Field of Schemes

by Coburn, Jennifer

  “Mom, he already invited me over for dinner. I’m sure a ride home’s no problem.”

  I glanced at the growing line waiting to talk to Preston and agreed. I was just being overprotective. Though Darcy gave him a failing grade as a husband, she had nothing but praise for his parenting. “Rachel, I might not be home for a while,” I said, gesturing to the size of the line. “If you want to eat dinner with the Greers, go ahead.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” she shouted, Kelly now by her side as they walked down the stairs of Diablo Field. Turning to me, she mouthed, Find out!

  I stood in line for thirty-five minutes before I even came close to Preston. I listened as he advised the four parents ahead of me. He seemed pretty forthcoming, checking his notes on every player. “Cressida’s got speed, but she shies away from the ball,” he told the mother. “She needs to be more aggressive and attack the ball more. We need to see her killer instinct.”

  “She’s eleven,” whimpered the mother.

  The next father explained that his daughter had a tough season. “Things weren’t easy for Brianna. I’m not making excuses, but I want you to take it into account,” the father said. “She had a very hard year.”

  Poor kid, I thought. I hoped these coaches gave this girl a break. I mean, she obviously dealt with some serious issues at home or at school or at—

  “I mean, you know how it is, Preston,” the father said, hoping to ally the recruiter. “You played halfback, but you can imagine how rough it is on a keeper without a good sweeper.” What? That’s their big tragedy? They lost their cleaning lady? “You try and keep the ball out of the net with the weak defense we had last season. I promise, you get a decent sweeper in there and she won’t let one or two goals go by all season.”

  Another father listened intently as Preston scolded him for not working with his daughter on her foot skills. “John, she looks exactly the same as she did at the end of State Cup. Who’d she train with in the off season?”

  The father shook his head apologetically. “She needed a break from soccer,” he explained. “They made it so far in State Cup, she played ten months straight without a rest. She’s eleven, Preston. She needed a break.”

  “And now she may get one,” Preston said.

  “What are you saying? Are you cutting Taylor?”

  “She may need a year of development on the second team.”

  The father took this news surprisingly well. “She’ll be on a team, though, right? If not the top team then the B-team?”

  “Yeah,” Preston said. “We saw a lot of great players out here today. Our blue team’s going to be strong.”

  Blue team?

  “Thanks, man,” the father said. “Blue team, white team, I really don’t care. I just need to know she’s on a team.”

  “John, she’s been with us since she was seven. We’d never let Taylor go. Work on her foot skills this year. Don’t get complacent with her.”

  “You got it,” John said, walking away relieved.

  I wondered if Preston got somewhat of a charge from having so much power over parents. Could he and his foreign colleagues help laughing at the spoiled American parents whose greatest challenge was that their daughters might be cut from a soccer team?

  “Hi Mrs. Emmett,” Preston said when it was my turn to talk to him.

  “You can call me Claire.”

  He didn’t. Instead he just looked at me for a few seconds and asked, “What can I do for you?”

  What can he do for me? What the hell does he think he can do for me, bring me a Happy Meal with a Coke? I need information about Rachel!

  “I wanted to see if I could get an idea of Rachel’s standing.”

  He flipped through several sheets of paper until he found Rachel’s page. I saw diagrams jotted down, notes in several different scripts and a series of numbers. I wanted to grab the clipboard from Preston’s hand and bring it home to Darcy so we could pore over it all night. “Rachel is very talented,” he said. “She’s on the bubble for the white team, so if she doesn’t make it, she’ll definitely play blue.”

  “What bubble?” I asked, imagining Glenda the Good Witch of the North floating down into Munchkin Land.

  “I mean it could go either way,” he said. “Like I said, she’ll make one of the teams.”

  “I see,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. “What can she do to improve her chances?” I remembered my first conversation with Darcy, and wondered if Preston thought I was propositioning him.

  “Some things she won’t be able to get past, like having never played club soccer before. I’ve got to be honest, it’s a drawback. What we need to see from the late-starters is that they are fast learners. If Gunther thinks she’s smart and can catch up, it’ll help Rachel’s chances a lot.”

  Gunther? Who the hell is Gunther? I didn’t want to ask who Gunther was for fear it would make me look like a stupid mother who passed along her stupid genes to her stupid daughter.

  “That makes complete sense,” I said, showcasing my calm, intelligent nature. “Should I bring her report card for Gunther when we come back on Monday?” Preston shook his head and glanced at his clipboard. I was losing his interest. “Stanford-Binet IQ test?” He shook again.

  “Nah, a good coach will be able to assess her intelligence by watching her play. Ultimately the choice is his, so he’s the one to impress.”

  “Listen,” I whispered desperately, causing Preston to look at me with concern. “Rachel wants this more than anything she’s ever wanted in her life. She just lost her father and we’re new to Santa Bella. She tells me that she thinks her dead father watches her play soccer and that it’s the only time she feels complete. Making the white team means the world to her, so if you could give me any advice, anything at all that would help her, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I played the death card. Steve would have been so proud. He was quite annoyed with me when I self-righteously told him that I would never exploit his death to gain political capital. “Don’t be so high and mighty, Claire. Everyone in this world uses what they’ve got to get ahead,” he said. “If you’ve got a dead husband, use it for all it’s worth.” He softened and gave me a slight nudge. “Come on, Claire. I want to feel like I’m helping you even when I’m gone. I’m telling you, it’ll work like a charm. People will feel sorry for you and give you whatever you want just to get you to stop talking.”

  Steve was right. Preston held his hands up in what looked like a gesture of surrender. He came closer to me and whispered, “Okay, you seem like a nice lady and Rachel’s a good kid. Gunther played for the German National Team and is gung-ho on Germany, but says Americans don’t know anything about his country. He says that all Americans know about Germany is the Nazis. If you showed a little love for Germany, I’m sure he would think you were very intelligent for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes,” Preston said.

  “Danke schön!” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  When I finally got home that night, there were two messages waiting for me on the answering machine. The first was from Lil, who was just calling to say hello. My heart dropped. The second was from my mother letting me know that Kathy was in labor. I shouted with joy and dialed my sister’s cell phone without thinking. Not surprisingly, the call rolled over to voice mail. I tried George, then my mother, then Blake, who actually answered. “Blake here,” he announced.

  “Am I an auntie yet?” I squealed.

  “Hello, Claire. Not yet, but your nephew will be here very soon,” Blake said.

  “Is everything okay? I mean, no problems or anything?”

  “My dear, I stay as blissfully ignorant as possible in these matters,” Blake said. “There have been no problems, but after that, I neither have nor want any details of the delivery.” Well poopy doo to you. “The ladies sent me back to the apartment to get some of Kathy’s things she forgot. Do you have any idea what woolies are?”

 
I smiled remembering a teenage Kathy with the flu. She rummaged around the house, frantically searching for her wool socks, crying, “How can I be expected to get better without my woolies?!” She was completely dependent on her brown wool socks with the reinforced toe and heel, the kind they make monkey sock puppets with.

  “Brown wool socks,” I told Blake. “Check the top drawer of the armoire. If they’re not there check—”

  “Mission accomplished! Claire, will we see you tomorrow morning or are you going to come in tonight?”

  “We’re on our way.”

  When Rachel and I arrived at the hospital on Friday evening, Kathy had just given birth and announced that she was naming her son Steve. She seemed so fragile and tired, I didn’t have the heart to voice my concerns, but I was definitely upset by her presumptuousness. How could she not talk to me about this? She said that she and George had planned to name him Paul, but once they saw him, they changed their minds. She beamed this news to me as if she expected me to be thrilled. Rachel was delighted that her baby cousin bore the same name as her father, but I could barely hold back the tears.

  “What’s his middle name?” I asked Kathy, hoping that perhaps they’d call him by that instead.

  “Emmett,” she told me.

  “Emmett? You named your baby Steve Emmett?”

  “You’re upset with me,” she said holding her baby blue bundle. “Emmett means truth, Claire. I’ve always loved the name.”

  “So did I,” I said, a little annoyed. My eyes darted toward the door. “Look, I know your heart was in the right place, but I wish you’d discussed this with me first.”

  “I thought you’d be happy,” she said earnestly. “We wanted to honor Steve.”

  “Kathy,” I sighed. “Think about if George died and I had a baby and named him George Fuller. What would you think of that?”

  Kathy’s eyes welled with tears. “I’d love it. Oh Claire, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I thought we were—”

  “It’s okay,” I said, knowing that my forgiveness would be the only thing keeping her from a full-on breakdown right there in the maternity ward.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. We’ll give him a nickname. Forgive me, Claire. I thought it would, I thought it would honor him—fill a void for you.” Clearly my sister’s head was up her ass. How could she think that an infant by the name of Steve Emmett would fill the void left by the death of my husband of twelve years? It wasn’t his name I loved; it was him. Now, every time I saw this kid do something I didn’t like, I’d think, “You’re no Steve Emmett.”

  By Sunday afternoon, Kathy was home, hosting a small brunch for the family. Her nurse helped place mini quiches on trays and set out a decanter of coffee. As Kathy sat in her pajamas, rocking in her chair, George thanked us all for coming on such short notice to welcome the newest member of the family. “Especially Oliver and Renée,” he said, gesturing to my father and his wife, who had flown in from Miami yesterday. “As you know, we’ve named the baby after our late brother-in-law Steve, but decided that he’ll go by Duke, so raise your glasses and join me in toasting our newest little cowboy, Duke Fuller.”

  “To Duke,” everyone said in unison.

  Duke? Cowboy?

  My father and his wife mingled about the apartment as if they were a regular part of the landscape. As chilly as my mother was, I had to give her and Blake credit for maintaining a highly civilized relationship with my father and Renée. Anyone looking through the window would think we were all friends, not related by marriage, kids, and divorce. Whatever problems my parents had in their marriage were quickly packed away when he moved to his condo on the eighteenth hole of a lush Floridian golf course.

  As Rachel and I rode the train back to Santa Bella Sunday afternoon, she told me she was disappointed that they weren’t calling the baby Steve. “What kind of name is Duke?” she asked. I found this an interesting question from a child who was classmates with kids named River, Sage and Pandora. Looking out the window, Rachel said she wanted to run before it got dark outside. “Tomorrow’s the final tryout and I need to be in shape.”

  I laughed. “It’s been two days.”

  “Right, so now I’m two days behind the other girls.”

  Now there was a child named Steve Emmett. And one who was Steve Emmett.

  I jarred with the realization that I’d forgotten to go to the Soccer Post to buy Rachel a German National team jersey. And that Nietzsche book I wanted her to read. Okay, truth be told I didn’t need her to read it. As long as she carried it and Gunther saw, that was good enough.

  Note to self. Go to Soccer Post when it opens and buy jersey. Go to Barnes & Noble. Google facts on Germany and its national soccer team.

  After heavy negotiations, Rachel agreed to walk instead of run, and let me come along. I could tell she was tired anyway, and I convinced her to conserve her energy for tomorrow. I treasured these walks because Rachel seemed more free to ask questions she wouldn’t bring up at home. Of course, I would prefer that she never hear about bar mitzvah blow jobs, but as long as she did, I was glad she brought her questions to me.

  I was always surprised at what she picked up on. For instance, I would have never imagined that an eleven-year-old would sense the marital strife in the Greer house. I never had the chance to watch Darcy and Ron interact, but Rachel was at the house often enough to sense the tension that I’d only heard about over coffee with my friend. “I think Kelly’s parents are going to get a divorce,” Rachel announced unceremoniously as we made our way into the woods.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “That’s what Kelly says,” Rachel told me, staring straight ahead. “They’ve got this tone they use with each other, like they’re annoyed all the time. When I was there for dinner, Kelly’s mom was totally nice to us kids, but then when her dad asked a question, she sounded way annoyed.”

  When I was Rachel’s age, I saw adults as simply part of the infrastructure of kid world. I didn’t fully understand that they had their own lives, their own relationships with people that were independent from us kids. Of course, I was sad that my friend Darcy was still struggling with her marriage. On an entirely selfish note, I loved our current set-up where the girls seamlessly traveled from house to house. I wanted the Greers’ to be a second home for Rachel, not someplace where she witnessed parents sniping at each other.

  After a few minutes, Rachel asked what was really on her mind. Stop the presses, it wasn’t even about soccer! “Did you and Daddy ever fight?”

  “We fought,” I said with nonchalance. “But we fought fair. Every couple fights. The question really isn’t if we fought as much as how we fought.” Before she could ask her next question, I answered it. “We wouldn’t have gotten divorced.”

  “Four kids in my class have parents who are getting divorced,” Rachel told me. “It’s weird. I’m the only one with a dad who died.”

  I wondered what she was getting at. Was she just stating aloud the facts? Was she curious about her parents’ relationship because she was beginning to forget it? Did she simply want my assurance that we were as happy as she remembered?

  I was certain that Steve and I would have grown old together as a happily married couple, but the entire truth was more than what I was willing to share with my child. There was a time early in our marriage when it looked as though we were heading for a break-up.

  Though Steve was elated when I told him about my unexpected pregnancy, the reality is that having a baby right after college was stressful on both of us. He assured me that he would have proposed anyway, but it was sort of a let-down to have him pop the question in the bathroom of our campus rental as a blue EPT stick sat on the sink ledge. I’d always imagined something different. The truth was that I’d imagined most everything different. I always had a vision of myself as a peaceful nursing mother, lovingly coddling her sleeping newborn.

  The reality was a stark contrast. Steve was working i
nsane hours in the midst of layoffs at his company, and I was slowly losing my mind. As much as I hated to admit it, I did not love motherhood right away. Lack of sleep, lack of space and lack of money were chipping away at my peace of mind. It wasn’t the run-of-the-mill fatigue; it was a sinking feeling that having a baby was a huge mistake. My mother suggested a new hat might cheer me up. Steve advised me to “shake it off.”

  When things didn’t turn around, it was Steve’s mother Lil who came to my rescue. She took me to her doctor, where I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. Lil got my prescription filled, then insisted on babysitting for Rachel twice a week while I did something for myself. “Who is that?! I don’t even know who I am anymore,” I sobbed with dramatic self-pity. “I can’t leave you with this beast,” I said of Rachel. “She never stops crying, and if she does with you, it will mean what I think it means—she hates me. She hates her mother!” With that I fell to the floor, defeated by the thought.

  Lil picked up the phone and called her friend Caroline to ask for the name of her marriage counselor. She then dialed Steve at work and told him—she didn’t ask—to choose one day a week when he could go to lunch and therapy with his wife. I assured Lil that the marriage wasn’t the problem, and that I was only kidding when I barked that I wanted to shove Steve’s face into the Cuisinart, but she asked me to humor her and go anyway. For several months, Lil was the mother of us all. And like a true mother, she took great pride in fading into the background when her work was done. Her accomplishment was obsolescence.

  In our second month of marriage counseling, I learned that Steve resented me for having post-partum depression. “What’s that saying about me, Doc?” he asked. About him?! Did he just say he was insulted by my depression? How this egomaniac managed to make everything about him was beside me! “This should be the happiest time of her life, but instead she mopes around like she can’t stand Rachel or me.” I refrained from picking up Dr. Rosenberg’s couch pillow and assaulting him with it, and tried to “hear him.” Hear him, my ass! This was ridiculous. I told him that if he weren’t at the office seven days a week, he might be able to relieve me from the pressure cooker of motherhood. Even as I said these words, I knew it was an empty rebuttal. Lil helped me plenty. I had relief. What I wanted was my husband to understand that my post-partum depression wasn’t a punishment to him, the center of the universe. It wasn’t a reflection of how I felt about our marriage. It was a chemical imbalance for which I was not to blame. As soon as I actually believed this, it became a lot easier for Steve to. For one, I wasn’t trying to convince him of this anymore. As soon as I bought it myself, I stopped defending his charges that I wasn’t trying hard enough. And when I stopped being so defensive, he wasn’t quite as offensive. He no longer told me how happy I should be. I stopped telling him how he should shut up and get a clue. Slowly, we stopped “shoulding” on each other and came together in a way we hadn’t before. We were like veterans of the same war.