“OK, Paul, here’s the deal for this year. This team has all the talent in the world. Talent is not a question. We have to crank up the discipline, study our routes, and execute, and we will go to state. We will be the hammer and not the nail. End of story.” He sticks his hand out. Paul fumbles with the mic, shakes it. “OK, Paul, good job on the interview. Good talking to you. I need to get back to my boys.”
Tyler pats Paul Harbaugh on the back in a way that both signals the interview is over and edges him out of the way. The instant Paul leaves, Tyler steps forward toward me.
“Hey, Pink Puke, you’re lookin’ better. But you should definitely not be in the sun.” He nods toward Shupe. “Obviously, no one’s got your back. That dee bag’d just let you die out here.” Still facing me, he walks backward, toward the field. “You staying hydrated?”
I raise my bottle of water.
“OK, you drink those fluids, girl. That heatstroke—”
“It was just exhaustion. Heat exhaustion.”
Heat exhaustion, really? That is really what I yell at him?
“Either way. That is serious shit. People die behind that shit.”
I hold the bottle up and pretend to chug it. I ignore his dimple and see only the spotted, crooked teeth. They make me believe that Tyler Moldenhauer is just an ordinary boy.
He points at me, turns, and runs back to the team.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
Scared and lost, Aubrey turns from me.
“Please, sweetie. Tell me what’s wrong. Whatever it is, we can—”
EEEEEEEEEEE!
The smoke alarm shrieks.
The scared child disappears and, as if the black smoke pouring off the stove and the ear-piercing shriek were occurring in some galaxy far, far away and have nothing at all to do with her and her life here on earth, Aubrey observes, “Your thing is burning.”
I turn off the stove, use my shoe to bang on the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling until the alarm stops. Mickey Mouse is charcoal. Egg and Teflon fused into a blackened crust. I toss the ruined frying pan into the trash. The charred and smoking pan immediately melts a hole through the plastic can and fills the kitchen with the odor of poached polyvinyls.
I fling open the front door to wave the smoke out and hear the rumble of Tyler’s truck approaching. This is a rare appearance; they usually arrange for him to pick her up a few blocks away or whatever else it takes for him to never actually set foot in this house. A topic that has been the subject of more than one fight. Among the many lame excuses Aubrey has given me for why Tyler can’t come in and pick her up like a decent person is that he has some kind of social anxiety disorder and meeting new people terrifies him.
Pretzels, who’s managed to sleep through the fight and the screeching alarm, is roused by either the sound of Tyler’s truck or the waves of hostility pouring off me. She rises shakily from her spot on the kitchen rug, totters over to where I stand at the open door, and looses a few barks that sound like a garbage disposal chewing through a tennis ball.
An anthem more pop than country and western throbbing from the truck, Tyler barrels into the driveway, cuts the engine, and brays along with the stirring finale, “Gimme that girl lovin’ up on me!”
Ah, the enormity of the cultural divide contained within the bad grammar, the folksy anti-intellectualism, the paternalistic macho swagger of the one line that a privileged suburban jock pretending to be country chooses to sing. Why couldn’t Aubrey have brought home one of those vegan, tattooed boys in the skinny black jeans who love bands with arty, non sequitur names?
The song ends. Tyler presses the brim of the cap hugging his head into an even tighter semicircle, plucks the Oakley wraparounds off his head, and settles them over his ridiculously blue eyes.
Social anxiety, my ass.
But I say nothing. If biting my tongue and walking on eggshells is the price to free my daughter from this redneck Romeo, I will pay it.
Pretzels gives a growl more mucoid than menacing; then, her work done, she lumbers back into the kitchen and flops, exhausted, onto her rug, sighing loudly at the imposition.
Stopping only to scoop lip glosses back into her purse and snatch up her apron, Aubrey hurries past. I grab her arm. “Aubrey, I want you