Kate Christie (4 page)

I nodded. “Totally.”

We sat together in the hot, still afternoon, surrounded by Oregon greens and blues. And I did know.

He looked away, finally, to glance at his watch. “Looks like story time with Father Joseph is officially over. Come on. Best get on with the fence trim from hell.”

And that was that. Back to the hot weed whackers and the feel of shredded grass and twigs whipping against our legs, the roar of the small motors and the smell of gasoline disturbing the peaceful afternoon.

Two-person projects like that one were rare. Most jobs were either solitary or called for four or five of us. In the afternoons, I would take off alone on my favorite John Deere mower, Walkman in one pocket of my coveralls, sleeves rolled up so that my farmer tan wouldn’t be too bad, SDU hat worn backward to protect my neck while I mowed. There was something satisfying about trimming the lush summer growth, about making even swaths across a green expanse.

Those days, kicked back on my mower in the summer sun, Melissa Etheridge or Janis Joplin or the Indigo Girls blaring in my ears over the sound of the motor, I almost liked being away from my SDU life. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t quite belong there, either. Most of my friends from school spent their summers leisurely touring Europe or working as an intern in one of their parents’ law offices or financial services firms.

Holly was currently working for a broker friend of her father’s three days a week. The other four days she usually spent at the beach, she told me when she called on my birthday at the end of 2 Kate Christie

June. SDU kids tended to be rich. And white. And Californian.

Have you heard the one about the Oregonian, Californian and Texan who go camping together? The first night out, they’re sitting around a campfire when the Texan pulls out a bottle of tequila. After a couple of swallows, he tosses the bottle into the air, pulls out a six-shooter and neatly shoots the bottle. When the Californian points out that there was still some tequila left in the bottle, the Texan replies, “That’s okay, we have plenty of tequila where I come from.”

Not to be outdone, the Californian whips out a bottle of White Zinfandel, drains it, tosses the bottle into the air and shoots it with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. When the Oregonian gives him an odd look, the Californian says, “That’s okay, we have plenty of wine where I come from.”

So the Oregonian opens a pale ale from a Portland microbrewery. He downs the entire bottle, throws it into the air, shoots the Californian with a 12-gauge shotgun and deftly catches the beer bottle. When the Texan stares at him, horrified, the Oregonian says, “That’s okay, we have plenty of Californians where I come from, but we always recycle.”

Pacific Northwesterners tend not to appreciate the perpetual flow of Californians to the north. Our southern neighbors move to Oregon and Washington in droves, driving up housing prices and changing the local economies and communities. But I loved Holly and Laura in spite of our regional differences. After all, they couldn’t help that they’d been born in the land of greed and honey.

The great thing about summer was that working so many hours made the weeks pass quickly. On the weekends, I occupied myself with my favorite things about being an Oregonian: hiking in the Cascades with a group of friends from high school, reunited for the summer months; camping out on the beach with bonfires and local brew; catching local minor league baseball and A-league soccer games; pub-hopping with our fake IDs.

Summer at home was usually a well-needed dose of normalcy Beautiful Game 2

after the school year in Southern California with its tightly-packed houses, abundant strip malls and unremitting sunshine.

I worked for the Parks that summer through the third week of August. Then I took a week off, sleeping until ten and lying out in my backyard, still working out nearly every night. I’d started my preseason conditioning program in mid-July—running distance, lifting at a nearby gym, practicing sprints on my old high school track. Now I counted the days until preseason, crossing them off one by one on the Far Side wall calendar in my childhood bedroom. Waiting for real life, my soccer life, to begin again.

At last it was time to go back to California. At the end of the month, I packed the Toyota, said goodbye to my family and friends and headed down the coast. My parents had decided I should have a car on campus this year, and I wasn’t arguing. The Tercel might not compare to the Saabs and BMWs and Troopers at SDU, but it was small and red and in good condition. I loved that car.

In Orange County, I stopped to pick up Holly. She’d crashed two cars in high school, so her parents, Bill and Elizabeth, had decided not to give her a car in college. Yet. They said if her grades stayed high, she might get one senior year. Holly’s family lived a block from the ocean in Newport Beach in a huge Mexican villa with a red tile roof. Her parents remind me of the people in that movie,
L.A. Story
, who sit around the dinner table talking about vacation homes and stocks and plastic surgery, then kiss the air near each other’s cheeks before taking their leave in a swirl of lounge pants and low-cut blouses. But they were nice to me because I was a friend of Holly’s, and even managed not to look too askance at the sight of my eight-year-old Toyota in their driveway. I doubted they had any clue I was gay.

Holly had told me once that they referred to me as her outdoorsy friend from Oregon. “How is that friend of yours?”

her mother would ask. “She’s got the rosiest cheeks, that girl.

What is it she does in the summer again? Park ranger, wasn’t it?

And what is it her father does? Works with retarded children?”

Whenever Holly did her impression of her mother, I cracked up. Then again, her family stories often left me snickering. Our 30 Kate Christie

families had met once after a game freshman year. We both stood back and smothered our laughter as our mothers smiled politely and our fathers shook hands and her frat boy, business-major brother tried to find something to talk about with Nate, my ski bum, outdoor recreation-major brother. I think everyone was relieved when we went to dinner with the soccer team and ended up at different tables.

The last Sunday of August, Holly and I loaded her things into my car and drove away from her childhood home, waving to her mother as we headed out. Her father, an attorney, was golfing with colleagues. As we drove down the palm tree-lined street, passing parked Mercedes, BMWs and Lexuses, Holly rolled her window down, stuck her head out and shouted, “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!”

Freed from our families once more, we headed toward SDU

for our junior season, and I felt again that sense of possibility.

Our college soccer careers were half over, but we still had so much ahead of us, so many practices and games and tough wins and hard losses. I couldn’t wait to begin again.

Sunday was moving-in day. Holly and I were in the same dorms as the previous year, only a couple of buildings away from each other. We pulled up in front of hers and started to unload her things. Holly had more clothes than anyone I had ever met.

Whenever she got upset, she went shopping with her father’s credit card. That was the one thing she had in common with her mother, I used to tease her.

Athletes were the only students back on campus this early: men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey, football, volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country, and men’s and women’s tennis. Lugging Holly’s trunk toward the elevator—we would be running plenty of stairs in the stadium during preseason—we passed a tennis player on the front steps. She smiled and nodded at us and we managed mangled “Hi’s,” and I thought suddenly 32 Kate Christie

of Jess Maxwell. She should be back today too. I’d thought of her occasionally over the summer, especially when I watched coverage of the French Open or Wimbledon. Now I wondered when I’d run into her, and, more importantly, if she would be as friendly as she had been the previous spring.

Holly helped me with my room after we’d finished hers, insisting on personally unpacking my posters and threatening to put them up where she liked. I let her. The year before, my posters had remained rolled up in a corner until after soccer season. I’d had a heck of a time getting them to unroll and stay up. A couple of boxes of clothes had remained in the same corner, unpacked throughout the year, much to Holly’s consternation.

Unlike me, Holly had good decoration sense. When we’d finished, my room actually looked nice, I had to admit. She had hung my Indian print sheet across one wall, filling the room with its warm colors. The other walls were nicely covered with my favorite Matisse print, “The Casbah Gate, 1912, Museo Pushkin,” a couple of Picasso prints, a map of the world, a Nike running poster that featured a woman following a moss-strewn path that I recognized as a trail in Oregon, and a poster of Michael Jordan in silhouette with his arms extended. Jordan was my favorite athlete of all time, even if he did insist on regularly trouncing the Trailblazers. A bookshelf was tucked into a corner, boxes of books just waiting to fill its empty spaces, while a beat-up desk sat to one side of a pair of tall, narrow windows.

The last thing we did was haul my futon and frame up from the basement where I’d stashed them in the spring, once again praising the elevator as it carried us painlessly up to the sixth floor. We pushed the frame up against the wall with the Indian print and dragged the double-sized, extra-thick mattress into place, collapsing together on top of it.

“I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a lot of time here the next couple of weeks,” Holly said, staring at the ceiling.

“I have a feeling you’re right,” I agreed, and sneezed from the dust floating around the room.

“Thanks a lot.” Holly wiped the arm closest to me. “That’s disgusting.”

“Sorry,” I apologized, trying not to laugh. “It snuck up on me.”

Beautiful Game 33

“I think that deserves... a tickling!” She jumped on top of me, attacking my underarms mercilessly.

“No! Stop!” I gasped, trying to throw her off. Finally I managed to hook my leg around hers and tugged. We rolled around on the bed, laughing, until we heard a polite, “A-hem,” at the doorway. We both sat up, looking around quickly.

Jess Maxwell stood there, holding a box with my name and the words “Soccer Stuff” scrawled across one side. She was smiling slightly. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No problem.” I scrambled up off the futon and headed toward the door, mock-glaring at Holly over my shoulder.

“My friend here was just leaving, right, Holl? Don’t you have that special someone waiting for a phone call?” I didn’t want Jess Maxwell thinking that Holly and I were more than friends rolling around on my futon together.

“Oh, yeah. Shit.” Holly jumped up. She was supposed to call Becca, her girlfriend, as soon as she got in. Becca had stayed in San Diego for the summer. They’d seen each other frequently, but the constant commuting between San Diego and L.A. was starting to strain their relationship. “I’ll be right back.”

“By the way, Holly, this is Jess Maxwell,” I added. “Jess, Holly Bishop.”

“Hi,” Jess said with that shy look that always surprised me.

She pushed a strand of dark hair behind one ear. “I’ve seen you around.”

“Same here,” Holly said. “Nice to officially meet you.” She glanced back at me. “Don’t go anywhere without me, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.” She punched me affectionately, smiled at Jess again, and jogged off down the hallway.

“Gotta love jocks,” I said, rubbing my arm. Holly only punched people she liked. Lucky us.

Jess was still standing in the hallway, still holding the box with my name on it. My cleats, shin guards, turf shoes, athletic bag, water bottles, ball and pump were all in there, the first box I’d packed the day before and the last one I’d unloaded today.

“Let me take that,” I said, finally cluing in, and reached for the box. “Where’d you find it, anyway?”

“Out on the front step.” She followed me into the room, 34 Kate Christie

glancing around curiously, and stopped in front of the Matisse poster. “I’ve never seen this one. It’s beautiful.”

I set the box on the floor and wiped my hands on my dusty cut-offs, moving to stand beside her. “That’s my favorite painting.”

“I see why.” She stared at the poster, seeming intent on the muted blues and reds and greens swirled together.

It was good to see her. She looked healthy and strong in a green tank top and white shorts, long limbs well-muscled. I wondered what she had done over the summer to get such an even tan. Probably hung out at the beach.

“Thanks for bringing up the box,” I said belatedly.

“Figured you’d probably be needing it.” She moved away, checking out the other posters and the few books I had unpacked.

“I was helping Jenny Lewis move some of her stuff in, and someone said they saw you on six.”

“Good thing you found it,” I said. “Would not be fun to break in new cleats this week.” Not to mention drop the hundred bucks that Copas, my shoe of choice, commanded.

“No kidding.” She turned from her vantage point at the window overlooking the courtyard on the inside of the building.

“You’ve got a great room. I can’t believe you’re unpacked already.”

“Wasn’t my idea,” I confessed, dropping onto the edge of the futon. “Holly’s kind of compulsive. It seems she wasn’t happy that I had a couple of boxes last year that I never unpacked, so
voila
.” I waved my hand.

“Good thing you have Holly around, then.”

“Most of the time,” I said, noticing the way the sunlight picked out golden highlights in her dark hair, pulled back in a silver barrette. I admired the simple elegance of the style. When I’d had long hair in high school, I’d never been able to figure out any way to wear it other than a ponytail. Now I frequented a barbershop in San Diego that specialized in clippered cuts. “Are you ready for tennis?”