigger house. She always wanted more.

  "It's on Inwood just off the boulevard"—the River Oaks Boulevard—"a block from the club," she said. "Eight thousand square feet, six bedrooms, seven baths. And only five million."

  She said it with a straight face.

  "Liz, what would we do with seven toilets and eight thousand square feet?"

  "Entertain."

  "We do." He turned to the kids. "You guys entertained?"

  They laughed. Rusty barked. Lupe muffled a giggle. Liz gave him that stern look that used to mean, "No sex tonight." But sex had ended long before. He had not sought sex from other sources; perhaps he was too afraid or too lazy or too Catholic. He didn't think she was cheating on him; that would be too scandalous in Houston high society. Instead of climbing the social ladder she would become the subject of social gossip. So they now slept in separate bedrooms; he told
the kids his back made him toss and turn and wake their mother up. William had bought it; but he was only twelve. Frank suspected that Becky had not; but she went along with it. At fourteen, she was his deputy, working hard to keep the peace in River Oaks.

  Which was not easy with her mother.

  They had married eighteen years ago. He was twenty-seven and already practicing with a Houston firm; she was twenty-two and just graduated from UT, a pretty girl who wanted to be a star. She had planned on parlaying her looks into local television stardom and then jumping to the networks; it didn't pan out. At forty, she wanted to be a Houston society dame. Her Plan B. They had grown apart, as they say. In fact, they had married too young to know themselves and too soon to know each other. By the time they knew who they were and who they were not, they already had the kids. Frank had contemplated divorce, often, but Liz would get custody of the kids. Unless she was an alcoholic or drug addict, the mother could be dating an NFL team and she'd still get custody. He would be the every-other-weekend dad. He couldn't bear the thought of that life. So he stayed for the kids. For himself. He needed to be close to them. To live with them. To see them every day. To be a part of their lives.

  Frank Tucker was a family man.

  Chapter 2

  The varsity quarterback threw a wounded duck, a pass that wobbled in the air like a shot fowl. The defensive back intercepted at the thirty-yard line and returned the ball for a touchdown. The home crowd groaned.

  "A pick-six," William said.

  The Houston skyline illuminated the night sky to the east and seemed to loom large over the small stadium. River Oaks occupied the south bank of Buffalo Bayou just west of downtown. River Oaks was a part of Houston, but it seemed completely apart. A different world. A two-square-mile island of wealth and white people surrounded by the two million residents who called the sprawling 627-square-mile city of Houston home. Originally excluding minorities and Jews, River Oaks' real-estate prices now excluded only those without money. Fourteen hundred families called River Oaks home. The Tucker family lived in River Oaks because it was the mother's dream and close to the father's office. Instead of commuting the congested freeways of Houston an hour each way, Frank had two more hours each day with the kids.

  It was eight that night, and his daughter stood on the sideline with the other cheerleaders. His son sat on one side of him and his wife on the other, on the front row of the small bleachers among other affluent white people whose children attended the Academy. Since racial integration of the Houston public schools back in the seventies, it was a given that River Oaks parents would send their offspring to private schools. Frank sent his children to private school because his parents could not; he wanted more for his children.

  The River Oaks parents and children in the stands looked like models from a Neiman Marcus catalog (there were no Nike sweat suits in these stands) and the parking lot like a Mercedes-Benz showroom (with a few Ferraris and Bentleys thrown in for variety). The Academy was a small private school in River Oaks teaching pre-K through high school; tuition cost $40,000 per year, more than public colleges in Texas. But graduates of the Academy did not go to college at a public university in Texas; they went to the Ivy League. The Academy had become a feeder school for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Smith, and Wellesley. A few went west to Stanford or stayed home at Rice. None went to the University of Texas or Texas A&M.

  "Hi, William."

  Two preteen girls who looked as if they had stepped out of a fashion shoot strolled by in front of them. They did not distract William from the game.

  "Hey."

  They giggled as girls did. Frank nudged his son's shoulder.

  "Already got the girls' eyes, huh?"

  "Girls are lame, Dad."

  His son was handsome with angular features, blue eyes, and curly blond hair that fell onto his face. But he had not yet reached the age when girls graduated from lame to alluring. Sports interested him much more than girls. Which was a good thing at twelve. For the boy and his father.

  The first twelve years of William Tucker's life had been easy for Frank Tucker. It was more like having a younger brother, teaching William all the manly things Frank knew—how to throw a baseball and swing a bat, pass and punt a football, swing a golf club—or rather, pay the club pro to teach him; Frank would never impose his golf swing on his son—and how to spit watermelon seeds. Frank's father had taught him how to roof and paint a house, use and repair a lawnmower, snake and unclog a sewer line, and fix and change a tire; that is, useful life skills. A man did not pay another man to do work he could do. But Frank was a lawyer not a plant worker so he hired out that work so he would have time to teach his son the less useful life skills.

  It had been a fun twelve years with William in his life.

  But Frank knew the next twelve years would be more challenging for father and son. His son would go through puberty; his body would transform seemingly overnight from boy to man. But his mind would not. Physical maturity would come soon and fast; mental maturity would come later and slower. Studies suggest that the part of a boy's brain that controls judgment does not fully develop until his mid-twenties. And that gap between mind and body—a body that could suddenly do what a man could do and a mind that still thought like a boy—could put his son's future in jeopardy. Throughout the history of man, testosterone and stupidity had never joined together to produce a good result. Frank wondered if he could protect his son from himself. He put an arm around his son's shoulder.

  "You going to get the senator off, Frank?"

  The dad sitting behind them leaned in; his breath evidenced his taste for expensive wine.

  "Gag order, Sid."

  "I can't believe you're representing a Republican."

  Sid was a rich Democrat—Houston was a Democratic holdout in the state of Texas—but his children attended this elite private school so they wouldn't have to sit next to the brown children of poor Democrats in the public schools.

  "I'm representing an innocent person."

  "She's guilty of being a Republican."

  The other team kicked off. The Academy player fumbled the ball. The opponents recovered and scored on the next play.

  "Wow," William said. "They're terrible."

  The team was terrible. But the boys were nice. The coaches were nice. The parents were nice. No one was disappointed in their play because no one expected them to win.

  "We may not have scored in two years," Sid said from behind, "but ten of our students aced the SAT this year."

  The apparent purpose of public high schools in Texas was to produce the best football players in the country. And they did. Division I-A college football coaches from across America journeyed each fall to Texas to fill their rosters. They did not stop at the Academy. Athletics at the Academy were employed to build character and camaraderie among the student body, not to produce D-I athletes. And they did not. No student in the fifty-year history of the school had ever won a D-I athletic scholarship. The Academy was a top-ranked academic school, not a top-ranked athletic school. Consequently, every season was a losing season. This season was no exception. But the parents still came to the games, and the cheerleaders still cheered.

  "Two bits, four bits,

  Six bits, a dollar.

  All for the Armadillos,

  Stand up and holler."

  No one stood. The students were engrossed in their electronic devices, and their parents in conversation about politics and the stock market. Of course, it was hard to get fired up for a football team called the Armadillos. But Frank stood, threw his arms over his head as if to start a wave, and yelled, "Go 'Dillos!" Becky laughed from the sideline then hid her face behind her pompoms. His wife glanced up at him as if he were insane. But then, she wore perfume to a football game.

  "It's over on Inwood," she said to the equally perfect mother sitting next to her. "It's only eight thousand square feet, but we don't want something too big. Just enough room for a charity event."

  Frank
and William were watching the game; she was climbing the social ladder. She had never been off-stage since her first beauty pageant in high school. She always looked perfect, sat perfect, stood perfect. Perfect clothes, perfect posture, perfect makeup, perfect hair. As if she were still competing for a crown. Perhaps she was.

  "We want cozy."

  William heard. He turned to Frank, made a face, and mouthed, "Cozy?"

  Frank shrugged then held an open hand out to him. They high-fived.

  Elizabeth Tucker saw the envy in her friend's eyes. The same envy that had once resided in her own eyes. She had grown up on the wrong side of Houston with nothing. She hated being poor. She always looked at the society section of the newspaper, at the parties and social events and the beautiful people, and wondered what their lives must be like. To have something in life. When she began driving, she would often cruise the streets of River Oaks in the old family car. One day, she had always said. One day.

  One day had come.

  She had caught her husband's look when she said, "cozy." He didn't understand her. She had grown up in a family of nobodies. She needed to be somebody. He apparently did not. He was almost famous, like a B movie star, but he seemed not to care. He had no desire to become an A-lister in Houston. She burned with such desire.

  To be somebody.

  But he made the money she needed to be somebody. To live in River Oaks, on the right side of Houston, in a house worthy of somebody. To make the society section. To be envied by others.

  William focused on the football field. His buddies spent the games chasing each other around the stadium, but he preferred to watch the games with his dad. Fact is, he'd rather be with his dad than with his buddies. Watching the games, running around River Oaks, playing golf at the club, having their man talks—they could talk about anything, he and his dad. His dad understood him. He knew what was inside him, in a way his mom and Becky could not. Of course, they were girls. He and Dad were guys. Dad said girls didn't understand guys, and guys didn't understand girls; that's why God gave guys cable TV with a hundred sports channels.