Field of Schemes (39 page)

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

“I’m mad as hell at Mimi,” he said to my great relief.

I looked at the phone and smiled. “Dave, you’re my best friend. I mean it. It’s not just the drugs talking.”

That evening I had the conversation I was dreading. Rachel sat at the table, flipping through
Garb
with an expression of horror on her face. When she saw me, she launched, “Do you have any idea what women do to get rid of those blue veins on their legs?!”

“Rachel, we need to talk,” I began. Knowing what I did about Mimi’s questionable ethics, there was no way I could have my daughter play for her renegade team. She turned the girls into fat little drug addicts, had an affair with a player’s father and fired the coach in a subversive takeover. What good could come of Rachel’s involvement with this woman? I gave Rachel the PG-rated version of the story and hoped that she would understand. I knew she would be disappointed, but I prayed she’d take it in stride. And truth be told, I was terrified that she would be angry with me. I could stand Mimi’s hatred, Dick’s animosity and Preston’s indifference, but I was truly frightened that Rachel would despise me for this. I realize that all parents of adolescents have moments when their kids think they’re ogres. In fact, it’s probably a promising sign that I’m doing something right. Still, I feared that this would be the point of no return—the moment our relationship began to unravel. “So the bottom line is that I really can’t let you go to State Cup with Mimi’s break-off team,” I concluded.

“You’re joking, right?!”

“No, I’m not, Rachel. I wish there was a way for you to go to State Cup, but under the circumstances, our only option is to sit out.”

She stood enraged. “Why is that the only option?! Another option is going with Mimi like everyone else. This is State Cup, Mom. I don’t think you understand what a big deal it is.”

“Rachel, I have been hearing about State Cup since before tryouts last year. I get it. What you don’t get is that I’m not looking to guide you through one soccer season. I’m in this for life, and I can’t condone what Mimi did to Gunther. If I let you go with her, I’m saying what she did was okay, and it’s not.”

“Mom!!!” Rachel screamed. “I know she can sometimes be bossy, but she really knows what she’s doing. She played in—”

“I know, Rachel. I think we’re all well aware that Mimi played soccer in college.”

“You’re jealous of her! You don’t want me to go because you hate her. That’s so unfair!”

“Rachel, I am not jealous of Mimi Shasta!”
Okay, maybe a little.
“I wish I could let you go, but—”

“You can! All you have to do is say, ‘Rachel, go to State Cup.’ That’s all. No other parents are making a big deal of this. Why do you have to be the nice police about this?!”

My tone and intensity escalated. “It’s not about being nice, Rachel. It’s about doing what’s right. Where is your loyalty to your coach? The coach who took a chance on a rookie! The coach who taught you everything you know! Mimi just fired that coach—by email! She took a secret vote and ousted him. She put painkillers in your cookies! This is who you want to play for?!”

“Maybe she just didn’t want us to be sore after practice,” Rachel shouted. “I don’t care who I play for, I just want to play.”

“You know what, Rachel? I knew this was going to be an unpopular decision, but I’m sticking to it because I know it’s the right thing to do. You’re twelve. You don’t get a say in every decision, even if it involves you!”

“I can do what I want! You can’t control me!” Rachel screamed before trotting up the stairs.

Shouting at her back, I shouted, “If you make your choices simply to defy me, I
am
controlling you, Rachel!” The door slammed.
Well, that went swimmingly.

I decided to give Rachel some time to cool off before I tried to make peace. I dialed Darcy’s house, checking first to see that Ron’s car was gone. “Darcy?” I asked of the faint voice that answered the phone. “How are you doing?”

“Meh, been better,” she said with the tiniest laugh.

“Did you say anything?”

“Not yet,” Darcy said. “I need to figure out what I’m doing first, and if Ron knows that I know, it’ll complicate things. Better to just get through the holidays letting him think everything is normal.”

“What do you mean, it’ll complicate things?”

“Claire, he’ll start hiding money so I can’t get it in a divorce.”

“So, that’s what you’ve decided?” Before I thought it through, I asked, “Do you really think he’d hide money from you?”

This annoyed Darcy. “Gee, Claire, I don’t know. He’s been hiding his dick in the team manager all season. Speaking of that crazy bitch, did you get her last email? Can you believe she fired Gunther?”

I couldn’t believe that in the height of her marital crisis, she was still concerned about soccer politics. “There’s no way I’m letting her take Kelly to State Cup,” she said.

“I’m not letting her take Rachel either. You’re never going to believe what I found out,” I said. Darcy didn’t seem all that shocked when I told her about the Girl Power bars. In fact, she gave the faintest acknowledgment of it and moved on to ask if I’d spoken with anyone else from the team. I told her I hadn’t.

“Do you have time this morning?” she asked.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s get on the phone and see just how much support Mimi really has. I’ll bet if we refused to let our daughters play for Mimi, we could get Nancy on board with that. Let me talk to Gia and Tom and see where they stand. I’ll call the Psycho Dads and you talk to the Normals and the Italian and let’s touch base this afternoon. Maybe we can undo this takeover.”

“Do you think we can?”

Sounding energized, Darcy said, “Claire, I can’t turn back the clock on the affair Ron had with her, but I can mess up her stupid plan to take over the world of girls’ soccer.” I smiled. “I’ll tell you this, Claire, I’d like to take a fist full of medals and stick them straight up her ass!”

“Then so you shall, my friend,” I said.

Hours later, Rachel still had not come out of her room, answering my knocks only with, “Go away!” It was a shame she had to be such a snot considering she was missing out on news that she would quite like. As it turned out, all three Katies’ parents, Deborah’s parents and Sapphire’s parents had voted not to overthrow Gunther, which meant Mimi only had the support of the Psycho Dads, Ron, Giovanna’s father and, of course, herself. Paulo put an older cousin of Giovanna’s on the telephone, who explained that he spoke English “more good than Uncle Paulo.” I explained the situation as I heard young Gianni translate for his uncle. Paulo sounded flustered and began repeating the word “no.” “My uncle he is very sorry he did not understand what the lady saying. He no want to get a new coach than Gunther.”

“Really?! That’s wonderful news. Grazie, molto grazie,” I said.

As it turned out, Mimi never bothered to call Violet’s parents, but when I called, Ray and Leesha said that they would vote however I thought they should. “I never trusted that rich bitch with her fancy-ass house,” Raymond said.

“You didn’t trust me either,” I reminded him.

“Don’t make a proud man say he’s sorry, Claire.”

“I think you just did,” I teased.

“Good ’nuff then. Let’s do to this team what you did to that lung dinner.”

By the next morning, Darcy and I had chipped away at Mimi’s team until it was only Cara, Cayenne, Tandy, Mariah, Kylie and Savannah. Oh, and of course, Sissy. There was a part of me that hated tearing the team down the middle like this, but as they say in kindergarten, she started it. The larger part of me knew that Darcy and I were doing the right thing. Mimi had been operating like this throughout her entire life, and it was high time someone put a stop to it.

After the New Year, Gunther returned to Santa Bella and seven phone messages from me. “We’ve got half the team back, and Preston said we could borrow players from the B-team for State Cup,” I said in my fourth message. When he finally called me back and I filled him in on Mimi’s plan, he laughed with more vitality than I’d ever heard.

“This woman is cuckoo,” Gunther said. “All season she tell me girls are fat, and now you say she feeding them fat food? Then she fire me?”

“Yeah, um, I know, it’s hard to believe.”

A week before State Cup, Darcy still hadn’t told Ron that she knew about his affair with Mimi. As far as he knew, he was happily married, and his daughter would be playing on his girlfriend’s team at the state championship. Darcy told me she’d been doing some digging and, with what she discovered, there was no way Ron would stop her from switching Kelly’s allegiance. “Trust me on this one, Claire. Ron’s going to be extremely cooperative with me next week, and my lawyer the week after that,” she said coyly, still absolutely refusing to let me in on her secret. “I promise everything will become very clear next weekend.”

With Mimi now coaching the other team, I volunteered to take over as manager for what was left of Gunther’s team. Strangely enough, it was in the few weeks that I stood in as team manager that I gained appreciation for Mimi’s contribution. Sure, she was a vicious, lying, cheating scoundrel. But she did handle quite a bit of paperwork for the team. I had no idea how many forms, phone calls, and emails this job entailed. Still, all things considered, I wasn’t about to drop her a thank-you note.

Because my mother had called in a few favors in the magazine world, several of my designs were scheduled to appear in the glossy pages of women’s monthlies in the spring. This was just the kick in the ass I needed to get back to work. Claire Emmett Designs was my mother’s first true gift to me and was scheduled to officially open its doors in February. Mother had bought me clothing and jewelry throughout my life, but in spoon-feeding my upstart business to me, it was the first time she had really thought about who I was and what I needed most at that point in my life. I found a great space that had room for about twenty workstations in the back where people could string beads. And there was a small shop in the front—just large enough to hold a few designs and tiny enough to feel like a chic boutique. Adding to the character of the shop would be my ritzy sales clerk, Lil, who volunteered to work for me once a week. Afterward, she’d have dinner and take the train home the next morning. It would be good to have her around on a regular basis again.