season, that it was a special thing between her and Coach, she kept quiet. And then, more quickly than Mel would have thought possible, it became too late to ever tell her.
In the beginning, Mel and Coach only talked about field hockey. He would ask her opinions. Who played well, who didn’t. Sometimes he would complain to her about the refs, poke fun at other coaches, voice his worries about different girls on the team. Their conversations became as much a part of her postgame ritual as taking a shower.
Never flirty but friendly. Like a friend. A good friend, sometimes, because it was easy to talk to him. That didn’t mean, however, that his texts didn’t give Mel a charge. Make her feel special. Because they definitely did.
Though they could talk about field hockey infinitely, the universe still expanded. He began to tell her about Truman. His alma mater. The greatest place on earth. The happiest times of his life.
Sometimes he called. Usually late and without warning. Just in case, Mel went to sleep with her phone plugged into her charger and always on vibrate. She would keep her voice quiet, and he’d keep his quiet too, even though he was probably in his condo, all alone.
It’s only been talk. Coach would never … you know. And the same goes for Mel. They know there are lines that cannot be crossed. Lines that might not be there in the future, but are very clearly drawn in the here and now, and not worth the risk to his reputation and hers. But there is something real between them. Something that’s grown over the years, spread roots, and managed to sustain itself despite them both purposefully ignoring it in the hopes it might die.
MEL: Where are you?
COACH: Your dad’s office
COACH: I’ve been trying to say goodbye to your parents for the last twenty minutes
MEL: Sorry
COACH: They just brought out your baby album
Oh God.
Mel picks up the platter and sprints down the hall. She finds Coach on the leather Chesterfield in her father’s office, a photo album splayed in his lap. Mel’s parents are each perched on an arm, leaning down to point things out. They are both extroverts and terrific party guests, well read and well informed on a wide variety of subjects. But their favorite topic of conversation—at any time, to any group—is Mel.
She’s their pride and joy.
She had been difficult to conceive—they tried for more than a year, and then with the help of a specialist, a lone viable embryo was implanted. Mel grew like a weed in utero and was born strong as an ox at eleven and a half pounds. She was too big for the eyelet lace romper her mother had packed for her, so she was taken home from the hospital in only a diaper.
Mel hates most of her baby pictures, hates when the baby album comes out on her birthday and gets passed around to her friends. Bald, androgynous, one of those giant beast babies you see every so often on the news, held in the arms of her swan-like mother. She was a physical baby: killer grip, quick to sit up, then crawl, then walk. She didn’t really get cute until around two, when her hair came in, shiny and stick straight.
“Mom. Dad. Coach needs to get going.”
Her father says, “Oh, look, sweetie! Annie!”
Her mother taps a photo with a manicured nail for Coach’s benefit. “This is the girl who introduced Mel to field hockey.”
Her parents had always been athletic—her mother a devoted lap swimmer, her father with three standing racquetball games a week. Mel slipped right in with tennis lessons, swim team. She had a decent golf swing and liked driving the cart. But those sports were quiet. Lonely. A twosome on a vast manicured golf course. A clay court at the country club where no one spoke above a whisper and you never, ever argued with a line judge. A sparkling private pool where your opponents were watery blurs in your periphery.
Mel discovered field hockey through her babysitter Annie Birch, a high school girl from Dormont who took over watching Mel two Saturdays a month for her parents’ date night after her other babysitter left for college. Once Annie must have come straight from a game. Mel, on the front stairs, watched Annie get out of her car, still in her grass-stained gray kilt and maroon shin guards, a wooden stick shaped like a candy cane propped up in the passenger seat.
As