LeKeefe tweets his whistle, holds his right foot up high, and orders, “Mark time! Mark … AND!” He brings his foot down, trying to get everyone to hit the first beat together. They don’t. They really don’t.
“T-bones, arc it up! Arc it up!” Mr. Shupe runs onto the field to make certain that the trombones do the choreography perfectly so that, from the stands at halftime, they will all look like very talented ants forming into triangles and figure eights.
The brass players are swinging their instruments up and down, the drummers twirling their big, padded sticks with each beat, everyone just working it as hard as they can.
Do any of them even know that they are playing “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen? Have they watched the YouTube video of Freddie Mercury? I did, and from that moment on, all I could ever think about when we played that song was this skinny guy in a stretchy unitard thing singing about how fat-bottomed girls make the rockin’ world go round. You can’t erase that image and get back into believing that you and Wren Acevedo and LeKeefe Johnson and Amelia O’Dell and all your other band friends are really, secretly cool any more than you can believe that girls of any bottom size made Mr. Mercury’s rockin’ world go ’round. You just can’t.
The football field is still empty, but the aluminum bleachers set up next to it are filling in with the girls who Mom and Dori call the Parkhaven Princesses. They are all wearing Nike running shorts, flip-flops, and weirdly uncool T-shirts that they make look cool. And, somehow in the swampy humidity, they all have hair straight and shiny as Christmas tinsel. Flatiron hair. My whole life Mom has told me that I am “just as good as any of those Parkhaven Princesses.” Which, until she mentioned it, I had never really considered, but the instant she made a point of telling me I was just as good as them, I saw that the whole question was open to debate and she was cheering me on because I was on the losing team.
I suddenly wonder why I ever hated these girls and realize that I don’t. I never did. My mother does. Dori did. Or they hate whoever their version of them was in their high schools. But why should I hate them or idolize them or feel anything at all about them? They are just being who they were born to be. Exactly like I, only child of a semideranged, quasi-hippie single mom, am being who I was born to be.
Everyone on the bleachers claps when the team runs out. The players have on their video-game-predator pads and helmets. Tyler is so encased in plastic that all I can identify is his number. The only sound is a clatter when the players ram together.
In the end, it doesn’t matter that I have worn a skirt. Tyler never looks my way once. Which is good. I am dressed all wrong.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
I grab the Diet Cherry 7UP, dump most of the can into a glass—a giveaway from the breast-feeding conference I attended last March, inscribed with the proclamation, I AM A LACTIVIST!—dig out a half-finished bottle of merlot, pour a healthy jolt in, and hope that the chemical cherry taste and aspartame will be enough to sweeten the vinegar tang of the old wine. Since Dori isn’t around to slug me on the arm, I need at least a modest buzz to disrupt my current cycle of regrets.
I take the drink and settle into my usual spot on the sofa where I’ve sat up more nights than I care to recall listening for the rumble of Tyler’s truck. To take my mind off my fear that this will be one of the nights when Aubrey doesn’t return, I listen to my messages. The first one is from Simone, who reminds me that I saw her late last week in the hospital after her delivery. The message breaks up but sounds frantic enough that I call right back.
“Thank God you called!”
When someone asks why I do the work that I do, that’s what I should tell them. Those four words. “Thank God you called.” How many people ever get to hear that at their jobs? Her problem is engorgement. I walk her through expressing by hand. “That should help soften the breast a little. The nipple won’t