Forward

by Abby Wambach

  Transformation. That’s how.

  From my heart space to yours . . .

  Thank you.

  Get it done tonight.

  —K.

  Immediately I write back: “T it is.”

  And in that moment, I mean it.

  We get it done in Wembley Stadium before a booming crowd of 80,203, just a few hundred shy of capacity—the largest audience for women’s soccer since the 1999 World Cup final at the Rose Bowl. My support system—parents, siblings, Kara, Are, his mother Dena, Sarah, and assorted other family and friends—are all there, thanks to Dan Borislow, who paid for their flights and hotels. I am getting chances but can’t convert, my headers soaring wide or falling short. But Carli comes through twice and we finish 2–1. My skin is still wet from sprays of champagne when I bow my head to accept the gold medal.

  I don’t yet want to face the possibility that it might be the last one I wear. I give interviews in which I talk about my successful tournament—five goals in six games—and field questions about my injuries. They’re under control, I insist, helped by a rigorous regimen of ice baths, compression stockings, and my boot-shaped night splint, and I will be on this field as long as my body allows. “If I can get fully well and feel good, I want to be a part of this team. I think I’m a lifer.”

  A week later, back home in Hermosa Beach, I wear the medal out for a walk with Sarah and two friends. It’s early afternoon, and I’ve been drinking since I woke up, and we stop for pizza and more beer at Paisanos on the pier. Passersby recognize me and notice the medal, and I stop for photos and high fives, laughing and slinging my arm around strange shoulders. Someone with a camera approaches, zooming in on the beer in my hand and following me as I leave. Only later, after it’s uploaded, do I realize that he works for TMZ.

  “How’s it going, Abby?” the cameraman calls to me. “Congratulations!”

  IT’S ABBY WAMBACH, blares the voiceover in the finished video, WHO LED THE U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM TO GOLD GLORY!

  “Is this an official diet?” the cameraman asks.

  “This is past the diet, yeah!” I say, the words struggling to escape my mouth. “Let’s be real, like, it’s pizza, so . . .”

  AND YOU KNOW WHAT GOES GREAT WITH PIZZA? the voiceover intones, flashing a GIF of a drooling Homer Simpson. BEER!

  The video cuts to the TMZ offices, where a woman staffer says the obvious: “I guess she’s been drinking.” Another staffer adds, “She was wasted . . . she was not only wasted, she was day-drinking.” A third chimes in: “She was partying the entire afternoon.” A fourth has mercy: “Which is fine. It’s a beautiful, hot day out.”

  AND SHE’S EARNED IT, the voiceover concludes. ABBY’S AN AMERICAN HERO, DAMMIT!

  Sarah saves me, wrapping her arm around my back and leading me away.

  The video is watched more than two million times, and the vast majority of commenters think it’s hilarious and don’t judge me at all. For years I think it’s hilarious, too, until suddenly I don’t.

  16

  WIFE

  We are going to have the best life. Our dreams are lining up, just waiting for us to claim them. As predicted, the WPS league has folded, but a new one has sprung up in its place: the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), and Sarah and I both play for the Western New York Flash. We live in Buffalo, an hour from my family, and we both hate it: the cold, the smallness of the town. I remind her that the season is short—just four months—and we’ll move on. We have faith that something new and exciting will always be waiting for us, as long as we know where to look.

  At age thirty-two, my career has reached its pinnacle: I’ve been named FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year, edging out my teammate Alex Morgan and Marta, my perennial rival from the Brazilian team. I score my 159th goal, breaking Mia Hamm’s record for the most goals by any player, male or female. It happens in June 2013, during a game against South Korea; a corner kick finds my head and I punch it in, sure and smooth, my instant amnesia telegraphing my triumph. I am grateful to my teammates, who worked mightily to get me the ball, and when reporters inquire about my next goal, I tell them this: “I want to give more assists to Alex Morgan, so she can break my record.” And I mean it: there would be no greater tribute than being surpassed.

  For the first time, I have fleeting thoughts about what life might look like after retirement: How I will I support myself, and Sarah, and our family? What can an aging athlete with an unfinished degree in “Leisure Management” do? I fear that I’m not smart enough, that my mind is far inferior to my body and will never accomplish anything on its own. I fear that I don’t know how life works off of the field, and that my purpose will be unsettled and ill defined. For the past fifteen years, I’ve had an itinerary slipped under my door, telling me exactly where I need to be and what I need to do; Sarah always jokes that I’d prefer such an arrangement even when I’m home.

  My agent assures me not to worry; I’ll be fine. I’ll be better than fine. He says believe it or not, Abby, you have more to offer the world than just soccer. People like you. Kids look up to you. Women want to be your friend. Men want to drink whiskey and play golf with you. You have valid ideas about politics, about inequality in sports, about advocating for women. You’re funny and articulate and can convince anyone of anything. You could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves. You will know what you’re meant to do when that time comes, but for now, just enjoy where you are.

  I decide to take that advice.

  On a whim, Sarah and I search online for a home in Portland—friends in the city have been urging us to move—and the perfect one appears on my screen, as if by magic, as if our wishing coaxed it into existence. We send those friends and a realtor to check it out: “Amazing views and great bones,” is the consensus; with a gut renovation, it could look exactly like the picture in our minds. On their recommendation alone, I buy it and appoint myself the general contractor. I want to create something out of nothing, a something that will become everything.

  I fly out to see the house, the place where I’ll have a fresh start. It’s perched in the hills outside the city, a perfect balance of bustle and peace. It’s made of glossy, warm wood cut in rectangular shapes, the rooms and levels stacked at angles, a structure that reminds me of building blocks. The rear of the first floor features a trio of sliding doors leading out to separate balconies. A stone patio runs the length of the property and looks out onto miles of trees. I begin making it ours, picking out furniture and lighting and finishes. I install a wine refrigerator/beverage center into the kitchen hallway cabinetry, so I don’t have to walk to the kitchen for a drink. I visualize the nooks and crannies where our kids will play. We want three, maybe. Definitely two, at least. Sarah will get pregnant first, after she retires; I will get pregnant next, after I retire. If things are going well, we’ll adopt a third, although they always say the third baby is the divorce baby, and we don’t ever want to let that happen.

  My excitement for a baby surges in August, when Kara gives birth to a boy, Lewis. As soon as I hear the news, I rush to my computer and compose an e-mail:

  Kara,

  I’m overcome with excitement. I know we’ve known each other for many years, but tonight really feels so different. You chose to make a baby, and now he’s real. Feel that. You made a stand for what you wanted, and now you have this little one who you will love and nurture for all the days of your life. I am more proud of you now than ever. Feel every moment. You chose a birth plan that not many would choose. You took a chance at doing it organic and natural. I am so proud of you for that. You made a plan and then saw it through. Do you know how cool that is? And to do it vaginally, and in the water. I just have the utmost respect for the way you chose life,—because it is a choice. And you and I get that.

  More than anything, I think you are a lover and a survivor, in all that you do. I had no doubts. Today was a certainty for you. I trust you completely and feel you will be a person in my life I can alway
s turn to. Now I have this to be able to ask you questions about. So cool.

  Thank you for being in my life, and giving me the gift of what real love is. It’s rare, and a special quality we both have. Just know that today, more than any other, I am sad beyond measure to not be right there by your side. I know you are capable and handled it perfectly, but to be far and not near is surreal and difficult. What makes it easier is to know that you are strong and will be the best goddamn mom in the land. Thank you for the pictures and texts. It meant a lot. Know that I will be doing the same on our blessed day.

  We love you beyond imagination. All of you. You, Jenny, Lewis. Can you fucking believe it? You made a human being, Kara. You. Celebrate that. I think you will look back on this as a time of your life that will always uplift you.

  In all sincerity, you are my idol, and I love you.

  Now rest,

  Abby

  While I build our home, supervising every last detail, Sarah plans our wedding. It will be grand but intimate, a low-key ceremony involving our closest family and friends. She decides on Hawaii, and I agree, because why not? We want a destination wedding, a place where people would actually want to go on vacation, a place that will make it worthwhile for my siblings to leave their kids behind for a week. She picks a stunning resort called The Villas at Poipu Kai, on Kauai, envisioning a beach ceremony at sunset: her in a flowing white dress, me in a crisp white suit, wearing matching leis.

  We pick a date: October 5, 2013. I ask Are to be my best man, and Dena to read a poem. I’m thrilled Kara can come, even though baby Lewis will only be two months old. Teammates Sydney Leroux and Alex Morgan will be there. Dan Borislow generously offers to pay the bill for the open bar. Our dogs, Tex and Kingston, will be staying behind, but we buy them tuxedos to commemorate the occasion. We file the proper paperwork for a civil union, since same-sex marriage is not yet legal in Hawaii. On the advice of some friends, we go to premarital counseling—just to get our ducks in a row, solidify our respective roles, devise a blueprint for our life.

  I am ready. We’re ready. I want to be as successful at love as I’ve been at soccer. It is more important to me than the FIFA award, the Olympic medal, and the World Cup title I have yet to win. On the night before the wedding, after the rehearsal dinner, Sarah and I seclude ourselves in our suite and write our wedding vows.

  I am nervous, more nervous than I’ve ever been—not because of my impending nuptials, but because my mother will be there to witness them. It’s all well and good for her to give her blessing to Sarah in private, but this is public, laid out for the world to see. What will she think when I kiss Sarah after our vows? When we have our first dance? Is she going to stand there wishing I had married Are instead? I confide my fears to Dena, and she assures me that my mother has come a long way—even farther than I’ve hoped. Once, Dena says, when the three of them were in Orlando watching me play, Are turned to my mother and said, “Your daughter is un-fucking-believable.” And without batting an eye, my mother replied, “I know, she really is.”

  I laugh. I’ve run out of time to be nervous. The procession is going to start soon. I ask Are for the rings and am horrified by his response: he didn’t know he was supposed to handle the rings. My cousin Tracy approaches with them, saving the day. As Sarah walks down the aisle my heart bangs against my ribs. A rainbow appears in the sky, arching behind her, and I take it as a good omen.

  It’s immediately followed by a bad one: We realize that we’ve left our written vows back in the suite and have to invent new ones on the spot. Still, I’ve never heard such a lovely string of words—I can barely believe they’re intended for me—and I repeat them on the flight home, hoping they’ll always be true.

  17

  GAMBLER

  One month after our wedding, standing in the kitchen of our Portland home, Sarah makes an announcement: she will not play another season for the Western New York Flash. She doesn’t like Buffalo, as I’m well aware, and wants to focus on creating experiences in our new city. Instead, she’ll accept an offer to be traded to the local club team, the Portland Thorns.

  Looking across the table at her, our dogs running figure eights through our legs, I contemplate what to say. Later, after having time—too much time—to replay the scene, I’ll admit some hard truths about myself: I know I’m a bit of a nightmare to live with, with my need for control constantly at odds with my instinct to go with the flow, my yang stomping on my yin, Intense Abby and Chill Abby in a perpetual showdown, and I’ll wonder if Sarah’s problem was me as much as it was upstate New York. But in that moment, without benefit of retrospection, I pile all the blame on her. I’ve been here before, I think to myself, when Haley admitted her engagement to a man, and now the fault line from that betrayal cracks further and deepens.

  I want to say, “We’re newlyweds. We’re a family now. If the tables were turned, I’d move to Alaska with you. I just want to be with you, wherever you are. I want you to know you’re the most important thing in my life now—more important than soccer.”

  Instead I say, “Okay, I hear you. I will agree to this decision, but only under one condition: if we start to go south, you have to come to New York, because I make the most money. That’s the most logical step. If you haven’t gotten a job and we are doing poorly, then everything needs to stop and we need to reconnect.”

  We kiss, sealing the deal, and in the spring I move back to Buffalo, alone.

  From the start, I am miserable without her, and I don’t know how to connect to someone when they’re not in the room with me. Texting feels superficial, the phone feels like a job, and Skyping is a poor facsimile of the real thing. I seek advice from friends who have been in long-term, long-distance relationships, and their responses are vague: “Yeah, we don’t necessarily talk every day. We talk every couple of days. We might text each other to say good morning and good night, but that’s mostly it.”

  That proposed routine is not nearly enough to address my insatiable need for attention, and I begin to flounder and flail, which, as always, leads to drinking. I buy half-gallon bottles of vodka, the serious kind with a briefcase handle. I’ll devour half the bottle in one sitting, forcing myself to ration the rest for the following day, and augment my buzz with pills: caffeine tablets, Vicodin, Ambien, security blankets that turn my brain into a warm and vacant place.

  I abstain only if the next day features a practice or a game or a tournament with the national team, such as the Algarve Cup, held annually in Portugal. That March, we have our worst showing in history, losing every game in the group stage and finishing in seventh place. I score only twice during the whole tournament and miss a penalty kick, a shot I’ve made effortlessly dozens of times. In each game, I notice that I shut down in the second half—not just physically but mentally, as though a part of me is back with Sarah in Portland, and I realize I will never play at full capacity again.

  My deterioration does not go unnoticed on soccer chat boards, whose members dissect our performance at the Algarve Cup with disgust. “Not only did Abby miss a penalty kick (which makes her PK conversion rate about 50% since 2013),” says one armchair analyst, “but her current fitness level let her squander a prime and easy tap-in for a goal. . . . I recognize her importance on the field, but when does Abby impede the future success of the USWNT?” The next commenter agrees, and adds, “I still think she’s very much the heart of the team, but I think she needs to be the heart of the team from the bench. She spends more time flopping around looking for a call than she does playing soccer these days.”

  I have to admit it’s true. If only I were half as talented at flopping around as I once was at playing soccer.

  After the tournament, back in Buffalo, I pick up my phone to call Sarah. I hate the dial tone, the ringing, the remote, tinny sound of her voice, three thousand miles away.

  “I’m waving the white flag,” I say. “You need to come here.”

  She says no, and explains: She’s happy there. She has a life there.
I’m so unhappy, and if she moves to Buffalo, the only thing that’s going to happen is that she’ll be unhappy with me, and that won’t be healthy for either of us.

  This is not what a relationship should be like, I think. This is not what our relationship was like. All of our interactions seem tainted by doubt and suspicion. I worry that she has feelings for someone else. Then I worry I’m being ridiculous, creating problems instead of addressing our real ones. But I say nothing. I want her to think everything is still okay—I want everything to be okay—and if I don’t voice my concerns they might cease to exist, creep back into some far-flung fold of my brain.

  When we hang up, I pour myself another glass of vodka.

  I deteriorate further in June, during a Western New York Flash game against the last-place Houston Dash, at Sahlen’s Stadium in Rochester. In the seventeenth minute, I find the ball and pull back to take a shot. A Houston defender slithers her leg near mine and tries to block it, and as I follow through my foot strikes the ball strangely, sending reverberations up my shin that converge in my knee. Damn, that hurt, I think, and feel myself folding to the ground. I’m down a minute, and tell myself it’s going to be okay, even though I know I’ve hurt my knee, and once you’ve hurt your knee you are never the same. I get up, hobble around, decide I can play, hobble around for another minute and admit that I can’t. In the twenty-fourth minute I slump down on the bench, waiting for the trainers to examine me.

  “Check and make sure my ACL is there,” I plead, and they knead their fingers around my knee and conclude that it is. I’m relieved, and schedule an MRI the following day for an official diagnosis: a sprain of the lateral collateral ligament, which connects the thighbone to the shinbone, and which will take several months to heal.