The Pants! They’d come back to her. With a clanging in her chest, she tore up the stairs, stripped off her running clothes, and jumped into the shower. You weren’t allowed to wash the Pants. She wasn’t crazy enough to try them on just after she’d run ten miles on an August day in Alabama.
She dried herself, put on underwear, and took up the Pants. Please fit, she begged them. She pulled them up and closed them in one fluid motion. Ahhhhh. They felt so good. She did a victory lap around the attic. She ran downstairs and outside and did a victory lap around the house. “Yay!” she shouted to the sky, because it felt so good to feel good again.
She put her hands on her thighs, soaking in the connection to Carmen and Lena and Tibby, and loving them so much. “It’s okay!” she wanted to shout loudly enough for them to hear. “I’m going to be all right now!”
Greta cast her a bemused look as Bridget shot past her, back up to the third floor.
The contents of the last box were still piled in the corner. Bridget was ready to put it all away and be done with it now. She grabbed the box to repack it, but as she did, she stalled. There was a yellowed square left in the bottom that she hadn’t noticed before. Her euphoria dimmed as she reached in after the paper. It was the back of a photograph, she realized as she put her fingers on it. She promised herself she would be okay, whatever it was.
The picture showed a girl, about sixteen, sitting on the steps of Burgess High. She was beautiful to behold with her giant smile and her yellow curtain of hair. Bridget’s first thought was that it was her mother. She just assumed it. But as she looked closer, she wondered. The picture looked too old to be of her mother. And besides, the character of the face was different….
Bridget thundered back downstairs.
“Grandma! Hey!” she shouted.
“Out here,” Grandma called from the yard. She was hosing down the little garden that hugged the back of the house.
Bridget thrust the picture in her face. “Who’s this?”
Greta looked at it. “Me,” she said.
“That’s you?”
“Sure.”
Bridget studied it again. “You were beautiful, Grandma.”
“Is that so surprising?” Greta asked, trying to look offended but not seeming to care very much.
“No. Well. A little.”
Grandma hosed Bridget’s foot. Bridget hopped around laughing.
When Bridget settled down she came back to the picture. “You had the hair.”
Grandma cocked her head. “Where do you think you got it from, missy?” she asked playfully.
Bridget’s answer was serious. “I always thought I got it from Marly. I always thought it meant I was like her.”
Greta transitioned easily into Bridget’s new mood. “You are like her in some ways—in some wonderful ways.”
“Like how?”
“You’re intense like she was. You’re brave. You have her beauty, no doubt about that.”
“You think so?” Bridget longed for reassurance on this point more than she ever had before.
“Of course you do. Whatever color you want to make your hair.”
Bridget liked that for an answer.
Greta turned off the hose and tossed it into the flower bed. “You’re very different from her too.”
“Like how?” Bridget asked again.
Greta thought. “I’ll tell you an example. The way you came into this house and remade that attic. You pulled it apart and worked day after day to put it back together. It made my heart grow to see your patience and your hard work, Bee. Your mother, God bless her in heaven, couldn’t pay attention to any one thing for longer than an hour or two.”
Bridget remembered that about her mother, how quickly she had become impatient. With a book, with a radio station, with her children. “She gave up too easily. Didn’t she?” Bridget asked.
Greta looked at Bee like she was going to cry. “She did, honey. But you won’t.”
“Grandma, can I keep this picture?” she asked. Of all the thousands of things she had sifted through in the attic, this one looked like hope. This was the one she wanted to keep.
Carmabelle: Len. Please answer me? Please? I’m coming over.
Lennyk162: Not right now. I’ll call you later, okay?
Distantly, from the bottom of the well, Lena heard the knock on the door. It came twice more before it occurred to her that it was her door and she was supposed to answer it.
She coughed up her voice. “Who is it?”
“Lenny, it’s me. May I come in?”
Carmen’s voice was so lovely and familiar, and yet it belonged to the world above.
“Not … right … now,” she managed to say.
“Lenny, please? I really need to talk to you.”
Lena closed her eyes. “Maybe later.”
The door opened anyway. Carmen walked straight over to the bed where Lena was huddled.
“Oh, Lenny.”
Lena made herself sit up, though her bones seemed to slump and cave. She began to cover her eyes with her hands, but then Carmen was right there. There was no hiding. Carmen put her arms around Lena and held her.
Lena let her heavy head fall into Carmen’s neck, giving way to the inexpressible mercy of her friend’s warm skin.
“Lenny.” Carmen hummed and held, and Lena cried.
Lena cried and shook. She cried, and Carmen cried for her.
After a while Lena realized she wasn’t at the bottom of the well, but here, with Carmen.
“Mark him! Rusty, go!” Bridget screamed from the sidelines. She paced the length of the field in the Traveling Pants, barking orders and ranting encouragement like any good coach. Her hair was free and incandescent, but her players didn’t care. They wanted her for her mind. Or her strategy, more specifically. At the half, eleven guys crowded around her, wide-eyed and attentive, as if she were an oracle.
Greta sat a few yards behind her in a beach chair, smiling and shaking her head, alternately studying the game and her crossword puzzle.
“Jesus, Corey, stop mooning around the goal. Rusty, don’t get so far ahead of Billy. You’re useless when you’re offsides; I don’t care if you are fast. And also, their right midfielder is dead on his feet and has no viable sub. That’s where you work ’em.” She rearranged her lineup a little and sent them back onto the field.
Eight minutes into the second half, Mooresville’s overworked midfielder took to the sidelines and got subbed by the backup goalie, who was at least forty pounds overweight. Bridget knew it was in the bag at that point.
Billy threw his arms around her after the win and lifted her off the ground. “All right, Coach!” he shouted. They all swarmed around her happily, shouting and yelling and celebrating.
“Let’s not get cocky,” she said. Then she realized how much she hated it when coaches said that. “Screw that,” she said, laughing. “Get cocky all you want. We’re gonna flatten Athens at four.”
Burgess didn’t flatten Athens at four, but they did beat them, securing a berth in the final the next day.
It turned out that the final pitted them against Tuscumbia, all the way from Muscle Shoals. Bridget woke up early and put on the Pants for another spin. She brought her clipboard down to breakfast and detailed her complex strategy to Grandma, who tried very hard to look interested but kept sneaking peeks at an article in Ladies’ Home Journal.
Billy appeared at the screen door, white-faced, at nine. “We’re dead,” he said.
“What?”
“Corey Parks took off for Corpus Christi with his girlfriend last night.”
“No!”
“Yes. She threatened she’d break up with him if he didn’t drive her.”
Bridget grimaced. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I never trusted Corey. Not since he faked the knee injury so he could go to King’s Dominion.”
“Bee, we were six,” Billy said.
Bridget didn’t back down. “Well, you know. The more things change …”
At the field half an hour later, with the two sides assembled and two towns present to cheer and harangue, the situation didn’t look any better. Burgess was no deeper a team than Mooresville. Bridget surveyed her bench unhappily. Their one reliable sub had left for Auburn two days earlier. Seth Molina had shin splints and refused to wear his game shirt. Rason Murphy had such bad asthma Bridget worried that if she put him on the field on a sultry day like today, he would up and die. She would do better to suit up Greta and throw her into the game.
She and Billy paced together, considering their options. There weren’t any options.
They looked toward their sorry bench. “This is hopeless,” Billy said.
The whistle blew to start the game. Bridget stood frozen on the sidelines as her team filed onto the field—all ten of them.
Tuscumbia went up by four and stayed there, possibly out of pity, till the half was called. Most of the fans were booing or departing by that point.
Bridget had nothing to say to her team at the half. They had the wrong number of players; subtle strategy wasn’t really going to make a dent.
“This is humiliating,” Rusty opined.
The team trudged back onto the field. The ref was ready with the whistle. Billy was mouthing something to Bridget.
“Huh?” she shouted at him, moving closer.
He mouthed it again. He was waving his hands around like mad.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Honey Bees!” he blasted at her. “I’m saying ‘Honey Bees.’”
Finally she got it. He was waving her into the game.
Bridget laughed. Without thinking she ran onto the field beside him.
Everybody looked confused as she stood there in her jeans and running shoes in the middle of the field.
“She’s our sub!” Billy shouted to the ref, Marty Ginn, who also happened to own the Burgess Fine Pharmacy. “Rason has asthma,” Billy added, knowing perfectly well that Marty had spent eighteen years filling prescriptions for Rason’s inhalers.
Marty nodded. He looked to Tuscumbia’s captain. “All right with you?” he asked.
Tuscumbia’s captain seemed to find the whole thing entertaining. The game was already a farce, so who cared if there was a girl wearing long pants in the middle of it? He shrugged and nodded, as if to say, What next?
The whistle started the half.
Bridget began running slowly up the field, just getting her legs under her. She followed the action around at a distance until she felt the adrenaline building and her eyes and her mind and her feet getting that harmonious feeling that lifted her playing up and up. Then she got down to business. She easily stole the ball from a Tuscumbia forward and began to dribble at speed, a touch and three paces, a touch and three paces.
Nine months away from competitive soccer hadn’t made Bridget worse, it turned out. Also, she was wearing the Traveling Pants. They were the wrong shape and texture for competitive sports, granted, but they made her happy. And Greta had yanked herself off her duff and was tearing along the sidelines, shouting for Bridget like a maniac. That didn’t hurt.
Bridget rose and rose until she was up in the clouds. She could afford to be generous. She assisted Rusty. She assisted Gary Lee. She assisted Billy twice. She set up the plays and doled them out like Christmas presents until the game was tied, the shouts of protest from the opposing team grew deafening, and the last minute began ticking away. Then she took the last goal for herself. She’d never said she was Mother Teresa.
Carma,
I know you needed these especially, so here they are, as fast as I could get them to you. Please note the grass from the soccer field I left for you in the back pocket. A tuft of the sweet homeland for your enjoyment.
The Pants worked their magic. I’m so happy, Carma. I’m not going to tell you all about it now or even on the phone, because I want to tell you in person. I’m coming home soon. I found everything I needed here.
Love,
Bee
Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
—Charles Dickens
“Outta bed.”
Christina squinted at Carmen in irritation. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Mamaaaa.”
“Why?”
“Because …” Carmen tapped a little drumroll on her mom’s bureau. “You are going out tonight.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Carmen, I am not going out with your father and Lydia again.”
“I know you’re not. Anyway, they’re gone. You’re going out with David.” Ha.
Christina sat up. Her cheeks were pink at the very mention of his name. She tried to look suspicious and mad. “Since when?”
“Since I called him and set it up.” Carmen opened her mother’s closet and began surveying the shoe options.
“You didn’t.”
“Did so.”
“Carmen Lucille! This is not your business!”
“He misses you, Mom. You miss him. It’s so obvious. You’re sad. Just go. Be happy.”
Christina piled pillows onto her lap. “Maybe it’s not that easy.”
Carmen pointed to the bathroom. “Maybe it is.”
Christina hesitated. Carmen could close her eyes and plug her ears, and still she would know how much her mom wanted to go. But Christina was trying to be rational and responsible, and Carmen appreciated that.
“I’m not telling you to lose your head, Mama. I’m not even telling you to take up where you left off with him. I’m just saying, go out to dinner with the guy who loves you.”
Her mother swung her feet over the edge. This was working.
“You never have to go out with him again if you don’t want.” Carmen knew the chances of that-were zero, but hey.
Her mother started toward the shower.
“Wait.” Carmen rushed back to her room. She took the Traveling Pants from the top of her bureau and shook them out gently. She rushed back to her mother.
“Here.”
Christina’s eyes got swimmy. She pressed her lips together. “What?” Christina said in a whisper, even though she knew what it meant.
“These are for you to wear.”
“Oh, mi nena.” Christina grabbed Carmen and pressed her close. Carmen realized she could lift her chin and rest it on the top of her mother’s head. That was sad, a little.
When her mom pulled away, Carmen felt tears on her neck.
“I can’t take them. If I’m going to try again, I have to be a grown-up this time.”
“Okay.” Carmen understood that.
“But Carmen?”
“Yeah?”
Her mother’s mouth wobbled and tipped. “It means the world to me that you offered.”
Carmen nodded. She picked up her mother’s hand and pressed a kiss onto her knuckles. “Go, Mama. Shower. Get dressed. Hurry!”
Carmen strode back to her own room. “I’ll get the camera all ready for when David gets here!” she called over her shoulder.
Carmabelle: Tib. I’ll bring the Pants when I come to the screening. Can’t wait to see you.
Tibby knew she was a true-blue believer in the Pants, because otherwise she could not have put them on today, considering what had happened the last time she had worn them. For her, the Pants were about putting in bad, lame-o stitches and pulling them out again, judging people and being able to change her mind. She could surprise herself, that was what Bailey had said.
She touched the embroidered heart as she walked into the auditorium. Her own heart felt as if it were beating just beneath her skin. Her bones no longer felt hard and protective.
For some reason, when she saw the cluster of people waiting for her in a row of seats at the back of the auditorium, she had the strangest sensation that she had died. The world was over, and all the people she had hurt and disappointed had come back to give her a second chance.
Her mother and father
were there. Brian was there. Lena and Carmen, Mr. and Mrs. Graffman. Even Vanessa. I want to deserve all of you, she thought.
Her movie came first. It started with Bailey in the window and sunlight pouring all around and Beethoven. The picture switched to Wallman’s and Duncan Howe and to Margaret at the Pavillion movie theater and to Brian at the 7-Eleven. She’d interspersed these segments with bits from the home movies she’d gotten from the Graffmans. Bailey taking her first steps as a baby, Bailey running after a butterfly in her backyard, and—this was a hard part—Bailey as a feisty six-year-old with a baseball cap and no hair underneath. The last segment was the interview. Bailey talking and looking, seeming to take as much from the camera as she gave to it.
The end was the still picture from the 7-Eleven. The one with her looking over her shoulder at Tibby and laughing. The image dissolved slightly as it hung there, and it turned to black and white. It stayed on the screen as the music played on.
Brian, sitting next to her, reached out and took her hand. She squeezed his in return. She realized he was whistling along with the music, but so quietly she was probably the only one who could hear it.
At last the music finished and Bailey’s face flickered off. The darkness felt empty without it.
Mrs. Graffman leaned her head against her husband’s chest. Tibby’s mom reached for Tibby’s hand on one side and Carmen’s on the other. Lena held her head. All of them cried freely.
Outside in the bright sunlight, Tibby’s parents hugged her. Her mother told her she was proud. Carmen and Lena squeezed her and praised her again and again. Brian had tears in his eyes. Tibby was surprised when Alex came over. She steeled herself for his comment, though she was well beyond taking it to heart.
“Well done,” he said. His eyes were uncertain; it came out almost like a question. He studied her as though she were a stranger. Which, in a way, she was. He was flattened against the wall, and she could see all around.
If you are Greek, you know that it is traditionally considered an insult to the ancient gods to think you know when things can’t get any worse. If you make this mistake, then the gods will prove you wrong.
One week to the day after Lena received the apocalyptic letter from Kostos, Grandma called from Oia and told Lena’s father that Bapi had had a stroke. He was in the hospital in Fira, and he wasn’t doing well.