Field of Schemes (20 page)

“What are they fighting about now?” Nancy asked.

“What else? Fitness training. He cut it down to nothing today,” I explained.

“For good or just for today?” Darcy chimed in.

“Don’t know. He just told her that the girls need to get serious before the tournament, and she looked supremely insulted by that comment.”

“Shhh, he’s going to say something,” Darcy said as we all watched Gunther grope for words.

“We have tournament soon!” Gunther said. “Girls need to play soccer.”

Nancy, Darcy and I relaxed into our seats again, disappointed with Gunther’s reply. “He already said that,” Nancy noted.

“Well, I think it sucks in a major way,” Gia piped in. “He promised her an assistant coaching position and he’s so not keeping that promise. Mimi puts a lot of prep work into these trainings and cutting them is a total slap in the face.”

“Please,” Jennifer said. I wasn’t even aware that she was listening to us as she laced up her running shoes a few feet away. “Gunther’s the coach and he gets to set the agenda for the team.”

“Hear, hear,” Nancy said.

Gia looked around curiously. I could just see the thought bubble over her head wondering,
where, where?

Mimi shouted, “Gunther, we agreed—”

“We have tournament soon. Girls need to play soccer.”

“Not exactly a candidate for the debating team, is he?” Darcy said.

“Darcy Greer, you’re bad,” Jennifer teased before setting off on her run.

After a few minutes, Mimi gestured like she was throwing something to the ground, though her hands were empty. “Fine,” she snapped, then stormed off to the sideline. When she joined the fat four and the Italian, it was a defining moment for our team.

In the first minutes of Gunther’s drill, the wall of noise began.

“What the hell was that?!” Dick muttered just loud enough for the parents to hear.

“Time-wasting bullshit’s what it is. He ain’t
sivious
spending the last practices before the tourney doing this kind of crap,” yelled Leo.

“Move, move, move it, Violet!” shouted Raymond. “No mercy, no mercy, girl!”

Paulo muttered unhappily in Italian.

“He’s completely incompetent,” Mimi added.

Loud Bobby just sighed. Loudly. Then he turned to Mimi, who stood watching with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed. “You played in college. They ever do drills like these with you?”

“No they did not,” Mimi said, repeating the response while oscillating her head like a fan. Everyone needed to hear that during Mimi’s glory days at Dartmouth, her precious time wasn’t wasted with inferior Guntherian drills. “Of course, we were in
better shape
on my college team so we could do more advanced exercises!”

Darcy nudged me and laughed. “Aren’t you mortified that our fifth graders don’t measure up to Mimi’s college soccer team? I could just die of shame.”

No, but I
am
mortified that despite the fact that your husband is an absolute ass, I still have wildly inappropriate dreams about him.

At the next practice, I watched Mimi pacing the sideline like an old-school father waiting in the maternity ward. “Mimi’s getting wacky,” I whispered to Darcy. “Rachel said that when she was at her place on Tuesday, Mimi was pushing these homemade Girl Power bars, saying that since fitness training was canceled they needed to make up for it with good nutrition.”

“Is it canceled for good, or just before the tournament?” she asked.

“For good,” I told her, my lips pressed together as if to say,
how do you like them apples?

“Do tell,” Darcy urged.

“Nothing to tell. I had to call Gunther about something, and while I had him on the line, I asked if he was just suspending fitness training or ending it altogether.”

“You had to call him about something else?” Darcy asked suspiciously. “You little gossip whore,” she teased.

“I did! Really. I needed to get Rachel new cleats and wanted to see if he recommended a certain brand or style.”

“Oh,” Darcy shrugged. “Well, does he?”

“He told me to get cleats that are comfortable and fit well.”

“There’s a hot tip.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He seems to communicate well with the girls, though. Anyway, he told me fitness training was a waste of time and that Mimi wasn’t qualified to teach the girls how to use the equipment properly, blah, blah, blah.”

“Really? Gosh, ’cause I heard somewhere that she played in college,” Darcy said.

“Well, she didn’t take very good notes because Gunther said Mimi was completely wasting their time, tiring them out for nothing. In any event, Rachel said Mimi was like June Cleaver Freakazoid, making them all eat her special high-octane cookies she baked.”

“Kelly says they’re quite tasty,” Darcy said. “I guess when you make homemade treats, you can get pretty pushy about everyone trying them.”

“I guess we should be thankful that she cares so much about their health,” I said.

“Puh-lease!” Darcy snapped. “I’d believe Mother Earth over there cares about their health. Mimi cares about their performance on the soccer field. She cares about taking some sort of credit for their success. If she can’t claim she made them the fittest team in Cal South, she’ll say they win because of their superior nutrition.”

“Who to? Who to, Violet?!” Raymond shouted.

“Get to the ball!” belted Loud Bobby. “You first, you first!”

“Savannah, you’re hesitating!” Leo cried.

“You dented my new Fiat, you animal!” shouted Paulo. Or something like that. Did this guy even speak English?

“What was that?!” Mimi snapped at Cara. She was one of them now. May she pack on pounds and sprout facial hair.

The thing with club soccer parents was that they limited their public humiliation to their own kids. It was the unwritten code that no soccer dad should deny another his right to psychologically scar his own child. Still, there were plenty of mutterings. “How’d
she
make the team?” Raymond made the mistake of whispering about Tandy.

“Zip it, pal!” Dick snapped back. For a moment I was touched at Dick’s loyalty. “You want to talk about sucky players, look no further than Debbie Does Defense. Or should I say
doesn’t
do defense?” The group cracked up at that one.

“What about Sapphire?” said Loud Bobby.

Shhhh, everyone can hear you!

Nodding his head towards Gia, Bobby said, “Don’t tell me Adolf didn’t take that one so he can look at those tits on the sideline all season.” Mercifully, Gia was reading
Cosmo
and listening to tunes through her iPod.

Did he just refer to our coach as Adolf?

“I think Katie’s our weak link,” said Mimi. “She’s slow to the ball and can’t finish.”

“I don’t even know which Katie you’re talkin’ about and I agree,” Raymond said. “I’m not impressed with any of the Katies. And I tell you who else I don’t like is Rachel. She don’t do shit ’cept hog the dang ball and run it down the middle like she thinks she’s bowling.” The negativity was like lava flowing from Mount Vesuvius.

“Excuse me?” said Nancy. I admired her chutzpa.

“Yeah?” Dick replied, puffing out his chest, a somewhat ridiculous gesture when one’s challenger is holding half of an angora scarf from a set of knitting needles.

“Did you just refer to one of the girls as a weak link?”

Um, actually, he referred to several as weak links. Plural. And yes, both of our kids were included in that.

“It’s an expression. Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Dick huffed.

“My
panties
in a
wad?
”

“Also an expression.”

“So is ‘shut up’!” Nancy said.

Oh. My. God! You go girl to the nth degree.

“These are children you are talking about!” Nancy continued. “Calling any one of them a
weak link
confirms what I’ve long suspected of you, Dick! You are the weak link of humanity.”

Or the missing link,
I wish I had the gumption to say.

I was relieved that Mimi’s lofty goal of having the girls play in eight tournaments over the summer didn’t pan out. With family vacations and travel, parents could only come together for three weekends in the early summer: the Manchester United Memorial Day Cup in Santa Barbara, the Cooperstown Rebels’ “School’s Out for Summer” Cup, and the Patriots’ Cup on July Fourth weekend.

As Rachel and I walked in the woods a few days before we left for Santa Barbara, I asked if she had any idea how much I loved her. She nodded, but I wanted more from the moment. “You are—”

“I know, I know, I’m all you have,” Rachel said.

“No, Rachel. You’re not all that I have. You’re everything I have. Big difference.”

“I don’t really see the difference,” Rachel said.

“You don’t?” I asked, slightly disappointed that my daughter hadn’t picked up the nuance.

“No, either way, it’s like I’m it. I mean, I know you’re saying it to be nice and all, but it’s like I’m your basket with all the eggs in it, and what if I, um … ” Rachel groped for the words.

“Crack them?” I offered.

“Yeah! That’s it. What if I crack them?”

I hardly ever told Rachel that she was everything I had. And on this occasion, she was the one who brought it up. Still, I remembered what our marriage counselor said when Steve and I would challenge each other’s feelings: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to
do
right?” I wanted to do right by Rachel, so I accepted that this was her way of broaching a difficult topic with me, something I said I wanted from these walks.

“Rachel, first of all, you could never crack my eggs,” I said. “Can we drop the whole egg thing?” She laughed. “I think what you’re saying is that one person can’t be another person’s whole world, right?” She nodded. “I bet it’s a lot of pressure to feel like my happiness depends entirely on you.”

“Yeah, sort of,” Rachel said.

“So basically, you’re telling me to get a life?”

She laughed, slightly uncomfortable with my interpretation. “Sort of.”

I sighed like an exasperated teen. “Okay, if I have to.”

Rachel giggled. “I love you, too.”

After several delays, Beadorable! finally opened its doors, which Rachel was more excited about than I. “Look, it’s open, Mom! Let’s go in! We can finally start beading again.” I smiled because she’d never strung a bead in her life except for the big plastic ones they give kids in preschool. Nonetheless, I decided not to set her straight, and let her enjoy our imaginary shared history. I had to admit, it was exhilarating once we got inside and started looking through the precious stones and divider beads in so many different patterns. We could do fun and trendy pieces with rhinestone-trimmed dividers and chunky hammered silver, or more understated and elegant necklaces. It was when I approached the charm display that I knew what our first project together would be. Under the glass tabletop were delicate little silver soccer balls. We bought fifteen of them, along with different beads to reflect the personality of each member of the team. For Kelly, we bought pink, soft-shell pearls and tiny silver dividers. For Deborah, we bought unfinished crystals and black stones that looked like we might have found them on a hike. We got Cara beautiful blown-glass beads with different funky patterns on each separated by clear glass and silver discs. And guess what we got for precious Sapphire.