Training Ground

by Kate Christie

  “Oh, sweetie, you didn’t have to say it,” a voice said behind her. “He knew. He always knew.”

  And then her mother and Ty were there beside her again and they were all hugging each other and crying, and she knew she would have to say a final goodbye to her dad soon but not yet. For now they could stand together beside him and they could still be the family she had always known, even if he wasn’t really there.

  “He knew you both loved him,” her mom said, brushing her own tears away. “And he loved you both so much. You know what? His last words were about the two of you. The last thing he said to me was to tell you that he loved you. So I’m telling you, okay? And when you start to feel guilty, and you will because everyone does when they lose somebody, remember this: His last thoughts were of the two of you, and he knew you loved him. He knew it every single day of your lives.”

  Emma tried to hold back the sobs but she couldn’t. Finally she turned her face into her mother’s hair and let herself cry. As she sobbed, she remembered the day Jamie had told her about France. She had cried just like this. At the time, Emma had had no way to truly understand the pain Jamie had dealt with. But now she knew, and knowing how hurt Jamie had been by what had happened made her cry that much harder. The world was not a safe place, or easy. Girls could be brutally attacked, and parents could die before you had a chance to forgive them. There was nothing to do but keep going, to move forward even if you had no true idea of how to do so.

  At that moment, soccer seemed like a silly thing to love as intensely she did. But then she thought about what she really loved about the game—sunshine and the smell of freshly mown grass; the rush of adrenaline that took her out of her head and rooted her firmly inside her body; the feeling of power and near invincibility when she made a goal-saving slide tackle or game-saving clear; the bonds she shared with girls she had played with all her life and girls she had only just met. Soccer had taken her places she wouldn’t otherwise have gone, and soon, if her luck held, it would take her places she couldn’t imagine. Soccer had made her feel strong and fierce. Soccer had given her Dani and Sian and the rest of her closest friends. It had brought her Jamie. And soccer had made her dad proud of her in a tangible way even as it gave them something uncomplicated to share.

  After a little while, Aunt June brought Emma’s grandmother in. She still didn’t seem to understand what was going on, but she sat down in a row of chairs with the rest of them and listened quietly as Emma’s mother told them about the trip to Maui and how happy they had been there. And even though in the beginning Emma hadn’t wanted to enter this room, now she couldn’t imagine leaving.

  When the funeral director opened the door and walked slowly into the room, Emma had to bite her lip to keep from telling him to leave them alone. Beside her, Ty shook his head, glaring at the interloper. Glad to have something else to focus on, Emma reached behind their mother’s chair and set her hand on her brother’s shoulder, squeezing hard. He looked at her quickly, his eyes filling with tears.

  “It’s okay, Ty,” she said. Even though they both knew it wasn’t.

  A line from a recent song by the Indigo Girls, one of her mother’s favorite bands, came back to her—how there are some things in life that can never be made right. Her mother had listened non-stop to the new album all spring, and while before when she heard this particular song Emma had thought of Jamie, now it fit her own family, too.

  The funeral director gave them another few minutes, and then there were no more delays. Emma clung to her mother and brother as they left the room, turning back for one last look at her father lying motionless on the table. This was it. This was the last time she would ever see him. But he wasn’t here. He was already long gone, and the truth was that she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.

  The car was quiet again save for the sounds of her brother’s sniffles. She offered him her hand and he held tight all the way home. Familiar landmarks along the way somehow seemed darker and more sinister than they normally did. Back at the house, they put her grandmother to bed in the guest bedroom and then sat around the kitchen for hours, drinking tea and hot cocoa and retelling favorite family stories. By midnight Emma was completely cried out, and it was all she could do to send a simple text to Jamie: “Sat with my dad’s body tonight. Can’t wait to see you next week. Love you.”

  There was that phrase again, the one Jamie had introduced to their interactions: Love you. And she did. Only she wasn’t prepared to consider how much or in what way.

  She wasn’t as successful in preventing her mind from dwelling on other difficult topics as she lay in bed trying to fall asleep. This time she didn’t have the luxury of telling herself he wasn’t really gone. This time she couldn’t forget the image of his body, cold and motionless, her soccer sweatshirt covering a heart that no longer beat, veins full of blood that no longer flowed. In the morning he would be fed into an incinerator, his muscles and tissues consumed by fire and everything else ground into powder that the crematorium would return to them. As if having his pulverized bones back to keep in a closet or on a shelf or on the mantle would help them deal any better with his absence. They wouldn’t keep his remains for long, though. He had requested that his ashes be scattered in a wildflower meadow on the flanks of Mt. Rainier along a trail they had hiked as a family at least once each hiking season. That meant that either this summer or the next, she, her mom, and Ty would be hiking the old familiar trail and releasing what remained of her dad into the wind, there in the shadow of the mountain he had always loved.

  When she did finally sleep, she dreamed of her dad. She was sitting on a beach on Puget Sound thinking how much she missed him, and then suddenly he was there, standing above her, holding out his hand. After a moment of shock—“But you can’t be here, you’re dead!”—she took his hand and they ran together into the water, and even though in the dream she was the age she was now, her dad was a much younger man, laughing and carefree beside her. They splashed in the shallows for a while, and then they went back to the beach and kicked a ball around. They talked, too, but she couldn’t remember afterward what they said. Eventually her dad held out his hand and she took it, and they went for a walk as the sun set. Right before the dream ended, her dad slipped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his side, and she heard him whisper, “I will always be with you, Emma.”

  When she woke early in the morning and remembered that he was gone, she waited for the crushing pain to return. And it did, briefly. But then something else happened. As the picture of his body lying still and inanimate on the funeral home viewing table started to take hold, memories of the dream flooded her mind, and she smiled, tears filling her eyes as she remembered her father’s youth and happiness, her own joy at the unexpected extra time they’d been given. In that moment with the sky still dark beyond her window and her comforter creating a warm cocoon around her, she understood: Her dad had visited her in her dreams so that she would remember him as he had been in life, not as his body appeared in death. He had come to say goodbye the only way he could. He had come back to her, after all.

  Emma closed her eyes. “Thank you, Dad,” she murmured. But the only answer she heard was the wind blowing through nearby trees and the creak of the house settling around her.

  Chapter Eight

  JAMIE GLANCED AROUND baggage claim, keeping an eye out for Emma. This was her first time flying into Seattle, and the airport was significantly larger than Oakland. She’d had to check a bag with all her gear for the Portland tournament, and now as she looked around the baggage area, she hoped a sign would point her toward the correct carousel. But all she saw were milling passengers and the people who were waiting for them.

  Then the fluorescent lights caught on a white US Soccer baseball cap, and she did a double take—Emma, scanning the crowd, too. With her hair tucked under the cap and a navy fleece hiding her curves, she didn’t look like her usual fashionably girlie self.

  “Emma,” Jamie called, willing away the b
utterflies that had taken flight in her gut. The way Emma’s eyes lit up the moment she saw her didn’t help a bit.

  Quickly they crossed the short distance, and then Emma was flinging herself at Jamie. She dropped her carryon and stumbled back a bit, absorbing the other girl’s weight. She was taller but Emma was broader—good Scandinavian peasant stock, she’d joked more than once—not to mention curvier. Jamie grasped her tightly and lifted her off her feet briefly, hugging her as hard as she dared.

  “You’re here,” Emma murmured against her shoulder, and Jamie could feel the hitch in her breathing.

  “Good thing. Clearly you need someone to look after you.” Emma laughed a little, at least Jamie thought it was a laugh. But then she felt tears on her neck and squeezed Emma tighter again, murmuring softly, “Shh, I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

  The whole last week, Jamie had wanted nothing other than to be in Seattle. As it was, she’d had to content herself with the usual phone calls, emails, and text messages in between studying for mid-terms. It was almost unreal to finally be here holding Emma in her arms instead of listening to her cry over the phone.

  Not that there had been much crying since the previous weekend. The day after Emma had texted about viewing her father’s body, visitors had begun to descend upon the Blakeley house—first a plethora of local friends with flowers and casseroles followed shortly by the first of the relatives and friends from Minnesota, Virginia, and Boston. Emma and her brother had stayed home from school all week, but she told Jamie school would probably have been better than being stuck at home with the influx of hospital staff and family friends with their sorrowful expressions and protestations of shock. The visitors didn’t seem to realize that rather than offering comfort, mostly they were reminding the family of what they’d lost.

  “Honestly,” she’d told Jamie the night before her flight, “it’s not that different not having him here. But every time someone comes by to check on us, I remember he’s not just away. It’s starting to feel like people want to gawk at the bloody aftermath. You know, like rubbernecking? Only in this case my mom and brother and I are the smashed cars in the median.”

  “Is this your way of telling me you’d rather I not come see you?” Jamie had asked, only half-joking.

  “Of course not! Unless—do you not want to come?”

  She’d sounded so nervous that Jamie had rushed to assure her that the opposite was true. If anything, she’d wanted to get there sooner and stay longer. Five and a half days in Seattle didn’t seem like nearly enough time.

  At least she was here now. Finally.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma mumbled, rubbing her face against Jamie’s jacket. Then she froze.

  “Did you wipe snot on me?” Jamie pulled away to peer down at her.

  Emma bit her lip. “I think it was mostly tears?”

  “We’re even then, since I’m pretty sure I ruined your sweatshirt at Golden Gate Park.”

  “No, you didn’t. Turns out snot doesn’t stain.”

  Her voice was so earnest that Jamie cracked up. Pretty soon Emma was laughing, too, but it didn’t last long.

  “Come on,” she said, wiping her cheeks and marshaling her features into a stoic mask. “Let’s find your bag.”

  The mask remained in place as they followed the freeway north past the glittering nighttime skyline of Seattle, chatting about Jamie’s flight, the city’s geography, and soccer. At her mother’s insistence, Emma was taking a break from her travel team.

  “I’m not really sure why, though,” she grumbled as she guided the Volvo wagon across an impressive bridge, city lights slipping away behind them. She pointed to one side of the freeway. “That’s the University District, by the way.”

  “Cool. So you would rather be playing?”

  “Totally. Soccer has always been great at taking my mind off things.”

  “Same. When I came back from France last year, my concentration at school was crap. Same with my moods. But on the soccer field I could stop being me, you know?”

  “Exactly,” Emma said, glancing over at her as speeding cars jockeyed for position in the three lanes around them. She started to lift her hand from the steering wheel, and for a moment Jamie thought she was going to reach for her. But then she glanced back at the road, tucked a loose strand of brown-blonde hair behind her ear, and gripped the wheel again.

  They didn’t speak much the rest of the way. Jamie kept thinking about the way they had been ending their emails and texts for the past week. “See you later” had been replaced by, “Love you.” Not “I love you,” but also not a casual “love ya” that could be more easily dismissed. Jamie wanted to ask Emma what she meant when she said “love.” She wanted to ask why Emma was thinking of joining the GSA. She wanted to know if Emma felt like there might be something more between them, too. But Emma’s dad had just died and Jamie was there to support her, not browbeat her about what was going on between them.

  She stared out the window as the freeway wound through the outskirts of the city. Such an inopportune time to realize she had a crush on her presumably straight best friend. But really, was there ever a good time for such a realization?

  Ten minutes out of downtown, Emma guided the Volvo off the freeway. In a few minutes they reached a busy intersection bordered by used car lots—“Aurora,” Emma told her—and then they were leaving behind the industrial area. The transition to leafy residential neighborhood happened faster than Jamie expected, and soon they were turning at a stop sign onto a dark, wooded drive with two signs. One advertised sharp curves and the other a dead end.

  “This is your street?” she asked as they passed a secluded, gated property lit up against the night sky.

  “Yeah, we’re a little ways down.”

  As they wound downhill along the twisty road, Jamie caught glimpses of large homes on even larger lots. In Berkeley, even the uber sophisticated homes in Claremont Hills were built practically on top of each other. But here, landscape lights revealed long driveways, extensive gardens, and wide lawns. Some houses were built into the trees, security lights shining on giant evergreens. Others offered panoramic views of a dark, open expanse that she knew must be Puget Sound. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn they were hundreds of miles from any city.

  When they turned onto a long driveway that led to a two-story cedar shake cape overlooking the Sound, Jamie shook her head a little.

  “What?” Emma asked.

  “This neighborhood is unreal.”

  “My parents have stressful jobs. They bought this place to make sure they had a retreat from the hospital.”

  It looked like they’d gotten their wish. But Jamie didn’t comment further. She knew Emma wasn’t entirely comfortable with her family’s privileged status.

  Once they’d parked, Emma insisted on carrying her bags from the attached garage into the house. Jamie followed, trying to convince herself she wasn’t nervous about meeting Emma’s mother. As she recalled, her father hadn’t seemed thrilled to make her acquaintance the summer before, and though Emma had never said as much, Jamie was pretty sure he had made his opposition to their friendship clear. It wasn’t like it was the first time someone had looked at her the way Emma’s dad had. Parents tended to react in one of three ways to her unapologetic baby dyke ways: Either they commented on how impressed they were to see someone so young dancing to a different drummer (she had heard that phrase easily a hundred times since chopping off her hair), stared her down the way the late Mr. Blakeley had, or pasted on a fake smile and pretended to be fine with her gender expression.

  Emma’s mom was in the kitchen when they walked in, seated on a stool talking to another woman at the sink. When she saw them, she set down her nearly full glass of wine and slid off the stool. She looked like she had in the pictures Emma had shared: an older version of her daughter, still trim in middle age with a kind smile in spite of the sadness lurking in her tired eyes.

  “Jamie,” she said, and held out her a
rms. “It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”

  Jamie stepped into the hug. “Thanks,” she murmured, glad she had practiced this meeting in her head during the flight. “It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Blakeley. I wish it could have been under different circumstances.” Emma had told her how sick she was of hearing people say they were sorry for their loss, so she had tried to come up with a suitable alternative.

  “So do I, sweetie. And call me Pam.” Keeping one arm around her shoulders, Emma’s mom turned toward the other woman. “June, this is Jamie, Emma’s friend from California. Jamie, this is my sister June.”

  The aunt stared at her. Jamie recognized the look—clearly she was trying to decide between a glare and a fake smile. In the end, her Midwestern training won out. “Nice to see you.”

  “You, too,” Jamie said equally politely.

  “How was your flight?” Emma’s mom asked. Then, before Jamie could answer, she added, “Are you hungry? You’re probably hungry. They don’t do food on airplanes anymore. Except on the way to Hawaii. We had quite a nice meal in first class. Frequent flyer miles certainly do come in handy, don’t they?”

  At the mention of Hawaii, everyone else froze. Jamie glanced at Emma, seeing her eyes glaze over at the reference.

  “I could eat,” she said quickly.

  “Why don’t you get settled upstairs and June and I will see what we can rustle up. Are you a vegetarian?”

  She shook her head. “No, I eat pretty much everything. Except baby animals.” As Emma rolled her eyes, Jamie mock glared at her. “What? Have to draw the line somewhere.”

  Emma’s mom was watching their interaction with a gentle, almost sad smile. “Emma, could you ask your brother if he’d like a snack before bedtime?”

  “Sure, Mom,” Emma said, and leaned in to kiss her cheek as she passed.

  It was such a sweet gesture, such an Emma gesture, that Jamie couldn’t breathe for a second. She felt Emma’s mom’s eyes on her again and wondered if she imagined the understanding in them.