Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (26 page)

“I appreciate your telling me this,” Thea said. “You've always looked out for me. But you might be happy to know that Garret and I had a long talk, to get everything out once and for all, and it looks like we're going to be—I don't know—maybe even friends. In fact, he bailed me out at Sue and Ken's party the other day when I needed help.”

“He did? That was nice of him. I'm so sorry I couldn't go . . .”

“You were missed,” Thea said, and she breathed a sigh of relief to think that they might be done talking about Garret. “Sue and Ken had a great time.”

Lettie dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. When she spoke again, her eyes were wells of tenderness and care. “Darling, I know you don't need advice on how to live your life. But it's seemed to me that you've always been very good at being happy. That whatever life throws at you, you just make do with it.”

“I would think that's a good thing,” Thea said.

“And it is! Oh don't get me wrong, it is! But you didn't used to be that way.”

Thea leaned back in her seat. “Do you mean that you think I'm doing something wrong?”

Lettie gave a small frown. “On the contrary. I think you're starting to do things right. And I'm happy for you. I really am.”

“Thank you,” Thea said, though she still felt a bit unsure about what Lettie was getting at. “I think I've got everything under control, actually. The divorce went through, but Jonathan and I are getting along. Things with his family are good. Irina's a little touch-and-go lately, but otherwise, everything's okay.”

“I'm glad,” Lettie said. “But the thing is . . . contentment is for when you get old and lazy. Happiness takes work. You have to risk something to get it. I'm just saying that, well, if you find something that makes you happy—wildly, blissfully, amazingly happy—you'll go and get it and not hold back.”

Thea looked up, guilt-stricken. It occurred to her: perhaps it was no coincidence that Lettie's pep talk was coming on the heels of a conversation about Garret. She was sure there was a connection. Was Lettie rooting for her and Garret? The idea was so preposterous it would have made Thea laugh aloud—if she wasn't so horrified. “I hope you're not saying I should chase after Garret. I don't even know him anymore.”

“Rubbish,” Lettie said. “But anyway, I'm not only talking about Garret. I'm just saying that whatever it is that makes you happy, you should go after it. Your heart
knows
. You just have to listen. That's all.”

Jules knocked on the open door and stuck his head in the room. “Thea? You told me to tell you when the milk delivery guy is here? Well, he is.”

Thea stood up from her chair, glad for the excuse to interrupt the conversation. Had Garret come to the Dancing Goat looking for her? She couldn't bring herself to believe it. And yet, some part of her wanted to.

“Excuse me,” she told Lettie. “I have to go argue about an overcharge.”

“Of course.” Lettie picked a bit of wilted lettuce from her sandwich. “Just think about what I said.”

 

 

So how are you doing?
was the question people asked Jonathan again and again. And they didn't mean
So what are you up to these days?
or
How is your morning going?
Each
So how are you doing?
had its own cautious and unsaid meaning.

From his mother:
Are you happy, my love? Is there anything I can do to make you happy?

From his coworkers:
I know what happened to you, poor bastard. You brought it on yourself, but still, I hope you're hanging in.

From Garret:
So what comes next, now that the divorce is final? When do you want to start dating? When do you get back on your feet?

From Thea:
I'm not sorry this happened. And I want you to be okay.

Mostly, Jonathan's answers were the same, no matter who asked the question. And in fact, he was getting on rather well. His divorce had not been the radical life change that it might have been if he and Thea were different people. He still had his daughter. He had his brother again. And his ex-wife didn't feel like an ex at all, but instead, like a long-lost and newly rediscovered friend.

He read more books, started training for a marathon, and saw his daughter on the weekends. He fought against loneliness with everything in him.

How are you doing?
he asked himself.

The answer:
All in all, okay
.

 

 

On the aluminum bleachers at the soccer field, Thea sat watching her daughter run from one end zone to another in the first scrimmage of the year. The other team was winning by one goal, and Irina seemed to have taken the error personally, her face crumpling in intense concentration and her little legs pumping as fast as they would carry her downfield. She'd tried a couple shots on goal, and Thea had gripped the cold edge of the bleacher in anticipation, her jaw clenched and her gaze riveted. But Irina just couldn't seem to score.

Thea sat quietly, clutching her cup of hot chocolate and espresso. Where Irina's love of soccer had come from was completely baffling. It seemed to have arrived so abruptly, independent of Thea or Jonathan's interests. A spontaneous generation. Jonathan had never once watched a soccer tournament; neither had Thea. No one had breathed a whisper that Irina should take an interest in the game.

Yet even before Irina had been old enough to sign up for soccer, she'd been obsessed with it—begging her parents to record the New England Revolution's game so she didn't miss a moment, begging to stay up past her bedtime to watch the end of a half. Thea and Jonathan could only sit with her, far more engrossed by their daughter's astonishing and unexplainable enthusiasm than they could ever be in the score.

Thea wasn't surprised when she saw Jonathan making his way toward the bleachers; though he didn't follow professional soccer, he'd always loved watching his daughter play. But she
was
surprised to see that the man walking beside him wasn't a fellow soccer dad but was Garret, holding a hot dog on a paper plate in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

She waved toward them as if she hadn't been taken aback, and she tried to reason with herself to stay calm. It wasn't surprising that Garret would come to see his niece tear up the turf. In fact, Thea was glad that Irina and Garret had something in common—even if, during Irina's younger years, Thea sometimes had the sense that the universe had conjured a passion for soccer in Irina because Thea had once stolen that same passion from Garret. Irina would be thrilled to see her uncle and father—and even more committed to winning the game.

And yet, the question that Thea could not overlook, the question that she could not grip firmly enough to cast aside—was whether or not Garret came not only to see Irina, but her too.

“Hey guys!” she smiled up at them and scooted down to make room. Jonathan slid in beside her, Garret beside him.

“How we doing?” Jonathan asked, scouring the field to find his daughter.

Thea pointed. “Not so great. Coach just benched her, put in a substitute.”

“Bull,” she heard Garret say.

“Was she due to sit out?” Jonathan asked.

Thea shook her head. “I don't think so. But she was getting a little too . . . intense.”

“Shame,” Jonathan said.

Garret leaned forward so Thea could see him. He wore a Red Sox baseball cap over his blond hair, but beneath the brim was the sparkling blue of his eyes. “Want me to talk to the coach?”

Thea laughed, and then she saw he was serious.

“What? She wants to play, she should be allowed to play. I'll have her back out there in fifteen seconds flat.”

“I'm sure you will,” Thea said, and she meant it. Garret had a silver tongue, a way of persuading people. He would probably talk about the team's record, about how all the parents—even those whose kids weren't exactly athletes—would rather leave here celebrating a win than see their kid play for an extra five minutes and lose. In Thea's mind, there was no doubt that Garret could persuade the coach to put Irina back in. But Irina had to learn to fight her own battles.

Jonathan glanced at his brother. “Hey, remember that time you talked Mr. Fairfax into giving you and Thea permission to cut last period so we could go to Adventureland?”

Garret laughed. “And there was that bumper boat operator who thought Thea was cute, so we could just keep jumping the lines?”

Thea couldn't help but smile a little. “True. We had your powers of persuasion to thank for that day.”

“That and your denim shorts,” Garret said.

She heard Jonathan snicker beside her, and though she felt a little jolted to remember the shorts in question, which Garret had unbuttoned too many times to count, she too couldn't help but laugh.

“She's talking to the coach,” Jonathan said, nodding toward the field. Irina had risen from the bench and made her way over to the adults on the sideline. She stood directly in front of the head coach in her red nylon shorts and shin guards. If she were tall enough, she would have stared him down, eye to eye. “Ten to one says he puts her back in.”

They watched quietly for a moment, all of them rooting for her. Thea couldn't hear a thing over the shouts of the spectators around them, so she was scrutinizing body language: Irina's head was held high, her ponytail bobbing violently as she talked, so that Thea knew she was lecturing. The coach's bemused smile, his crossed arms, the tilt of his head said,
I'm listening
.

A moment later, they were cheering and clapping together as Irina jogged back onto the field, back into the game. Jonathan put his arm around Thea and squeezed. Garret punched a fist into the air.

So this is how it's going to be,
Thea thought. The three of them. Together. Just like in the old days. On the fading grass, Irina made a charge for the ball, running out in front of the crowd with fiery resolve. Maybe they had come full circle, at last.

 

 

In the fourth quarter, when Irina tumbled into another player, Garret knew she was hurt. He couldn't tell exactly what had happened. She and another girl had gone rolling onto the ground together like a pinwheel of arms and legs. She got up—of course—fast to her feet, and she'd even managed to run three more steps, never losing sight of the ball, the goaltender, the one point that would secure them a win. But her pain reflexes were delayed—Garret knew from personal experience how fast adrenaline kicked in—and after three steps, she crumpled, rolling to the ground, grabbing her ankle, her face contorted with pain.

He didn't wait. He jumped from the bleachers, running onto the field. He didn't care if he was breaking some kind of unwritten friends-and-family policy. Jonathan had left an hour ago, realizing he'd forgotten his laptop at work. Thea had gone in search of a restroom, and Irina needed help. He beat the coaches to her, sprinting past them while they jogged, and when he got there, she was lying on her side, not crying but dazed.

“What hurts?” he said. “Your foot?”

“My foot?” She lifted her head to look down at it; it was swelling. “My foot and my head.”

He ran a hand lightly over the spot just above her ear; a hard knot was already swelling. They would need to get her checked out. The coaches huddled around her, stooped with their hands on their thighs, asking questions. Panic flashed in Irina's eyes—fear that seemed to be fed more by the coaches' worrying than by pain.

“What happened?” Thea was beside him, breathless. He saw her focus sharpening, the intense concentration in her eyes. She wasn't overreacting; he could see her mapping out the situation, drawing up plans.

“I think she sprained her ankle. The coach is getting ice.”

Thea nodded. “It's not broken?”

“I don't think so,” Garret said. He took Thea's arm and stood with her, taking a few steps away from Irina for a moment and leaving her in the care of another player's mom. A cold wind sliced through the fabric of his jacket. “There's something else. I think she got kicked in the head. We should take her to the doctor, ASAP. Get her checked for a concussion.”

“We walked here. I don't have a car.”

“Not a problem,” he said.

 

 

The walls of the high school locker room were imprinted on Garret's mind. A lattice of red steel lockers. Water bottles and crumpled jeans. Fountains too low to drink from. The bright, high energy of the gym after victory. The solemn and gloomy trudging to the showers after defeat.

He remembered what it was like to play hurt. A shin bruise the size of a saucer and the color of eggplant. A twisted knee or ankle, pain that nearly crippled him walking from one hallway to another, but that somehow vanished the moment the starting whistle blew. In the weight room he trained his muscles to be strong and agile, and on the field he trained for pain. When he went pro, the presence of pain would become more normal than the lack of it. But he welcomed it—all because of the game.

He remembered too icing his elbow in the locker room or bandaging an ankle, while around him his teammates ribbed each other and gossiped as much as, or more than, the cheerleading squad. On good days—like Fridays, when the amped-up expectations of the weekend were setting in—it never failed that talk in the locker room was talk that veered in the direction of women and then of sex. Garret loved it. He'd discovered somewhere along the line that he was a great storyteller—good at capturing the attention and the imagination of a crowd. He'd never been self-conscious about bragging—or embellishing when it came to things he hadn't quite done. And over time he'd acquired a reputation for scoring bigger, higher, and faster than any of his teammates—and not just on the soccer field.