The Abstinence Teacher (30 page)

“I’ll run,” he promised. “It’ll take two minutes, tops.”

Uncertain how to proceed, the ref—a nervous high-school kid with spiky hair frosted at the tips—deferred to Tim. A lot of other coaches would’ve made a fuss, but he didn’t think it was worth arguing about.

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “I guess we can wait.”

John shook his head as Soccer Dude set off across the field in the direction of the parking lot, which had to be a couple hundred yards away.

“What a space cadet,” he muttered. “No wonder they’re two and six.”

Tim thought about calling the girls back to the sidelines for a last-minute strategy session, but instead directed them to take a knee and sit tight. He really needed to talk to John and wasn’t sure when he’d get another chance.

“Listen—” he began, but John cut him off before he could go any further.

“Oh, hey, I talked to Marty last night. We’re all set for the Faith Keepers conference on Friday night.”

Tim was startled by this, but tried not to show it. The Bible Study guys had arranged this outing months ago, but it had always seemed way off in the future.

“
This
Friday?”

“Yeah. You didn’t know?”

“Kinda snuck up on me.”

“We talked about it at Bill’s the other night,” John told him. “Maybe it was before you got there.”

“It’s bad timing,” Tim pointed out. “I hate to reschedule practice before the biggest game of the season.”

“Don’t worry about that. The girls don’t care what day they practice.”

“Some of ‘em might not be able to make it. They have a lot of commitments.”

“We have commitments, too,” John reminded him.

Tim glanced at the dull gray sky looming over the field.

“I know. I’m not complaining.”

John squinted in the direction of the parking lot. The Bandits’ coach was jogging toward them at a pretty good clip, a mesh equipment bag slung over his shoulder. Tim knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Listen, John, I know what the Pastor said the other night, but I’m just not feeling right about praying today. A couple of the parents complained to me last week. They don’t think it’s fair.”

John took this news more calmly than Tim expected.

“I disagree,” he said. “What’s unfair is depriving these kids of the only thing that’s gonna save them.”

“It’s not just the parents,” Tim continued. “It’s the Soccer Association. If they hear about it, we’re up the creek.”

The coach was on the field now, tugging a garish orange-and-yellow jersey over his goalie’s head. The other players rose and began drifting back to their positions. John placed his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Jesus didn’t want the cup, either.”

Soccer Dude came jogging back to the sidelines, clutching his side and breathing raggedly.

“Thanks, guys.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s her lucky jersey. She’s kinda superstitious about it.”

“No problem,” Tim told him.

The ref set the ball down at midfield and raised his right hand. Tim looked at John.

“Jesus took the cup,” he said quietly.

“He had to,” John replied, as the whistle sounded to begin play. “It was His Father’s will.”

AS HEAD
coach, Tim was responsible for keeping track of the big picture. He had to spread his awareness over the entire field, to make sure his players were where they needed to be at any given moment, and to communicate with them simply and effectively from the sidelines—directing this one to move up, that one to protect the weak side, alerting the girls to threats and opportunities before they materialized—while at the same time managing his subs, calculating who to put where, and when to make the changes.

It was a tall order, but he handled it pretty well, at least when Abby was out of the lineup. When she was playing, he often found it difficult to maintain his focus, to resist the temptation of thinking like a father instead of a coach. As soon as Abby stepped onto the field, his
range of vision narrowed, his gaze drawn as if by magnetism to wherever she happened to be, regardless of her proximity to the ball, the game as a whole overshadowed by the riveting spectacle of his daughter in motion. He had to make a conscious effort to tear his eyes away from her, to look around and see what the rest of his team was up to.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much to him, why he felt such a thrill when Abby made a good pass or beat an opponent to the ball, or why all the air went out of him when she screwed up. Part of it was pride, he supposed, the simple selfish desire to see your own kid succeed, to prove herself better than—or at least equal to—other people’s kids. But it went deeper than that, down to something more primal. Because there were moments on Saturday mornings—amazing moments in which his mind and her body were in perfect synch—when he felt such an intimate connection with his child it was almost like they were one person. Just as often, though, in those bad-dream interludes when she flubbed an easy scoring opportunity, or stood frozen in place while an opponent dribbled around her, what he glimpsed was the impossible distance between them, a gulf that he feared would grow wider with each passing day and year of their lives, and it was this sense of hopeless separation that made him clutch his head, and cry out, “Oh, Abby!” with such anguish that John sometimes felt the need to pat him on the shoulder and tell him to take it easy.

It didn’t help that she was such an erratic player. On her good days, his daughter was a valuable member of the team, maybe not a star—she lacked Nadima’s nimble footwork, Sara’s intimidating power, Maggie’s competitive fire—but a solid and reliable performer, speedy enough to be an offensive factor, and surprisingly tenacious on defense, considering her waiflike proportions. On her off days, though, she seemed like an entirely different kid—sluggish, uncertain, emotionally disconnected from the action—as if soccer were just one more boring obligation in her overscheduled life. Weirdly, Tim could never judge her mood from
talking to her in the car. He had to wait until the game started to see which Abby he was dealing with.

Today looked to be a good day, though he couldn’t quite decide if this was because she’d come to play or because the Bandits were so outclassed that it didn’t really matter. The Stars asserted their dominance from the outset, moving upfield at will against their smaller, slower opponents—oddly, many of the Gifford girls were short and stocky, not the best build for soccer—and getting off several quick shots on goal before the Bandits had even managed to move the ball across midfield.

A fairly predictable rhythm developed in the opening minutes of the game. The Stars would attack, and the Bandits would somehow manage to beat them back. But Tim’s girls were relentless; before the defense could catch its breath, they’d return for another try. Pretty soon the Bandits began to panic. They gave up any pretense of strategy or deliberation and just booted the ball randomly downfield to clear it away from their goal. Tim waved his sweeper up toward midfield to increase the pressure.

“They’re gonna crack,” he told John. “It’s only a matter of time.”

After making a nice diving save on Hannah Friedman, the Bandits’ goalie tried to punt the ball—she had a weak throwing arm—but it squibbed off the side of her foot, bouncing erratically toward the far sideline. Abby got to it first, but instead of passing right away—her usual impulse on offense—she took a moment to settle the ball and scan the field. Then, to Tim’s surprise and delight, she began moving toward the goal, something he’d been urging her to do all season. Without any hesitation or windup, she blasted a high, hard shot that sizzled past two defenders before bouncing off the goalie’s arm. As luck would have it, the ball landed right in front of Maggie Ramsey, who was perfectly positioned to bang in the rebound.

“Bingo!” John raised his hands overhead like a football ref. “Yeah, baby!”

Tim called for subs—no one ever complained about being taken out right after a goal—stepping onto the field to slap hands with his starters as they came charging off, sweaty and exultant. He could hear Frank Ramsey bellowing his approval from the far sideline—“Yo, Maggs, way to be there!”—and double-checked to see if he could spot Ruth standing among the spectators. It seemed odd for her not to be here, after raising such a big stink about last week’s prayer, but some people were like that—big on the bluster, weak on the follow-up.

Or
, he thought, with a bitterness that caught him by surprise,
maybe she has something better to do
.

TIM HAD
actually stopped by Ruth’s house the night before, ostensibly to drop off a sweatshirt Maggie had left at practice. Even at the time, he understood that this was just a pretext. Girls forgot water bottles and articles of clothing on a regular basis, and he’d never before felt the need to hand-deliver these items to their rightful owners. He was their coach, not the UPS man.

Although he was pretty sure he had an ulterior motive, he wasn’t completely clear about what it was. It would have been nice to believe he was acting as a responsible adult—a gentleman, even—going out of his way to level with Ruth, to let her know that his situation had grown more complicated since they’d last spoken, giving her one last chance to remind him of the bargain they’d made, and what a disappointment he’d be if he reneged on it. But if that was the case—if everything was completely aboveboard—then there was no reason to hide behind Maggie’s sweatshirt. He only needed the sweatshirt if something murkier and less respectable were afoot—if, for example, he were a married man in no particular hurry to get home to his wife, looking for an excuse to pay a visit to a divorcee whose kids, he happened to know for a fact, spent Friday nights at their father’s condo.

It must have been this lingering uncertainty about the propriety of his errand that kept Tim trapped in his car for such a long time after
he’d pulled up in front of her house. She seemed to be home: the downstairs was lit up, the windows glowing warmly in the bluish twilight. The porch light was shining as well, almost as if she’d been expecting him. He could easily picture himself walking up the steps and ringing the bell, but at that point his imagination faltered. Did he greet her solemnly and inform her that they needed to talk? Or did he just hand over the sweatshirt with a sheepish grin and wait for her to invite him inside?

He’d been thinking about her a lot over the past couple of days, so much that it had begun to make him nervous. Not with lust—he knew what lust was, and this wasn’t that—but with a kind of hopeful curiosity, a sense that they had more to say to each other. He would’ve liked to know a little more about Ruth’s marriage, how she’d hooked up with a blowhard like Frank Ramsey, and at what point she realized it was a mistake. And why had she kept his last name even after the divorce? She didn’t seem the type. That was all he really wanted—a chance to sit down with her at the kitchen table and resume the conversation they’d started on Tuesday night.

Was that so bad?

AT ONE
of the first Bible Study sessions Tim had attended after joining the Tabernacle, Pastor Dennis had proposed a simple test the men could use in case they found themselves in what they believed to be a morally ambiguous situation, and weren’t sure how to handle it.

“All you have to do,” he told them, “is to imagine Jesus standing right beside you, and then ask yourself,
Would my Companion be proud of me right now? Or would He be ashamed?
And you know what? Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. You need to turn around and get yourself out of there!”

Over the past couple of years, Tim had applied this test on a number of occasions, and for a while, at least, it had worked pretty much
the way the Pastor had predicted. Tim’s Companion had been highly observant and easily alarmed. Lately, though, He seemed to be slacking off a bit, or at least becoming more tolerant of human weakness. Tim knew this wasn’t quite right—in the Gospels, the Son of God was often angry and harshly judgmental, despite His injunction against mortals passing judgment on one another—but there were times when the Jesus by his side seemed no more helpful than one of his old stoner buddies from high school, the kind of guy who’d watch you screwing up, then just chuckle and say,
Wow, dude, I can’t believe you did that
.

In thorny cases such as this one, the verdict usually seemed a lot clearer if he imagined Pastor Dennis looking on instead of Jesus. As far as the Pastor was concerned, it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference if Tim had come here to return a sweatshirt, or to have a serious conversation with Ruth about prayer, or to sweet-talk her into bed. No matter how you sliced it, the bottom line didn’t change: Tim was a married man and a Christian, and he belonged at home with his Christian wife. He needed to turn around and get out of there!

And that’s what he was about to do—at least he was thinking about moving in that general direction—when Ruth stepped out of her house and began heading straight down the cement path toward his car, peering quizzically into his passenger window as she approached. There was nothing for him to do but unbuckle his seat belt and get out, as if he’d just pulled up a couple of seconds ago, and hadn’t sat through five repeats of “Uncle John’s Band,” trying to talk himself into leaving.

“Tim?” she said, sounding a bit flustered. “Is that you?”

“Maggie forgot this,” he explained, holding up the sweatshirt as he circled his car to join her on the sidewalk.

“Oh, thanks,” Ruth said, accepting the garment with a certain amount of reluctance. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here. You could’ve just given it back to her tomorrow.”

“It’s no trouble,” he insisted. “I just thought she might need it tonight.”

“She’s not even here. The girls spend Friday night with my ex-husband.”

“I didn’t realize,” Tim said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother.” She glanced back at her house. “I’d invite you in, but …”

Her voice trailed off, as if she didn’t know how to complete the sentence.