Field of Schemes (6 page)

That evening, as we dined together over candlelight at a cozy restaurant with a view of the city, Rachel told me she had the best Christmas ever. “You did?” I asked, hoping she’d elaborate.

“Yeah, totally,” Rachel replied as she ate her last bite of chocolate crepe.

“Me too,” I said.

Because we shared a hotel room, I had the chance to watch her sleep more than I did at home. I loved the smoothness of her fully relaxed face and wondered why I didn’t stop into her room more often and look at her after she’d drifted off. Jetting off to Paris together gave me the chance to rediscover Rachel in a way that I couldn’t—or hadn’t—at home. There was always homework or email or the telephone. Getting away let us escape mundane distractions that interrupt intimacy.

As we were pulling into our driveway from the airport, I saw Darcy standing on a ladder, removing the holiday lights from her house. I’d changed my mind about her. I enjoyed her frenetic energy when we chatted, which was now a few times a week. Whenever we’d see each other, we got going for at least an hour. She had a more raw honesty and vulnerability than many of the other mothers I’d met. While so many mothers spewed clichés about the wonder of motherhood, Darcy seemed unafraid to admit she found it to be a grind sometimes. I remember the exact moment I decided she was going to be a good friend. About a week after our first discussion about club soccer, I ran into Darcy at the gas station, fueling her trash-filled minivan. Veronica, her six-year-old, was screaming about Kelly not sharing her juice with her. Then Kelly whined that she didn’t want her little sister’s “gross, snotty mouth” on her drink because she didn’t want to catch her cold. Darcy rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Ya know how everyone says these years go by so fast?” Darcy asked me. Not waiting, she finished, “Today I feel like, meh, it could go faster.”

Darcy waved from her ladder and shouted, “Can you believe I have to do this? Chivalry is definitely dead.” I smiled and rolled down my window to ask if she needed help. “Welcome home. How was Paree? Come by and tell me everything. I’m alone again, naturally,” she said with a pained grin.

A while back, Darcy complained that her husband’s work hours were killing their marriage. He was a surgeon and worked more hours than anyone with a scalpel should. Still, she said, Ron always made time to be at Kelly’s soccer games. He even coached Veronica’s rec team so she’d be ready for club when she turned seven. It wasn’t that Ron worked too many hours to have an outside life. It’s just that he filled it with everything except Darcy. She once confessed that she fantasized about divorcing Ron and moving to the city to help her brother Ira run his textile business in L.A.’s Garment District. “I find the hustle and bustle of it energizing,” she told me. She would. I went there exactly once with my mother and Kathy on a mission for
Garb
and got vertigo. “When Ronnie graduates high school, I’d love to go back to work,” she said. “I was good at it. Damn good. Ira always tells me when I’m ready to leave this bum, he wants me back.”

I wondered why Darcy had to leave Ron in order to go back to work, but didn’t ask. Darcy was a smart woman. I didn’t need to point out to her that she could do both. Plus, who was I to talk? When Steve took his medical leave, I let my website design business completely fall by the wayside. The Bagel Bastard wasn’t unique in the toll he took on my reserves. Listening to small business owners talk about how they needed graphics that communicated their “corporate synergy” and “client-centeredness” seemed so trivial compared to what we were going through. As I listened to the manager of a podiatry office drone on about foot pronation, I dug my fingernails into my thumb just so I could experience a different type of pain. The last contract I had was for a yoga studio where the business manager kept telling me how sensitive they were to the individual needs of their clients. Hoping she would understand when I explained that I needed to cut short our forty-five-minute conversation in order to get Steve to chemotherapy, she replied, “Oh, right, that reminds me, we need to include info on our cancer rehabilitation program on the website. The classes are so healing.”

When Steve got sick, we were in the process of upgrading our life insurance policies and changing providers, so we hadn’t yet canceled our lesser one. He joked that having two life insurance policies would certainly cause him to go into remission. As time went on, he became more solemn in his gratitude of our timing. With two life insurance policies paying me upon his death, I would never have to work again. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine wanting to. I even gave up my labor of love, jewelry design. Necklaces and earrings seemed so irrelevant when our family was dissolving.

“Why don’t you come over to our place?” I shouted to Darcy through my car window. “I want to get unpacked and download our photos. Bring the kids, we’ll order pizza and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I hate you for being able to eat pizza,” Darcy said. “How’s six o’clock?”

“Perfect,” I replied.

Many women hated me for being able to eat pizza, but the truth of the matter was that I had the sort of body that was only appreciated by hungry women and clothing designers. I never drew too many cat calls from construction sites, just a few unsolicited suggestions that I eat a burger.

Opening the door was a challenge because our mail came through a slot in the front. As I scanned the pile, I saw Christmas cards from Mom and Blake and from Kathy, George and their girls. Friends, thinking of us during the holidays. Steve’s firm. My accountant. I stopped suddenly when I saw Lil’s handwriting.

At some point I was going to have to talk to her. I hated myself for returning her phone calls only when I knew she’d be out, but I feared that as soon as I heard her voice, I’d start crying and might never stop. In fact, that’s exactly the reaction I had every time we tried to visit after Steve died. Every time I looked at her face, I saw his, which was unbearable. I sobbed after she went home and until I fell asleep, then woke up the next morning with the vague sense that something was dreadfully wrong. This luxury lasted a few seconds before I remembered he had died, and began another day of mourning. Six months ago, I decided that I’d return Lil’s phone call on the afternoon she regularly volunteered at Children’s Hospital. It seemed like a good way to delay talking to her for a while, but it became a habit. I called when I knew she was at church, playing bridge and getting her hair set. I detested my selfishness, avoiding this woman who’d been so good to me over the years. And worse, keeping her apart from her granddaughter—and Rachel from her grandmother. Knowing Lil, there would be a message on the answering machine too. It would probably say the same thing it always did: “It’s Lil, calling to send my love. Please get back to me when you’re ready.” She knew I was avoiding her. I could never fool Lil, which was what made her simultaneously wonderful and terrifying.

Lil’s mistake was giving me the out. I almost wish she demanded that I call her, telling me how horrible and rude I was being. I wish she reminded me of how much I owed her, but that wasn’t her style these days. When Steve and I were first married, and I had postpartum depression, Lil took charge and physically took me to a doctor. She insisted on babysitting twice a week and enrolled me in a jewelry-making class in Santa Monica, suggesting I take myself out to lunch afterward so I could see the faces of Los Angeles. After Steve died, she didn’t have that kind of fight anymore. She left a series of weak messages telling me that I could call her when I was ready. God, I was awful for not calling this woman. Clearly she needed to connect with us and yet I could not face her.

January turned into February and Rachel and I were kept rapt in the excitement of club soccer through Darcy’s and Kelly’s tales from the California State Cup. Parked in their driveway was their silver minivan with windows painted with white letters. “Go Kelly #3!” was the largest proclamation. Next was “Kix Girls Rock State Cup” with smaller script letters below that listed the names and jersey numbers of the team.

I found myself sucked into the drama as if Rachel’s curiosity were contagious. Every time we saw the minivan pull into the Greers’ driveway, Rachel asked if she could run over and find out how the team did. I told her to give the family an hour to unpack and settle in. Then I’d end up going over too, listening to Darcy’s take on the weekend while Kelly offered Rachel a play-by-play of the games. Ron had always disappeared by then, and Darcy was starved for the good audience she had in me. After the girls went upstairs to Kelly’s room, Darcy regaled me with tawdry gossip about the bad behavior of parents at games. Making sure I wasn’t scared off by this, she always prefaced, “This is the minority, Claire. Most people are completely normal, but they’re no fun to talk about.”

“Okay,” I said, assuring her that she wouldn’t scare me away from taking Rachel to soccer tryouts.

“So anyway,” Darcy smiled with delight, “one of the Conquistadors board members got in huge trouble with our regional league for selling the naming rights for their annual tournament.”

“Will you sit down?” I scolded. “You’re like a bee!”

“If I don’t do this now—” she began to defend her sweeping.

“What, the crumbs will settle in and stain? Sit. Sit.”

Darcy obliged. “Okay, so their attorney was able to get them out of the contract, but still, it was a huge ordeal for a few days. Apparently the guy penned a deal with Taco Bell. He said he didn’t see the harm since it went with their Latin name. The board said that associating an athletic event with fart-inducing fast food was not the image they were trying to project.”

I laughed. “That’s good of them, I guess.”

“Are you kidding? Turf just signed a deal with Sizzler and Hot Shots is in negotiations with Pepsi. What’s the difference?” Darcy asked. “The problem was that he did this all on his own, without discussing it with the board. This is all about bruised egos and pride. I guarantee you that if this guy went to the board, we’d be playing in the Fart Cup next spring.”

Darcy said California was a testing ground for corporate sponsorship of kids’ sports, but that in ten years it would be the norm. Thirty years ago, stadiums bearing the name of disposable razors, florists and Post-it Notes were unheard of. College bowl games weren’t sponsored by Tostitos, FedEx and Citibank. Now, no one thinks twice about it. Darcy predicted that by the time our kids played high school soccer, they’d wear jerseys decked out with logos from everything from fast food restaurants to cell phone carriers and play in stadiums built by Children’s Motrin.

In late February, Kelly’s team lost in the “sweet sixteen” weekend of the still-unbranded California State Cup. There was talk of foul play and bracket reconfiguration, the athletic equivalent of political gerrymandering. Darcy also complained that Turf had a goalkeeper who looked no less than sixteen, but when she complained to Kelly’s team manager, she was immediately hushed because the Kix squad had snuck on a thirteen-year-old ringer using a doctored birth certificate. Darcy also cracked me up with her imitation of the Patriots’ team manager choosing field side. Apparently the home team gets to choose the side of the field the girls play on while the visiting team selects which of their two jersey colors they’ll wear. Waddling around her kitchen, Darcy smacked her lips together like the dumpy Patriots dad, then licked her finger and held it in the air. Imitating his voice, she said, “ ‘The wind’s blowing this way, but the sun’s gonna be in their eyes if we stay on the south side.’ ” I laughed. “Then he looked at his watch, and I know he was trying to figure out how much the sun would move by halftime. It was a big debate among their parents while we all had to stand around with our chairs all folded up until they told us where we could sit.”

“They get to choose where the spectators sit, too?” I said, incredulous.

“We certainly don’t sit on the same side of the field,” she said.