Field of Schemes

by Coburn, Jennifer

  I looked at him with no expression. “Her parents should sell her on eBay.”

  “Nah, I’m not sayin’ that,” Loud Bobby continued. “But don’t feed her a bunch of lies and tell the kid that failure is success, ’cause that’s when ...”

  Why did he think I cared to hear his musings on sports psychology and parenting? How many different baseball caps does he own anyway? Is it some sort of white trash fashion faux pas to be seen in the same cap twice? Last week it was a Skoal cap and this week it’s some joint called Freddie’s Palace. What woman looked at this and said, “Yes! This is who I want to spend my life with. He’s fascinating, he’s funny, and he has such a wide assortment of hats!”

  “… so I always say to Cayenne, give it your best and if that’s not good enough, we’ll practice till y’get it right.”

  Is this guy still talking?

  The referee blew his whistle and gave us a two-minute warning. I loved his World War II-era clip art look and earnest nature. Seeing him at games always made me want to wear a cardigan sweater and rent It’s a Wonderful Life. “Come on girls!” the Blue Kittens’ coach shouted. “We can still win this!”

  “Dream on!” Loud Bobby shouted across the field. While the referee was like something you’d see on Turner Classic Movies, Loud Bobby was pure Fox TV. He was the kind of guy who won the stupid tricks contest at local bars by inhaling a silver chain up his nostril and pulling it out his mouth. “Dream on, Coach!” Bobby taunted again. Was this guy physically capable of speaking below eighty decibels?! I dropped my head into my hands for fear that someone might mistake me for his wife—or even his friend.

  Rushed, the Blue Kittens’ coach began shouting instructions. “Layla, Willow, Annabelle, Emma, push up! Defense, move up! Everyone’s trying to score except Money. Money, you stay back on D. Everyone else, you’re a forward now!”

  “Give it up, Coach!” Bobby shouted again. “Nothin’s gonna save y’now. It’s all over, pal.”

  The coach glared in our direction. Not me. I didn’t say a word. Hell, I think Layla did a good job when she fell on her ass. I am so totally not with this guy.

  None of my telepathic apologies seemed to transmit. The coach muttered something to the referee, who then pointed at us and blew his whistle. As if in slow motion, every head on the field turned in our direction. Parents on both sidelines stared. Kids gawked. Even families who were passing by, on their way to a game at a different field, stopped to hear what the referee was going to say.

  The long whistle stopped. “Warning!”

  After a split second of silence, I sighed with relief. Then Bobby responded. “That’s what I was tryin’ to give ’em, Ref,” he shouted. “He can throw the whole damn team up top, but if he leaves one defender back there, our girl Rachel’s gonna blow past her and score on these suffocated kitty cats once again!”

  Our girl?! Our girl?! Do people think this jerk is Rachel’s father?

  The referee held up a yellow card and announced perfunctorily, “One more word and I’m asking you to leave, sir.”

  Bobby held up his hands in mock surrender. Every girl on the field was staring at Bobby, bewildered and horrified. And little fall-on-her-ass Layla looked particularly devastated. Or not. “Ya jerk,” she muttered at Bobby.

  “Yeah, be quiet, y’big old loser,” another Blue Kitten added.

  As the referee blew his whistle to resume the game, I noticed a tall black man with ropy, muscular legs and a snappy royal blue Adidas warm-up suit. He held a clipboard and took notes with the interest of a doctor listening to the symptoms of his patient with a rare condition. I’d seen him at a few of our other games, but never really gave much thought to who he was or why he was watching our team. But as he gave a sidelong glare at Bobby, I wondered if he was from the Kix Soccer League, taking notes about which parents were naughty and nice. Maybe Loud Bobby would be banned from games for life.

  The ball was deep in our territory. It looked as though the Blue Kittens were finally going to score as the cluster of newly appointed forwards scrambled for the ball. Good enough. Let the Blue Kittens score a goal and feel good about their last game of a successful season, I thought.

  It became so crowded in the goal box that it was tough to see what was going on. It looked like a kicking riot. The parents of the Blue Kittens started shouting, “Shoot! Shoot!” Their coach frantically joined in. “Take the shot!”

  Parents from both teams were on their feet, leaning their bodies toward the action as if it might help the outcome. Throwing his hands in the air and beckoning the soccer gods, the coach good-naturedly begged, “Someone take a shot already. One shot is all I ask.”

  A mother on the other team grabbed her husband’s jacket sleeve and wailed, “They’re gonna score, I can feel it!” I wished Steve were here to grab onto. I wished I could borrow his sweater the way I always had on crisp autumn days. I never fully accepted the chill of fall, always clinging to the hope that Indian summer might continue into the holidays. Even though I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I chose to believe the movie version of Southern California where people walked around in swimsuits year-round. I never owned many sweaters, but was especially glad for this fact when I met Steve and started borrowing his. I loved the way his Shetlands hung down to my thighs. The sleeves needed to be rolled up so many times, it looked as if I had doughnuts around my wrists. I called the look “girlfriend chic,” while my mother dubbed it “frumpy wife.” As I wrapped my bare arms around my t-shirt, I had to accept that it was cold and I was alone.

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Bobby told me.

  “It could,” I returned. “They’re very close to the goal.” Why did I even respond to this imbecile?

  “Close, nothin’,” he said, disregarding my comment with a wave of the hand. “Look how they’re all bunched up. Cayenne’s gonna snatch that up, no problem.”

  As Bobby predicted, Cayenne laid her goalie gloves on the ball, ensuring that there would be no goal for the Blue Kittens.

  “I love their banner,” Celeste, our team mom, whispered to me as she gazed across the field enviously. Despite the efforts of five mothers armed with glue guns, our team banner placed second to the Blue Kittens’ in the opening day parade. While ours was beautiful, it didn’t compare to the elaborate extravaganza the other team put together. Ours had a purple sequined border surrounding an enormous blue felt sky with puffy white clouds. Fifteen fully feathered purple sparrows flew toward a soccer net in the heavens as they clutched soccer balls with their claws. Each bird held a Styrofoam sphere that was painted like a soccer ball, with the girl’s name and jersey number printed on it in purple metallic ink. When the mothers unveiled their masterpiece, I was certain we were a shoo-in for the prize.

  After I caught a gander at our competition, I knew we’d be also-rans. The other team somehow managed to get battery-operated blue fur kittens to dance to a rap song, I’m Smitten by Kittens, which the team sang and recorded. The music was actually produced in a studio by a mother who had connections at Sony. The kittens were brought to life by a father, an engineer who just so happened to have thirty hours to spare to make sure his kid won the banner medal. If that weren’t enough, another mother designed jewel-encrusted jerseys and actual cleats to fit their little paws. The lunatics from the Kickin’ Chicks made their banner three-dimensional, with a goal net built around a backdrop of Astroturf. “Birds are so hard to work with,” Celeste continued as Cayenne’s foot connected with the ball.

  Our goalkeeper’s punting was breathtaking. Often the ball went so far to the other side of the field, it looked as if she might score. This one sailed past the midline. It was our three forwards against their sole defender. Of course, I wanted Rachel to succeed, but I was sort of hoping she wouldn’t score another goal. She’d already had such a great game, another goal wouldn’t make any difference to her. These kittens, on the other hand, didn’t need a third goal scored against them in the final seconds of their final game. Who needed that ki
nd of letdown just hours before their team party?

  I was absolutely mistaken in my assumption that one more goal wouldn’t make a difference to Rachel. She charged to collect the ball and began running toward the goal as if these final seconds were the most important of her life. I guess no one told her that the game had already been won. She scrunched her face with determination and looked to her sides for a teammate to pass the ball to. Both were left behind, unable to keep up with Rachel’s speed. It was Rachel against one defender in the Blue Kittens’ territory with less than a minute in the game. She stepped over the ball and kicked it to her side in a fake-out move I didn’t quite follow. Her feet moved faster than my eyes. All I knew was Money, the lone defender, was now behind Rachel and it was my daughter one-on-one with a nervous-looking goalkeeper.

  Rachel leaned to the left as if she were going to shoot to that corner, then suddenly shifted her weight and shot to the opposite corner as the keeper was mid-dive in the other direction. It was stellar. When the ball made it into the net, our coach ran onto the field and put Rachel onto his shoulders. The other girls exploded into a screaming celebration and rallied around Rachel, cheering.

  This was good. Whenever I second-guessed my decision to move to the suburbs, I would visit this mental snapshot. Here she had community. Here we could build a new life. Here we could sew together a patchwork family with good people, top schools, and kids’ sports.

  Chapter Three

  In my mind the season ended with that goal. As the parents formed a London Bridge-style tunnel for the girls to run through, Celeste handed out boxed Yoo-hoos and cookies frosted to look like soccer balls. She cheerfully reminded everyone that our team party was that evening.

  I had closed the chapter on soccer until next season. My daughter and the man in the Adidas warm-ups, however, had different plans.

  He was a bold presence, a physical specimen of ebony muscle making his way toward our cluster of parents. He had an official look about him, his clipboard and club logo embroidered on his chest.

  “Who’s that?” I asked a mom. Just then Rachel ran toward me, asking if I’d seen her goals. “Of course I did, Rachel! You were amazing!”

  Though sports weren’t really my thing, I tried to match her enthusiasm because soccer seemed so important to her. I didn’t want to be like my own mother, an anorexic Popsicle who refrained from facial expressions because they caused wrinkles. Whenever I brought home exciting news, she would say, “I expect excellence from you, Claire.” In her own way, she was being supportive, but I yearned for a mother who was supportive in my own way. A child simply can’t understand the subtlety of presumed excellence. I could’ve used a high-five every now and then. Or at least a smile. I couldn’t control the fact that I didn’t get a mother who would meet me where I was emotionally, but I could control the type of mother I was to Rachel, so I bubbled over as she did. When she ran to me with her youthful buoyancy, I held her hands and jumped a bit with her. “Really awesome, Rachel. You’ve never played better,” I told her. Satisfied, she scurried off to chatter with her teammates.

  Margo answered my question. “That’s Preston,” she said. “From the club.”

  “Why do you think he’s here?” I asked, already knowing that he was there to reprimand Bobby. I have found many friendships were formed by having a common enemy. Loud Bobby’s asinine behavior seemed like a fun conversation starter.

  “He’s here for Rachel, silly,” she answered.

  My mouth fell open in shock. “What has Rachel done?” Did she gloat when she scored goals and I just didn’t notice it?

  She looked at me as if I were an imbecile. “Are you kidding? She’s broken every record in rec soccer history. Haven’t you noticed him out here for the past couple of weeks?”

  “Yeah,” I said sheepishly. “I thought he was here to discipline Bobby.”

  “Bobby? What did Bobby do?”

  “Don’t you think he’s sort of a jerk at games?”

  Margo dismissed me with a laugh. “No, I think he’s very much a jerk, and not only at games, but that’s not the kind of thing that’s going to get Preston out to the field. He’d never have time to recruit if he spent his time dealing with every obnoxious parent on the sidelines.”

  As Rachel sped across the field, making her way back to me, Preston called out to her in his Caribbean accent. “Hey Number Nine. Your dad here today?”

  I felt like someone punched me in the gut, but tried not to react. Rachel was going to have to learn to deal with these questions more and more now that we were in a new neighborhood where no one knew our history.

  “No, but my mom is,” Rachel replied. Rachel’s pumpkin-colored hair sprang for a full minute after she stopped running. She inherited my lanky body and red hair and Steve’s athletic prowess and competitive nature. What was completely hers was the untarnished innocence with which she viewed the world. Her eyes were bright with optimism, and the smattering of freckles on her nose gave her an even greater sense of freshness. “She’s right over there,” Rachel said, pointing in my direction. “You’re Preston Sanford, right?” Not just an island accent, but a soap opera name too?

  He flashed a smile and waved a hand before heading toward me. “Quite a little soccer player,” he said as he and Rachel reached me. His hair was shaved so close I could see his skull. This accentuated his high cheekbones and full lips. Preston’s eyes were like slits with long lashes draping both top and bottom lids.

  “Thanks,” I replied, not sure of what the protocol was for accepting compliments made about your child. “Rachel really loves it.”

  The team started trickling away, waving as they left. “See y’tonight, Claire!” shouted Bobby as he and Cayenne walked to their car.

  “I’m Preston. Preston Sanford,” he said, extending his hand.

  Erica Kane, I did not say. “Claire Emmett.” We shook hands.

  “Rachel’s got a lot of talent,” Preston said. “I like what I saw out there today. I want to see her at tryouts in the spring.” Turning to Rachel, he continued, “I can’t make promises, but you’ve got the raw material and you definitely have the desire. With proper coaching, you could go far.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said, unable to contain her fidgety excitement. She looked a little bit like she had to pee when she thanked Preston for the third time and told him how “honored” she’d be to play for the Kix Club. Really, she said honored.

  “Tryouts?” I queried, handing Rachel her sweatshirt. The wind shook the green and brown leaves clinging to the trees so they looked like shaking pompoms cheering for my daughter. Turning back to Preston, I continued. “She didn’t have to try out this year.”

  Rachel looked a bit embarrassed. She inhaled to speak, but Preston put his hand out as if to yield traffic. “She’s been playing recreational soccer. The club is competitive,” he explained.

  What? We always try to win.

  “So competitive soccer is different than recreational because—” I paused for him to finish the sentence for me.

  “Rec is only for fun,” Preston replied. “Club soccer is fun, but the players are at a higher level, commitment- and skill-wise. The coaches are all professionals, so they really know how to teach technical and tactical skills.”

  Technical and tactical skills?

  This is the point where I was ready to say no thanks and grab a hot cocoa. Who needed technical and tactical skills at any age, much less eleven?

  The next words answered my question. “That sounds like a tremendous opportunity,” Rachel said. A tremendous opportunity? Who was this kid? I guess no one needed technical and tactical skills, but one eleven-year-old wanted them with every ounce of desire she possessed.

  “When you say commitment level, are you talking about more practices or more money?” I asked, to Rachel’s great mortification.

  Preston smiled as Rachel rolled her eyes, trying to distance herself from her mother. “Yes and yes, but the money can be worked out if it’s an i
ssue.”

  “It’s not,” Rachel said hurriedly. She wanted this deal closed immediately. “We’ve got plenty of money, and I’m so totally committed to soccer, I’d be excited about the two practices a week and summer tournaments. And State Cup,” she said, nearly sighing. “It would be a dream come true to play at State Cup.”

  Smiling again, Preston said, “Looks like you’ve been doing your homework, young lady.”

  “Kelly plays club, Mom,” Rachel explained. Kelly Greer was Rachel’s best friend and our next-door neighbor. I’d popped by the house to chat with her mother when we first moved into the house in July, but I hadn’t been back since. I confess that my sole purpose in meeting her was to make sure Rachel wasn’t dining with the Osbournes. I didn’t really have any desire to make a new friend. When Darcy started chattering incessantly about her incompetent pool guy, I found her energy a bit overwhelming. She seemed sweet enough, but seven months after losing my husband, everyone else’s problems seemed annoyingly petty. I felt as fragile as a light bulb and Darcy was like a Tasmanian devil wielding a hammer. After a few minutes, I had to get out of her house.

  “Kelly Greer?” Preston asked.

  “She’s my best friend,” Rachel said as if that might help her make the team.

  “Tremendous athlete. Nice girl. Has she filled you in on club life?”

  Has she? How did this slip by me? Have I been so consumed in my grief that I haven’t paid attention to my daughter’s first love?

  Rachel giggled, affirming his suspicion.

  “Anyway, Mrs. Emmett, we’ll go through all the details at tryouts, assuming you’re interested.”

  “Oh, we’re interested,” Rachel said. She was sooo not a Rules Girl.

  “May I take your phone number and call you before tryouts?” Preston asked me. Handing me his business card, he told me to call him anytime with my questions. The white linen card had the Kix logo and Preston’s private phone number. His title was simply “Player Acquisition.” I gave him our phone number and prepared to turn around and go.