That evening, everyone gathered for yet another luau, on the lawn just above the lagoon. People were reporting that the baby seal had moved on, safely back to sea.
“I heard y’all saw him?” Jordan Cash’s wife Pam was asking.
“Yeah, he was real cute,” Caryn affirmed. “Just a big old blob of mammal.”
“Did you get pictures?”
“Some. I hope they turn out.” For the first time, Caryn found herself sad she hadn’t snapped a few of her own. There would be no photos without Vicki in them.
Vicki, for her part, was feeling better. Even after a hard day, it generally didn’t take much festivity to get her in a pixie mood, introducing people, winking, giving her opinions and holding court. She wasn’t drunk. Vicki rarely got drunk. She just got talky. Caryn should’ve known she would talk about the seal.
“There are only a thousand of them. That’s all! It was a totally special moment.” She’d drawn a crowd that included Jordan and Pam Cash, and everyone was nodding and shifting their drinks around.
“So I call to the woman who’s in charge of the whole thing, like, ‘Is this okay?’ You know. I’ll be real careful. And she’s like, ‘Sure, whatever.’ Like she doesn’t care about the line per se; she just doesn’t want anyone to kill it. So I take the kids up close, and it’s just the cutest, smushiest thing. And we’re good. We don’t touch it or anything. I mean, it could’ve been much worse. Next thing I know the woman’s tearing over, screaming, telling me to get my ass off the beach. Mason’s crying. I’m almost crying. Like, seriously, what a trap! You ask permission and still they get you? She must hate tourists. That’s all I can think. You know: it wasn’t about me. It was about her and her mother. Her and the traffic. Whatever!”
Faintly disturbed by Vicki’s about-face performance, Caryn pulled herself away. She found Cindy in a gaggle with several other moms.
“She’s telling the story,” Caryn said.
“Of course she is.”
“I thought she was ‘so embarrassed.’”
Cindy shrugged. “Guess she’s still working it out for herself.”
The fact was, people liked it. They kept demanding it. “Heard y’all saw the baby seal!” they’d greet her, and she’d be narrating all over again.
Sometimes she offered a bit of self-doubt, but that only made it worse. “To be honest, I really shouldn’t have pushed,” Caryn heard her tell one group.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself!” they cried.
“An opportunity like that?”
Later, after all the kids had gone to bed, Caryn and Vicki walked down to the private lagoon, where Caryn tried to distract her from the endless seal drama by shifting the subject to herself. They were holding their shoes and kicking sand and Caryn was telling Vicki about her hopes for the coming week, how she planned to enjoy herself but also to stand up for herself, finally demand Mitch’s respect.
“He has to be better,” Vicki agreed.
“He really does.”
“The thing with Hardy,” Vicki said, by way of comparison, “is he needs his recuperation time. Mondays we don’t talk. He gets under the covers and I just leave him there. But that means he’s with me on Tuesday. One hundred and ten percent.”
“And you really think he’s never had other girls?” This had long been the chief difference between them, the reality they’d often tried to puzzle out.
“Hardy?” Vicki paused, choosing her words. “No. I honestly don’t. Not because he wouldn’t like it. I just don’t think he’s willing to take the risk. He might steal a kiss or two, sure, same as any man. But real cheating? No. He’s too scared for that. In a way it’s better when they’re scared.”
Caryn stood listening to Vicki and the unseen water lapping the shore. It was very dark on the beach. “Sometimes I think they cheat because they’re scared.”
“Sure, some. But Hardy knows which side his bread is buttered. I was with him before he got rich. And I’ll be with him when his body breaks down.”
Caryn had always liked Hardy. He had a gentleness common to the big men on the line, a care in his real-world movements because he knew how dangerous his body could be. He was Brittany’s preferred hair brusher, the kind of man who didn’t leave drawers open. She had always liked talking to Vicki about him. But she had a sense, now, that they weren’t really talking about Hardy. They were talking, again, about Mitch, and how he wasn’t Hardy’s equal.
The men showed up then with extra leis and beers, and soon after they were doing their late-night beach thing at the Pro Bowl, a tradition two years running.
“Sayyyy, my love—” Mitch brayed at Caryn, looping his mitts about her waist.
“Ugh, your voice!” Vicki protested.
It was true that no one sang worse than Mitch, but Caryn didn’t care. She reveled in the attention, delighted he was doing Dave Matthews, whose music had become a kind of private language between them, because the band was, like Caryn, from Charlottesville, and rising simultaneously with Mitch.
“I’ll tell you what I’m seeking,” Vicki said, in response to Mitch’s continued growling. “A little respect for my eardrums.”
Caryn looked in Vicki’s direction, and saw, with sudden, perfect clarity in the dark, that her friend could barely tolerate her husband. That she would never, if not for Hardy, who loved Mitch like a brother, choose to spend time in his company. How, in their countless mall quests and pollen-infused play-dates, had Caryn missed Vicki’s judgment before? She’d thought of her friend as a genuine person—a true straight-talker in a maze of phoniness, who never let herself get lost—but it was clear now that even Vicki had her blind spots. And what a violence that one of them was Mitch.
As this revelation turned itself over in her mind, Caryn found, to her surprise, that she did not feel especially wounded by it, though, certainly, she could not excuse it. Nor ignore it. When faced with opposition from outsiders, Caryn grew loyal. She clung, triumphantly, to her own.
Turning to her husband, she belted the chorus about celebrating life and climbing two-by-two. Hooking an arm around his neck, and a leg around his waist, she literally climbed his body to the words. Mitch, who loved everything hammy and obvious, from Adam Sandler to deli meat to, most of all, himself, joined her for the final lines, their voices crashing in happy disharmony.
“Oh my god,” Vicki protested, covering her ears.
They made out messily and began the next verse, which was even sexier, about mouths and hearts and wine and minds.
“That’s it,” Hardy said, taking Vicki’s hand. “We’re out of here. You two deserve each other.”
“God, finally,” Mitch said, once their friends were out of earshot. “You get sick of people after a while, you know?” Caryn wanted to be pregnant with him she loved him so much.
They made their way to the other end of the beach to lie down. “You wouldn’t have done what she did, would you?” she asked. “With the seal, I mean.”
“I’d get as close as I could. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Heat emanated from his body, every organ inside him working, and just like that, they were back together. Perched halfway onto his chest, she could hardly recall her separate self.
“I’m not even sure it’s that rare,” she said. “I talked to the concierge. I think it happens more than we think. Every week maybe. But, I mean, you wouldn’t have crossed the line.”
“There were lines?” He traced one down her arm.
“That was the whole point. A clear boundary with signs and everything. And still Vicki had to cross it. Had to have her picture.”
He thought for a moment, his throat moving, and she rested her chin on his meaty shoulder and watched it. “Wow. No. Absolutely not. Rules are rules. We have them for a reason.”
“Absolutely!” she cried, hugging him closer, draping her little leg over his large one. It boggled the mind, how their past problems were just—gone. As though they hadn’t even happened. Their cycle of long absences and strange
returns was not normal. She knew this from her yoga friends, the few people she spoke to outside the NFL, who knew her not for her husband, but for her Uddiyana Bandha, her Ardha Candrasana, and perhaps also for her flattering pants. These were scarf-wearing women with henna tattoos who seemed to be in conversation with their own husbands at all times. They admired her poses and traded alignment tips, but they could not exactly empathize. That was why she had Vicki. It was why they all had Vickis. Only other football wives understood. Yet at moments like this—real, live in-the-moment moments—she felt exquisitely normal. Connected, content. And so who cared? She was only here and now.
“I keep thinking,” she said. “If people like Vicki can decide for themselves what’s safe and fair, what’s the point of having rules at all?”
“Some rules are dumb,” he conceded, palming the flesh of her butt.
“Not that one though. For the protection of the seals?”
“No, that’s just common sense. Stop messing with nature. Stop the killing. They’re endangered, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Vicki thinks she’s good. She thinks she’s incapable of harm.”
“Everyone thinks that,” Mitch said with sudden intensity, jostling her head. “But they’re wrong.”
Caryn exhaled, delighting in their agreement. She’d been afraid she’d been too ungenerous. He’d often called her on it—and he was often right, because when she was angry with him during the season, she’d been known to name pieces of dinner garbage after him, and run them through the disposal in his presence.
“We’re not like that,” she said.
“No way.” He held her so tightly against him. “We know we’re a total mess.”
Mitch was already gone when Caryn opened her eyes the next morning, and as she stirred to wakefulness in the light, the crossing of palms and planes through open doors, the smell of lotion everywhere like balm, she realized she no longer wanted to punish him with an extravagant day at the spa. And yet she’d already promised Vicki. Vicki who worshipped control, who didn’t like to change her plans.
“Ready?” Vicki asked her when she answered the bedside phone. “Our day of severe relaxation awaits.”
Caryn yawned and stretched under the white duvet. “I can’t wait for my massage.”
“Don’t forget your mani-pedi. And your seawater jet massage. And customized detox wrap.”
“Actually if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll skip the detox and the jets.”
“Oh, come on, girl! Don’t get shy on me now.”
Caryn mellowed her voice, like it was nothing personal, no big deal either way. “I don’t know. I just woke up this morning and felt like I didn’t need them.”
“But I already booked everything,” Vicki blurted. “I mean.” She stopped, fumbled for the right thing to say. “I thought you wanted to go all out.”
The door clicked and Alyssa bounded onto the bed. “Supreme Empress of the Universe!” she cried, kicking her leg in salute.
“Shh.” Cindy came in behind her. “Mommy’s on the phone.”
“Don’t let me stop you!” Caryn said, dragging Alyssa under the covers for a snuggle. “You should totally get the works. Treat yourself. I’m just not feeling it for some reason. You crazy monkey,” she said to Alyssa.
“It’s about the money?” Vicki asked, her voice lurching over the uncomfortable word.
“Of course not! You know we’re fine.” Mitch was younger than Hardy, and a first round pick. “I was calling Alyssa a monkey. Because she is.” She bulged her upper lip with her tongue, eliciting a gleeful shriek from her daughter.
“Well, what then?”
“Look, if you want to spend the day there, you should. You’ll love it. I’ll be there with you in the beginning and by the time I leave, you’ll be feeling so blissful you won’t care if I’m there or not.”
“I just thought you wanted to. You love this stuff.”
Caryn sighed. Vicki always needed everyone to love the things she loved. “Sometimes I do. But if you love it you should do it. What I think doesn’t matter.”
“I do love it.”
“There you go.” Caryn wrestled Alyssa back under the covers.
“Can I come?” Alyssa asked into her chest once the phone was back in its cradle.
“I wish, baby. I’d have a lot more fun with you there.”
It was a tense morning at the spa, which was elegant but connected to the parking garage, not what either Caryn or Vicki would have wished. Vicki couldn’t stop thanking the native woman who crouched over the basin of steaming water at her feet, and she couldn’t stop sharing snippets of the book she was reading about Jackie Kennedy Onassis. “Listen to this,” she kept saying to Caryn as they had their toenails painted. Or, “Look at this photo. It’s stunning.” When the massage therapist came to collect Caryn from the nail dryers, she was relieved to be heading to a dark, quiet room.
She drank in the peace through her face cradle, tasting eucalyptus and meditative woodwinds, as the therapist worked her hands down her back. When it was over she oozed herself down to the beach, where Cindy and Alyssa were hard at work on a sprawling sand metropolis. She lay in a cabana for a while and watched them dribble water and pack walls, absorbing the sun in her shins, letting it fill them until they could take no more and seemed ready to melt away. For two and a half years in Miami, this had been an almost daily ritual, but now she was a New England wife and mother, quickly anxious and overheated in the sun. She headed for the lagoon, which was surprisingly cool, and swam the length of it, emerging almost shivering on the other side where she had lain with Mitch the night before. Looking back, the Koalani looked small, less intimidating, like a folded paper hat. She knew everyone inside and she felt in her spine a fresh afterglow from her massage, perfectly cool and calm.
Before long it was game day, and then it was Monday again, and they were riding to the airport in a town car. Caryn watched stone apartment towers float before cloud-cloaked mountains, green with jungles. Hawaii was still the most foreign place she’d ever been, and after her week in nature perfected she found herself longing for everything else. The smudged pedestrian overpasses, the crowded city living, the traffic. This was the part of America that was most like another world. What America might look like if it was the world, or the world if it was America. It was like China maybe, or Mars. She half-expected to see a flying disc, passing between the towers. She wished now that they’d stayed in town. She and Alyssa could’ve gone exploring. She and Vicki could’ve avoided their awkwardness. “I’ll call you,” was all she’d said when they’d parted, meaning when she got back to Massachusetts. And she would, she was sure of it. But for now, she needed space.
Saying good-bye to Alyssa was much harder, a horrible scene at the airport as Cindy had to carry her, hiccupping, to the overseas terminal while Caryn felt like a criminal for going on to Kauai.
“It’s fine,” Mitch kept saying. “She’ll be fine.”
The flight to Kauai was a joke. They went up, they received juice, they came down, the fastest flight of her life. Moments later, it seemed, they had picked up their rented convertible and checked into the Princeville Hotel, looking west over a smooth curving bay. The AFC had won the game and with it came that extra cash, though Mitch was not the MVP, so there would be no additional car. Again she had the feeling that he was exhausted, that there was something about walking into a splendid hotel room with her that took every drop of energy he had. Again she went to the pool alone.
By happy hour he was unpacked and ready, as though he’d found himself among his clothes.
“Let’s watch the sunset,” he said. He took her hand awkwardly and she followed him down the hall, hearing their door click shut behind them. She watched his back work together with his legs.
Piano music filled the lobby and intensified as they approached the baby grand in the bar. They flagged down a server to order drinks and made their way out to t
he lanai. An older couple was sitting on the end in a pair of cushioned armchairs.
“Here,” the man said, moving to the chair on the other side of his wife. “Now you can sit together.”
“Thank you.” Caryn settled herself into the chair on the end and stared straight out at the sun, which was hovering like a flaming basketball over the western coast. “Bali Hai,” she said.
“That’s it,” the man confirmed. “You folks doing the coastal trail?”
“No, sir,” Mitch said, in that folksy friendly manner he was sometimes capable of throwing on. “I’m not here to exercise.” His knees jiggled, as if daring them to recognize him, which people seldom did without the helmet and pads.
Their drinks came and the older man had more advice. “Drive down there, even if you don’t do the hike. Ke’e Beach is something to see, and there’s a botanical garden just before you get there with two preserves. They have thousands of species there that the natives have been growing for centuries. They farmed them on terraces built from lava beds.” He reached for his wife’s hand. “We’ve been coming here twenty-five years, and I told her, when I die, that’s where my soul is going. I told her she can come find me there.”
By now half-blind from the orange sun, Caryn turned toward the man to show her respect for his soul, and to allow her vision to restore itself. They were Midwestern people, she could tell, round, unguardedly pleasant, and somewhat genderless in that way older people can become. They even had the same haircut. But he was the one making recommendations, so you knew he was the man. And she was the one with the large sparkling diamond: plainly a late-in-life gem. Caryn tried to imagine growing old with Mitch. She would never let herself get that fat, and she would never cut her hair that short, but that was not the point, was it, she was always skirting the point, failing to stay in the moment. The point was she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see herself old and sad, visiting his soul in an ancient garden. He simply wouldn’t be there. Mitch would go someplace gleaming. She saw his soul instead in the future, blazing new frontiers, in space probably, or something like it, not hanging around for her in some earthly terrace. Not ditching her, exactly, but definitely not hanging around.
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