Earlier in the day, Willow, the other girls on the softball team, and I gathered in the cafeteria for our first softball meeting. Our school softball teams were never that great to begin with, but we were scrappy and played hard and never embarrassed ourselves on the field. I’d made varsity last year, as a sophomore, although I hadn’t got much playing time. But this year, with five seniors having graduated, I expected to start at second base. Coach Hicks wanted me to be a slap hitter and had informed me that I would practice that method every day. That meant that as a left-handed batter, I would try to hit the ball toward third base and use my speed to arrive safely at first.
During our first gathering, Willow’s father had circled the room, with the camera pointed toward us. It had felt weird being in that room, next to Willow, knowing we were being filmed during something as insignificant as a softball meeting. I’d seen all the girls sitting up a little taller and posing for the camera, as if they were auditioning for American Idol. More than anything, I’d felt silly and insecure. In everything I did, I was the girl behind the scenes, helping to make it all come together. Like I did in the musical and on the softball field, my job was to make those who were more talented than me look good. To be supportive and prop them up.
Willow’s mother screamed at her, drawing me out of my thoughts. Tears flowed down the woman’s cheeks as she turned to her husband and laid into him. I hadn’t heard what they were arguing about, and before I knew it, her mother had fled upstairs.
I didn’t want to be there. I felt like a stranger in their midst, an anthropologist out in the jungle, observing a never-before-seen tribe. I watched streaming footage of Willow on the iPad, waiting to see if anybody else would appear with her. Gil turned the camera and briefly filmed me before turning back to Willow, who stood bawling in front of their massive refrigerator. I couldn’t believe this. Never in a million years would my mother allow another kid inside our home while she argued with my dad. Everything that happened in our family stayed behind those walls.
Then something happened that stuck with me. Gil put the camera down and hugged his daughter. He wore those signature black glasses with the silver studs adorning the arms. His embrace of her felt odd, seeing it from my perspective, especially after his wife had fled upstairs in tears. Willow clung to him with everything she had, her long nails digging into his gray USC sweatshirt. Willow had told me he’d graduated from there with a degree in film and TV production.
Aside from that night of the first party, I’d never seen my friend so distraught. Was it simply over the brief, volatile argument with her mother? I hadn’t heard what they were arguing about, but could it have been that bad? Enough to make Willow sob like that? Enough to cause her mother to scamper upstairs in tears?
Gil whispered something to her, moving her long blond hair away from her ear. I glanced at the iPad and saw footage of Willow dancing onstage in her role as Sandy Olsson. Willow kept nodding, her eyes glued to his shoulder. They whispered conspiratorially for a few minutes. At one point she looked up and gazed at me, as if wondering what I was still doing here. Why was I invading their privacy? Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Our eyes locked, and I looked away in embarrassment.
The intimacy of a father comforting his daughter was for behind closed doors, not for public consumption, done in private and not in the company of strangers. The emotion they displayed toward each other made me feel like I was violating their personal space. But what was I to do? There was nowhere for me to go in this house. And it would seem awkward if I moved into the living room and completely ignored them.
Finally, they separated. Willow sat calmly on one of the bar chairs lined up along the island. Gil stood behind her, massaging her shoulders. Willow asked her father to pour her a glass of Chablis, and he did so without any reservation, asking if I wanted one, too. Was this the way rich people behaved? Or maybe people from California? My