Choosing Sophie

by Leslie Carroll

  “Holy cats!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “They what?”

  “Did you just say what I thought you said?”

  “My bro did what?”

  “Over mah dead body!” Carleen’s hand was shaking so much, she could barely type a return message.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it—it’s so obvious. I guess it didn’t occur to me because Sophie’s life experiences have been so limited.” The Ashes glared at me. “I mean—what could she—they—the two of them—have been thinking?! May I?” I asked. Carleen lateraled the phone to me, past Glenn who made a grab for it as it flew by his chest.

  Joy’s mouth seemed stuck in a permanently shocked O. “Why couldn’t she tell us?” she lamented, genuinely hurt. “And we don’t even know the boy.”

  “Hey—watch what you’re saying about my twin!” Lyle’s fingers curled into fists.

  “Kyle Angel’s a good kid,” Dusty told the Ashes, as if his opinion carried the weight of finality. He looked utterly betrayed. “Now that we know they’re both okay—more than okay, apparently—I feel like benching him as soon as I get my mitts on him, just to teach the kid a lesson about skipping practice and skipping town. I’ll never understand some of these kids. He thinks he’s mature enough to get married, but he’s such a baby, he don’t even ask permission to leave the city. Or consider his commitment to the team.”

  “You can’t bench him—if we win on Tuesday, we’re going to need his arm in the playoffs,” I said, feeling too angry about Sophie’s secrecy and irresponsibility to be happy for her at that moment.

  “And if we don’t win, he and Sophie can honeymoon on a slow boat to China, for all the time they’ll have to do it.” He sighed heavily and shook his head.

  I sank onto the sofa and buried my face in my hands. “I can’t believe she didn’t trust me enough, or care enough, to bring me into her confidence.” My tears burned my palms. “And I can’t believe she contacted you first—before she told any of her parents,” I said to Carleen, who immediately began to get her dander up and defend her friendship.

  “Ah’ve known Sophie a lot longer than you have, Livy! And there are some things girls just tell each other.”

  “Such as, they’re getting married. Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m not mad at you. Just…just hurt.”

  Tears streamed down Carleen’s cheeks. “Well, Ah’m hurt she couldn’t wait to tie that knot. Since freshman year we promised to be each other’s maid of honor.”

  Joy came and sat beside me, her animosity shelved, I suppose, at least for the moment. “If it makes you feel any better, Sophie didn’t share her plans with us, either—obviously. We didn’t even know she was seeing anyone, let alone how serious they’d become.”

  “We didn’t raise her to be secretive,” Glenn said. “In our household, we always encouraged totally open communication.”

  I remembered Sophie’s lack of confidence around guys, her utter inexperience in the world of dating. I guess there were a lot of things that the Ashes hadn’t communicated to our daughter somewhere along the line. But I didn’t want to start a war with them over it. At this point, the water was so far under the bridge it had mingled with the mid-Atlantic.

  I read the text message Sophie had just sent Carleen. “They’re flying back this afternoon.”

  “Ah think our work here is done, then,” said Carleen. “It dud’nt make sense to wait here for her to show up, like we’re some sort of posse. When she gits back, lemme know, so I can come over and punch her lights out.” She extended her hand to Lyle like she’d suddenly become Blanche Dubois, and turning on the brights, sweetly asked him, “Y’all want to escort me downstairs?”

  Lyle rose to his feet. “My pleasure.”

  “Well then, we’ll leave y’all to yourselves. Call me as soon as they get home—Ah don’t care how late it is.”

  “I wonder where they’re going to live,” Lyle muttered to her as they left my apartment. “We only have a studio.”

  Glenn drained his coffee cup, slapped his knees, and stood up. “I guess we might as well hit the road, too.” Joy took one last sip from her cup, then joined him.

  “We should let you get some sleep, now that we know they’re all right,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek. I wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tightly. “I’ll phone you when they get here.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Livy,” Joy whispered to me. “It’s hard to be a mom. All you can do is give it your best shot. Sometimes, you can cook the spaghetti perfectly, and it still doesn’t stick to the wall.”

  Glenn shook my hand. “Hang in there,” he said, patting my back like I was one of his high school ballplayers. “Sorry I kind of blew up at you back there. It’s been rough on all of us.” He put his arm around Joy’s shoulder and the two of them headed for the elevator.

  I looked at Dusty. “Well, it’s just the two of us,” I sighed, looking at the front door as if I expected Sophie and Kyle to walk through it at any moment. I slipped my arms around his thick torso and buried my face in his chest. “Don’t go…please.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” he whispered, cupping his hand against the back of my head. “Unless you wanted to kick me out, of course.”

  I shook my head. “But I need to go to bed. Joy was right; I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Want company?”

  “Yes, please,” I nodded. “But I don’t think I’m in the mood to—”

  “I wasn’t going to suggest it,” Dusty said softly as we headed up the stairs to my bedroom. “We’ll just snuggle. You can fall asleep in my arms.”

  Being skin to skin and flesh to flesh with Dusty was comforting, his bulk sheltering and shielding me from all harms, real or imagined, as we spooned. And though I was utterly exhausted, after several minutes of resting dreamily in Dusty’s embrace, cuddling segued into caressing, which morphed into slow and gentle lovemaking, ending where we started, his bare barrel chest molding into the curves in my back, his arm lazing protectively and proprietarily across my breasts.

  We must have slept for hours. The next thing I heard was the sound of a key turning in the lock. Suddenly fully awake, I leaped out of bed and threw on a silk kimono. Running around to Dusty’s side of the bed, I shook his shoulders. His skin was warm and soft, and a little moist. My lips grazed the back of his neck. He smelled deliciously male. “Wake up—they’re back!”

  “Wha-uh?” he said groggily.

  “You might want to put on some clothes.” I bent down and retrieved a pair of bright blue stretchy briefs from the floor. “Starting with these.” I playfully dropped them on his head, which caused him to bolt up onto an elbow with the underwear still clinging to his face.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked sleepily, tentatively touching the briefs as if he wondered how he’d somehow gotten stuck behind a curtain.

  I was laughing so hard I’d given myself the hiccups. “You are! You’re adorable. Here, let me help you.” I extricated Dusty from the undies and tossed him his slacks. “I’m going downstairs to greet the happy couple. If you hear any broken crockery, don’t give it a second thought. You’re welcome to join me, of course.”

  I kissed his nose and dashed down the staircase.

  “Welcome home!” I said, standing at the foot of the stairs, my hands planted on my hips. Out came a hiccup. I held my breath and swallowed hard to suppress the next one. “Mr. and Mrs. Angel, I presume.”

  “Umm…not. Actually.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you where we went, Mom,” Sophie mumbled, looking about as guilty as a fox caught with a mouthful of feathers. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “I asked Soph to marry me right after our victory,” Kyle said, looking equally shamefaced. “I guess we should have said something to everyone so you guys wouldn’t worry, but—”

  “But no one leaves a note when they elope! That’s the whole point of eloping,” Sophi
e said, finding her voice.

  “What do you mean by ‘not. Actually.’”

  “Well…we got there and were all ready to go through with it…but we changed our minds.”

  “Thank God!” I exhaled an enormous sigh of relief.

  “It was Carleen’s text message that did it, actually. She can get really violent when she thinks she’s been betrayed.”

  “Jesus, Soph—we were all so worried about you!” I said, grabbing her into a hug and holding on for dear life. My tears moistened her hair. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore—it’s a crazy world out there!” I drew back and held my daughter at arm’s length, relieved and grateful that she and Kyle were home in one piece apiece, and delighted that they’d found so much happiness with each other, but still livid that Sophie couldn’t, or wouldn’t—and didn’t—talk to me about her plans, about how serious her relationship with Kyle had become. “Why did you never say anything to me?” I asked her. I gave Kyle a hug and suggested that he might want to have a word with his coach, who had just shuffled down the stairs to greet him.

  “I think we need to have a little talk about the concept of responsibility,” Dusty said, crooking his finger at his ace, while rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the other hand. He drew Kyle over to the living room couch for a man-to-man chat, while Sophie and I convened in the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe the two of you flew all the way to Vegas to not get married!”

  Sophie gave me a confused look. “Would you rather we had? Because I kinda got a different impression. Maybe it was your ‘Thank God!’ comment. We just hadn’t thought things through,” she added, rummaging in the fridge for something that met her strict dietary specifications. “Carleen was right: I did promise she’d be my maid of honor when I eventually married—which at the time, I thought wasn’t likely to happen until the twenty-second century. I really didn’t want to come home to a split lip and a busted best friendship. And I know you don’t think I’m much of a girly girl, but I do kind of want a wedding with the whole nine yards—of tulle, or whatever you call it. Mostly, I guess,” she said, settling on a bowl of blueberries, “I realized how much I wanted you to be there, Mom. On my ‘special day.’ So we canceled our appointment at the Love Shack and came home.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this admission. On the one hand I was genuinely touched. On the other, I felt disappointed, even a bit betrayed by her behavior. “You confided in me about some things—like being a virgin—so why couldn’t you share your feelings about Kyle?” I whispered to her. “I’m really hurt that you couldn’t talk to me about how things were going, as your mom, or as a friend, or even woman to woman. You didn’t even tell Carleen or Joy how far things had progressed did you?”

  “Oh, I definitely never could have told Joy,” Sophie chuckled. “She’s a great mom, but not the hippest person in the world. And I didn’t talk much about Kyle to Carleen. I…I just wanted to have something of my very own that was so personal and private, it was like having a secret little treasure chest, I guess.”

  “Yet we all knew you and Kyle were a couple. You two never kept that from anyone. In fact the team always ribs you for your frequent PDAs. But your relationship progressed with the speed of Kyle’s fastball. That’s another thing that concerns me…and he’s the first man you ever dated. There’s a whole world out there, Soph. Okay—jetting off to Vegas might have been romantic and giddy and spontaneous, but you and Kyle almost made a choice that wouldn’t have been any fun to reverse if, God forbid, it came to that. Marriage isn’t a toy. A wedding, even a Vegas wedding, for people not named Britney, is still a serious thing. It’s not a lark, Sophie.”

  “How would you know?” she mumbled, her words tumbling in the general direction of her sneakers. “You’ve never done it yourself.”

  Ouch. “When I took over the Cheers, I didn’t know squat about baseball, either,” I said, sounding too defensive. Uncomfortably so. I wanted to change the subject. After all, this was about Sophie, not me. Her choices, not mine.

  “Even choosing to get married this young—whether it’s in Vegas at the Elvis chapel or downtown at City Hall—I just want to be sure you’re doing the right thing,” I said gently.

  Sophie thought about it for a moment. “Do we ever know that, when it comes to love? Or maybe, as long as any decision is guided by love, it’s the right one. Maybe that sounds too Dr. Phil-ly, but the only answer I have for you is that I won’t change my mind about marrying Kyle. And neither will he. But we do want to do it differently from the original game plan so we could invite our friends, have a barbecue, wear flowers in my hair, hire someone to officiate who doesn’t wear a spandex jumpsuit…but that’s just window dressing, Mom. I’m really, really happy, for the first time in my life.”

  I smiled and tried not to chuckle. “You mean all those batting titles you won count for nothing? Or discovering that your bio-mom really wanted to welcome you into her life?”

  Sophie hugged me. “Okay, so maybe not the first time. But it’s definitely way up there. Definitely above the batting titles,” she grinned. “Oh—before I forget,” Sophie added, rummaging through her purse, “even though we didn’t go through with it, we brought you a souvenir from the chapel.”

  She handed me something wrapped in white sparkly tissue paper. An Elvis key chain.

  I let the bit of kitsch dangle from my finger as I beheld my daughter’s sparkling eyes. “Awesome!” I said quietly.

  Bottom of the Eighth

  Sophie had taken to perusing wedding magazines in between innings. The location of her “destination wedding” was a tossup between the castle in Westchester where the Ashes always took her to celebrate her birthday when she was a little girl, or the pitcher’s mound in deMarley Field. She and Kyle were now alternating nights between my duplex and Kyle’s cluttered bedroom at Casa Angel out in Queens.

  Too bad the Cheers’ relationship with the press wasn’t enjoying the same coziness as Kyle and Sophie. Sammy Santiago had announced to the local sports writers that “Venus deMarley is the whore of Satan.” Naturally, the hacks ran with the story of the power hitter who had begun to answer to a higher power. According to Sammy, “the Cheers’ new owner has injected filth into the purity of the game of baseball. Sins of the flesh. Half-naked women shaking their booty in between innings—if I had a family of my own, I’d sooner take them to the gates of hell than to a Cheers game.”

  “Scantily clad babes gyrating on the sidelines, revving up the fans. God forbid, people should confuse it with football,” Dusty muttered sarcastically.

  “I’ve got a raging headache,” I said, reaching for the Daily News. “Do we have any old fish we can wrap with this article?”

  Exchanging glances with Dusty, Sophie said grimly, “I knew we should have hidden the newspapers from her.”

  “So, what’s he really saying, Dusty? Is he asking to be traded?”

  The Cheers’ manager scratched his head. “He doesn’t come outright and say it, that’s for sure. But one thing that’s for damn certain, he’s cruisin’ for a bruisin’, as my Uncle Pete used to say. “Kid’s hitting .297, which is the highest average of any player on the team at the moment.” Dusty placed his hands on my knees and leaned forward to look straight into my eyes. He asked me if I wanted to trade Santiago, said he could get Barry Weed on board with it, put some feelers out as to who might be looking for a slugger as the teams headed for postseason play. It was my choice—was I willing to overlook the kid’s attitude in favor of his performance?

  “What happens when his performance becomes affected by his attitude?” I asked Dusty.

  “My gut says trade him for insulting my mom!” Sophie said emphatically, stirring her coffee with ferocity. “There’s a guy I’ve been reading up on—a more than halfway decent third baseman whose contract was just dropped by the Rochester Contacts. Anyone been following Gabriel Moses’s career lately?”

  I was still angry with her over the Las Vegas incident. And I
still had the bitter taste of the Tommy DuPree debacle. When it came to Sophie’s scouting talents, why should I trust her judgment again? I looked at my daughter. “I thought his name was Moses Gabriel.”

  Sophie looked confused. “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure which way his name goes.”

  “It’s Gabriel Moses,” Dusty said. “I got a pneumonic for it: G.M. First of all, G comes before M in the alphabet, and second-off, G.M. stands for General Manager, who in our case is Barry Weed, and the story of Moses goes that the princess pulled him forth from the weeds.” He looked at us like he wanted a congratulatory pat on the back. “So that’s how I remember which way his name goes.”

  “Jeez—I’d have trouble remembering the mnemonic,” Sophie whispered to me.

  Tuesday morning, in the middle of practice, Sammy walked off the field.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked him.

  “I don’t have to listen to you,” he replied.

  I was dumbstruck. “What?”

  “I don’t have to listen to you,” he repeated.

  “Sammy, I own the team.” I crooked my finger at Dusty and Barry Weed. “Houston, we have a problem.”

  “‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.’ First Epistle to Timothy.”

  My jaw dropped so far I got dirt on my chin.

  “Well, you’re going to listen to me,” Barry Weed said testily, lighting another Winston with the butt end of the one he’d been sucking down for the last minute and a half.

  “Venus deMarley is a sinful and unnatural woman,” Sammy stated.

  Dusty, trying to make light of the situation, gave my body the once-over, and replied, “It all looks pretty natural to me.”

  The slugger sure wasn’t shy about sharing his views—some of which were boilerplate evangelical, and others that were completely twisted b.s., based on some bizarre personal bias. Sammy condemned me not only for my career as an exotic dancer but also for having chosen to put Sophie up for adoption. At this point, Sophie couldn’t restrain herself. “Would you rather she’d had an abortion, like my bio-dad wanted her to?” she demanded rhetorically. “Wait a sec—I don’t recall my mother’s personal life, or mine, being any business of yours.”