Smiling a little, she reached for Emma’s hand again.
Emma glanced over at her. “What’s that look?”
“Nothing. You’re just cute when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Right. Totally.”
Emma laughed under her breath and squeezed Jamie’s hand, and they drove on through the early summer day with gently rolling mountains edging the road, the freeway wide open before them.
#
Their view the following evening was considerably different.
“Welcome back, athletes,” Jo said, smiling out at them from the front of the hotel conference room.
“Canada or bust!” Angie called out, and the rest of the team joined in with whoops and cheers of their own.
Jamie smiled sideways at Emma, who was seated beside her in the third row of chairs near Maddie and Angie. Emma smiled back, her eyes happy, and Jamie elbowed her a little before glancing back at the front of the room.
“All right,” Jo was saying, “a little business to take care of at the outset. Bear with me. I’ll get to the fun stuff as soon as I can.”
As Jo launched into a logistical overview of the upcoming training camp, Jamie looked down at her shorts-clad thigh practically touching Emma’s on the neighboring chair. They had spent the past 48 hours together nearly non-stop, and Jamie still felt a small thrill at being this close to her. The only blemish on their road trip had been Jamie’s anger with her mother about Lyon. On the way there, she’d decided she needed more time to process before confronting her mom. Instead, she’d pulled what Emma called “a Minnesotan” and avoided being alone with her mother during their stay. This wasn’t all that difficult given they were in Berkeley for a total of 16 hours.
The visit had gone well, other than Jamie’s latent hostility. They’d arrived in time for dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the hammock in Jamie’s parents’ back yard, seated side by side with their feet on the ground while her mom and dad sipped glasses of wine on the nearby patio. Naturally, her parents had wanted to know all about her new apartment, and had perked up noticeably as Emma described the extra storage and built-ins. Jamie had been a bit suspicious at their reaction—until her father said that since she was settled, they were hoping to box up some of her old things and send them to her.
Now Jamie frowned and tapped her foot as Jo ceded the floor briefly to Lacey. Why the sudden urge to clean out her room? Were her parents planning to sell the house? They’d assured her they weren’t when she’d asked point blank, but she wasn’t sure she believed them. She would have to text Meg about it. Maybe her sister knew something she didn’t.
From the front row, Ellie glanced over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at Jamie. And, right. She should probably pay more attention to the national team coaching staff’s pre-World Cup speech.
Once Lacey finished her tortur—fitness update and various assistants put in plugs for the days ahead, Jo took over again.
“Look at the people sitting around you,” she said. “These are the teammates who are going to have your back in Canada this summer. Not your family, not your friends on your club team, not the fans, and certainly not the media. The people in this room—they are your family for the duration. We, the coaching staff, are your family. Every single one of you is where you’re supposed to be. You all belong here.
“So right now, I want you to shut down that voice of doubt in the back of your head. Ignore the naysayers. Don’t engage with the reporters who are going to question our readiness and our formation and our abilities. That’s their job. Your job is to keep all of that negative energy outside the bubble. Your job is to exist inside the bubble with the rest of us in this room. Your job is to believe that we can win the World Cup this summer. Because in order to win, we have to believe—every single one of us.
“So what do you think, athletes,” she added, smiling calmly around the room. “Are you ready?”
“Yes!” Jamie said, hearing Emma’s voice echoing hers.
“Hell yeah!” Maddie said.
“Fuck yeah!” Angie all but shouted.
At the front of the room, Ellie slapped hands with Phoebe and glanced over her shoulder again, eyes crinkling this time in a smile. Hell yes, Jamie imagined her saying. Because if anyone was ready to shake the monkey off her back and finally win a World Cup, it was Ellie.
Family, Jamie thought, smiling back at her friend and mentor. That summed it up nicely.
Chapter Five
Within the week, Emma and Jamie were retracing their steps from Carson back to the Bay Area for the first match of the send-off series: Ireland. Only this time, the entire team was along for the ride. As usual, US Soccer sent them first by flight and then, once they’d settled into the team hotel, by coach. And what a coach it was: newly painted red, white, and blue and adorned with two stars to signify the team’s two previous World Cup wins. Painted prominently in bold letters across the length of the bus was the tagline of the current year’s tournament: “ONE NATION. ONE TEAM.” Or, as the Twittersphere put it: “#INIT.”
On Saturday morning, twenty-four hours before the Ireland match, the team practiced on the game field as was their pre-Game Day tradition. After a light training session that included set pieces and various walk-throughs, the coaches ended practice early. Emma didn’t question the timing, only followed Jamie back onto the team bus, where they claimed their usual row directly across from Maddie and Angie.
“’Sup, Blakewell,” Angie said, grinning. And then, predictably but no less cringeworthy: “Welcome to the lesbian lovers row.”
Emma gave Maddie a pointed look, who turned the same look on her girlfriend.
“Oh, sorry, I mean the women-loving-women lovers row,” Angie amended.
Emma regarded Angie through narrowed eyes, but she didn’t detect any sarcasm. Maddie must be making progress in her attempts to reform her girlfriend.
According to Emma’s best friend on the team, Angie’s habitual swagger was a mask she’d developed to deal with her previous girlfriend’s rejection and her family’s crappy attitude. Not only were the Wangs categorically uninterested in women’s professional sports, they possessed an apparently common first-generation immigrant attitude toward careers. They had not left China so that their youngest daughter could make a living playing a game. Rather, they’d expected all five of their children to pursue careers in science or law, fields they perceived as being less vulnerable to discrimination against minorities. But their disapproval of Angie’s pro soccer career paled in comparison to their disgust regarding her “perverted lifestyle,” Maddie had told Emma. As devout Catholics, they could not condone what they saw as her “immoral tendencies.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have moved to America,” Angie had reportedly shot back at her parents a few months earlier after yet another disparaging remark about her sexual orientation. “Because in case you missed it, homos have civil rights here.”
She’d walked out practically on the spot and called Maddie from the airport to ask if she would mind if Angie arrived in Palm Springs for their planned vacation a few days early. Maddie didn’t. In fact, she’d flown out the same day to meet Angie. Cutting short her visit with her own family hadn’t bothered Maddie. After all, she’d told Emma, her parents were practicing Catholics, too.
Normally, parents weren’t all that involved with national team friendlies. But this weekend, with the US playing Ireland on Mother’s Day, at least a few moms were bound to be present. Jamie’s, obviously, since she was local, and Lisa Wall’s and Ryan Dierdorf’s, since their families lived in Southern California. But Maddie’s and Angie’s shouldn’t be around until the actual World Cup.
Shouldn’t was the key word. Unfortunately, the publicity arm of US Soccer sometimes had different ideas.
Back at the hotel, the team assembled in a conference room for a meeting over lunch. They were chatting amongst themselves when the double doors opened and Caroline, the team’s
PR rep, strolled in followed by—
“Mom?” Ellie said, her tone disbelieving as she started to rise.
Emma followed her friend’s gaze to the doorway, only to stifle a gasp as, one after another, the mothers of the national team streamed into the room. Emma glanced at Jamie, seated at a nearby table with her U-23 mates, and noted the way her expression hardened. Then Emma’s own mother was stepping into the room, and Emma was moving to intercept her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, laughing as they met in a warm hug.
“Your marketing team saw the obvious opportunity in a match on Mother’s Day,” her mother answered, stepping back with a smile. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Emma wasn’t, either. And with the cameras rolling, as they almost always were, most players—and their moms—were smiling as if delighted to be reunited. Except Taylor O’Brien, whose mother had died of breast cancer a few years earlier. She was holding tightly to her grandmother, both in tears at the unexpected reunion.
Certain other players appeared less than thrilled with the turn of events, though. Emma could tell Jamie’s smile was forced as she listened to her mother prattle on about something, and while Ellie and her mother had hugged initially, now they were standing awkwardly near the door, Ellie’s shoulders drooping slightly as her mother looked at everyone and everything except her. Angie’s mother’s embrace was almost nonexistent, and Emma watched the pair interact even as she chatted with her own mom about the team hotel. Angie was trying, but her mother only patted her arm and turned away to greet Rebecca Perry’s mom. Angie’s face fell momentarily before her self-assured mask slipped into place. That less-than-touching scene wouldn’t be making the send-off series marketing video, that was for sure.
“What’s wrong?” Emma’s mother asked quietly.
“Nothing.” Emma glanced at Maddie in time to see the cool smile and colder hug Mrs. Novak bestowed on her daughter. Like Angie, Maddie appeared outwardly unfazed by her mother’s unimpressed greeting, but Emma knew better. “It’s just, not everyone is as lucky as I am.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” her mom said sincerely.
“Me, too. Now come on, spill. How long can you stay?”
Not long, it turned out. As soon as the game ended, she would be back on a plane to Minnesota in order to be at work first thing Monday morning.
“I wish I could stay longer,” she told Emma.
“It’s fine,” Emma said, and meant it. With a caring mother who supported her life choices—and had never once betrayed her intimate confidences, as far as Emma knew—she really was lucky.
Some of the players’ mothers looked more like their older sisters, and those, of course, were the stories the PR team honed in on. They interviewed all the mother-daughter tandems that afternoon, but Emma could easily predict which pairs would be immortalized in the official video: Rebecca and her mother, with their matching blonde ponytails and their mutual insistence that they were best friends forever; queer Gabe and her ultra-feminine mom, because they were opposites but loved each other deeply; Lisa and her mother, not only because of the usual cynical US Soccer representation but also because they routinely finished each other’s sentences. Emma and her mom were close like that, too, but Emma had a feeling they would be considered too boring for the federation’s promotional bent.
At least, until Caroline asked her on camera about what it was like to have such a strong female role model in her life. US Soccer, it appeared, had gotten the memo about her mother’s promotion to Chief Nursing Officer of Pediatric Surgery at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital.
“My mom is amazing,” Emma said, smiling at her mother through the camera lights. “She and my dad both dedicated their careers to supporting families in crisis. I couldn’t be prouder of the work she’s done to help sick kids and their families through what are often the most stressful periods of their lives.”
Her mom smiled back from the other side of the hotel couch. “The admiration is entirely mutual,” she said. “I help repair bodies, but you inspire kids to work hard and reach for their dreams. I’d say you’re continuing the family legacy, only with your own spin.”
Emma hadn’t thought of it that way before. While she didn’t worry that her mom was hiding Wang-level disapproval of her athletic career, she did often wonder if her mother was secretly disappointed in her for not choosing a different, more intellectually challenging path. Nice to receive confirmation that she wasn’t.
“You mentioned your father, Emma,” Caroline put in. “I understand the two of you met while working at Boston Children’s Hospital?” She directed the question at Emma’s mother, who shifted slightly and blinked under the bright lighting.
“Yes, that’s right,” she started.
But Emma touched her mother’s hand and tilted her head at Caroline. “What are you doing? You know he’s off-limits.”
The team’s PR rep glanced down at her note cards and shuffled them in place. “Normally, yes, but you brought him up—”
“I mentioned him in passing,” Emma said, tamping down her irritation. Sometimes it was like Caroline saw the players as participants in one giant theater production. Which, to be fair, in a way they were. “This is Mother’s Day. Can we please keep the focus on my mom?”
“Of course,” Caroline said, and guided the conversation back to the care of sick children in Minnesota.
“What was that about?” Emma’s mom asked a little while later as they left the hotel room to make way for the next mother-daughter pair.
“It was nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
Emma expelled a breath. “They’re just always trying to sell the fatherless daughter story, you know?”
Her mother shook her head. “What’s wrong with talking about him? His life—and death—are very much a part of who you are. Your brother, too.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Emma said. “The federation wants to package all of us into these neat little boxes so that we’re somehow more relatable to the average fan. They don’t actually care about what Dad may or may not have meant to me. And frankly, I refuse to be marketed as part of his story.”
A few months earlier, when the PR team had produced the individual player videos—“One Nation, One Team, 23 Stories”—that had been released only after the final roster was named, more than one bright-eyed intern had suggested Emma talk about how losing her father had shaped her soccer story. In reality, her father’s death had barely impacted her career trajectory. She’d already been well-ensconced in the junior national team pool before his heart attack, and his surgical work had kept him so busy that he’d barely been around in those last few years. That wasn’t the story the powers that be would want to hear, though, and she didn’t trust the federation not to twist her words to suit a different, more sympathetic narrative.
Now, to her surprise, her mother laughed. “Oh, honey, you are the star of your own story, I promise you, just as your father was the star of his. Your brother and I, though? Sometimes I think we’re simply along for the ride.”
Emma stopped in the middle of the hotel corridor. “What are you talking about?”
Before her mother could answer, a voice sounded from down the hall. “Emma! Hey!”
She glanced over her shoulder to see Jamie striding toward her, her own mother in tow. And just for a minute, Emma felt the floor shift under her feet as memory overlaid the present. The sensation faded quickly, though, and she moved to meet Jamie.
“Are you done with your interview?” Jamie asked.
“Yes, thank god. What are you up to?”
“We were thinking of going out for coffee. Want to come?” Jamie’s smile held an edge, as if she was desperately hoping that Emma and her mother would join them so that she and her mom wouldn’t have to be alone together.
“I don’t know. What do you think, Mom?” Emma asked, unable to resist teasing her girlfriend.
&nb
sp; “Eh, twist my arm,” her mother said, smiling.
They fell into step together, Emma and Jamie leading the way, their mothers behind them talking about last-minute flights and art installations and work commutes. As they neared the Starbucks at the end of the block, the conversation shifted to family. Once they’d ordered and were seated, Emma and Jamie exchanged furtive smiles as their mothers interrogated each other about their non-soccer-playing children.
“They’re getting along well,” Jamie commented, her voice low.
“Did you have any doubts?”
“Not really. Thanks for coming, though. Seriously.”
“Of course,” Emma said.
She was gazing at Jamie, appreciating the leftover glam of her styled hair and light make-up when she heard her mother utter the momentous words, “The wedding venue is confirmed.”
“Wait—Ty and Bridget set a date?” she asked, staring at her mother.
She nodded. “They decided to get married on January second at a venue in DC called Top of the Town. It overlooks the Mall and is supposed to be one of the best wedding sites in the city, and they were both thrilled when a slot opened up last minute. I think that’s why they waited so long to set a date. They wanted it to be perfect.”
That meant Emma would have two weddings to appear in: Dani and Derek’s in early October at the Space Needle, where they’d had their first official, non-casual-hookup date; and Ty and Bridget’s on the day after New Year’s at Top of the Town. As a bridesmaid in her brother’s wedding, shouldn’t Emma be one of the first to know the details?
“Ty asked me to pass along the news,” her mother explained. “He knew I would be seeing you this weekend.”
Jamie’s mother put in, “My older daughter and her husband actually have news as well. But I think they’ll want to tell you themselves, Jamie.”
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