The Hard Count(87)

She turns back to the field to watch my dad talk—more rationally—with the referee, a guy named Jeff Munds. We’ve known Jeff for years. He handles most of the big games in the state, and ends up doing a lot of ours because of that. My father seems to calm down thanks to Jeff, and as he starts to walk with him to the exit from the field, I watch my mom carefully, her nails in between her teeth and her eyes not blinking, but never focusing in one place for too long. She flits from the exit, to the field, to the score, to my knees, to the place down the bleachers where my brother is sitting with a few friends. It’s like I can read her mind, and the way it’s working out what every person here must be thinking about her.

And then, with a few words, everything about her shifts.

“What’s the matter, Lauren? Can’t handle the spotlight? Thinking of driving the car through Jimmy’s house now?”

I don’t even know where the shouting is coming from, but the words ring through clear, and my mother hears them. I watch her demeanor change, her chest fills with air slowly and her shoulders rise.

“Just ignore them,” I say, my hand finding her arm. My mom reaches into her purse, probably for her keys, ready to leave. I assume she’s going to go find my dad and make him go home. Her hand pauses, though, with one more shout from behind us.

“Tori O’Donahue’s parties are better than yours ever were!” the voice shouts.

Of everything that’s ever been thrown at us as a family, the one thing that has always been off limits is Lauren Prescott’s ability to put together an event of any kind. My mother’s degree is in hospitality, and before my father was making good money, my mom ran a five-star resort. Her events are perfection—always on time, always under budget, and enjoyed by all. To throw stones at her over that, especially now, is a bigger insult than I think anyone could ever realize.

My mom turns to me, and when our eyes meet, I see a glimpse of the woman she used to be before the stress of being the coach’s wife started to tear her down. Her pupils dilate, just enough, and her head tilts a fraction. I imagine the sound of her neck cracking, though I think perhaps it really did. She stands, delicately folding the sweater that was keeping her lap warm, laying it down on her seat pad and walking, her arm looped through her purse, up the steps to the place where the voice came from.

I turn in my seat, leaving the chaos still being sorted out on the field and watch as my mom questions the rows of boosters sitting near the press box until a woman finally stands up and puts her hands on her hips, yelling more at my mother—probably about her party planning.

My mom’s expression remains staid, and as her hater continues to yell, pointing and gesturing toward me first, then Noah, my mom calmly opens the snap on her purse and reaches in, pulling out the thin, silver bottle of leftover party paint she had in her purse from when she and Linda met to make posters for the first game. Without a second of warning, my mom takes one step forward and sprays it at the Tiger logo embroidered on the center of the woman’s sweater, causing her to fall backward and scream.

“Oh…shit!” I say, scrambling up the steps, leaving our things and reaching my mom just as others around her are holding her down, several calling the police.

“Let her go!” I yell, trying to pry their grip from my mom’s arm.

“That’s assault! That…that was assault!” one woman yells.

My mom doesn’t fight them, eventually sitting down calmly on the edge of the bleacher row and waiting. I sit next to her while clutching her purse in my arms to protect it from the circling booster wolves. The sounds of their yelling, their disparaging comments and cruel names—they’re careful not to call my mom a bitch, but they come as close as they can without doing so—it all fades to background noise. They keep bickering, pointing and accusing, even when the police officer working the game comes up to take everyone’s statement.

My mom calmly watches the field, her eyes transfixed on the scoreboard as the clock ticks down. She looks on as our defense completely falls apart under someone else’s direction, Nico never getting a chance to touch the ball again. She watches The Tradition lose, and then a slow smile creeps across her face, and her eyes shift to mine before the officer kneels in front of her to get her version of the story.

“I suppose spray-painting a pair of fake tits looks better on your record than smoking pot and driving through the garage,” she says to me, not whispering enough.

The cop, thankfully, doesn’t seem to care all that much. He likely has to deal with yuppie, ticky-tack reports all day, working around Cornwall. How petty and stupid his report must look when turned in next to the guy from West End.

Dad had been escorted from the field, and waited for us on one of the few picnic tables in the grassy area between the football field and the locker rooms. I find him, after the woman—Penny Schmidtt, a friend of Tori O’Donahue’s—decides not to press charges against Mom. Linda caught the entire thing on video with her phone, including the part where Penny called my mom some torrid names and tried to conceal the vodka she snuck in her enormous snakeskin purse.

“What was that all about?” he asks, gesturing to the stands, where my mom still weaves her way down through the crowd. I’m still holding her purse, which no longer conceals the can of paint. The police officer did take that off her hands.

“Mom sort of…” I stop, wanting to rephrase this. “She stood up for herself.”