Kick (10 page)

The crowd erupted into cheers. Coach Hill yelled, “Nice job, Ricky! Nice job with your left foot, Kevin!”

A few moments later the whistle blew, signaling halftime. Coach yelled at us to come over and sit.

“Thanks,” Ricky said as we picked up our water bottles. I gave him a smile, and this time it wasn't sarcastic. I meant it. Something felt different for me in this game. I felt looser, less anxious—and maybe that was because I had gotten things off my chest by talking to Sergeant Brown. Who would have thought that would help my game? Soccer was the only thing on my mind.

“You guys are lucky to be tied,” Coach Hill said as we sat down on the sidelines. “They're outplaying you guys, and they had just one quick lapse on defense. You've come a long way since the beginning of the season, and you should be proud of yourselves, whether you win or lose this game. But you're still not looking like the team I know you are. To win, you're going to have to show more teamwork, like Shawn and Ricky and Kevin just showed.” Coach paused. “Now tell me, guys, are you having fun?”

“Yeah, Coach,” we mumbled.

“It sure doesn't sound like it. Look, I know I've been tough on you the past couple of weeks, but that's only because I want you to succeed. Now I don't expect you to be perfect, and I know you think I do, but I don't. Perfection only drives people to achieve great things, but is never achieved. I'm just hard on you because I want you to try your best and give it your all, and if that's what you do, I'll be satisfied and you'll be satisfied, whatever the outcome.”

It sounded like Coach knew that this would likely be the end of our season, and it was his way of saying good-bye. I had never seen this side of Coach Hill. Maybe he was seeing another side of me, too.

“So go out and enjoy this moment, because who knows when it might come again,” Coach added. We put our hands in. “One, two three, Raiders!” we shouted.

We came out in the second half with renewed energy and disrupted their style of play by playing man-to-man. The minute they passed the ball, one of our players would close them down and force a turnover. The momentum was changing.

At the end of the second half, the score was still 1–1. Since it was a State Cup game, we had to go into a fifteen-minute overtime. At the end of that, if there was no winner, it would go into another fifteen-minute overtime. Penalty kicks were the last option. They put a lot of pressure on the goalies and the kickers.

The Arsenal Warriors started with the ball. Ty was fouled just outside the eighteen-yard box. Coach ordered Cal to take it, since he had the best foot. Cal moved the ball a little bit up when the ref wasn't looking, and the Warriors created a wall to try to block his view of the goal. Our team lined up to try to get the ball if there was a rebound.

This was the first time I'd ever seen Cal look nervous. He was usually pretty cool. He took the kick and put so much spin on it, it looked like it was in slow motion as it rotated. It hit the ground right underneath the goalie's spread-out arms and then bounced into the goal.

The crowd broke into cheers and our bench stood up in excitement.

But the danger was not over yet, as we still had to finish out the overtime. There were a few scary moments, but we managed to hold the other team off by keeping possession of the ball. By the end of the game, the Warriors were too frustrated and gave up on themselves. Their coach screamed at them to not give up and run after every ball, but I think they tuned him out.

We lined up and shook the hands of the opposing players. Their heads were down.

I wasn't sure that the better team had won, but I was overjoyed at the opportunity we now had.

I put my arm around Shawn, who had taken his shirt off in the celebration. “I didn't think we could do it,” I said.

“Man, I know it's just the semis, but it feels like we won it all,” Shawn yelled.

Coach Hill gathered us together. Looking over his shoulder, I saw the next semifinal game was getting ready to be played. We were more focused on that than on what Coach Hill was saying. But Coach was so happy with the win that he let it go.

The New Jersey Golden Eagles were one of the top teams in the country. They had won the past three State Cups and two regional titles. They came in second in the nation last year. It would take a miracle to beat them. You'd have to pull off some kind of stunning upset, the kind that would show up on the ESPN highlights in the morning—if ESPN cared about soccer.

I was psyching myself out for the finals. I didn't want to set the bar low, but I knew I would be cool with a silver medal.

After Coach's talk, he wanted us to go view the next game and learn about the opponent. I grabbed a sweatshirt from my soccer bag. Now that the game was over, I was freezing.

By the time we reached the sideline, the Golden Eagles were already up 1–0. This is going to be a blowout, I thought. The other team's offense looked lost. The Golden Eagles' best player was a black dude they called Kwame. Every time I saw the guy in a game, it was as if his whole life depended on every play.

“Not to be negative here, guys” I said, “but the only thing that our team is learning is that we're going to lose.”

“Badly,” Matt added. “Their team is full of stars.”

“Look, guys, everyone is assuming that the Eagles are going to win,” Shawn said. “But the truth is we don't have anything to lose if we give it all we got, and maybe we can just pull this thing off.”

I didn't know if I was wrong to think that we were going to lose or whether I was just trying to be realistic. We'd find out in a week's time.

On the way home I thought of what Shawn had said and how the whole team felt about playing next week. There was a good chance we'd get our butts kicked, but if we didn't at least try, we were definitely going to lose.

I thought maybe I had been guessing all along that I had to lose in court, too. I still figured I was going to be toast, but I did have a play in the back of my head. I went straight to my room. I found the number I was looking for on speed dial and pressed the button.

“Hello, Sergeant Brown, could I talk to you about Christy and her dad?”

Chapter 13

“Jerry, do you know what you're getting into with this dinner?” Carolyn asked.

“Nope.”

“Then why are we going?”

“Because it's a chance to maneuver McNamara into a place where he might feel like being a good guy.”

“Why don't you just sit him down and tell him how nice that boy is?” Carolyn had slipped on her serious face. “Tell him that Kevin isn't a thief.”

“If McNamara had been in the mood to listen to the world, we wouldn't be dealing with him, woman,” I said.

“And if those kids had any common sense . . .” Carolyn's lips tightened slightly.

“Look, those kids were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Christy is smart enough to know her mother needs some kind of professional help, and she's clever enough to understand that what her father's doing—trying to control his wife's behavior and to bully her into good behavior—isn't going to work. That night he was pushing his wife—Christy's mother—around, and the girl just couldn't take it anymore. That started the whole chain of events.”

“She should have called—somebody!” Carolyn said.

“Like who?” I asked. We were attending a dinner and get-together at Kevin's house that I hoped would begin to ease things up a bit.

“I don't know their family,” my wife answered.

“We've had problems in the past and we didn't reach for a phone,” I said. “We hung on to those problems, trying to keep them within our household until something came along to solve them. What do you expect from people as young as Kevin and Christy?”

“But getting into a car . . . ” Carolyn didn't finish her sentence.

I knew what she meant, but I'd also had enough experience over the years dealing with people who had problems to know that the simple answers were always easy when they were somebody else's problems.

“I've seen parents tell their children to lie to the police because it seemed to them the only way out of a difficult situation,” I said. “And sometimes I thought they were right.”

“Would you lie to get out of trouble?” Carolyn looked at me, and I glanced at her.

“To hold my family together?” I asked. “To protect you? Yeah, I would lie. If I couldn't think of anything else. The girl was trying to hold her family together, and she didn't want her father to get into trouble.”

“Lord, lord, lord.” Carolyn shook her head.

“Look, everybody knows what's going on and everybody's a little scared,” I said. “The thing is that there just aren't any easy answers.”

“That's why he's coming to this dinner?”

“No, like I told you, Kevin asked me to invite the McNamaras to dinner. He asked me if I would come. You're coming along to show everybody that it's just a friendly dinner.”

“And why is McNamara coming along?”

“One thing I've learned from my years on the force is that people act because they've either made a decision or they're close to making a decision,” I said. “McNamara wants to know how hostile we'll be to him or his situation and if we're really on his side. What he senses tonight will push him one way or the other. That's why he said he'd come to this dinner. Now, can we get going?”

“And you're sure of this?”

“Nope.”

“But you're convinced that this dinner is going to work?”

“Nope. But I got my fingers crossed and a song in my heart,” I said.

“You're as bad as Kevin!”

“Or as good—if it works,” I said.

“Hope that song doesn't end up on a blues note,” Carolyn said. “What does Mrs McNamara do that's odd, anyway?”

“Sounds like depression to me,” I said. “I looked up the symptoms on the internet.”

“Jerry, that is the worst thing you could have done. You're not supposed to be looking up people's symptoms on the internet and making judgments about them. What did it say?”

“It said that depression was serious and you had to be careful with it,” I said.

“It say anything about chicken soup?”

“Kevin thinks that we shouldn't work on Mrs. McNamara,” I said. “He thinks we should work on Mr. McNamara. He thinks that if Mr. McNamara sees everybody is friendly, he'll come around.”

“He won't,” Carolyn said.

“You don't know that,” I said.

I fixed the rearview mirror and drove the rest of the way to Kevin's house in silence. Carolyn was right. McNamara hadn't been friendly at all when I spoke to him on the phone, but he had asked some interesting questions. The most interesting was whether Kevin had “talked a lot of guff” about what had happened that night. I thought what he wanted to know was if anybody was thinking of charging him with domestic violence against his wife. That would have revealed his whole situation and opened a can of worms that maybe should have been open, but that McNamara wasn't ready to deal with.

“And why does Kevin think he's even going to show up?” Carolyn asked.

“Because Kevin is as good a young man as we think he is,” I said. “And like most kids his age, he believes everyone else in the world is just
waiting
for the chance to do the right thing. And you know what? I like that attitude. I really do.”

“But he did say he was coming,” Carolyn said. “So I guess he'll at least show.”

I remembered the phone conversation. The strain in McNamara's voice told me he had some serious reservations about the dinner.

My mind kept switching to the car. I imagined I heard something wrong with the engine, and then the lights seemed dimmer than usual. By the time we reached Kevin's place, it was my stomach that needed the tune-up.

“Look, Carolyn, anything you can do to help tonight will be appreciated,” I said.

“Jerry, I've been putting up with you for almost thirty-nine years,” she answered. “I kind of get the routine by now. We go in, it gets messed up, and then all the way home you tell me how right I was. Isn't that how it works?”

Kevin's house was all lit up with candles. There were real candles on the mantelpiece and on the end tables. Others, placed around the room, were electric. They gave the place a warm glow but enough dark shadows to add drama. Kevin's grandmother gave me a big hug and then kissed Carolyn. She turned and said something to her daughter in Spanish.

“She's saying your wife has the same color as cinnamon,” Kevin said.

“I used to think of her as brown sugar,” I said. “I guess cinnamon fits her now.”

Estela, Kevin's mother, took Carolyn into the kitchen, and the grandmother stood in front of me with a big smile on her face. I didn't know what to say, so I just smiled back. Finally she patted me on the shoulder and went to join Estela.

“Sometimes she speaks great English,” Kevin says. “But when she tries to get fancy, she has to speak Spanish in her mind and then she can't find the words in English. Then she just looks at you.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “It happens to me when I want to sound super-intelligent. Have you heard from you-know-who?”

“Christy's been working on her mother, trying to get her excited about coming,” Kevin said. “She told her that she wants to learn how to cook Colombian food.”

“You kids ought to be politicians,” I said. “You spend your life scheming away.”

The women returned with plates of cheese and crackers, something that looked like peas in cream, some midget bananas, and sodas. I liked the way Carolyn was mixing in. If she had a good time, the trip home wouldn't be so bad.

Kevin put on some music and we sat around and talked. Somehow, the conversation got to be about the differences between dogs in the United States and dogs in Colombia.

“In my country,
un perro es un perro
.” Kevin's grandmother hit the middle of her left palm with her right index finger for emphasis. “In this country
, un perro es un
kink!”

“A king,” Kevin said.

“It's what I said,” his grandmother went on. “
Un
kink! They have more food for dogs in the market than for
bebés
!”

I couldn't argue with that, and it was a good assessment of American values. People loved their dogs and were willing to pamper them.

Carolyn and I had arrived on time for dinner at six thirty. There was no sign of the McNamara family. When the clock on the wall had reached seven thirty, Mrs. Johnson finally suggested we sit down and eat. I glanced at Kevin and he shrugged, clearly disappointed. I felt disappointed too, and frustrated.

“I had hoped that Mr. McNamara would come,” I said to Estela. “I was surprised that he said he would, but I knew it was a long shot.”

Kevin's mother forced a smile and nodded. Then she gestured to the table. Life moved on.

We sat down and the grandmother had just placed a tureen of soup in the middle of the table when the doorbell rang. I caught my breath, and for a long moment we all froze around the table. Then Kevin's mom wiped her hands on the front of her dress and went to answer the door.

The suit McNamara wore, a light brown double breasted with patch pockets, looked at least a size too large for him. The shirt he wore looked clean but not crisp. I knew he was uncomfortable as he shifted from foot to foot during the introductions. We sat with me, Carolyn, and Kevin's grandmother on one side of the table, the McNamaras at the other side, and Kevin and his mother at either end.

Christy's mom, close up, was an attractive woman. She had wispy brown hair just long enough to touch the bottom of her jawline. Her face was thin, youthful looking, with a touch of makeup. I imagined Christy making her mother up.

But it was her hands that I noticed most. It was as if there was no place for them. She put them on the table, then on her lap, then folded and unfolded them inches from the table. She had smiled nervously at everyone as she was being introduced, making sure not to make too much eye contact.

“It's avocado soup,” Kevin's mom said. “Kevin loves anything with avocados in it.”

“He's a dreamer,” his grandmother said, rubbing his head in a way that I knew he didn't want Christy to see. “Everything is too much, like Florentino Ariza in . . . I don't remember the book. But he falls in love with every star and every moon he sees. Isn't that right, Kevin?”

“Abuela!”
Kevin shook his head. “I don't fall in . . . ”

“I like romantic boys,” Carolyn said. “I used to go out with a boy who used to tell me that my teeth were like pearls and my eyes were like precious jewels. He owned a pawn shop when he grew up.”

I glanced over at Christy's father. He was staring down at his plate, and I was sure he was thinking the whole idea of coming to the dinner had been a mistake.

“When Kevin's father was really young . . . ” Kevin's mom sat down at the table and in a minute, Kevin's mom, Carolyn, and his grandmother were deep into a discussion about boys they had known when they were young. Christy's mom sat shoulders slumped, wringing her hands in her lap.

McNamara was sitting next to his wife and keeping a close eye on her. I saw his jaw tightening and relaxing, as if he were trying hard to control himself. Christy was eating the avocado soup, clearly tense, watching her mother.

I tried to think of something to say to Mr. McNamara, but everything I thought of sounded stupid even before I opened my mouth. I wanted to sneak a peek at the clock. I started doing the math. Fifteen minutes for the soup. Thirty minutes for the main course. Twenty minutes for dessert. Twenty minutes for polite conversation, and then two hours of Carolyn's mouth before I got to sleep.

“Do you like avocados?”

Silence.

I looked up and saw that Kevin's grandmother was talking to Mrs. McNamara.

“Do you like avocados?” she asked again.

“She doesn't like soup very much,” Mr. McNamara interjected.

“
Love in the Time of Cholera.”
Mrs. McNamara lifted her head. “That was the name of the book.
Love in the Time of Cholera.”

“That was it!” Kevin's grandmother's face lit up. “Did you read that book? I have it in Spanish. That man, Florentino, I could have married. Of course, I wouldn't have married him, but I could have. You know what I mean?”

“I do. He was a wonderful character,” Mrs. McNamara said.

And then the conversation was between Kevin's grandmother and Mrs. McNamara at one end of the table and Carolyn and Kevin's mother on the other end.

“You do the math?” Kevin was talking to Christy.

She shook her head no.

Okay, everybody was talking except me and McNamara.

I decided to take a chance.

“You want to grab some air?” I asked, standing.