#11 Christina

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Speaker 14 Hello? Hey, do you have a copy of T V Guide?

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Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 8 Why?

Speaker 14 I can't find my copy and I was wondering what was on T V.

Speaker 16 Don't you don't you remember don't you remember

Speaker 17 don't you d wait wait don't you remember calling people up on the phone?

Speaker 1 I do remember that, yeah.

Speaker 14 Just just to see what was on? I remember calling out my Aunt Tilly because because

Speaker 14 I was too lazy to get up off the couch to look for the TV guide, so I just called her up.

Speaker 5 The poor woman could hardly walk, and she had to search around for a TV guide.

Speaker 8 All right, I gotta go.

Speaker 14 From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Christina.

Speaker 14 This is the best of all possible worlds, my father was fond of saying.

Speaker 14 The words were spoken contentedly, often while reclining in a barca lounger, belt buckle undone after a large meal of baked beans and lamb chops. But what did my father know of other worlds?

Speaker 14 He'd held down the same job and was married to the same woman for decades. Plus, he hardly left the house.

Speaker 14 But what he did know was that this world had one thing over all of those other worlds. It existed.
For my father, that was enough to make it best.

Speaker 14 I, on the other hand, am not won over so easily. Sure, existence is a nice quality.

Speaker 14 a fine quality, but going so far as to call a world that contains both soul patches and puddles the best possible anything seems a little extreme.

Speaker 14 And so imagining other worlds, the same only better, is just too irresistible, in spite of the pain such thinking inevitably invites.

Speaker 14 Why don't we start from the beginning?

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 14 This is Christina, and like me, she knows this world can use a few tweaks. Overall, she says, her life hasn't been a bad one.
It's just not the one she was meant to live.

Speaker 14 She's worked as a waitress, a receptionist, as a home care worker. The kinds of jobs you do, but not necessarily the kind you dream about.
Lately, she's been helping run her husband's company.

Speaker 1 It's a disc golfing backpack company.

Speaker 14 Sorry, say that again. It's a what?

Speaker 1 Disc golf backpack.

Speaker 15 What is company?

Speaker 14 What is disc golf?

Speaker 1 It's like ball golf, but instead of balls and clubs, you have frisbees.

Speaker 14 When you say ball golf, you're talking about golf golf.

Speaker 1 Like regular golf, yeah.

Speaker 18 Okay, I've never heard it referred to, distinguished as ball golf, but I love it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, only disc golfers call it ball golf.

Speaker 14 But how do you, so how do you get a frisbee in a golf hole?

Speaker 1 No, it's actually not a hole, it's a basket.

Speaker 14 Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 14 Before she started pining after better worlds, Christina was focused on just one, the world of small town western Canada.

Speaker 1 I lived with my mom. She was a single mom.
My dad left when I was around one.

Speaker 1 And my mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Speaker 14 Christina was just a kid, so a lot of it's now fuzzy. But she remembers bits of things.
Her mom going off her meds and beginning to hear voices.

Speaker 14 Her mom waking her in the middle of the night and saying they had to leave right away. She remembers running with her mom down dark streets.

Speaker 1 She started becoming violent and she would just... you know, hit me with the phone handle.
Or this one time she came after me with a high-heeled shoe.

Speaker 1 There's no food in the house. She wouldn't do laundry.

Speaker 1 Like the dirty clothes would pile up in the living room. Like I remember this massive mound of dirty clothes.

Speaker 1 And I remember this kid made fun of me for having dirty pants. And so I started stealing clothes just so I could have clean clothes to go to school.

Speaker 14 When you're a kid trying to survive on your own, the unthinkable can start to seem normal. To escape her house, Christina took a job caring for two boys not much younger than herself.

Speaker 14 She became a 12-year-old live-in nanny.

Speaker 1 So I ended up moving in with this family and looking after the boys.

Speaker 1 They paid me a little bit, and I quit school to be a nanny.

Speaker 14 When she stopped showing up at school, social services removed Christina from the nannying house. But instead of bringing her back to her mom, they took her to a foster home.

Speaker 14 She was sent to live with an older couple and their grandson. They lived on the fancier side of town in a house decorated with candle holders and decorative pistols.

Speaker 14 The foster mother was a woman named Isabel. Her grandson, David, was the golden boy who could do no wrong.
From day one, Christina struggled for Isabel's approval.

Speaker 1 My foster mother and I kind of butted heads a little bit,

Speaker 5 or a lot.

Speaker 14 Although Isabel was only an inch taller, Christina was scared of her. Her foster mother communicated through rules and punishments.

Speaker 1 She was very strict. If I was five minutes late for curfew, I would be grounded for a month.
It felt like I was always grounded and

Speaker 1 afraid all the time and kind of walking on eggshells and yeah, just feeling always really intimidated and

Speaker 1 scared. I was always scared.

Speaker 14 And when she got scared, Christina would go silent. As a result, she never once stood up to Isabel.

Speaker 14 It was while living in Isabel's world that another better world presented itself to Christina. A world with rules that were easy to understand.

Speaker 14 A world where someone was always keeping score and keeping things fair. This was the 84 by 50 foot world of a basketball court.

Speaker 1 I can't explain how much I was obsessed with basketball. I would practice at like six in the morning at the school.
I would practice on weekends.

Speaker 1 I'd watch the NBA games with Clyde the Glide and Charles Barkley. And then my name was in the paper a few times.
I think I have some paper clippings of like high scoring.

Speaker 16 I loved, loved, loved basketball.

Speaker 14 On the basketball court, Christina was never scared. It was a place where for the first time in her life, she felt in control and confident.

Speaker 14 Her foster brother, David, a popular jock, spent hours helping her get better. She joined a team and quickly became a high scorer.
Eventually, she was made team captain.

Speaker 1 They would always put me inside like I would always have to guard the post.

Speaker 14 When Christina talks about basketball, she lights up. And I want to encourage her to keep talking by asking questions.

Speaker 14 But my only real knowledge of basketball comes from watching the Harlem Globetrotters. I was in my 30s before I learned it was illegal to bring stilts onto the court.

Speaker 14 So my questions are limited.

Speaker 18 Were you tall?

Speaker 1 No, I'm only 5'6.

Speaker 1 But I guess I kind of had this unrealistic

Speaker 1 view of myself where I thought I was taller than I was.

Speaker 17 Because

Speaker 1 off court I was like kind of meek and

Speaker 1 I just follow the crowd and I wouldn't like create any waves. I didn't really have an opinion.
But on the court, I was a force to be reckoned with. It was like the only time where I felt powerful.

Speaker 14 It was around this time that a plan began to take shape. If she kept practicing and kept winning, she'd get a basketball scholarship.
Christina knew that was her only hope of getting into college.

Speaker 1 I wanted to get out of that circle of welfare and illness and living from paycheck to paycheck and just feeling, just being poor.

Speaker 16 it sucked

Speaker 14 which brings us to the moment that 30 years later Christina still can't stop thinking about she'd just come home from school when Isabel called her into the kitchen sat her down at the table and presented her with an ultimatum she said you have to get your grades up you have to work harder at school

Speaker 1 and so in order for me to be able to play basketball the following year which would have been 11th grade i had to have an average of a b in every class But I was really bad at math and chemistry and

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I didn't make it.

Speaker 1 I wasn't allowed to play basketball.

Speaker 14 What she remembers most about that time was watching a lot of TV and overeating. And the chores.

Speaker 14 After forcing Christina to quit the basketball team, Isabel handed her chores that felt like ironic punishments from the Judy Bloom version of Dante's Inferno.

Speaker 14 She had to bake cookies for the family, but because of her weight gain, she wasn't allowed to eat any.

Speaker 14 And when she dusted the house, Isabel instructed her to pick up David's basketball trophies, dust each one, and dust the shelf underneath.

Speaker 14 All the while, Christina felt her loss acutely of basketball and the better world it promised.

Speaker 1 She took something from me that I that I've not been able to get back.

Speaker 14 What is that thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I don't even know. I don't, I don't, when I say that out loud, it sounds ridiculous.

Speaker 1 But it feels like

Speaker 1 that passion for something,

Speaker 1 it gashed this huge dream that I had for my life.

Speaker 14 Christina still wonders why. Why did Isabel take away basketball? The only thing that really mattered to her, that would have given her a better life.

Speaker 14 But all these years, she's been too afraid to ask.

Speaker 1 She's going to be 95 in July.

Speaker 1 The thought of talking to her about it petrifies me a little bit. Like, there's still a part of me that is scared of her, which is ridiculous.

Speaker 14 And what, um,

Speaker 14 what do you want?

Speaker 1 I think, yeah, I think I want to know

Speaker 1 why she made my life so difficult. If it was just to

Speaker 1 break me down, if she had some kind of thing against me.

Speaker 14 And what do you want to hear her say?

Speaker 1 I guess I want to just hear her say that she just genuinely wanted me to have better grades.

Speaker 1 But I know that that's just such BS.

Speaker 1 For whatever reason, I've let go of a lot of things that have happened, but for whatever reason, this one thing, the basketball thing, not letting me play basketball-I'm having such a hard time letting go of that and forgiving her.

Speaker 16 I want to let it go.

Speaker 14 So, you want to go talk to her?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And you, and you want me to come?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 14 I get really mealy-mouthed when I'm in the same room as like strong-willed, scary older women. I'll tell you that right now.
I'm not going to be much help.

Speaker 15 So, we're doing it.

Speaker 14 It sounds like we're doing it.

Speaker 14 All right. right.
We're going to go talk to that scary lady.

Speaker 14 After the break, how much mincing can a mealy mouth mince when a mealy mouth meets a menacing miss? Who writes this stuff?

Speaker 14 I guess I do.

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Speaker 14 Once I gave Christina my word that I'd help, I approached CEO and Gimlet founder Alex Bloomberg to ask if he could fly me to the British Columbian interior to confront a 95-year-old woman about something she may or may not have said some 30 years ago, to which Alex asked, Why are you always standing just outside the door whenever I get out of the bathroom?

Speaker 14 And I said it was a coincidence, although I might have pronounced it coinky-dink, to be playful.

Speaker 14 And he asked how long this trip would take me out of the office, and I said a week, and he said to take longer if I needed it. So I was off to Canada.

Speaker 4 Nice to meet you too.

Speaker 14 I meet Christina and her husband Levi at the Kelowna airport in British Columbia. They just flown in from Portland and the look of trust on their faces is daunting.

Speaker 14 When meeting new people, especially people I'm about to help, I'm more comfortable with looks of skepticism or anticipatory disappointment. Trust was disconcerting.

Speaker 14 Yes, I have a reservation. It was an hour and a half drive to Isabel's, so we made our way to the airport rental desk to get a car.

Speaker 3 What's your last name?

Speaker 21 Goldstein, G-O-L-D.

Speaker 22 Can I just ask what that is there?

Speaker 14 Oh, it's just we're doing a radio story, so I'm just gonna.

Speaker 4 Do you mind turning that off and putting that away from you. Yeah.

Speaker 14 If I couldn't even stand up to the car rental clerk, what hope did I have of helping Christina stand up to Isabel?

Speaker 22 It's hot in here.

Speaker 5 All of a sudden.

Speaker 14 It's been well over two years since Christina's seen Isabel. She's feeling anxious, so I try to keep the mood positive.

Speaker 14 I bet the thrift stores are really good around here.

Speaker 14 I point out foreign license plates, and because we're in a foreign country, there are many.

Speaker 21 Pretty.

Speaker 14 Have you guys been watching this show called

Speaker 21 Little Big Lies?

Speaker 21 Or Big Little Lies?

Speaker 9 Or

Speaker 9 Little Big Lies?

Speaker 4 That'll set?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 14 Isabel lives on the ground floor of a squat apartment block, mostly inhabited by seniors.

Speaker 14 We wait. When no one answers, we ring the bell.

Speaker 14 The door opens.

Speaker 14 I heard you the first time, Isabel says. Christina smiles.

Speaker 14 In spite of herself, she can't help but get a a kick out of Isabel.

Speaker 14 Isabel peers up at us from behind her walker. Christina's husband, Levi, makes introductions.
This is Jonathan, Isabel. Hi.
Hi, Jonathan. How are you doing?

Speaker 4 Oh.

Speaker 14 That O is me reacting to Isabel's handshake, a surprisingly powerful thing that yanks me through the doorframe.

Speaker 14 Although a diminutive woman with white puffy hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Isabel's just established herself as the alpha. Come on in.
Nice to meet you.

Speaker 21 Nice to meet you, too. Thanks for for having me.

Speaker 21 Okay.

Speaker 8 You seem to be doing great.

Speaker 8 I'm doing not bad for my age, I guess.

Speaker 14 Isabel's apartment is tidy and dim, decorated with candles that haven't been lit in years.

Speaker 14 We slowly follow her down a narrow hallway to her living room, where she seats herself in a faded blue mechanized armchair.

Speaker 14 On the drive over, Christina mentioned that Isabel is legally blind, but I misremember this as Isabel being legally deaf, so I compliment her on how well she's following along.

Speaker 14 Well, I'm not talking very loud, and you've been able to hear everything, so I didn't say there was anything wrong with my ears.

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 14 And you did not

Speaker 14 to recover from this faux pas, I offer Isabel a chance to feel my face, run her hands through my beard, which is something I think I saw done in the Miracle Worker.

Speaker 14 Well, if ever you want to feel my stubble or I don't go running around feeling beards,

Speaker 14 I decide that now's as good a time as any to offer around the airport treats I bought during my layover. I brought some refreshments.

Speaker 14 Since I don't want to put Isabel out by asking for a party tray, I scoot my travel socks and underwear to the side of my backpack and proffer them straight from the bag. Some

Speaker 14 chocolate-covered nuts and such.

Speaker 8 Not right now, thank you.

Speaker 22 No, okay.

Speaker 14 Okay. I'll leave them in the bag.

Speaker 14 If I've learned anything from my work in the business of forcing people to ask terrifying questions, it was that it's always best to just get it over with. Ask the question, why did you ruin my life?

Speaker 14 Get the answer, and head back to the hotel bar to eat the juiciest, fattiest T-bone steak that Gimlet Media's $14 per diem allows. But staging is everything.
I need to be offhand.

Speaker 22 Subtle.

Speaker 5 Do you...

Speaker 14 Christina, do you have anything that you...

Speaker 14 that you want to ask about or

Speaker 14 Christina looks down at her hands and tightens her lips. Of course I understand her hesitation.
Isabel is even more intimidating in person than Christina made her out.

Speaker 14 And nothing about being here can possibly feel much like coming home. The walls and shelves are loaded with photos of Isabel's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Speaker 14 But there isn't a single photo anywhere of her only foster child, Christina.

Speaker 14 To break the silence, I ask Isabel why she originally took Christina into her home in the first place.

Speaker 8 One of my children left a child for me to raise, my grandson.

Speaker 14 This was David.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So I thought life with just my husband and I,

Speaker 8 we were both older, it would be kind of very dull for him.

Speaker 8 So I thought that having someone else around the house would make it a little more homey for him.

Speaker 8 But I hadn't chosen Christina. Christina was brought to me and

Speaker 8 she was just there. this wild-looking thing.

Speaker 8 She needed a little bit of training to live in a home. Obviously, she hadn't been brought up with anything.
I just thought any child living under my roof had to be taught something.

Speaker 14 Meaning, like, what kind of things? Like, you mean normal, like, rules?

Speaker 22 Well, rules, yeah.

Speaker 8 I don't think that our rules were terribly strict, were they?

Speaker 6 I mean, I felt like they were strict.

Speaker 8 Well, maybe you thought so, but most kids do.

Speaker 8 But they were the same rules my kids had.

Speaker 14 Christina hesitates. You can see it's hard for her to talk back to Isabel even now.
But then she says.

Speaker 6 But David didn't have rules.

Speaker 8 No, he didn't need any.

Speaker 8 He is the most perfect person I've ever raised.

Speaker 14 Christina, another person she happened to have raised, is seated a couple feet away from her. Christina stares ahead blankly, not saying anything.
So I press Isabel.

Speaker 14 Well, he must have done something wrong.

Speaker 5 I mean, he's only human.

Speaker 8 Very little. Oh, you'd be surprised how perfect he was.

Speaker 14 Was that hard, though, being

Speaker 14 like side by side with someone who was just so...

Speaker 8 No, I think it was good for her.

Speaker 14 Christina,

Speaker 14 is that how you feel?

Speaker 22 It was hard. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It was really hard.

Speaker 14 Something else that's been hard is finding the courage to ask the question that brought her here. Christina gives it a shot.

Speaker 14 But after some throat clearing, again, she goes silent.

Speaker 8 Go ahead, ask.

Speaker 6 I think

Speaker 6 the one thing that I

Speaker 6 have kind of always wondered is: do you remember, I think it was in 10th grade,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 I had been playing basketball, and you told me that I had to get my grades up or I couldn't play basketball anymore. Do you remember that?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 6 Okay, so I didn't get my grades up, and I had to quit the team.

Speaker 8 I don't remember that at all. You don't? No.

Speaker 6 I still,

Speaker 6 it was devastating for me.

Speaker 8 Why didn't you get your grade job then?

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 14 I asked Christina if she could explain to Isabel why losing basketball hurt so much.

Speaker 4 Not without crying.

Speaker 6 I felt like

Speaker 6 it was like the one thing that I was really good at.

Speaker 14 Are you surprised to hear Christina talk about how much she loved basketball? Like, was that something that you knew back then?

Speaker 8 I didn't know it, no.

Speaker 14 Did Christina, did you ever express it?

Speaker 8 I don't think she did.

Speaker 6 I don't think so.

Speaker 8 No, I don't think you did.

Speaker 6 I think the reason why, like,

Speaker 6 it still affects me now is because I didn't fight for it.

Speaker 14 And how could she have? She never felt like she had the right to stomp her feet, to slam the bedroom door, in so many words, to act like someone's kid.

Speaker 14 I thought that maybe if I could get Isabel to put herself in Christina's shoes, it might help her understand.

Speaker 14 Was there anything that you can think of that's comparable from your own life, Isabel? Like something that you really felt very passionate about, like the thing that you really

Speaker 14 was your

Speaker 14 great love?

Speaker 8 Not really. I always wanted to go to school more than I did.

Speaker 8 I really wanted a good education, which out in the country you weren't able to get.

Speaker 14 Her father was a rancher, Isabel says. And her mom died when she was little.
So her dad raised the kids by himself. And Isabel, being the eldest, had a lot of responsibility.

Speaker 8 I used to miss school every year when I got us to be a certain age and had to herd cattle.

Speaker 8 So I'd miss about

Speaker 8 two months or a month of school every year when I was old enough to do this.

Speaker 8 But I was first in my class from the day I started till the day I finished. I was never anything but first in my class.

Speaker 14 Was that typical that a lot of kids in the class have to miss?

Speaker 8 No, just me.

Speaker 8 And my, well, we were brought up by our dad. Men bring up children differently than women.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And what ways? How do you mean?

Speaker 8 I mean, my dad didn't teach me to ride horseback. He just threw me on a horse and told me to go.

Speaker 8 You know, a woman wouldn't do that, I don't think.

Speaker 8 Not likely.

Speaker 8 My father was quite fond of me, actually.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 14 How far did you go in school?

Speaker 8 Just grade nine. I took grade nine by correspondence.

Speaker 14 So you didn't, you never ended up getting the

Speaker 14 high school degree?

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 8 Yeah, school was an important thing to me because I felt that's how you'd make your living.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 8 But I remember when I was through school, my stepmother looking in the paper, and she found a dishwashing job for me. She thought that all I was capable of was washing dishes in some restaurant.

Speaker 8 I felt very insulted.

Speaker 8 It always surprised me when kids didn't want to get all the education they possibly could.

Speaker 14 Isabel motions towards Christina.

Speaker 8 There's only so far you can go in basketball.

Speaker 8 I always felt your education was more important.

Speaker 8 But as a kid, sometimes

Speaker 8 you don't see that.

Speaker 8 I knew I tried to teach her to be self-sufficient because I knew that she'd only have herself to depend upon.

Speaker 14 Isabel wanted to give Christina something she never got herself, a good education. But by depriving Christina of basketball, Isabel took away just that.
At the time, though, she didn't know it.

Speaker 14 What Isabel did know was that when Christina showed up at her door 30 years ago, she was already in her 60s. Isabel was old, and if she were to die, Christina would be left all alone.

Speaker 14 She'd only become a foster child because no one in her extended family had stepped up to take her in.

Speaker 14 She had no one else.

Speaker 14 What did you know about Christina's childhood before she met you?

Speaker 8 Not much of anything that I can remember.

Speaker 8 Like her mother was mentally ill. I guess he knows that, does he?

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I lost my mother when I was five, and my father eventually had a nervous breakdown, so I knew what it was like to live with a mentally challenged person.

Speaker 8 What was it like?

Speaker 8 Terrible. It was horrible.

Speaker 8 You didn't know if someone was going to kill you today or tomorrow or what the heck was going to happen.

Speaker 14 That's not an exaggeration? You really were?

Speaker 8 No, it's not an exaggeration. I remember taking my little brother and sister outside and trying to hide them.

Speaker 8 He was left with five little children.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And he was terrified that they were going to take the kids away from him.

Speaker 8 I used to sit by his bed and hold his hand. And one day he said to me, Isabel, why do you keep holding my hand?

Speaker 8 And in my own way, I was trying to let him know that we all loved him.

Speaker 14 Isabel eventually placed her father in a mental hospital.

Speaker 8 I admitted him.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 14 And you were how old?

Speaker 8 At that time, I was about 14.

Speaker 14 Wow, that's a big burden.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it was.

Speaker 8 And I thought, here when I'm 14, what the hell am I doing here?

Speaker 14 All the while, as Isabel talks, Christina, seated in an armchair beside her, listens quietly, her hands gripping the armrests. Without looking at Isabel, She makes her presence known.

Speaker 23 I have many memories of visiting my mom in the mental hospital when I was young, like seven, eight, nine, kind of age ten.

Speaker 6 It's weird. It's a really weird experience to go.

Speaker 1 Knowing that the other people are mentally unstable and could you can't predict what they're going to do.

Speaker 23 Yeah, and my mom was, you know, kind of a zombie because of all the medication.

Speaker 1 And obviously, it was like

Speaker 23 sad and upset that she had to be there and wasn't with me.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was an awful place.

Speaker 13 It makes you grow up way too fast.

Speaker 8 Yeah,

Speaker 8 that's right. I mean, I was never a kid until I got married and had my own kids.
And then I had a lot of fun raising my own children.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think that's why I was a nanny.

Speaker 6 Because I could be around kids and have a childhood with all these other children.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's what I...

Speaker 8 what I did. I grew up with my own children.
That's what was my childhood. Yeah.

Speaker 8 You know, I'd play with my children just like I was one of them.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I did the same thing.

Speaker 8 One day, one of the neighbors looked at me, one of the little girls, and she says, how old are you?

Speaker 14 These were stories that neither Christina nor Isabel had ever told each other. Watching them connect like this, it feels like a good time to to bring the subject back to basketball.

Speaker 14 How much over the past 30 years Christina's fretted over Isabel's decision. Knowing this now, I ask Isabel, would you have done things differently?

Speaker 8 Oh, I wished I had known more about it at the time, but I mean, I still have no regrets about it.

Speaker 14 It's as though Isabel just doesn't understand what the word regret means. So I offer a working definition.

Speaker 14 If we were to set off in a time machine where we could return to that time and Christina were to say,

Speaker 8 I know what you're saying,

Speaker 8 but frankly, I don't know what I'd do. You know, I really don't.

Speaker 8 It would depend what kind of a mood I'm in.

Speaker 14 If you were in the mood that you're in right now.

Speaker 8 I really have no idea.

Speaker 8 I could give you a lot of BS and tell you how good I would have been, but

Speaker 8 it wouldn't have been the truth.

Speaker 14 I think like a lot of people would just give Christina the BS.

Speaker 22 Yeah,

Speaker 8 I don't do that. I usually tell the truth.

Speaker 14 Like most, I can lie upwards of 10,000 times a day. It helps ease the friction of getting through life.
People ask how I am and I say fine. Does this jumpsuit make my ass look fat? And I say no.

Speaker 14 And so on, lying all the day long until bedtime. At which point, I'm not sure the lying stops.
I can probably lie in my dreams. In other words, I hold lying to be the greatest gift God gave to man.

Speaker 14 But even with all of our lies and best intentions, we still can't escape hurting one another.

Speaker 14 I don't think Isabel is a cruel woman, but I do think she knows that hurting people and being hurt is the price one pays for being human.

Speaker 8 There is nothing out of the ordinary in our lives, but just, you know, even ordinary lives are

Speaker 8 quite upsetting sometimes. It's a decision that was made when she was younger.
It wasn't the right one. But how many wrong decisions are made as we go along?

Speaker 8 Regretting something is a waste of time. You move on.

Speaker 8 Find something else to be passionate about.

Speaker 14 In spite of their similar childhoods, Isabel and Christina see the world so differently. Christina is a dreamer, and for her, the best possible world is the one that's always just out of reach.

Speaker 14 But for Isabel, it's not about pursuing the best possible world at all. It's about making the best of this world, the one you're stuck in, and evidently, with the people you're stuck with.

Speaker 8 I wouldn't look after her if, you know, if I didn't care about her, it would have been different, I think. You know, but I was interested in what she did and how she progressed.

Speaker 8 I wanted her to do well at school and do well at everything. And I was very proud of her when she did.

Speaker 8 She was with us a long time.

Speaker 8 Couldn't get rid of her.

Speaker 18 I'm just kidding.

Speaker 14 Isabel pauses, and then she says appraisingly, She deserves a good life.

Speaker 8 I do have one.

Speaker 22 Good.

Speaker 8 And I think it's better because she had some stability in it, which I feel she got in my house.

Speaker 22 I'll get on that side.

Speaker 14 We say our goodbyes and head to the car. Outside Isabel's, the parking lot has grown dark.
Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 14 As we get into the rental car, Christina lets out a sigh.

Speaker 14 Well, so how did how did you feel that about that?

Speaker 1 It was just really intense and there's a lot of things that she said that were like that were very hurtful to me.

Speaker 1 It's like she affected me tonight, but not in the way that she used to.

Speaker 8 I didn't get,

Speaker 1 I didn't get the fuzzy, teddy bear, cuddly

Speaker 1 thing, and that's okay that I didn't get that.

Speaker 1 But what I got was her, and

Speaker 1 it wasn't everything I needed.

Speaker 8 But I feel like

Speaker 1 that's

Speaker 8 how she shows love.

Speaker 1 And it's not with hugs and it's not with I love yous and it's not with

Speaker 1 praise necessarily either.

Speaker 1 It's in a way that I understand now, whereas before I just felt like she just didn't even like me.

Speaker 1 But now I can see that she loves me in her way

Speaker 1 and in the best way that she knows how.

Speaker 14 In the end, it seems like this is why Christina came here. Not to find out why Isabel made her stop playing basketball, but to find out whether Isabel loved her.

Speaker 14 And in her tough, straight-shooting, slightly scary way, it's pretty clear she does.

Speaker 14 Do you know why I want to go to Scott Hawk Park?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 14 It's a surprise.

Speaker 5 Uh-oh.

Speaker 14 It's not a big surprise. The next morning, before heading home, I take Christina and her husband Levi out to a nearby park.

Speaker 14 What foot it is? I don't know.

Speaker 14 I have a paper bag I've been carrying with me since Brooklyn.

Speaker 14 When the anticipation reaches its zenith, I reveal to Christina and Levi what's in the bag.

Speaker 14 A basketball. Which I think they'd sort of guessed since we were now standing by a basketball court.
And I was dribbling a spherical paper bag. I turned to Levi.

Speaker 14 Have you ever seen Christina play basketball before?

Speaker 14 Maybe not.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't think we've ever played.

Speaker 14 Christina says she hasn't played in over 10 years. She doesn't even watch basketball on TV anymore.
I hold out the ball, and Christina looks at it. Then she looks at Levi.

Speaker 14 And then she takes it from my hands.

Speaker 14 Check.

Speaker 14 Check.

Speaker 4 A little rusty.

Speaker 14 But when she gets going, it seems to come back to her.

Speaker 4 Oh, behind the back.

Speaker 5 A little behind the back.

Speaker 4 Spin move. Oh, behind the back again.

Speaker 24 Oh, shoot. Oh!

Speaker 4 It goes.

Speaker 4 What do you got?

Speaker 14 What do you got? Trash talking, calling her own shots, driving hard to the basket. There was a different side to Christina that was coming out on the court.
It happened suddenly and easily.

Speaker 4 I think you're waiting.

Speaker 6 I think it's 2-0 at this point. I don't think I've scored yet, have I?

Speaker 14 The best basketball players are said to have an almost supernatural ability to see a little ahead, to anticipate what will happen next.

Speaker 14 But Christina and Levi aren't that good, and so they play like a couple of kids for whom the future doesn't matter or the past. And in that space between, it seems like a pretty good life.

Speaker 14 Oh, that was close. No! For the win!

Speaker 23 You do.

Speaker 9 Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Speaker 9 Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit Take this moment to decide

Speaker 9 if we meant it if we tried

Speaker 9 But felt around for far too much

Speaker 9 from things that accidentally touched

Speaker 14 Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Caitlin Roberts.
Editing by Jorge Just, Alex Bloomberg, and Wendy Dorr.

Speaker 14 Special thanks to Emily Condon, Misha Gluberman, Stevie Lane, and Jackie Cohen. The show is mixed by Kate Belinski.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Edwin.

Speaker 14 Additional music credits for this episode can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight.

Speaker 14 Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com.

Speaker 14 We'll have a new hot puppy of an episode next week.

Speaker 8 So, Jonathan, you have a wife, I hear you say. Yes.

Speaker 8 Can't keep looking you over, Cat.

Speaker 14 I think I probably look best from your perspective.

Speaker 14 I think it's a good look for me.

Speaker 14 It's kind of blurry.

Speaker 7 Drew and Sue and Eminem's Minis.

Speaker 7 And baking the surprise birthday cake for Lou.

Speaker 7 And Sue forgetting that her oven doesn't really work.

Speaker 7 And Drew remembering that they don't have flour.

Speaker 5 And Lou getting home early from work, which he never does.

Speaker 7 And Drew and Sue using the rest of the tubes of Eminem's minis as party poppers instead.

Speaker 12 I think this is one of those moments where people say, it's the thought that counts.

Speaker 7 M ⁇ Ms, it's more fun together.

Speaker 24 Top reasons your career wants you to move to Ohio.

Speaker 13 So many amazing growth opportunities, high-paying jobs in technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering, life sciences, and more.

Speaker 13 You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong. Their careers all took off in Ohio, and yours can too.

Speaker 13 A job that can take you further and a place you can't wait to come home to. Have it all in the heart of it all.

Speaker 24 Launch your search at callohiohome.com.

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