Solo

by Hope Solo

  Full of dread, I hit redial. The same abrupt voice answered the phone.

  “Hi,” I said tentatively. “I’m calling about my dad? Jeffrey John Solo?”

  “Oh, yes,” She sounded like she was asking for my takeout order. “What kind of arrangement do you want to make for the body?”

  My knees buckled and I slipped to the bed. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d been informed. Your father passed away and you’re listed as next of kin.”

  She kept talking but I couldn’t hear her anymore.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .”

  My roommate Cat came out of the bathroom and sat next to me. She figured out what must have happened through my moans. “Hope, you have to get home,” she said. “Can you call your family? Do that, and I’ll be right back.” She went downstairs to tell my team.

  I kept telling myself this wasn’t real. My dad was supposed to be coming on a trip with me in just a few days. On June 23, our team would play Brazil in New York, and Marcus and my father would be there. We would take Dad on a trip to visit his boyhood haunts and maybe finally get some answers about his past. Best of all, my dad would be there in person to see me play with the national team for the first time. Every time I thought about our upcoming trip, I smiled. Dad couldn’t have made this journey years earlier: his knees were too bad, his life too chaotic. But now he was stable, happy, and healthy. Mentally prepared to revisit the past.

  Oh my God, oh my God.

  Shaking, I dialed Marcus’s number. I knew he was staying at Mom’s.

  “Wha . . . hello?” Marcus said. I had woken him from a sound sleep.

  “Marcus,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Dad didn’t make it through the night.”

  My strange wording confused him. It was too hard for me to say that our father had died. When Marcus finally understood what I was trying to tell him, he didn’t respond with words, but a guttural animal-like wail. In the background, I heard my mother rush into his room and try to comfort him. She took the phone and I told her what I knew. But I didn’t have any answers for them. I didn’t feel equipped to deal with this. I felt like what I was. A little girl who had just lost her daddy.

  Cat and Aly came back into my room. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking. I was unsure what to do. What happens next?

  I lay curled in a ball while things happened around me in a blur. Someone booked me a flight home. Cat and Aly began to gather my things. My teammates came into the room, one by one, to check on me. Some were unsure how to act and stood awkwardly near the door, simply staring. They had never seen me so vulnerable and broken: I usually presented such a strong front. Marci Miller—older than many of my teammates—seemed to understand what was needed. She sat next to me on the bed and rubbed my leg, murmuring calming words. I latched onto her touch and voice and turned toward her for help. “I don’t know what to do,” I whimpered. “I can’t do this.”

  I looked up and saw Bri sitting across from me, looking directly into my eyes. “You can do this Hope,” she said. “Be strong.”

  When I didn’t respond, she said again, “You can do this.”

  Bri had lost her father on Father’s Day of 2004, just weeks before the Athens Olympics. She stared intently at me, as though passing her strength and experience through the air between us. I kept my eyes on her. “You can, Hope,” Bri said. “You can do this.” Then she got up and walked out of the room, like a woman on a mission.

  Greg came in and stood awkwardly in the middle of the scene. I was in shock. Aly was on the phone. Cat was packing my bag. Marci was rubbing my leg. Other girls huddled on the bed or leaned against a wall. Greg walked over and patted me on the shoulder. “Take care, kiddo,” he said. And then he walked out.

  Aly and Cat arranged for a taxi to the airport. As we were leaving my room, Bri returned. She slipped a letter into my hand. “You can do this Hope,” she said, again. “You’re strong.”

  II.

  At the airport, Aly and Cat checked me in, helped me get into the security line and hugged me good-bye. And then I was alone, sitting in a chair at my gate. For years, I had always called my dad before I flew, a ritual to ward off my fear of flying. I couldn’t call him now. I was alone with my terrors, old and new.

  Memories of my dad rushed at me. Dad holding me up to the basketball hoop in the driveway of the smiley-face house. Dad weeping as he proclaimed his innocence to me in front of REI. Dad reaching out to hug me near a damp Seattle soccer field. Showing me his tent in the woods. Pointing out the sights of Seattle from the top of the Space Needle. Sitting high in the stands in his purple University of Washington sweatshirt. Laughing as he tried to figure out a computer keyboard.

  There was so much I still didn’t know about him. So much more laughter to share. I put my head on my knees and sobbed.

  After a few moments, I realized someone was standing near me. I looked up and saw an unfamiliar man with a kind expression, who said, “It’s your father, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, wiping my eyes with my sleeve.

  “Only a daughter cries like that for her father.”

  On the plane I pulled my hood over my head and opened Bri’s letter.

  She wrote from the heart, describing exactly how I felt. She knew because she had felt the same way—with her heart and soul ripped apart. “It will take time,” she wrote, “and, to be honest, it will never go away completely.” She encouraged me to hold on to my dad’s spirit to help me get through these dark days, to carry him inside me and let myself cry when I needed to.

  “You can do this, yes you can,” she wrote. “Do it for both of you.”

  She closed by letting me know that she was there for me.

  I flew west. I remembered that Sunday would be Father’s Day.

  III.

  My father had been sleeping on the couch in the apartment of his friend, Beverly, who also lived at Hilltop. He hadn’t felt right, and she had checked on him early in the morning. “I’m fine,” he told her and went back to sleep. An hour later, he was dead; the cause of death was coronary artery disease.

  Everyone in his life knew about his upcoming trip to New York. He bragged that he would see Baby Hope play at Giants Stadium, on the same field where Eli Manning played. He couldn’t wait to travel with his two youngest children and show us his childhood landmarks. To take us on a carriage ride through Central Park and visit Yankee Stadium, where as a kid he had seen Mickey Mantle play. “I’m going to take them back to where it all started for me,” he told his friend Mark.

  He was happy. He couldn’t wait for our trip. He had bought a suit for the journey and was already all packed, weeks in advance. The pain and craziness of his life had ceased. He was content, surrounding himself with family and good vibes.

  One of the last things my father and I had done was paint my house, just a few weeks earlier. My little cabin in the woods was a dark brown, and I wanted to freshen it up. I picked out a cream color and a plum color for the trim. And then we had a painting party: me, Adrian, my dad, and my mother. I remember him working so hard to paint my shutters, though he was using primer that didn’t cover well and he got frustrated as it slipped off and left streaks. He joked that we had given him an impossible job. He and Adrian painted the carport, each working on a different side, competing to see who could do a better job. My dad sat in a rocking chair with a long-handled roller, slapping paint on the wall and joking that two city boys like he and Adrian weren’t used to such hard labor and needed a pay raise: meanwhile, my mother and I were doing all the hard work. But we were laughing all the time. The music was blasting. The weather was great. My dad’s chatter never stopped.

  Terry called that day. She was thinking about stopping by. “Dad’s here,” I told her. For almost seven years I’d done my best to keep them apart. She neve
r came by.

  That night we all went out to dinner: my mom, my dad, Adrian’s parents, Adrian, and I. Like a normal family.

  When I landed at Sea-Tac Airport, Adrian was waiting. He had been the second person I called. He loved my father, and even when things were difficult between us, he had been my dad’s favorite. “Don’t be upset about Adrian,” Dad would tell me. “You two are in love. You just have to work it out.”

  In recent months, I realized my dad was right. I fell into Adrian’s arms sobbing, and he wrapped me up. Then we drove to my little half-painted house in Kirkland, where my mother and Marcus were already waiting. I was drained, hollow, but I knew there was so much to do in just a few days. I needed to honor my father as best I could.

  One blessing was knowing my father’s wishes: he had told both me and Marcus he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread over the Snoqualmie Pass. I hated driving in bad weather, so in the winter, when I had to navigate the pass on my way to or from Richland, I would stay on the phone with my father until I felt safe. “When I die, scatter my ashes there so I can still look out for both of you,” he had told us.

  On Father’s Day, I had a barbecue at my house to celebrate my father’s life. Lesle and Amy came; so did Cheryl and Malia and Dad’s friend Mark. It was the first time I had ever met my father’s dear friend in person. Beverly came with her son. We had boards of photos of my dad set up. Adrian and Malia cooked for everybody.

  During the gathering, Greg called. I already knew our team had beaten China in Cleveland. My teammates wore black armbands in honor of my father, and there was a moment of silence for him before the game. Bri had put my father’s initials on her goalkeeper gloves and recorded a shutout. I was touched by their actions.

  “I’m just checking in with you,” Greg said. He told me to let him know when I was ready to come back and play with the team.

  IV.

  The next day, Marcus and I went to look at caskets. I was irritated by the incredible cost of ornate boxes, with leather padding and brass adornments that would just be burned up. The man who had been happy in a tent in the woods would have scoffed at the excess. Marcus and I found black humor in the absurdity of my father in a lavish casket. We decided not to get anything. We were going to dress my father in his beloved University of Washington sweats and a Native American Pride T-shirt he liked to wear, and cover him with a UW blanket—he didn’t need any fancy trappings.

  While we were there, my phone rang. It was Greg again. He must have gotten impatient waiting for me to call back. He wanted to know when I would be back. I stepped into the hall to talk. I told Greg what I had known all along, ever since I had left the hotel in Cleveland. I needed to play in the game in New York. It was the moment my father had been looking forward to, and even if he wasn’t there, I wanted to fulfill the promise of our trip. I wanted to honor him by playing.

  “Greg, I want to play against Brazil,” I said. “I’ll be there. I’ll play.”

  He hesitated, then launched into minutiae about the travel and practice schedule. He thought I would miss too much training, but I knew the calendar. There was an off day and a travel day. I knew I would miss only one practice session. “I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll play. My dad would want me to.”

  Despite telling me he would honor my wishes, Greg told me that he thought I would be a distraction to the team. That he didn’t think I would be emotionally ready.

  What the fuck did he know about emotions? I thought. He was a man who had patted my shoulder and called me “kiddo” moments after I learned my father had died. One day he told me to let him know what I wanted to do; the next day he was telling me how I felt. Was I supposed to apologize because my father had died? Was I being punished? I couldn’t believe it. I thought back to 2002, when I had roomed with Brandi Chastain when her mother, Lark, died of an aneurism. Brandi played the next day, and her teammates rallied behind her and picked her up. Eight months later, when Bri’s dad died, she came back and played in the next scheduled game.

  Greg told me I could sit on the bench with the team. He had made up his mind. He wasn’t going to let me play in New York against Brazil.

  V.

  The plans for the memorial weren’t going well. I felt overwhelmed: the list of things I had to do was endless. Phone calls to be made, the obituary to be written, cremation plans to be finalized, finding someone to officiate the service. I was trying to get things done. Marcus and I were arguing. Thankfully, Cheryl flew into town as soon as she heard the news and helped us get organized—she could tell we were paralyzed by our pain.

  The night before the memorial, we were at my house, sitting outside in the yard, going over the plans when Marcus and I got in a terrible fight. I yelled at him for not helping and for partying instead of working. He lashed out at me. “You’re taking this over,” he said, “like you fucking take over everything.”

  I slapped him in the face. Even as my hand made contact with his skin, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I sprinted back into my house, Marcus chasing me and calling me hateful names. My mother was right behind him, screaming for us to stop as I dove under my dining table. Marcus is going to kill me, I thought, right here in my own house.

  Jesus Christ! I thought. I was twenty-five years old, my father had just died, and my brother and I were acting like animals. And I was cowering under a piece of furniture. This was our family, this was our inheritance.

  VI.

  Marcus didn’t kill me, and we put together a moving memorial service. Everyone helped, including Cheryl, who found photos, helped write the obituary, got the programs printed and hand-folded them. We held the service at Hilltop; my father had made a lot of friends, and there was an outpouring of love and respect.

  From every person who spoke, we learned something remarkable about my father. When he had been homeless, he had dressed up as Santa every year at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, bringing joy to young children who were suffering. In the 1990s, when he was still living on the streets, he donated $35,000 in video equipment to that pediatric ward (where my father got all that electronic equipment remained a mystery that I decided was better left unexplored). At Hilltop he’d taught half the residents—men and women—how to play poker, arranging big games for dimes and nickels. He had wooed the Japanese ladies who lived at Hilltop with exotic mushrooms that his friend Mark picked in the woods and brought to him by the bagful. Mark brought a small bonsai tree to the service in his honor. Marcus’s new dog Blue—who had replaced my dad’s old friend Henry—was there. My grandparents came and Grandma Alice assured us that my father had been a Christian and that we would see him again. That eased our pain a bit.

  My oldest brother, David, didn’t attend the service, which upset me. Thanks to Marcus, David and my father had reconnected in recent years. The three of them had gone out to dinner one night when David was in Seattle on business. David’s birthday is June 12, and my father had called him to wish him a happy birthday just three days before he died. In David’s eyes, they had found some closure and peace in their relationship, and that was enough for him. But I still felt that David should have come to the memorial, to support Marcus and me, and to pay his respects. It was his father, for God’s sake, the only one he would ever have.

  My sister, Terry, did attend. She had never seen my father after the day she called the police on him, seven years earlier.

  I was bitter that my father had died with the murder of Mike Emert still looming over him. The police had continued to harass him for years, and the case remained unsolved, a frustrating and sad episode that was proof to him that the authorities couldn’t be trusted. Dad had been at peace with a lot in his life when he died, but not with that lingering stain. He spent hours thinking about it, going over details with Marcus, hoping to try to figure out what really happened.

  When it was my turn to speak at the memorial, I said my father often seemed st
uck in his ways but that he actually took computer classes to learn how to send me e-mails when I was away. He spent hours figuring out how to log on to the computer and poking at the keys to come up with a two-line e-mail saying he missed me. Sometimes he would mistakenly erase his finished product and have to start all over. He always laughed at himself when he told me about his technological struggles. In almost every e-mail he would write the same thing:

  Baby Hope, be safe, have fun, go with your vibes, smile and be happy. You are the best. Love, Pops.

  I told how he had recently opened a bank account after a lifetime of keeping his money under his mattress. I told the secret of his happiness that he had passed along to me. “He guarded each and every memory with his whole heart,” I said. “He was fueled by the love he shared with his friends and family, the moments between them, and he relived those happy memories over and over, bringing a new and fresh smile to his face each time. He knew that life could always be worse, so it was important to find joy in the simple things in life. My dad always said to me: ‘Baby Hope, memories are for you, and nobody can take them away.’ ”

  I ended by saying that my father would always be at my side and in the goal.

  After the service, Marcus gathered his belongings from Hilltop. I joined him before he shut the door and saw the objects my father had carried from place to place, through the rain and cold, for so many years. The home-run ball Marcus had given him. The etched rock. A signed dollar bill from David from 1977. His carefully maintained scrapbooks were filled with pictures and keepsakes from all four of us: ticket stubs to David’s football games, pictures of Terry, a letter from young David telling him about the 1980 Lakers-Sonics playoff games that ended with a plaintive, “I miss you Dad, I really love you a lot Dad.” There were clippings about Dominic Woody’s minor league baseball career—my dad had coached him back in Richland. There were letters in childish blocky writing to him from Marcus and me. My dad kept everything, carrying it with him for years through the Seattle rain. He had catalogued it and written little notes with observations and messages of love for his children.