Page 13 of A Better World

Nobody answered. They used the excuse that the break was over and turned their attention to the field for kickoff.

She and Russell headed back to their donuts. He looked queasy, brow knitted, eyes downcast, so she kissed his cheek.

“I was doing all the talking,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You’re the talker. You could have helped,” he said.

She looked at the field. The absence of cheering lent an ominous quality to the game. It all seemed more important than it deserved to be. “What could I have said?”

His face stayed stony, though she could tell he was thinking hard. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Just then, the Gryphons’ left forward kicked the ball so hard that it passed through the back net of the Rocs’ goal. The Gryphon touchline erupted in rhythmic, coordinated claps. The Roc touchline stayed hushed. It was weird. In a town this small, they all knew each other. So why not cheer your friends on the other team when they did an amazing job?

“Jesus, they’re serious about their soccer,” Linda said.

“Poor Hip,” Russell answered, his eyes on his son, who had been benched since the beginning of the game.

Linda’s heart sank. Hip didn’t look bored, like the small, young-looking girl beside him, who also hadn’t yet played. He looked embarrassed: all those scissor-kick tutorials for nothing.

Josie wasn’t faring much better. Repeatedly, she’d been open and in perfect position to score. Nobody’d passed her the ball.

Linda reminded herself that this was natural. These kids had all been playing together for years. It would take time to incorporate Josie into their rhythm, just as it would take time for these sideline parents to figure out what to do with her and Russell. Still, Josie seemed so eager out there, just bursting for the chance to prove herself.

With such a small population, soccer was the only fall sport in Plymouth Valley. The league was advertised as no-cuts, with everyone aged fourteen to eighteen playing at least a few minutes in every game. The PV brochure advertised that the purpose of these town-wide leagues was to build character and community.Join!it exclaimed.You can’t lose!

Despite Russell’s objections (I’m not trying to be mean here, Linnie, but the kid’s got two left feet. I don’t think you realize what that’s like. You can’t justdecideto be coordinated), she’d forced Hip to join, thinking it would help him break out of his shell and make some friends. Parents were barred from practices. This was the first timeshe’d seen the Rocs play. Knowing now what this league was really about, she regretted signing him up. She wasn’t even sure she should have signed up Josie.

Once the ref whistled for halftime, Russell was back at it. Reluctantly, wishing this were over already, so she could go home and stress eat some cold donuts, she joined him. “That’s your boy? He’s got feet like a quarter horse!” Russell joked to one dad, then turned to somebody else and said, “Your daughter’s the best goalkeeper since the steel trap!” His voice wheedled, radiating frenetic desperation.Like me, it begged.Accept me and my family!

They gave short answers. Eventually, Russell stopped trying.

Linda noticed a lone man about ten meters down the touchline.A parent?Was he sick of these jerks, too? She headed in his direction, knowing that if she hung around the tracksuit crew much longer, watching them passive-aggressively gnaw her husband’s balls for breakfast, she’d lose her temper and say something she regretted, like:No offense. I’m sure you’re all nice people deep down. But right now, I hope the frigging earth opens up and swallows you.

She was speechifying all this to herself, her lips moving, as she walked toward the lone, brown-skinned man, who appeared Middle Eastern in origin.

“Hi!” she called. He was standing in profile. “I’ve got two. Josie’s the shark, Hip’s the minnow. But he’s a crafty minnow. Which ones’re yours?”

When he faced her, she gasped. He was wearing a child-sizedPlymouth Valley Gryphonssoccer shirt that rode halfway up his adult belly. A full hand width of baggy skin protruded, centered like a belt-eye by a deep and hairy belly button. Over this, he wore an open jacket whose cuffs squeezed his forearms.Dementedwasn’t a common look for residents here, but he wasn’t wearing a dayworker badge.

“I just come to watch the games,” he said. His brown pupils skittered. Possibly, he was on drugs. Equally possible: his endocrine system had suffered so many insults that he’d become unregulated. She’d seen kids with these kinds of eyes in her pediatric practice back in Kings. The chronic stress forced permanent chemical imbalances.

“Great way to spend a Saturday,” she said. And maybe it was. Then again, was he saying that he didn’t have a kid playing this game?

He was unusually young for this crowd—definitely under forty, with a full, moplike head of black hair. He eyed her up and down, and maybe he thought the gesture was neutral, but he seethed.

Her imagination ran away with her.This is what’s behind Plymouth Valley’s veil of smiles, she thought. Then came a disconcerting image: a bloody, gristly grin under a curtain made of lace. The red soaked the white.

Suddenly, Russell was beside her, his arm on her shoulder. She jumped, then laughed as he extended his hand. “Hi! I’m Russell! We’re new!” He’d been introducing their family in exactly this way since their arrival in PV and until now it had annoyed her. Startled from her mind-set by this unaccountable man, she realized that it was funny:Hi! We’re new! Like us, we’re new! Be our friends, we’re new!

Fuck you! We’re new!

The man ignored Russell, directed his words at Linda. “You keep an eye out for your own. They lose their way in the tunnels.”

“What?” Russell asked. “Who gets lost?”

Dismissing them, the man turned his attention back to the field, upon which no one was playing, because it was halftime.

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