Twenty-four.
AYSO, which stood for something Frances could never accurately remember, and which was also described as peewee soccer, was Frances’s least favorite thing in the world. She also felt pretty strongly about eggplant, but she fucking hated little kids’ soccer. It started in the fall, which in L.A. is still really hot, and involved several painful rites of passage. When she and Michael had been considering a third child she had said out loud, No, wait, we’d have to do soccer again . . .
For some reason it was a blight that hit every family hard. It started with the application form, which was only slightly less detailed than the forms for getting into one of the city’s charter schools, which were currently heading the field of Forms That Are Complicated Beyond Belief. Then there was the day, which started at some ungodly hour like seven on a Saturday, when the teams got picked. You’d see groups of experienced parents herding their kids together as swiftly as greyhounds rounding a track corner; while other, less experienced parents ended up wandering around with wobbly chinned kids looking for a group that “had room.” Shockingly painful, especially when your kid ended up in a little clump of other kids whose parents didn’t understand the process. It was the sporting version of the Island of Misfit Toys, and if you think five-year-olds haven’t seen that movie, you’re drunk. Then there was Team Parent and Snack Mom and Volunteer Coach, all positions that went to parents who’d just gotten off the turnip truck, soccer-ly speaking.
She personally hated Team Parent, but Coach was also a disaster. She’d seen world-famous directors in bright jerseys made of nonbreathing material reduced almost to tears by the challenge of getting a dozen six-year-old boys to run in the same direction. Get a thousand horses to come over a hill at once, sure; get precious actors to emote on cue, no problem; wrangle a set of producers who don’t understand the importance of using real butterflies, damn the cost, all in a day’s work. But stand in the blazing October sunshine getting Tarquin, Samson, Argo and Aero (twins) to stop kicking the ball at one another’s heads, impossible. Snack Parent sucked ass, too: She once saw a mom who published a well-known mommy blog about finding the joy in every moment, handing out Tic Tacs from the bottom of her purse as the postgame snack. Thank God the bottle of Xanax was in her other bag.
On this Saturday Frances had drawn the short straw because Michael had some work thing he “needed” to do. She was marginally bitter as she stood on the sidelines being grateful she wasn’t Snack Mom this time, when she heard her name being called. She turned and smiled, while inside her head she said, Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. She braced herself.
Shelly was a mom in Milo’s class, and Frances hated and feared her in equal measure. She was a “cool mom” on the surface. Casual shoes that cost a fortune, leggings on toned legs under vintage kaftans, jewelry personalized with her many children’s names, a commitment to veganism and alternative medicine, a firm belief in the joy of a childhood lived free of electronics and sugar, and a tendency to gossip about other parents with the rapier knife of a trained assassin. She specialized in concern, and as she got closer, Frances could see the small eyebrow furrow that indicated she was about to ask about Anne Porter.
“Frances, how are you?” Shelly cooed, embracing Frances and, as always, making her feel momentarily guilty for doubting this woman’s good intentions. “How are the kids?” She turned and looked at Lally, who was running in the wrong direction, but grinning like an idiot. “Lally looks like she’s having a good time.” She kept watching as the referee came over and turned Lally around, sending her heading in the right direction without apparently realizing she’d been turned. “And that’s all that matters really, right?”
“Of course,” said Frances, correctly reading the implied comment on Lally’s lack of athletic coordination. Shelly’s kids were naturally good at lots of things, which, to be fair, was hardly their fault. Otter and Persimmon, both girls, and Gin and Arable, boys. Shelly liked to question gender-normative naming conventions because, as she had memorably put it at one early birthday party, names carry such weight in our society. Frances often wondered how much weight being named after a water mammal, a fruit, a clear alcohol, and a farming term carried, but as the kids themselves were very nice and easygoing, she’d never posed the question.
“I heard the news about Anne Porter, it’s terrible.” Shelly looked at the ground, almost conjuring a tear, and radiating Genuine Concern. She looked up in time to catch Frances’s raised eyebrow, and added, “Not that I know her very well, of course. Not like you.”
Frances wondered if Shelly was suggesting that Frances was somehow complicit in Anne’s cheating, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Yes, it’s sad. I hope they’re able to work it out.”
“For the children.”
“Sure, but also for them. I imagine divorcing someone is very painful, even if you’re both ready to leave the marriage.”
“And Charlie presumably isn’t ready, seeing as he wasn’t the one cheating.”
Frances shrugged. “You’d have to ask him. I’m trying to stay out of their business.”
“How do the kids seem?”
Frances nodded her head at a distant field. “Theo’s playing goal, and hasn’t let any in yet, so he’s presumably fine right now. Kate is sitting with her dad over there, doing stickers. I expect they’re sad, but they’ll be OK. Kids are resilient, right?”
Shelly looked at her and tipped her head to one side. “You know, Frances, you don’t need to be defensive. Friends rally around at times of crisis, it takes a village, right?” She smiled sweetly. “It’s interesting when other people’s pain brings up issues . . . Are you and Michael having problems?”
Frances resisted the urge to punch the other woman in the throat. “I didn’t think I was being defensive, Shelly. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” She felt herself starting to sweat, hating any kind of conflict. “If you’re so worried about the Porters you should go and speak to Charlie, he’s right there.” She wasn’t even going to touch the comment about her own marriage. She herself never felt she was intimate enough with someone to ask about their marriage, unless they were, like, friends for a decade or related by blood or thrown together on a sinking cruise liner or something. You came across this false, fast intimacy all the time in the circles she moved in. People who loved to talk about their feelings, their fears, their colonic irrigation, their therapy, their children’s therapy, their sex life, their new car. Frances barely had room in her head for her own feelings plus a running grocery list. She felt like the Mad Hatter: No room! No room!
She looked around, hoping the soccer game was nearly over, or that Lally had been mildly concussed, or something that would end this stupid conversation. But no, Lally was now running in a different direction, still wrong, but different. Over on a nearby pitch Milo was playing a real game of soccer, as the difference between four and ten years old was significant when it came to rules and balls. Ava had loved soccer. Frances suddenly had a vision of the little trophies she used to bring home proudly, the slices of orange making her wrists sticky, the bouncing ponytail as she pelted across the grass. That nine-year-old was long gone now and Ava seemed to barely remember her, or even care about the things that used to matter so much. Dinosaurs. Doll clothes. Horses. Legos. Drawing was the only one that stayed, the one passion that had yet to wane.
“Frances?” Shelly was still looking at her, a deeper wrinkle between her eyebrows. Shit, apparently she’d drifted off there for a moment. She looked at Shelly and smiled vaguely.
“Sorry, Shelly, got distracted. What were you saying?”
But Shelly herself was suddenly distracted by something behind Frances, and the way her eyes widened suggested it was way more interesting than Frances’s apparent descent into dementia. Frances turned, guessing before she saw her that Anne Porter had just arrived.
Anne realized as she got closer that this was a major mistake, but she had told Charlie she would show up and there was no turning back. She couldn’t have chosen a more public place to appear, as pretty much everyone she knew was there, or at least enough of them that everyone she knew would get a firsthand account.
She felt like crap. Apart from the eggs at Frances’s she’d barely eaten in the last few days. She still hadn’t called her parents: Her mother didn’t enjoy bad news. Or maybe she did enjoy it, but whoever brought the bad news lived to regret it. Anne decided to wait until she had a better story to tell. Rather than, “Hi, Mom, I fucked up massively and now my life has shattered into a million pieces,” she wanted to be able to lead with, “Hi, Mom, Charlie and I have been having some problems, but it’s all better now. How are you?” It might take a while, but she was going to wait for that. Her mom preferred to parent the good parts of her children only.
Now Anne was standing in the heat of the soccer fields in the park, looking around for her kids and trying very hard not to make eye contact with the parent body of her school. It was hard because although a generous third of them were doing her the courtesy of pretending she wasn’t there, the other two-thirds were avidly watching and hoping she was either drunk or insane. Some of them were looking behind her, hoping she’d brought the eighteen-year-old she was supposedly sleeping with.
Suddenly she saw Frances, and instinctively started walking toward her. Frances was looking at her, but with a question in her eyes, rather than judgment: Are you OK? Anne walked toward her resolutely, avoiding any other eye contact. As she got closer, though, she realized Shelly was standing with Frances and nearly stopped. Shelly was absolutely the worst possible person to run into, but fortunately Frances was stepping around her and walking to meet Anne in the middle, curving her body as she walked to suggest a bench off to one side as a meeting point. It was like semaphore: Don’t panic, we’re heading for that bench, we’re going to make it, keep going. Anne had started to feel tingling in her hands, and pulsing nausea; she was going to have a panic attack.
“You’re fine,” was the first thing Frances said as they got close enough to hear each other. “You’re fine, just sit down on the bench. I’ll get out the taser and keep the bitches at bay, OK?”
“OK.” Anne’s voice was a whisper.
They were now walking together, and Frances added, “Lili’s here somewhere, and so are Jim and Andy, and between us we will create a human shield if we have to.”
They reached the bench and sat down. Anne was breathing rapidly, her color very bad, her nausea worsening.
“I’m going to throw up.”
Frances shifted her purse on her shoulder and let it fall to the ground. “Oh dear, I dropped my purse. Quick, bend down and help me pick up my shit. Keep your head lower than your knees.”
Anne did as she was told. Frances, it turned out, had a great deal of stuff in her handbag. Toys, sweets, coins, a pack of cards that spilled helpfully across the grass, a little Hot Wheels car, a bottle of bubble solution, several pens, several pen lids, none of which went together, and so on and so forth.
Frances knelt on the grass in front of the bench, shielding Anne while they picked up the contents of her bag. “Feeling better?”
Anne kept her head down, and a sob escaped her. “No.”
Frances made a soft noise of support, such as one might make to a child, and touched Anne on the knee. “Anne, you messed up, but you’re here now for your kids, and you need to pull it together. You are not going to throw up or freak out, you are going to let the blood flow back into your extremities and once you’re able to stand up again we’ll find the kids and you will be good once you see them, alright?”
“If they want to see me. If Charlie will let me.”
“He told you to come here, right?” Frances looked worried, suddenly. “You’re not just turning up unexpectedly?”
Anne shook her head, gathering the playing cards together and searching for a rubber band or something to keep them together. Frances handed her a black-covered hair elastic, which worked just fine. “No, I’m invited.”
“Excellent.” Frances looked relieved.
“He’s coming,” Anne said and suddenly sat up, the blood restored, the nausea subsided, the inner anxiety reduced just by seeing her husband, even though he hated her now. She tried a smile. He’d always loved her smile.
Charlie didn’t smile back. Instead he spoke to Frances. “Nice to know whose side you’re on, Frances.”
Frances sat back on her heels and looked up at him. He was barely holding it together. “Don’t be silly, Charlie. She looked like she was about to pass out, and rather than give the local witches something even juicier to talk about, I helped. I hope you would do the same for me.”
He shook his head. “Not if you’d cheated on your husband and ruined the happiness of your children. You’d be just as big a bitch as she is.” He looked at his wife with disgust. “I’d have let her fall, personally.”
Frances stood up. “I’m glad to see you’re handling this so well. I’m going back to my kids now, before I say something we both have to live with for years.” She turned back to Anne and smiled. “Sorry, Anne. I hope you feel better.”
Apparently soccer was over because behind them they heard Kate and Theo happily calling to their mother, and thundering in their direction. Frances walked away, and the kids passed her going top speed. Her own kids were waiting for her, watching her come with trusting expressions. There were juice boxes in their future, and possibly ice cream.
“Is Anne OK?” Shelly had stepped into her path, looking concerned in a way that suddenly pissed Frances off. Shelly barely knew Anne, she just wanted to be the One Who Knew the Scoop.
“Sure,” replied Frances, not slowing down very much.
“Can you believe she cheated on Charlie? He’s so nice. Those poor kids. So selfish, right?” Shelly made a little clicking sound with her tongue. Frances still didn’t slow down, but she looked at Shelly and raised her eyebrows.
“You know absolutely nothing about it, Shelly, and you should keep your ill-formed and unwelcome judgments to yourself. Maybe your life is a well-orchestrated series of elegant vignettes, with perfect photo opportunities every ten minutes, but if you’re anything like the rest of us then you’re lurching from one near-disaster to the next, crossing your legs every time you cough so you don’t pee your pants after having had four children.”
Shelly just stared at her, her mouth open.
“That’s what I thought,” said Frances, walking by and farting silently as she went. She was opposed to chemical warfare on principle, but sometimes you just had to go with what you had at hand.