Open and shut. No wonder the jury bought it.
Ginger ended the video by speaking to Audrey directly. In simple terms, she said, “Matthew told the truth. From the beginning. Every word. When he stated under oath that he had no memory of any of this, he wasn’t lying. The drug I used is classified as an amnesiac. It’s designed to make you forget. Once I got him to the room, he was comatose, quite nearly dead, and incapable of any of this.” She then detailed the amounts and doses and on what schedule it was given to me—holding up her notepad taken from the bedside table, which showed her handwriting in pencil.
To nip any speculation in the bud as to why she chose now to speak up, she spoke with clarity. “I was content to hang my misery around Matthew Rising’s broad and beautiful shoulders and let him live out his days in prison.” Here Ginger cracked and cried a long time. The video continued. When she collected herself, she said, “But then, despite all the reasons you had to hate me and the world around you, you took an abandoned kid under your wing, nursed him back to health, and taught him… how to love.” She shook her head once. “And as if that wasn’t bad enough, you both knew—all the while—that Dalton Rogers was, and is, my son.” She trailed off and tried again. “I can’t—” Emotion choked whatever was to follow.
At the video’s end, she stared at the camera. “I would ask for forgiveness, specifically from you, Audrey and Matthew, for mercy, but I don’t deserve either. And I know it.” She shook her head, stared off-camera, and the video faded to black.
I sat there with my mouth open. If Ginger had been in prison for most of her life, then her confession was her attempt to fling wide the door. Now she’d have to deal with the court of public opinion.
Sitting in that room, surrounded by a lot of whispering people we did not know, Audrey looked at me, shaking her head. Her hands covering her mouth. The reality of the past twelve years cracking down the middle. Her entire body trembled, rocked violently. I’ve only heard the sound that exited her one other time in our married life. Then, it had entered her. Now, it was leaving. Exiting. I wrapped my arms around her and listened as Audrey emptied her soul. Moments later, she pressed my face between her hands and managed a painful whisper. “Forgive me?”
I shook my head. “There is nothing to forgive.”
The story spread, consumed the media outlets. Much of primetime coverage was given to Ginger’s continuing confession. To her credit, she went on the air that day on her own program, took no callers, broke for no commercials, and confessed to the world. A day later, she accepted an invitation to an hour-long nighttime news program out of New York.
Given the evidence and the public outcry, the District Attorney, along with assistance from the Governor and Warden, fast-tracked my release whereby Audrey and I went into hiding. With what little we had in savings, we rented a car and drove the coast of Georgia, hopping from cheap hotel to cheap hotel. It wasn’t glamorous, wasn’t Hawaii, but we didn’t care. We walked on the beach, shared as much of the last twelve years as we could remember, told the good and the bad. She wanted to know about life in prison, about my fight with the man, if I was afraid. When we were alone, she traced the lines of my scars with her fingers and kissed each one. Finally, she would kiss my chest, above my heart. I wanted to know how she ended up at St. Bernard’s, about the garden, how she’d met Dalton, about the video in her bedroom, and how long she’d been taking sleeping pills. We held hands more often than not, seldom were beyond an arms’ reach, and spent hours each day, her skin pressed to mine, wrapped around each other like the vines in her garden. To protect ourselves, we didn’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or read the newspaper. A total media blackout.
The following Friday night, we drove back into town and watched Dee’s game from the top of the Bucket. Wrapped in a blanket, safe from the crowd, we saw Dee become the quarterback, and man, he was meant to be. We watched in amazement as he broke free from the chains of his past and found his stride.
At halftime, the announcer stated that he’d heard from a reliable source, Wood no doubt, a special guest was in attendance at the game tonight.
He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you may not be able to see him, but I’m told he’s within the sound of my voice. So let’s welcome the most decorated high school player in the history of high school football, two-time Heisman trophy winner, three-time national championship winner, and the number one pick in the NFL draft, Matthew ‘the Rocket’ Rising, back to the field he helped build.”
The crowd hit their feet and began stomping the stands. “Rocket! Rocket! Rocket!”
We sat safe and alone atop the Bucket. It was a fun moment.
The announcer returned, and we watched as Ray ran out onto the field, carrying something about the size of a bath towel. He spoke into the microphone. “Rocket, I know you can hear me. I been waiting a long time to say this.” He turned toward us, and even from this far we could see his smile spread from ear to ear. “We’d like to re-retire your jersey.”
The crowd liked that, too.
Audrey was sitting between my legs. My arms wrapped around her. I whispered, “Probably be a good idea. The thing didn’t smell too well then. Can’t imagine what it smells like after a decade.”
The game continued, and the announcer’s words echoed in my ears. I heard his words describing me, but they seemed hollow. As if they somehow didn’t fit. Clothes that were the wrong size. Yes, that Matthew Rising had walked into prison, but I’m not sure that Matthew Rising walked out. What I’d learned since my release was that an entire population had risen up around what I might have done had I played. They’d conjectured and theorized ad nauseam. They’d spent the time between my incarceration to my release thinking about me playing, dreaming about me playing, and regretting that I hadn’t played. They’d even included my persona in video games. From bars to living rooms, park benches, and board rooms, all had been filled with this conversation.
When I walked out a free man, I walked into the middle of a conversation that had been running a long time. A conversation about me that had not included me—in which I’d played no part. Had no say. The barrage of questions via the media was constant, and it caught me and us off guard. In prison, I felt forgotten and, in order to survive the hell in which I was living, I’d thrown daily with Gage. Laid down my dreams. Sweated out my anger. The football-loving public had not done so. A few diehards were still packing in the beer and wearing my jerseys. Selling them on the Internet. As if it mattered. We quickly learned that they just couldn’t understand how I’d so easily given it up. They saw me throwing in the prison video, they saw my tryout with Dee, and they thought for sure my goal was to pick up where I’d left off.
This left me scratching my head, so we kept our distance from any and all crowds.
When the stands had emptied and Dee had finished with interviews and responding to questions about our whereabouts, Wood, Dee, and Ray met us on the fifty. A tender and quiet homecoming. Wood didn’t need to ask us how we were doing. Our faces said it. Dee had showered and was wearing his letterman jacket. The same one he wore for this week’s cover of SI. He handed Audrey the game ball. “For you.”
She stood holding the ball, turning it in her hands. After a moment, she kissed him. “I’ve always been a sucker for quarterbacks.”
Wood interrupted the long silence and held up his phone. He said, “I know you two want to take some time. You got it. All you want. I’m just registering it on your radar that my phone is ringing off the hook.” It vibrated as he was speaking. He turned the face plate toward us. “See what I mean?”
I’d thought long and hard about this. If the last few days had shown me anything, they’d proven that Audrey was still pretty raw. Her emotions were all over the board, and we needed time. I wanted to rent a house in Alaska, fifty miles from anyone, and spend time remembering us.
I said, “I know you all would like to see me—” I smiled. “Try out for real. Join a team. But we… need to take a year, or two or th
ree or ten, and just remember each other. Be married. Laugh. Forget… all this.” I wrapped my arm around Audrey. “A few years back, I laid that dream down. I have no idea what I’ll do, but… Audrey is my focus. My whole world.” I turned to Wood. “Can you just tell them that for me?”
He nodded.
We stood there, our little huddle. Audrey’s eyes scanned the stands, the field, the world around us. She looked at me, licked her thumb, and then wiped something off my cheek. Wood laughed. “Not much changes.”
She shrugged. “Well, I can’t have a crusty hanging off his face.”
Dee shook his head. “Nice, Coach. Really. Way to represent.”
Audrey squared to me and chose her words. A wrinkle formed between her eyes. She stood tall. Not below me, not above, but eye level. Alongside. “Matthew, do you love me?”
The others inched forward, wanting to hear my response. I wasn’t sure where this was going and wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation in front of all of them. I eyed them and then nodded at her.
I studied her, realizing how, in just a week, she’d transformed from the frail woman in her cottage chewing on sleeping pills to the woman standing before me. I’d take either, but I much preferred this one. She stepped closer, the intensity spreading across her face, and poked me in the chest. “Matty… do you love me?”
The first time didn’t bother me so much, but the second time was starting to ding me a bit. I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at. I whispered beneath my breath, “Honey—”
Her head tilted to one side. Her voice was soft. The words spilled from her heart and cracked when they exited her mouth. “Do you love me?”
“Audrey, I—”
What happened next I did not see coming. In hindsight, Wood and Dee did because they were filming it with their phones. She set the ball in my hand, kissed me, and stepped back. “Show me.”
Dee posted the video on YouTube, Wood began answering his phone, and life quickly returned to crazy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
One week later
The lady dusted my collar. She was new. Not the same intern. “Moldone’s Off 5th?”
Audrey sat next to me smirking. The lady was commenting on my pinstriped suit. “Yes,” I said. “I asked Moldone if he had any prison orange, but he was fresh out.”
She chuckled. One of the things I’d learned in a short period of time was that, given everything that had happened, people didn’t know how to react around me. Most everyone had thought, with good reason, for longer than the last decade, that I was/am a deviant pervert who should have been buried beneath the prison. That mind-set takes more than a few seconds to change. Given that, I tried to make folks comfortable, and talking about where I’d come from in stark contrast to where I was had become a fun and ice-breaking way to help others with the transition.
She laughed, raised an eyebrow, and looked at Audrey. “Not sure about orange, but this color makes your eyes dance.”
She gave me my marching orders about the audience, when they’d be coming in, about the extra security guards who’d been brought in to make sure no one got out of hand, and that Jim would be walking through “that door” in twenty-three minutes.
I pointed at the audience who’d just walked in and were flashing cameras. “You mind if I mingle?”
“Help yourself.”
I stood, unplugged my cord—which struck me—and then walked over to the railing where folks sat in hushed silence. I put my hands together and couldn’t contain my smile. “The last time we did this, things didn’t end too well. I’d like to remedy that.” I scanned the crowd, but there were so many spotlights shining down that I couldn’t make out faces. I turned to the producer’s box, pointed, and mouthed the word, “Lights.” The lighting instantly changed and lit the audience. “Ah, much better.” I turned to a guy up front and extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Matthew Rising.”
He hopped up, shook my hand, and patted me on the shoulder. He had two chins, more like jowls, and they bounced as he smiled and began speaking ninety miles an hour. The rest of the night went much like that. I found people genuinely happy, happy for me, for us. And just as many people wanted to talk with Audrey. Take our picture. Not just mine. After ten or fifteen minutes, they could have turned off the lights in the studio because my wife was glowing.
Having taken several pictures, I stopped and spoke above the crowd. “This is going to sound a bit crazy, but prison does crazy better than any place I’ve ever been—” Laughter, I’d learned, was a pressure valve to a room, and it was true here. They laughed. And in that laughter I heard a silent whisper of collective thanks—Thanks for not holding it against us that we thought such horrible things about you all this time. It was true. This is life. Welcome to Earth. I continued. “Last time I was here, there was a kid, Mac was, or is, his name. He’s not—”
Before I finished speaking, I heard a door shut behind me. A guy wearing an ESPN hat walked out of the producer’s box. The light was shining in my face, so he walked around front where I could see him. He held his hat in one hand and extended the other. “Matthew.”
I shook his hand. “Hey, Mac, it’s good to see you again.”
He nodded, tried to speak but couldn’t, and motioned to the producer’s box. Then he pointed to the large screen beyond the stage. A video flashed. The last time I was here. The video playing above me was of my meeting Mac. Our conversation. Me signing the ball. Taking a picture with him. When it finished, he said, “You’re the reason I’m working here. I’m one of the assistant producers on the show tonight. And I cannot tell you what a privilege and honor it is to have you back.”
Sometimes handshakes just don’t cut it, so I hugged him. In a strange way, I was proud of him. He turned to an assistant, who tossed him an NFL ball, and he held it out to me. “You mind?”
“Love to.”
I signed several balls for the audience, took what felt like a hundred or so pictures, and the iconic Jim Kneels walked in. We were scurrying to get back to the stage when he held up a stop-sign hand and said, “I’ll come to you.” A laugh. “You’ve earned it.”
The audience laughed along. For thirty minutes, Jim and I signed balls, took pictures, and talked with the audience. It was magical.
Finally, he gestured to the stage. “Shall we?”
The assistant plugged me back in and we sat, Audrey slipping her hand in mine. The red light flashed to green, Jim looked at his notes but thought better of it and set them down. Deliberately. He turned to me. “Where were we?”
A great opening. The ice shattered. The audience stood to their feet, and it was several minutes before Jim could quiet them. He turned to Mac in the production booth and spoke with a smile. “We might need more than an hour.”
Finally, I spoke. My emotions had been all over the place, and I’d learned that it didn’t take much to poke them through the surface. “We were talking about dreams, and what happens when they all come true.”
The audience hit their feet again.
Audrey sat on one side. Dee on the other.
Jim smiled, still leading the dance. “A little gray in your face since I saw you last.”
“Prison does that to you.”
Jim countered. “Let’s play a word game. Tell me the first words that come to mind when I say words like… prison.”
“Loneliness untold.”
“Football.”
“Joy unspeakable.”
“Audrey.”
“Promise kept.”
He paused, letting my answer hang in the air, shifting gears.
“Word is that you’re leaving this room en route to a building a few blocks down the street where a few folks are waiting on you.”
“We are.”
“And those contracts are worth a lot.”
I smiled. “That’s what I’m told.”
“Do you realize that you are, as of this moment, one of the most highly sought after endorsers of products ever?”
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“No, I didn’t, but remind me when we leave here and I’ll speak to my agent about his abject failure at mentioning that fact.”
The camera panned to Wood who stood with hands folded. One of the assistants held a microphone to his mouth so the audience could hear him. Wood said, “I didn’t want his head to get swollen.”