“Hey, you want to come and hang out at the game with us tonight?” I blurt out, glancing at Claudia out of the side of my eyes, hoping she’s okay with it. But Claudia just smiles and says, “Yeah, you should come. It’s a home game. We won’t even have to drive far or anything.”
Lucy chews on a thumbnail, her eyes still on the activity in front of her. My heart picks up speed a bit until she turns and looks at us and says, “Okay, why not. I’ll go.” Then she stares back at Mitchell Wilson and Jason Garza practically beating on their chests as they urge the crowd to yell louder and louder for them. Lucy’s eyes widen. “God, it’s honestly like Roman gladiators or something out there,” she says, giving the gym floor her best what-the-fuck face. “Like, they’re acting like they’re about to go wrestle tigers or lions or whatever.”
“I know, right?” I answer, smiling. It really is the perfect description.
*
On the Friday nights when my mom isn’t working and there’s a home game, she’ll sometimes join Meemaw and Grandpa to watch the East Rockport Pirates play football. I wonder if it’s intensely depressing for her to have to sit in the same bleachers that, when she was a teenage girl, she totally shunned in favor of driving to Houston to go to punk rock shows. But she always says it’s fun for her now, as an adult, to just sit back and observe the spectacle.
“It’s a display of testosterone-fueled hypermasculinity, sure,” she told me once, “but a person can only watch so much on Netflix all by herself on a Friday night before it starts to get really sad.”
But this Friday afternoon as I stand in my bra and jeans digging through my closet to find something to wear to the game, my mom pops her head into my bedroom. The first thing I notice is her cheeks have a little more blush on them than usual and her lipstick looks fresh.
“Hey, you’re going with Claudia tonight, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, she’s picking me up.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. Then she moves into my room, but her steps are uncertain. My mom and I never hesitate to go into each other’s rooms.
“Look, Vivian, I’m not going to be driving to the game with Meemaw and Grandpa, okay?” she begins, and I notice her smile is stretched sort of thin, the freshly lipsticked corners of her mouth not really turning all the way upward.
“Are they not going?” I ask.
“No, it’s just…” She pauses so long I finally pull a T-shirt on over my head. This seems like the type of conversation in which a person should not be standing around in just a bra and jeans.
“Mom, what is it?”
“Do you remember John, from the HEB?” she starts, her smile still fighting to stay a smile, her lighthearted voice sounding forced. I can feel the sides of my mouth sliding downward, but I’m not forcing it at all.
“That guy who voted for the Republican?” I ask. I attempt to arch an eyebrow. I know I’m being a little pain in the ass.
My mother rolls her eyes. At least her expression is finally authentic. “Yes, Vivvy, that guy.”
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“Well, you know, we work together at the clinic, and it turns out he’s one of the doctors for the football team. You know, he’s on the sidelines during all the games in case of an emergency. He just started doing it.”
Wow, so he votes Republican and he tends to sexist Neanderthals on the side. Sounds like a real winner. To my mom I just say, “Okay?”
“Anyway, he asked me to have a drink with him after the game. Maybe down at the Cozy Corner.” The Cozy Corner is the one bar in East Rockport that my mom goes to on the super rare occasion that she goes out with some of the other nurses from work. She says she likes that they have the Runaways on the jukebox.
“Okay,” I say again because I can’t think of what else to say. I wonder if this Republican John dude likes the Runaways. Highly doubtful.
“I just wanted to let you know I might be a little late getting home, but not too late,” she says, her fake smile back on her face, her voice a half-assed attempt at cheerful.
“So he’s taking you to the game?” I ask.
“Yeah. He’s picking me up. You don’t have to come out of your room or anything. I told him I’ll just come out when I see his car.”
“The car with the DELOBE bumper sticker on it?”
“Yes, Vivvy.” Deep sigh. Half hopeful eyes.
“Okay,” I say. “Well … have fun.”
My mom lingers a few beats too long, and I know she’s debating whether or not she should keep on trying to talk about this. But she just pulls me in for a hug and a kiss on the temple. She smells like the vanilla extract she loves to use as perfume, and all of a sudden I’m sorry for everything.
“Mom,” I say as she heads out of my bedroom.
“Yeah?”
“Have a good time.”
Her eyes light up for real at last.
*
The game is actually fun. Claudia picks me up and then we go to Lucy’s neighborhood, where she’s waiting on the porch of a little green-and-white bungalow. When Claudia’s Tercel pulls into the driveway, Lucy bounces up, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt with red piping on the sleeves and collar. At least a dozen red plastic bracelets dance on one wrist. Her hands are still marked, too, like maybe she’s even touched up her hearts and stars a little.
“Hey,” she says. “Thanks for coming to get me.” She slides into the back and immediately pops her head in between the driver and passenger seats. “This is the first time I’ve gone out or, like, done anything since I moved here.” She sounds a little breathless, like maybe she’s kind of nervous.
“It was no big deal to come get you,” says Claudia, and the truth is, it’s easy to be around Lucy. When we meet up with Sara and Kaitlyn and Meg and the other girls we always hang out with, Lucy keeps up with them no problem, her easy, bubbly chatter acting as super hilarious new-girl commentary on the ways of an East Rockport football game.
“Wait, how much money did they spend on that Jumbotron? Aren’t our math textbooks from the ’70s?”
“When does Mitchell Wilson get trotted out on his golden chariot, pulled by white horses?”
“If the Pirates don’t win, do we all have to drink spiked Kool-Aid, or what?”
The other girls and I take time to catch Lucy up on all the town gossip, pointing out the half dozen former Pirates football players in the stands who were going to be big NFL stars until they suffered injuries or got kicked out of college for too many DUIs. Now they’re old men with potbellies that stretch out their orange East Rockport Booster T-shirts, and they watch every move on the field with expressionless faces. During halftime when all of us make our way through the crowd to the Booster Booth to get popcorn, we run into Meemaw and Grandpa, and Lucy smiles and introduces herself and looks them in the eyes and shakes their hands, and I know Meemaw will describe her later as “that lovely Spanish girl who was so darn charming.”