Carpool Diem Read online

  Remember: Though tournaments are entirely optional, as stated in the Mountain Ridge Soccer Board handbook, I view them as a vital way to glue our team spirit together. I encourage any player who must miss a tournament to speak to me immediately regarding less demanding alternatives to the Power!

  Notification of next year’s team selection will begin on the 25th of June. Players who are moved down to the B team, the Asteroids, will receive a call from the B coach, Gerri Picker. But do not despair! A is only one letter away from B! Any player who is moved down from our Elite team to the B team will have the opportunity, over the next season, to work hard and climb back up if she so desires!!!

  Good Luck to One and All from Winslow West!!!

  Three

  Annie was well prepared. She was a change specialist, after all. She was an expert at spinning events so that even unexpected, unwelcome changes could be perceived as good. She knew how to organize information on the spot, how to modulate tone to keep listeners engaged, how to make eye contact to seduce the willing, and how to use body language to soften the opposed. For the earnest, she relied on an impressive reserve of numbers and facts.

  For this morning’s hastily convened meeting, she’d managed to get all the necessary players to attend, and promised them she’d have them in and out in less than twenty minutes. But the meeting was running long. And it wasn’t going well.

  She concentrated on Bingham Biblow. It was Biblow who had hired her, mentored her, and given her the Proxo engagement in the first place. He was also the one who kept promising the infuriatingly elusive carrot of partnership.

  Biblow was listening, which was good, but he was also avoiding her eyes, which was bad. He swiveled restlessly, back and forth, back and forth, in his sleek leather chair. Annie shifted eye contact to Crawford.

  Crawford, the CEO of PC&B, had never been her champion, but he was known to be fair. Except Crawford was avoiding eye contact now too, staring instead into his lap.

  Annie could tell from the position of his head that he was scrolling through his email on his BlackBerry, the twitch of his shoulders giving away each time he typed a reply.

  That left her two choices for eye contact: Roxanne Lacombe, the firm’s youngest and most ambitious partner, and Paul Pederson, the company founder.

  Pederson’s presence at the meeting was particularly worrisome. The spindly founder spent most of his workdays at the golf course now, trying to improve his stroke and handicap before he had one and got one. She hadn’t invited him to the meeting, and while she knew his unexpected attendance meant something, she hadn’t yet figured out what.

  She pushed on. “I assure you I will stay with Proxo as long as necessary. And I will actively help you search for a replacement for that engagement before I move on to another. But I have to move on to another.”

  Biblow stopped swaying. He looked up and reshaped his doughy face into an approximation of concern. “You sound very upset. Would you like some water?”

  Before Annie could say no, he cut her off.

  “Phyllis,” he called out to his antique secretary. “We need more water here.”

  Crawford looked up from his BlackBerry and shook his head as if to clear his brain. “Annie, the word on you has always been that you’re a team player. But I have to ask—is the word wrong?”

  Roxanne leaned forward in her chair and spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “Remind us again why you don’t see your Proxo engagement as the opportunity it is.”

  Annie took a deep breath. She was surprised to hear it come out loud and shaky.

  Pederson, sitting next to her, heard it too and recoiled in his chair. He turned to Roxanne. “Is she going to cry?”

  Roxanne patted Pederson’s veiny hand. “No. Annie’s too smart to cry. Aren’t you, Annie?”

  She was. Annie willed herself to reabsorb any liquid in her eyes that might be mistaken for tears.

  Phyllis, Biblow’s secretary, sped into the room, set a second pitcher on the table, and quickly left. The ice cubes collided, ringing like tiny bells.

  “Can someone get those damn cubes to stop,” Biblow snapped.

  Roxanne got up and started refilling everyone’s water glass.

  Annie covered her glass with her hand. “No, thank you,” she said, to regain control.

  Roxanne sat back down. “Face it. Proxo loves you. And like all lovers, they want more of you. How is that a bad thing?”

  “I love the Proxo people too,” Annie said firmly.

  “We don’t think you do,” Biblow said. “Because love means commitment. And it sounds to us like you’re waffling in the commitment department.”

  Annie straightened her navy skirt and pulled at the sleeves of her crisp white shirt. That was her uniform, navy or gray suit and white shirt. Limiting the colors in her closet allowed her to cut a full minute from getting ready for the day. It was the same reason she kept her wheat-colored hair cut short. It dried quickly and on its own—more time saved. Everyone knew this about her. Annie was an expert at compressing, compartmentalizing, and commitment. What exactly was going on here?

  “Proxo is in its transitional stage,” Roxanne said. “You, of all people, know transitions don’t last forever.”

  “They’re short-term,” Pederson added, in case Annie didn’t get it.

  Annie stuck to her script. “That’s true. But as I’ve already explained, this morning Proxo asked me to extend my current level of engagement for the next three years.”

  “Proxo actually said they want you to commit to living in Connecticut five days a week for three more years?” Roxanne asked.

  Annie nodded, feeling—finally—understood.

  “Wow,” Roxanne said. “That is an exquisitely beautiful number of billable hours.”

  “It’s not reasonable,” Annie said.

  “We are prepared to put together a very attractive relocation package for you,” Biblow said. “We understand you have a situation.”

  “I don’t have a situation,” Annie said. “I have a family.”

  “We all have families,” Crawford reminded her.

  Annie did not think the lives of Crawford, Biblow, or Pederson’s country club wives or poised, hard-drinking children had much in common with her family life. As for Roxanne, Annie had heard she had cats. Annie had also heard that after the cats died, Roxanne liked them even more.

  “With all due respect,” Annie said, “we can’t move from New Jersey. My husband’s business is based in New Jersey.” Tim’s work troubles flashed into her brain. Things at Hot Holidays were not going well. But this was not the time to think about it. She pushed Tim and his brother’s travel business out of her head. “And my daughter, Charlotte, is almost halfway through middle school. It would be a terrible time to uproot her.”

  “Let’s try to stay on point, shall we?” Roxanne asked.

  Annie did a quick analysis. They might try manipulation and intimidation, but they weren’t really going to risk losing her. For one thing, whom could they find who would work harder than she did?

  “Here’s the point,” Annie said. “I can’t live in Connecticut for three more years. So I need a new engagement. I’m sure we can all agree that it would be best for Proxo if we made the change quickly, by the end of the summer.”

  “Or?” Roxanne asked.

  “Pardon?” Annie replied.

  “Are you giving us an ultimatum?” Crawford asked.

  “No,” Annie said.

  “Good,” Biblow said. “Because Proxo is a very big client. It’s like Roxanne said. They love you to death. We love them to death. You get where I’m going?”

  What Annie got was that she was feeling absolutely no love in this room.

  “Let me make this perfectly clear,” Biblow said. “Resigning from the Proxo engagement means resigning from the firm. Is that what you want?”

  Often, when Annie was ragged from overwork, or sick of sleeping on a bad hotel bed, or worried that Charlotte might have grown so
much in a day that Annie wouldn’t recognize her anymore, she let herself wonder what it would be like if she were independently wealthy, or had won the lottery, or if Tim earned enough money for her to afford to quit. But she wasn’t, and hadn’t, and Tim didn’t, so there was no point in indulging those thoughts.

  “All I’m saying is that I cannot move to Connecticut for three more years.” Annie kept her voice steady and calm. “But I am completely confident we can find a mutually agreeable solution.”

  “I’m sorry it has to end this way,” said Biblow. He stretched out his hand, and then, thinking better of it, let it rest on the table. The light reflected off his manicured fingernails. “On behalf of the entire PC&B family, we wish you a world of luck. God bless.”

  Biblow got up and left. Crawford and then Pederson followed.

  Roxanne went to the phone at the back of the room and made a quick call.

  “Human Resources wants me to escort you down,” Roxanne said, after she hung up. It was clear this was not an offer.

  Annie and Roxanne walked together down the long hall. At the end of the hall the HR manager waited. He led Annie into his office and showed her where to sit. Annie struggled to process what was happening.

  The HR Manager took charge. “You have resigned,” he said in a slow clear voice. He slid a thick exit manual across the desk.

  “I did not resign,” Annie said. She stood up. “Is that what you think? Is that what they think? Because I thought I was fired. If they think I resigned we can clear this up right now.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” the HR manager said. “Please.”

  “Okay.” Annie sat down. “I didn’t resign,” she said again.

  “Right. Let me ask you this. Did you refuse to continue to work on the Proxo engagement?”

  “I didn’t use the word refuse,” Annie said. “What I did was explain that I cannot move my family right now. So I have to move off of Proxo to another account.”

  The HR manager leaned closer. “Annie. Face it. Refusing to work for Proxo means you’ve resigned.”

  “It does?”

  He nodded and pushed the exit manual closer to her. “I need you to read through this,” he said, tapping the thick book. “But take your time.”

  Annie opened the manual and skimmed over the words, but she couldn’t take anything in. She turned the pages and closed the book, retaining nothing.

  The HR manager showed her where to sign, in four places. Then he escorted her to her office and stood, watching, as she packed up her things.

  By the time she got to the elevator, a crowd had formed.

  “Is it true?” Phyllis asked. Her face was flushed. Her eyes looked red.

  Annie’s best friend, Linda, pulled her aside and spoke quietly into Annie’s ear. “Just so you know, you walked into a setup. Biblow’s been waiting to do this for a while.”

  “No he hasn’t,” Annie said. “Biblow likes me.”

  “Biblow used to like you,” Linda whispered, “until you sent that email to HR about Blaine Glass. Remember that email?”

  “The one where I recommended Blaine for a diversity workshop?”

  Linda nodded.

  “Blaine Glass needs help,” Annie said. “He offended half the staff on his first day here. Everyone knows that.”

  “No one would disagree with you,” Linda said. “Even Biblow wouldn’t disagree with you. However, Biblow’s sister is another story.”

  It clicked. “Blaine Glass is Bingham Biblow’s nephew?” Annie asked.

  Linda nodded. “Don’t worry. He won’t last a week in your job.”

  “Blaine Glass is getting my job?”

  “He offered to move to Connecticut permanently,” Linda said.

  Annie struggled to keep up. How had she misread this so badly?

  But she knew how. She’d been stretched too thin. She’d worked too hard. Proxo had sucked the brain cells out of her head.

  “They’re going to beg you to come back,” Linda said. “You’ll see.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  “They can’t do this to you,” the mailroom guy yelled out.

  “Why does it always happen to the nice people?” Phyllis wanted to know. “Annie is the only one here who remembers to ask about my grandchildren.”

  Annie stepped into the elevator.

  “Have fun at home,” a voice called out.

  She turned toward the voice. Blaine Glass leaned against the wall, slowly waving good-bye. The elevator doors closed. Annie rode down to the lobby, numb.

  She didn’t remember walking to the train, but somehow she got there. She put her box of personal possessions—-photographs of Charlotte and Tim—on her lap and held them close, as if they needed to be protected. She looked around.

  It was the first time she’d ever taken a morning train home. Who were these people? she wondered. What did they do? What would she do?

  For the first time in nearly twenty years, Annie was unemployed and without a plan. She shook off a chill of fear and turned her focus to her future.

  Four

  Winslow West looked up at the crayon blue sky and cursed the perfect picnic temperature of seventy degrees.

  It was something few would imagine, how much he hoped for rain on tryout days. When it rained, the halfhearted players stayed home, where they belonged, complaining of stomachaches or sore throats or chills. But on a day like this, dry, clear, with a dazzling sun and that damn blue sky, every child with at least one leg would be dropped off and commanded to play.

  Last year, on an equally brilliant day, so many players turned up for tryouts he’d had to form six new teams. One week later, when it rained during practice, all six teams fell apart. And he was the only one who wasn’t at all surprised.

  His eyes flicked to the woman at the perimeter of the field who was yelling something he couldn’t hear at a child he didn’t know.

  “Who, may I ask, in God’s name,” Winslow said, “is that?”

  Vicki, his wife, followed his gaze.

  She shook her head. “What else can we do? We put it in the flyer. We underlined it. We capitalized it. We bolded it. It says, ‘Parents Are Not Permitted to Watch.’ What more can we do? I mean, really? What more can we possibly do?”

  Vicki, tall and commanding, marched across the field to set things right. Her long red hair flashed like a fiery warning in the sun.

  Winslow watched from his post atop the hill. He liked to stand on grassy hills, mounds of dirt, and rock piles, even though his rail-thin, broad-shouldered frame topped well over six feet on flat ground. With his long, straight, enviably thick, jet black hair blowing back in the wind, and beetle brown eyes that he knew how to use as weapons, he could intimidate from a ditch. Still, given a choice, he preferred to tower.

  His head trainer, Parker Stone, showed off his bulging biceps as he gave five quick blows on his whistle.

  Thirty eleven-year-old girls raced off the field. Thirty twelve-year-olds raced on.

  Vicki jogged back, red faced and hot.

  “Who are they?” Winslow asked, his eyes carefully scanning the players.

  “The mom is Annie Fleming,” Vicki reported. “The twelve-year-old is Charlotte.”

  “Twelve-year-old? Why don’t I know her?” Winslow was in charge of all Travel Soccer in Mountain Ridge, but the team he cared about, the one he coached as if his life depended on its success, was a team of talented twelve-year-old girls.

  “She’s a town-soccer kid,” Vicki said. “It’s her first time trying out for a travel team.”

  “Oh.” And like that, Winslow’s interest disappeared. There was no hope for a town league player that old.

  He watched as the fifteen girls who made up his team hustled onto the field in perfect triangular formation, assuming their regular positions. Parker organized the others, four players whom Winslow had enticed to try out from travel teams in other towns, and ten pathetic hopefuls from the B-rated Asteroids. As for Town League Girl, Winslow�
��s eyes had already edited her out. To him, she wasn’t even there.

  Parker blew his whistle to signal the start. Immediately, a blur of a player raced across the field, the ball connecting to the toe of her cleat as if it were magnetic.

  “Shelby is looking very good today,” Winslow said.

  “That’s because her mother upped her allowance to twenty bucks a goal,” Vicki reported.

  “Marilyn is awful, isn’t she?” Winslow said, and smiled. “Do you think I should talk to her about funding my next Soccer-Plex?”

  His first Soccer-Plex was being built on the outskirts of town, on land that had been a farm when Winslow was a boy growing up in Mountain Ridge. The grand opening was only a couple of months away. But already he was feeling the itch for more. One wasn’t enough. One wasn’t enough at all.

  Evelyn, the girl he’d been courting from Tyler Park, sent the ball to the far end of the field.

  “Look at that kick,” Winslow said. “I’ve got to get her on this team.”

  Evelyn took his breath away, and it wasn’t just because of her perfect-aim foot. Her eyes got him, too. She had the burning eyes of a competitor. The best ones always did.

  “I’ve got the father on board,” he said. “But I’m worried about that mother.”

  “Carpool,” Vicki said. “That’s all you have to do. They live an hour away and the mother does not want to drive two hours, back and forth, five days a week, to take her daughter to practice.”

  “Are you offering to pick her up?”

  Vicki laughed off that idea. She scanned the field. “See the girl with the tie-dyed headband? She’s Evelyn’s neighbor. If you put that girl on the team, Evelyn’s yours.”

  Winslow smiled. He knew there was a reason he’d married Vicki. He hadn’t even considered the slow girl with the tie-dyed thing on her head.

  He studied his list, looking for someone to cut so Evelyn’s friend could join the team. His pen stopped at Heather King’s name.