by Tim Howard
We thanked him, and he left quietly.
We showered off. Then we got out of there as soon as we could.
“CAN WE GET BEYOND THIS?”
Relentless striving comes with a price. For me, the price was my marriage.
Laura and I had been a great team from the beginning. We agreed on money, never overspending on houses or cars. When we had kids, we agreed on schools and on discipline. We enjoyed the same things—jet-skiing in summer, quiet family dinners in winter. We were good parents and good partners.
But a good marriage, a happy one, needs more than that.
It was the month in South Africa—all that time at the isolated lodge, alone in my hotel room—when I began to understand.
At first, I’d felt only a vague gnawing, a sense not yet articulated, that things at home weren’t right.
Then the vagueness began to take shape, growing more and more defined, like a figure emerging from fog, until it became a fully formed thought.
And after that, I knew.
I didn’t want to be married to Laura anymore.
I was addicted to my job. That’s no metaphor; I was an addict in all the tangible, physical ways that signify true addiction, regardless of the substance.
My substance is winning, the pursuit of greatness. I was addicted to the adrenaline rush of victory, that beautiful flood of endorphins, of dopamine, of norepinephrine, every time we won.
I’ve read that cocaine floods a person’s system with dopamine. Speed floods it with norepinephrine. A great save, a win, does both of those things at once.
The feeling is clean and pure. It makes you feel invincible, but only for a while. Within a day the flood recedes, and the game becomes part of your past, like all the others you’ve already played.
Every single week, from August to the end of May, I went looking for my fix.
Roy Keane once said that the only thing winning does is put off the fear of losing for a few days. Roy had put into words the very thing I’d been experiencing for decades.
I could remember all those years ago, watching the athletes around me and thinking, I don’t want my comfort to come from winning or losing. I want to be connected to something bigger than myself.
I’d done better than many—maybe even better than most—at staying grounded.
But I hadn’t succeeded completely.
My whole career was so front-loaded. I had friends who were getting PhDs, who were attending law school. Their careers would be just getting started when they hit their 30s. For me, turning 30 marked the beginning of the end.
There could be no putting work on hold to focus on my marriage.
I had no time to spare.
If I was going to achieve—if I was going to be great—it had to be right now. Or never.
When I walked through the door in Memphis after the 2010 World Cup, Laura threw her arms around me.
In response I felt . . . nothing. I was numb.
I hugged the children, kissing their hair, their cheeks, their ears, their arms. Laura watched, smiling. I could not meet her eyes.
I’d be home for a few weeks, not quite a month, before reporting to Everton for preseason. I couldn’t imagine how I’d even begin to talk to her about what I was feeling.
Are you okay?” she asked me later that night.
“I’m tired,” I said.
We spoke little to each other, busied ourselves with the kids. We read to them and brushed their teeth and put them to bed and picked up their toys. We swam in the pool. We ate out.
One evening, after the children had fallen asleep, I sat in an armchair, flipping through a magazine. Laura sat down on the sofa. She patted it, not unlike the way she had all those years ago when we watched Remember the Titans together in Dallas.
“Tim?” she said. “You want to come watch TV with me?”
This could be the end of my marriage, I thought.
“Not now.”
I was terrified to say it out loud. As soon as I did, everything would change. I wasn’t ready for that.
As the weeks went by and we got closer and closer to preseason, Laura tried to connect with me, to make things better. “Tim?” she asked. “What’s going on with you?”
I can be a good father, Laura.
I can be a good provider.
I can be a good partner when it comes to raising kids and running a household. But I’m no longer sure I can be a good husband.
Every time I try, I feel like I’m faking it.
“Tim?” she repeated, still waiting. “Can you talk to me?”
This could be the end of my marriage.
“I’m tired.”
What if we went away, Tim? Just you and me.”
I’m not sure there is a you and me anymore. There is me and the kids, and you and the kids, and us as a family. But you and me might be gone.
“Nah, I don’t want to go anywhere.”
This is about us, isn’t it?” she asked.
I met you when I was a kid. I married you so quickly.
And I don’t think I want to be married anymore.
“Maybe,” I answered. “I don’t know.”
Could you talk to our pastor,” she asked. “Or a friend?”
Maybe it’s because I sensed it back then, sensed the change that was coming. Maybe some part of me already understood, deep down, that I was mere months away from having money and cars and a home and hangers-on, not all of whom could be trusted. Maybe I’d been looking, most of all, for some sort of stability amid that flurry. And if that’s true, I’m so sorry.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it with anyone.”
We could go to marriage counseling.”
No. I already know what will make you happy. But I don’t think I’m capable of doing it. Not for real. Not with authenticity or integrity.
“No counseling,” I said.
“Tim, tell me what I can do.”
There is nothing you can do. Nothing you could have done. You’ve done it all brilliantly.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Tim?” she asked. It was almost August—I’d be flying back to England for preseason soon. She and the kids were to follow me a few weeks later. “Do you still want to be married?”
No.
No, I do not want to be married.
But these children sleeping upstairs are my heartbeat. They are everything. And I know that if I answer this question, I will lose them; I will lose the family as we know it. I cannot imagine living apart from those kids, not having Ali crawl into bed and lay her little head on my chest in the mornings, not laughing with Jacob in the kitchen. I cannot imagine it, and I am scared to death to set this into motion.
The day I left for preseason, I knew. I knew that the next time I came back to this house it would be her house—hers and the kids. Not mine.
We had a goodbye group hug in the kitchen, all four of us. Then I started to walk out of the room, but rushed back instead to cover Ali’s mop of hair, her neck and her ears, with kisses. She squealed with delight, clutching her dog security blanket to her chest. Then I did the same for Jacob. He was quieter than his sister, and I knew he was sad, even though he laughed.
“See you in a few weeks,” I said.
Laura walked with me to the car that was waiting in the driveway.
We hugged and kissed.
Goodbyes might be my life, but they’re one thing I’ve never gotten good at. This was the saddest one I’ve ever had.
When I got to my home in Manchester, the phone rang. Laura.
“Tim, can we get beyond this?” she asked.
That Southern lilt. The girl who once sat in a hotel room in a black dress repeating, over and over again, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” as the lights of Times Square flashed through the windows behind her. All that exuberance: gone.
I had made her so sad.
I knew that the problem was me, my job, my addiction to the game, my una
vailability, but knowing that changed nothing.
“No,” I answered, finally honest for once. “We can’t.”
Many conversations lay ahead—about kids, about schools, about the fact that it would be best for them to stay in Memphis and I’d live in Manchester, alone. There would be conversations about assets and properties, depositions and signings, lawyers and mediators and affidavits. The conversations would be difficult, then divisive, and ultimately deeply bitter.
But all of that was in the future.
For the moment, we sat, silently, in separate houses, with an ocean—literally and figuratively—between us.
PART
FOUR
USA VS. BELGIUM: STILL ALIVE
ARENA FONTE NOVA
SALVADOR, BRAZIL
JULY 1, 2014
There’s a moment that lies suspended between the shot and the result. If you can stop time in this instant—somehow press pause, allowing the ball to hover in the air, the players frozen mid-run—you straddle two worlds.
In one world, the shot goes in. In the other, it does not.
The second half of this game has been a siege of shots from Belgium. I don’t know how many I’ve stopped. I don’t even have time to wonder.
All that’s come before has disappeared into the blunt staccato of shots on goal.
Bam. Bam bam. Bam bam bam.
One upon the next, they’ve rained down so fast there’s no time for a chess match, no time to reflect on what’s broken down, or how we might fix things.
We’re too busy defending for our lives.
But here’s the thing: we are alive.
The number of corner kicks doesn’t matter, attempts on goal don’t matter. Possession stats? Irrelevant.
All that matters is that we’re entering the 92nd minute and the score is still 0–0. Belgium has dominated everywhere but the scoreboard.
One goal. That’s all it will take.
And look—at the other end of the field, Jermaine is rising in the box. He heads the ball toward the far post. Chris Wondolowski is right there.
The goal in front of Chris is gaping.
Wondo is the consummate poacher, a guy who makes a habit of the late winner.
As the ball flies off his foot, I can almost picture in my mind’s eye what will come next: the net bulging, the delirious run to the corner flag, the jubilant ten-man pileup.
It will be like Landon’s Algeria moment four years ago.
In that world, I lift my arms heavenward, and say with heart and soul, “Thank you.”
But, of course, the world that flashes in my mind is only one of the two possible outcomes.
There is another world, and it is that second world we enter in the 92nd minute.
If I could choose, I’d put the ball in front of Wondo today. He’s money in the box.
It’s just that this time, his shot goes high and wide.
We may still be alive, but we have 30 minutes of play still ahead of us.
We are heading into extra-time.
DIVORCE
On August 14, three days after Laura filed for divorce, Everton played its first Premier League match of the season, against the Blackburn Rovers.
I’ll never forget that game.
In the 14th minute, Blackburn headed the ball into my box. Three of us charged toward it at the same time: me, Everton’s center-back Sylvain Distin, and Blackburn forward Nikola Kalinić. There was nothing unusual about the way the ball was moving, or how we went for it—I’d lived a thousand moments like this one already.
Sylvain saw me coming and got out of the way so I could grab the ball. Kalinić was still barreling toward me, as any good striker would, but the ball was secure. Safe. I had it in my hands.
My plan was to roll it out to Leighton Baines, let him take it down the left flank. But as I went to roll the ball, I dropped it right at Kalinić’s feet. The striker couldn’t believe his luck as he slotted the ball into the wide-open net.
That proved to be the only goal of the game; we lost 1–0.
Opening day of the season—and I’d made a spectacular blunder.
As I walked off the field, Chris Woods shook my hand and patted me on the back as he always does. But I knew there would be hell to pay with Moyes.
There was. “I don’t understand,” he hissed. “What were you doing? What were you thinking?”
On Sunday, I was too depressed to get out of bed, much less go anywhere. I lay there, thinking, I can’t take it. I can’t handle letting down my team like that. I can’t bear my life right now.
I didn’t feel any better the next day, but I couldn’t miss practice. I also needed to talk to Moyes, not to justify my howler against Blackburn, but to explain what was going on in my personal life. If anyone needed—and deserved—to know that, it would be him. So I dragged myself out of bed on Monday and drove to the training ground early.
From Everton’s parking lot you can see into Moyes’s glass-walled corner office. I saw Moyes already there, sitting upright at his desk.
I entered the building and I knocked on his door. “David?” I asked. “Can I come in?”
Moyes looked up. “Sure, Tim, sit down.”
So I did. But when I tried to speak, the words wouldn’t come. I opened my mouth, closed it, stared at the floor. Right here, in front of me, was a man who put his faith and trust in me, unconditionally, and I’d let him down.
It felt like I’d let everyone in my life down recently.
“Tim?” he asked, gently. “What’s going on?”
As my eyes welled up with tears, I managed to speak.
“I need you to know where I’m at personally,” I began. “Laura and I are getting a divorce. The kids are going to stay with her in Memphis.”
“Tim,” he said, concern and empathy suddenly etched into his face, “Look, I had no idea. If I’d known I never would have reacted—”
I held my hands up. “Stop,” I said. “You had every right to react that way. I’m a big boy, and I made a big mistake. I can handle it. I just wanted you to know.”
“If you need anything,” Moyes said, “you tell me.”
I said nothing.
“I mean it. Come around to my house anytime. Day or night. Nothing’s off-limits, you hear me? We’ll sit. We’ll talk.”
Discreetly, David let Chris Woods and some of the senior players in on the news. One by one, they approached me, telling me how sorry they were, inviting me to dinner, insisting that whenever I felt like talking, they’d be around to listen.
After a while, everyone at Everton knew. Even cranky Jimmy Martin shook my hand. “I’m sorry about your personal trouble,” he said. Then he handed me three sets of white socks. “You let me know if you need any more, okay?”
I called Dan and Mulch, talked to them together. I told them what was happening. Divorce . . . kids in Memphis. It upset them. Both of these guys loved Laura; everyone did. They were both family men, and they’d seen me around the kids. They knew how much it would pain me to be apart from Jacob and Ali.
Dan in particular pushed me hard to make sure I’d thought through every angle.
“Dan,” I said, “it comes down to this: I don’t want to feel like a fake in my own life.”
“Okay,” he replied. “And you’re ready for this, for all that comes next?”
I took a deep breath.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
I called my mom. She mostly listened, the same way she always does. If she was thinking, You got married too young, she didn’t say it. If, on the other hand, she was thinking, This divorce is a mistake, she didn’t say that, either.
She asked a single question: “How are you going to be apart from the kids?”
I’d already thought through all the possible ways I could stay close to the kids. I’d wracked my brains trying to figure out how we could live on the same continent. I could return to the States, try to play for an MLS team. There was no MLS team in Memphis, though, and I’d s
till have training all week, games every weekend. I’d still see them only occasionally. Besides, playing in the Premier League, I could retire comfortably and live permanently in Memphis by the time I was 40. If I joined an MLS team, I’d have to play far longer to earn enough to retire.
So I told my mom the only thing I knew for sure.
“Mom,” I replied, “it’s on me to be the kind of father I want to be.”
In my next life, I want to be a divorce lawyer. It seems like the easiest job in the world: pit one spouse against the other when both are at their most vulnerable and, hopefully, most ignorant about the process. Then they’ll believe whatever you tell them.
Actually, scratch that idea: I’d rather clean toilets. The whole divorce business is too damned dirty.
Maybe there really is such a thing as an “easy” divorce, but I wouldn’t know. All I can tell you is that Laura and I didn’t have one. Instead, it turned out to be an extended, outrageous, stupid fight.
Each of us hired a lawyer. The lawyers told us what to expect. In theory, it was all about material things—money, homes, cars—that could be easily settled. Assign a monetary value to each item and split that number down the middle. Done.
But that was in theory. The reality was anything but easy.
Part of the problem was the nature of my job. I was making a lot of money now, but sometime in the future, possibly the very near future given the potential for injury, I would no longer be able to play soccer, and there was no certainty about what I could do after that.
There are plenty of Premier League players who have declared bankruptcy in the wake of bad investments, bad luck in the real estate market, and, yes, bad divorces; I’d played with a few of them. But Laura’s attorney insisted my career would remain lucrative indefinitely—guaranteed—even long after I was too old to play anymore.
“Yeah?” I said to my own lawyer. “Is she offering me a job?”
But the real fight and the real ugliness wasn’t over money or property or anything you could put a price tag on. The financial issues were stand-ins for the emotional ones. We were fighting, because Laura felt angry, because I felt guilty, and because both of us felt broken and shaken to the core.
