“Yeah, they keep hoping the women’s pro league will revive. There’re some top-notch women players in high school and college with no place to go.”

Joan put her notebook away and told a photographer to get us out on the court for some shots. We eight old-timers straggled out to the gym floor, Caroline worrying around us like an overzealous terrier.

Diane picked up a ball and dribbled it behind her, under her legs, then bounced it to me. I turned and shot. The ball caromed from the backboard and I ran in to get it and dunk it. My old teammates gave me a ragged hand.

The photographer took some pictures of us together, then of Diane and me playing one-on-one under the net. The crowd got into it a little, but their real interest was on the current team. When the Lady Tigers took the floor in their warm-up suits, they got a big round. We worked out a little with them, but turned the floor over to them as soon as possible: this was their big night.

When the girls from visiting St. Sophia came out in their red-and-white sweats, I slid back to the locker room and started to change back to my civvies. Caroline found me as I finished tying my neck scarf.

“Vic! Where are you going? You know you promised to come over to see Ma after the game!”

“I said I’d try, if I could stay down here.”

“She’s counting on seeing you. She can hardly get out of bed she’s in such bad shape. This really matters to her.”

In the mirror I could see her face flush and her blue eyes darken with the same hurt look she used to give me when she was five and I wouldn’t let her tag along with my friends. I felt my temper rise with twenty-year-old irritation.

“Did you arrange this basketball farce to manipulate me into visiting Louisa? Or did that only come to you later?”

The flush deepened to scarlet. “What do you mean, farce? I’m trying to do something for this community. I’m not a la-di-da snot going off to the North Side and abandoning people to their fate!”

“What, you think if I’d stayed down here I could’ve saved Wisconsin Steel? Or stopped the assholes at USX from striking one of the last operating plants around here?” I grabbed my peajacket from the bench and angrily thrust my arms into it.

“Vic! Where are you going?”

“Home. I have a dinner date. I want to change clothes.”

“You can’t. I need you,” she wailed loudly. The big eyes were swimming with tears now, a prelude to a squawk to her mother or mine that I was being mean to her. It brought back all the times Gabriella had come to the door—saying “What difference can it make to you, Victoria? Take the child with you”—so forcibly it was all I could do not to slap Caroline’s wide trembling mouth.