Trailer Guy continued. “After years of living under English tyranny, the settlers revolted against the king and declared their independence.” A dozen men wearing bright blue jackets and white wigs marched by, playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on their flutes. Behind them were two drummers and a flock of Founding Fathers displaying a replica of the Declaration of Independence. The voice dropped an octave and proclaimed, “Let freedom reign!”
The next voice I heard was a familiar slur. “What the —?!”
All heads in our area turned to Drunk Dick, who was standing agape pointing at Thomas Jefferson. “That’s friggin’ Danny Cartwright!”
Dave found us and asked, “What did I miss?” He leaned in to kiss me hello, but I quickly turned my head down to look for nothing in my purse. Nervously, I introduced Lil to Dave, stressing her status.
I turned to Dave and provided an update. “Dick’s had a bit too much to drink.”
Dick bellowed, “Danny Cartwright, you thought you saw the last of me, didn’t you?! You’re gonna pay this time!”
Danny Cartwright looked terrified, his eyebrows like parentheses. He pointed at himself and mouthed, Me?
“Don’t you play dumb!” Dick shouted. All of the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims on the stern of the Mayflower were now watching the drama unfold. “I’d know your ugly mug anywhere, wig or no wig! Yer nothing but a two-bit cheater.”
Darcy wiped her brow. “I’ve never really trusted Thomas Jefferson. Did you know he had slaves?”
As Lil, Dave, and I laughed, Dick lunged into the parade and grabbed Jefferson/Cartwright by the collar and started shaking him. Soon, a blue jacket lay on the ground with the jackhammer of Dick’s fist thrusting into it. The Founding Fathers shouted for help but nary a one of them jumped in to break up the fight. Okay, the ass-kicking.
The crowd screamed when Dick picked up Jefferson and threw him through a drum. Lil gasped, “Claire! Do something!” Without thinking, I jumped into the brawl, grabbing George Washington’s ax on my way.
“Dick, get off him!” I demanded, holding the ax.
Dick looked up at me and informed me, “The ax is plastic, Claire!” and continued beating this poor soul. “He deserves it anyhow for cheatin’ me!”
Weakly, pleadingly, the bloody-faced man uttered, “I have no idea who—”
“You think I’m stupid, Cartwright?! You think you can walk outta a poker game and screw Dick Merrick outta forty bucks and get away with it?! No sir, sooner or later, I’m gonna catch up with you and kick your fuckin’ ass, buddy!”
Hardly a time to be calling another person “buddy.”
“Please,” Jefferson said weakly. My God, Dick was out of his mind! He was actually going to kill this man over a forty-dollar poker dispute. Finally, John Hancock came to Jefferson’s rescue, running toward Dick wielding his quill pen overhead.
A man of many fights, Dick knew what to do when someone came at him. He flew out of the way like a matador’s red cape and left Hancock plunging toward—me! My right thigh to be exact. And while George Washington’s ax was plastic, John Hancock’s quill was very real and very sharp. Whoever said that the pen was mightier than the sword had obviously been stabbed with one. The cut required eight stitches at the local hospital.
The upside of my stabbing was that I won the Emergency Room Injury of the Day. Apparently, the staff awards the most bizarre accident of each day and posts a photo of the patient on its wall of fame.
I realized that in my short time as a club soccer parent, I’d grown more competitive. I felt a bit of pride as I held the shining trophy with the wings supporting a Beanie Baby of Eeyore. (I suppose the message was that this was the jackass award.) I was a little disappointed to learn that the trophy stayed at the hospital. “The glory is yours forever,” my doctor said, stitching me up. “You have stiff competition on holidays too, with all your barbecues and fireworks and the like. So what did you do to piss off John Hancock so bad, anyway?”
“She did a very brave deed,” Lil told him. When the doctor excused himself, she said, “Claire, I cannot get over your actions today!”
“You told me to do something,” I replied.
“I meant something like calling security.” We laughed. “It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I must say it was good to see you running toward a problem rather than away from it.” After an awkward silence during which Lil seemed to be deciding whether or not to continue, she went on. “Remember when Rachel was born and you wanted to move to Bali because California had too many earthquakes?”
“I believe it was Bora Bora,” I said, feigning indignation.
“Well, wherever it was, it was good to see a different side of you today, though I must say, you might have chosen a safer forum.” She kissed my forehead. “You’re a braver person than you once were, Claire Emmett.”
As Lil and I left the hospital, I posted my photo on the corkboard and smiled. It wasn’t a fist full of medals, but a soccer mom had to take her victories where she could.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lil and I made it back to the field in time to watch the last few minutes of Rachel’s second game. While I was the most bizarre injury at the hospital emergency room, I certainly wasn’t the most serious, which meant a long wait for treatment. Every time I grew impatient and asked Lil to step outside and call Darcy for a score, the giant double doors would swing open and bring in another cracked skull or broken arm. It was late in the day, and all the parents we passed on our way back to the field seemed at their wit’s end. Fathers were lecturing their sons about what they could’ve done better, and one mother had gone totally Joan Crawford on her daughter. “You made me sick the way you played today,” she barked. Are you sure it’s not the portrait-sized piece of funnel cake you’re scarfing down? The daughter hung her head. “You don’t deserve to wear that jersey. Take it off right now!” The girl looked incredulous. “I said take it off!”
“I’m not wearing anything underneath,” the girl squeaked.
“Gimme a break,” the mother snapped. “You’re eight. There’s nothing to cover up anyway.”
Lil and I looked at each other in shock. “Touching, isn’t it?” I said.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Lil said to the mother. The mother’s and child’s heads whipped around to see what the stranger wanted. “That child needs sunscreen if she’s going to walk around without a shirt. She’ll burn to a crisp on a day like this.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business, lady?!” the mother snapped. “I know how to handle my own kid.”
“Have it your way,” Lil said. “For the record, that’s what Lizzie Borden’s mother used to say too.”
I muffled a laugh while the mother stood dumbfounded for a few seconds. “Put your shirt back on,” the mother said, tossing the jersey at her daughter.
“Who’s Lizzie Borden?” the girl asked.
“Never you mind about Lizzie Borden. Put the shirt on.”
After they were well out of earshot, Lil said, “That’s what I call pulling a Claire.”
“Oh please,” I teased. “All she was armed with was funnel cake, and it didn’t look like she was about to give that up.”
Lil pouted playfully. “She had a fork. We can’t all put ourselves in the path of dangerous signatories.”
When we reached the field, even the Normals were shouting zealously. I knew we’d lost the first game and were down two goals at halftime of this one. “What’s the score?” I asked Darcy, setting our seats next to her.
“Three-zero, we’re losing,” she said, shoveling spiral pasta salad into her mouth. “You have got to try some of this. Giovanna’s grandmother brought like seven different pasta salads for lunch. We’ve got tons of leftovers,” she said, nodding over in Paulo’s and his mother’s direction. “She said the girls are too skinny and need some meat on their bones.” Needless to say, it’s a good thing that Mimi doesn’t speak Italian and Carla doesn’t speak English because there was a definit
e difference of opinion on that one.
“I miss all the good stuff,” I said.
Darcy protested with her mouth full. After she finished her bite, she said, “The pen thing was still the highlight of the day, but it’s been a day of drama.” Lil leaned in to hear the gossip. “Mimi’s now on the warpath saying that Gunther’s the cause of our poor performance.”
“Why would she say that?” Lil asked.
“Because we’re losing,” Darcy explained.
Dave walked over and asked how my leg was doing. “It’ll heal,” I dismissed.
“I need to talk to you,” he said in that we need to talk way.
“Um, okay,” I said.
As we walked away from the crowd, Dave inquired about my prognosis. Then about my sister. Then finally, he cut to the chase. “Claire, you know I like you.” I nodded and assured that I felt the same. “Yeah, well, I think we need to hold off on any sort of, you know, relationship.”
He froze mid-word. I looked around the field. Fathers’ mouths hung open mid-scream and players stood still on the field. In an instant, action resumed. “You do?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Claire, I don’t think you’re ready to date yet,” he said. “Or maybe it’s me, I don’t know. In any case, all the cancellations, the whole hospital photography thing. It’s a hint and a half for a guy.”
“No, no!” I said, panicked. “I’m just playing hard to get, that’s all.”
He laughed slightly. “I wish that were true, Claire. We’re still friends, right?”
“Of course,” I said, devastated by the thought of losing him as a friend.
“So, let’s keep it that way and stay in touch, and who knows what’ll happen later.”
Lil turned from her chair to see what was going on between Dave and me. Just getting dumped. Be back with you in a moment, Lil!
“Okay,” I said, holding back tears. “I’m sorry that—I wish I was more together right now.”
Dave smiled. This man was more pure-hearted than anyone I’d ever known. “Don’t lose my number. I’ll take you back in a New York minute.”
“But I’m not dumping you!”
“Claire,” he said, correcting me with his tone. “You dumped me weeks ago. I’m only saying the words aloud. It’s okay. I understand.”
The girls returned to Santa Bella without a single victory, much less a fist full of medals. Still, they were giddy with tales of Rachel’s mother being stabbed in the butt with John Hancock’s pen. The pen never made it anywhere near my butt, but the girls liked this visual far too much to let accuracy interfere with a good story.
As we made our way back to my minivan, Gunther called out to me. He jogged up and said that Rachel had played well at the tournament. “You didn’t see last game. She play a smart game. I have high hopes for Rachel Emmett,” he said in his Germanic clip. I thanked him, not only for the tournament, but for the special interest he seemed to be taking in my daughter. At practice, he often used her as a demonstrator and seemed to soften when he spoke to her. I wanted to ask him why he’d taken Rachel under his wing, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you asked without sounding suspicious of his motives, which I was not. Instead, I just told him how much being on the team meant to Rachel. “I know,” he said. “I was Rachel once.” Thinking Gunther really had bumbled his English this time, I started to correct him, but he continued before I could do so. “I was seven years old when my mother died in the car crash. I play soccer all day every time I could. Instead of crying, I practice penalty kick. Instead of feeling mad at driver, I kick ball. By time I am ten, I am so good with ball that I can go anywhere on field with it, and no one can take it away from me. In soccer, I am in charge of what happens,” Gunther explained. “My father cry all the time until he come to my futbol game. Then he see me play and he is happy again. Futbol give me life. Soccer make my father put his shoes on and come out of the house to see me play.”
I smiled. Soccer is life. I get it now.
Dick was banned from all future Patriots Cups. As it turned out, Thomas Jefferson was not Danny Cartwright and never cheated Drunk Dick out of his meager poker winnings. Jefferson, also known as Philip Oberholtzer, filed assault and battery charges and has a permanent restraining order against Dick. “My mistake” was Dick’s big concession as he told a group of parents about the incident at practice the following week. “The guy looked exactly like this fucker who screwed me outta forty bucks.”
Gia told the group that she had “the best time” at the tournament. “I missed spring break this year, so this totally helped me blow off steam.”
Spring break? Is Gia still in college?
“Gia, how old are you?” Nancy asked.
“Twenty-four,” she said.
“And you’re a student?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Gia said, fidgeting with her ring. “I took some time off to deal with family stuff though, so I’m not sure when I’ll finish.”
Deal with family stuff! Oh, please, is that what they’re calling blowing your geezer groom these days?
Without an ounce of sarcasm, Darcy added, “Well, if anyone deserves a break, it’s you, Gia. Tell us, how did you wind up on the Mayflower?”
“We didn’t want to drive in the morning, so we got to San Luis Obispo the night before. When we were checking in, there was a big fundraiser for the Patriots right there in the grand ballroom, so we were like, there! Anyway, they had this live auction, and I went a little crazy so I could get the super cute Pilgrim costume.”
Before our resident trophy bride could regale us with tales from the Mayflower, Mimi stormed over to the cluster of parents. “Parent meeting, now!” she demanded. Darcy and I tried to contain our snickers. There was no need for such a grand proclamation. We were already assembled in the requisite half-moon formation, ready for her to turn our sideline chat into an emergency summit. “We need to get a handle on what’s going on with the team,” she snapped. Sadly, I knew she was referring to the girls’ fitness rather than the need to control alcohol consumption at games. “Gunther’s zoned out during games! He has no clue when to make substitutions and which players have chemistry together.”
I turned to watch Gunther as he led the girls in soccer drills. He looked coherent to me. He was no rousing Knute Rockne, that was for sure, but he seemed to know what he was doing. More importantly, Rachel adored and respected him.
“Hear, hear!” Dick agreed with Mimi.
Gia searched the field.
“She’s right,” Loud Bobby blasted. “Those were some kick-ass teams, but we didn’t have to get shut down as bad as we did.”
Leo added, “That dude’s got his head up his ass.” I almost felt incomplete until he punctuated the sentence with “Sivious.”
Nancy’s willingness to speak up always amazed me. “Let’s not forget that the girls were playing in the gold bracket at the Patriots Cup. Of course, they’re not going to fare as well as they did in the bronze.”
“You mean the retard league?” Dick taunted.
Nancy stood straight. “You are vile.”
“I need everyone to focus on our discussion about fitness,” Mimi barked.
We were having a discussion about fitness?
“As manager of this team, I need to start asserting my authority a bit around here!” Mimi told us. Shit, what exactly had we been experiencing? “The girls are to meet at my house at 7 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays where I will resume fitness training with them.”
“Does Gunther know about this?” Jessica asked. Her hand was still wrapped in white gauze bandages.
“I don’t need to tell Gunther everything,” Mimi defended. “What I need to do is make decisions that are in the best interest of these girls.”
As I looked at my feet, I remembered Lil’s comment about my running away from uncomfortable situations. It’s not that I hadn’t already made this self-observation. I just didn’t realize how liberating it was t
o do the opposite. In the moment when I ran into the parade of patriots, and the last time I stood up to Mimi, I felt like the Claire I was when I was Rachel’s age. I felt like the me who hadn’t learned to hide. “Mimi,” I heard my own voice say, “exactly how is scheduling double-secret practices in the best interest of the girls?”
“Right on, double-secret practice. Animal House!” Bobby said.
Nancy added her two cents, then Darcy chimed in with her objections. Twenty minutes later, no one was on board with Mimi’s clandestine plan. We all had our different reasons, but the bottom line was that no one was bringing their daughters to an early morning secret fitness training with Mimi.
“How much fatter do these girls need to get before you people start taking this problem seriously?!” Mimi asked as she stormed off.
When practice was over, Cara was left looking around the field for her mother. “Mrs. Emmett, have you seen my mom?”
Heads began scanning the area.
“Don’t worry, Cara,” I assured her. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s fine too, but I need to get home.”
“I’ll give you a ride, honey,” I told her.
When Rachel and I returned home from soccer practice, I popped dinner in the oven and pressed the flashing light on the answering machine. “Claire, it’s me,” my mother said with an uncharacteristic lilt in her voice. “I have some zippy news for you! We were shooting the cover for the November issue today and made a last-minute change to the model’s top—a fabulous looking V-neck thing, but that’s beside the point. We needed a necklace that would pull the look together, and guess what happened to be around my neck? You guessed it!” I did? I was still stuck on the fact that some poor older women had to don autumn clothing in the height of this sweltering summer heat. “My lira necklace—the one you made for me—is going to be on the cover of Garb. Isn’t that fun?!” Who was this woman using words like “fun” and “zippy” in one thirty-second message? “We’ll be up late tonight if you want to call us back. Mexico is taking on France at eleven, so you can call till around two.”
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