Game Changers

by Jane Cuthbertson

  Someone official eventually pulls Allerton away, but the local heroines stick around until everyone gets an autograph. I see Jaye at the far end of the railing, figure she’ll get to me when she’s ready, and as the crowd gradually disperses, my gaze drifts upward to the night sky, where the beginning of a quarter moon becomes visible in the dusk. I watch it brighten, take a moment to appreciate this clear April night. I’m as close to happy as I ever get, and I let the universe know I’m grateful.

  When I refocus on planet Earth, only a couple of players are left by the stands. One of them is Jaye, and she’s staring at me with an expression of strange intensity. And maybe a little anger? This puzzles me, even threatens to wipe out the peace I’m feeling, but I’m still brave enough to break the silence.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She startles me by climbing up and over the railing to take a seat next to me. “I’m either going to make a complete fool of myself,” Jaye says, “or you are.”

  I’m so surprised I sputter out some old air traffic phraseology. “Say again?”

  “Are you The Fyrequeene?”

  I sit there in complete shock. It has never, ever occurred to me that Jaye Stokes would have any clue about The Fyrequeene. And I don’t have to answer: I know my expression says it all. Jaye falls back into the seat and turns her head to the sky.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says helplessly, then fires a glare at me again. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a writer?”

  “B-Because it’s not what I do?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t tell anyone I write.”

  “Why not? I love your books. I can’t be the only one.”

  I’m flattered. I’m also completely at sea. “I really am a private person, Jaye.”

  She’s not buying it. “Didn’t you blog about going to a convention? The one for writers? Did you go as the Invisible Woman or something?”

  “No. I went as The Fyrequeene. I never told anyone my real name.”

  I also hid behind Toni’s (totally) metaphorical skirts the whole time. The conference was a good experience, but I’m ambivalent about going again.

  “You’ve read my blog?” I ask this softly, almost like a little kid would, and something in my tone of voice melts away Jaye’s anger.

  “I’ve read everything I can find. The books, the short stories, the Xena stuff”— here the glare returns— “and last week’s blog about our game.” She rolls her eyes. “I couldn’t believe it! Here’s The Fyrequeene writing about a nine-hour drive, about sitting up high in the stands, about hating crowds, and it sounds exactly like what you’d said when we talked on the phone. But I asked you what you did, and you never said you wrote.”

  Jaye pauses, frowns at me, shakes her head. “I went back through your other blogs. You mention growing up in Texas and being an only child, and I knew. I’ve not only met The Fyrequeene, she’s my cousin!”

  Depression senses a real opportunity for dominance here and lets me know it. I can panic and withdraw—or try to salvage things. I opt for the latter and attempt a joke. “Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. No one has to know.”

  Jaye stares at me blankly, sees my tentative smile, and bursts out laughing. I give her a smile, pleased and relieved.

  “It explains some other things, too,” she says, but we’re interrupted before I can find out what.

  “Jaye! We gotta go!”

  We both turn toward the voice. It’s Nickerson. Even in defeat she projects the sturdy strength of an old growth tree, right up to the deep forest green color of her hair.

  “The team’s waiting, babe,” she says to Jaye, the endearment startling me until I remember they are BFFs.

  “Nickory, do you know who this is?” Jaye asks with enthusiasm.

  Nickerson turns her gaze to me, and I have a sudden vision of the goalkeeper as a warrior queen, fiercely protective of those she loves. “Your cousin from Texas,” she says.

  I’m impressed. Jaye had introduced us briefly at the soccer camp, and I honestly didn’t think she’d remember.

  “Yeah, but she’s also The Fyrequeene!”

  The warrior eyes narrow. “The writer?”

  “Yeah!”

  Jaye is only the third person, other than Toni and her partner Paula, to know Rachel Johnston and The Fyrequeene are one and the same. Nickerson makes four. An exponential increase, and a cause for inner terror on my part. I swallow and try to remain calm.

  Nickerson, meanwhile, is underwhelmed. “You’re older than I thought.”

  Jaye glares at her. I see this, draw strength from it, then fire my own little salvo. “And I didn’t think you’d let Allerton score two goals on you tonight. Great save to keep her from the hat trick, though.”

  Nickerson grimaces and dismisses me. But I’m definitely ahead on points. “Jaye,” she says, “we really do have to go.”

  Jaye turns to me. “The team’s going downtown for barbecue. Come with us?”

  Barbecue is one of my favorite things. But my crowd tolerance has reached its limit, and my inner recluse is stronger than my inner foodie.

  “I appreciate the invite,” I reply sincerely, “But no.”

  Jaye puts a hand on my arm. “Come. It’ll be fun.”

  I feel the warmth in her touch, and a certain electricity. Her expression is both parts eager and hopeful, with true invitation in her gorgeous gray eyes. But I don’t give in.

  “Jaye,” I say with sincere regret, “I can’t do a noisy restaurant on a Saturday night.”

  Her smiles fades. I literally see her remembering my thing about crowds. Then she rallies. “I’m not letting you get away again. Let’s get takeout and go back to my place. I promise it’ll be quiet there.”

  Nickerson makes a movement, a subtle shift of discomfort. Jaye ignores her, but I remember Jaye telling me she shares a house, or something, with her best friend, and offer a different option.

  “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ve got a huge room at the Hampton Inn down the road. How about we get takeout and go there?”

  “Perfect,” she says. I startle myself by falling into her smile a little. It’s not flirtatious exactly, but I’m struck by the odd sense that it wants to be.

  Jaye stands up before I can process my reaction. “I’ll meet you by the players’ entrance in twenty.” She hops back over the railing and walks off with Nickerson. I stand slowly, wondering where the players’ entrance is and sense something new inside of me. A tiny little change, a subtle vibration.

  Like a small leak springing through a dam.

  

  After a few minutes of playing lost wanderer, I successfully locate the locker room doors and park myself on a nearby bench next to an attractive African American woman who seems vaguely familiar.

  She’s more extroverted than I, so the mystery is solved quickly. “Hi,” she says, holding out her hand. “I’m Bree Thompson. Who are you waiting for?”

  I shake her hand. “Jaye Stokes. I’m Rachel Johnston, her very distant cousin. And you’re waiting for Kath Nickerson.”

  I’m sure of my words. Bree Thompson is “the woman” in Nickerson’s life, according to the Internet gossip on TMZ and such. Questions about their relationship tend to elicit the firmest of Nickerson’s “no comments.” Thompson has been in lots of pictures with her, though, and with Jaye Stokes, too. That’s why she looks familiar.

  “Yes,” Thompson answers me, offering nothing more. “Wait, are you the one from the cemetery?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jaye talked you into coming to a game.”

  “I’ve been a soccer fan for a while. Since the Clean Sheet Olympics.”

  When a baseball pitcher goes nine innings without allowing a run, it’s called a shutout. When soccer goalkeepers allow no goals during a game, it’s called a “clean sheet.” In the six matches of the 2008 Games, Nickerson held every opponent scoreless. Thus, “Clean Sheet Olympics.
” In fact, Nickerson didn’t just have a Clean Sheet Olympics, she had a clean sheet year, a feat no other goalie, male or female, has even remotely approached.

  Thompson brightens. “Cool. I was there in Beijing. It was great.”

  I sigh with envy, but before I can say anything the locker room doors open to reveal Stokes and Nickerson. Jaye sees me and waltzes right up.

  “Bree,” she says with enthusiasm, “this is The Fyrequeene! Can you believe it?”

  Bree raises an eyebrow. “You said you were her cousin.”

  “I am,” I say, stifling another sigh. “But I’m also The Fyrequeene.” Now five people know about Rachel Johnston and The Fyrequeene. Grrrr.

  “What’re the odds?” Jaye says, putting a friendly hand on my shoulder. “I’m related to my favorite writer!”

  What? Favorite writer? Me? “Distantly related.”

  “Third cousins, twice removed,” Jaye says promptly.

  Bree laughs. “Will you be going to dinner with us?”

  “Uh, no, I’m not a crowd person.”

  “I’m taking her to dinner,” Jaye says. “We’ve never really had a chance to talk.”

  Bree nods, taking in Jaye, me, then Jaye looking at me. She turns to meet my eyes, her expression abruptly serious, and says a curious thing. “Jaye’s the best. Be good to her.”

  

  As a frequent guest of Hampton Inn, I occasionally get free room upgrades. I have scored one this week, a mini-suite with a wet bar, sofa, and coffee table in addition to the king-size bed. Jaye and I pile into the room after picking up takeout barbecue at a place near the stadium. When I tell her I have only Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper her face lights up.

  “I love Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper!”

  Must be a family thing.

  While Jaye lays the feast out on the coffee table I go get ice, laughing at myself. Charming a beautiful woman with soda pop? I have no idea where this is going, and as the ice bucket fills, I realize it doesn’t matter. Jaye will like me or not, and I truly have nothing to lose. Life will either go on like it has, or I will have a new friend. Nothing but positives here.

  I smile. Here’s hoping for the “new friend” option.

  I get back to the room and pour our drinks. Jaye is starving after running up and down a soccer field for two hours, so we park ourselves on the sofa, and don’t talk much until she’s inhaled a quarter of a chicken and half the coleslaw.

  She comes up for air prior to attacking the potato salad. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why are you so secretive?”

  “I’m not,” I protest mildly, taking my chance to grab the coleslaw. “I’m private.”

  “Okay. Why are you so private?”

  “I always have been.”

  “Are you out at work? Oh, wait. You’re retired. Were you out at work?”

  I shrug. “More or less. I kept a low profile, but people knew, and I never denied it if asked.”

  Jaye eyes me over a full fork. “Can I ask you another question?”

  I eye her right back. “Quid pro quo, but yes.”

  My comment stops her for a second. But only a second. “Okay, fair enough. I’ve never slept with Nickory.”

  Thank goodness my mouth isn’t full. “What?”

  Her turn to shrug. “That’s what everybody asks.”

  “Because you’re friends?”

  “And because I live with her and Bree.”

  “I’m not everybody.”

  Her eyes spark. Am I hallucinating flirtation in them? “I know.”

  “Besides, the real question is, did you ever want to sleep with her?”

  Jaye freezes for a second and gives herself away. Puts the napkin down. “I see why you’re such a good writer. You come at things from different directions.”

  “It is the more interesting question. But, it’s also none of my business. Now what do you want to know about me?”

  Jaye nods, grateful, I think, and maybe a little intrigued that I let the subject go. Do others keep pushing, I wonder? “Where did you get the idea for Empress?”

  Ah, safer ground. Sort of. My books are ostensibly historical romances, but the history part always centers around some sort of catastrophe. Book one was set in Galveston, site of the hurricane of 1900. Book two was about Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the munitions ship which exploded in the harbor in 1917, devastating the city. For book three I kept both the nautical and Canadian themes, writing about The Empress of Ireland, an ocean liner whose sinking in the Saint Lawrence River in 1914 took almost as many lives as the Titanic. My romance involved two survivors who have to come to terms both with outliving a thousand other people and with their attraction to each other.

  “I like to take stories off the beaten path. I’ve been interested in history forever, and if I can teach readers something they didn’t know before, then it’s worth it.”

  “And you have a thing for disasters,” she says, taking back the coleslaw.

  I start to object, then remember the subject of my upcoming novel—the Triangle Fire of 1911. “Disasters, and the early Twentieth Century,” I say wryly.

  I will admit to some vague prejudices about “jock-head” athletes, Jaye is tearing many of them to shreds. The conversation flows easily, like it did when we talked on the phone last Sunday. I’m happy to listen to Jaye, but I’m pleased to learn she’s happy to listen to me, too. A lot of people spend their conversations waiting for the other person to shut up so they can talk again. Jaye seems genuinely interested in what I have to say.

  She’s not surprised to find out I was a history major, but is astonished to learn I never took a writing course after high school.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I’m kind of an idiot savant when it comes to writing.”

  “Why did you wait until your forties, though?”

  “Actually, I’ve been writing since my teens. I just never finished anything until my forties. I was an air traffic controller for twenty-five years, and it kept getting in the way of my creativity.”

  “It really is stressful?”

  “Absolutely. Combine it with depression and the job could be downright lethal sometimes.” I hadn’t intended to bring up the subject, but it slips out.

  Jaye says, “That’s why you write about disasters. About women who overcome the impossible.”

  I stop eating, struck by the interesting observation. I almost own up to never overcoming my own impossible, but back off. “I suppose you could be right. But if I think about it too much I can’t write. So, I don’t think about it.”

  Jaye’s expression is bemused for a moment, like she knows there’s something I’m not saying. Then she grins and lets me off the hook. “I understand. I play my best soccer when I let it happen, when I just take the ball and run.”

  Whew. “Have you always played soccer?”

  “Of course. My parents signed me up when I was five, and from my first game all I wanted to do was play. Are you going to finish that?”

  I surrender the last of the potato salad. “You’re lucky to be so good at something you love.”

  Jaye takes a bite, swallows, and surprises me. “Yes and no. I know I’m good, but I’ve never gotten to the top. I’ve never been elite.”

  “You look pretty elite to me.” Full double entendre intended.

  “Did you know I was on the same Under-17 team with Wendy Allerton, Nickory, and Becky Kaisershot?”

  No acknowledgment of my cleverness.

  “I thought I’d take the next steps right along with them. The World Cup, the Olympics.” She pauses. “And I didn’t get there. I never made the final cuts.”

  Jaye puts the food container down on the coffee table. “One day you’re right there in the hunt, the next day you’re not. You’re a little bit slower than the other players. Not a step, not even half a step. An eighth of a step slower. Subtle, barely noticeable. But all
the difference between a decent pro and a gold medalist.”

  I think back to KC’s only goal tonight, which Jaye started with a header to a teammate. She’d cleared the ball, raced up the pitch, ready to take the ball back and make the perfect pass to Longstreet. I saw no lack of speed there. Why would she think she’s too slow?

  I find the brownies we’d bought for dessert and hand her one. “But you’re still doing something you love. You listened to your heart. I spent half my life working for other people and never did listen to mine.”

  “But you’ve published three books!”

  “Yes. In my forties. But how many might I have written if I’d listened to my heart? You found out for sure how good you are.” I laugh. “I never knew how much I loved writing until I got old.”

  “You’re not old,” Jaye says firmly.

  I throw out my best maternal tone. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  “But you’re not my mother.” Jaye’s eyes bore into mine as she says this, and now the flirtatious smile I’ve sensed all evening blooms in full. Suddenly we aren’t two distant relatives chatting. We’re two women, two lesbians, exploring possibility.

  The shift in tone flusters me. I cover my confusion by taking our cups and getting up from the sofa. I walk over to the wet bar and refresh our drinks, trying to rebalance my equilibrium, which tilted completely sideways when her last smile hit me. I don’t succeed, and now know it’s time to worry about how attractive I find this young woman.

  Before I can finish pouring the soda, Jaye comes up close and slides her arms around my waist. She presses herself gently against my back.

  “You’re not my mother,” she whispers in my ear.