Field of Schemes

by Coburn, Jennifer

  “Preston played on the Jamaican National Team when they qualified for the World Cup in ’98,” Rachel told me. Well, she pretended to tell me. The truth was that she knew very well that I could not care less about the World Cup. What she was really doing was trying to impress Preston with her vast knowledge of soccer, his career in particular.

  And it worked. His eyebrows rose as he acknowledged, “Ah, you know the Reggae Boys?”

  “Who doesn’t?” she said, shrugging.

  “Smart girl,” he laughed. “I guess we’ll see you in spring then?” He shook my hand again and reminded me to call him anytime with my questions.

  As he walked away, Rachel said, “Have a great Thanksgiving. Happy holidays! Good luck in State Cup!”

  Did she want to wish him a happy birthday while she was at it?

  On the drive home, I asked the stupidest question of my parenting career. “So, you want to do this club soccer thing?”

  “Totally!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why do I want to play club soccer?” she returned with incredulity.

  “Yeah, why not just stay in rec?”

  “You’re not going to let me try out?!” she cried.

  “I didn’t say that,” I replied. “I’m just trying to understand this a little better. I mean, it seemed like you had such a good time on the Purple Sparrows. Why fix what isn’t broken?”

  I could understand running away from unpleasantness. In fact, for my entire life I’ve been guided by the three-strikes rule. If one bad thing happens, I locate my nearest exit. At strike two, I’ve got one foot out the door. By strike three, I’m out of there. But Rachel wanted to move on from recreational soccer when the experience had been a positive one. Who flees at zero strikes?

  “I did have a good time,” she protested. “I kinda feel like I could have a better time if the team was good. Kelly says rec soccer isn’t even soccer; she calls it ‘swarm ball.’ ”

  “It is not swarm ball!” I said, mustering as much righteous indignation as I could fake. What the hell is swarm ball? “You guys just beat the Blue Kittens!”

  “Come on, Mom,” she scoffed. “The Blue Kittens? This is really important to me.”

  That’s when she got me. I had absolutely no idea why playing for a professional coach who wanted to teach her technical and tactical skills held any appeal whatsoever, but she did and that’s what mattered.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Really?!” she screamed.

  “Yeah, Rachel. You can go to tryouts, but remember that Preston said he couldn’t make any promises. Keep your expectations realistic.”

  “I cannot wait to tell Kelly about this! When I told her Preston was showing up at our games, she totally knew he was going to recruit me, but I kept saying, ‘No way! It’s my first season.’ But she was like so sure, and she was right. Yes!” she cried, doing some crazy little dance of excitement. Rachel was experiencing the familiar exhilaration of scoring a goal, while I, for the first time, knew what a goalkeeper felt like when a ball slipped through her hands. What just happened here?

  Chapter Four

  The Greer home was everything mine wasn’t. I sensed that from the moment I rang the bell, before Darcy even invited me in. With its dark wood double doors and autumn wreaths of clustered miniature pumpkins, there was a finished feeling to the home. Though Rachel and I moved into our new house in July, we still had unpacked boxes in every room and hadn’t hung a single picture. The family photos, I knew, would be the last box opened.

  Darcy flung open the door wearing a coffee-colored turtleneck and Thanksgiving theme sweater, looking rushed. She had dark brown eyes and a full head of curly black hair pulled into a low pony tail. A thick-boned woman, Darcy reached just beneath my chin and had a slight underbite. She was exotically attractive, the type of woman who would be cast to sell plum wine rather than light beer in a television commercial. “Have I caught you at a bad time?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she quipped, smiling warmly. “But if you want to wait for a good time, it’ll be another ten, fifteen years, so come on in.” Her frenetic energy wore easier on me this time. In fact, I found her candor disarming. Most of the women in Santa Bella looked so well sewn together, it was reassuring to find someone who seemed to feel as frayed as I did. “How are you settling in? Come on in.”

  “Good,” I said, following her into the kitchen.

  Darcy’s ultramodern kitchen looked like something off the cover of House Beautiful, with dominant tones of light wood and brushed steel illuminated by a flood of natural light. The only place I’d ever seen more windows was in a greenhouse. The ceiling was covered in silver with multiple crisp wires suspending sleek halogen lights. The centerpiece was a wood and stainless steel island with a gas range and granite cutting station. Around the periphery was light wood cabinetry that sunk into the surface of the walls. A few family photos were perched on a mantle over a small fireplace. Everyone was smiling on a sailboat, Darcy beaming and her husband tan and laughing. The lighting was such that I couldn’t really see her husband’s face as he wore a fishing hat and sunglasses, but I could tell he was a handsome man by the way he held himself, the way he looked confidently into the camera. Steve also looked straight into the lens. I always turned a bit, as if hoping that a different perspective might make me look better. I never noticed this until Steve once asked me why I looked like I was hiding in photos. When he said this, I looked back at all of my pictures and noticed I’d been posing this way since I was about eight years old.

  “Sit, sit,” Darcy said, pointing to her table. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Orange juice?” In the time it took her to make these offers, she’d made her way around her enormous, modern kitchen. I wasn’t even sure what she was heading toward, since she never opened the fridge or a cupboard.

  “No, thanks. I just had breakfast. I was hoping to talk to you about Kelly’s soccer team.”

  “Are you sure? I’ve got water boiling anyway.”

  “Um, okay,” I agreed because it seemed easier than refusing.

  “What do you want to know about soccer?” she asked. Was she ever going to sit?

  “Well, this guy Preston came to Rachel’s game yesterday and asked her to come to tryouts for the club in spring.”

  “Great,” Darcy said, wiping a clean counter.

  “Rachel’s thrilled,” I said, pausing.

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m torn. I mean, it’s flattering that he thinks Rachel has talent, but what are we getting ourselves into?”

  Finally, Darcy sat at the table, bringing a sugar bowl, honey and a variety of packaged artificial sweeteners. Stirring honey into her teacup, she answered, “It’s definitely a big commitment, but Kelly loves it so we manage.”

  “That’s what Preston said, but what does he mean by commitment?”

  She laughed. “It means that after your first season, most parents are ready for a mental institution.” Before I could react, she continued. “I’m exaggerating, of course, but it is different. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you that it’s way more intense than rec soccer. Well, some of the parents are more intense. I always thought it would be a good idea for the club to invest in an on-site therapist who could run sessions for parents while the kids are practicing, ’cause left to their own devices for a couple hours, some of these folks can really stir the pot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They start questioning the drills, the plays, basically second-guessing everything the coach does,” Darcy told me. “I’m telling you, they need to find some way to occupy these folks during practice.”

  “We have to stay for practice?” I asked, not thrilled with the prospect.

  “You don’t have to, but many of them do so they can micromanage. But Claire, that’s only some of them, and you can stay out of all the politics. Kelly’s had a great experience, and Ron and I stay away from all the petty bullshit. He was the unofficial assis
tant manager last year, and even he never got sucked into the drama.”

  Knowingly, I recalled Loud Bobby. “We had a crazy parent like that on the Purple Sparrows this year.”

  “I guess that’s the main difference as far as parents are concerned. In rec, you’ll have one or two nut jobs. In club, half the parents are normal and the others are, well, over the top in their own special ways. Then there are the two practices a week, the longer game season and tournaments in the summer and winter. It’s a lot more expensive too.”

  “Like—”

  “Like two grand.”

  “Two thousand dollars?!” I gasped. “Rec is seventy-five.”

  “True, but if Rachel’s serious about soccer, she’s going to want a coach who knows more about the game than some random parent who volunteered for the job.”

  I paused to absorb what Darcy was telling me. Twice as many practices. Twice as many games. Way more money and more Loud Bobbies. It sounded less than inviting. As if she were reading my mind, Darcy added, “If Rachel loves soccer, this will be the best thing you ever did for her.”

  And with those words, I mentally withdrew the money from my bank account and resigned myself to it.

  Darcy had remained sitting for our entire conversation. It seemed like craziness had to be somehow involved in our conversation. She could sit and relax as long as we were discussing other people behaving madly.

  “So what’s the worst thing I can expect?” I asked.

  Darcy thought about this for a moment, glancing up to the ceiling to recall a story. “A few years ago, well, many years ago, one of the more—eh hem—ambitious team managers got herself into some hot water with the club for unethical recruiting practices, if you know what I mean?”

  I didn’t. I looked blankly, which Darcy mistook for horror.

  “Am I scaring you?” Darcy asked. “You asked for the worst. It’s been a great thing for Kelly and—”

  “Darcy,” I interrupted. “I’m not scared; I’m confused. What do you mean by unethical recruiting practices? Did she pay people?”

  “Well, let’s just say,” Darcy dropped her voice into a sultry tone, “she took one for the team.”

  “What?!”

  “Yup,” she smiled coyly.

  “You’re telling me that a team manager recruited a player by sleeping with—”

  “The player’s dad.”

  “Whoa,” I said, absorbing this.

  “It’s actually pronounced ho.”

  “And you feel the kids haven’t been affected by any of this?”

  “Completely clueless,” Darcy assured me. “She didn’t screw him on the field.”

  “But didn’t people talk?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? They still talk about it, but not with their kids.”

  I thought it was a bit naïve of Darcy to think that kids were oblivious to the gossip of adults. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to keep Rachel away from the game she loved to protect her from the corruption that was present in every other walk of life. I wouldn’t keep her out of school because the principal was catting around with a school board member. In fact, our principal was such a nasty old geezer that I’d be likely to send the slutty board member a box of chocolates and a thank you note for helping Mr. Portmond take the edge off.

  Santa Bella wasn’t the wholesome suburban haven I’d hoped to find when I sold our place in the city and moved. At first I thought Rachel and I would stay in our old condo, but everywhere I turned I saw Steve. I couldn’t look at a chair without seeing him in it. I kept smelling his pillow at night, refusing to wash it months after he died. I thought giving his clothes to Goodwill would help, but the empty closet turned out to be an even worse reminder. I tried to put some of my own things in it to fill the emptiness, but every time I opened the door, I tried to remember where his things used to be. It reminded me of the game of Concentration where kids try to remember which images are on the cards after they are turned face down. Whenever I opened Steve’s old closet, instead of seeing my dresses and skirts, I immediately panicked to see if I could envision where his pants and ties once hung. If I could remember, at least part of him remained with me. It was like trying to catch steam.

  It wasn’t just inside our home, either. It was the aroma of the pizza place on the corner where we ate on Sunday evenings. It was knowing where the Speed Stick was shelved at Vons, but not needing to buy it. It was the sympathetic look on my dry cleaner’s face when I picked up my lighter load. It was the nothings that were everything.

  At first I clung to the pain like a placeholder, as if letting it go would mean that we could never reverse time. As months passed, reality usurped hope, and I realized there were no placeholders; there was only empty space where Steve used to be. My mother told me that this feeling would pass with time, but it didn’t. Though she meant well, my mother took me on a bereavement shopping trip four months after Steve died. She isn’t shallow. Rather, she honestly gets great comfort from the act of shopping and purchasing new clothing, shoes and hats. I gave it a try because it was easier than turning her down again, but I felt no better after our day at Neiman Marcus.

  Since my mother’s suggestions of time and retail didn’t work, I decided to try distance instead, and listed the apartment with a realtor, whom I also asked to find us a nice suburban family home at least an hour from downtown. Through a small ad on Craigslist, all of our furniture was absorbed by strangers looking to cozy their homes with a tapestry Steve and I bought in Bali, the hand-carved headboard his parents gave us as a wedding gift and the funky chair we picked up at an art fair in Napa Valley. In eight weeks, escrow on both places had closed and Rachel was enrolled for the upcoming fifth grade session at Santa Bella Elementary School.

  Looking around Darcy’s house that day in November reminded me that it was time I decorated and made my house feel like a home for Rachel and me. If the whole point of our move was to give Rachel a greater sense of stability, I needed to unpack our boxes. Rachel was better about this. She had posters on her walls and stuffed animals perched on her dresser before the sun went down on our first night at the new house. From the time she was five, I sensed she was a stronger person than I, asserting her will as I struggled to make decisions. I missed discussing with Steve my concerns about raising a daughter who seemed to ground me more than I did her. He always assured me that our family dynamic worked and that the three of us complemented each other to create a perfect balance. Back then, I feared he was wrong. Now, I feared he was right.

  As she dipped her teaspoon into her mug, Darcy assured me that, as scandalous as the adults in club soccer could be, the positives outweighed the negatives. “Trust me,” Darcy said, calmer than she’d been during the entire half-hour of my visit. “I would not put my daughter into a world that was bad for her. There are drawbacks, to be sure, Claire, but Rachel will have a great time, she’ll make new friends and learn a lot,” she said. “The kids really blossom.”

  Moving to Santa Bella created a fresh setting in which Rachel and I could make a new life together. My mother and my sister Kathy characterized it as running away, and I suppose they had a point. But more than that, I was running toward something new. I just never imagined that our run would require cleats and shin guards.

  Chapter Five

  Days after Rachel’s recreational soccer season ended, the holidays descended, and in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there were three strikes that sent me packing. At Thanksgiving dinner at Kathy and brother-in-law George’s house, Mother surprised everyone with the news that she had eloped with her longtime “companion,” Blake, who was also her business partner at Garb magazine, Mother’s color glossy for senior fashionistas. (They rejected my title suggestion This Old Thing, and positively detested The Hag Rag.) My mother tapped her fork to one of Kathy’s crystal wine glasses and gushed with her news of being the blushing new bride. This means she smirked. Immediately afterward, she insisted that Kathy had big news of her own to shar
e.

  “I was planning on telling everyone at Christmas,” Kathy said, nervously glancing at me. She knew me better than anyone, and understood that I was in no shape to handle two strikes in one day. Kathy was four years older than me and always had a stronger relationship with my mother than I did. In fact, though my mother was the editor-in-chief at Garb, it was really Kathy who ran the show. I know that my mother loves us both, but she clearly has more of a friendship with her eldest. Kathy was perpetually caught in the middle, though, wanting to please Mother without alienating me. “It’s not a good time, Mom. Let’s wait till Christmas,” Kathy said, shaking her head.

  “Nonsense,” Mother protested. “You’ll be showing by then. I can see your bump already.”

  I wished I was a better person. I wished I was more like Rachel, who bounced out of her seat and kissed her aunt and grandmother, congratulating them without a moment of hesitation. “Omigod!” she shrieked. “When’s my new cousin due?” she asked her contemporary cousins. “You guys are so lucky!” She floated to her Uncle George, kissed him on the cheek, then made her way to Blake, a dead ringer for Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island. I think the look was quite purposeful, as he almost always wore yachting attire and spoke through a clenched jaw. Kathy and I did imitations of him calling our mother Lovey—not that he’d ever try that. Barbara Walden was Barbara. She wasn’t Barb, she wasn’t Babs and she most certainly wasn’t Barbie. She wasn’t Honey, Sweetheart or even Darling. She was Barbara, and anything else was just frivolous. She never laid down any such ground rules, but her tight black bun and ivory sheet of taut skin sent the clear message that if you messed around with Barbara’s name, you might very well be the first recorded incident of death by glare. To Blake, Rachel asked, “So, do I call you Grandpa?”

  Warmer than Mother, Blake agreed heartily, grasping onto Rachel’s hands. “That would be smashing.” Kathy and I shot each other a look and mouthed, “Lovey.”