The Great Christmas Bowl

by Susan May Warren

  Then I turned to watch the kickoff, and my heart lodged in my throat.

  Kevin stood at the center, warming up to kick the ball into enemy territory.

  When did he become the team’s kicker?

  Wait! I wanted to yell. What about his Velcro hands, his ability to carry defenders with him as he broke through to a first down? I wanted to see my Kevin carry the ball to another winning touchdown! Not that kickers weren’t important, but I wanted Kevin to feel the victory of playing the position he’d worked so hard to master.

  He raised his arm, then led the team forward in a rush and kicked the ball.

  I heard the fans erupt, but I didn’t put much umph into my cheering as I watched Kevin assist in the return run tackle, then jog off the field.

  I waited for him to return for his stint on defense, but he stayed on the sidelines. Maybe Coach was saving his star for offense. I blew out a breath and picked up the blow horn, leading a round of “Here we go, Trou-outs; here we go.”

  The line kept the Falcons from a first down, and they punted.

  C’mon, Kevin, take the field. I turned, hope bubbling inside me, but there he stood, good ole 33, on the sidelines, eyes on the game.

  Disappointment sluiced through me as I clapped my pom-poms together, watching as his replacement tailback got pushed back, time and again.

  Kevin would have motored right through those linemen.

  I gritted my teeth and picked up the cowbell. I just wouldn’t watch the game. I’d simply cheer. But when the fans surged to their feet, I turned just in time to see our QB do a sneak up the middle for a first down.

  So maybe they got lucky.

  They pushed forward again and landed in Falcon territory. I was eating my frustration when our tailback fumbled the ball. The Falcons picked it up and, fueled by the turnover, marched back up the field and scored.

  We ended the first quarter seven points down. To my recollection, we’d never ended a half scoreless, but that’s exactly what happened as the Falcons time and again thwarted our offensive line.

  Kevin punted four times.

  Put the kid in at tailback, I wanted to scream. I seriously entertained the idea of following the team into the locker room to offer some suggestions. After all, I had served as the team mascot for three games and Trout Mother for the regular season. I thought that merited some respect.

  Mike must have read my mind, because he came out of the stands and helped lead the halftime gig by starting the wave. I was just about ready to hand him the suit when the Trouts came charging back onto the field. I wanted to catch Kevin’s eye, maybe give him one of those “hey, tell the coach to put you in” looks, but he took his place beside the coach as the return kick team went in.

  The Trouts ran it back to the ten, where the Falcons held them. “Field goal, field goal!” the fans shouted, all on their own. I was still plugging for the touchdown. Deep inside, I feared that Kevin couldn’t get it through the uprights.

  They lined up and I waved my foam finger, eyes on Kevin as he took a big breath and signaled for the snap. The placeholder lined the ball up; Kevin took four steps and kicked.

  The stands went quiet as the ball soared.

  It hit one of the goalposts and careened off. A collective groan went up, and I saw Kevin shake his head. See, I shouldn’t have thought those thoughts.

  This wasn’t fair. Not to the Trouts. Not to Kevin. Not to me. I’d spent the entire season rooting for this team and I deserved to see my kid victorious.

  For once, I gave thanks for the giant head that hid my dark expression.

  I faked it well through the third quarter, my spirits brightening only slightly when we managed a screen play that allowed Kevin’s replacement to slip into the end zone.

  Kevin missed the extra point.

  Seven to six, Falcons lead, and I was wearing out. The Falcons erupted on the other side of the field, drowning us out. My voice had left me; my muscles ached. I gave a halfhearted clang of my cymbals. “Rah rah ree, hit ’em in the knee!”

  I glanced up at Mike, who was finishing the cheer with his section of fans. “Rah rah rass, hit ’em in the other knee!”

  He looked at me, gave me a thumbs-up. I didn’t know why he was so cheery. We were losing, and our son was the culprit.

  Lord, this was not how it was supposed to work out. Furious, I shook my pom-poms. Kevin was supposed to be a star, and me his hero. We were supposed to win this game and have this memory to hold on to forever. It was supposed to be an amazing day, an amazing season, and frankly, I felt betrayed.

  After all I did, and . . .

  “What is the meaning of love, anyway? Isn’t it always looking out for the good of others?” Mike’s words, that day when I’d been searching for answers, reeled back to me. “What would you call the times we had to ground Neil for not finishing his homework or cut Amy off from her million-hour phone calls?”

  What, was this humiliation for my own good? for Kevin’s good?

  I didn’t get it.

  A wave of enthusiasm from our fans, the way they took to their feet, made me turn.

  The QB had connected with our wide receiver, and we’d gotten the ball all the way to the thirty-yard line. I glanced at the clock. A minute, forty-eight seconds, and four downs to go.

  “Go, Trouts!” I jumped on the bench Mike had pulled over during halftime and screamed, doing a trout wiggle.

  We edged forward a few yards, then a few more, but the Falcons held us from our first down on the twenty-three-yard line.

  There was a lot of space between the line of scrimmage and the goalposts. I glanced at the coach. He was pulling Kevin in close.

  No, no, please no.

  I shot a look at the clock. Thirty-two seconds and ticking. Enough to go for the first down, maybe even a pass, a Hail Mary into the end zone. Please!

  But the coach gave my beloved son a little pat on the back and pushed him into the game.

  I wanted to slump down on the bench and hold my head or, rather, slink off the field. But I summoned every ounce of proud mother inside me and grabbed my cymbals. “Go, Kevin!

  “Okay, God,” I said quickly, shooting a look to the fluffy white material of the dome roof. “I’m sorry for my bad attitude. I’m sorry I made this about me. I believe You’re up to good in Kevin’s life—and in mine too—” the last words came out in a groan—“whatever happens.”

  The boys lined up to kick. Some fantasyland dreamer inside me was hoping it was a sneak play, that Kevin would run it in for a touchdown, but—

  They snapped the ball to the holder.

  Kevin took his time, relying on his blockers. Then he took four long steps and kicked.

  The ball sailed high, straight. I didn’t breathe.

  Without wind to derail it or snow to weight it down, it stayed true and sailed like a beautiful gull right through the uprights.

  “Yes!” The fans drowned out my screams, but I leaped from the bench.

  The team had surged out, hoisting up my Kevin.

  I ran straight for the coach. He looked a little shocked when I grabbed him by the shoulders with my fins. “Good job! You did it!”

  He grinned at me then. “It was Kevin’s idea!” He pumped both hands in the air.

  Kevin’s idea! I did a trout dance while the coach ran past me and the stands emptied.

  State champions.

  Mike grabbed me around the waist, lifted me in the air. He wore the foam finger I’d discarded and now pulled off my head and tossed it to the sidelines to kiss me.

  “Way to go, champ!” he said.

  “Me? I’m just the Trout.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re the mom!”

  I’m the mom!

  I pumped my fist into the air. “I’m. The. Mom!”

  He laughed.

  Our town celebrated on the field as the Trouts fair-gamed the Falcons. News media attended the event, and I saw Kevin giving an interview, as well as Coach Grant and the QB.

&n
bsp; Kevin waved to me.

  The interviewer turned. Kevin must have told him who I was because he strode toward me, camera and all.

  “Can we ask you a few questions?”

  An opportunity to brag about my son? Any day! “Sure.”

  “So, what made you want to be the team Trout? Isn’t that taking the soccer mom concept a little over the top?”

  I laughed. “It should have been Bud Finlaysen. He’s our town Trout. But he had a heart attack three games ago and needs a heart transplant. . . .” I held up my fins. “The show must go on.”

  “Are you head of the booster club?” He stuck the microphone back in my face as another reporter edged in, listening to my words, taking notes.

  “Oh no,” I said, laughing. “The only thing I do is run our hospitality committee at church.”

  This seemed to get a lackluster response, so I added, “We’re having a Christmas event, with clam chowder this year.” I’m not sure why those words came out of my mouth, but at the time it seemed important.

  I’d caught the other reporter’s interest. “What church?”

  “Big Lake Community Church,” I said. “Off of Third Street.”

  He scribbled it down like he might actually attend.

  “Mom!” I heard Kevin’s voice behind me and turned away from the press to see Brianna and my football hero running toward me. She had her arm around his waist, grinning, her brown hair cut shorter than I remembered, and she wore a Big Lake sweatshirt and mittens.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, wrapping her in a hug.

  “I just had to see this Trout thing. And wish my little brother good luck.” Her eyes shone. I could see her war between laughter at my appearance and downright pride for Kevin.

  Her smile dimmed just a little. “And to tell you that I can’t make it to Christmas dinner. I have to finish a project for school that I needed an extension on. It’s due the twenty-sixth.”

  Amid the cheering and screaming around me, I couldn’t muster the dismay I knew would come later. “It’s okay, honey.” I gave her a hug.

  She untangled herself and grabbed my fins. “You look pretty good as a fish.”

  I nodded. Actually, I looked great as a fish. Especially after we’d won the Great Christmas Bowl.

  Chapter 10

  I made the paper. Right below the full-page color picture of the team lifting Kevin in celebration. And this photo captured my face and Mike’s as he gave me our victory kiss.

  I decided this one would be worthy of a frame.

  The Trouts paraded back into town, a victory celebration that lasted a week. I rode Gil’s truck again in my last appearance as the Big Lake Trout. I waved my fin with exuberance to the team’s fans.

  My fan was Kevin, who leaped aboard the pickup during the last circle of the block, to wave beside his mother.

  My last little minnow.

  Back at home, I wasn’t sure whether or not to launder the Trout, but I removed the staples and restored it to its previous height, then packed it up along with the cheering accoutrements and returned the lot to Coach Grant’s office.

  I found him sitting at his desk, looking over rosters. “Already getting ready for next year?” I said, half joking.

  “Absolutely. Sure wish your son was sticking around,” he added. “He turned out to be the backbone of my team. Almost as if he were captain.”

  Every mother’s cell inside me exploded with pride. “Yes, well, Kevin’s an exceptional young man.” It was one of the first times I’d said it without a niggle of doubt in the back of my mind. “He’s going to go far.”

  Coach nodded, leaning back in his creaky chair. “It really was his idea to be kicker. I wasn’t just saying that.”

  I hadn’t been sure, really. Kevin was never one to volunteer himself for anything, never one to so fully leap outside his comfort zone.

  “He said he’d played soccer for years and had been pretty good. I met him at the gym every day for hours of practice. If he hadn’t been willing to give up his position for the team, we wouldn’t have had a kicker.”

  And wouldn’t have won the game.

  “We all learned a lot this season,” I said. “So, have you got any prospects for next year’s Trout?” I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe of his office.

  “Why? Do you want to give it a go again?”

  “Not on your life. My fishy days are over. But it doesn’t look good for Bud.” Word was that he’d been put on the heart-transplant list, but even if he did find a donor, without insurance, he wouldn’t be able to afford the surgery.

  “No volunteers so far. But it’ll all work out.”

  I smiled at his words. “Merry Christmas, Coach,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Hey, good idea about the soup kitchen, by the way,” he said. “I’ve always thought that would be a great thing to do during the holidays, and with the economy, some people are in dire straits.”

  Soup kitchen? I frowned at him. He met it with one of his own. “The paper mentioned that you were having a soup kitchen at your church next weekend. Even has an address for people to donate to the cause.”

  It did? I stared at him in horror. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  He slid his desk chair back and pulled out his garbage can, riffling around until he pulled out a copy of the newspaper. He opened it to section A, reading a headline on the inside page, next to the religious ads. “‘Soup Kitchen at Big Lake Community Church.’” He handed it to me for confirmation.

  Sure enough, there it was, not a hint of what I’d told Robyn when I placed the ad, and every bit a fabrication and potential atomic bomb. “I didn’t put out this ad. I mentioned the Christmas Tea, yes, but not a soup kitchen.”

  Coach shrugged. “I heard a couple people say they were coming.”

  I looked over the top of the paper. “How many?”

  “Ten, maybe?”

  Ten? Multiply that by, well, whoever else had read the paper, and . . . I folded it up, stuck it under my arm. “Can I keep this?”

  “Have at it, Marianne. Merry Christmas.”

  I trudged out to my car. Sure, the town’s economy had taken a nosedive with the current recession, and more than a couple businesses had closed their doors. Our unemployment rate soared to an all-time high. I agreed with Coach. A soup kitchen could be a great idea.

  But it wouldn’t stand in the place of the Christmas Tea.

  I got into my car and turned on my cell phone. Seven messages bleeped on my screen. Perfect. I dialed Mike, barely keeping my voice pitched at reasonably calm. “Did you read the paper?”

  “The rundown of the game? Kevin had three quotes.”

  “No—the article in the religion section. Apparently our church is hosting a soup kitchen in place of our Christmas Tea! How could this have happened?”

  “Well, don’t ask me. I’m not the hospitality chairman.”

  If I could have, I would have reached through the phone and strangled him. “But you were the one who signed me up.”

  Silence. Then, “I’ll see you at home.”

  “Don’t expect supper. I’ll be making soup!” I pressed End, wishing I could slam the phone down on something. Add a little resonance to my fury.

  How in the world . . . ? And then I remembered my stupid moment of fame. The reporter had asked where the event would be held after I’d opened my big, fat fishy mouth and announced to channel six that we were having soup for our Christmas Tea.

  I was an idiot. I wondered if I still had time to book a trip to Cancún. With half my family defecting, it would sure be cheaper. Kevin at least had loved it.

  I scrolled through the list of missed calls before listening to my voice mails: Gretchen. Gretchen. Gretchen. Pastor Backlund (or maybe Rachel). Jenni. Gretchen. Gretchen.

  Oh, this was going to be fun.

  I retrieved the first message and had to appreciate Gretchen’s calm tone as she politely asked if perhaps there’d been a misprint in the
paper. The calls deteriorated from there. Pastor Backlund mentioned that the church wasn’t zoned for commercial use. Jenni wondered how she was supposed to tell her friends that they needed to serve instead of be served when they were already stressed out enough, concluding that she’d probably just skip this year but she’d send her list of potential babysitters to me by e-mail.

  Gretchen’s final message indicated that by no means was her grandmother’s china going to be used to serve a “bunch of riffraff off the street,” and if we wanted to do that, then we’d have to add paper products to the budget, which had already been sucked dry by my imported seafood.

  Yeah, imported all the way from the canned goods aisle at the grocery store.

  By the time I returned home, I just wanted to drink a nice glass of eggnog and listen to Bing Crosby sing “Silver Bells.”

  The answering machine had come alive with angry red blinking I leaned on the counter, my finger hovering above the Play button. Really, how important was the tea, anyway? Couldn’t we save the money and use it for, say, Bibles? maybe supporting a missionary in China? What about buying boots for the needy in Siberia?

  I closed my eyes and pushed the button. Gretchen. I deleted it. Backlund, Rachel, who told me that perhaps we needed to rethink the tea. You think? Muriel, who had dialed the wrong number and was looking for Gretchen. Gretchen again.

  The last message, however, caught my attention. I listened to it twice before I slumped into a kitchen chair, put my head in my hands, and let fatigue wash over me.

  “Mom, it’s me, Amy. Oh, I hope you’re not asleep and running to get the phone right now. I just can’t figure out this time change thing. Hello? Okay, I guess I’ll just leave a message. I miscalculated my schedule, and it looks like I might have classes until the twenty-fourth, which means I won’t get out until the twenty-fifth and not there until the twenty-sixth, and it’s such a long trip home, I’m thinking that maybe I should just stay here. I know we talked about it, and you gave me that extra money to come home, but still—what? . . . Yes, I’ll tell her—and Marcus wants me to visit his family, too, so . . . okay, maybe I’ll just e-mail you. Love you! Ta-ta, as the Brits say!”