Defending Champ

by Mike Lupica

  He was waiting to open the door, hand on the knob, beaming back at Alex.

  “What’s going on—”

  But before she could finish her sentence, the door swung open.

  Standing on the other side, in the light of the porch lamp, was someone she never expected to see.

  9

  Alex nearly knocked her dad over as she blew by him and jumped into her mother’s arms.

  “Merry Christmas,” Dr. Liza Borelli whispered into her ear.

  Alex gripped her mom tight around the waist. “Didn’t Christmas already come and go?” she asked, her voice muffled into her mom’s wool coat.

  “Oh, you know stuff always arrives late this time of year,” her mom joked as Alex finally pulled back.

  “Hey, you,” Jack said to Alex’s mom, pulling her in for a side hug.

  She smiled at him. “Hey yourself. I was sure you’d cave and tell her.”

  “It was strictly the fear of what you might do to me if I spoiled your surprise,” he said.

  The best thing about their divorce, Alex knew, was that they had remained good friends. They still loved each other, just not the way they once had. Alex understood not every child of divorced parents had it so well. She might not get to see her mom all that often, but she had two loving, supportive parents. And that was all she needed.

  A few minutes later they were all in the living room, Alex seated next to her mom on the couch, Jack on the recliner across from them.

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Spill. What are you doing here?”

  Liza had a big job as a surgeon in a major hospital in San Francisco and rarely got time off. In fact, on many occasions, she’d have to hang up early on her calls with Alex because of an emergency or to check on a patient. So though Alex was excited to see her mother, she was aware it was nothing short of a miracle she was here at all.

  “I didn’t want to tell you until I was absolutely certain it was going to happen,” her mom said.

  “Tell me what?” Alex said.

  Liza looked across the room at her ex-husband, the two seeming to share some kind of inside knowledge. It was driving Alex mad.

  “Tell me what?” Alex repeated, getting antsy. Even though she knew it had to be good news.

  “I’m moving back to the area for a few months,” her mom said, “to give a series of lectures at the Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital.”

  Alex’s heart sped up in her chest. This was not the surprise she was expecting, and yet it was everything she could ever hope for and more.

  “No way!” Alex yelled.

  “Way,” her mom said.

  “What about Richard and Connor?” Alex asked.

  Richard was her mom’s new husband. Alex still thought of him that way, even though he wasn’t exactly new any longer. They’d been married for seven years, and he was a doctor at the same hospital as her mom, a specialist in sports medicine. They’d met during their residency. Connor was their five-year-old son, Alex’s half brother, even though she’d only met him once, the time she flew to San Francisco.

  “They’ll probably come to visit one time while I’m here,” she said. “And I’ll fly back Out There a couple of times.”

  It was how she referred to San Francisco. Out There. She sometimes made it sound like another planet. And to Alex, it almost was.

  “It’ll be rough being separated from them,” her mom continued. “But this was such a great honor, with a wonderful hospital. I couldn’t pass up the chance to help educate other medical professionals about my specialty.”

  Her specialty was pediatric surgery.

  “So what I’ve done is rented a small apartment next to the hospital, because they’ve asked me to see patients while I’m in residence,” she said. “It would have been a bit too much of a commute every day if I’d gotten a place here. And I figured if the Steelers aren’t too far away, neither is your old mom.”

  “Are you kidding?” Alex said. “I’m going to get to see you, like, all the time!”

  Her mom gave her a warm smile and leaned over to kiss the side of her head.

  “Okay,” Alex said, turning to her dad. “Now this really is the best Christmas ever.”

  “Just call me Santa Claus,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jack had a special dinner planned for Alex’s mom’s arrival: grilled lamb chops. He was already on his way outside to throw down the charcoal and fire up the grill.

  “How can I help?” Liza said once they were in the kitchen.

  “Salad,” Jack called over his shoulder, as he opened the sliding glass door to the patio.

  “Hey,” Alex said, “salads are usually my job when you grill.”

  “Work it out with the doc,” he said.

  A half hour later they were sitting at the kitchen table. The three of them. Alex and her parents. Alex couldn’t remember the last time they’d done this. When her mom had surprised her by showing up for Alex’s football championship game, they’d gone out to dinner once before she flew back to San Francisco the next morning.

  This was different. Just knowing they’d have the chance to do this more often in the next few months sent a pleasant warmth into Alex’s chest. The longest Alex had ever spent with her mom since the divorce had been a week. She was so excited by the prospect of having her mom present in her life for this long. It was as if Christmas had been extended this year.

  Suddenly the whole idea of soccer had shrunk down small enough to fit inside the palm of her hand. Her mom was here. Right here. And she didn’t have to fly back to the West Coast tomorrow either. She was living here. Into the spring.

  “Hey,” her mom said now. “Where did your mind just wander off to?”

  “I was just wondering if I was dreaming,” Alex said.

  When they’d finished dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, Alex’s mom said she needed a post-meal walk, especially after the s’mores Alex’s dad had assembled for the special occasion.

  Jack told them to go ahead without him, he had some work upstairs he still needed to finish up. Alex’s mom grabbed her coat, Alex put on her hoodie and puffer jacket, and out they went for a walk around the neighborhood. Or what Alex’s dad liked to call “securing the perimeter.”

  It had gotten a few degrees colder after the sun had gone down. But not too cold for a walk with her mom. They had been talking more on the phone over the past few months. But this wasn’t FaceTime.

  This was actual MomTime.

  “So how’s my girl?” Liza said, knocking her hip into Alex as they walked.

  “I’m good,” Alex said. “Still kind of coming down off everything that happened in football. It’s only been a few months, but every time I look back, it’s like it happened to somebody else.”

  “It didn’t happen to somebody else,” Liza said. “It happened to you, honey. And what’s more, you made something happen in this town that they’ll be talking about forever.”

  “I don’t know about forever,” Alex said, feeling a bit awkward. She never looked at herself that way. As someone who’d be remembered.

  “You should give yourself more credit,” her mom said. “You sent all the girls in this town a powerful message about the way things ought to be for all girls.”

  “There were a bunch of times when I didn’t think I was going to make it,” Alex admitted.

  “Hey,” her mom said, “there were plenty of times I didn’t think I was going to get into medical school. Let alone make it through medical school.”

  “And now look at you,” Alex said, “a big fancy-pants lecturer at one of the most famous hospitals in the whole country.”

  They had no destination. Weren’t in any hurry. They strolled up Miller Road, took a left on Running Brook, then a right onto Jonah’s Path. Alex had often wondered what it would be like to ha
ve more mother-daughter chats like this in person. Now they were doing it. It was the first of many, Alex was sure. Merry Christmas to me, she thought.

  “So,” her mom said, “are we going to talk about soccer before we make it all the way to Murrayville?”

  “Dad told,” Alex said, not that it surprised her.

  “Only after you said you were done talking about it with him.”

  “And figured I could make an exception for my old mom . . .”

  Alex’s mom pinched her lightly on the arm. “Who you calling old?”

  Alex took her through all of it. From the beginning. Her mom already knew some of the details, like Lindsey Stiles giving her grief for quitting soccer. But Alex updated her on the new developments. Like Annie’s reaction when Alex told her she might try out for soccer in the spring.

  “I don’t want to feel like an outsider on my own team,” Alex said. “Been there, done that.”

  “You won’t,” her mom said.

  Like it was a known fact. Her mom had always admitted she didn’t know a ton about sports. Especially football. She’d been a cross-country runner in high school and still ran forty miles a week. Recently she’d even competed in a few five-kilometer races on the West Coast.

  “You don’t know that, Mom,” Alex said. “No offense, but it’s been a while since you were twelve.”

  They stopped under a streetlight, and Liza laid a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

  “Let me explain something that you’ll understand a lot better when you are as old as me,” she said. “That twelve-year-old kid never leaves any of us.”

  They turned back toward home. Alex looked up at the sky. There was a huge moon tonight, lighting Orville, Pennsylvania, along with the stars.

  “What do you think I should do?” Alex said, genuinely wanting her mom’s opinion. She often gave solid advice for tough situations like this one.

  “You play,” she said. “One hundred percent. You play your little butt off. And anybody who doesn’t want you as a teammate ought to think about going bowling instead.”

  Alex had a gut feeling her mom would say that. Liza never shied away from a challenge. One day, Alex hoped to be half as brave as her mom.

  “If I do join the team,” Alex said, “I’d want to tell the coach I don’t need to play my old position.”

  “Center middie.”

  Alex was equal parts shocked and delighted her mom remembered the name.

  “It’s Annie’s position now, and she was great last fall,” Alex said. “I wanted QB when I went out for football. But it really doesn’t matter where I play in soccer.”

  “You should probably leave that up to the coach,” her mom said. “Who is the coach, by the way?”

  “Our other coach took a job in Philadelphia,” Alex said. “The new coach is some woman named Mrs. Cross?”

  “Mrs. Cross as in Hannah Cross?”

  Alex shrugged. “I think so,” she said. “Why, who’s Hannah Cross?”

  “Only the greatest player in the history of Orville High,” Liza said. “She was there when I was.”

  “I heard she just moved back here with her husband and their son,” Alex said.

  “Oh, honey, how great will it be playing for Hannah Cross?” her mom said, almost starry-eyed.

  They were back at the house by now, on their way up the front walk.

  Before heading back inside, Liza took Alex’s hand in hers.

  “You go for this, Alex,” she said in earnest. “Whether Lindsey Stiles or anyone else says they don’t want you on the team. They don’t make the rules. They don’t get to decide. You didn’t let the jerks on the football team run you off. You’re certainly not going to let a few naysayers get in your way now.”

  Alex’s lips perked up into a smile, and her mom squeezed her hand tight.

  “I don’t mean to get preachy . . .” she said.

  “Not you, Mom,” Alex said, grinning back. “Never.”

  “Very funny,” she said. “But seriously? After what you went through last fall, you’re way past letting somebody define your role.”

  “If you had,” Alex said, “you wouldn’t be a doctor and you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Bingo,” her mom said.

  “It’s funny how things change,” Alex said as they hung up their coats in the front closet. “I left soccer because football was my dream. Now here I am, eager to get back to playing soccer.”

  Her mom wrapped an arm around Alex right then.

  “That’s the thing about dreams,” she said. “They don’t just come one to a customer.”

  Her mom made it sound so simple.

  It wasn’t.

  10

  Alex’s mom came over every day that weekend. They went out to dinner on Saturday night, just the two of them. Then, Sunday afternoon, Alex brought her mom into their backyard and they kicked the soccer ball around together.

  “I’m going to turn you into a player,” Alex said.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” her mom said, laughing.

  Alex passed her the ball, and her mom stopped it with her foot. “If you can run,” Alex said, “you can play soccer.”

  “There’s running,” her mom said, “and there’s kicking a ball while running.”

  “C’mon,” Alex said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “What’s next, you teach me how to be a football catcher?”

  Alex sighed and shook her head. “They’re called wide receivers, Mom.”

  Alex demonstrated a few moves, showing her mom how to control the ball with the sides of her feet, how to plant and swing her leg when taking a shot. And before long, Liza started to get the hang of it. It even turned out that she could kick with both feet. When Alex explained how useful that was in soccer, and how she could do it too, her mom pumped both fists in the air.

  “I knew you inherited something from me!” she said.

  “A lot more than kicking a soccer ball, I hope.”

  Finally, just for fun, Alex put her mom in the goal, showing her how to get into position, weight balanced equally on both feet so you could set up to move in either direction. Arms relaxed at the sides.

  Alex wasn’t kicking the ball as hard as she normally would. That would be unfair. But after a while, her mom was getting pretty good at making stops.

  “Is there a position open for me on the team?” she said after tipping one of Alex’s shots over the crossbar.

  “Ha!” Alex said. “I’m going easy on you.”

  “Time to dial it up,” her mom said. “Find out what I’m capable of.”

  “You sure?”

  “Bring it, kid.”

  Alex used a move she’d been working on recently. It started out like any other kick, winding up for a big shot. Then, at the last moment, once you had the keeper leaning, you practically froze the frame and pushed it into the net with the opposite foot.

  She did that now. Huge windup, like she was aiming to kick the ball all the way into the woods behind their house. Her mom was watching closely, so she really had to sell it. Then she came to an abrupt stop, switching feet and kicking the ball with her left foot into the corner to her mom’s right, just as her mom was leaning in the other direction.

  When Liza tried to adjust, she ended up sitting on the ground, looking like she’d just experienced whiplash.

  “Oops,” she said.

  They both laughed their heads off, like a couple of twelve-year-olds. Maybe her mom was right. Maybe the little kid in you never really left.

  * * *

  • • •

  Soccer tryouts were scheduled for the following Wednesday after school. Mrs. Cross had moved them up when she heard they were predicting an unusually warm week for this time of year.

  After being around her mom and having the Big Talk about soccer that f
irst night, Alex knew she couldn’t not go out for the team. That Monday she’d gotten to school early, made a beeline for the corkboard outside the gym, and printed her name on the tryout sheet.

  It felt good. Empowering. To see her name up there in black and white. It was a small gesture, but symbolic of a decision that’d been hanging over her head for weeks.

  The next few days dragged by painfully slowly. Now that Alex had made up her mind, all she wanted was to get out there and get after it.

  So when Wednesday rolled around, Alex was ready.

  She’d packed a duffel that morning—cleats, shin guards, socks, and a sweatband—and stored it in her locker until the final bell rang.

  The soccer hopefuls were to gather in the gym on the bleachers closest to the double doors at four o’clock sharp.

  Alex noticed about twelve other girls sitting with her in the stands, none of whom she recognized. For all she knew, they could all be star players. The thought made Alex sweat, and she wiped a hand through her hair.

  After about five minutes, a short woman who must have been Mrs. Cross came though the gym doors carrying a mesh bag full of soccer balls over one shoulder.

  She wore her short blonde hair in a tight ponytail and wore track pants with a T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt. A whistle hung low around her neck.

  Setting the bag down, she grabbed a loose ball that’d rolled out and started bouncing it off her feet and knees and chest, never letting it touch the ground, like some kind of soccer magician. Alex thought, She must have been something to see when she played for Orville High.

  Gabe and Jabril said you could always tell if somebody was a “baller.”

  Hannah Cross was no doubt one.

  She kicked the ball down the court and ran to catch up with it, skidding to a halt right in front of the girls.

  Introducing herself briefly, she talked fast. Cutting right to the chase and explaining how tryouts would be organized.

  The tryouts would be an abridged version of those in the fall, Coach Cross explained. One two-hour session to evaluate their skills, in order to fill three open spots on the team. One of last season’s starters, Liz Duffy, had moved to Oregon with her family in December. Two other starters had decided to try lacrosse.