Bobby didn’t say anything except to tell us we’d be going to the women’s lounge at St. Mark’s, where nuns took their breaks between classes. Since it was a boys’ school, there was no girls’ locker room, and the only reason we even had this space was that one of the nuns had insisted to Bobby that we be afforded the same hospitality as a boys’ team. As we made our way into the school, I hoped that they had also prayed for us, even though I normally didn’t buy into that kind of thing.
We followed a nun who introduced herself as Sister Anthony down the hall. She was as tall as the St. Mark’s coach, with an equally long face, and I wondered if they were related. She wore a men’s-style suit with her nun headpiece, so that from the back she looked like the Grim Reaper if he stuck around and changed for your funeral. The thoughts of death felt appropriate at that moment.
The hallways smelled like a mix of church and boy: incense and dust plus BO and fried food. Our feet squeaked against the clean linoleum.
I thought of things to say. Captain-y things. But if I pointed out the few good moves we’d made in the first half (and to call them good would be a stretch), it would sound hollow and phony.
Dawn punched one of the lockers as she passed it. “Fuck, we shouldn’t be out there.”
“Get some water,” Dana urged her as they passed a fountain.
“I need hemlock, not water,” Dawn snarled.
Sister Anthony opened a dark wood door and flipped on the light switch. We followed her into the lounge, a wood-paneled room with some old furniture and a noisy fridge running in one corner.
“There’s some water,” she said. “If anyone needs a bandage, there’s a kit.” She gestured to a first-aid box on the wall. Then she retreated to a corner of the room and fired up a cigarette. There were ashtrays stuffed with cigarette butts scattered everywhere. Nuns liked Marlboros, apparently. I suspected Sister Anthony was one of the nuns Joe liked.
We fell onto the couches and chairs, all of them overstuffed, comfortable traps. Maybe Sister Anthony just wanted us to fall asleep here.
Bobby stood at the center of us and walked the circle, peering at Marie’s wrist, which she shielded with her other hand, and Franchesa’s scuffed-up legs. He was silent amid our groans and sighs, as if trying to interpret what they meant.
“You’ve done a great job,” he finally said. “You might not see it that way, but you’ve challenged every possession, and you’ve kept up with them every step of the way.” He looked from girl to girl. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a team work so hard on the field,” he added. “You should be proud.”
His remarks were the kind of thing I had debated saying, but if I’d said them, they wouldn’t have been in past tense. I leaned forward in my seat, hanging on his every word, but not in the way I used to. It sounded like he was giving us a pep talk so that we’d be okay with bailing on the second half.
And I was right.
“I think you’ve really proven yourselves today, but there’s no harm in letting this game go.”
I almost jumped from my seat. “What is this? A funeral? We’re not dead yet,” I said, facing off with Bobby. I gestured to my teammates, who did, admittedly, look a touch dead.
Bobby’s jaw clenched. “Susan, you might want to go back out there, but what about your team?” Looking right at me, and only me, he added, “There will be other games.”
“I don’t think we’ll feel like we gave it our personal best if we quit now,” I said, like I was explaining a simple concept to a stubborn child. I looked around the room to see if someone, anyone, was on my side.
Dana Miller was the first to speak, and I braced myself. But she just said, “Susan’s right. We have to finish this game.” She came and stood next to me.
“We can finish,” Tina said, also rising. “It will be ugly, but we’ll survive.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to give them the satisfaction,” Marie said, and joined us. She didn’t give any sense she was in pain, but I saw her touch her hurt wrist as if checking to make sure it was intact.
Slowly, the rest of the team got up and stood next to us. Bobby’s eyes were still on me, his expression fretful. He looked around the room, waiting for someone to take his side, but the only one left was Sister Anthony, whose face was now hidden behind a paperback mystery novel.
Maybe it was being surrounded by so much holy stuff, but realizing that Bobby not only had flaws but also fears was an epiphany. Then and there, I forgave him entirely for not being who I’d wanted him to be. He was my coach, and he could get things wrong.
When it was clear we wouldn’t back down, I could almost see an idea form in his head as he nodded to himself. “Okay, your captain has spoken,” he said. “You’ve all spoken. But I’m not sending you back out there without a path to victory. So here’s the deal: We just need one goal. If you can score one goal, that’s a win, as far as I’m concerned.”
With the way the first half had gone, I didn’t know if we could get even one goal, but he was right. A single point on Ken would feel more like the ending we needed than playing the entire rest of the game only to come up with nothing.
“That’s fair. We accept,” I said to him. I said it to the real him, the worried, unsure one, and I felt less worried and more sure than I ever had. “One goal.”
I held my hand out flat, and waited while my teammates piled their hands on top of it. “On the count of three, Powell Park Pirates,” I said.
Bobby added his hand to the pile, and I counted, smiling at him.
“Powell Park Pirates,” we said in unison, and with that, halftime was over.
We made our way toward the door, if not restored, then at least united. We were still battered and bruised, but we were standing. “Think we can do it?” Wendy whispered to Dawn.
“Stranger things have happened,” Dawn replied. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
Franchesa, Lisa, and Sarah made the sign of the cross as they passed by a painting of the Virgin Mary over the light switch. I was the last one out. In the corner, Sister Anthony looked at me over the top of her book and winked.
I winked back.
One goal.