by Monica Nolan
But by the time the driver had passed the stone gateposts and was speeding toward Adena, any second thoughts about her trip to Bay City had fallen away like dried mud flaking off a tennis shoe.
Bobby had been looking forward to this trip to Bay City all day. She was meeting her old teammates for dinner, an informal reunion of the Elliott College Spitfires in honor of Chick, her best friend. Chick had gotten the spot on the National Women’s Field Hockey Team after Bobby’s accident. She was making a brief visit to the city following a summer at the Swans’ lavish training camp on Lake Cranston, just before the renowned team flew to Glasgow for the first leg of their European tour.
Gee, it would be fun to see the old gang! Fond as Bobby had grown of Metamora and her students, it would be a relief to escape the hothouse atmosphere of the school for an evening. It would be a relief to carry on a conversation in English, without those foreign phrases buzzing around her like incomprehensible bees. It would be a relief to talk about calisthenics, field hockey plays, or cross-training with girls who really understood the importance of physical fitness.
At the train station in Adena, Bobby bought a Coke, drinking it in noisy gulps as she waited impatiently for the 5:40 train. She’d been in such a hurry to leave that she hadn’t even stopped for a drink of water. Once on the train, she stared unseeingly out the window. In her bowling bag was a paperback novel she’d confiscated from Sandy Milston that morning, but she hadn’t had time to put a brown paper wrapper over the picture of the two girls in their lingerie. Instead of reading it, she let her mind wander.
She thought what a good idea it was, bringing the bowling bag as an excuse for dressing in pants, saddle shoes, and a button-up shirt instead of the pumps and skirt a city excursion required. She wondered how her ex-teammates were adjusting to life after college. She was particularly curious about the ones now living in Bay City. Had any of them visited one of those attractive-sounding bars, like the one in the book, where desirable women congregated?
Maybe Pat, she mused. Pat Pressler, former fullback, had a reputation for sophistication. She’d majored in psychology and was full of theories applying what she’d learned in the classroom to her favorite sport. She loved to explain why goalies were more likely than forwards to become alcoholics, or to speculate that players who set up shots but never scored often had domineering mothers. Now she was working for the Bay City Parks and Recreation Department, sharing an apartment with two other Elliott graduates.
In her eagerness to see her old friends, Bobby was the first at the rendezvous. They had agreed to meet at Luigi’s, an unpretentious Italian restaurant on the edge of Bay City’s bohemian Riverside district. Bobby was sitting in the corner booth sipping a Cinzano when Pat walked in.
“Gee whiz,” Bobby exclaimed, “I hardly recognized you!”
At Elliott College the fullback had lived in a sweatshirt and jeans, but today she was wearing pumps, hose, and a skirt.
“I look a sight, don’t I?” Pat peeled off her gloves and tossed a battered hat on the seat next to Bobby. “Some of the old biddies at Park and Rec are real sticklers for what they call proper office attire. I think they subconsciously long to put on pants themselves, and thwarting me is the way they suppress their own desires. Give me two seconds in the john and I’ll look more human.”
Pat had hardly vanished into the restaurant’s bathroom when Bobby felt a whack on her shoulder. “Bobby! How’s the Games Mistress?”
“Chick!” Bobby jumped up to greet her best chum. “You’re looking grand, Chick!”
The two friends thumped each other’s shoulders affectionately. Pat returned from the powder room, presentable again, amid a flurry of arrivals. Fran and Bennie (Frances and Bonnie), the inseparable halfbacks nicknamed “the twins” because they always dressed alike—tonight they wore sharply creased plaid Bermuda shorts and knee socks, topped with Elliott College sweaters. Mash (Marcia) Manning, ex-goalie and now social worker trainee came next. She exclaimed over Bobby’s bowling bag trick, while Lon (Yolanda) who walked in with her, merely smiled. Lon had never cared what people thought about the way she dressed. Tiny (Elise) and Glen (Glenda) completed the party.
A buzz of greetings filled the air. “Hi, Bennie—or is it Fran?” “Glen! How are the Spitfires doing without us?” “Hello, Mash, didja help the indigent today?” “When are you moving to the city, Tiny?” “Bobby, let’s see your shoulder!”
Bobby obligingly lifted her right arm and rotated it in a circle. Chick clapped her hands. “Full range of motion! Bobby, that’s terrific!”
“About ninety percent, really, but I’m working on it,” Bobby said modestly.
Chick leaned across the table. “I told Sal, one of the trainers at Lake Cranston, about your injury, and she said you should try this exercise…”
Unexpectedly, Bobby’s mind rocketed off on an odd tangent. Why, that might have been me, she thought in wonderment. Only a few months ago the Swans had been the only goal she could imagine. Now she couldn’t picture life without Metamora, her students, her team, her new psychological studies.
“…keeping the shoulders level and the back straight,” finished Chick. “You should try it.”
“Thanks, I will,” Bobby promised her former teammate.
Chick lowered her voice. “And those other—symptoms—they still bothering you?”
Chick was one of the few people who knew about Bobby’s dizziness and the queer nightmares.
“I think they’re getting better.”
Bobby pushed from her mind the remembrance of the incident just the other day when she’d climbed to the top of the bleachers to retrieve an errant hockey ball. She’d made the mistake of glancing over the edge and had found herself on all fours, crawling back to the safety of low ground.
“The odd thing is the dreams. Lately, the girl—remember how I told you there’s always a girl? Lately, this girl is another teacher—”
Tiny interrupted them. “Enough with the top-secret confab. Let’s eat!”
Everyone was hungry, and as the orders for veal piccata, lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, plus a couple bottles of chianti flew at the harried waiter, Bobby mused a moment longer on the frequent appearance of Enid Butler in her dreams. Was her subconscious trying to warn her about the duplicitous Math Mistress? Were they clairvoyant dreams?
The night before the game, she’d dreamed that she and Enid were at Mesquakie Point. It was like the picnic with Elaine, only this time she was kissing Enid on the striped blanket. The kisses were dream kisses, impossibly tender and delicious. Then Enid got up, saying, “I need my slippers and bathrobe.” Bobby followed her as she entered a stone tower and in her dream she’d somehow known it was a lighthouse on the Muskrat River. At the top of the tower, Enid told her, “My slippers are in the closet.” But when Bobby opened the door to get them, there was nothing but thin air, and she tumbled off the tower, down, down to the roaring river rapids below.
Thinking about her theories now, during this boisterous get-together, Bobby scoffed at her own superstition. She was becoming as credulous as some of her students.
The hearty food arrived, and the ex-hockey players ate with gusto. Pat and Bobby compared notes on teenaged athletics. When Pat told her ruefully of the competition for gym time at the neighborhood recreation center, Bobby felt glad anew that she’d ended up at Metamora. At Miss Craybill’s school there was no boys’ basketball crowding the sports-minded girls out of the gym and into a small room to learn social dance!
Bobby told the whole table about the new field hockey team and the Savages’ triumph that afternoon. She demonstrated the winning play, using the salt and pepper shakers as stand-ins for Angle and her opponent, with the bowl of grated cheese and Pat’s wineglass marking the goal end. She basked in the keen interest of the other girls. No need to explain the sixteen-yard hit-out to this crowd!
“Great strategy,” approved Chick. “You’ll be heading toward the finals!”
Bobby shook her he
ad modestly. “I’ll just be happy to win a few more games.”
Pat put in, “With adolescent girls, at such a volatile stage, anything can happen. Often the psychology of the team is as important as its skill—”
A universal groan went up. “My mother does not dominate me,” muttered Bennie.
But Bobby’s recent readings had made her more receptive. “What do you mean, Pat? Do you think the social adjustment of the girls to each other can really make a difference in the dynamic patterns associated with winning and losing?”
“Get a load of the intellectual!” Tiny nudged Mash so hard she nearly knocked her off her chair. For the first time Bobby felt impatient with their joking. She wanted to hear what Pat had to say.
“I was thinking more about the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies,” Pat told her. “Generally it’s applied negatively, but—”
“If I could manage to instill in the girls a belief in their team as invincible, you mean?” Bobby jumped on Pat’s idea eagerly.
“Yes, a kind of folie-à-deux, or in this case, folie-à-squad,” Pat agreed.
The other Spitfires rolled their eyes and the discussion drifted to the Swans and their training methods, their top-secret playbook, and the chances at the International Tournament in Orkney. Bobby would ordinarily have been as interested as the rest, but now she turned to Pat and said sotto voce, “I’ve been worrying a bit about the factions the team is developing. I’m not sure how to handle this—this rivalry.”
Pat chewed an olive thoughtfully. “You first have to identify the root of the division. Factions often form as a result of mistrust, which stems from a basic insecurity, a lack of confidence.”
“That’s true of one player, maybe,” Bobby said, thinking of Angle. “But this other girl has it all—a terrific player, pretty, and popular to boot. Her teammates elected her captain.”
“Even with all those outward markings of success, she may be plagued by questions about her own identity that cause a deep-seated unease,” Pat told her firmly.
“Hey, Bobby, speaking of cross-training,” Mash’s jolly voice interrupted Pat’s pithy analysis, “how’s Elaine ‘hubba hubba’ Ellman?”
“She’s…well, she’s engaged.” Bobby broke the news bluntly, and the whole group sobered up.
“Another good kid gone wrong,” mourned Mash.
“Is this what we have to look forward to?” asked Fran, now a senior at Elliott.
“Yes,” added Bennie anxiously. “What do you do when all your best chums from school start getting married?”
It was a problem they’d all secretly pondered, and now it was out in the open.
“You kids are making a mountain out of a molehill,” said Pat with her usual assurance. “Those fly-by-night girls we knew in college aren’t the only fish in the sea.”
“That’s right,” said Lon, surprising them all. Lon rarely spoke.
“What do you mean, Lon?” queried Glen.
“You just have to know where to look.” Lon seemed to think she’d explained everything.
“You mean—” began Mash.
“I’ve heard—” muttered Chick.
“In Bay City, is there—” asked Tiny timidly.
“A bar for gay girls?” responded Pat smoothly. “There certainly is! More than one, in fact. It’s quite a fascinating study, the different clientele of each bar, and its socioeconomic-psychological profile.”
“Well, let’s go study ’em!” said Mash enthusiastically. “Let’s find our captain a new girl!”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Sure, now’s the time!”
“Is this an individual practice or do we make it a scrimmage?”
Somehow the check was paid and the tipsy teammates rolled out of Luigi’s and into the street. The autumn twilight had turned into night, and the Spitfires still at Elliott College looked at their watches and reluctantly bade the graduates farewell. Tiny, Mash, Chick, and Bobby, however, eagerly followed Pat and Lon, the self-appointed experts.
“Where are we going?” Bobby laughed with excited anticipation.
“Francine’s, I think, don’t you?” Pat consulted Lon, who nodded. “The gang there is mostly career girls, college graduates, like ourselves,” Pat explained. “Primarily drawn from the upper-middle, middle-middle, and lower-middle economic strata of society…”
Bobby scarcely heard Pat’s profiling. She was wondering if there’d be dancing—if she’d meet someone who’d invite her home—if she’d be blond or brunette. Desire fizzed up in her like the head on a pint of beer, welling over the glass rim.
“…and there’s less risk of raids,” concluded Pat as they rounded a corner. Bobby and Chick had linked arms and begun to hum the Spitfires’ old fight song.
“Fight, fight, fight with all your might!”
“There it is,” pointed Pat. Halfway down the block was a small neon sign spelling out the word “Francine’s” in blue cursive. Below the name, a pink arrow pointed down a short flight of steps to a door below street level. Light streamed from the porthole in the door and embraced a young couple descending the stairs.
“Hey, that’s a fellow,” said Tiny in disappointment.
“He’ll be in the minority,” Pat assured her. “Those two are what’s known as ‘tourists’—likely a straight couple with a yen for novelty.”
The man held open the swinging door for the girl, bathing his companion in light.
“She’s a cute little number,” said Chick admiringly. “Hey, Bobby, what’s with the dodge?”
Bobby had stopped abruptly, and Chick had stumbled. “I know that girl!” she exclaimed. “That’s Metamora’s Math Mistress, and her boyfriend Rod!”
She gaped at Francine’s in a rage of thwarted desire, like a girl stranded on a desert isle who sees a passing ship moving away from her. She couldn’t go in now—that went without saying. How would she explain her presence to Enid? Hope flared briefly as she glanced at Lon. Lon was often mistaken for one of the boys—perhaps she would pose as Bobby’s date. Then the hope winked out. What would be the point? How could she find a girl for herself if she was supposed to be Lon’s steady?
“You said there was more than one gay bar—what about one of the other places?” Mash suggested.
“There’s the Knock Knock Lounge in Riverside,” Lon said.
“Gee, I don’t know.” Pat’s sophistication slipped a little. “Doesn’t it get raided? And I’ve heard they’re friendlier if you’re wearing fly fronts and grease your hair.” She looked down at her side zipper slacks and ran her fingers through her curly bob uneasily. “It’s important to fit in with the group, especially on a first visit.”
Bobby had seen the look Mash and Chick exchanged when Pat mentioned raids. Chick was flying to Glasgow in the morning.
“You kids go ahead,” the Games Mistress told the group, swallowing her disappointment like an indigestible lump of gristle. “It’s late and I ought to be heading back to Metamora anyway.” After all, just because a handicap kept her off the field was no reason to spoil the other players’ game! She pushed them toward Francine’s. “Next time, teammates! It was grand seeing you.”
“Next time!” “Good seeing you, Bobby!” “Keep up your guard with those Metamora girls!” the gang called after her. Turning the corner, she saw them clambering down the steps to Francine’s and her bitterness increased. That Enid! It’s all her fault, she thought fiercely as she walked toward Lake Street Station. She bought a Field and Sport to distract herself from the stew of lust and frustration bubbling inside her.
With a sigh, she sat down on one of the benches, near an attractive woman whose shapely legs were crossed in front of her. It was only after she looked from the legs to the face that Bobby realized the brunette engrossed in a drugstore paperback was Laura Burnham.
Chapter Thirteen
The Art Lesson
“Why, hello,” said Bobby. “Fancy meeting you here!”
Laur
a looked up, as surprised as Bobby had been a moment before. Her hair was pulled into a sleek updo and her black evening coat was open over a blue striped cocktail dress with a plunging neckline. She even wore gloves.
“Why, it’s Coach Bobby.” The Art Mistress was equally taken aback, but after a moment she tucked her surprise away with the paperback she’d been reading. “Come sit over here.” She patted the spot on the bench next to her. “I thought I was the only one who’d escaped from Metamora tonight. Mona gave me a ride to the station after dinner.”
“I took a cab, before.” Bobby sat next to Laura, thinking of Enid, who’d probably driven into the city with Rod. Perhaps Metamora’s entire faculty was roaming the streets of Bay City tonight. “I had a dinner date with some old classmates,” Bobby explained. “Then we—we went bowling.” She was glad she had the bowling bag to excuse her almost masculine attire.
Laura didn’t seem to have noticed Bobby’s casual dress. “I went to a—a gallery show in Riverside,” she said as if she felt the need to explain her own finery. “I couldn’t stand being cooped up with that mob of immature adolescents any longer. I needed the stimulation of the city. The cultural stimulation, I mean. The paintings I saw were terribly provocative, they gave me all sorts of new ideas—”
“Where’s Ken?” Bobby asked, to divert the Art Mistress from her discussion of “provocative” art. Bobby knew nothing about modern art, except that she didn’t like it.
“Ken’s away for the weekend, inspecting a newly discovered mound on a farm near Mink Lake.” Laura’s disdain for her husband’s hobby was hardly concealed by her attempt at an indulgent smile. “Haven’t you heard him talking about it? He’s been more excited than an Eagle Scout with a new patch.”
Bobby rarely paid attention to what Ken said, having taught herself to tune his monologues into a relaxing drone. “Oh, how nice for him,” she said politely.
