Wife-in-Law Read online

  One of his pals from work—a very kind man, he assured me—was the coach of a girls’ team, so against my better judgment, I gave in and went with Kat and the girls to get their uniforms. When we got to the athletic supply, Sada immediately disappeared into a carousel of Windbreakers, something she did easily, small and quick as she was.

  Kat paid no attention, as usual, and I prayed there wasn’t a back door to the place. Sada had been known to strike off on her own, but so far, we’d managed to find her every time, and Kat had merely chided her, then acted as if nothing had ever happened, which drove me crazy.

  Standing there in the store, Amelia tightened her grip on my hand, studying all the unfamiliar gear and the faintly musty smell of the place. “Mama, where are our uniforms?”

  “They’re here, sweetie.” I spotted a clerk at the register in the back. “That man can help us find them.”

  Kat, currently sporting the Cyndi Lauper look, eyed a pair of orange baseball leggings on her way back. “Ooo. Wouldn’t this look cool with rolled-up camo pants and a big, orange sweater, and green basketball shoes?” Oblivious to the fact that Sada was nowhere to be seen, she carried the leggings to the register. “I’d like to git these. And a uniform for my daughter. She’s on the Falcons T-ball team. Mike Williams is the coach.”

  The clerk, balding and slightly paunchy, nodded. “Sure. We’ll fix you right up.”

  “Us, too, please,” I said, joining Kat.

  The clerk got out his T-ball notebook, then flipped through the pages. “Here it is. Falcons: orange shirts, white pants, and orange leggings.”

  Kat grinned, pointing to the leggings. “See? I told you I’m psychic,” she said to me for the jillionth time.

  Hardly. We both knew orange was her favorite color.

  “I always wanted to play baseball,” she mused, “but Daddy wouldn’t let me.” She brightened. “Maybe I’ll git a uniform too. I always wondered what it’d feel like to wear a real uniform. It’d be great fer team spirit.”

  The clerk was delighted, but I put the kibosh on that idea. “I’m pretty sure only the coaches get to wear uniforms. It might confuse the kids if you did too.” And embarrass Sada.

  Kat deflated. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  The clerk shot me a brief, hostile look.

  “Oh, I know,” Kat said. “I could wear it at home on game days, to git Sada in the mood.”

  I gave up. It was her money.

  The clerk beamed. “And what size would you and your daughter be needing?”

  “I normally wear a four,” Kat said, “but maybe we need to try a six. I’m expectin’.” The girls’ games only lasted six weeks. “I’m not sure what size fer my daughter. I get most of her stuff at thrift shops, and we just keep tryin’ things on till we find somethin’ that fits. Hang on.”

  I was prepared for what came next, but the clerk jumped half out of his skin when Kat put her baby and index fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that could be heard two blocks over, her earsplitting method of summoning Sada, indoors and out.

  Sada cheerfully materialized with two mismatched golf shoes. “Look, Mama.”

  Lord knew what sort of mess the child had left in the shoe department.

  “Um-hm.” Kat plucked the shoes from her and casually laid them on the counter. “Do you need to measure her?” she asked the clerk.

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’m thinking she’s a toddler three.” He eyed Amelia. “Girl’s five, right?”

  Amelia was taller and heavier than her best friend, and very self-conscious about it. “That’s right.”

  “They’re in the stockroom.” He handed Kat two forms, and me one. “If y’all could please fill these out for me, we’ll have their last names put on the backs of their shirts. I’ll have those uniforms for you in a jiffy.” He headed through the dingy curtain behind the counter, calling over his shoulder, “You can try them on here, just to be sure.”

  Kat filled out Sada’s form while I did Amelia’s, but when she got to hers, she wrote a G for Gober, then hesitated.

  She’d always insisted it was sexist to take the man’s last name, but she frowned. “If I put Gober on mine, nobody will know Sada’s my daughter. But there aren’t enough spaces for Gober-Rutledge on either of ours.”

  God help the genealogists in generations to come.

  I wasn’t touching this one with a ten-foot pole. “I guess you’ll have to pick.”

  “Maybe we could use first names.” Rules had never bothered Kat before, so she wasn’t about to start accepting them now. But part of my job as Sada’s godmother was to spare her embarrassment. “Everybody else will have their last names. Would you want to risk embarrassing Sada by having the only first name on the team? Kids can be awfully mean to somebody who’s different.” We both knew the truth of that all too well.

  “Hadn’ thoughta that,” she said, serious. Then she aimed the pen at me. “Not that there’s anything wrong with bein’ different.”

  “Not a thing,” I agreed.

  Kat hovered over the blank spaces. “Oh, what the hell.” She wrote in “Rutledge” in firm caps, then shoved the forms onto the counter.

  I eyed her askance. “You okay with that?”

  She cocked a wry half-smile. “About as fine as you are about Amelia bein’ on the team.”

  “Here they are, ladies,” the clerk said as he emerged with two small and one larger uniforms. “Y’all be needin’ cleats with any of these?”

  Cleats? Please.

  “Already got ’em,” Kat said, then pierced the air to whistle up Sada, who’d disappeared yet again.

  She emerged from behind the curtains and playfully swatted the clerk’s ample bottom with both palms, which scared the bejeebers out of him. Then she laughed and ran to Kat, who was laughing too, instead of correcting her for slapping an adult, and a male at that. “C’mon, Mama.” She dragged Kat’s hand toward the three haphazard changing areas on the side wall. “Let’s be twins.”

  After instructing me to hold the curtain closed tightly so no one could see, Amelia tried on her outfit in the dressing room beside them, then all three came out to show off. Their uniforms fit perfectly, with a little extra breathing room for Kat and the baby.

  For the first time, Amelia seemed a little excited. She hugged Sada and singsonged, “We’re on the same team. We’re on the same team.”

  “I guess it’s official,” I said to Kat.

  She gave me a sidelong hug. “Trust me, darlin’, both of you are gonna come through this just fine.”

  Back home that night, Greg was so excited to see Amelia in her uniform that she proudly paraded for him, talking about practice without worry. But when we all got there the following afternoon, her optimism faded.

  Awkward and self-conscious, she did her best to blend in.

  The coach turned out to be a wonderful man, very supportive and encouraging, but I couldn’t accept his reassurances, when any fool could see that Amelia was miserable.

  During practice, Greg was right behind the chain-link fence, urging her on, but she kept looking back at him and missed the tossed pitches without even swinging. The coach came over and gently suggested that Amelia might do better if Greg sat with me. Sheepish, he agreed, but when he sat beside me, his body was taut with tension.

  “This is T-ball. Why are they throwing pitches?” I asked under my breath.

  Greg didn’t look at me, his eyes glued on our daughter. “To get them used to having the ball come their way. And some of them can hit it. They get three pitches, then three tries to hit it off the tee.”

  “Whose idea was it to pitch in the first place?” I grumbled. “If you call it T-ball, it ought to be T-ball.”

  Greg ignored me, something he’d long done whenever I raised an issue we didn’t agree on.

  Amelia finally managed to get a piece of the ball on the tee with her last try, but it dribbled only a few feet in front of her.

  Kat and Zach made a b
ig deal out of it, applauding and cheering.

  “That’s okay,” Greg called. “You’ll do better the next time.”

  “Good try, honey,” Kat hollered. “You’ll do better the next time.”

  What is it about parents and kids’ sports? Perfectly rational people forget every rule of good parenting and become obsessed with performance.

  When it was Sada’s turn at bat, she whaled the daylights out of the first pitch, sending it into the back fence.

  Zach roared to his feet as the rest of the parents cheered. “That’s the way to do it, baby! Slam the skin off that ball!”

  Amelia clapped as hard of the rest of them, but when it came her turn at bat again, she shrank with dread.

  Greg made a megaphone with his hands. “You can do it, ’Melia,” he hollered. “Just keep your eye on the ball.”

  “Come on, baby,” Zach called. “Remember how we practiced?”

  Don’t say that! Amelia hadn’t connected with one of his practice pitches.

  Responding to their voices, she immediately looked to the bleachers and missed the pitch. My heart ached for her as I remembered being the last one picked for teams in school. It took all my self-control to keep from running out onto that field, scooping her up, and taking her home. If it hadn’t been for Greg, I would have.

  So what if she wasn’t an athlete? Big deal.

  “Eye on the ball, ’Melia,” Greg ordered.

  I elbowed him and hissed, “Shut up, please. You’re distracting her.”

  Amelia sent me a plaintive look that said, “Save me!”

  I flared at Greg. “Why are we subjecting her to this, anyway? She’s just a baby. Who cares whether she can play baseball? Can’t you see, she’s humiliated?”

  “Maybe she needs to toughen up.” He patted my arm in dismissal. “She’ll get the hang of it,” he said confidently. “Just you wait and see.”

  “What if she doesn’t?” I whispered. “She’ll think she’s let you down, all over stupid baseball.”

  Greg kept his eyes on the field. “She’ll get it. She just needs practice.”

  As it turned out, practice didn’t help.

  No matter how hard I begged Greg to let her quit T-ball and take ballet instead, which was what Amelia wanted, Greg wouldn’t budge, claiming she needed to learn good sportsmanship and how to handle adversity.

  At age four!

  The man had lost his mind.

  The day of their first official game, a cold front barreled in from Canada. By the time the kids gathered at six under the lights on the field, it was fifty degrees with a cold east wind, and Amelia shivered in her uniform despite the long shirts and pajama pants she wore underneath it. When I tried to bring her jacket, Greg grabbed me and pulled me back into my seat. “She’ll be fine. Once she gets moving around, she’ll be fine.” This, from the man who wanted to put a sweater on her in July when she was a baby.

  “It’s freezing out there,” I argued. “It’s freezing right here, despite my fur coat.” A full-length mink Greg had given me the Christmas before, when Kat had threatened to throw red paint on it.

  Greg went icy and commanding. “I said, she’ll be fine. End of discussion.”

  Crazy.

  But he was my husband, the head of the household, so I choked back my maternal instincts and subsided to my seat.

  The Falcons lost the toss, so things went okay for the first half of the inning. Amelia watched earnestly from left field as the other team scored five runs. Blessedly, none of the hits went in her direction. (Like me, whenever the ball came at her, she always shut her eyes and covered her face with the mitt.)

  At the inning change, we all went down to the end of the dugout, and Greg gave her a pep talk through the chain link. Amelia tried to keep a brave face, but I could see she was on the ragged edge. Her freezing little fingers gripped the fence.

  “Honey, it’s going to be okay, no matter what,” I reassured her. “You’re perfect to me, just the way you are. Don’t worry about all these other people. You’re mine, and I’m proud of you.”

  She shot me another heartbreaking look.

  The coach gave us a thumbs-up, then motioned us back to the bleachers. “Thanks, moms and dads. Time for us to huddle up.”

  So I sat in the bleachers, snuggled in my mink, and watched my shivering child await the worst moment of her young life.

  One by one, our batters came, and all of them hit the ball. Then it was Amelia’s turn.

  Her shiny black helmet reflecting the lights, my precious darling walked toward the plate like it was a guillotine. Zach and Greg called instructions to her over the slight patter of applause and the daunted murmurs of the other parents.

  Then Amelia turned and looked at all the people staring at her, and promptly disintegrated. Sheets of tears poured over her cheeks as her mouth trembled, soft sobs escaping, but she did her best to stay erect and face the ball.

  Murmurs of sympathy and criticism buzzed from the other parents.

  I rose to go rescue my daughter, but Greg tugged me back down. “She can do this,” he insisted. “Do you want her to run away whenever she faces something difficult?”

  “I want her not to be traumatized at four,” I snapped, but he circled my shoulders to hold me in place.

  “She’ll be fine,” he ground out as my own tears overflowed.

  Kat and Zach looked away. “You can do it, sweetie,” Zach called to Amelia.

  The first pitch went by her as she woodenly pivoted in its general direction, then looked back to us like a lamb to the slaughter.

  Dear Lord, please help her.

  Trembling visibly, she turned back toward the pitcher, then repeated the empty swing as the second pitch went by, her mind on everyone watching her instead of the ball. She probably couldn’t see it through her tears, but she stoutly remained in position.

  Finally, the last pitch whizzed by, and they placed a ball on the tee. Amelia took another wooden swing, and the ball dribbled onto the ground not three feet from her as she dropped the bat and numbly walked toward first as if she was wearing full leg casts. The opponents’ shortstop scooped up the ball and easily tossed it to first.

  “Out,” the opposing pitcher called.

  That did it. Amelia started sobbing and ran into the dugout to cower in the corner.

  I jumped up, and Greg tried to pull me back down by my coat, but nothing was going to keep me from my child. So I let him keep the coat and pulled free, then rushed to the dugout, where the coach had collected Amelia and was holding her in his arms, stroking her back as she sobbed. “It’s okay, sweetie.” Keeping her back to me, he raised a staying palm in my direction, then placed a silencing finger to his lips. “You did great for your very first time. Everybody has to start somewhere. Some of the people on the team had all last year to practice. It’s okay. They had to start out just like you, and they love it now.”

  Her other teammates crowded around them, offering consoling touches and encouragement.

  Chewing gum, one little girl stroked her leg. “Please stop crying, Amelia. I’ll give you my bubble gum if you stop crying.”

  Not used!

  To my relief, she proffered three pieces of wrapped gum. “See?”

  Amelia actually stopped crying and studied the gum, something she’d never been allowed at home.

  “It’s fruit flavored,” her little friend clarified. “Try one.”

  Her breath still catching in soft spasms, Amelia unwrapped the pink cylinder, then put it in her mouth and relaxed against her coach’s shoulder, clearly enjoying the burst of sweetness.

  The coach seized the opportunity to sit with her on the bench, still cradling her so she couldn’t see me and react.

  All my instincts cried out for me to take her away and never let her come back, but the other children were being so sweet to her, and …

  I sensed Greg’s presence before I felt him place my coat on my shoulders. “Come on, honey,” he said gently. “Mike’s got thi
s under control. If she sees us, she’ll just start crying again.”

  He was right.

  I stepped back, then went behind the dugout, clutching my coat around me as Greg stroked my arms.

  “I know, honey,” he soothed. “I know.”

  Then, on the cold wind, I heard a familiar giggle and the sound of little-girl cheers and applause.

  It was Amelia.

  “Maybe this is why little girls have fathers,” I said to my husband.

  “Maybe it is.” He kissed my hair, then led me back to the bleachers.

  The minute Amelia was done, we took the kids to McDonald’s, and she acted as if everything was hunky-dory, carousing in the indoor playscape with the rest of her teammates amid the infectious sound of little-girl laughter.

  Then I took her home and gave her a long, hot bath, and put her to bed.

  After she fell asleep, exhausted from her ordeal, I did my best to talk Greg into letting her quit, but he still wouldn’t budge. “Hell, Betsy, we’re not torturing the child. It’s just T-ball.”

  “You are torturing her,” I countered, “and I, above anybody, know how that feels. It was the same way with me when I was little. I hated for anybody to notice me, to criticize me. This is cruel.”

  He pulled me into his arms. “No it’s not. Hard maybe, at first. I don’t want her to be a quitter. It will not serve her well in life.”

  I stayed rigid in his embrace. “Please let her take ballet instead. That’s what she wants.”

  “She’s four years old,” he said evenly. “How can she possibly know what she wants?”

  But she did. I wanted to haul off and sock my husband for being so detached, and I might have, but what he said next stopped me.

  “How about we tell Amelia she can take ballet if she finishes the season? How does that sound?”

  It was a compromise, but at least she’d be earning something she really wanted. “Maybe. But I can’t bear to see her so upset again. Do you think it would hurt her feelings if I wasn’t there?”

  Greg gave me a squeeze. “I don’t think so. I’ll be there, and Kat and Zach and Sada. As a matter of fact, Amelia might not get as upset. You two are so closely attuned, she was probably reacting to how upset you were too.”