Training Ground

by Kate Christie

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Surprisingly, my math book doesn’t make a very good pillow.”

  “Crap, I woke you up and you’re still sick. I should let you go.”

  “No, really, I’m fine. Why haven’t you told Justin?”

  “Um… We sort of broke up?”

  “You what? When?”

  “Earlier,” she said vaguely. “Don’t worry, it was my call. I don’t want to get into it right now except to say he showed his true colors, and they were ugly. Like, really fucking ugly.”

  She sounded even more pissed than she had a few months earlier when they were watching Man U play Arsenal in the match the press had nicknamed the Battle of Old Trafford.

  “Christ,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault he’s an asshole.”

  Talk about a shit-storm—Emma had lost her dad and broken up with her boyfriend all on the same day. And yet part of Jamie was relieved she wouldn’t have to share Emma with Justin. Most of her, actually. Which she knew was uncool, but as Shoshanna had said often enough, you couldn’t help how you felt.

  Actions, however, were a different story.

  “I know it’s not my fault,” she said, “but I’m still sorry he picked today to be a dick.”

  “To be honest, his timing was perfect.”

  She didn’t elaborate, and Jamie let it pass. When Emma was ready, she would tell her more. Or not. Either way, Justin was out of the picture and she, for one, hoped he would remain that way.

  They stayed on the phone a little while longer, and then Emma finally said she should head to bed. Her brother was sharing his best friend’s bunk bed, as he’d done a thousand times before, and they had rigged a futon on the floor for her so that she would be at hand if he woke up. She told Jamie she’d expected her brother to protest the arrangement, but he’d seemed almost relieved.

  “Poor kid. He doesn’t have a dad anymore,” Emma said.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m a girl so it’s different for me. Plus I’m supposed to be leaving for college in the fall.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “No, I’m sure I will. It’s hard to picture what’s going to happen right now.”

  Jamie understood. When your axis shifted the way Emma’s had, none of your plans for the future felt quite as secure.

  “I should go,” Emma murmured again. “I have to be up early.”

  Assuming she would sleep at all. Jamie wished she could loan Emma her vape pen but doubted she would accept even if they were in the same city. As a self-proclaimed control freak, Emma claimed to prefer alcohol, the devil she knew, to drugs any day. Then again, this wasn’t any day.

  “All right,” Jamie said reluctantly. “Let me know what your mom says about me coming up there.”

  “I will.” She hesitated. “And thanks, Jamie. Seriously.”

  “You’re welcome.” Another few seconds ticked past before she brought herself to say softly, “Love you, Emma.”

  The silence lasted so long that Jamie thought Emma had hung up. But then she heard her whisper, “Love you, too.”

  Jamie ended the call and set her phone next to the alarm clock. Then she turned on her side and hugged her pillow, swallowing against the pain in her throat. She wasn’t sure if it came more from her lingering cold or from her certainty that Emma’s words held a completely different meaning from her own.

  #

  Emma and Ty huddled together on the couch in the den, Lucy snuggling between them. Dani had offered to take care of the dog the night before, which was fortunate because Emma had completely forgotten about her. Now she kept one hand on the dog’s silky fur as she and her brother watched sports, flipping back and forth between March Madness, early MLS match-ups, and Champions League on DVR. Anytime a commercial showed a father and son or a happy family, Ty would look away until Emma changed channels. For once, there was no battle over the remote.

  Their mother’s flight had arrived on time that morning, followed by Aunt June’s a couple of hours later. Emma and her mom had killed time in a restaurant outside security, picking unenthusiastically at their breakfast sandwiches and talking mostly about Tyler and logistics for the coming week. Her mom had readily agreed to Jamie’s visit and had even offered to help cover her fare, if necessary. Other relatives were planning to come for the service the following weekend, but Emma wouldn’t mind sharing her room with Jamie, would she? No, she’d assured her mother as she texted Jamie the good news. She wouldn’t mind sharing her room at all.

  They were almost back to baggage claim when her phone buzzed—Jamie would arrive Thursday night and stay for close to a week, assuming that worked at their end. Her mom had approved the plan, and Emma wrote back, “See you in five days… Can’t wait.”

  “Me too. XOXO,” Jamie replied.

  Emma had traced her fingers over the glowing characters. Five days seemed like too long, but they had gone for months at a time without seeing each other. What was another week, really?

  Back at home, Aunt June had quickly taken charge. After a run to the grocery store she’d started cooking. At first Emma, her mom, and Ty sat at the kitchen bar watching her move like a whirlwind through the too-still house. She hadn’t let them linger long, though. Soon she was banishing Emma and Ty to the den and leading her “baby sister” upstairs with a Valium from her own stash. She was going through menopause, she let them all know, and those hot flashes certainly could keep you up at night if you weren’t prepared.

  Emma thought she could probably use a sedative herself right about now. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t seem to get her mind to shut off. Everything reminded her of her dad, especially in this room. The dog—Lucy was technically his, and sometimes Emma and Ty joked that he missed her more than anyone else when he was out of town; his favorite recliner with his slippers and a pair of reading glasses close by; the many basketball and hockey games destined to remain forever unwatched on the DVR; even the television itself, a wide-screen plasma model with matching sound system that he had brought home at Christmas. The set was sweet, Emma had to admit, but the price tag had been, frankly, embarrassing. Not that they couldn’t afford it. Her dad’s surgical patent raked in millions each year, and his appearance and seminar fees were substantial. If they’d wanted, her parents could have retired years earlier. But their work was so much a part of each of them that they’d never even considered stopping, as far as she knew.

  Now he wouldn’t ever have the chance. Instead of an awkward retirement party at the hospital to celebrate his career, he would have a memorial service where colleagues and people from the community could pay their respects. He was going to miss so much, she realized, and then stopped the thought before it could go any further. She wasn’t ready to picture the multitude of future events—graduations, holidays, family vacations—that wouldn’t be the same without him. Better to pretend nothing had changed, to tell herself that he was at work or on a trip, anywhere but stuck in the casket her mother had had to pick out before flying all night across the ocean, his body somewhere below her in the plane’s cargo hold.

  The surreal quality she’d described to Jamie the night before shadowed Emma throughout the afternoon, which seemed almost to slip away when she wasn’t paying attention even as it dragged interminably. Ty clung to her the way he used to when he was little and in the grip of a cold or fever. Even at dinner, he pulled his chair close to hers. Aunt June had baked a cheese and potato casserole, or “hot dish” as they called it back in Minnesota. No one seemed to have much of an appetite though, and the dining room remained so quiet that Emma could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the next room.

  Afterward, they left the dishes soaking in the sink, piled into the Volvo, and drove a handful of miles up I-5 to retrieve Emma’s grandmother. Then they backtracked to Shoreline, their intended destination a funeral home on the east side of I-5 not far from the high school. As usual, her grandmother didn’t
seem to understand what was going on around her, which, given the circumstances, was probably for the best.

  At the funeral home, Emma and her brother waited in the front hall while their mom and aunt spoke with the director. Their grandmother leaned against her cane nearby, looking lost, and Emma closed her eyes briefly. The numb feeling was back. Her heart and mind felt heavy, encased in ice. This couldn’t really be happening, could it? He couldn’t really be gone. He wasn’t even fifty yet. How did a forty-nine year old surgeon die of a heart attack?

  Suddenly Ty grabbed her hand. “I don’t want to see him,” he said, voice breaking more than usual.

  “I don’t either.” She squeezed his fingers. “But I think we owe it to ourselves, Ty-Ty. If we don’t say goodbye, we might always regret it.”

  “But what’s he going to look like?”

  She had asked their mother the same question, worried that organ donation may have left him disfigured, and had been assured that he wouldn’t look all that different from the last time they’d seen him. Because their parents were opposed to embalming, his body had been preserved with dry ice and refrigeration rather than formaldehyde. In the morning he would be cremated, which was why they were here now.

  “I think he’s going to look like himself, only sort of empty,” she said. “His body is still here, but his soul, the thing that made him Dad, is gone.”

  She bit her lip as Ty stared at her, his chin trembling. She hadn’t cried since she’d talked to Jamie, not even when she met her mother at baggage claim and stood in her arms for a good five minutes. But now looking into her little brother’s eyes, she could feel her own tears threatening again. She couldn’t cry, though. She had to be strong for Ty, who was looking at her as if he thought death might have turned their father into a zombie. Understandable, really—they had never seen a dead person before, and now they were expected to visit their father’s body only twenty-four hours after they’d learned he was gone? It was harsh, but the lack of embalming fluid meant they only had a short window to work with.

  Between basketball games that afternoon, she’d made the mistake of doing a web search on what happens to the body after death. While she hadn’t read much, it had been enough to convince her that immediate cremation really was the way to go. Still, she couldn’t shake the sense that things were moving too fast. The night before, after hanging up with Jamie, she’d been unable to sleep until she told herself it wasn’t true. Her father wasn’t dead; he would come home on Sunday as planned and she would see him then. Though she hadn’t truly believed the lie, the temporary feeling of normalcy the fantasy had engendered allowed her heart rate to slow, her eyes to close. Beyond drained, she had finally fallen asleep.

  Now here she was in a hallway outside of a private viewing room at the funeral home she had passed a hundred or maybe a thousand times in her life, never realizing that someday their father would be lying on a table here waiting for her and Ty to say goodbye. Not that he would know. Seeing him like this wasn’t about him; it was supposed to help them accept that he was really gone. Or so their mother had said.

  “Ready?” Aunt June asked, offering Emma and her brother a sympathetic smile while their mother stood at her side fidgeting with her wedding ring.

  The funeral home had transported the casket from the airport, so Emma knew her mother hadn’t seen him since leaving Maui. She reached out and touched her arm. “You okay?”

  Startled, her mom looked up, and Emma realized how far away she had been. Reliving the moments of his death, maybe? Castigating herself for not saving him? Or was she too thinking of all the times she had driven past this building without suspecting the circumstances that would leave her a widow at forty-seven?

  “Fine, honey,” her mom said, and wove her fingers between Emma’s. She offered her other hand to Ty and the three of them walked through the door the funeral director opened for them. For the moment, their aunt stayed behind with their grandmother.

  Even though their mom had prepared them, Emma couldn’t help but feel light-headed when she saw her father laid out on a table under the window at the opposite end of the small room, dressed not in a suit and tie but in his favorite weekend outfit—a Shorecrest High Women’s Soccer crew neck sweatshirt layered over a tie-dye T-shirt that her brother had made him in elementary school.

  She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat and closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to be here. She couldn’t be here. This wasn’t happening, her mind insisted. He couldn’t really be dead, could he? But when she opened her eyes, he was still lying on the table, unmoving.

  His head rested on a pillow and a blanket covered his lower half. His face and hands looked ashen, but he seemed more like himself than she’d expected. He didn’t look like he was sleeping, though. He looked absent; that was the only word she could think of. Her heart fell, and she didn’t bother to blink back her tears this time. Some part of her had wanted desperately to believe the lie she’d told herself the night before. Seeing him like this now, she couldn’t pretend there was a chance he would ever come home again.

  They walked toward him side by side. When they were only a few feet away, Emma heard a noise and felt her mother’s fingers release. Ty had turned and was running toward the door. Emma started to turn, too, but her mom shook her head.

  “I’ll go,” she murmured. “You stay with your dad.”

  No! Emma wanted to shout. But before she could say anything, her mother slipped out, leaving her alone. Well, almost alone.

  At first she stood where she was on the Oriental rug, trying to get used to the sight before her. The back of the sweatshirt was embroidered with “Blake # 8,” she knew, and it was strange to think that he would be going to the crematorium wearing her nickname and soccer number. But her mother had explained that he’d chosen the outfit himself a few years ago when they’d made end-of-life arrangements. He’d been so proud of Emma. Even when he was living at the hotel and she’d told him she hated him, her mother said he would brag about her to anyone he could trap in conversation long enough.

  “I think you have what it takes to be the next Mia Hamm,” he’d said on Jamie’s birthday, right before she walked out on him.

  Only a truly committed parent could delude themselves into believing that their daughter could be her generation’s entry in the perennial greatest of all time competition. Then again, he’d pioneered a revolutionary surgical technique. If he could be world famous, why couldn’t his kid? And in return for his faith, she had thrown his love back in his face. All he had wanted was to be closer to her and all she had done was push him away. If she’d known he would be gone, really gone, she would have done things differently. But she couldn’t have known and there was no going back. No changing what had already happened, despite how much she wished she could.

  She sniffed, wiping at the tears dripping from her chin onto her ratty old club sweatshirt from eighth grade select. She’d pulled it out of the back of her closet and paired it with jeans she hadn’t worn in years because she knew that she wouldn’t want to wear today’s clothing ever again. Even the scrunchie she’d picked came from the inside pocket of one of her old soccer duffels. She wanted nothing to remind her of this day—not that she was likely ever to forget.

  Slowly she stepped forward and reached for his hand. The skin was cold, and she tried not to picture the refrigerated container she imagined he had been stored in before they arrived. Cold now, but by tomorrow he would lie in flames that would reduce his body to ashes. She winced at the thought. She knew he was dead and gone—there was no response to her touch, and she could see herself that there was nothing left to animate his tissues and bones. But he was still her dad, and the idea of what was left of him being burned up was awful. Not as awful as what would happen if he wasn’t cremated, but terrible all the same.

  There was no good end, she realized. None except for him to sit up and say that it was all a mistake, that he hadn’t really died, that he was ready to come home wi
th them.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she murmured, her hand still on his. She thought about hugging him, but the most she could bring herself to do was lean down and kiss his hair. It smelled like salt water and sunshine, and she realized he would be cremated with the scent of the ocean on his skin.

  All at once, a hundred memories surged back—building sand castles and body surfing at Richmond Beach; playing soccer at Golden Gardens; watching beach volleyball at Alki; snorkeling off the coast of Mexico; sailing in Puget Sound; windsurfing off the Gulf Coast; riding the green Washington State Ferries to San Juan and Orcas and Lopez and Shaw. They had done all of these things when she was younger, back before his career and her soccer commitments overshadowed everything else. Once he began traveling for work and she started traveling for soccer, finding beach or ocean time had become increasingly difficult.

  She was just like him, wasn’t she? Her dedication to soccer was almost as unswerving as his to surgery. She had missed family reunions, friends’ birthday parties, even weddings for soccer tournaments. Family vacations had to be planned around her schedule and her dad’s, and in recent years they’d almost always ended up piggy-backing family time onto existing trips. Whatever they did had to be scheduled around a conference or a tournament, and she hadn’t even thought to question this practice. It was simply what they had to do to make everything work.

  What that meant was that he had missed her growing up, and she had missed the final years of his life. Always assuming there would be more time, more opportunities, more chances to be together, they had missed each other, and now it was too late. He wouldn’t be able to schedule a presentation in North Carolina this fall to coincide with one of her games. He wouldn’t see her play at the U-19 World Cup or the College Cup finals. If she one day made the senior national team and played in a World Cup or the Olympics, he wouldn’t be there in the stands wearing her number and cheering her on. He wouldn’t be there.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad,” she said, her voice breaking. “I didn’t hate you. I hope you know that. I love you. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t tell you that.”