The One and Only.
by Emily Giffin.
One.
I should have been thinking about G.o.d. Or the meaning of life. Or simply grieving the fact that my best friend was now motherless and my own mother without her best friend. Instead, I found myself gazing into the sleek mahogany coffin lined with generous folds of ivory silk, silently critiquing Mrs. Carr"s lipstick, a magenta with blue undertones that subtly clashed with her coral dress, the same one she had worn to Lucy"s wedding nearly five years ago.
More problematic than the shade of lipstick, though, was the application. Someone, clearly low on the beauty-industry totem pole, had colored just outside the lines as if to create fuller lips. It was an optical illusion that never fooled anyone and seemed wholly unnecessary given the circ.u.mstances. After all, there would be no photos taken today. No professional alb.u.ms filled with various combinations of family and friends, posing with Mrs. Carr, horizontal but front and center. In fact, the entire custom of fancying up a corpse for an open-casket funeral seemed suddenly ridiculous. Cremation was definitely the way to go. It was the way I wanted to go, rather than risk the possibility of going out on a bad-hair day. Without a husband or sibling, I made a mental note to convey my final wishes to Lucy after some time had pa.s.sed. She was really the only person it made sense to tell. Besides, Lucy got s.h.i.t done. She was like a decisive committee with no dissenting members. At least none who dared speak up.
"Do you need anything?" I whispered to her now, breaking into the endless line of friends, family, and virtual strangers offering condolences. I had never seen so many people at a funeral, and, combined with everyone who had come to the wake the night before, it seemed that most of our small town had made an appearance.
"A Kleenex," she whispered. In contrast to the past three days, she was dry-eyed, but looked to be on the verge of a fresh breakdown, her blue eyes gla.s.sy and round. I handed her a tissue from my purse, once again conjuring her wedding, when I had vigilantly shadowed her with mints and a compact of powder.
"Anything else? Water?" I asked, thinking that it felt good to be needed for once, and it was a shame that it took a major rite of pa.s.sage to turn the tables on our usual dynamic.
Lucy shook her head as I returned to the second pew, where she had instructed me to sit, along with my parents. She had all the details covered-from the seating to the hymn selection to the white orchids on the altar-which was why it was so surprising that she hadn"t noticed her mother"s lipstick last night at the wake, when there was still an opportunity to fix it. At least I hoped she hadn"t noticed it, because as a corollary to her efficiency, Lucy was cursed with the crippling capacity to dwell on even the most trivial matters for weeks, sometimes years. Like the grudge she was sure to hold against Angel, her mother"s hairdresser, who dared to be away this week, on a Caribbean cruise no less. If not to return to do her mother"s hair, Lucy had ranted, then at least to pay her respects to her best client. Secretly, I thought Angel should have been afforded some slack; surely her vacation had been planned for months, and logistically it must be pretty tough to get off a ship on such short notice. But it wasn"t Lucy"s style to cut anyone slack, especially when it came to a slight to her family, whether perceived or real. As her oldest and closest friend, I was also a beneficiary of her extreme loyalty and had long since memorized her bright-line rules. There was no gray area and no second chances, even when I could muster up my own forgiveness or indifference. That didn"t matter to Lucy, who stood by her creed: You"re dead to me.
There it was again. Dead. I shivered at the finality of it all, cursing the cancer that took Mrs. Carr"s life in ten months flat, not a single symptom until it was too late. Recognizing that praying wasn"t at all like riding a bicycle, I bowed my head and formed silent, clumsy words, doing my best not to question G.o.d"s existence while I asked Him for favors. Please help Lucy find a way to be happy without her mother. It felt like an impossible request, and the fact that she had her own daughter, just-turned-four-year-old Caroline, who was too young to attend the funeral or one day remember her Gigi, seemed to heighten all the emotions of loss. A new generation was a constant reminder of everything Mrs. Carr was going to miss. Birthdays, benchmarks, all of life"s momentous firsts stretched ahead without her.
I turned my gaze and prayers to Lawton, Lucy"s brother, a carefree bachelor but still a mama"s boy to the core. He was standing beside his sister, mopping his face with a handkerchief, likely one Mrs. Carr had pressed for him in antic.i.p.ation of this day. She had made a flurry of arrangements and plans over the past few months, including a morphine-induced request for Lawton and me to marry. Kill two birds with one stone, she had said, not exactly a flattering or hopeful description. That wasn"t going to happen-Lawton wasn"t my type and I was even less his-but I had smiled and told her I"d work on it, while Lucy made a joke about every couple needing at least one grown-up. I looked up at the sun streaming through the stained gla.s.s behind the altar, wondering if Mrs. Carr was somewhere up there watching us. And if so, could she read my mind? Just in case, I said a final goodbye to her, my throat tight and dry. Then I closed my eyes and mouthed Amen, aware of the glaring omission in my prayer: Coach Carr.
When I looked up again, he was directly in my line of vision, walking from the opposite end of the casket toward the pew in front of me, his hands clasped behind his back, the way he paced the sidelines of a game. I heard him exhale as he took his seat, close enough for me to touch his shoulder if I only extended my hand and leaned forward a few inches. But I couldn"t so much as look at him, hadn"t been able to in weeks, even when I dropped by the house with store-bought ca.s.seroles and six-packs of Shiner Bock. I knew he was devastated, and the mere notion that I might glimpse him in a vulnerable moment was unbearable, like looking at those award-winning photos of soldiers or firemen, holding babies, weeping after a catastrophe. I firmly believed that it was always harder to be the one left behind, especially if you thought you were on your way to happily ever after.
Coach and Connie Carr"s story fittingly began at Walker University, the school with the same name as our small town in North Texas, where he was the star quarterback and she the prettiest cheerleader. Except for the one season he played for the Colts, just after Lucy and I were born, the Carrs never left Walker, as he worked his way up the coaching ladder from quarterbacks" coach to offensive coordinator to the youngest-and now the winningest-head coach in Bronco history.
Coach Carr was something of a deity in our town, throughout the state of Texas, and in the world of college football, which happened to be the only world I truly cared about, and Connie had been royalty in her own right. She was more than the elegant coach"s wife, though. She worked tirelessly behind the scenes, as the ultimate fund-raiser, administrator, social chair, therapist, surrogate mother. She sat with injured players in the hospital, wined and dined boosters, cajoled crotchety faculty, and soothed feelings on all sides. She made it look so easy, with her surplus of charm and kindness, but I knew how demanding and lonely her job could be. When Coach wasn"t physically gone-on road games or out recruiting-he was often mentally absent, obsessed with his team. Still, Mrs. Carr had never wavered in her support of her husband, and I honestly didn"t know what he would do without her.
I took a deep breath, catching a whiff of Coach Carr"s familiar Pinaud Clubman aftershave, a few airborne molecules triggering rapid-fire memories. Lucy and me sitting on his office floor, playing board games while he drew up depth charts and play diagrams. The three of us riding in the front seat of his truck, my hand out the window, as we listened to country music and sports radio. Sneaking into the locker room with Lucy, not to glimpse the shirtless boys (although we did that, too) but to hear Coach"s pa.s.sionate postgame speeches, thrillingly peppered with cusswords. Much like the one he gave me in his living room when I was seventeen, right after the cops decided not to arrest me for drinking and driving-and instead dropped me off at the Carrs". Coach, you got this one? I could still remember the look he gave me-worse than spending the night in jail.
I allowed myself a fleeting glimpse of his profile now, afraid of what I would find, but comforted that he appeared as strong and rugged as ever. Not at all like a widower. He was a fit fifty-five, but looked a decade younger thanks to a full head of hair, olive skin, and a strong bone structure. It wasn"t fair, I had thought for years, whenever I saw Lucy"s parents together. Mrs. Carr was beautiful, fighting age almost as viciously as she fought death, but her husband just kept getting better-looking, the way it was for a lot of men. And now. Now it really wasn"t fair. It was a proper funeral musing-the inequities of life and death-and I felt relieved to be maintaining an appropriate train of thought, if not actual prayer.
But in the next second, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, as I thought of football. Lucy said it was all I ever thought about, which was pretty close to true, at least before Mrs. Carr got sick. Even afterward, I found myself escaping to the game I loved, and I knew Coach did the same. It upset Lucy because she didn"t understand it. She would ask me, through tears, how he could care so much about signing a recruit or winning a game. Didn"t he see how little it mattered? I tried to explain that his job was a distraction, the one thing he could still control. Football was our touchstone. A constant. Something to hold on to as a bright light burned out in Walker, Texas, our little version of Camelot.
A few seconds later, Lucy and Lawton sat down, flanking their father, and the sight of three of them, instead of four, was more than I could take. My throat tightened as the organ began to play. Loud, mournful notes filled the church. I could hear my mother softly weeping between chords, and could see Lawton and Lucy wiping their eyes. I glanced around so I wouldn"t cry, anything to distract me in that final lull before the service began.
I spotted my boyfriend, Miller, who had played for Coach years ago, during my faded era, standing with a few former teammates in the far aisle. They all looked lost in their ill-fitting suits and shined-up shoes, unaccustomed to Walker gatherings that weren"t celebratory in nature-pep rallies, parades, and booster dinners. Miller gave me a two-finger wave with a half smile as he fanned himself with his program. I looked away, pretending not to see him. Partly because I knew Lucy didn"t approve of him. Partly because I still felt a knot of guilt for having been in bed with him when she called with the final news, my ringer accidentally turned off. But mostly because it just wasn"t the time to be waving at your boyfriend, especially one you weren"t sure you really loved.
"No riffraff at the house," Lucy declared immediately after the burial as she marched down the gra.s.sy embankment toward Neil"s freshly washed Tahoe. I"d known it was only a matter of time before her sadness turned to anger-and was actually surprised that she had held out this long. Coach had once joked that Lucy had only two gears-happy and angry.
"Define riffraff," I asked-because I really wasn"t sure what she meant other than that she cast a wider net than I did when it came to such categories.
"Boosters. Fans. All players, past or present. Except Ryan. Mom loved Ryan," she finished decisively, tightening the belt of her long black trench coat.
Mrs. Carr did love Ryan James, who happened to be Walker"s only Heisman Trophy winner, but she had also adored every sorry benchwarmer and earnest walk-on ever to come through the program. I exchanged an anxious glance with Neil, who calmly said his wife"s name.
"Don"t "Luce" me," she snapped under her breath. "I mean it. I"ve had enough. Family and close friends only."
"How do you plan on enforcing that?" Neil asked, glancing around at the droves of acquaintances making their way to the circular drive surrounding the Carr family plot. He pushed his retro oversize gla.s.ses-the kind you could only pull off when you were as boyishly cute as Neil-up on his nose and said, "Half the town"s on the way over there now."
"I don"t care. They weren"t even supposed to be at the cemetery. What part of private don"t they get? And they aren"t coming to the house. They aren"t. Tell them, Lawton," she said, turning to look at her brother.
"Tell who what?" Lawton asked, appearing completely disoriented, useless as ever.
"Tell Shea and Neil that it"s time for family and close friends only," she replied, for our benefit more than his. She reached up to make sure that no loose strands of hair had escaped her tight, low bun. They hadn"t, of course.
"But they think they are family, Lucy," I said and could hear Mrs. Carr saying it now, referring to virtual strangers as part of "the Walker family."
"Well, it"s offensive," Lucy said, stumbling a bit as her heels sank into the fresh sod. Neil slipped one arm around her, catching her, and I contemplated how much worse this would be if she were in my shoes, alone. "I"m sick of these people acting like this is a tailgate at a d.a.m.n bowl game. And if I see one more teal tie ... Who wears teal to a funeral?" Her voice cracked just as Miller, in his teal and gold striped tie, loped toward us with an expression that neared jovial. I made eye contact with him and shook my head, but the gesture was far too nuanced for him.
"Yo. Shea. Wait up," he called out as I noticed that he not only had donned his school colors but also had a "Cla.s.s of 2001" Broncos pin centered on his lapel. How he"d managed to keep track of that thing for over a decade was beyond me, especially given that he"d lost his wallet twice since we"d been dating.
Lucy pivoted, squaring her slight frame to all six feet, four inches of Miller. "I"m sorry, Miller," she said, her chin quivering. "Did you want to sing the fight song for us? Or just relive the glory days when you were ... relevant?"
"Whoa, whoa, girl. What"d I ever do to you?" Miller said, his emotional instincts on par with his sartorial sense. "Why you gotta call me unrelevant?"
"Irrelevant, Miller. Not to be confused with irregardless, which, by the way, also is not a word. And I"m calling you irrelevant because you are." Lucy"s long, delicate fingers made artistic flourishes in the air.
"Fine, then," Miller said, his cheeks even ruddier than usual, his curly sideburns damp with sweat despite the brisk February day. I had told him twice to get a haircut, but he hadn"t listened.
"I just wanted to tell you I"m sorry. Very sorry. For your family. For your loss. I really liked your mom. She was an awesome lady."
The speech was heartfelt, I could tell, but Lucy refused to cave. I braced myself as she crossed her arms and said, "Oh, puh-lease, Miller. The only loss you ever cared about was the one to Nebraska when you fumbled on the four-yard line because you were so c.o.ked up."
"I wasn"t c.o.ked up," Miller said. "I just ... dropped the d.a.m.n ball. Jesus."
I bit my lower lip, shocked that Lucy recollected the play, even the yardage. But she got the rest wrong. It was T. C. Jones who failed the drug test after the game, not Miller, who never really did c.o.ke, vastly preferring the mellowing effect of marijuana. In fact, based on his gla.s.sier than normal expression, there was a distinct possibility that he had smoked this morning. Maybe even on the car ride over.
"Luce," Neil said, sliding his grip from her elbow to her forearm and gently guiding her to his car. A child psychiatrist, he had a calming effect on the most high-strung children-and the rare ability to soothe Lucy. "Come on now. Let"s go, honey."
She didn"t reply, just gracefully climbed into the car, crossed her slender legs, and waited for Neil to close the door. As Lawton collapsed into the backseat, Lucy stared down at the pearl bracelet that once belonged to her mother.
"Are you coming with us?" Neil asked me. "Or going with your parents?"
I glanced back toward my mom and dad, walking toward her car. Although long divorced, they had managed to be civil to each other through this ordeal, and, to my relief and surprise, my dad had left his wife back in Manhattan.
Lucy answered for me through her half-open window. "Neither," she said. "I want her to ride with Daddy. He shouldn"t be driving alone. He"s being so stubborn." She stared at me. "Okay, Shea?"
I hesitated.
"Just do it. And make sure he wears his seat belt. One death in the family is plenty," she said as I looked up the hill, finding Coach Carr in a cl.u.s.ter of dark suits.
"But don"t you think he"d rather be alone?" I asked. "I"m sure he doesn"t want to make conversation-"
"Well, you"re different," she said, cutting me off. "He actually likes talking to you."
Two.
I waited, squinting in the winter sun and watching as Coach Carr talked to the last few graveside stragglers. Lucy was right. They really were insensitive, as everyone knew he didn"t like to talk after losses, and if you didn"t know this, you probably shouldn"t have been there in the first place.
He finally broke free and walked toward me. My mind raced, wondering how I was going to tell him he had an a.s.signed chaperone back to his house.
"Hi, Coach," I said when he was directly in front of me. We made fleeting eye contact before I stared back down at the ground.
"Hi, girl," he said, sounding weary. "You need a ride?"
"Um ... Lucy wanted me to go with you ... to make sure you wear your seat belt," I stammered.
I looked up as he shot me a sideways glance. "All right ... But am I allowed to dip?"
"I thought you quit?"
Some of his Levi"s still had a telltale imprint of a Copenhagen tin on his back right pocket, but it had been years since I had seen him take a dip. His quitting tobacco was all Mrs. Carr wanted one Christmas. That and a Cotton Bowl victory-both of which she got, along with a diamond tennis bracelet she hadn"t asked for.
"I did quit. I was joking," he said.
"Oh," I said, forcing a smile, realizing that the circ.u.mstances had dampened my keen radar for his brand of humor.
He gestured toward his car as if granting permission to ride with him but, to my relief, didn"t open the door as he usually did for me. For any woman, including and especially his wife of thirty-plus years. Every single time, Lucy once said when I pointed out the spousal chivalry. I remember the cute way she had smiled, prouder of this fact than she was of any of her father"s on-the-field accomplishments. It was the only thing Lucy had that I ever felt genuinely envious of, my own parents being unified only in their hatred of each other. Only now, bizarrely, I was the lucky one. Because divorce was better than death.
Coach Carr went around to the driver"s side of his old Ford Explorer, and we got in and closed our doors in unison. He started the engine and did an efficient three-point turn while I calculated that we were about four miles from the Carrs" house. Ten minutes at most, but an eternity when I couldn"t think of a single thing to say. Asking him how he was doing didn"t seem like my place, and telling him I was sorry felt like too much of a mammoth understatement. So I said nothing, just watched out of the corner of my eye as he reached for his silver Walker thermos, the same one I had seen Mrs. Carr fill with freshly brewed coffee at least a hundred times over the years. Probably more than that. I wondered who had made his coffee this morning and if he even knew how to work their fancy European machine. Befuddled by modern gadgetry, he was the least handy man I knew in the state of Texas. He still had a flip phone and did without a computer, insisting that it was the only way to avoid all the Monday morning quarterbacks who would inevitably track down his email address. He took a sip of coffee and made a face, replacing the thermos in the cup holder near the dashboard.
When I could no longer bear the silence, I cleared my throat and imitated what I had heard others say between the ceremony and burial. That the service was really nice. That Lucy did a great job with the eulogy.
"Yeah. She sure did. I"m proud of her." His voice cracked, and, for a few seconds, I held my breath and looked away, terrified that he was finally going to break down.
But when he spoke again, I realized it was all in my head. He was still composed, in complete control. "Lawton said you helped Lucy write it?"
"I just helped a little," I said, which wasn"t exactly true. They were all Lucy"s ideas and feelings, of course, but I had rewritten and rearranged whole sections because she said her own words didn"t sufficiently honor her mother.
"Please make it better," she had pleaded until I broke out my highlighter and red pen. Lucy was probably smarter than I was and had always done better in school, but writing was my thing.
Coach gave me a look that said he didn"t quite believe me. "Well. I think Connie would have been pleased."
I caught that he said would have-instead of was-a clue that he wasn"t one hundred percent sure about G.o.d these days either, and I felt a stab of despair followed by a more dire emptiness. At that moment, I desperately wanted Coach Carr to have real, enduring faith, although I wasn"t sure why that mattered to me so much.
As we turned out of the cemetery onto Baines Avenue, the main thoroughfare bisecting Walker from east to west, I worked up the courage to speak again. "Coach Carr?"
"Yeah, girl?" he asked, waiting.
"Could you ... uh ... put on your seat belt?"
It was the first time I had ever told him what to do-unless you count "pa.s.s the salt"-and I added a please to soften it.
He smiled his easy smile, crinkle lines appearing around his eyes as he strapped the belt over his shoulder. "There. We good now?"
"Yes," I replied, one syllable closer to absolutely nothing left to say.
"All righty then," he said, his voice changing again, only this time in the opposite direction-loud, normal, almost cheerful. It suddenly became clear to me what he was doing. He was faking it, trying to put me at ease, which made me feel even guiltier for being in the car, next to him. In her place. He finished his sentence with "Should we talk Signing Day?"
He was referring, of course, to the big day last week, always the first Wednesday in February, and the first day that a high school senior could sign a binding letter of intent, committing to play for a particular college or university. It was one of the most important days of the year in Texas. This year, Walker had made a big splash by landing one of the top recruits in the country, Reggie Rhodes, an explosive, game-breaking tailback from Louisville, beating out Texas, Alabama, and Ohio State. It was impossible to be too excited about the news, given Mrs. Carr"s death the very same week, but it was something of a salve, and Coach"s mention of football now filled me with relief.
"Sure," I said, feeling my shoulders relax a little as I glanced at him.
He reached out and turned on the radio, bypa.s.sing his usual country stations and punching the dial up to AM 1310, The Ticket, tuning in to an animated conversation about Rhodes and how disappointed everyone was in Austin. "Bronco fans are already rubbing their hands together for the first Sat.u.r.day in December, when they will have the chance to avenge last season"s bitterly close loss to the Longhorns," Bob Sturm mused.
"Sure hope so," Coach talked back to the radio.
"With Rhodes on the field and Mrs. Carr up there on our case ... we can"t lose."
"Yeah. It"s the least the big guy upstairs can do for us," he said, as I pictured Mrs. Carr, waving her teal pom-poms up in heaven.
The first photograph ever taken of Lucy and me together features the two of us lying side by side in a playpen, staring up at the ceiling with cross-eyed, blank baby expressions. We can"t be any older than two or three months, just two blobs-one with blond fuzz and blue eyes turned red by the flash (Lucy), the other with a thatch of dark hair and eyes (me). We were wearing matching onesies with the vintage Walker logo, a cursive W ensconced in a horseshoe. I couldn"t find the negative, and the only surviving copy was yellowed and ribbed from the sticky pages of one of my mother"s cheap alb.u.ms that predated acid-free sc.r.a.pbooking. So I carefully excavated it, took it to a specialty photography store, and had it restored, then framed-one for me, one for Lucy. I put mine on the mantel over the faux fireplace in my apartment, along with a handful of other momentous photos, and gave Lucy hers for her thirtieth birthday, a few weeks after mine. For a year or so, she kept hers in an equally prominent spot in the family room of the three-bedroom bungalow she and Neil had bought together. But I recently noticed that the frame had been demoted to a dresser in her guest bedroom and, more troublesome, our photo replaced by a professional shot of Caroline, standing alongside a white picket fence, wearing a pink monogrammed sundress.
When I called Lucy out on the unsentimental swap, she looked sheepish, a rare emotion for her. "We have far better pictures together. Like that one," she said, pointing to a shot of the two of us, arm in arm, sporting buns and voluminous yellow tutus from our first ballet recital. "Besides," she said, "don"t you hate the way they used us as props like that?"
By they I knew she meant my mother and her parents, all Walker grads and close friends during their school days. My father had even adopted the Broncos, because Williams, his alma mater, didn"t have much of a football team. As Lucy rea.s.sembled the frame, our photo on top again, she said, "I will never foist that rah-rah c.r.a.p onto Caroline. Don"t you ever feel ... brainwashed? Just sick of it all? The same thing-year in and year out?"
"No," I said, thinking that summed it up, really. Lucy was absolutely correct in saying that our mothers used us as yet another way to highlight their love for Walker-right along with the flags and banners that they raised over their front porches on game day. But I could never understand why she had always seemed to resent our shared heritage, the way our friend Aubrey seemed to resent the red hair and freckles she inherited from her father"s side, and Pastor Wilson"s sons balked at Bible camp. Football was our religion, the very fabric of our hometown and state, and praying for the Broncos should have been effortless for her, a joyous experience from her sweet box seats on the fifty-yard line. She cared about her father"s team, of course, hoping that they"d win, disappointed when they didn"t. But she never truly devoted herself to it. Never became one of the faithful.
Coach Carr once explained it this way: I was born on February 22, 1980, within the very hour that the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet Union in the semifinals of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, in the game dubbed the Miracle on Ice. It would have been more fitting if it had been an epic football game, Coach said, but the fact that it is widely considered one of the greatest moments in sports still seemed noteworthy-a foreshadowing of my destiny. And then there was Lucy, born in March, on the night J.R. was shot on Dallas, the greatest prime-time soap of all time. In other words, Lucy emerged into the world on a rare night when n.o.body in Texas was thinking much about sports. I told Coach it would have been a better a.n.a.logy if Lucy had become an actress instead of the owner of the only upscale clothing boutique in Walker. But still, his point was funny.
In any event, maybe Lucy was right about our mothers" attempt to brainwash us. But right out of the gate, I willingly drank the Kool-Aid. As a little girl, I dressed up as a Walker cheerleader virtually every Halloween (except for the few times that I donned pads and a helmet and went as a player). I painted my face with little horseshoes before games, belting out our fight song after every touchdown. I collected autographs and hung team posters in my room with hearts around the cute players just as Lucy did with Keanu Reeves and Leonardo DiCaprio.
As I grew older, my obsession only became more intense and focused. I pored over Walker media guides, studying details of every player, learning their numbers and positions, hometowns and majors, heights and weights. I memorized useless trivia and endless stats and scores, rattling off players" rushing and receiving yards, sacks and interceptions, to anyone who"d listen, including some of Walker"s biggest boosters, who could never get enough of my party trick at the Carrs" social gatherings.
"Ask her about the Texas game on Thanksgiving "seventy-eight," Coach Carr would say, grinning, as I regaled them with the epic battle that predated my birth. Play by play, I knew it all.
By the time I got to junior high, I was a serious student of the game, subscribing to The Sporting News, traveling to any road game that didn"t require a flight, and hanging around the fields after my own school day ended. I became a fixture at practice, an honorary mascot of sorts, and did my best to make myself useful, lest someone decide to send me home. Some days, I"d help the equipment managers pa.s.s out Gatorade, or collect b.a.l.l.s that were kicked over the chain-link fence separating our main practice field from the wheat fields beyond. Other times I"d man the c.u.mbersome video camera or fold towels or time sprints using the stopwatch Coach Carr gave me for my twelfth birthday. But mostly I"d just sit in the stands, watch, and listen. Get my fix. Feed my addiction. Quite simply, I was in love with football, every aspect of it. The smell of the freshly cut gra.s.s, the sight of the tight huddle against a backdrop of postcard-blue sky, the sound of the quarterback bellowing out the plays I knew by heart, one even named Shea 80 after me and my year of birth-a play action screen to the fullback. Most of all, I loved the inspiring sight of Coach Carr pacing the sidelines with his clipboard and whistle, throwing out his trademark quips and colorful colloquialisms, often under his breath, cracking everyone up even when he wasn"t trying to be funny. Asking linebackers not to take the scenic route to the ball. Telling receivers to pretend that they were going after a Happy Meal, maybe they"d catch it. Informing the line that they looked like dying calves in a hailstorm. And reminding our quarterback that, in the words of one of his own coaching heroes, Darrell Royal, only three things could happen when he threw the ball, and two of them weren"t good.
In high school, I grew tall, pretty, and slightly less tomboyish, getting something of my own life apart from Walker. Lucy led the charge for those four years, our priorities more in sync than they"d been in junior high. She was a cheerleader while I played soccer and ran track, but we hung with the same crowd, took the same cla.s.ses, and both went a little boy crazy. The most popular girl in our cla.s.s, Lucy had her pick of any guy from any clique, but she tended to reject those who were too impressed with her famous father, pa.s.sing them off to me. For two years, we dated best friends, both baseball players named Scott, and the four of us became inseparable (until our joint breakup, when Lucy declared us Scott-free). Even amid all the boisterous normalcy of adolescence, though, I remained dedicated to the game of football, working as the sports editor of our paper. I covered our high school"s poorly coached and perpetually losing team, but also convinced our journalism teacher to let me write pieces on Walker-straight reporting of the games as well as lengthy features. I was the only high school reporter with press credentials and direct access to Coach Carr, peppering my pieces with insider nuggets on projected lineups or next year"s recruiting cla.s.s. Lucy often tagged along on my a.s.signments, even though the details bored her, explaining that it was the only real way to spend quality time with her dad.
When it came time to apply to college, there was never a question where I"d go, even when my grades slipped to a low B average. My parents pretended to be concerned, reminding me that Walker was practically Ivy League when it came to academic standards, but I knew that, short of a felony, it would only take one thirty-second phone call from our closest family friend to get me in. Fortunately, I didn"t have to resort to that, at least as far as I knew, my admissions essay about my pa.s.sion for Walker football overshadowing my lackl.u.s.ter transcript. There was even a handwritten note on my acceptance letter that said: Go Broncos!
Then there was Lucy, who didn"t even apply to Walker, not even as a backstop. I was shocked at her decision to go to the University of Texas, our blood rival, and remember asking her how she could be so unsentimental. "I mean ... you"re Coach Carr"s daughter!"
"It"s precisely because I"m Coach Carr"s daughter," she tried to explain. "It"s like I don"t even have a say in the matter. You do."