Field of Schemes (27 page)

Dick looked at Mimi with deep admiration. “What a twat,” he sighed.

“No, this is not nice,” Gunther said. “We let them play in white.”

“Thank you, coach,” Trudy said. “I’m glad
you’re
a reasonable person.”

“Gunther, how can you—” Mimi shouted. He raised his hand.
So glad to see that “talk to the hand” translates to German.
“What-ever,” Mimi said, rolling her eyes at Trudy. “We’ll kick your asses just for practice. Since we gave you this break, we want the good side of the field. Move your stuff,” she said, pointing at the sideline where her team had planted umbrellas, set up chairs and placed their bags. Trudy looked appalled.

After the other team’s parents returned to their side of the field to begin their forced migration, Dick raised his beer can and gave a hearty cheer. “I think I’m in love with Mimi.”

“Don’t move,” Mimi told our parents who were starting to collect their stuff for our move. As the other team’s parents began crossing the field with their folded umbrellas and chairs, dragging coolers, backpacks and two baby strollers, Mimi smirked maliciously and turned to Dick. “Think you love me now? Watch this.” When the disgruntled group arrived, she shifted her weight cutely and put her fingertip purposefully on her pretty little head. “You know, now that I think about it, we’ll stay on this side after all.” Mimi giggled and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Off with you. Back to your side of the field.”

Mother leaned in toward me and asked, “Does this happen all the time?”

“No, Mom, that’s the beauty of club soccer. There’s fresh new bullshit at every game.”

I always root for the girls to win, but after they scored four unanswered goals, I’d had my fill of our success. I realized that these definitive victories were important for our ranking in the tournament, but the score of this game also reflected the score between our team managers, and it was more lopsided than I liked. Mimi strutted up and down the sideline, smirking at Trudy as if to say,
Bet you’d like to forfeit now.
Trudy averted her eyes, conceding defeat.

As much as I loathed the sight of Mimi gloating, the game held two pleasant surprises for me. First, Rachel grew into her uniform. She finally looked confident as a club player. Rachel always seemed happy playing soccer, but in the last tournament she was still playing rec-style breakaway soccer rather than working with her teammates. Today, in her sixth game with Kix, Rachel became a real club player.

“See, what did I tell you?” Dave said as he sat next to me, my mother and Blake. He was right. As center midfielder, Rachel was like the conductor of an orchestra. She brought the ball as far as she could, then passed to one of the forwards to shoot. She passed the ball back to defenders, which I thought was a mistake at first, but Dave explained that this was a smart strategic move when there was nothing but opposing players in front of her. “Good soccer players pass to space whether it’s in front of them or behind them. You’re right, though, it’s a risky move because we’re bringing the ball further into our own territory.” I nodded. “But when we play easy teams, it’s a good opportunity to practice doing this. We’re not going to beat the premiere teams at State Cup if we don’t know how to use the entire field.”

On two occasions, Rachel even penetrated the eighteen (I loved saying that) herself. She passed the ball to Kelly, who was out wide. Kelly brought it back to Rachel, who shot it in the net! My heart grew two sizes when her teammates all fell to the ground and began bowing, doing the “we’re not worthy” routine they always did when a player scored.

My second shock of the day was my mother. Much to her own surprise, Barbara was a closet soccer fanatic. As soon as Rachel got possession of the ball, she stood and began cheering hysterically. She didn’t know a thing about soccer, but before long, she was urging players to work the channel, to find feet and to make one move and go. After Rachel’s first goal, she wailed, “That’s what I’m talking about, baby!”

Dave raised his eyebrows as if to say that this was not exactly how I had described my mother when we had dinner earlier that week. Our second date was less of a therapy session, but still had that platonic feel to it. Still, I wanted to hang in there and see if romantic feelings would develop. He was just the type of guy I’d always been attracted to in the past.

When Ron began pacing behind Dick trying to light his fuse, it was my mother’s powder keg that exploded first. Barb stood, her heels sinking into the grass and shouted, “Come on, ref! Can we get a call on anything here?!”

Unfortunately, the referee took her words to heart and held up a yellow card, pointing at my mother. Blake began stroking Mother’s wrist and urging her to sit before she started a soccer riot.

“Mother,” I said, laughing, “I’ve never seen this side of you.”

“Nor have I,” she said, regaining her breath and composure. “My therapist said I needed to get in touch with the fun person inside waiting to get out.”

“Dave’s a therapist,” I said, gesturing to him.

Barbara raised her eyebrows. “Really? Well, I certainly hope you haven’t diagnosed me too harshly.”

He smiled and gave me a look to say,
See, everyone thinks that
. Instead, he politely told my mother, “Rachel’s having a great game. She’s quite a little distributor.” Blake and I looked confused but Mother nodded and agreed.

Ron paced behind the row of parents, stopping to consult with Mimi, who was taking judicious notes at the far end of the field. Darcy turned to me and said, “They never stop. She called last night to get Ron to go with her to the Kix board meeting to force Gunther to reinstate fitness practice.” I rolled my eyes in solidarity.

“We should get your sister out here,” Barbara said. “Maybe that would help her shake her mood.”

“Awwww,” the parents from our sideline shouted as Kelly Greer shot wide.

“What mood?” I asked. I hadn’t spoken with Kathy in a few weeks. “Is she okay?”

Mother sighed, sounding a bit exasperated. “Baby blues,” she explained. “I wish she’d get over it already. She’s positively dreary around the office.”

Loud Bobby filled the void that Crazy Raymond left and began shouting hoarsely, “Nooooo mer-saaaaay!”

“What do you mean baby blues?” I whispered.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Barbara said, now standing on her feet with her eyes locked on the field. “Attack, attack!” she shouted at our defenders as a girl in blue approached our defensive third. Mother certainly was picking up the language quickly.

“Mom,” I said, concerned. “What do you mean by baby blues? What’s going on with Kathy?”

Shaking her hand loose from my grip, she shouted, “Offsides, ref!” There was no way my mother even knew what offsides was, much less had the ability to make the call. I glanced behind her and saw Ron pacing behind our chairs again. He mouthed an apology and pointed to Dick, trying to explain that our team drunk was his real target. How did I find this imbecile so attractive? What guy over the age of thirteen would purposely provoke the volatile team alcoholic?

“Mother, tell me what’s going on with Kathy!”

“She’s moping around, crying over the slightest little things, saying she’s a bad mother. The same thing you went through with Rachel. It’ll pass. It’s rough in the beginning with all those hormones.”

“Mother, I had post-partum depression and it didn’t
just pass
! I went through months of therapy and anti-depressants. Why are you acting like she has a bad case of PMS and just needs to—”

“Shake it off, Macy!” a mother screamed at her flattened daughter in the blue uniform. The girl lay on her back, motionless. Her coach and the referee ran out to her and began asking a series of basic questions to determine whether or not Macy had a serious head injury.

“Hang tough!” her father shouted.

Two long braids rose from the ground and Macy hobbled to her feet. Her coach patted her on the back and said, “This body needs to last a lifetime, let’s take a rest.” Months ago, an interaction like this wouldn’t have even registered with me. Now, moments of reason seemed remarkable.

As Macy hobbled off the field, I joined the others clapping for her. My mother whipped her head around at me, appalled. She looked at Dave, Darcy, Ron, Gia, Tom and the others and snapped, “You people are sick!”

Looking across the field at the other team parents was like holding up a mirror. They also had a wall of noisy dads who were interchangeably angry or arrogant, depending on the score of the game. Many of their parents shouted instructions that conflicted with their coach’s. And, as with our Kix team, about half the parents looked absolutely normal and were simply there to support their kids.

Somewhere between the team’s sixth and seventh goals, my mother noticed my latest experiment in beading. “What a darling necklace. Are those pence?”

I confirmed, pleased with both how the piece turned out and that my fashion-savvy mother noticed. I wasn’t sure how the amber, turquoise and pewter would blend, but something about the unusual shape of the twenty-pence piece pulled it together. I made a nice garnet one for Darcy, sort of a “sorry for coveting your husband” present, and an Austrian crystal one for my sister, Kathy. I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought to make one for my mother, but in fairness she’d never really cared for my designs before. She said she preferred classic elegance to my Bohemian mish-mash.

“I have a dozens of Italian coins left over from our trips before the euro,” Barbara said. “Would you make a little jingly-jangly thing of lira for me?”
Jingly-jangly? Who was this woman?! Next thing you know, she might smile.

“Sure,” I said tentatively. “You’ll need to give me some direction, though, because your taste is so—”

“Get that ball, Rachel!” Barbara interrupted as she stood to her feet. “That’s it, that’s it! Atta girl, move around her!”

The crowd cheered as Rachel scored another goal.

Leo came over and shook Blake’s hand. “That girl’s a
sivious playah
now.”

“True player for real,” Loud Bobby said, strutting over to Leo, then doing that fist gesture that is something between a handshake and a punch.

Hey, where was my handshake?! I’m her mother.

At halftime, Gunther told the girls that they were to work on their pass backs and foot skills in the second half of the game. “We need no more goals. I want practicing using our defenders more.”

I looked to Darcy for translation. “Since we’re up by five goals, we’ve already got the maximum number of points for this game, so he wants to use the second half to bone up on some of the things he’s been working on in practice.”

We tuned into Gunther again. “Kelly, you are goalkeeping this half.” She nodded in agreement, but Mimi stormed over with loud protest.

“Kelly’s our lead scorer, why put her in goal?” Mimi shouted. Trying to preserve her good reputation with the girls, she took it down a notch. “Cayenne is such a star keeper, why risk the shutout by taking her out of the box?” Gunther looked back at the girls and continued. “Gunther!” Mimi screeched. “I am speaking to you.”

“Girls, I am explaining why I make the decision. Kelly, we no need any more goals to get maximum points.”

“But what if they score on us?” Mimi demanded. “Then we lose the shutout point! Cayenne hasn’t let a single goal go in. You’re a star, girlfriend,” she said, directing the compliment to Loud Bobby’s offspring.

“They have not made any shots on goal,” Gunther reminded her.

“But Kelly Greer in goal is such a waste.”

“This talk is waste,” Gunther said. Turning his attention back to the circle of girls, he continued. “In practice we work on plays I want to see using today. On three.”

“One, two, three,” the girls shouted in unison as they each held one hand into the center of the circle. “Go Kix!”

As was the case at the Manchester tournament, Mimi congratulated the girls Sunday evening for winning the “fist full of medals” at the School’s Out for the Summer tournament, then promptly emailed the parents to remind us that our victory was a meager one.

MEMORANDUM

TO: The Team

FROM: Mimi

DATE: June 20

RE: We were in the lowest bracket again!

Congratulations to the girls on their second tournament win! I know it’s exciting for some of our new players to have the opportunity to shine when we play marginal teams, but I encourage everyone to gently remind the girls that during our regular season we will not be playing inferior opponents like these! I blame myself! I hoped that these easy wins would be good for team morale, but now I see that I was wrong! We need to play our equals to really see how out of shape the girls are! We MUST resume fitness training if we are to have any chance at winning State Cup!

Also, Raymond keeps calling me to make sure we hold Violet’s spot! He says her physical therapy is going well and that she will be back in time for State Cup! I adore Violet, but think her father is being overly optimistic! We really can’t hold a spot for a girl who may very well never play soccer again! It is in the best interests of this team to replace Violet with Sissy so she can learn the plays in time for the regular season! Let’s not dally on this! I have four votes in favor of this already and need to hear from the rest of you!