She’d always been willing to drive to any activity, to run anybody’s kid home, to whisk across town for someone’s forgotten shin guards or jersey. She was every team mother, every room mother.
Robin felt a painful squeeze in her chest, as if only at this moment did she understand that her cheerful, generous friend was truly gone.
How? Why? she begged incoherently, knowing there would be no answers. And then, I’m trying to take care of him. She tried to tell Julie, hoping she could somehow hear, know.
Out of the driver’s side climbed an older man who looked a great deal like his son. Robin remembered seeing him at games, although he’d tended to be down on the sideline rather than sitting in the bleachers with her and Julie. With dark hair cut short and an erect carriage, he had the air of retired military. Wearing a polo shirt and shorts, he glanced around, his expression wary when he met Robin’s gaze.
“Mr. Lofgren?”
“Yes?”
She smiled. “I know we’ve met before. I’m Robin McKinnon. Brett’s teacher this year. This…” she turned in search of him, “is my son, Malcolm, who has grown about a foot since you last saw him.”
Brett’s grandfather, too, smiled, his face relaxing. “Robin. Malcolm. I remember you.” He nodded at the lawn chair. “Do you watch practice?”
“Yes, usually, unless I have quick errands to run.”
“Ah. I wondered if I should stay.”
Brett and a pretty, younger girl had gotten out, the girl looking around curiously, Brett pretending he hadn’t noticed anybody else’s presence.
“Hey!” Malcolm said. “It’s great you’re joining the team. We missed you.”
Bless him, Robin thought. The speech was unusually loquacious for an eleven-year-old boy. They seemed to communicate mainly in grunts and raucous laughs. Malcolm had been listening to her.
Brett pretended to look surprised to see her son. “Hey,” he said in response.
“Come on.” Mal jerked his head. “You know how Coach feels about us being late.”
Brett grimaced. “Yeah, I remember.”
Kicking their soccer balls before them, the two boys struck off across the field. They were a handsome pair, both tall and athletic in their shorts, shin guards and loose-fitting T’s.
Beside her, Brett’s grandfather said, “This was nice of you.”
“I hope it works out,” she worried.
“Your boy looks like a nice kid.”
Now she smiled. “He is.” She surveyed the little girl, who waited gravely to one side. “Wow, you’ve grown, Abby.”
The girl grinned. “I’m in fourth grade this year.”
As they started walking after the boys, Robin said, “I hear you have Mrs. Jensen.”
“She’s really nice.”
“You’re lucky. Just between you and me, I think she’s the best fourth grade teacher in the building.”
“My best friend’s in her class, too.”
They continued chatting, Abby telling her artlessly about Summer, whose mom said maybe they could go to the water slides at Wild Waves next weekend and if they did Abby could come for sure. Abby got a little shy when she saw other younger siblings playing under the trees at one end of the giant soccer field. A couple of the ones close to her age were hanging from a low, well-worn limb on the sycamore.
Her grandfather said, “Why don’t you go see what they’re up to. Unless you want to watch Brett.”
She wrinkled her nose, hesitated, then sidled over to the trees. Robin saw that she was quickly absorbed by the small crowd of kids ranging from four- or five-year-olds up to a ten-year-old sister who bossed the rest around.
On seeing the new arrivals, Coach Pearce slapped Brett on the back and said, “Hope you’ve been staying active,” and ordered the whole team to take two laps of the field.
Brett loped beside Malcolm, the two finishing near the head of the string of boys.
Robin set up her lawn chair near the picnic table and several other mothers. Brett’s grandfather shook hands all around. The others seemed momentarily startled, turned to look at Brett, but smiled and included the boy’s grandfather in their idle conversation.
Robin paid more attention to Brett’s play than she did to her son’s. Brett wasn’t as rusty as she would have expected. He must at least have been kicking the ball around. He couldn’t have tossed it in a closet and left it there, or he wouldn’t have been dribbling the ball deftly between cones, heading it to other players, passing with fair accuracy when he and another player raced down the field exchanging the ball.
He acquitted himself well when they scrimmaged, too. By the end of practice, he was as sweaty as the rest of the boys and was in the midst of them when they grabbed water bottles and drained them, listening while Coach mentioned a few weaknesses and said, “We’re playing Puyallup Saturday and they went undefeated last year. Let’s make sure they don’t repeat that feat this year, shall we?”
“Yeah!” The boys high fived.
“Good practice,” the coach finished briskly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The cluster broke up into twos and threes that started toward the parents on the sideline and the parking lot where others would be pulling in to pick up offspring.
“Brett,” Coach added, “I want to talk to you before you go.”
In the act of folding her chair, Robin froze. Oh, no! Had Brett not done as well as she’d thought? She saw the boy’s face go expressionless in a way she’d seen every day in school and come to dread.
“Sure,” he said, shrugging as if he didn’t care.
Malcolm hung back, too.
Stacking cones, the Coach said, “I’d like to try you out at goalie tomorrow. You still interested in playing the position?”
“Yeah! Sure. That’s cool!” His back was to Robin, but she heard the animation in his voice, saw the way his shoulders relaxed.
She relaxed, too, and smiled at his grandfather who had also been listening. “He did great today.”
She repeated the compliment to Brett as the two families walked back to the parking lot together.
Mal scoffed, “Nah, he was so slow I could have stolen the ball from him any time I wanted.” His foot shot out.
Brett turned his body, blocking the steal and then going for Malcolm’s ball. After roughhousing the entire way, the two boys were grinning when they reached the cars.
“See you tomorrow!” her son called as they separated.
“Yeah.”
