Field of Schemes (10 page)

I smiled after my fifth lap, only to say hello, really. He winked back.

Maybe he was single after all. After all
, I didn’t see a ring on his finger.

This man was a chocolate truffle cake with a thick coat of melted caramel holding petals of shaved chocolate onto the outside. I thought better of licking him, though it wasn’t as easy to control the impulse as one might think. This group had its own resident Dick who was holding court, telling parents about what changes the team would be making. I heard snippets, something about fitness training. He said parents would have to stick around for practice this year, an idea that was met with a collective groan. I couldn’t just stop and join a conversation among the veteran parents, could I? God, that father was sexy.

Finally, Preston blew his whistle and motioned for parents to come to him in the center of the field. I draped my arms around Rachel’s sweaty body. “How’d it go?” I whispered.

“It was harder today,” she whispered back.

“I want to thank everyone for coming out today,” he began. “All of you girls should be congratulated for your efforts.”
Rachel didn’t want to be congratulated for her efforts. She wanted to be congratulated for making the team.
“We have some very tough decisions to make.” The other coaches all nodded in agreement. “Every girl showed something special out here today. We’re going to ask all of the girls to come back for a final look on Monday. This is different than what we typically do, but there’s a lot of talent out here, and we need to look at all of them again because they were all terrific.”

Rachel looked at me, beaming.

This is
not
good!
Thankfully, she could not read my facial expression or see the thought bubble over my head calculating the odds. Forty girls were being considered for fifteen spots on two teams. There were thirty spots, which meant there was a twenty-five percent chance that she wouldn’t make either the top or second team. The fact that they couldn’t easily eliminate one of the girls here today was not a good thing. All Rachel heard was that she was good. It would take her a few minutes to figure out that Preston just gave the identical compliment to thirty-nine other girls.

“Hey, wait a—” Rachel started before I nudged her. She was quicker than I’d given her credit for.
Don’t say anything. It’s minus two points for being a pain in the ass.

Thankfully, no one heard Rachel because a parent raised his finger and began speaking. “Monday is the Hot Shots tryouts,” she said. “If you’ve already seen our girls twice now, do we still need to come back Monday?”

“Good question, Jessica,” Preston said. The exchange had a planted-question feeling to it. He definitely wanted this issue brought up. “If you want your daughter to play for us, bring her here Monday. If you want to play for Hot Shots, go to their tryout. Every year, we have parents who bring their kids to three or four different clubs, and it causes a lot of problems for us.” This elicited some grumbling from parents. I plastered a
sounds fair
expression on my face and said nothing. “This year, we’re going to ask the girls to sign a letter of intent that says if we offer you a spot on the team, you will accept it.”

Dick whispered to Bobby, “Sign the fucker then do what you want.”

Preston continued. “And to make sure parents are dealing straight with us, we’re sending some of our board members to other clubs to see who else is showing up to those.”

“No way, man,” said Gangsta Dad. “
Sivious?
”

“That’s such an invasion of our privacy,” snapped Whole Foods Mom, the one who didn’t care for our resident trophy bride. “What next, wiretapping?”

“Let’s not be dramatic, Nancy,” Preston said.
So far, he’s addressed two mothers by name. I wonder if he remembered my name. I should ask a question.
I couldn’t contain my grin as I saw Sexy Dad smiling at me. I even liked his shoes, black leather slip-ons with rubber soles. They were reminiscent of Hush Puppies, which you had to be mighty cute to get away with. Wearing nerd shoes was a bold display of confidence, a way of telling the world, “I don’t need to depend on a pair of shoes to make me good looking.”

Preston held his hands out, motioning for us to take it down a notch. “Like I said, there are parents who take their kids to every club in town. We want to know who’s committed to Kix and who’s playing the field.”

Nancy snickered. She leaned in toward me and whispered, “I think he just called us soccer sluts.”

“So yer sayin’ that if we take our girls to other clubs, yer gonna blackball ’em?” Dick asked.

“I wouldn’t call it
black
balling them,” Preston defended.

“Grayballing?” asked Bobby.

None of the coaches was smiling, least of all a Chinese woman the size of a cocktail nut. She raised her brow and scanned the parents so invasively that I felt like I was being frisked at the airport. She clipped, “What Preston is saying is that it won’t be a deal-breaker, but it will not win them any points here.”

After ten minutes, the parent questions were becoming redundant and Preston looked at his watch. I understood the desire to keep asking the same question until we got answers we liked better. For one, it kept him from walking away and leaving us clueless for an entire weekend. There was also the off chance that he might accidentally tip his hand and give us the insight we so desperately craved. Thankfully, others were asking the same questions I would have, or I might have opened my mouth and started begging them to take Rachel on the team. Either team, top or second!

As parents started dispersing, I told Rachel I wanted to speak privately with Preston. After all, he recruited her. He owed me at least a minute of his time and some feedback, didn’t he? “Can you hang out on your own for a few minutes?” I asked Rachel.

“Can I get a ride home with Kelly?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied. “Is Darcy down in the lot?”

“Her dad’s here,” she told me. I hesitated for a moment, slightly uneasy with the fact that I still hadn’t met the elusive Ron Greer, but if he was Darcy’s husband, surely it would be okay to let Rachel drive two miles with him.

“Let me ask him if it would be okay,” I said.

“Mom, he already invited me over for dinner. I’m sure a ride home’s no problem.”

I glanced at the growing line waiting to talk to Preston and agreed. I was just being overprotective. Though Darcy gave him a failing grade as a husband, she had nothing but praise for his parenting. “Rachel, I might not be home for a while,” I said, gesturing to the size of the line. “If you want to eat dinner with the Greers, go ahead.”

“Thanks, Mom!” she shouted, Kelly now by her side as they walked down the stairs of Diablo Field. Turning to me, she mouthed,
Find out!

I stood in line for thirty-five minutes before I even came close to Preston. I listened as he advised the four parents ahead of me. He seemed pretty forthcoming, checking his notes on every player. “Cressida’s got speed, but she shies away from the ball,” he told the mother. “She needs to be more aggressive and attack the ball more. We need to see her killer instinct.”

“She’s eleven,” whimpered the mother.

The next father explained that his daughter had a tough season. “Things weren’t easy for Brianna. I’m not making excuses, but I want you to take it into account,” the father said. “She had a very hard year.”

Poor kid,
I thought. I hoped these coaches gave this girl a break. I mean, she obviously dealt with some serious issues at home or at school or at—

“I mean, you know how it is, Preston,” the father said, hoping to ally the recruiter. “You played halfback, but you can imagine how rough it is on a keeper without a good sweeper.”
What? That’s their big tragedy? They lost their cleaning lady?
“You try and keep the ball out of the net with the weak defense we had last season. I promise, you get a decent sweeper in there and she won’t let one or two goals go by all season.”

Another father listened intently as Preston scolded him for not working with his daughter on her foot skills. “John, she looks exactly the same as she did at the end of State Cup. Who’d she train with in the off season?”

The father shook his head apologetically. “She needed a break from soccer,” he explained. “They made it so far in State Cup, she played ten months straight without a rest. She’s eleven, Preston. She needed a break.”

“And now she may get one,” Preston said.

“What are you saying? Are you cutting Taylor?”

“She may need a year of development on the second team.”

The father took this news surprisingly well. “She’ll be on a team, though, right? If not the top team then the B-team?”

“Yeah,” Preston said. “We saw a lot of great players out here today. Our blue team’s going to be strong.”

Blue team?

“Thanks, man,” the father said. “Blue team, white team, I really don’t care. I just need to know she’s on a team.”

“John, she’s been with us since she was seven. We’d never let Taylor go. Work on her foot skills this year. Don’t get complacent with her.”

“You got it,” John said, walking away relieved.

I wondered if Preston got somewhat of a charge from having so much power over parents. Could he and his foreign colleagues help laughing at the spoiled American parents whose greatest challenge was that their daughters might be cut from a soccer team?

“Hi Mrs. Emmett,” Preston said when it was my turn to talk to him.

“You can call me Claire.”

He didn’t. Instead he just looked at me for a few seconds and asked, “What can I do for you?”

What can he do for me? What the hell does he think he can do for me, bring me a Happy Meal with a Coke? I need information about Rachel!

“I wanted to see if I could get an idea of Rachel’s standing.”

He flipped through several sheets of paper until he found Rachel’s page. I saw diagrams jotted down, notes in several different scripts and a series of numbers. I wanted to grab the clipboard from Preston’s hand and bring it home to Darcy so we could pore over it all night. “Rachel is very talented,” he said. “She’s on the bubble for the white team, so if she doesn’t make it, she’ll definitely play blue.”

“What bubble?” I asked, imagining Glenda the Good Witch of the North floating down into Munchkin Land.

“I mean it could go either way,” he said. “Like I said, she’ll make one of the teams.”

“I see,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. “What can she do to improve her chances?” I remembered my first conversation with Darcy, and wondered if Preston thought I was propositioning him.

“Some things she won’t be able to get past, like having never played club soccer before. I’ve got to be honest, it’s a drawback. What we need to see from the late-starters is that they are fast learners. If Gunther thinks she’s smart and can catch up, it’ll help Rachel’s chances a lot.”

Gunther? Who the hell is Gunther?
I didn’t want to ask who Gunther was for fear it would make me look like a stupid mother who passed along her stupid genes to her stupid daughter.

“That makes complete sense,” I said, showcasing my calm, intelligent nature. “Should I bring her report card for Gunther when we come back on Monday?” Preston shook his head and glanced at his clipboard. I was losing his interest. “Stanford-Binet IQ test?” He shook again.

“Nah, a good coach will be able to assess her intelligence by watching her play. Ultimately the choice is his, so he’s the one to impress.”

“Listen,” I whispered desperately, causing Preston to look at me with concern. “Rachel wants this more than anything she’s ever wanted in her life. She just lost her father and we’re new to Santa Bella. She tells me that she thinks her dead father watches her play soccer and that it’s the only time she feels complete. Making the white team means the world to her, so if you could give me any advice, anything at all that would help her, I would greatly appreciate it.”

I couldn’t believe it. I played the death card. Steve would have been so proud. He was quite annoyed with me when I self-righteously told him that I would never exploit his death to gain political capital. “Don’t be so high and mighty, Claire. Everyone in this world uses what they’ve got to get ahead,” he said. “If you’ve got a dead husband, use it for all it’s worth.” He softened and gave me a slight nudge. “Come on, Claire. I want to feel like I’m helping you even when I’m gone. I’m telling you, it’ll work like a charm. People will feel sorry for you and give you whatever you want just to get you to stop talking.”

Steve was right. Preston held his hands up in what looked like a gesture of surrender. He came closer to me and whispered, “Okay, you seem like a nice lady and Rachel’s a good kid. Gunther played for the German National Team and is gung-ho on Germany, but says Americans don’t know anything about his country. He says that all Americans know about Germany is the Nazis. If you showed a little love for Germany, I’m sure he would think you were very intelligent for it.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes,” Preston said.