“Hello team,” he said. Oh. My. God! He sounded like a robot. This guy was some sort of German lab experiment. No human had such a monstrous voice. He sounded like he was operated by hand crank.
Mimi continued. That was it from Gunther? “Okay, so what I need you to understand about the team structure is Gunther needs to be all about the coaching. If you have questions about practice, game time, anything like that, I need you to call me.” We nodded. “So, let’s say it’s the night before a game and you don’t know where the field is, who do you call?” She stood waiting for a reply. “Okay, this is not a good sign, folks,” she laughed and shook her finger at us playfully. “Let’s try again. Who do you call?”
“You,” the group replied half-heartedly.
“Who?!” she shouted like a cheerleader.
“You!” we all shouted.
“That’s right. You call me. Gunther is all about the coaching. I am all about the management. Oh, and the fitness, but I’ll get to that in a minute.” She flipped through her notes. “Practices will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Diablo Field from 4:30 to 6 p.m., so make sure you adjust your schedules, move dance classes or what-not you have on those days. This year I’m going to need at least one parent from every family to be at every practice. Except for Mariah and Tandy, who are represented by Dick.” Maybe Rachel needs an agent. Not.
Last week when we got the call from Preston, I felt like my equilibrium had returned. I was no longer the lunatic who got into brawls over German jerseys. I was level-headed Claire again. As soon as I heard Preston’s voice say those magical words, “We’d like Rachel to play halfback for Gunther,” the crooked horizon straightened. Now that Rachel had made the team, we could get back to normal.
Mimi flipped another sheet. “We need parents to be fluent in Gunther-speak,” she said in response to a parent’s concern about her being able to attend practices. Gunther-speak? “When you talk about games, tactics and strategy, we need you to be speaking the same language as we are at the club.” We’re supposed to talk about these things at home? “Because I was a college athlete, I’m familiar with the type of fitness training the girls need to excel at in soccer. Gunther asked me to be the fitness trainer for the team. If we’re serious about taking State Cup, these girls are going to need to be in top physical form, especially our rookies,” she said, looking at me again. Flipping onto the next page, she continued. “We’ll play in eight weekend tournaments this summer before the regular season starts, which will give us a serious edge over the other teams.” Eight tournaments? There were only ten weeks of summer vacation!
Dick and Bobby hooted, while Leo asked how much this was all going to cost. “If money is an issue, I need you to talk to me about it afterward,” Mimi said. “We have a very generous foundation that provides scholarships for our families with limited means.” A few people laughed at Mimi’s reference to the foundation, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Darcy later filled me in that Mimi’s family funded the foundation. “Okay, so I also believe that in order to win as a team, we need to bond as a team, so I’ll have the girls do homework here before practice and run—and I mean run—them over to Diablo Field and get them started on their fitness regimen.” She sighed and flashed a megawatt smile. “Okay, I’ve done a lot of talking. Who has questions for me?”
One parent asked about game schedules, which Mimi said she would email to us as soon as the league got it to her. “We usually won’t get our game schedule until a few days before the season starts. Men run the league, what do you expect?”
I raised my hand. “Who makes the banner?”
She looked at me as if I was a pitiful little purple sparrow hit by an eighteen wheeler on the freeway. “We don’t make banners in club. Okay, so any other—”
“When do the girls choose their team name?” I asked.
Impatiently, she explained to the others, “Rachel comes to us from the rec side of Kix, so we’re all going to need to bear with a few of these types of questions until Claire gets oriented. Claire, we don’t name the teams after little plants and animals in club. Our name is Kix Girls Under Thirteen White.”
Yeah, girl power right back at you, Mimi.
Ron leaned toward me. “I’ll fill you in on everything later.”
“Thanks,” I said, nodding perfunctorily. He smelled yummy. Why wasn’t my constipation visualization working?!
“Okay, so we need to talk about legacy numbers,” Mimi continued. “Gunther and I discussed the matter and we both agree that returning players should have first pick at their old jersey numbers.” Yawn. “Some of you have already called me with your requests, and I’m thrilled to tell you that they’ve all been accommodated.” Who wouldn’t be thrilled? “Dick was fast to grab numbers for his girls, which only leaves us with a few.”
“You got number two?” Leo asked, or as he would pronounce it, axed.
Mimi checked her oh-so-official looking clipboard once again and nodded. “You’re in luck. Do you want number two for Savannah?”
“Yeah, number two ’cause she’s the shit,” he said, laughing.
“How about you, Claire? I know this being Rachel’s first year on a club team, she hardly has a legacy number, but is there one she’s fond of?”
“Well, she was number nine last year,” I said.
Mimi looked at me as if I were a moron. “That’s Mia Hamm’s number. Every girl in America wants to be number nine.”
Wow, I thought it was cool because it was the title of a trippy Beatles song.
Mimi continued, “Kelly Greer’s been number nine since she was three years old.”
I am so embarrassed. Not.
“How ’bout number one?” I asked. A few people giggled. Ron patted my leg and whispered, “Goalkeeper’s number.”
“Why don’t you tell the new people what numbers are available?” Ron suggested.
Mimi glared at me. What the hell did I do? “We’ve got numbers seven and thirteen left and—”
“Violet wants number seven,” Raymond said. “Lucky little number seven.”
“Okay, then, that’s settled,” Mimi said. “Claire, Rachel will have to be thirteen. You’re not superstitious, are you?”
Trying to show her that I could not care less about her jersey number, I laughed. “Please, who believes in that nonsense?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Shit. Please tell me Raymond missed that comment. He folded his arms across his chest and tapped his right foot with annoyance. “That’s right, the ignorant black man and his Voodoo.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“If this team is unwelcoming to black folks, I’d just as soon know it now so we can—”
Mimi looked at me annoyed. “Raymond, we value our African-American players as an integral part of our multicultural, multiethnic, multi-ass-kicking team,” she said, making sincere eyes at Leo and Raymond. “Can we please move on to team business, Claire?” Visibly irritated by me, Mimi flipped another page on her clipboard and continued.
After an hour, Mimi finished outlining her expectations for the season as Gunther sat seemingly in a state of rigor mortis. “Okay, someone call the girls upstairs, so I can show them the DVD of last year’s season highlights. Most of you know that Cara’s grandfather owns a production company and put together this totally rockin’ DVD for them. I’m sure even if you saw it at last year’s end-of-season party, you won’t mind watching it again, right?”
“A production company?” I whispered to Darcy.
“Shhh, you don’t want to get in more trouble with the general, do you?”
I laughed quietly. “I thought she said the family business was importing.”
“Oh, they import, all right.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Lowering her voice almost inaudibly, Darcy confided, “The Shastas have lots of different businesses, but rumor has it that they’re all just fronts to launder drug money.” I made a horrified quizzical expression, begging her to continu
e. “There’s no way you get this rich off importing wicker baskets.”
“I bet the Pier One folks are pretty loaded,” I whispered as I glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.
“Trust me, the Shastas are on another pier altogether. The DEA could never get the evidence they needed to prosecute Freddy Shasta, but the IRS nailed him for tax evasion.”
“Really?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yeah, he’s doing two years in federal prison now. It’s Santa Bella’s dirty little secret. Even if anyone knew something that could hang Freddy, they’d never talk because he gives so much money to the community. You know that new playground?” I nodded. “Shasta money. The Shasta Eye Center at Santa Bella General, the New Globe Theatre, the Fine Arts Museum. This whole town is built with Shasta’s dirty money.”
I thought I was bringing Rachel to the land of milk and cookies, not the set of The Sopranos.
“Are you sure?” I asked, desperately hoping that Darcy’s report was simply overblown rumors.
“Like I said, the DEA never proved anything, but at the very least, this family has a few unethical accounting practices.”
“Wow.” As I absorbed this, the girls trotted up the stairs and settled in. On a giant TV screen, a picture of last year’s team appeared. The lights went down and the theme from Chariots of Fire began.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, I noticed Rachel’s goldfish, Jaws, was floating at the top of his bowl on the kitchen counter. Mentally, I went through my schedule to see when I could buy a replacement fish for Rachel before she got home from school. Even though it was just a fish, I preferred replacing it to having to tell Rachel that her pet died. Granted, it wasn’t like she bonded with the slippery little bugger after a mere four weeks. I just thought it better to avoid any minor bumps in a road that was finally smoothing for her.
I looked at my watch and realized I was late to pick up Darcy for our shopping date. She was planning an “old fashioned” seventh birthday party for her Veronica, and asked me to join her to buy supplies at Party City. I found it amusing that “simple” birthday parties were now in vogue in Southern California. Darcy explained that, between Kelly and Veronica, she’d hosted every kind of birthday party from ice skating to rock climbing to scavenger hunts to laser tag. When Kelly was into princesses, Darcy hired Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, and transformed their home into a pink glittering castle. Every guest received a gown, wand and tiara. After three-year-old Veronica uttered, “Stars is pretty” one evening, Darcy threw her baby a birthday party at the planetarium. Now, the ultimate one-upsmomship was hosting a modest backyard party with Pin the Tail on the Donkey and a frosted white sheet cake with a single color of icing.
Last week, Darcy explained that she would buy plain pink paper products and a single candle with the number seven. I laughed at how much effort she was putting into her simplicity theme. “For entertainment, the kids can play old-fashioned games,” Darcy said, beaming with pride. “I’m not hiring a single entertainer either.” I swore her head sprang a little with pride. “What do you think?”
“You, my friend, are positively Amish,” I told her.
I was enjoying having a best friend who lived next door. It reminded me of the sitcom childhood I never had.
I flushed Jaws and walked to Darcy’s house, hoping she’d be ready to leave right away. If we got back before lunch, I could head over to Fish World and pick out a body double for Rachel’s floater.
For a guy who was always at the hospital, Ron seemed to cross my path often. Funny, but until soccer tryouts, I’d never seen him. Now he was my shadow. He opened the door wearing a charcoal gray Armani suit with a crisp periwinkle shirt and striking textured silk tie in an abstract pattern of bright yellow and red. It was a different—and completely appealing—look for him. “Come in,” he snapped. It came across like, “Don’t just stand there.” Clearly, this man was not attracted to me or he would handle me a bit more gently than that. Good, I reminded myself. I don’t want him to be attracted to me. And I don’t want to be attracted to him. This is a good thing. This is the right thing. This is the only thing that is good for everyone.
I detested myself for my next thought, but couldn’t help wondering why Ron didn’t seem interested in me. I mean, not that anything was ever, ever going to happen between us. Never. Never, ever, ever. But why didn’t he have a secret compartment in his heart with a shrine to me, complete with my photos, a lock of my hair and a sexy jazz tune playing in the background? Not that I had one for him. (I mean, really! Where am I going to get a lock of his hair?) But what was wrong with me that my lustful feelings were unrequited? Like I said, I hated myself for having these thoughts; nonetheless, they flooded my mind like an overflowing toilet—one with a dead goldfish in it.
“Is Darcy here?” I asked meekly.
Then I heard her voice from another room as she continued an argument with Ron. She sounded hard. “So are we in agreement? I’m not going to have another situation like we had at Kelly’s party where I’m running around doing everything and you’re sitting out back yucking it up with the dads, got it?”
Ron smiled at me in the same way he did that first time I saw him on the soccer field. It was inviting. But was he issuing an invitation? Or was he inviting in the same way, say, a slice of chocolate cake was—unknowingly, scrumptiously tempting without doing a single thing? “Claire’s here, so you might want to tone down the nagging just a bit,” he shouted upstairs. Then turning to me, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Darcy rushed down the stairs, apologizing. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here, Ron?!”
She was apologizing? Please. Last night I dreamt that her husband and I had sex every which way possible in locations I didn’t know existed. Even in my dreams, I thought to myself, “Wait a minute, doesn’t this guy have a wife?” Then the magnificent feeling of Ron’s body enveloping mine was replaced with the self-loathing that came from seeing Darcy’s weeping disembodied head floating through the sky. The dream ended with Mimi tackling me to the floor and throwing shorts over my face.
He snapped, “What part of ‘Claire’s here’ didn’t let you know that Claire’s here?” The tone of his voice punctuated the sentence with a silent dumb ass. Now I knew what Rachel was talking about. These two were relentless.
I noticed myself backing toward the door, desperately hoping Darcy would cancel so I could exit immediately and head to Fish World. “Darcy, if this is not a good time, I have a couple—”
“It’s a great time,” Darcy said. “Let me grab my keys.”
“Why don’t you let her finish, Darc?” Ron said. He was bitter chocolate to be sure. Good thing for me, I don’t find nastiness at all sexy. Ron’s chocolate factor began to slip. The bad thing was that my friend Darcy was married to a bastard.
They both looked at me expectantly, so I spoke just to fill the silence. “It’s just that, well, we could do this another time if you two want to, um, finish chatting because—”
“No, now is a good time,” Darcy insisted. “The closer we go toward the weekend, the less stuff they’ve got, and everybody’s doing simple this year.”
“Jesus Christ, Darcy, why don’t you let the woman finish her sentence?” Ron asked. “Go on, Claire. How come you want to go later?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, squirming to try to make my way out from between them. I hated being in the middle of another couple’s fight. I hated conflict so much that I didn’t like being in the middle of my own fights.
“It’s not nothing,” Ron said. I glanced past him at their kitchen clock, watching the morning slip away. “Tell me, what were you going to say?”
Now Darcy was looking at me expectantly. How embarrassed would I be when I revealed that my big agenda item for the day was replacing Jaws to protect my daughter from the horrors of goldfish death? “Go ahead, Claire,” Darcy urged. “Tell us. If you have something else going on, it’s okay.”
I
laughed, trying to show how ridiculous my original plan was. “You guys, it’s nothing. I was going to buy a goldfish for Rachel because her old one died and I just don’t want to deal with it. It’s really very silly. Come on, let’s go. I’ll just tell her Jaws died and I flushed him, no big deal.” Darcy assured me she could do the errand without me. “Of course you could, but it’ll be fun. Let’s go. Come on, let’s go already.” I felt like I was escaping from a burning building.
When Darcy pulled her minivan into the lot at Party City, an identical one pulled up beside her with a redheaded woman in a pink alligator top. “Darcy Greer!” she screeched excitedly from her passenger seat to Darcy’s. “What in the Sam hill are you doing here?”
“Jinx, have you met my friend, Claire?” Darcy asked.
She smiled curtly. “Not formally. I’ve seen her around. Tryouts.”
“Oh, well then, Claire Emmett, this is Jinx Johansen. Jinx, Claire.”
“Mmnnn,” Jinx gave me a disapproving once-over as we all remained seated in our respective vehicles. “You’re the one with the daughter from rec, right?” It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about soccer. I somehow heard it as Rachel had survived some sort of wreck, which, truth be told, she had.
Darcy answered for me. “Claire’s daughter Rachel is one of our new girls. How’s Sissy doing on Jillian’s team?”
Sissy, Sissy? Where have I heard that name?
“Well, Darcy,” Jinx said with a haughty tone. “She’s doing as well as can be expected for a girl who was rejected by her soccer team.”
That’s right! At tryouts, I remember hearing Mimi assuring a woman that Sissy would make the team. She was on her way to Starbucks with Gia, though, so I didn’t turn around to see who she was speaking with. “Of course she’ll make it,” I remembered Mimi saying. “If I have anything to do with it, she’ll be on the team again.”
Field of Schemes Page 11
