Kate Christie (18 page)

“Anyway,” I echoed, willing the blush I could feel building not to spread past my neck. If I wasn’t mistaken, Jess had just alluded to lesbian sex. First the kiss, now this—was she trying to tell me something? “See you next month.”

“The sixth, right?” She had offered to meet me at the airport when I got back in January.

“Right.”

“Okay. Well, talk to you later.”

“Right,” I repeated.

She finally stopped staring at me and slid back into her car. I watched her pull away and check over her shoulder before easing the Cabriolet into the nearest lane. She waved at me and I waved back, fingering the pendant at my neck. I would see her in three weeks, I reminded myself as I headed into the airport, trying to ignore the ache in my chest that had started as I watched her little red car pull away from the curb.

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Back at home, I settled into my usual winter break routine: staying up late at night reading science fiction novels and watching Letterman, sleeping until noon, gorging on junk food, and generally bumming around. A few days in, I told my mom that one of my friends didn’t have any family to spend Christmas with, so she helped me wrap a few gifts to send to Jess—a couple of ornaments, a small wreath of cedar boughs from a tree in our backyard, a mix of music I knew she liked, a Wallace family Christmas card and one of the wool sweaters my father’s family was always bringing back from trips to Scotland. La Jolla never got that cold, but maybe she would need it someday.

Jess called on Christmas Day to thank me for the box. Her grandmother and her aunt had sent packages too, she said, but none of her friends at school had ever done anything like that.

She sounded really happy. We talked for a long time before she said she had to go downstairs to help Sidney and Claire and Barbara, her art teacher, with dinner.

My father officially had Christmas vacation too. But he still had to meet with his students’ parents and plan for the coming semester, so he was busy as usual. This was the second Christmas in a row without my brother—winter was nearly as busy a season as summer for his guide company up in Fairbanks, and Nate couldn’t get enough time off to make traveling down to Portland worth it. Without him around to distract me with day trips to snow fields and sci-fi marathons late into the night, I mostly passed the time with the same group of friends I hung around with in the summers, five guys I’d known since elementary school. Home for the holidays from various West and East Coast colleges, we had a long-standing tradition of spending New Year’s Eve together down by the river watching the city fireworks and drinking beer. They all knew I was gay, but we rarely talked about it. In the summer we were usually too busy hiking and camping out to dwell on such matters, while at winter break we filled the time playing video games and watching more than our share of football.

But we were getting older now, and a couple of the guys in our group were overseas on junior year abroad programs. The rest of us didn’t hang out as much as we normally did, which left 132 Kate Christie

me on my own much of the time. As usual, I was ready to go back to school—back to my real life—after only a couple of weeks of break. Decompression, Holly called the post-finals, pre-January term period. A necessary evil, but sometimes it lasted longer than I needed or wanted.

At the end of the third week, my parents took me to the airport. At the departure gate, we sat together in molded plastic airport chairs, the two of them flanking my bags and me.

“Well, Cam,” my dad said, “I suppose you’re ready to get back to your friends.”

He and I shared the same auburn hair and hazel eyes, the same interest in teaching and education. Still, despite our similarities, his favorite sport was baseball. How he could stand watching the most boring game ever invented, I would never understand.

“I guess so,” I said, feeling a little guilty. “I’ll miss you guys, but it’ll be nice to be back at school.”

My mother smiled and squeezed my hand. “I remember what it was like getting back after a vacation. You can’t wait to see your friends.”

My parents had met in college in Eugene. When I’d told them I was going to SDU, I think they were both disappointed I was going so far away. But they just congratulated me on Coach Eliot’s scholarship offer and said they would support whatever decision I made. They were amazing that way. When I told them my senior year of high school that I was dating Cara, they thanked me for trusting them enough to share the truth. Of all my friends, I had the easiest coming out story of the bunch.

Then again, I was also the only one whose parents had lived together in Eugene in the sixties before they were married.

I left them to guard my suitcase while I bought a bottle of soda at a nearby newsstand. They were a funny couple, I thought as I stood in line watching them: my mild-mannered father with his receding hairline and a penchant for flannel shirts leftover from his childhood in eastern Oregon, my mother with her brisk manner and immaculate business suits. She was the driving force in their relationship, the one who did the taxes and paid the bills while my father focused on ways to help his students’ families adapt to life with a mentally or physically impaired child. My Beautiful Game 133

mom and dad were so different, yet I couldn’t imagine one without the other.

I also couldn’t imagine never speaking to them again because of a single fight, like Jess and her mother. I had argued with my parents, of course, like any kid, especially during junior high and early on in high school. But my brother had broken them in—he’d always been a wild child, breaking curfew and coming home drunk and crashing multiple cars in his legendary pursuit of speed. After him, I’d probably seemed easy despite the gay thing.

Besides, no one in our family was particularly confrontational.

Wallaces preferred to pretend a problem didn’t exist rather than cause a disagreement or hurt someone’s feelings. Eventually the issue either took care of itself or we all forgot about it. Not exactly the healthiest way of resolving conflict, I realized when I took my first psychology class at SDU. But at least we didn’t fight that often. I couldn’t imagine the level of disagreement it would take for me to cut my parents out of my life. What unforgivable act had Jess’s mother committed? Or was Jess the responsible party?

I paid for a bottle of Diet Coke with a twenty my dad had slipped me on the way out of the house, and headed back to the gate. My mother frowned when she saw the bottle.

“You’re not on a diet, honey, are you?”

“No, I just like the taste better than regular.”

As a soccer player, I’d always burned enough calories that I didn’t have to watch my weight. The only diets I believed in were ones that improved muscle tone and overall health.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “I was reading an article recently in the
Chronicle
about college athletes and eating disorders. Apparently many more women athletes suffer from these disorders than you might think.”

My mother was always quoting articles from the
Chronicle
of Higher Education
, her all-time favorite print publication. A university administrator, she loved academia. In a way, I would be following in her footsteps too when I became a teacher.

A few minutes later, my flight started to board.

“Gotta go,” I said, fumbling with my boarding pass. In only 134 Kate Christie

a few hours, I would see Jess. Classes didn’t start for a couple of weeks, so we should have some time to hang around together.

Maybe I would check out an indoor tennis tournament or two.

“Take care, Cammie,” my father said, hugging me. “Don’t eat any snozzcumbers.”

This was a reference to
The BFG
, one of my favorite childhood storybooks. I’d always thought my father accustomed as he was to the limited mental capacity of his students, I’d always thought my father liked Nate and me best when we were still young enough to laugh at words like “snozzcumber” and

“whizzpopper.” Whenever we said our goodbyes now, he still trotted out this old line.

“I won’t.” I hugged him back. We were almost the same height. Was I still growing or was he shrinking? “Bye, Dad.

Good luck with school.” I kissed his cheek, his stubble scratchy against my chin.

“You too, sweetheart,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I turned to my mom. “I’ll call when I get there,” I promised before she could say anything, hugging her in turn.

She held me tightly, her arms surprisingly strong. Neither of my parents worked out, but they tried to walk a couple of miles together around the neighborhood every night after dinner.

“Have a safe trip, honey,” she said, and kissed my cheek.

“Love you. Give Holly and your friend Jess our love.”

The way she said it, I could tell my mom thought Jess was my girlfriend. It would have taken time and effort to correct her, so I just nodded and shouldered my bags and headed for the jetway.

As I passed through the doorway, I glanced back at my parents, noticing all at once that they didn’t look nearly as young as they used to. They had both turned fifty the previous year.

When they’d told me they were old enough for AARP, it had freaked me out. Now I waved and they waved back, standing close together, arms around each other. I turned again and strode down the jetway.

Back to life, back to reality, I thought as I waited in line near the entrance to the plane. Only which was my real life, which my reality? Oregon and the family I’d lived with for eighteen Beautiful Game 135

years? Or Southern California and the friends I’d made there?

It was hard to say. That was the thing about school. All of this leaving, friends graduating, new people taking their place, all in preparation for your own eventual leave-taking. Commencement, they called it, but I always thought it was more like an end to life as you knew it. You couldn’t really go back to who you were before college, and you couldn’t just hang out in your college town after you graduated. After commencement you had to be a responsible person with a job and an apartment and plants, even.

No more afternoon naps, no more food waiting for you beneath the plastic bubble in the cafeteria, no more aimless hanging out.

Suddenly you were expected to have a purpose in life.

Holly called it the plants-to-children progression. First you had to get some greenery, see if you could remember to water it and give it the proper amount of sunlight. If your plants survived more than a year, then you could get a dog or a cat. Pets, of course, were a little more complicated, but also easier in a way.

While pets had to be fed, watered, exercised and played with, if you forgot to do any of these things animals didn’t sit quietly on the windowsill wilting, dying a slow, silent death. Wisely, a pet would piddle on the floor or crap in your shoe or chew a hole through the cupboard door where you kept the biscuits.

If your pet survived for more than a year, then, assuming you were in a long-term committed relationship of some kind (though nowadays that part wasn’t necessary), you could procure a child by whatever technology was appropriate—that is, if you had a job, insurance and a roof over your head.

Which brings us back to a purpose and a direction in life.

If you had that, the rest would fall into place. Or so I had been told.“Welcome aboard,” a flight attendant said, smiling brightly at me as I reached the plane.

I nodded at her and went to find my seat.

Without a daily soccer commitment around which to schedule my time, second semester always seemed less orderly than first. Classes started the second week of January, and I settled in and managed not to skip very many right off the bat.

I even bought all the books I was supposed to buy, possibly a first for me. This semester I was taking a teaching history methods class, a seminar on American involvement in World War II, Philosophy and Women with Holly—very cool—and Macroeconomics. Laura, a business major, had convinced me that macro might come in handy someday. I bet Holly over lunch our first week back that since I was taking Macro on a pass/ fail basis, I could successfully complete the class without ever opening the textbook, relying solely on lecture notes. She accepted the wager, crowing almost giddily as Laura stalked Beautiful Game 137

out of the student center muttering about the juvenile nature of education majors.

Outside of class, Holly and I settled into our off-season workout routine: running or biking most days, lifting three times a week to keep our muscles sleek and strong. Intramural soccer had us playing six on six throughout January and February.

After that we would meet weekly for pickup games, sometimes scrimmaging with the men’s team, sometimes competing against other eligible opponents. As the upcoming season’s captains, Holly and I were expected to organize these sessions. Seniors weren’t required to participate, which was fine with me. Despite our truce, the less I saw of Jamie Betz, the better.

Jess and I resumed our Monday night dinners the first week of classes, even though the pro football season was winding down. We were good enough friends by now that we didn’t need an excuse to hang out. I never brought up the night of Mel’s party, and she didn’t either. I attended all of her home indoor tennis tournaments and the ones within driving distance from La Jolla, accompanied by Holly and Laura. We watched in something akin to awe as Jess pulverized her opponents. She was on a definite roll, playing better, if that was possible, from match to match. Not that I was biased.

At the end of January, I convinced Jess to host a Super Bowl party at her apartment. The Washington Redskins were taking on the Buffalo Bills, neither of whom we particularly cared about. But it was the Super Bowl, so Jess agreed and I invited Holly, Becca, Laura and a handful of other soccer players while Jess invited a couple of friends from the tennis team. Only Becca declined the invite—she wasn’t into “ritualized male violence,”