by Emily Nemens
A subset of the wives decide to get their hair done. Not that it’s necessary—they’ll be pulling tops on and off all night—but because a blowout is fun. One of Jimmy Cardozo’s “girlfriends” is there, getting her hair reddened to the color the stylist calls cinnamon, and she squeals, foil wrappers shaking, when the group comes in. They vaguely remember meeting her at Liana’s party, but the girl, Cynthia, has their names down pat. The way the hellos go, the hugs and leading questions and wide, expectant smiles: Melissa has no choice but to invite her along. Cleat chaser, Melissa thinks, even as she says, “See you later, Cynth.”
* * *
Maggie’s house has an open floor plan, the kitchen’s marble island opening into the cathedral-ceilinged great room. That chef Liana used was not available, so Maggie offered the cute cheese guy at Whole Foods $300 to set up some finger food. He’s done well: the dining room table is decked out with a vertiginous cheese tower, a platter covered with an elaborate pattern of sushi, and a tray of jigsawed crudités.
Turns out Chad, that’s his name, is in design school. “Graduate degree in textiles, ma’am.” Maggie does not like being called ma’am under any circumstance, and a grimace floats over her face before passing back into a smile.
Chad has brought a friend, Eric—“painter, good at mixing things”—to man the bar, which is set with magnums of moscato, prosecco, and sauvignon, three oversize Grey Goose bottles lined up like so many members of the cavalry. When Maggie comes into the kitchen in her dress and heels, he is ready, and raises a tumbler in salute. “Miss Maggie”—slightly better than ma’am—“try this.”
He’s holding a caramel-colored cocktail, something that she can smell from four feet. “What is it?”
“I call it the Desert Sun. Similar to a sidecar, but with whiskey.”
Maggie accepts the glass and draws it to her lips, eyebrows going up at the sound of the doorbell. “Mmm. Thank you, Eric,” she says before clacking away. She swings through the living room on the way to the front, waving at Chantelle, Neiman’s underwear girl, who is laying out silk robes in emerald and sapphire and cabernet. “We good here?”
The woman smiles and nods, “Oh, yes.”
“Love that purple one,” Maggie says, pointing at the latest deposit on the footstool. “And try one of his deserted cocktails.” She raises the tumbler. “It’s delicious.” The doorbell peals again.
“I let myself in,” Melissa says from the foyer, just as Maggie reaches the front hall. Melissa is taking advantage of the night’s chill to wear a half-length mink; below it flashes the sequins and beads of a short, tight dress.
“Oh, you look fabulous,” Maggie says. “Let me take your coat.” Melissa is loath to part with it, but she reluctantly does. “It’ll be right over here,” Maggie assures before disappearing into a room-size hall closet. “Who did that?” she asks, her finger sticking out of the closet, wagging.
“Cavalli. You like?” Melissa does a subdued sashay and runs a hand over her beaded thigh. “You’re looking sexy as well. You send a selfie to Tomás?” Part of being a baseball wife: just enough distraction.
“Not yet.” Maggie pops out of the closet as a knock comes at the door. “Can you get that, Mel? I’ve got to check on something.”
Cynthia and Cecilia smile widely on the front stoop. “Hi!” Cynthia says. Her new red is garish, as is her dress, a low and short tube of sparkly fabric. She hugs Melissa. “It was great to see you this afternoon. Thank you so much for inviting me. Us.”
Like I had a choice, says the voice in Melissa’s head.
“Do you know Cecilia Vásquez? She’s Victor Vásquez’s wife. Have you seen him pitch? He’s a-maze-ing.”
“Isn’t that nice,” Melissa says, flipping through the games, trying to remember any that Hal did not start. She turns to Cecilia, small and pretty and impossibly young to be a colleague. “We haven’t been formally introduced.” Melissa reaches out. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Hello.” In order to shake hands, Cecilia shifts her load from her right hand to her left, and only then does Melissa see: she has brought the child. Melissa cannot hide her surprise at the bundle in the carrier.
“He’s asleep, no problem,” Cecilia says, her accent making itself apparent. “If he gets up I’ll—” she nods to her swollen breast.
“Sure. Well. Come in, come in.”
Melissa shows them through the foyer, eyes scanning desperately for Maggie. Who brings a baby to a lingerie party? The girl is herself too young to understand, of course; perhaps something has been lost in cultural translation. But still.
They step into the living room. “Maybe over there, in that corner?”
“Perfect.” The baby is beautiful, Melissa has to admit, an entirely round face, lips pushed together in a pout. Were her children ever so flawless? They must’ve been. Something about the silky smooth skin seems impossible here in Maggie’s cheese-tower house, even more exotic than Chantelle’s leopard-print thongs.
“Now,” Maggie appears from somewhere, clapping her hands together. “Who wants drinks?”
The noise stirs the baby, not into a cry but a wet gurgle. “Oh my,” Maggie says, approaching the carrier, a long, acrylic nail pointed toward the baby’s face. “Who do we have here?”
* * *
The women have moved from robes to rompers and are now into teddies, have drained two glasses or three. The baby has interrupted them only once, and only because he’d spit out his pacifier, more surprised than upset, and Cecilia calmed him easily. But Cecilia and baby Pedro are not the night’s only unexpected guests: half an hour ago Liana arrived, with another ex, a tall blonde from the Angels organization. While Liana has kept a decidedly low profile since her divorce, word is that this other woman, Tonya, was a Cinderella at Disney and is already trying to reenter baseball’s koi pond–size dating pool, with eyes on Ray Putney. “Bitch better stay away from my guy,” Lisa now says under her breath, holding her wineglass so tight her knuckles go white. Across the room, Tonya chats politely with Hillary about the traffic in Santa Monica.
Liana’s arrival also puts the kibosh on the wives’ latest gossip about her ex. Cynthia said she’d heard from a friend of a friend who worked at the casino that Jason’d frittered away all his money playing poker. Gambling! The women don’t believe it, or its source, this woman with Tabasco-red hair. “My friend says he has a debt collector out after him.” Cynthia looks like she’s enjoying this, but the women are incredulous—what Cynthia is describing is lurid, tawdry, the stuff of crime procedurals. “What do you think he was doing up at Taliesin? Sightseeing?”
“Ladies, look at what we have here.” Chantelle waves an elaborate red corset through the air, flicking her wrists like a matador. “Wouldn’t this do wonders in the bedroom?” The baseball wives snap back to attention, ask about other colors. Melissa knew this Cynthia was not to be trusted.
“Or maybe this?” Chantelle reveals another one-piece, pewter this time, ass-less save for the string of a thong. The wives tingle at the thought of wearing that when their husbands return from a two-week road trip. “Great support, push-up bra built right in.” Chantelle cups her own small but perky breasts. “He won’t be able to resist.”
A throaty mewl startles the wives, the wet gurgle giving voice to how more than a few of them feel. “Oh!” Cecilia says and pops up from the couch. “Lo siento. I mean, sorry.” She hurries to retrieve the child.
Quieting the boy, Cecilia settles into an armchair in the room’s far corner. Chantelle continues with the corsets, demonstrating snaps and clips and reversible ribbons.
“Oh my god!” Cynthia cries. She is not watching Chantelle’s rainbow of silks or still gossiping about Jason but staring at Cecilia in the corner, the girl’s shirtdress unbuttoned, her milk-swollen breast uncovered. Cynthia’s eyes are like dinner plates, her mouth a wide-open grin. “They’re huge!”
The whole room turns to look at Cecilia, her baby cradled in her arms. Her exposed breast is gia
nt, taut with milk, a latte color with a rose-pink areola. Instantly, the hearsay about Goodyear is forgotten, Liana’s vulnerability ignored, Tonya’s roving eye forgiven. In fact, for a moment, their interest in men slides right off the edge of their planet: this is something else, something better.
With their eyes on Cecilia, the wives know that nothing in Chantelle’s trunk will improve the young mother. She is, at this moment, perfect. The baseball wives feel awe at this, but also, and mostly, regret: for having zoomed by this chapter, for having avoided it completely, for having surgically replicated it in a way that will never feel quite right. There are different kinds of beauty, and this—
“What?” Melissa’s hiss interrupts the group reverie. Her words, dulled by three Desert Suns, are less crisp, less clipped than usual. “You’ve never seen a woman breastfeed before?” She has, and has forgotten it, the urgency and beauty of the act buried under everything else that has since come her way. She turns to Chantelle. “Chantelle, please continue.”
As the clerk drapes a rainbow of thongs across her forearm, the doorbell rings. “Another friend,” Melissa says, raising her eyebrows at Maggie. “Wonderful.”
Maggie shuffles into the front hall, returning with Eliza Summers and another woman. While the baseball wives are all wearing strappy dresses, ruffles and ribbons, this woman is in a plain pink suit coat and matching skirt. Melissa thinks she looks familiar but cannot place her.
“This is my friend,” Eliza says. “Candice.”
They sit down with the group. More thongs have appeared on Chantelle’s arm, the bright laces now stretching nearly up to her shoulder. “Candice, what do you do?” Maggie asks.
Melissa watches her carefully, hunting for a clue. Where is this woman from?
“I work in government.”
And with that, the pieces click into place: I want Candy!
Melissa stands, tells Chantelle to order her two of the thongs in cranberry, and asks Eliza to help her get some wine for their new friend. In the far corner of the room, kitchen sink running to cover their whispers, the inquiry begins: “You brought her here?”
“Why not? She wants to see the offerings.”
“She wants to hit us up for money. Arizona is off-limits.” The whiskey makes her tongue thick.
“This is not a campaign stop. I swear.” Eliza raises her right hand. The scar from last year’s car-battery burn is a pink shadow across her palm. “She wants to buy something for her girlfriend.”
“What! She’s gay? Oh, you’re despicable.”
“Marriage equality is important. It’s a big part of her platform.”
“She can marry a duck as far as I am concerned. But we’re talking about intimates here. It’s like inviting a rooster into the henhouse. Allowing the volleyball team’s towel boy into the girls’ locker room … letting a little boy make cupcakes.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.” Eliza frowns.
“Of course there will be trouble.”
“Lesbians wear teddies, too, Melissa. Lighten up.”
Instead, Melissa slams off the water and pivots to the bar. “Eric, I’ll have another—”
But Eric has left his post—Maggie made him and Chad vacate once the lingerie came out—so Melissa pours herself the best approximation of a Desert Sun she can manage: whiskey over rocks, a splash of lemon juice, sugar cube plunking to the bottom of her tumbler.
Gripping two wines, Eliza returns to the circle of women. Melissa has a sudden, pressing need for fresh air, and steps with her cocktail out onto the back patio. The yard is quiet, save for the gurgle of the hot tub. Steam spills off of it in thin, gauzy sheets. It’s chilly, and she wishes she had her beautiful coat.
Through the windows, Melissa can see the women admiring a slinky bra. Eliza is cajoling Candy to take off her jacket; below she is wearing a cream-colored camisole. Chantelle holds the bra up to the woman’s chest, and the baseball wives smile.
In another window, Cecilia sits in an armchair, her child on her lap, the chair’s reading light casting her in a warm glow. She looks like a Madonna, like a child herself, a doll. Was Melissa ever that young? That certain of herself, that unafraid of what the world might think? She wants to be Cecilia, to start again with a young husband, a new baby. How much she’d do differently.
Across the patio, the blue light of a giant television spills into the yard, the two-headed silhouette of Eric and Chad against the den’s six-foot TV. They are watching basketball, the Suns versus the Bulls. The Suns are ahead; she can read the score from here.
Melissa drinks the rest of her glass in a gulp. Now she does not need her jacket; the whiskey warms her from the inside.
“Hal wants to get a divorce,” she says to the potted aloe. There, she’s finally said it. But nothing happens, not a rustle in the pointy leaves, not a lightning strike, not anything. Just the steady gurgle of the hot tub, the hum and tick of the desert night. “He’s going to leave me.”
She’s not a crier, but she feels her eyes getting hot and heavy with liquid.
Candy says something funny and the baseball wives all burst into a laughter so loud it carries through the triple-pane glass and out onto the well-swept patio. The woman has charisma, Melissa will give her that. Inside, Candy holds up another bra, shimmies her shoulders. Another wave of laughter.
Melissa decides in that moment: they can all stay. The beautiful baby and the cleat chaser and the randy politician, all those women she hated and those she thought were her friends. Instead, she will go. She will slink back through the yard and up the hillside and through the desert mountains. She will go into the night, and no one, but no one, will notice she is gone.
SEVENTH
The Hohokam wanted more control than Flood or No Flood, and so developed technology to build canals. And not ditches or divots, the kind of grooves a focused batter can dig out with his cleat. Channels, fifty feet wide, twenty feet deep, gravity pulling water along for nearly twenty miles. That’s some sort of relay play, as good a 6–4–3 as the Lions’ own horn could ever hope to string together.
“Masters of the Desert,” that was another name for them—later. Then, they were just farmers, guys playing well—if not an undefeated season, then one where they sat comfortably at the top of the standings. Maize, beans, squash, and cotton grew where the bluegrass thrives today. They ate like sluggers at the midnight buffet, then traded away what they didn’t need for more of everything else. It was the kind of surplus that would make any owner lick his chops, thinking about all the players and coaches and real estate he could buy. The sort of excess that’d get a star’s agent on the phone, talking opportunities, talking five-year deals, talking championship rings.
The Hohokam weren’t just king-of-the-hill farmers and master engineers, they were ballplayers, too. The men and women both played sport—how’s that for Title IX? For the guys it was a game not unlike basketball, with a hoop and ball; the ladies had one with sticks, something more akin to field hockey. Ball fields popped up every three miles, up and down Salt River, built as regular as bus stops on the Scottsdale–Tempe–ASU line. And these were not just meadows with trampled deer grass and a couple of half-sunk tree limbs marking fair and foul. No, a Hohokam field was a dug-out oval coated in caliche, stretching anywhere from eighty to two hundred feet. That’s like the stretch from the plate to shallow center, nothing small about it. They even constructed sloped, rising sides round the field, so a crowd could gather, sit down, and watch. Not a lot different from Salt River’s own outfield lawn, the patchwork of beach blankets and picnic baskets that fans spread out today.
The Hohokam may have had a winning streak, but for Jason, the bright afternoons are getting darker and darker. What’s the opposite of a trading surplus? He’s liquidated all he can (the Cadillacs, the memorabilia, the fancy furniture and kitchen gadgets) to cover his losses. Apparently his Pacific Palisades house was on the market in February, stripped clean of everything but the staging furniture. But its sale
carried him only a few weeks; quickly, again, his bank account sloped into a sorry state. Sara, who has become an ally (like Liana’s housekeeper, she responds well to hundred-dollar bills), passes me details while she smokes in the players’ parking lot between innings. It’s Sara who confirms that he’s sleeping on a cot in the stadium’s supply shed; there’s no way Joe Templeton could say no to the MVP. She also tells me Jason asked Herb for money, but Herb, still pissed about Nike and his lost commission, thought Jason was joking. He told him to go fuck himself, in any case. It’s true, sometimes these athletes need tough love, but Sara, in telling me about Jason’s pitiful plea—how the three of them went to Herb’s favorite restaurant and Jason, mustering up the courage or humility to ask for help, looked like he was near about to cry—just shakes her head.
As the spring season sprints toward its close, as Jason’s debts continue to tumble down the mountain, the threats against him increase: of physical injury, of insurmountable indignity. Jason knows that if his lender goes public, all his endorsement contracts, present and future, will go the way of his Nike shoe. When was the last time anyone saw John Daly selling any damn thing? Maybe he’s more likely to get a suspension and a dozen league-mandated appointments with a shrink (though Liana’s already tried that, so much therapy, solo and couples’ and even hypnotism) than what happened to Charlie Hustle, but still—what would happen if Twitter got a hold of this? His money guy wasn’t exactly a check-cashing operation. These kind of associations, this kind of tomfoolery? They’d tear him limb from limb, and then, no one’d touch him. Why should the Lions be loyal to him when he’s fraternizing with scumballs, making poor decisions, acting highly irrational? When he’s sleepwalking in left field and skipping out on games for a round or three of blackjack? Even with his tank on empty he’s better than most players, but then he makes one error, and another; he’s swinging and missing more and more. Herb’s about to blow a gasket, Sara tells me one morning, and she looks like she’s running a bit ragged herself.
