The Second Summer of the Sisterhood Part 33

Carmabelle: Len. Please answer me? Please? I'm coming over.

Lennyk162: Not right now. I'll call you later, okay?

Distantly, from the bottom of the well, Lena heard the knock on the door. It came twice more before it occurred to her that it was her door and she was supposed to answer it.

She coughed up her voice. "Who is it?"

"Lenny, it's me. May I come in?"

Carmen's voice was so lovely and familiar, and yet it belonged to the world above.

"Not ... right ... now," she managed to say.

"Lenny, please? I really need to talk to you."

Lena closed her eyes. "Maybe later."

The door opened anyway. Carmen walked straight over to the bed where Lena was huddled.

"Oh, Lenny."

Lena made herself sit up, though her bones seemed to slump and cave. She began to cover her eyes with her hands, but then Carmen was right there. There was no hiding. Carmen put her arms around Lena and held her.

Lena let her heavy head fall into Carmen's neck, giving way to the inexpressible mercy of her friend's warm skin.

"Lenny." Carmen hummed and held, and Lena cried.

Lena cried and shook. She cried, and Carmen cried for her.

After a while Lena realized she wasn't at the bottom of the well, but here, with Carmen.

"Mark him! Rusty, go!" Bridget screamed from the sidelines. She paced the length of the field in the Traveling Pants, barking orders and ranting encouragement like any good coach. Her hair was free and incandescent, but her players didn't care. They wanted her for her mind. Or her strategy, more specifically. At the half, eleven guys crowded around her, wide-eyed and attentive, as if she were an oracle.

Greta sat a few yards behind her in a beach chair, smiling and shaking her head, alternately studying the game and her crossword puzzle.

"Jesus, Corey, stop mooning around the goal. Rusty, don't get so far ahead of Billy. You're useless when you're offsides; I don't care if you are fast. And also, their right midfielder is dead on his feet and has no viable sub. That's where you work 'em." She rearranged her lineup a little and sent them back onto the field.

Eight minutes into the second half, Mooresville's overworked midfielder took to the sidelines and got subbed by the backup goalie, who was at least forty pounds overweight. Bridget knew it was in the bag at that point.

Billy threw his arms around her after the win and lifted her off the ground. "All right, Coach!" he shouted. They all swarmed around her happily, shouting and yelling and celebrating.

"Let's not get c.o.c.ky," she said. Then she realized how much she hated it when coaches said that. "Screw that," she said, laughing. "Get c.o.c.ky all you want. We're gonna flatten Athens at four."

Burgess didn't flatten Athens at four, but they did beat them, securing a berth in the final the next day.

It turned out that the final pitted them against Tusc.u.mbia, all the way from Muscle Shoals. Bridget woke up early and put on the Pants for another spin. She brought her clipboard down to breakfast and detailed her complex strategy to Grandma, who tried very hard to look interested but kept sneaking peeks at an article in Ladies' Home Journal.

Billy appeared at the screen door, white-faced, at nine. "We're dead," he said.

"What?"

"Corey Parks took off for Corpus Christi with his girlfriend last night."

"No!"

"Yes. She threatened she'd break up with him if he didn't drive her."

Bridget grimaced. "Oh, no." She shook her head. "I never trusted Corey. Not since he faked the knee injury so he could go to King's Dominion."

"Bee, we were six," Billy said.

Bridget didn't back down. "Well, you know. The more things change ..."

At the field half an hour later, with the two sides a.s.sembled and two towns present to cheer and harangue, the situation didn't look any better. Burgess was no deeper a team than Mooresville. Bridget surveyed her bench unhappily. Their one reliable sub had left for Auburn two days earlier. Seth Molina had s.h.i.+n splints and refused to wear his game s.h.i.+rt. Rason Murphy had such bad asthma Bridget worried that if she put him on the field on a sultry day like today, he would up and die. She would do better to suit up Greta and throw her into the game.

She and Billy paced together, considering their options. There weren't any options.

They looked toward their sorry bench. "This is hopeless," Billy said.

The whistle blew to start the game. Bridget stood frozen on the sidelines as her team filed onto the field-all ten of them.

Tusc.u.mbia went up by four and stayed there, possibly out of pity, till the half was called. Most of the fans were booing or departing by that point.

Bridget had nothing to say to her team at the half. They had the wrong number of players; subtle strategy wasn't really going to make a dent.

"This is humiliating," Rusty opined.

The team trudged back onto the field. The ref was ready with the whistle. Billy was mouthing something to Bridget.

"Huh?" she shouted at him, moving closer.

He mouthed it again. He was waving his hands around like mad.

"What? I can't hear you."

"Honey Bees!" he blasted at her. "I'm saying 'Honey Bees.'"

Finally she got it. He was waving her into the game.

Bridget laughed. Without thinking she ran onto the field beside him.

Everybody looked confused as she stood there in her jeans and running shoes in the middle of the field.

"She's our sub!" Billy shouted to the ref, Marty Ginn, who also happened to own the Burgess Fine Pharmacy. "Rason has asthma," Billy added, knowing perfectly well that Marty had spent eighteen years filling prescriptions for Rason's inhalers.

Marty nodded. He looked to Tusc.u.mbia's captain. "All right with you?" he asked.

Tusc.u.mbia's captain seemed to find the whole thing entertaining. The game was already a farce, so who cared if there was a girl wearing long pants in the middle of it? He shrugged and nodded, as if to say, What next?

The whistle started the half.

Bridget began running slowly up the field, just getting her legs under her. She followed the action around at a distance until she felt the adrenaline building and her eyes and her mind and her feet getting that harmonious feeling that lifted her playing up and up. Then she got down to business. She easily stole the ball from a Tusc.u.mbia forward and began to dribble at speed, a touch and three paces, a touch and three paces.

Nine months away from compet.i.tive soccer hadn't made Bridget worse, it turned out. Also, she was wearing the Traveling Pants. They were the wrong shape and texture for compet.i.tive sports, granted, but they made her happy. And Greta had yanked herself off her duff and was tearing along the sidelines, shouting for Bridget like a maniac. That didn't hurt.

Bridget rose and rose until she was up in the clouds. She could afford to be generous. She a.s.sisted Rusty. She a.s.sisted Gary Lee. She a.s.sisted Billy twice. She set up the plays and doled them out like Christmas presents until the game was tied, the shouts of protest from the opposing team grew deafening, and the last minute began ticking away. Then she took the last goal for herself. She'd never said she was Mother Teresa.

Carma,

I know you needed these especially, so here they are, as fast as I could get them to you. Please note the gra.s.s from the soccer field I left for you in the back pocket. A tuft of the sweet homeland for your enjoyment.

The Pants worked their magic. I'm so happy, Carma. I'm not going to tell you all about it now or even on the phone, because I want to tell you in person. I'm coming home soon. I found everything I needed here.

Love,

Bee

Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

-Charles d.i.c.kens

"Outta bed."

Christina squinted at Carmen in irritation. "No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Mamaaaa."

"Why?"

"Because ..." Carmen tapped a little drumroll on her mom's bureau. "You are going out tonight."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Carmen, I am not going out with your father and Lydia again."

"I know you're not. Anyway, they're gone. You're going out with David." Ha.

Christina sat up. Her cheeks were pink at the very mention of his name. She tried to look suspicious and mad. "Since when?"

"Since I called him and set it up." Carmen opened her mother's closet and began surveying the shoe options.

"You didn't."

"Did so."

"Carmen Lucille! This is not your business!"

"He misses you, Mom. You miss him. It's so obvious. You're sad. Just go. Be happy."