My boys in the pool. There was nothing like watching them. Their young bodies, full of life, never got tired of swimming. When either of them got the ball, I stopped breathing. My heart swelled. A mother’s pride.
The ref blew the whistle. The teams sprinted toward each other. A Waverider won the ball. Number 11. Cam stayed back. Defense. Jed sprinted up the side. Number 11 threw the ball to Jed. Yes! Jed caught it. He took a few fast strokes toward the goal. I stood. Chuck stood with me. Jed’s arm arced back. He threw the ball hard. It went, went, went—I stopped breathing—and the goalie jumped up—no!—and then—gasp!—it grazed the goalie’s fingertips and went in. The ref blew the whistle. Goal! Chuck and I shrieked cheers and bounced with excitement. Together, we held the sign I had laminated last year. GO MURPHY BOYS! In this moment we were a family again.
When the commotion was over, we took our seats in the bleachers with the other Waverider fans. The entire high school had been rebuilt recently, so the bleachers were new and the pool was new and the goals were fresh and white. The blue awning with the WR logo repeating itself along the edges was taut and clean, and the numbers on the scoreboard were crisply visible, even in the glaring sun.
As Brad had said, “Everything is better here.” I had clung to this line because I wanted it to be true, and because I wanted it to be true, I was constantly finding evidence to support it, which wasn’t hard to do at this pool. It was so much nicer than Clairemont’s.
I thought of the water polo moms in San Diego—of how we had a whole system for watching games. It would be four or five of us in the fifth row with three or four of our husbands—Sheila had gotten divorced after her husband cheated—right in front of us in the fourth row. Someone (Dorothy or B) would get there early to stake our claim. Dorothy did it with beach blankets, B did it with cones. Someone else (usually me) brought a cooler full of bottled water and soda and parked it between the husbands and the wives as a centerpiece. I usually brought orange slices, too, which I had a special system for preparing. I would carve the meat of the orange from the rind halfway up each slice so it would be easier for people to eat. This was very time-consuming and, I thought now, such a waste of time.
Today I was perfectly happy sitting in row seven with Chuck. We’d brought one bottled water apiece—this was all we needed. It was also nice to be anonymous. I knew nothing about these parents, and they knew nothing about me. There was so much freedom in that. I could choose to be any type of person, and they would think I had been this type of person all along. So no, I didn’t miss my old friends. I was content just observing the barefoot family two rows down eating their KFC from the bucket, and I was content every time I remembered I wouldn’t have to strain my back emptying the ice from my huge cooler after this.
“I wish my mom could have been here to see this,” Chuck said, touching the brim of his hat.
Chuck’s mother, Martha, had come to every one of his games in college. I used to get there late on purpose so I didn’t have to sit with her. I liked Martha, but she talked the whole time and asked me too many questions, some of which really weren’t appropriate. She always wanted to know if I was experiencing side effects from my birth control, for example.
“What about your mom?” Chuck put his arm around me, kissed my cheek. “Did she watch sports?”
It was a question he may have never asked before, which was rare this far into a marriage. I thought of my mother in her smelly chair. Of how The Young and the Restless had been on when she died. If she’d lived long enough to see my boys get to high school, would she have come to a game? She would have wanted to, maybe, but coming to a game would have meant leaving the house, which was very hard for my mother to do, especially near the end. She left only to go to the liquor store or to get her prescriptions refilled. And even those things—near the end, I was doing those things.
“No,” I told Chuck, “my mom didn’t watch sports. It was always soap operas.”
?
After the game we waited for the boys in the parking lot. We leaned on the trunk of their blue Honda and talked about Cam’s stellar assists and Jed’s powerful arm. He had scored the last goal for a win of 3–2. Jed always scored more than Cam. He was the bold one. He was the star. But Cam had more stamina. He made all the assists. Or not all of them, but many of them. Cam saw the game as a whole, and Jed had a winner’s tunnel vision: all he cared about was the goal. That’s what Chuck liked to say. He said both ways were good, just different. Now in the parking lot, arms crossed over his chest, looking very pleased, he said it again, with the same enthusiasm as all the other times: “Cam is more analytical than Jed. And Jed is more aggressive than Cam. Both ways are good, just different.”
We watched the other Waverider fans filter out to their cars. The KFC family had put their flip-flops on. Coach Iona yelled across the lot, “Hey, Murphy parents! We love your boys!” We waved and yelled, “Thank you! So do we!”
The boys appeared. Their lanky bodies, their loping strides. They walked like such teenagers. Two other boys walked with them. Next to Jed: a smaller Hawaiian boy. I recognized him as number 5. Next to Cam: number 10—he was easy to pick out because he had the palest skin on the team.
“Amazing game,” I told them.
“Phenomenal,” Chuck said, and gave them high fives.
Number 5 extended a hand to Chuck. “What’s up. I’m Liko.” He gave a firm shake. “Hi, Mrs. Murphy,” he said to me, in an almost provocative tone, as though he may have found me attractive. But no one else seemed to notice, so maybe I was imagining things. Liko smiled—a huge joker smile that took up half his face. His eyes turned into little slits.
“Nice to meet you, Liko,” I said pleasantly.
Our eyes turned to number 10. “Hi, I’m Tom,” Tom said. His voice was deep and he looked older than a high school kid. He was very attractive and sort of Swedish looking, with fine yellow-white hair and blue-white eyes like glaciers. He shook our hands. His grip was loose and clammy.
“Jed rocked it. He’s the king!” Liko jokingly bowed unto Jed.
“Dude, shut up,” Jed said bashfully, though I could tell he was loving the attention.
“And Cam, you did a wonderful job,” I said. I heard myself and thought: You sound like such a middle-aged mom talking about sports. But fine. Because what else was I supposed to be?
Cam was authentically bashful and looked at his feet. Tom patted the back of his neck. For such a strapping guy, he was kind of gentle. And quiet, because he didn’t say anything.
“Wonderful, both of you.” Chuck tore off his hat, smacked it against his thigh. “Jed, two goals! Damn. And Cam. Oh man, Cam. So many assists! And what solid defense. You fended those guys off you.”
“Fen-ded,” Liko repeated, like it was a sexual word. What was wrong with this kid?