“Mom, I hate cheese sticks.”
Okay. No cheese sticks. For some reason, this makes me mad at Will. He shouldn’t be spending his weekend negotiating the price of windmills but rather here negotiating about cheese sticks and water bottles. And while he’s doing that, I can be … doing something else. Like figuring out who has Gray and coming up with a daring yet responsible plan for getting him back, perhaps? No, no, no! Not that. Again, I tell the nagging voice of my instinct to shut up and go away. I’m just an ordinary person taking her normal kid to the regularly scheduled Saturday morning soccer game. It’s all very mundane and routine. But the effort required to make myself believe I don’t care is exhausting.
“Let’s go, Mom,” Theo says. “We’re going to be late and it’s all your fault.”
“You didn’t just say that to me, did you?”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind. I guess it’s time,” I say, rolling up my sleeves. “Assume the position.”
Theo plops down on the floor in front of me and sticks both legs straight up in the air like a cartoon character that just keeled over dead. I take a shin guard and strap it to his leg. It’s too big and covers him from ankle to knee. I wrap the extra-long Velcro straps around and around his skinny calf until he resembles a modern-day gladiator, albeit a very small one. I move on to the size XXS soccer socks, which are at least twenty-five feet long. I roll them up as if I am preparing to put a pair of panty hose on the Jolly Green Giant.
“Keep your toes tight,” I say. “Don’t bend your foot.” Even after all this time, Theo has no idea what that means and starts waving his foot around in the air, a sail that has broken free in the wind. I grab it and go in for the kill. The sock gets hung up on the first set of shin guard straps.
“That hurts,” Theo wails. “You’re pulling too hard.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. Just another second here and I’ll be done.” I put his flat foot against my thigh and give the sock a quick tug. With that, my whole child goes skidding across the kitchen floor.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“Almost home,” I tell him, breaking out in a sweat.
The sock bunches up at his knee. I pull out all the wrinkles and fold it over and over again on itself to get it to the proper length. Theo’s leg now suffers from a bad case of soccer-sock elephantiasis. We repeat the process on the other side and jam both feet into cleats that fit very nicely with normal socks but are almost impossible to get on with the soccer socks. And this is what we do for fun.
“Okay,” I say as cheerfully as I can manage. “We are good to go!”
We climb into the car and I wait while Theo insists on buckling himself in.
“I can do it,” he says, pulling out about fifteen yards of seat belt. “I need slack.”
“Looks like you have some,” I say. The minutes pass.
“I can’t do it,” he moans. “I hate this car. Get a better car, Mom.” It’s not exactly the car’s fault but I agree with the sentiment.
A quick word about the car. I used to have a cool car. It was fast and sleek and shamelessly chugged gasoline like a linebacker chugs Gatorade. But one day I opened my garage and found that my cool car had been replaced by a fuel-efficient tin can. I have many names for the tin can, none of which are polite, but its given name is Prius.
“Don’t worry, honey,” I say. “Mommy has her eye on a Tesla, a cherry red one, that even Daddy can love.” Theo has no clue what a Tesla is but the very word makes him smile.
At the soccer field, I wedge my eco-car into a tiny parking spot. It’s so tiny, in fact, that Theo has to climb over me in the front seat and squeeze out a very thin sliver of open door. I give him a quick shove with the heel of my hand to make sure he doesn’t spend the remainder of his childhood wedged here between the outside world and me.
“Mom! My arm.” He shoots me a wounded look and rubs his elbow.
“Sorry, kiddo,” I say, trying to extract myself, “city parking.” I suck in my stomach and attempt to push my too big body through the narrow space. My jeans catch on the door latch and rip clean across the thigh. I couldn’t have cut a straighter line with a pair of scissors. A patch of denim that used to be attached to my pants dangles from the latch.
“Great,” I say, but Theo’s out of earshot, dashing toward his team, already assembled on the grass.
Any sun we had was left behind in our neighborhood. This field, closer to the ocean, is shrouded in a cold, damp fog. I zip my fleece jacket up to my chin and think about how quickly I would trade my Prius for a cup of hot coffee.
On the other side of the field, Avery, my best mom friend, waves to me. Her daughter Sophie, wearing pink cleats, pink socks, and a pink bow in her hair, runs toward Theo. I experience a sudden weird wave of love for her unapologetic girliness.
I sit down next to Avery on her blanket. Avery is the kind of woman who remembers things like a blanket and a thermos full of hot coffee and mittens, and she most certainly is not wearing jeans with a huge gaping hole in the thigh. If she weren’t so nice, I wouldn’t like her at all.
“How many more games are we going to be forced to endure in the name of teaching our children to be team players?” I ask.
“Four,” she replies without even a moment of hesitation. See? She’s that kind of mom, the one all the rest of the moms want to be, the one who remembers things. A few minutes later, Sam joins us on the blanket. It’s not a big blanket but Sam is a grandfather, so the chances of him remembering a blanket and coffee are slim to none.
“Have you guys made any kindergarten decisions?” he asks as he settles in next to me. “Matt and Emily want to know.” We have never met Carter’s parents. They don’t come to soccer games or yoga classes or the playground. Apparently they work and meet their son for the occasional late dinner. “Personally, I don’t know what the big deal is but Emily’s going a little crazy over it. What happened to your pants?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“Private,” says Avery, covering the hole in my pants with Sophie’s jacket. “I’m afraid of the public school lottery. I’ve never won anything in my life so I’ll probably get a lousy lottery number and there goes Sophie’s chance at a top-rated public school. I’d rather take my chances on applications I can actually influence.” She pats the jacket in my lap as if to say, great, now that giant hole in your jeans is all taken care of.
“You aren’t going to resort to bribery?” I ask, only half kidding.
“No, of course not,” Avery says, “but if they need an extra wing for their library, I might consider a donation.”
I laugh. True colors are often revealed in times of great stress.
“Who cares?” Sam says, obviously exasperated by the topic. “It’s kindergarten, ladies. It doesn’t matter that much.”
Avery and I look at him as if he were a tried and convicted traitor.
“It matters,” I say.
“It does,” Avery agrees. “Do you want Carter to be playing catch-up in junior high because he didn’t go to a good elementary school?”
Interesting. I was thinking more along the lines of it mattering because I want the school where my son is least likely to be snatched by someone I pissed off in Afghanistan ten years ago. But Avery’s point is a good one, too.
A whistle blows and eight little kids in baggy uniforms huddle around their coach, who is passing on instructions not a single one of them will remember thirty seconds from now. Occasionally, these soccer games come to a screeching halt because a lone butterfly will flit across the field. All it takes is one player to spy the butterfly and off goes the team, en masse, chasing after the poor thing with a focus we thought they lacked.
“You’re both crazy,” Sam says. “My daughter-in-law is crazy. This city is crazy. And if we keep it up, all these kids are going to grow up crazy.”
“Oh, Sam,” says Avery, “don’t be so cynical. These kids are great.” She gives him an affectionate punch in the
arm. Avery will love you even if you insult her to her face while sitting on her blanket drinking her coffee. I’d like to be more like that. But who am I kidding? I’m not even a little like that.
Theo’s team, in sky blue jerseys, races down the field looking as if they know what they’re doing. The other team, dressed in red, does exactly the same thing. Somewhere in the middle they pass each other and just keep on going. The ball goes missing and one player sits down on top of the goal. Someone is crying. Another kid is taking off his shirt because it’s itchy. Another child is pretending to be a robot.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a bright yellow Porsche pull into the crowded parking lot, a fresh lemon in a bowl of moldy fruit. Sam lets out a slow whistle.
“Nice ride,” he says.
“It’s yellow,” I say. “Who buys a yellow car?”
The passenger door opens and a tall man in a custom-made black suit unfolds himself to standing. In his left ear, a wireless headset blinks a radiant blue, off and on and off and on, lending him an odd resemblance to a Borg. He puts one delicate Italian leather shoe onto the fog-damp grass and I’m sure I see a small shiver run the length of him.
“Suit on a Saturday? Lawyer?” Avery suggests.
“No question,” Sam answers. “And not the nice Save the Whales kind.”
The man in the expensive suit makes his way over to the sidelines of the abbreviated field, not acknowledging a soul, and takes up a position about four feet from our blanket. There he stands with a slightly hostile look on his clean-shaven face. I sneak a quick peek at his hands. Manicured and perfect. I decide I hate him and that I’d better keep a close eye on him.
“Madeleine,” he barks suddenly, his voice deep and harsh. Next to me, Avery jumps. “Faster. The point is to kick the ball, not have a conversation with it.” He immediately turns his attention back to his phone, thumbs flying.
Out on the field, a little girl with two spiky brown ponytails sticking straight out of her head comes to a dead stop. She turns slowly toward the voice and when she sees the man she doesn’t smile. In fact, I would swear she shrinks an inch right there in front of us. A middle-aged Hispanic woman comes running up to him.
“Mr. Colby, you’re here. She is playing good. You’ll see.” She keeps her head down as if preparing for the verbal blow sure to be coming her way.
Mr. Colby turns his gaze on her and his eyes remind me of a shark, empty and dark.
“Are you her coach? Her personal trainer? No? You’re just the nanny.” He says “nanny” with a sneer and turns his attention back toward the phone. The woman, head still down, backs away.
By now, the kids are having a jolly time kicking each other in the shins and tripping over cleats that are purposefully two sizes too big.
“Madeleine!” Mr. Colby gestures toward her with the phone. “Pay attention! Get up! Are you useless? God, you’re worse than your mother.”
And there it is, that small twitch in the corner of my eye. It’s the same twitch that shows up when Theo won’t put on his shoes or eat breakfast or insists on taking all the forks out of the drawer and relocating them to the living room because he’s playing “sorting,” whatever that is. I rest two fingers gently on my eyelid and try to stop the frantic motion. But Colby won’t quit.
“You’re such a girl! Madeleine, kick the ball! Don’t be so weak!”
Everyone stares at him but no one says anything. On the field, Madeleine is about to go fetal.
“Excuse me,” I say, not bothering to get up off the blanket. “Can you maybe stop shouting? I think it’s distracting the kids.”
Mr. Colby looks down at me as if I am nothing more than a cockroach that just happened to crawl over his fine Italian loafer.
“And why would I care what you think?” he asks, a tight look on his sharp thin face.
The move itself is easy enough if you’re positioned properly. It’s actually one Simon Still taught me on a slow day down in the Underground. We were in the circular center of our offices where there was no furniture and an inch of industrial gray carpeting covered in twenty years of dirt because no one was allowed down there to clean. One minute I was walking beside him and the next I was flat on my back, examining the ceiling tiles.
“What the hell?” I wheezed, the air all but gone from my lungs. Simon stood over me.
“When someone isn’t paying attention, that’s when you take them to the ground. As you can see.”
“Thanks for sharing that,” I said, not moving. The world spun in fast, lopsided circles. “Maybe next time you could send a memo?”
“Get up, Sally,” he commanded. I stood, my arms straight out for balance. As soon as I was upright, Simon stuck his left leg between mine and pulled. As I was going down, he fired his forearm into my throat. And there I was, back on the floor again.
“Okay,” I sputtered. “I get it. If you do that again, I’ll murder you in your sleep.”
“Ha,” he laughed, “my bedroom is booby trapped in so many ways even I sometimes sleep on the couch.” I stayed right there flat on the ground until another a man I’d never seen before came wandering by.
“What’s wrong with you, Sally?” this stranger asked, peering down on me with abstract concern, as if I were a rare species on the verge of extinction. I groaned and a look of understanding flashed across the guy’s face. “Simon got you with the ol’ scissor, didn’t he? Can’t believe you fell for that shit.” Then he stepped over me and vanished into an open office.
I don’t even need to stand up. From my position on the blanket, I simply shoot one of my legs out, lodge it between his, and jerk it forward. Mr. Colby goes down hard. A small scream escapes from his thin lips, the kind of scream he’ll be embarrassed about when he tries to recreate events later on in his head. His headset bounces away into the wet grass, where it continues to blink on and off as though nothing has happened. Play on the field stops and several of the parents come rushing over.
Colby is moaning now, either from shock or humiliation. It’s hard to say which.
“I’m a doctor,” says one of the parents. Of course she is. This is San Francisco.
“He just collapsed,” I say, innocently. “Maybe a heart attack?”
With the words heart attack, at least ten people pull out their cell phones and start dialing 9-1-1. Colby continues to gasp for air. I clutch his hand tightly in my own, the perfect picture of concern. He looks at me with frightened eyes.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “An ambulance is on the way. You’ll be fine.”
“You. You,” he squeaks. “You can’t get away …”
I lean in closer so my lips brush the soft flesh of his ear. “I asked you nicely to stop shouting,” I whisper. “Next time I might break your neck.”
He starts to gurgle something. I sit back up. “Shhhh,” I say. “Better to be quiet now.” Colby closes his eyes, probably wondering how a guy who drives a yellow Porsche can get beat up by a girl.
Moments later, two EMTs load Mr. Colby onto a stretcher and cart him off to the waiting ambulance. Madeleine, still on the field, wears a strange little smile as she watches her father go. She doesn’t make any move to follow him. The kids resume the madness of the game.
“What a jerk, but poor guy,” Avery says. “It was nice you held his hand, Lucy. I bet that helped.”
“I hope so,” I say. Sam gives me a curious smile.
“That car was really over the top,” he says.
I nod in agreement. “Definitely couldn’t fit a booster seat in that sucker.”
“Well, you know how it is,” Sam says, “you can’t choose your family. At least she didn’t inherit his beady little eyes. You see those eyes? That would have been awful. To have him as a father and get stuck with those beady little eyes too.”
Sam’s casual words rain down on me. It’s all in the eyes. It always is. They tell you everything you need to know. Is the person going to pull the trigger or is he bluffing? Does he love you or are you merely to
day’s entertainment? The eyes can’t hide the truth.
Out on the field, a little girl scores a goal. There is shouting and clapping but I’m barely aware of it. Although no one can tell, I’m slowly suffocating to death right here in front of the soccer moms and dads, in front of my friends, in front of the world. Somewhere out there, Blackford laughs and laughs. The whistle blows, ending the game, and the kids come running over.
“We won!” Theo shouts. “Did you see my goal?” He jumps up and down, his eyes full of the thrill of victory and the promise of more to come. They’re the same eyes that look out at me from the faded Polaroid. They’re the reason I cannot let go of Gray’s kidnapping even when doing just that is the obvious choice. They are Charles Gray’s eyes. Like a flower on a one-hundred-degree day, I feel myself wilt.
Charles Gray is my father.
11
Until I was eight years old, I lived on a farm in upstate New York with a woman and a man I called Mom and Dad. I had no memory of not happily being with them on the farm with the dogs and the fields and the cold dark winters. That parts of my life sat at odd angles to the lives of normal eight-year-olds was irrelevant because I was too young to have any perspective.
Once when I was in the third grade, my teacher, a young woman fresh out of school, caught me daydreaming and called on me to answer a question about the Civil War. I gave what I thought was a perfectly acceptable answer and didn’t understand why she and all of my classmates stared at me as if I had been caught running naked through the hallways.
In reality, naked would’ve been a fine alternative. It took about five seconds for me to realize I had answered the question well enough but I had done so in Russian. I couldn’t explain why I could speak fluent Russian when I had never even met anyone from Russia. Neither could I explain how all of my scariest dreams happened in Russian. So I just sat there, my cheeks glowing crimson, and prayed for time to speed up.
Eventually the class moved on but I never forgot that feeling. I was a farm kid like all the other farm kids, wasn’t I? But from the looks on my classmates’ faces, the answer to that question was clearly no. I was something else, something “other.” I was not like them.
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