Field of Schemes

by Coburn, Jennifer

  Opening the door was a challenge because our mail came through a slot in the front. As I scanned the pile, I saw Christmas cards from Mom and Blake and from Kathy, George and their girls. Friends, thinking of us during the holidays. Steve’s firm. My accountant. I stopped suddenly when I saw Lil’s handwriting.

  At some point I was going to have to talk to her. I hated myself for returning her phone calls only when I knew she’d be out, but I feared that as soon as I heard her voice, I’d start crying and might never stop. In fact, that’s exactly the reaction I had every time we tried to visit after Steve died. Every time I looked at her face, I saw his, which was unbearable. I sobbed after she went home and until I fell asleep, then woke up the next morning with the vague sense that something was dreadfully wrong. This luxury lasted a few seconds before I remembered he had died, and began another day of mourning. Six months ago, I decided that I’d return Lil’s phone call on the afternoon she regularly volunteered at Children’s Hospital. It seemed like a good way to delay talking to her for a while, but it became a habit. I called when I knew she was at church, playing bridge and getting her hair set. I detested my selfishness, avoiding this woman who’d been so good to me over the years. And worse, keeping her apart from her granddaughter—and Rachel from her grandmother. Knowing Lil, there would be a message on the answering machine too. It would probably say the same thing it always did: “It’s Lil, calling to send my love. Please get back to me when you’re ready.” She knew I was avoiding her. I could never fool Lil, which was what made her simultaneously wonderful and terrifying.

  Lil’s mistake was giving me the out. I almost wish she demanded that I call her, telling me how horrible and rude I was being. I wish she reminded me of how much I owed her, but that wasn’t her style these days. When Steve and I were first married, and I had postpartum depression, Lil took charge and physically took me to a doctor. She insisted on babysitting twice a week and enrolled me in a jewelry-making class in Santa Monica, suggesting I take myself out to lunch afterward so I could see the faces of Los Angeles. After Steve died, she didn’t have that kind of fight anymore. She left a series of weak messages telling me that I could call her when I was ready. God, I was awful for not calling this woman. Clearly she needed to connect with us and yet I could not face her.

  Chapter Seven

  January turned into February and Rachel and I were kept rapt in the excitement of club soccer through Darcy’s and Kelly’s tales from the California State Cup. Parked in their driveway was their silver minivan with windows painted with white letters. “Go Kelly #3!” was the largest proclamation. Next was “Kix Girls Rock State Cup” with smaller script letters below that listed the names and jersey numbers of the team.

  I found myself sucked into the drama as if Rachel’s curiosity were contagious. Every time we saw the minivan pull into the Greers’ driveway, Rachel asked if she could run over and find out how the team did. I told her to give the family an hour to unpack and settle in. Then I’d end up going over too, listening to Darcy’s take on the weekend while Kelly offered Rachel a play-by-play of the games. Ron had always disappeared by then, and Darcy was starved for the good audience she had in me. After the girls went upstairs to Kelly’s room, Darcy regaled me with tawdry gossip about the bad behavior of parents at games. Making sure I wasn’t scared off by this, she always prefaced, “This is the minority, Claire. Most people are completely normal, but they’re no fun to talk about.”

  “Okay,” I said, assuring her that she wouldn’t scare me away from taking Rachel to soccer tryouts.

  “So anyway,” Darcy smiled with delight, “one of the Conquistadors board members got in huge trouble with our regional league for selling the naming rights for their annual tournament.”

  “Will you sit down?” I scolded. “You’re like a bee!”

  “If I don’t do this now—” she began to defend her sweeping.

  “What, the crumbs will settle in and stain? Sit. Sit.”

  Darcy obliged. “Okay, so their attorney was able to get them out of the contract, but still, it was a huge ordeal for a few days. Apparently the guy penned a deal with Taco Bell. He said he didn’t see the harm since it went with their Latin name. The board said that associating an athletic event with fart-inducing fast food was not the image they were trying to project.”

  I laughed. “That’s good of them, I guess.”

  “Are you kidding? Turf just signed a deal with Sizzler and Hot Shots is in negotiations with Pepsi. What’s the difference?” Darcy asked. “The problem was that he did this all on his own, without discussing it with the board. This is all about bruised egos and pride. I guarantee you that if this guy went to the board, we’d be playing in the Fart Cup next spring.”

  Darcy said California was a testing ground for corporate sponsorship of kids’ sports, but that in ten years it would be the norm. Thirty years ago, stadiums bearing the name of disposable razors, florists and Post-it Notes were unheard of. College bowl games weren’t sponsored by Tostitos, FedEx and Citibank. Now, no one thinks twice about it. Darcy predicted that by the time our kids played high school soccer, they’d wear jerseys decked out with logos from everything from fast food restaurants to cell phone carriers and play in stadiums built by Children’s Motrin.

  In late February, Kelly’s team lost in the “sweet sixteen” weekend of the still-unbranded California State Cup. There was talk of foul play and bracket reconfiguration, the athletic equivalent of political gerrymandering. Darcy also complained that Turf had a goalkeeper who looked no less than sixteen, but when she complained to Kelly’s team manager, she was immediately hushed because the Kix squad had snuck on a thirteen-year-old ringer using a doctored birth certificate. Darcy also cracked me up with her imitation of the Patriots’ team manager choosing field side. Apparently the home team gets to choose the side of the field the girls play on while the visiting team selects which of their two jersey colors they’ll wear. Waddling around her kitchen, Darcy smacked her lips together like the dumpy Patriots dad, then licked her finger and held it in the air. Imitating his voice, she said, “ ‘The wind’s blowing this way, but the sun’s gonna be in their eyes if we stay on the south side.’ ” I laughed. “Then he looked at his watch, and I know he was trying to figure out how much the sun would move by halftime. It was a big debate among their parents while we all had to stand around with our chairs all folded up until they told us where we could sit.”

  “They get to choose where the spectators sit, too?” I said, incredulous.

  “We certainly don’t sit on the same side of the field,” she said.

  A few weeks later, we got the call Rachel had been anticipating all winter. “Yes, Preston, of course I remember you,” I said, signaling Rachel that it was Him, with a capital H. She looked up from the notebook on our kitchen counter and dropped her pencil for dramatic effect. “Yes, Rachel is still very interested in trying out for the club.” By now Rachel was pacing around the room, frantically fanning herself with her hands, a gesture I’d seen Kelly do often. She was silent, not wanting Preston to think her uncool by squealing with delight, though that is exactly what I knew she would do after the phone receiver was back in its cradle and she’d triple-checked for a dial tone to make sure I’d absolutely disconnected. “Yes, Wednesday at four o’clock. Diablo Field. Uh-huh, sure, no problem. Cleats, shin guards, water,” I said. Rachel was now on her back, on the floor flailing her limbs like some sort of tribal dance worshipping the sky. Though in our case, it would be fluorescent lights.

  As predicted, Rachel checked to see if the phone were really, truly hung up before jumping around the kitchen screaming in some foreign adolescent tongue.

  When the big day arrived, I confess to feeling equal parts excitement and fear. This cocktail is called anxiety. We drove to Diablo Field where we saw hundreds of girls clustered into groups from age seven to seventeen. The field is elevated, so we had to climb a flight of stairs. The bright green Astroturf appeared to rise like the sun
at daybreak. Though the sky was blue and the sun shone unobstructed by clouds, it wasn’t quite spring weather yet. The crisp air still made its way under jacket sleeves and kept younger siblings jumping in place to create warmth. The small children found each other within minutes and began playing their own form of soccer with a miniature ball.

  Preston was surrounded by what looked like a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. It seemed like every nation on the globe was represented by a coach in blue Kix warm-ups. A matronly-looking woman named Francine beckoned the new arrivals, telling us that we needed to get the girls signed in for tryouts. Rachel and I followed her to a tent with three volunteers, all of whom looked like the ladies in Madge’s Diner from the old Palmolive commercials. One was in charge of taking Rachel’s birth certificate, another said she had paperwork for me to fill out, and the last slapped an envelope-sized sticker with the number 43 onto Rachel’s shorts. She was branded like a cow and dismissed while I filled out legal liability waivers and a “short” questionnaire about Rachel’s soccer experience. “Good luck!” I shouted to Rachel as she trotted off. She turned back, looking slightly embarrassed by my comment.

  The questionnaire was four pages long, with multiple lines for me to fill out the names of camps, trainings and private coaches Rachel had worked with. Did the Purple Sparrows’ coach count? Somehow I thought not.

  I flipped to the second page where I was asked to list all of the teams Rachel had played on, what bracket they competed in and their standing. Next, Kix wanted to know about the tournaments she’d competed in and how her team ranked. Clearly we were going to fail the written part of this test. I glanced over at Rachel, who was running around the periphery of the field with several dozen other girls her age. How many spots were on the team? What were her odds? For Rachel this may have been a field of dreams, but for me it was a field of nerves.

  When I returned the form to Francine, she flipped through the pages and said, “You didn’t finish filling it out, dear.”

  Standing before her, I felt naked. “Rachel’s new to soccer.”

  “Okay,” she chirped, sounding like she was masking her real message: These blank spaces don’t bode well for her.

  “And this Purple Sparrow team?” Francine asked, looking at Rachel’s application. “Where’s this league?”

  “It’s a Kix team,” I said. “On the rec side.”

  “I see.”

  I wasn’t sure why I needed Francine to encourage me. She had no say in whether or not Rachel made the team. “Preston invited her to try out for the team,” I explained anyway.

  “Oh,” Francine said, sounding impressed. “That’s a good sign.” Why did I need validation from the check-in lady? Why did I feel relieved, and in fact proud, when Francine turned to Rhonda next to her and added, “Her daughter was scouted by Preston. From the rec program.” The woman raised her eyebrows with approval. Now I could move on, which was surely appreciated by the woman standing behind me in line.

  I walked over to a cluster of parents gathered around Preston asking questions. Soccer tryouts were the first daytime kids’ event I’d ever been to where there were just as many fathers as mothers in attendance. The coaches had dispersed and were with different age groups of girls, each taking notes on a clipboard.

  “Today we’re looking at their individual ball-handling skills,” Preston said, clearly continuing after a parental interruption. “And at the callbacks on Friday, we’ll do some one-v.-ones and a few game-related exercises.” Callbacks? There was more than this? “Then, at the final callback next week, we want to see their chemistry so we can put together teams that work well together. Does that make sense?” I hated when people asked whether something very simple makes sense. Did he think we were idiots? Or was I just cranky because I realized that this stress-induced nausea was mine for another week?

  A woman built like a potato asked, “Will all the girls get to come to the callback?”

  Preston shifted his weight uncomfortably. “This is the part of club soccer I like the least,” he said. “Some girls won’t be at the level we need them at, so there’s no point in bringing them back and wasting your time.”

  A skinny woman with red hair raised her hand. “What if our daughter is having a bad day today? Can’t she have another chance?”

  Oh God, please don’t let Preston mistake her for me. We have the same features, except for the deep lines on her forehead, surely a result of years of asking questions from a position of powerlessness.

  Preston sighed. I could see that he wanted to extricate himself from this conversation, but needed to stay put until the parents dismissed him. After all, if the club was going to ask these folks for thousands of dollars to let their kid play soccer, it had to make sure everyone felt heard, served, and validated. I wondered how the American customer service mentality and California New Age style seemed to a native Jamaican. We must have seemed like a high-maintenance lot, to say the least. Tryouts had started more than twenty minutes ago, but Preston was far from being released. “I’m sorry, but in order to evaluate the girls properly, the groups need to keep getting smaller,” he explained.

  This was Soccer Survivor.

  Before Preston could excuse himself, a Latino dad in a Yankees wool hat and too-long windbreaker jumped in with another question. “Say you know today that you’re taking Savannah. Do I still gotta bring her to all these callbacks?”

  Mighty confident, aren’t we?

  “Good question,” Preston said. It also annoyed me when people complimented others on the quality of their questions. It seemed so patronizing and disingenuous. Who fell for such empty flattery?

  The more these parents asked about the tryout process, the more I realized that every one of them wanted their daughter to make the team just as much as I did. With that thought, my anxiety level rose. “We need them to come back to get a sense of their chemistry with the other girls,” Preston said, his hands now in his pockets, his weight shifting from side to side. “Some of the girls from last year’s team will be on this year’s squad, so we want to see how everyone jibes. Does that make sense?” Duh, no, could you explain it again, slowly?!

  A dad who was doughy in both color and texture chimed in. “Wait jest a minute here. You tellin’ us that some of these girls who was on the team last year might not make it on the team this year?”

  “No,” Preston said. A group of parents, presumably of returning players, sighed collectively. “What I’m saying is that some girls from last year definitely won’t make the top team this year. If they need development, they’ll play on the second team.”

  Second team?! What second team?

  I raised my hand, finally deciding that I could ask a question. “How many spots are on each team?”

  “Good question.” Oh wow, thank you very much. My daughter asks good questions too, by the way. “Each team has a roster of fifteen girls, so thirty girls will make the teams.”

  “And the others?” asked the petrified redhead.

  “Will not,” Preston finished.

  O-kay then.

  “This is news to me!” shouted Doughboy.

  “Yeah, if they were on the team last year, they oughta get priority!” demanded another dad.

  “We’re vested!” shrieked a mother in overalls and socks under her sandals.

  “Don’t get all riled up now,” Preston offered in an effort to quiet the brewing parent mutiny. I could just see our ship sailing across the Astroturf, flying a shredded Jamaican flag. “Why don’t you relax until tryouts are over?”

  Because we want to avoid our children being heartbroken at all costs! Because we want to be proactive and get immediate assurances that our kids won’t be disappointed. Because my daughter told me that she believes her dead father watches her play soccer and that making this team is step one in her destiny to become a professional soccer player. That’s why! Does that make sense?!

  Chapter Eight

  I peeked at the field where
I saw Rachel dribbling a soccer ball around cones and trotting through a rope ladder as a tall blond man timed her. When she finished, she ran to the back of the line and caught my eye. She smiled to say hello and raised her eyebrows as if to tell me it was going well.

  Minutes later, a small Asian woman came to Rachel’s group and the blond guy left for another. She threw a ball at them and each responded by jumping in the air and heading the ball to the ground. It reminded me of feeding time at the seal tank at Sea World. Rachel was keeping up well considering she’d never done any of these things before, but she was not the wunderkind the way she was on the Purple Sparrows. Not by a long shot. Other coaches passed by and made notes about players. “Just take her!” I wanted to scream. Take her, take her, take her!!!

  We had another hour of this, and I was not doing well. No wonder so many people are on anti-anxiety medication. Their kids must play soccer.

  Just as Rachel was starting to get the knack of heading the ball, the coaches changed and a Middle Eastern guy started the girls in a foot juggling contest. I thought this was an especially poor use of tryout time, especially after Rachel was the first to be eliminated after four juggles. How was this guy supposed to assess my child when she was standing around watching other players do silly circus tricks?!

  Dear God, just let them take her and I will make the Good Samaritan look like a hooligan. I will rock sick babies in the hospital. I will never use Easter Seals’ return address labels without giving money again. I will call my mother-in-law and invite her to our new house, and try not to cry when she tells me stories about “Stevie” as a boy.

  This juggling contest was interminable! When would one of those little show-offs miss the ball and put an end to my misery already?

  As the group dwindled down to five, I started sending telepathic “miss the ball” messages through my eyeballs. Apparently I have no supernatural powers because all of them kept bouncing their balls on their feet, gleefully mocking me with their skills. Thankfully, Rachel seemed unbothered as she stood watching the final five—oops, make that four girls. Yes! She was having a friendly exchange with another girl, seemingly unaware of the fact that this child was the enemy. Get a grip, Claire! I told myself. This little girl is not the enemy. No, she was also eliminated quickly. It’s these other little bitches who are still juggling who are the real enemies!