The Withdrawal Method

DIZZY WHEN YOU LOOK DOWN IN

AFTER ABOUT TEN minutes of me catching him stealing looks across the waiting room, the big guy finally speaks. "I know you," he says, wagging a rolled-up Sports Illustrated in my direction. "Northern, right?"

"Yeah, Northern." I still can't place him.

"Point guard."

"These days?" I laugh. "Thursday nights at the Y, sure."

"But in high school you played point, right? For Northern?"

"Wow — that's, what? Ten years ago?"

He nods, that big head bobbing slow like its batteries are dying out. "1 went to St. Paul's."

He comes over, sits down with a seat between us. The magazine gets dropped and then there's this slab of a hand coming at me. Shaking it feels like sticking my arm inside a turkey.

"Brad Bettis," he says. "You're Dizzy Calder's big brother, right?"

"Yeah, that's right." I remember Bettis now, a monster of a four-man who'd bang away at our guys in the paint, knocking them down and then offering a hand to help them back up. A brute, all power, but classy — a yeti with a Catholic conscience. He's gained about sixty pounds, most of it under his chin. I don't ask him why he's here.

Bettis grins. "Dizzy Calder. Man, that kid could play."

I wait it out. The announcement for Dr. Singh comes on the PA again, the nurse starting to sound flustered. A little brown guy in scrubs rushes by flipping pages on a clipboard. His footsteps go clopping down the hall and then I'm left with Bettis, still grinning.

"Dizzy Calder," Bettis says again, shaking his head. "Whatever happened to him? They were asking for him all over the country, I heard."

"He went to Guelph for a semester."

"I heard that!"

"Yeah. Didn't play. Well, he was on the team but never saw the floor. They said he was too small to play three, and didn't have the outside game for a shooting guard."

"So, what? He dropped out?" Bettis has this look like I popped his favourite balloon.

Above Bettis's head, the clock on the wall reads a quarter to two. The anesthesia should be taking hold. They'll be starting now with the saws and blades and whatever else. But Bettis is leaning in, ready for some gossip. I can hear his breath coming in puffs. I tell him what he wants to hear. "He quit the team, finished the year at school, and then went down to Cuba."

"What, to play ball?"

"No." The PA crackles to life and it's the same nurse, sounding tired now. Bettis is waiting for more. "To build houses. He worked on some community project, building houses and pipelines and whatever. Ended up staying down there for six years."

Bettis sits back, all three hundred pounds of him slumping against the plastic chair. "Oh, yeah," he says, eyes narrowed, considering. You can almost hear the squeak of the hamster turning its wheel. After a moment, he picks up his Sports Illustrated from the floor, unrolls it, and smooths out the cover. Opening it, looking down, he says, "Too bad. That kid could play."

WHEN I GOT BACK to my folks' place, my mom had put together a box of Dizzy's basketball memorabilia for me to look through. Almost lost in that mess of offers from various schools on Athletic Department letterhead and MVP awards was a postcard that Dizzy kept tucked into the frame of his locker back in high school. Now, sitting here with the fluorescents buzzing overhead, Bettis beside me flipping through his magazine, I take it out from my jacket pocket and give it another look.

I don't know where he picked the thing up. It wasn't addressed or anything, it wasn't like anybody had sent it to him. Just a blank postcard, no postage. The picture is from a Celtics-Bulls game at Boston Garden, taken from high in the stands, up in the nosebleeds. Way, way down on the court you can make out ten players: the white and green of the Celtics' jerseys, the Bulls in their road red. Bill Cartwright and Horace Grant are out wide on the baseline, with Kevin McHale and Robert Parish hedging inside, and Larry Bird's sagging off Scottie Pippen down to the elbow. And over on the other wing, on the guy with the ball, is Danny Ainge. Poor Danny Ainge with his hands up, knees bent, feet shoulder-width apart — all fundamentals, all hope. In front of him, middribble, casual, like he's playing a game of pickup with some buddies and afterwards they'll all go out for a beer and wings or whatever, is Michael Jordan.

The Celtics are frozen, waiting, and the Chicago guys are like that too, standing there, no one with their hands up, no one looking for a pass. The rest of the Bulls are out for the show — best seats in the house. Maybe John Paxson's up there at the top of the key thinking about all the times in practice he's been left ducking while Jordan's up swinging on the rim over top of him, and he's thinking, All right, Danny Ainge — good fucking luck.

Before games, Dizzy took that postcard down from his locker and stared at it, finishing off the highlight reel in his head. In his mind he'd be way up there with his head scraping the roof of the Garden, bouncing around in that crowd of lunatics splashing whisky into big cups of fountain soda, leaning forward to see what the hell law of physics Jordan was going to break this time.

"WHAT YOU GOT there?" This is Bettis, curling and uncurling the Sports illustrated in his hands.

I hold the postcard up so he can see it. Bettis squints. "What's that? Celts-Bulls?"

"Yeah," I say, "from Boston Garden."

Bettis nods. He's sweating now — dark circles around the armpits of his shirt and hair slick at the sides. And he's looking at me, all intent, and I know what's coming; he's opened up a door and he's on the other side ready with that question certain people who don't have any good sense ask one another in places like this. I put the postcard back in my pocket.

"So," he says, puffing, "who you here for?"

DIZZY WASN'T REALLY a huge Michael Jordan fan. He went through phases, obsessed with a whole bunch of different players, copying their moves in the driveway. Isiah Thomas used to drive him crazy with his dribbling. Dizzy's handle was good, sure, just never enough to run point. But we'd watch Pistons games on Tv and Zeke'd be down there low to the ground, ball parumping off the floor like a drumroll, between the legs and behind the back and spin-dribbles, socks halfway up his calves — and smooth. And Dizzy'd be all over those moves, all winter working the ball in the garage until it was warm enough to get a good bounce going, and from inside the house we'd hear him through the wall, dribbling away, then after a while inside, all sheepish and bashful like he'd been beating off to the Sears catalogue out there or something.

But the one thing he never had was a favourite player. Back when we were kids, all of us would call who we were on the playground. I'd be Kevin Johnson, Mark Price, Tim Hardaway. Big guys were Ewing, Olajuwon, Mutombo. You'd usually get six or seven kids arguing over who was Michael Jordan. But Dizzy was just Dizzy. It was like he thought of the pros as just regular guys and pretending to be them was about as weird as pretending to be your favourite scientist when you wrote a biology test. He borrowed bits from here and there, certain moves — but everything he took he made his own.

Like his routine from the line. It was a weird mishmash he'd put together from guys he liked in college or the pros. He'd line up with the hoop, then take a half-step right — just off-centre, his feet right together. Then he'd get that shock of blond hair that hung in front of his face out of the way with a flick of his head, take a couple dribbles, and pull the ball up to his mouth — he either kissed it or said something, a little message, maybe. Guys lined up around the key would beak him for that, but usually they'd shut up once they checked the score sheet and saw he'd accounted for half our points. Then a knee bend and another dribble and a pause, and the ball would come up just over from his forehead, another pause, then that sweet left hand, all wrist: his shot would trace an arc you could teach math with before landing with a thock, the mesh catching the ball like a pair of hands and releasing it bouncing on the baseline.

BUT HERE'S BETTIS, staring at me, mouth hanging open like he's waiting to be fed. What do I tell this guy? I can just imagine him backtracking, all apologies with his big chubby arms around me. When I finally answer, I make sure to turn away a bit to show him that I want this conversation to go only so far. "Waiting for someone in surgery. You?"

"Yeah, me too. My wife." He holds up his ring finger, a sausage wrapped in a strip of gold, as proof. "She's having an operation for endometrial cancer. Know what that is?"

"I work in pharma. We practically had to go through med school our first year." Then, almost as an afterthought, I add, "Sorry to hear that," and surprise myself when, thinking about Jen, back home in Oakville, I realize I actually am.

"Yeah. She'll be okay." Bettis nods at this to reassure himself. And just when I think the conversation's over, he goes on. "So you're in sales?"

"That's right. Four years now. Regional manager, Peel- Halton." By reflex, I find myself going to my wallet to hand over a business card, but then think better of it.

"Right," he says, rubbing sweat from his hands down his pants. "I'm articling here in town, myself."

"A lawyer?" I hope I don't sound as blown away by this as I feel.

"Almost," Bettis says, "but I've had to take a few weeks off because of, you know, stuff?"

There's something in his voice when he says this that forces me to really look at him for the first time, and it's like someone's kicked my legs out from under me. I see bags the size of teacups under the poor guy's eyes, a week's worth of stubble peppering his jowly face. Here's someone reaching out, his wife dying, for all I know, and I'm closing down. I swivel around to face him, take a big breath before I speak. "Actually, I'm here for my brother," I say. "I'm here for Dizzy."

BEFORE BASKETBALL took over his life, Dizzy was always the kid off on his own, the kid who'd eat dinner in total silence while me and Mom and Dad joked with one another about whatever, and then we'd turn around and his plate would be empty with the chair pushed back from the table and he'd just be gone, off wherever, down to the ravine or up to his room.

Dizzy drove Mom crazy, especially with how careless he was with his health. He usually had his insulin on him, he'd just forget. Before we ate Mom always asked him, "Did you take your meds?" and Dizzy would nod, hiding behind all that hair in his face. Then I'd watch him sneak a needle out of his hip-sack, stab himself through his T-shirt under the table, then stash it and move right to his knife and fork and dinner. But he hated it, always did — not so much the needles or the diet, but the dependence, relying on something just to stay alive.

He's been Dizzy for so long that when Mom called me up at home in Oakville last week and said, "Derek's coming home," it took me a minute before I realized who she meant. Even in the few emails we kicked back and forth I never read the D he signed off with as his real name. Of course those weren't ever much more than him telling me how his Spanish was getting better, or me giving updates about the NBA. It felt more like checking in than real communication, and often his messages would sit unanswered for weeks before I could think what to write back — and, considering the lag between replies, I assume he had the same problem with mine.

Dad came up with his nickname one day down at the Pinery. I'd shown my little brother how spinning in place could make the world swim up and away from you. He'd loved it. Mom and Dad and I watched him all afternoon twirling circles with his arms out until he couldn't twirl any more, staggering down the beach and trying to make the water before he fell down. I'd been seven, he'd been five, and all the way home in the back seat he was Dizzy, and then it came to school with him that Monday, and that's who he's been ever since.

While I was happy as a kid to sit down with the Tv, maybe play Trouble with Mom or Dad, Dizzy couldn't stay inside. It's funny, because he was always so quiet, not your average hyperactive kid bouncing off the walls and shrieking and starting fights. Just restless. First chance he got from about age eight to twelve, he was right down to the ravine behind the housing complex, building forts to shut himself away in. First the ravine, then the basketball court: places he'd escape to, passing in and out of them, sly and silent, like a ghost through walls.

"DIZZY?" SAYS BETTIS.

"Yeah. It's a complication from his diabetes." I pause. "You knew he was diabetic?"

Bettis shakes his head.

"No, why would you. Sorry. Anyway" — I breathe here, deep — "he's got some problems with his feet. Pretty serious."

"Oh, that's terrible."

"Yeah. They're amputating one for sure, but they're going to try to save the other one. The right foot." His jumping foot, I think, but I don't say it.

"Amputating? Oh, god. That's — that's terrible."

"He didn't take care of his feet down in Cuba, was the thing. Trucking around construction sites in flip-flops or whatever. After so many years it started to take its toll."

"Man," says Bettis. "Well, I hope everything turns out as good as it can."

"Yeah. I mean, he's not going to die or anything."

I realize what I've said as soon as it comes out, but Bettis is just nodding, slow and thoughtful. If, for a second, he's forgotten about his wife, I can guess the one thing he's thinking is that Dizzy's ballplaying days are now officially over. But he can't say that. And neither can I.

DIZZY AND I FIRST played together when he was in grade ten and I was in grade twelve. He'd averaged something stupid in midget ball the year before, thirty-some points a game, half a dozen triple-doubles over the season, forty-two in a city semifinal his team won by twenty. I stayed back for a second year of junior, so I was captain on a team that lost twelve of fourteen in league play, but I made it to the all-star game, where I missed the only shot I took and got dunked on twice. Dizzy had fourteen as the midget MVP, passed up a few layups, air-balled a three-pointer and jogged back down the court grinning like he'd just done the grandest thing in the history of the sport.

The following year I moved up to the senior team and Dizzy went out for the juniors. The senior coach, Mr. McGowan, this shrivelled-up old guy who'd been coaching senior ball at Northern since, Dad joked, they made the switch from peach baskets, showed up at the first junior practice and grabbed Dizzy when he came in the gym and wheezed something at him like, "How'd you like to play up in senior with your brother?" I can just imagine what Dizzy might have done: shook the hair out of his eyes, shrugged, given McGowan that funny little half-smile of his, said, "Sure, okay," and left the gym without another word.

So Dizzy was the coveted recruit and I was backing up this kid, Raul, who'd come back for grade fourteen — the victory lap, he called it. It pissed me off a bit, because otherwise I would have started, and in practice the guy was a real cock, giving you titty-twisters when he came off screens, bringing his knee up into your balls if you guarded him too close. He had this scraggly little goatee like pubes on his chin and a bald slash through his eyebrow he told everyone was a knife wound but I heard he'd shaved there himself and never grew back.

For our rookie initiations Raul made me and this other kid, a big gangly stringbean of a redhead called Clark, run suicides with a hard-boiled egg between our ass cheeks. If it fell out you had to eat it. Clark got going too fast right away, only made it to half-court before his came plop out of his shorts, bounced once, and rolled right into the tip-off circle. Raul came over shaking his head and watched Clark chew his way through the egg while I waddled up and down the court — foul line, baseline, three-point, baseline, half-court, baseline — until Raul decided I'd had enough.

For his initiation, Dizzy got his head shaved. They buzzed everything right off, starting with that flop of bangs in the front. He sat on a bench in the change room while they did it, almost patient, waiting until the last of it was lying on the floor between his feet. Afterwards he even offered to sweep up, dumped all that hair into the trash by the sinks and came into the gym looking like a Navy SEAL.

First drill of practice he had Raul on him and did some crazy crossover I'd never seen before, and Raul went for it, diving one way and then stumbling back the other, and his one leg buckled and he was over on the ground hollering like he'd been shot. Dizzy didn't say anything, even helped Raul limp off the court, then came right back into the next drill on defence, first senior practice of the year, this scrawny little kid, fifteen years old. While he didn't start a game that season, he was usually off the bench for ten, easy, with a handful of boards and a few dimes and a couple of steals in there too.

BETTIS WANTS MORE. And, shit, I guess I owe it to him. "So he's been back from Cuba for a while?" he asks, and I start to feel like I'm Dizzy's agent doing press or something.

"No, not long at all. My parents flew him back a few days ago, basically right after he called and explained what the doctors in Havana had told him."

"And he's been in hospital ever since?"

"Pretty much, yeah." I pause. "But I haven't seen him yet."

"How come?"

"Well, I've been working," I say, knowing it sounds weak. "I live in Oakville, so I just thought I'd come down today, for the surgery."

"You talked to him since he's been home?"

"Not exactly." Bettis is looking at me funny, trying to figure this out. "He — he doesn't exactly love what I do for a living, to be honest."

"What, sales?"

"No, not the sales part."

"Then?"

I consider this, not really sure I could even answer in specific terms if I wanted to. Instead, I reach into my pocket and pull out the postcard. "You should check this out, actually," I tell Bettis, passing it to him. "It was his."

THE NEXT YEAR, my last year of high school, we both made the starting rotation. And, to be honest, we were magic together — all those years of two-on-two on the driveway at home finally paid off.

We had a system if McGowan's flex offence broke down, which it often did. I'd call for a reset, and while everyone was shifting around I'd drive the lane, go up among the trees, turn in the air all desperate, and there Dizzy'd be like a saviour open on the wing, rolling off a screen, hands up and ready. I'd kick it out and he'd catch and shoot, that jumper like a silk handkerchief pulled loose from a shirt pocket.

If a defender stepped up from the weak side he'd throw one of those killer head-fakes — he'd grown his hair back, so that shock in the front would go flopping up and send whoever sailing by, and he'd put it on the floor and come swooping down the lane, lay it in, his hand on the glass not a slap so much as letting the basket know he'd been there.

"HE USED TO STARE at that thing for hours," I tell Bettis.

"It's great," he says, smiling, handing it back to me.

"I brought it for him. When he comes out. I thought" — What did I think? — "I thought he'd like to see it, for old times."

Bettis's smile widens. "Old times. They are old times, aren't they?"

I look down at the postcard, at that frozen moment in history. I realize for the first time how faded the picture is — the parquet yellowing, Jordan's jersey a washed-out pink. I look up at Bettis. He's still grinning at me, putting on a good show despite whatever's going on with his wife. I drop the postcard into my pocket and do my best to force a smile to match his.

DIZZY LOVED basketball but could never watch it on TV for longer than a few minutes — he'd get all antsy and be up with a little Nerf ball, doing post-moves against the doorframe in the TV room, a drop-step and then baby-hooking into the kitchen. And when he got bored of that he'd just disappear, like when he was a kid. I'd turn around from my spot on the couch and he'd be gone — maybe out in the garage, dribbling away, or taking free throws in the driveway with his mitts on in the snow. I might go out there and we'd play some post-up, slipping around on the ice and Dizzy dropping lazy fadeaways over me with either hand.

But that year things started to change. Right around the start of the season he got this girlfriend, this mousy little thing with dreadlocks and a hoop through her nose, and he'd be out in the garage less — more often she'd swing by in her parents' Golf and pick him up. They'd be off somewhere, and when he'd trudge back in that night, shaking the hair out of eyes red and bleary from weed, Mom'd ask where he'd been and he'd tell her, "Out," showing that little half-smile that was the citizenship card to whatever world he lived in.

Still, the second year of senior ball we played together, our team was magic. Big carrot-top Clark hit the weights and put on about forty pounds, turned into a real force down low. We got a new kid, a transfer named Healey, a comedian, and deadeye from outside. He'd come off screens down low and pop out for threes, and make us howl doing Marv Albert all through practice, with McGowan barking at us to "Shut up and do it right," totally baffled as to what was so funny.

Regardless of whatever else he was getting into, Dizzy was the star. Grade eleven and already one of the most dominant players in the county, maybe the entire region. He was off on weekends with the under-21 rep team — at sixteen! — for tournaments all over the place, down to the States for training camps and clinics, playing against prep-school guys with NBA deals waiting for them like presents wrapped under the tree. But more and more often basketball was taking a back seat to whatever else: the girlfriend, the Grateful Dead, weed. Every chance he got he was reading The Catcher in the Rye or that motorcycle repair guide, whatever it was, and then at Christmas his girl got him the Che Guevara biography, and after that you'd never see him without it.

I remember playing against Bettis and his St. Paul's Panthers that year in the playoffs, how they threw a box-andone at Dizzy. McGowan called a time out right off the tip, took us into the huddle, and rasped at us to run the zone offence, four-on-four, and to take the open shots as we got them. We worked possessions for minutes on end, swinging the ball from one side of the court to the other, watching their box shift left and right, and Dizzy running the odd cut through the key to keep his man moving. We wore them down, let the ball do the work, and ended up pulling away in the second half before taking the game 36–24. We'd never scored less than seventy points all season, and here we were finishing with a combined sixty. Dizzy had eight, a season low, but he didn't seem to care. In the change room Clark stood naked except for his high-tops and tried to get us going on some lame team cheer before Healey came slinking up behind him and dumped the ice bucket over his head.

I MENTION THIS to Bettis now. "You remember that year in the playoffs when you guys tried the box-and-one on us?"

He's not biting. The high-school talk isn't reeling him in like it was minutes ago. He's twisting his wedding band around his finger. He's looking at the clock. "She'll be coming out of surgery now," he tells me. "It'll all be over soon."

Dizzy should be done too, and I start to wonder why a nurse hasn't come out to tell me anything. And here's when I realize that I'm not sure I want him to come out, that I want the surgery to go on until Mom and Dad show up so I don't have to see him by myself. I imagine him with bloody stumps disappearing into bandages, lying in a hospital cot like a bomb victim. And me walking up, not knowing what to say. I can picture myself standing there, him looking at me, waiting, and then eventually I'd fish the postcard out of my pocket, hand it over. Maybe he'd take it even, that sad little piece of cardboard nostalgia — not even close to enough, so far from enough it might as well crumble to dust in his hands.

MY LAST GAME of high-school basketball was the city finals. We played a school from across town that had snuck its way through the playoffs, the Richmond Heights Golden Bears. They'd finished sixth in the regular season, then made a run, taking out the third-place team in overtime in the first round, rode the win into the semis and blew out the two-seed, then met us, who were seeded first, in the finals. They played this crazy three-quarter-court press that some schools never quite got the hang of breaking. If you rushed, they'd trap you at halfcourt and you'd either throw the ball away or turn it over on the ten-second call.

Before the game Dizzy sat there in the corner of the change room with that Che Guevara book open on his lap, warm-ups on, shoes untied. He was using the Jordan postcard as a bookmark but wasn't looking at it, instead totally sucked into whatever the hell revolution he was reading about. When McGowan came in Dizzy dropped the book into his gym bag and sat back, ready for the predictably inane pep talk the old man had planned.

The game started and the stands were packed with half our fans, half theirs, both sides going crazy with banners and cheers and a few nuts from both schools with trombones and bass drums. But we got down fast. We were caving to their press, offering stupid cross-court passes like gifts, dribbling right into their traps and getting stripped, rushing our offence and forcing dumb shots. Down our end they were hitting everything, and by the end of the first quarter were up 17-2, capped at the buzzer with a bomb from half by their shooting guard.

Second quarter, Dizzy took over. He started dropping into the backcourt when we inbounded, taking the ball himself and dribbling through the pressure, pulling up in their end and looking for me to run the offence. We started hitting shots. First possession, I nailed a three on a botched pick-androll, and then it was all Dizzy. He got the ball on the wing against their zone and found holes, weaved through it like a needle through cloth. He hit layups and jump shots, collected other people's misses and put them back for two. He drove and dished to Clark, who powered it up strong, both hands on the glass. At half-time we were down five, 31–26.

A NURSE COMES out then. Bettis and I sit up like something's stung us both. She looks at me and smiles — trying to seem nice, I guess. Then she turns to Bettis. "You can go in and see your wife now, Mr. Bettis."

He stands up and the Sports Illustrated slides off his lap to the floor, lies there glossy and glistening in the waiting-room lights. "How is she?"

"Recovering fine. The surgery couldn't have gone more smoothly."

"Oh, thank you." Bettis lays one of those paws on the nurse's shoulder. "Thank you."

He turns to me, bowing his head. "Good to see you," he says. "And good luck." And then he's gone, and by the determined way he lopes after the nurse, I have to wonder if he's already forgotten about me.

SO WE CAME OUT for the second half, and both teams started slow. We turned the ball over to their press; they couldn't hit a shot. The crowd got less rowdy, then quiet, then just bored. The game was sloppy — passes off guys' hands out of bounds, power moves fired straight off the backboard and out to the foul line. Four minutes in, with the score barely changed at 34–28, 1 dribbled the ball off my own foot and McGowan called a time out. On our way over to the huddle, Healey muttered in his Marv Albert voice, "Neither team looking confident out there."

McGowan was waiting. "Christ almighty," he spat at us and then went nuts with the marker on his clipboard, all squiggles and Xs and Os in the craziest game of tic-tac-toe you've ever seen in your life. When he was done Clark stepped up and started yelling, "Let's do this! Let's fucking do this!" and we actually sort of got into it and the other guys were up off the bench and the crowd went crazy and we stuck our hands together and "One-two-three: Northern!"

Both teams came out of the time out fired up. First possession, their big man threw down a huge dunk in traffic, and back the other way we broke their press into a three-point play by Dizzy. Then we got a steal of our own, a few more unanswered baskets, and by the end of the quarter we were tied at 47.

ALONE IN THE waiting room, I sit with the clock ticking up over my head, getting on three o'clock, and I start to think I should maybe go see if anyone's got any updates at the nurse's station down the hall.

But I'm paralyzed, stuck there sitting in my chair, Dizzy's postcard stiff and awkward in my jacket pocket. I think about the few times I came back home from school once I moved out and went away to university, sometimes a day early on holidays just to watch Dizzy's games. He dominated the league, scoring at will, but seemed casual about it, only driving to the hoop when games were close enough that he needed to.

His hair was long everywhere, not just the front, and he played with it tied up in a bun, looking like a skinny blond Buddha out there. In grade thirteen he started showing up to practice stoned, and then to games all pie-eyed and bleary, even dopier than usual. He'd still be in charge, but just a step slower than usual, just a bit off the pace of his former self. Even so, the letters kept pouring in from schools — UBC, Western, StFX.

When I'd come back for Thanksgiving or Christmas he'd be out all day and night with that same girlfriend and a bunch of kids just like her, all dreadlocks and tie-dye and bloodshot eyes from dope. He missed a tournament one weekend to go to Ottawa for some rally, some protest against something happening halfway across the world. And when he graduated, instead of taking schools up on any of the tryout offers, he headed to Guelph with his lady, lasted a semester before calling university quits forever.

There was one dinner, though, right at the end of June before high-school graduation, that seems now to mark the end of the Dizzy I thought I knew. The basketball season was a distant memory, and I'd brought Jen to meet Mom and Dad for the first time. They liked her right away, and everyone was getting along and we were talking about moving in together for the summer while we did internships at companies in Toronto. Dizzy sat at the end of the table sneering at us and pushing his food around, barely acknowledging Jen was even there. When I talked about trying to get into drug sales and he muttered something like, "That's ethical," I finally lost it.

"What the fuck's your problem?"

Mom and Dad froze. We've always been a calm family — fights happen to people on Tv, not us, and suddenly it was like someone had stepped out of a soap opera and, one by one, slapped us all across the faces. Dizzy shook his hair out of his face, staring at me, and for the first time I saw that the sleepiness in his eyes was gone. He started going off about corporations and the American FDA and unreleased side effects, slapping the table. No one could believe it. He shook his head at me, then turned to Mom and excused himself from the table. "I have to go take my insulin," he said, getting up, then disappearing down the hall.

It's past three now, by the waiting-room clock, and to shake the memory from my head, I take out the postcard again. Sitting there looking at it, I start to wonder how things changed for Dizzy after all those years creating stories to go with the picture. Was there a point where he ran out of possibilities? Was there a day when he looked at it and didn't see anything, a time when everything that had been hope and glory and a whole universe of fantasy faded, and, just like that, when that image of the greatest player to ever play the game became nothing more than a bookmark?

THE FOURTH QUARTER of that city final was tight. We traded baskets back and forth, Dizzy on his game, driving to the hole, scooping up their misses under our basket and going coastto-coast, picking passes off, working their press. But Heights came hard too. They were pounding us inside, knocking down open shots, their pressure throwing us off our halfcourt set, making us overly careful, nervous.

With under a minute to go we were down two, 60–58, and they had the ball, running a weave up top to knock as much time off the clock as they could. Me and Healey were trapping and recovering, trying to force a turnover, waiting for McGowan to holler at us to foul.

Then something happened. Heights' point guard jabstepped one way and came hurtling down the lane. As he picked up the ball on the hop-step, one of our rookies, a good, solid kid named Leeman, came with the help and got a hand in, tied him up. The refs called it a jump — our possession. McGowan yelled for time and got us in a huddle to figure out a last shot. Not that we had a play. Everyone knew to get one guy the ball and sit back and let him do his thing.

We took our time off the inbounds with their pressure, working the ball back and forth in the back-court before we crossed half and set up our zone offence. Thirty seconds on the clock, and everybody in the gym knew who we were going to. I had it up top, dribbling over to the wing where I knew Dizzy would come swinging through for the pass. Heights were playing us tight, though, and he got the ball farther out than he usually liked — right up near the hash mark. The rest of us spread the floor, and Dizzy squared up, triplethreat, with one of their guys right in his face. The clock was counting down — twenty-six, twenty-five, twenty-four — and right before the five-second call he put the ball down, hair in his face, and started to move in.

We waited. No one wanted a pass. Their zone was laid flat out, waiting for Dizzy to go outside so they could bring the trap and he'd have to swing it back around to someone else. And, for whatever reason, my little brother gave them exactly that — he brought the guy up the sideline, into the corner, and then there were two on him, and the rest of us realized we had better rotate around to give him another option.

I came off a screen from Healey, wide open at the top of the key. Dizzy looked at me, still working his dribble with two defenders closing in on him. His eyes met mine. My hands went up. Eighteen seconds on the clock, seventeen. And then he went around the back, split the trap, and he was at his sweet spot, a step in from three, right where he'd made a living all season.

But, for whatever reason, he didn't shoot. He looked at me again quickly and then took a step backwards so he was beyond the arc. And then, like he'd been a bomber from out there all his life, he let fly for the win.

I heard McGowan yell, "No!" and then there was just silence as the ball made its way to the hoop, my teammates and I just watching, no one crashing the boards. It came down off the front of the rim, bounced up off the backboard, rim again, before falling out. One of the Heights guys nabbed the rebound, but we were so dazed we didn't even think to foul, and it was one quick outlet pass, and another, and their point guard was up for two at our end to put it at 62–58 and out of reach.

"MR. CALDER?"

I look up and it's the little doctor with the clipboard, slight and brown and sort of bowing at me, like he's a butler or something.

"Yes?"

"I'm Dr. Singh."

I stand up and we shake hands.

"I've got some good news," he says. "We were able to save your brother's right foot. Just some pustules, some minor infection."

"Oh, good." Right away, this seems a dumb thing to say.

"He's in recovery, a bit disoriented, but otherwise doing fine."

"Yeah?"

"We told him you're here," Dr. Singh says. "He said he'd like to see you."

Dr. Singh bows again and then he's off down the hall at a decent clip, and I have to hurry to catch up. I've still got the postcard in my hand, although now I realize that it's bent and folded like Bettis's magazine.

AFTER THE GAME I sat in the locker room with my shoes off and uniform still on. Clark was crying a bit, and McGowan put his arm around our big man and told him he was proud of how far he'd come, and to the other guys he said they did a great job and that he was looking forward to next year.

But I sat there, remembering that look Dizzy had given me before he shot, almost apologetic, but something in it that seemed cocky, superior — like, "This one's mine. Sorry." And then the miss and he'd gone shuffling off the court while the clock ran out on our season.

He'd got changed and was sitting there in jeans and a hoodie, reading Che across the change room. Eventually he looked up and I caught his eye. He slung his gym bag over his shoulder, stuck his thumb in the book to keep his page, and came across to where I was, sitting beside the door.

"Good game," he said to me, his palm out for five or a handshake.

I just sat there, offering nothing.

Dizzy smiled then, that one side of his mouth turned up at the corner. He flipped his hair out of his face. "It's just basketball, man," he said. Then, as he opened the door to head outside, my brother looked back at me with the same expression as the one he'd given me on the court — not arrogance, I'd misread it before. This was a look of distance. Once, when we were kids, I'd been sent to fetch Dizzy from the ravine. I'd stood up top, looking down, watching him pile branches on top of one another in the valley, whispering to himself, pointing here and there as though he were directing other people. When I'd finally called out, "Dinner!" he'd gazed up at me with the same look he gave me then in the change room, like I was part of a world he didn't care about belonging to. Just as I had back then, I couldn't take it. I had to look away. Dizzy waited for a moment in silence like he was going to say something else, but instead just shrugged, then ducked out the door and was gone.

WALKING DOWN THE hospital hallway, Dr. Singh bopping ahead of me in the dim light, that's not the way I want to remember my brother, not now. I want all those moments I can tell other people about, those moments when I was there and so close to being a part of his life — our post-up games in the driveway, running pick-and-rolls to perfection, me driving and dishing to him for the spot-up jumper. I want the kid at the beach, spinning and giddy and tumbling in the sand.

Dr. Singh stops at a door and peeks in through the little window. I'm still a few paces down the hall. When he starts to open the door, I pause. By now Dizzy's postcard is little more than a crumpled, papery mush in my hand.

I look to my right, into another room just like the one I'm sure my brother's in. Sitting on a chair with his back to me is Bettis, and lying in the bed in front of him is a pale, pretty woman with a bald head. He's got both of her hands in his, held up to his mouth, and his big shoulders are heaving, shuddering like a glacier run ashore. He's weeping, but his wife's looking at him with a smile on her face — the tired, sad smile of someone saved.

I turn away and Dr. Singh has disappeared. The door to Dizzy's room hangs open, an invitation, with a triangle of pale yellow light slanting into the hallway from inside.

But I don't move, not yet. I stand thinking about my brother, lying there in bed. In my mind the image starts to play out as a film. I see myself going in, sitting down in an uncomfortable chair at the foot of his cot, saying hello, not much else. My parents arrive. After some discussion, I end up staying the night. Dizzy and I don't talk much — he fades in and out of sleep, I huddle under a blanket in the chair; a breakfast comes he doesn't eat, then a lunch. I call Jen and we talk and decide that I should stay out here for a while. The days go by. Some nights I stay at the hospital; others, I sleep in my old bed at my parents'.

Meanwhile, Dizzy would be getting better, but our conversations would still be minimal — me asking if he needed anything, if he was feeling okay, whatever. Maybe I'd even bring in tapes of old NBA games, although I can't imagine we'd watch them. They'd probably just lie in a pile on the side table between a few vases of flowers, him never acknowledging them, me never suggesting we put them on. The nurses would come in and I'd look away while they changed the bandages where his foot used to be; if he was sleeping they'd ask me how he was doing and I'd nod and say, "Good." But mostly I'd just sit there with him. And sitting with him, I feel myself hoping, might just be enough.

I start to move down the hallway, toward Dizzy's room, toward the light shining out of it and the soft murmur of Dr. Singh talking to my brother. I'm thinking now about how, eventually, Dr. Singh is going to say that Dizzy is okay to leave. I see myself collecting his things, and through the window of his room a winter morning — sky like a white curtain, bright. I see me and Dr. Singh easing Dizzy into a wheelchair, some paperwork filed, some talk of prosthetics, good luck. And then I'm wheeling my brother down the hall, through the doors of the hospital, into the light, outside, where the snow's just starting to fall.