Forward

by Abby Wambach

  The following week, during Nikki’s visit, we’re out to dinner when my phone rings: Haley.

  “Let’s go get a drink and take a walk,” she says.

  “Wait, what?” is my smooth reply.

  I can hear her inhale, a sharp intake of breath.

  “How about a drink and a walk?” she tries again, this time as a question.

  There is nothing I want more, I decide, and realize I have two options: break up with Nikki as soon as possible, abbreviating our visit; or string her along for the week only to surprise her when she gets home. I go with number one, and Nikki flies out the following morning. But of course I still feel like a jerk when I pick up the phone and call Haley.

  We meet for dinner at a sushi place on the ocean. I remember her shirt, green-and-white striped, and the flush of her cheeks from the sun. She has sake, and I briefly repress Intense Abby and order a glass of wine. Afterward we stroll to the pier. It’s closed, so we take turns hurdling the fence, and we have miles of beach to ourselves, the ocean lapping at our calves.

  She kisses me and digs her nails into my shoulder in that same way, and I fall in love instantly; a part of me is in love with her still.

  We see each other as often as possible during training. Every time I travel with the team I head to her apartment as soon as I return. She gives me a set of keys, and once she comes home to find me lying in the middle of her floor, naked, with our favorite soundtrack playing. I buy her five-thousand-dollar earrings. We laugh and talk for hours. I want to know everything: where she’s been, where she’s going, what she’s been through, what she’s conquered, what she’s lost. She coins a phrase for how she feels after our marathon dates: the “Abby Hangover.” She jostles every other thought out of my mind until it’s time to leave for Greece. Only then do I invoke the memory of the Germans celebrating the World Cup, and I bring that anger with me.

  We’re up 1–0 against Brazil in the Olympic final, but the game is not going well. The Brazilians play with skill and flamboyance, as though we’re at a dance party rather than the Olympics, as though this is fun and not war. We’re slow and disorganized, failing to find each other, and the only reason we survive is because Brazil clinks the ball, twice, off the goalposts. With seventeen minutes left in regulation, our luck runs out: a Brazilian player named Pretinha, my former teammate on the Washington Freedom, shoots a line drive into the net, tying the game.

  The pressure fuels me, catering to my need for extremes; I do not know how to exist in the middle. I unleash my old failures and let them run free inside of me, filling me up with a wild rage. I am a cocked gun, a sharpened knife, a grenade with its pin half pulled. In the 112th minute, I see my chance in the form of a corner kick, and I leap, unfurling my long body, snapping my head—contact, and the sweet, fleeting blackout before I realize what I’ve done.

  In the locker room, amid sprays of champagne, Julie Foudy turns to me. “Thank you,” she says, “for not making the next forty years of my life miserable.” Mia is next, and speaks of leaving the program in the hands of the next generation. For the first time I realize that my life is about to change, radically and irrevocably. It’s the beginning of my turn.

  In the fall, after a nine-game victory tour with the national team, I plan something I’ve never done before: a solo trip, two weeks of hiking and camping in the Arizona desert. For the first time in a long time I am at peace, both with my accomplishments and with who I am, and I want to preserve the feeling, tuck it away for safekeeping. Even in my euphoric state, I know the day will come when I’ll need to summon it as a reminder.

  While I was away, a friend borrowed my Jeep and drove it down to Florida, so first I need to fly south to pick it up. I stop by Are’s parents’ house to show them my gold medal, which I couldn’t bear to leave at home. More than an athletic honor, I view it as a time divider for my life, Before Gold and After Gold, a reminder of where I’ve been and where I need to go. I have an itinerary, but I expect that I’ll improvise, Intense Abby and Chill Abby in perfect accord.

  I start heading west, intending to stop first in Flagstaff. An hour into the drive, I feel an odd flicker of unease, a sudden and persistent sense that something’s gone wrong. Panicked, I stop at a gas station, load up on cigarettes, tobacco, coffee, and energy drinks, and drive thirty-two hours straight, taking a slight detour to Haley’s house in Phoenix, where she now attends school. I can’t help but break our newly enacted pact: we’d decided to take some time apart and meet next year in the Grand Canyon if we missed each other.

  By the time I arrive it’s sunrise, and I press her buzzer, holding my finger down until she appears at the door. I am wild-eyed and delirious and soaked in crazy, but I don’t care; I need to see her expression in order to know the truth. I ask her to tell it to me, straight and honest, as we’ve always been.

  Taking my hand, she leads me to the driveway, where we sit on the trunk of her car. She tilts her face toward mine and confesses that she’s slept with someone else.

  “Who?” I ask, my voice sounding small and far away.

  “You don’t know him,” she says.

  Him.

  I’m too wired to cry, and instead I resume the smoking, chewing, and chugging as I drive the final two hours to Flagstaff. Lying sleepless under the stars, I try to convince myself it’s okay to be alone.

  Next on my list is Sedona, famous for its vortex sites, mysterious pockets of amplified energy, allegedly capable of healing both physical and psychological pain. I plan to stay there for only two days—I still want to see Moab and Bryce Canyon—but find myself unable to move on, drawn by the mystique of its powers, even though I don’t entirely believe in them.

  I stop in a diner and realize it’s Thanksgiving, the first I’ve ever spent alone, and I imagine my parents and siblings and their combined children sitting around the table, loud enough to be heard down the street. I slide into a booth, scanning the menu, and can’t help but eavesdrop on the family sitting behind me—mother, father, and young girl, their plates piled high with turkey and stuffing. I turn my head just enough to gauge the kid’s age, surmising she’s about seven or eight.

  “You really need to find a good man,” the mother says, and I sit straighter in my booth. “You need to find a good man to have a good life, just like I found your father.”

  The words stir a fury inside of me. I think about where I am: twenty-four years old, just a few steps away from being a powerful, self-sufficient woman, someone who never considered relying on a man or anyone else for my well-being and success, someone with an Olympic gold medal hidden just yards away from this spot.

  I twist in my seat, poking my head into their space. I open my mouth and am prepared to voice a tumble of thoughts: Lady, just shut the fuck up. SHUT UP. Don’t diminish your daughter! What you’re doing right now is giving her an out to rely on someone else, and in this world, if you rely on other people, they take advantage of you. In this world, if you rely on other people, you don’t get to where you want to go. You get to a version of yourself, a small portion of yourself, and never learn how to access the whole thing.

  Instead of delivering this monologue, I tap the little girl on the shoulder and ask if I might borrow her coloring book.

  To this day I think about that little girl and about myself in that pivotal time back in 2004, when I was old enough to have tasted success, but young enough not to fear its consequences. I still wish I’d said something to counteract her mother’s words—and, while I was at it, warned my future self that I wouldn’t have all the answers, and that having answers still doesn’t prevent life from taking unexpected turns.

  8

  DEPRESSIVE

  There are cycles to soccer that, I’m learning, correspond to cycles within myself. Several years of quiet work leads to a few short weeks on the international stage where, win or lose, we descend back down the mountain and prepare to climb all over again. After the high of the Olympics, followed by the news of Haley’s betrayal, I cr
ave that period of hibernation, the chance to feed myself in ways that have nothing to do with the sport. It’s an escalation of the pattern I began in high school, when I first realized that soccer is bearable only if I take time to rebel against it.

  When I get back to my old apartment in Washington, D.C., I call Are.

  “Where should I move?” I ask him. “Los Angeles or San Francisco?”

  “L.A.,” he says without hesitation.

  After scouring the Internet for a condo, I buy one in Hermosa Beach, sight unseen, with my post-Olympic money, and tell Are he’s coming to live with me.

  We move in June 2005 and settle into an unconventional domestic routine, grilling out every night and joining a touch football league, playing on the beach. “As far as I’m concerned,” Are muses, “every woman is a lesbian unless she says otherwise.” Occasionally, and only half in jest, he brushes a hand across my breast, testing to see how quickly I slap it away. I reconnect with Haley, talking frequently on the phone and traveling to Phoenix for occasional visits. I develop a taste for red wine that rivals my love of vodka cocktails and Labatt’s beer; Are and I often finish three bottles over the course of a meal.

  I meet a new friend, Kara, who works as the team’s sports therapist. We’re both Geminis, born four days apart, and she understands my dual—and occasionally dueling—personalities better than anyone. Right away I can tell she speaks her mind, even if the thought is one I’d rather not hear, a quality I’ll come to depend upon in the months and years ahead.

  The dynamics on the team are changing as swiftly and dramatically as I am. We have a new coach, Greg Ryan, and only four of the 99ers remain: Kristine Lilly, Kate Markgraf, goalkeeper Briana Scurry, and Christie Rampone—still known as “Pearcie” to us, after her maiden name, and briefly on leave to have her first child. Our new roster includes a dozen players who are twenty-three or younger and a dozen who have played in five or fewer games. At twenty-five, with sixty caps under my belt, I am a grizzled veteran, and I begin to act like it, ordering people to hustle at practice and critiquing their play, being every bit as blunt as I am when I critique myself. The 2007 World Cup is still more than a year away, but I am already fearful of repeating the failures of the last one.

  We start another residency camp at the Home Depot Center, three weeks on and one week off. After practice one afternoon, a teammate casually mentions Haley’s engagement. I freeze, locker door half open. Engagement. I can’t imagine why she would do such a thing without telling me, or even how she could do such a thing in the first place. Clearly she’s willing to risk losing me for good. My mind treads back to its well-worn truisms: I am unloved. I am unlovable. I am abandoned and forgotten. Even if I force myself to be seen, I will never truly be found.

  As soon as I get home, I sit on the edge of my bed and summon the will to call her, afraid of what I might hear. After three rings she picks up.

  “Hal,” I say, my voice cracking on that one syllable.

  “Hey!” she says cheerfully, and I suspect she knows what’s coming.

  “I heard something really weird, and I don’t know how to say this—it’s so bizarre.” I laugh meekly, as if the very thought of it is too absurd to consider. “Are you . . . engaged?”

  She’s quiet a moment, and admits, “Oh yeah, I am.”

  I probe, needing to know every last torturous detail. Her fiancé isn’t the man she slept with when we were dating, the man she told me about before I drove off into the desert. This is a different man, a man she’d never once mentioned in all our long conversations, hours I spent hoping we might try again. This man surprised her with a trip to Mount McKinley, hiking with her to the summit, where she turned to find him on bended knee. She keeps talking, and every word is an internal earthquake, each more powerful than the last, carving a fault line from my throat to my heart and splitting me in half. “I still love you,” I hear her say, “and that won’t change.”

  “What the fuck?” I say, screaming now. “How can you be getting married to this man when you have feelings for another person?”

  “I’m different than you. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I don’t love you.”

  “Wouldn’t you think I needed to hear that before you decided to marry him?” I’m sobbing now, and mortified that I’ve allowed such emotion to escape.

  She’s quiet, out of things to say.

  “I don’t know how to process this,” I whisper, and hang up.

  I lied, unwittingly. I do know how to process it, or at least attempt to process it—by numbing it out of existence. I develop my own interpretation of Newton’s third law: calculated actions to further my career collide with an equally strong desire to destroy myself. For the three weeks I’m at camp I’m all business, running drills and practicing headers and solidifying my role as leader, and during my off week I drink until I can’t talk or stand or even see. This isn’t Chill Abby, searching for fun and levity amidst a successful career, but a warped, corrupted version of Intense Abby, with all her focus and ambition turned inward and darkened.

  Are, my perennial drinking buddy, never chastises me or even advises me to take a night off, but Kara, my sports therapist (and voice of reason), does. One night we’re all out at a gay bar in West Hollywood, and some strange girl pushes my friend. I put down my vodka and step forward. “Don’t push her,” I say, enunciating each word. I think the matter is settled until we go to leave, and suddenly I’m wearing someone on my back, and there are four or five women pummeling any part of me they can reach. I swing wildly, hearing the smack of flesh and feeling my knuckles sting, until I’m on my knees, crying, and Are scoops me up.

  “Where are you responsible, Abby?” Kara asks. “Put yourself in places where you can answer that question. You can be so sweet and loving and kind, and then there’s this other person, who’s so wounded and upset and on a rampage.” Sometimes when we’re out and I’m too drunk to know my own name, she calls me “Mary,” afraid that someone might recognize me.

  I am Mary one night at a bar where the bouncer refuses to let us in, explaining they’re at capacity. Gathering all of my seventy-one inches, spreading my body as tall and wide as it will go, I thrust my face into his, eye to eye, nose to nose.

  “Do you know who I am?” I say, a question that now makes me cringe.

  “Come on, Mary,” Kara says, pulling on my arm.

  “I don’t give a fuck who you are,” he responds, so close I can’t see his pupils, so close our lips nearly touch.

  Pathetically, I’m about to try again—Motherfucker, do you know who I am?—when Kara manages to peel me away, and I flip the question inward, interrogating myself. No, motherfucker, I don’t know who you are, and at this rate I probably never will.

  9

  CAPTAIN

  The cycle of soccer spins inexorably forward, taking me along with it, and as the World Cup approaches I emerge from hibernation, shedding my vices and sharpening my focus. But for the first time in my career my body is not cooperating, opening itself up to injuries it has always managed to avoid. In early November 2006, during a tournament in South Korea, I roll my ankle so badly I think it’s broken. Just a sprain, the trainers determine, and after they shoot me up with cortisone and swaddle it in a thick wad of tape, I’m good to go again. A few weeks later, the cortisone flowing and the tape still intact, I score both goals in a 2–0 game against Mexico, qualifying us for the 2007 World Cup.

  I think the worst is over, but the ankle injury has a domino effect, spilling into the rest of my body. Before we leave for Shanghai, during a warm-up game against Finland, my big toe collides with another player’s leg. I can feel the toe swelling inside my cleat, throbbing against the leather, but I keep playing until the twenty-seventh minute, when it can no longer withstand an ounce of pressure. During the first game of the World Cup, with toe numbed and ankle wrapped, my head rams against the head of a North Korean player, as solidly as a bowling ball striking a pin. The back of my head splits open. Blo
od seeps from my scalp and trickles to my neck, and in this condition I walk 150 yards to the locker room at the end of the stadium for stitches. During the ten minutes I’m out, our 1–0 lead becomes a 2–1 deficit, and we finish at a 2–2 tie. I begin a revolving cocktail of pills: Vicodin, caffeine, and Ambien.

  Before the semifinals, where we’ll face Brazil—ostentatious, dramatic Brazil—Coach Ryan makes a controversial decision, benching our goalkeeper, Hope Solo, in favor of Briana Scurry, a 99er who’s set to retire soon. From start to finish the game is a disaster. Our set pieces falter and fail. Our defense is tentative and porous. We lose a key player, midfielder Shannon Boxx, late in the first half after she receives a red card. In the end we’re routed 4–0 and left in shock as the Brazilians mob each other on the field.

  On the bus ride back to the hotel, everything hurts: my ankle, my toe, my head, my heart, my pride. This was not only my chance at redemption for the last disappointing World Cup, it was also my first major test as a leader of this team. Once again I’ve let everyone down, myself included, and I feel dressed head to toe in failure, wearing my shame like a second skin. I ache to dull both my throbbing joints and my roiling thoughts, so I pop a few Ambien, and then a few more, wishing I had some vodka to wash them down.

  I’m back in my room, prone on my bed, when one of my teammates bursts in. “Did you see the fucking thing Hope said?” she asks. I haven’t, but it’s all over the news. In an interview after the match, Hope claimed, “There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves.”

  There’s an unspoken code in our sport, with a few key tenets: you don’t talk shit about your teammates, you don’t throw anyone under the bus, and you don’t publicly promote yourself at the expense of the team. The comment further derails a team that had veered off track, and when the tournament is finally over I make a promise to myself: if I’m ever forced to ride the bench, for any reason, I will not react in a manner I’ll later regret.