Chapter 2
Holland
On Mondays I leave the high school at four fifteen. That gives me forty-five minutes to pick Lina up from school, cross half of Seattle to the club’s training fields, and have all the gear set up before the first girl shows up with her mom a little before five.
I’ve done it so many times I don’t even check the clock anymore. It’s in my body, the same way I know, without opening the bag, that there are twelve yellow pinnies inside when there should be sixteen, because four went missing months ago and nobody replaced them.
Lina rides in the back seat with a piece of toast I made her on the way out, eating it at a pace that spells trouble for the upholstery.
I braided her hair this morning and it’s already half undone, two strands hanging down by her ear.
At seven, a braid lasts about as long as recess.
Normally I’d give her an energy bar, but two new players are coming today and one of them is allergic to peanuts, so I’d rather not risk it.
“At recess Andrea told me her grandpa says girls can’t have two moms,” she blurts out of nowhere, mouth full.
I turn right without answering. It’s what I always do. I let a second or two go by before I say anything.
“Every family is different, you know that. There are kids with two moms, with two dads, with one mom or one dad… what matters is that there’s love. What did you tell her?”
“That I don’t have two. I have one, because I almost never see the other one anymore.”
I grip the wheel hard. I feel it in my knuckles.
It’s not about her; Lina said it with no drama, chewing her toast, the same way she’d say Andrea still can’t tie her shoes.
A schoolyard is like that, and they’re seven.
What turns my stomach is the fear that one day a letter shows up with the letterhead of some Richmond law office, just because my ex has suddenly decided she wants back into Lina’s life.
I get to the training field with half an hour to spare, exactly how I like it. It’s empty, the grass still wet from the noon rain, a cracked cone by the sideline that somebody should have tossed.
I check the equipment shed. The door still doesn’t close right; the latch turns and swings open on its own, so I leave the good balls in the car. I make a note on my phone to send to the coordinator on Tuesday.
Lina does her homework on the bleachers while I set up the mini-goals and sort the pinnies by color.
At five the girls start arriving, and behind them, the parents.
Well, almost all of them are moms, except two or three dads, who tend to be the ones who give me the most grief.
They sit up at the top of the bleachers with their coffees and film every play on their phones, convinced this is something more serious than it really is.
I’ve got forty kids, eleven and twelve years old, who come to have fun two afternoons a week.
My only goal is that not one of them goes home thinking she’s no good at this.
That’s it. I don’t care about the league, or the standings, or whether we win a game or lose it.
I’ve spent six years explaining it to the parents, and there’s still one or two who try to convince me that if their daughter doesn’t get more minutes she’ll never go pro, and it’ll all be my fault.
At ten past five an official club car parks by the fence. One of those gray, expensive ones. A woman climbs out of the back seat in sunglasses and a first-team tracksuit, moving like she’d rather be anywhere else on the planet than here.
Damn. I thought Alexandra Drummond’s emails were just for cover. I never once thought Natalia Costa Oliveira would actually show up at a training field to help me coach eleven- and twelve-year-old girls.
“You’re late,” I say, by way of hello. “I’ve split the girls into two groups. You take the red pinnies, I’ll take the blue.”
She doesn’t answer. She lifts her glasses and looks at the cones I’ve set up for practice.
“Those channels are way too tight. That’s not how they learn to receive, they learn to boot the ball and pray. Who set up these cones?”
She says it like you’d say the sky looks cloudy today.
“I set them up,” I answer, flat.
“Ah, okay.”
“Thanks for coming,” I say, though it’s thanking her for nothing, because she doesn’t want to be here and I don’t want her here.
“Look, this isn’t a pro league, it’s a rec activity these girls do twice a week.
Maybe you should talk to Alexandra Drummond and have her put you with a more competitive team, or older players. ”
“I’m good here,” she says, no argument.
“Then don’t complain about how far apart I put the cones, because to me this is volunteer work and all I’m trying to do is give these girls a good time,” I grumble.
The session works in spite of us. The players don’t even notice our little standoff. Well, her group works fine, anyway. The girls in mine are more interested in watching Natalia Costa Oliveira juggle the ball than in training.
“Are you the player from TV?” one of them asks, breaking up my drill. “The one who pushed a reporter?”
The field almost goes silent, and a field with forty girls never goes silent. Several moms have looked up from their phones, because she asked it right next to the bleachers.
Natalia Costa doesn’t answer right away. She looks at the girl for a long moment, like the question caught her completely off guard.
“I think that’s enough practice for today,” I announce, putting a hand on the player’s shoulder. “Thursday I want you all on time.”
The kids drift toward the bleachers cracking jokes, grabbing their backpacks to meet their moms or hanging back to talk in little clusters. Natalia Costa stays put in the same spot, rolling a ball lightly under her foot.
Natalia
It’s cold in Hades’s office. Ethan isn’t here; he waved me in and left, which already tells me this isn’t a welcome chat.
“The clause that has you coaching those girls twice a week isn’t a whim,” she explains, not looking up from some papers. “You had a disciplinary suspension for several games at your old club. We need to clean up your image, but if anyone asks, you say you do it voluntarily, as community outreach.”
“Okay,” I answer, with a shrug. I figure there’s not much point in arguing.
“It’s a pilot program run by the players’ committee.
Someone upstairs decided we needed pretty photos of players with disciplinary problems doing things for the community.
Iris went through a version of it last year.
Now it’s your turn. Don’t screw it up, because if you do, you don’t just get an earful from me and Drummond, it’ll probably be headlines.
And you know what headlines do,” she presses, and now she does look up.
I don’t say anything. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make headlines.
And then she takes off her glasses, slow, and sets them on the desk with the arms pointed at me.
“I know what happened with Bianca Loureiro,” she says, out of nowhere. “I don’t want you to explain anything to me.”
The air goes out of me for a couple of seconds. She’s the first person to say it to my face, no dancing around it, no half measures.
“You’re very good, but I want you to work hard. And make this girls’ team thing work,” she adds before turning back to the papers.