Field of Schemes

by Coburn, Jennifer

  Dave smiled sympathetically. “Whenever you choose to.”

  “You’re not going to send me a bill for tonight, are you?”

  “No, but I am hoping we can do this again.”

  “Really? Even though I really don’t have it together yet?”

  “Please,” he dismissed with a wave. “I don’t want to wait around forever for people to get it together. I like you, Claire. You’re funny. And honest. I don’t know about you, but I feel very comfortable around you.”

  “Oh my God, that’s exactly the word I’d use.”

  “I actually used several,” Dave said.

  “Comfortable.” I smiled.

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: The Team

  FROM: Mimi

  DATE: June 15

  RE: The girls are getting fat!!!!

  Two weeks ago another manager called our team the Chub Club when our girls were called up onto the stage to accept their medals at the Manchester tournament! I was mortified and was certainly relieved that none of our girls heard her cruel comment! As nasty as she was, this woman had a point! The girls are getting fat!!! I think they’ve gained 50 pounds collectively! I need parents to remind the girls that fruits and vegetables are healthy snacks! I also need your support in encouraging Gunther to resume fitness training! Let’s all band together for the good of our daughters and get them back on the regimen of health and fitness!

  Go Kix!

  --------------------

  TO: Mimi

  FROM: Claire

  RE:Re: The girls are getting fat!!!!

  DATE: June 15

  Rachel and I made some cute soccer necklaces for the girls that we plan on giving the team at the tournament. Just wanted to make sure this doesn’t interfere with any gifts you’re planning on giving the team.

  --------------------

  TO: The Team

  FROM: Mimi

  DATE: June 15

  RE:FW: Re: The girls are getting fat!!!!

  I gave the girls necklaces at the last tournament! I gave them a gift to commemorate their first tournament together as a team! If we give them something every time, it minimizes the significance of the gift, so I’d appreciate it if you did not give them anything more! They need to learn to feel pride internally, not by receiving trinkets! Recent studies on consumerism show that kids whose parents stress materialism wind up depressed!

  Why did I even engage with this Queen Bee mom? I refrained from responding, but my buddy, Nancy could not hold back.

  Dear Mimi,

  I’m not sure if you realize that you’re sending your emails to the entire team, but since you are, I thought I’d respond. While I fully agree that we live in an overly materialistic, consumer-oriented society, I might remind you that it was you who began giving the girls “trinkets” when you gave them “girl power” scrunchies at their first practice and necklaces for their first tournament. Lest we forget the team photo t-shirts and mugs you bought the girls at the tournament. It was also very generous of you to buy the girls “Chicks rock” shoelaces, but I think it somewhat undermines your credibility when espousing your belief that less is more.

  Respectfully,

  Nancy and Roger Gilman

  I would really have to thank Nancy with a bouquet of pollen-free flowers when this season was over.

  Hello Team,

  Good luck this weekend. Kick some ass and show no mercy.

  Violet’s having another surgery, but she’ll be back and that’s a promise.

  Raymond

  My mother and Blake could not have looked more out of place at the “School’s Out for Summer” soccer tournament. She wore a silk scarf around her head and flung it dramatically over her shoulder. Mothers my age were competing through their children, but the women of the older generation were competing through sunglasses. Whoever could support the biggest pair won, and Barbara was a definite contender. The black, crystal-encrusted frames sat under the hood of her scarf, making her look like a chic strain of Unabomber—the type that sends you champagne with too many bubbles. Blake wore his usual yachting gear. Through his locked jaw, he told Darcy, Ron, and Dave how “spectacular” it was to meet them, then excused himself to “have a word” with Rachel.

  “You can’t do that, Blake,” I told him.

  Dick and Bobby sidled over to introduce themselves and explain that Mimi doesn’t allow the girls to talk to anyone for an hour before games. “She says she’s got ’em in some sort of zone,” Loud Bobby shouted at a shocked-looking Blake. I don’t think he was expecting to have his hair blown back by Bobby’s voluminous explanation.

  “That’s absurd!” Blake said.

  Never missing her cue, Darcy shot, “It’s club soccer. Of course it’s absurd.”

  As my mother and Blake chatted with some of the Normals before the game, I noticed Mimi arguing with the other team’s manager. Her hands were placed firmly on her hips, her head jutted forward aggressively. The other manager held a panicked expression and slouched posture as she spoke with Mimi. She was a potato-fed woman of considerable girth with hair that extended past her bottom. If the setting were different, one might imagine that Mimi was a celebrity and the other manager was the schlubby assistant getting bawled out for having caffeinated Diet Coke in the movie set trailer. No one could make out exactly what they were saying, but Mimi seemed to be winning the argument.

  “What did I miss?” Dave asked as he approached me.

  “Hey,” I greeted him. “Don’t know. It just started. Stay here, I want to introduce you to my parents. My mom and her husband, rather.”

  Suddenly, the other manager stormed off to talk to Gunther, who was sitting on the sideline with the girls telling them who would be starting. “Excuse me, are you the coach?” she asked.

  Dave stood by my side. “Let’s wait till the commercial break,” I said, gesturing toward the unfolding drama.

  Mimi arrived seconds later. “Let’s not have a scene, Trudy. You know the rules and you made a choice not to follow them. Accept the forfeit and move on.”

  “There is a problem?” Gunther asked. This guy did not miss a trick.

  “What’s the deal?” Dick demanded, his right eye bulging from his head like Rachel’s old Mr. Whoozit.

  “The deal is that we won,” Mimi said. Parents started gathering to see what the commotion was about.

  “My God!” Gia exclaimed, giggling. “I didn’t even see the game start!”

  “Girls, run a lap with Mimi,” Gunther suggested.

  “Oh, so now you want fitness training?” Mimi snapped. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  Noting the wedge between our team manager and coach, Trudy immediately jumped in with her appeal to Gunther. “I meant to set my dryer for an hour but accidentally put the thing on auto-dry, so our white jerseys were in my dryer all night!”

  No one understood why this woman was sharing her laundering woes with us, but she was clearly upset about her dryer working overtime.

  Mimi gestured with her hands that Trudy should cut to the chase and said, “Bottom line, they forfeited.”

  “We did not forfeit!” Trudy said, growing two inches.

  Gunther asked Jennifer to lead the girls in a lap around the field. “I don’t understand the problem,” he said as they took off. Now parents from the other team were walking over to see what was going on.

  Mimi said, “We’re the visiting team so we choose the jersey color, and they choose the side of the field. I told her we wanted to wear our whites and she freaked out!”

  “You said you didn’t care what color you wore until I told you I was relieved because I accidentally shrunk my white jerseys in the dryer last night! Then you insisted on wearing your blue tops so we’d have no other choice but white! Why can’t you just wear your whites?!”

  Gunther knit his brows, still confused.

  Mimi escalated the argument. “We can. We choose not to, as we have the right to do as the visiting team. You choose the
side; we choose the color! That’s the way it works. It’s not my fault that you ruined your white jerseys. If you don’t have your whites, then you have to wear your blue tops! And since we chose to wear our blues, your team is not prepared to play by the tournament rules, thus you automatically forfeit this game to us!” She was quite satisfied with her cutting efficiency.

  Turning to Gunther, Trudy begged, “Have a heart, coach. This could happen to you sometime.”

  “It would never happen to us!” Mimi screeched. “My housekeeper would never leave the dryer on all night!”

  Gunther looked baffled. “Do we have white shirts with us?” he asked Mimi.

  “Of course we do, Gunther!” Mimi said. “I always bring complete uniforms, both color tops. The point is that—”

  “We use white tops and let them play in blue,” Gunther said as Trudy sighed with relief.

  “No we do not!” Mimi shouted so loud that a referee from an adjacent field looked over to see what the fuss was about. “A forfeit is worth seven points! Do you know what we have to do to earn seven points in this tournament? It’s three for a win, a maximum of three for goals scored and a point for a shutout. The only way to earn seven points is to shut them out 3-0. Even if we shut them out 10-0, we still can’t get more than seven points. This forfeit is their fault, not ours. I didn’t ruin her white jerseys, did I?” Did she? “We’ll let the girls save their strength and go into their next game fresher than the others who will have already played a game earlier!”

  Dick looked at Mimi with deep admiration. “What a twat,” he sighed.

  “No, this is not nice,” Gunther said. “We let them play in white.”

  “Thank you, coach,” Trudy said. “I’m glad you’re a reasonable person.”

  “Gunther, how can you—” Mimi shouted. He raised his hand. So glad to see that “talk to the hand” translates to German. “What-ever,” Mimi said, rolling her eyes at Trudy. “We’ll kick your asses just for practice. Since we gave you this break, we want the good side of the field. Move your stuff,” she said, pointing at the sideline where her team had planted umbrellas, set up chairs and placed their bags. Trudy looked appalled.

  After the other team’s parents returned to their side of the field to begin their forced migration, Dick raised his beer can and gave a hearty cheer. “I think I’m in love with Mimi.”

  “Don’t move,” Mimi told our parents who were starting to collect their stuff for our move. As the other team’s parents began crossing the field with their folded umbrellas and chairs, dragging coolers, backpacks and two baby strollers, Mimi smirked maliciously and turned to Dick. “Think you love me now? Watch this.” When the disgruntled group arrived, she shifted her weight cutely and put her fingertip purposefully on her pretty little head. “You know, now that I think about it, we’ll stay on this side after all.” Mimi giggled and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Off with you. Back to your side of the field.”

  Mother leaned in toward me and asked, “Does this happen all the time?”

  “No, Mom, that’s the beauty of club soccer. There’s fresh new bullshit at every game.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I always root for the girls to win, but after they scored four unanswered goals, I’d had my fill of our success. I realized that these definitive victories were important for our ranking in the tournament, but the score of this game also reflected the score between our team managers, and it was more lopsided than I liked. Mimi strutted up and down the sideline, smirking at Trudy as if to say, Bet you’d like to forfeit now. Trudy averted her eyes, conceding defeat.

  As much as I loathed the sight of Mimi gloating, the game held two pleasant surprises for me. First, Rachel grew into her uniform. She finally looked confident as a club player. Rachel always seemed happy playing soccer, but in the last tournament she was still playing rec-style breakaway soccer rather than working with her teammates. Today, in her sixth game with Kix, Rachel became a real club player.

  “See, what did I tell you?” Dave said as he sat next to me, my mother and Blake. He was right. As center midfielder, Rachel was like the conductor of an orchestra. She brought the ball as far as she could, then passed to one of the forwards to shoot. She passed the ball back to defenders, which I thought was a mistake at first, but Dave explained that this was a smart strategic move when there was nothing but opposing players in front of her. “Good soccer players pass to space whether it’s in front of them or behind them. You’re right, though, it’s a risky move because we’re bringing the ball further into our own territory.” I nodded. “But when we play easy teams, it’s a good opportunity to practice doing this. We’re not going to beat the premiere teams at State Cup if we don’t know how to use the entire field.”

  On two occasions, Rachel even penetrated the eighteen (I loved saying that) herself. She passed the ball to Kelly, who was out wide. Kelly brought it back to Rachel, who shot it in the net! My heart grew two sizes when her teammates all fell to the ground and began bowing, doing the “we’re not worthy” routine they always did when a player scored.

  My second shock of the day was my mother. Much to her own surprise, Barbara was a closet soccer fanatic. As soon as Rachel got possession of the ball, she stood and began cheering hysterically. She didn’t know a thing about soccer, but before long, she was urging players to work the channel, to find feet and to make one move and go. After Rachel’s first goal, she wailed, “That’s what I’m talking about, baby!”

  Dave raised his eyebrows as if to say that this was not exactly how I had described my mother when we had dinner earlier that week. Our second date was less of a therapy session, but still had that platonic feel to it. Still, I wanted to hang in there and see if romantic feelings would develop. He was just the type of guy I’d always been attracted to in the past.

  When Ron began pacing behind Dick trying to light his fuse, it was my mother’s powder keg that exploded first. Barb stood, her heels sinking into the grass and shouted, “Come on, ref! Can we get a call on anything here?!”

  Unfortunately, the referee took her words to heart and held up a yellow card, pointing at my mother. Blake began stroking Mother’s wrist and urging her to sit before she started a soccer riot.

  “Mother,” I said, laughing, “I’ve never seen this side of you.”

  “Nor have I,” she said, regaining her breath and composure. “My therapist said I needed to get in touch with the fun person inside waiting to get out.”

  “Dave’s a therapist,” I said, gesturing to him.

  Barbara raised her eyebrows. “Really? Well, I certainly hope you haven’t diagnosed me too harshly.”

  He smiled and gave me a look to say, See, everyone thinks that. Instead, he politely told my mother, “Rachel’s having a great game. She’s quite a little distributor.” Blake and I looked confused but Mother nodded and agreed.

  Ron paced behind the row of parents, stopping to consult with Mimi, who was taking judicious notes at the far end of the field. Darcy turned to me and said, “They never stop. She called last night to get Ron to go with her to the Kix board meeting to force Gunther to reinstate fitness practice.” I rolled my eyes in solidarity.

  “We should get your sister out here,” Barbara said. “Maybe that would help her shake her mood.”

  “Awwww,” the parents from our sideline shouted as Kelly Greer shot wide.

  “What mood?” I asked. I hadn’t spoken with Kathy in a few weeks. “Is she okay?”

  Mother sighed, sounding a bit exasperated. “Baby blues,” she explained. “I wish she’d get over it already. She’s positively dreary around the office.”

  Loud Bobby filled the void that Crazy Raymond left and began shouting hoarsely, “Nooooo mer-saaaaay!”

  “What do you mean baby blues?” I whispered.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Barbara said, now standing on her feet with her eyes locked on the field. “Attack, attack!” she shouted at our defenders as a girl in
blue approached our defensive third. Mother certainly was picking up the language quickly.

  “Mom,” I said, concerned. “What do you mean by baby blues? What’s going on with Kathy?”

  Shaking her hand loose from my grip, she shouted, “Offsides, ref!” There was no way my mother even knew what offsides was, much less had the ability to make the call. I glanced behind her and saw Ron pacing behind our chairs again. He mouthed an apology and pointed to Dick, trying to explain that our team drunk was his real target. How did I find this imbecile so attractive? What guy over the age of thirteen would purposely provoke the volatile team alcoholic?

  “Mother, tell me what’s going on with Kathy!”

  “She’s moping around, crying over the slightest little things, saying she’s a bad mother. The same thing you went through with Rachel. It’ll pass. It’s rough in the beginning with all those hormones.”

  “Mother, I had post-partum depression and it didn’t just pass! I went through months of therapy and anti-depressants. Why are you acting like she has a bad case of PMS and just needs to—”

  “Shake it off, Macy!” a mother screamed at her flattened daughter in the blue uniform. The girl lay on her back, motionless. Her coach and the referee ran out to her and began asking a series of basic questions to determine whether or not Macy had a serious head injury.

  “Hang tough!” her father shouted.

  Two long braids rose from the ground and Macy hobbled to her feet. Her coach patted her on the back and said, “This body needs to last a lifetime, let’s take a rest.” Months ago, an interaction like this wouldn’t have even registered with me. Now, moments of reason seemed remarkable.

  As Macy hobbled off the field, I joined the others clapping for her. My mother whipped her head around at me, appalled. She looked at Dave, Darcy, Ron, Gia, Tom and the others and snapped, “You people are sick!”

  Looking across the field at the other team parents was like holding up a mirror. They also had a wall of noisy dads who were interchangeably angry or arrogant, depending on the score of the game. Many of their parents shouted instructions that conflicted with their coach’s. And, as with our Kix team, about half the parents looked absolutely normal and were simply there to support their kids.