The Art of Losing Yourself (9 page)

C
ARMEN

I followed Natalie past the exuberant student section of the Bay Breeze football stadium, where a row of shirtless boys, their torsos painted blue and gold, worked on riling up the crowd. We climbed the aluminum bleachers to a spot where we never sat—far upper left, away from the rest of the coaches’ wives and booster moms. Usually we sat with them in the middle, but not tonight. Tonight, I hadn’t even planned on coming. Not with that video circulating. But then Natalie showed up on my doorstep and forced me out of hiding.

Her husband coached with Ben. That’s how we met—four years ago when Brandon took the job as defense coach so Ben could be promoted to head varsity. At the time, Brandon and Natalie had been new to Bay Breeze, Yankee transplants from Minnesota who still to this day elongated their
o
’s. Natalie and I started off making small talk at banquets and team dinners and Friday-night games, which led to double dates, which led to us inviting them to church, which led to Natalie and me attending women’s ministry events together, then hanging out all on our own.

When we first met, Natalie had been slightly overweight—a tired mom with three young children underfoot and a preteen in the throes of puberty. Then she saw a picture of herself on Facebook, looking, in her own words, “run-down and fat.” She decided to join a gym and became one of CrossFit’s biggest advocates. Her transformation had been something to behold.

“Everyone’s staring,” I mumbled, pulling the brim of my hat down lower.

“Nobody is staring,” Natalie said, ushering Reese and Lainey up the stairs in front of her. “And if anyone says anything, make a joke. Trust me, the less embarrassed you act about it, the sooner everyone will move on to something else.”

When we reached our little corner, she pulled out a few Barbie dolls for Lainey and handed Reese her iPhone. He was the youngest of her brood and the spitting image of his mother, only in little-boy form.

I squeezed in closest to the railing and tweaked Reese’s knee. “How’s kindergarten?”

He scrunched up his nose and gave me the universal hand signal for so-so. I laughed while he returned to his game.

Natalie stood on her tiptoes, craning her neck so she could look over the crowd toward the field. Her third-grader, Mason, leaned against the fence with a few of his buddies, finagling miniature footballs from one of the cheerleaders while the rest turned cartwheels and backflips on the track. As if sensing his mother’s stare, Mason turned around and looked up into the bleachers. Natalie pointed to her eyes, which were crazy wide, then pointed to her son. He gave her a solemn nod. This was the first time Natalie had let him run around with his friends during the game. She’d told him at least three times in the van that if he thought twice about going under the bleachers or didn’t check in every quarter, he’d spend the rest of football season playing Barbie dolls with Lainey.

Natalie was a good mom.

“He’s so grown up,” I said.

“Just don’t let him hear you say it.” Her attention moved to the student section, where one of the blue-painted boys flirted with Samantha, her oldest, officially a freshman in high school. Natalie and Brandon had done things the “hard” way. Pregnancy first, marriage second. It seemed to work for them.

“How long is Gracie staying?” Natalie asked.

Earlier today over the phone, I’d filled her in on the past forty-eight hours of my life. I started with my sign demolition in the Toys R Us parking lot and moved on to Gracie, the video, my forced leave of absence, the panic attacks I had whenever my phone rang—because what if it was the social worker calling?—Aunt Ingrid’s disturbing fit, my crazy idea regarding The Treasure Chest, and the four-hundred-dollar bumper replacement.

“I’m not sure.” I looked at Reese and Lainey in their own respective worlds, healthy, well-adjusted children because they had a mom and a dad who loved them. Gracie didn’t have that. And as much as I wanted to rail against our mother for being so pathetically lousy at motherhood, I couldn’t. Because that would mean I’d have to make an honest assessment of myself and sisterhood, and one thing had become glaringly clear over the course of the day. I’d been a giant failure in the sisterhood department. “Indefinitely, I guess.”

“And Ben’s okay with that?”

“He says he is.”

“Brandon would have a cow. He doesn’t even like having my parents at the house for a long weekend. I tell you what, that man’s spiritual gifting is not hospitality.”

“Ben doesn’t know about the video. Or my job. Or my plans for The Treasure Chest.”

Natalie raised her eyebrows in that knowing way of hers.

“I didn’t want to unload it on him before the game.” I would not be responsible for distracting my husband before the first game of the season.

“You don’t think he already knows about the video?” Natalie asked.

“If he does, he hasn’t said anything to me.” Ben wasn’t on social media, but his students were. Did my husband already know? And did that knowing bring him the same sense of dread it brought me? My attention wandered to the field, where Ben ran the offense through a series of pregame drills. He wore his royal-blue Sting Rays polo and his most serious game face. I really needed them to win tonight. Talking to him about these things would be much easier in the wake of victory.

The Sting Rays lost ten to fourteen. The opposing team and their fans went ballistic, jumping and cheering and hugging as if they’d won the Super Bowl. Our side of the stadium seemed to be in shock. Florida’s 4A state champions had started the season with a loss to an unrated, mediocre team—on their home field, no less.

Natalie collected her two olders and we filed out into the parking lot, surrounded by grumbles that were all a different version of the same.

“They were overconfident.”

“Every single one of them looked lost out there.”

“They had their heads up their you-know-whats.”

“Maybe this will be a much-needed wake-up call.”

I found Ben’s car, which he’d parked near the door where the players and coaches exited, and leaned against the hood. The night was muggy and extra thick with mosquitoes. High up above, mayflies and moths swarmed the lights.
Normally, Brandon and Ben and the other coaches would swing by Jake’s Bar and Grill for a beer and I’d go home and crash. Tonight, however, we needed to talk.

The players began filing out, somber faced and saggy shouldered. They met moms and buddies and girlfriends who wrapped them in hugs or slapped them on the back or said things like, “Better now than later.”

The coaches exited last.

Brandon headed to his family-laden van idling nearby, where Natalie stood outside. He wrapped his beefy arms around her waist and buried his face in the crook of her neck. I looked away from the gesture to Ben, who walked toward me with his thumb tucked beneath the strap of his bag, the glow of the stadium lights casting shadows along his jaw line. The idea of slipping my arms around his neck like Natalie had done with Brandon felt about as foreign as my father’s astronomy books.

I wiped my sweaty palms on the back of my jean shorts. “Rough game.”

“Worse than rough.”

“Maybe this will give them a little kick in the butt.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He dragged his hands down the length of his face and released a long, drawn-out sigh. When his fingers no longer obstructed his view, his eyes flicked toward the top of my head. “Cute hat.”

I gave the bill a self-conscious adjustment and mumbled a “thank you.” I didn’t typically wear hats, but I also didn’t typically try to disguise myself from the public. “Are you going out with the guys?”

“Not tonight.”

There was a moment of uncertain silence, and then…

“Do you want to grab a bite?”

“We need to talk.”

We spoke at the same time.

And as soon as I processed Ben’s words, I wished I could take mine back.

“About anything in particular?” he asked.

Yes
. But what we
needed
to talk about and what I
wanted
to talk about were two different things. I didn’t want to bring up the video. Everything in me wanted to push it under the rug and hope Ben never heard about it. That, however, was impossible. I scanned the parking lot. Brandon and Natalie had
already driven away. Most of the players had left. Nobody felt like loitering tonight. Me neither, but Ben was waiting, and if I didn’t get it out now, I never would. “Did you hear anything about a video today?”

Judging by the way his eyebrows knitted together, I took that as a no.

“When I hit the sign yesterday, somebody captured it on their phone”—I looked down at my feet—“and posted the video on Facebook. A lot of people have seen it.”

“Define a lot.”

“Enough that my producer asked me to take a few weeks off work.”

“Because you ran into a sign?”

“Because I reversed the car and ran back over the sign.”

I waited for his reaction, wondering what it would be. Did he realize that my mistake could jeopardize all of the hard work we’d put into this adoption—the sweat and the tears and the financial stress? Did his heart thud with dread at the thought of our social worker being among one of the viewers?

Ben pushed out a breath. “Well, I guess this will give you a chance to spend more time with Gracie.”

“Speaking of that…”

He cocked his head.

“There’s something I’d like Gracie and me to do together.”

“Like?”

“Fix up The Treasure Chest.”

His countenance darkened. “I thought we talked about this.”

“Ben, if I don’t do something, the property will be purchased and the motel will be razed. I know you think that’s inevitable, but I don’t.” And I couldn’t let it happen. Aunt Ingrid said so herself. Some things were worth fighting for. The Treasure Chest was one of those things. “With this forced leave of absence, I’ll have the time.”

“The motel is going to take a lot longer than a few weeks to fix up. And what makes you think Gracie will even want to help?”

“There’s a reason she went there. The place has to mean something to her.” Not to mention the postcard from Ingrid that she’d kept all these years. I shifted my weight, my resolve strengthening. “I talked to my dad this afternoon. Aunt Ingrid has plenty in savings from Gerald’s inheritance. It took a
little convincing, but he agreed that there was nothing more Ingrid would want to spend her money on than this. It won’t cost us anything.”