A Big Day for the Lord

NORMALLY, ON GAME DAYS, TIM WAS JUMPING OUT OF HIS SKIN TO get going. He’d wake up long before the alarm and chug several cups of coffee, but after that he was useless—couldn’t eat breakfast, couldn’t read the paper, couldn’t manage a conversation with Carrie, couldn’t do anything but glance obsessively at the clock until it was time to pick up Abby and head for the field.

Today, though, for the first time since he could remember, he was dragging. The weatherman had predicted a 50 percent chance of showers, and Tim spent a good part of the morning gazing morosely out his kitchen window, hoping the rain would start early enough and be heavy enough to wash out the Stars’ eleven o’clock match against the Gifford Bandits. It wasn’t the game itself he was hoping to avoid—the Bandits were one of the weaker teams in the league, an easy tune-up before next week’s make-or-break showdown with the Green Valley Raiders—it was the decision he was going to have to make when it was over.

Until he went to Bible Study on Thursday night, the situation had seemed clear enough. He’d made a promise to Ruth Ramsey, and he intended to keep it. He wasn’t sorry he’d led the team in prayer last week—it was his fervent hope that he’d planted a seed in some of the girls’ hearts (his own daughter’s especially) that would blossom in due time—but he understood it as a one-shot deal, a spontaneous act of worship he’d be a fool to repeat, at least if he wanted to keep on coaching.

FOUR YEARS ago, when he’d checked the box on Abby’s registration form, volunteering his services as assistant coach, Tim barely knew the difference between a direct and an indirect kick. All he’d wanted at the time was a way to stay involved in his daughter’s life after the divorce, to prove that he could be something more than the loser her mom had kicked out of the house.

In what he later came to recognize as a stroke of genuine good luck, he was assigned that first season to help out on a U-8 team led by Sam “Corny” Hayes, the founder and elder statesman of SHYSA, a visionary who’d climbed aboard the youth soccer bandwagon way back in the late 1970s, when most Americans still viewed the sport with suspicion, if not outright contempt, as a pastime fit only for sissies and Europeans. Corny was a crusty old guy, a retired pipe fitter given to dark mutterings about the goddam rich people who were ruining his town, but he loved coaching and had vowed to keep doing it until the undertaker made him stop. For whatever reason—maybe because Tim obviously wasn’t one of those goddam rich people—Corny took a liking to his new assistant and went out of his way to teach him to think like a soccer coach. They got in the habit of heading to Victor’s Luncheonette after every game—in those days, Abby went straight home with her mother—and conducting detailed postmortems on the day’s action, evaluating the performances of individual players and strategizing about the lineup combinations that would maximize their strengths and neutralize their weaknesses.

Tim assisted another veteran coach on Abby’s U-9 team, and was entrusted with his first head-coaching assignment the following year, when he took charge of the U-10 Sharks. Despite his inexperience, the team did remarkably well, coming in second in the C Division with a solid eight-and-four record. Even so, Tim had been taken aback when Bill Derzarian called last August to let him know he’d been chosen to be head coach of the Stars.

“The A team?” Tim said. “Are you sure you want to do that? There have to be a lot of other guys way more qualified than me.”

“That’s not what Corny says. And I’m telling you, Tim, we got a lot of great feedback on you from the parents. They really like your enthusiasm, the way you run your team.”

“Wow. I really don’t know what to say. I’m honored.”

“You’ve proven yourself,” Bill assured him. “You have our complete confidence.”

TIM HAD come close to skipping Bible Study altogether, partly because he hadn’t finished the reading—they were making their way through the two books of Samuel, and it was tough going—but mainly because he was ashamed of himself. At the end of every session, Pastor Dennis set aside time for a “spiritual gut check,” in which each participant was invited to give an account of his successes and failures in leading a godly life during the previous week. Tim did his best to be honest—what was the point otherwise?—and he was painfully aware that his recent behavior didn’t make for a very uplifting picture: he’d gone into a bar for the first time in years; he’d had sex with his wife, contrary to the Pastor’s explicit instructions; and, on top of everything else, he seemed to have joined a poker game.

The meeting was held at Bill Spooner’s house, a small Cape Cod near Shackamackan Park. Tim arrived a half hour late, not because anything had detained him but because he kept pulling up at the curb behind John Roper’s Odyssey, losing his nerve, then driving off again, only to come back and do the same thing a few minutes later.

Pastor Dennis was reading about Goliath when Tim stepped sheepishly into the tiny living room, barely large enough to contain a couch and a recliner, let alone the kitchen chairs that had been dragged in to accommodate the extra guests. All the usual suspects were present—Bill, John, Andy McNulty, Jonathan Kim, Steve Zelchuk, and Marty Materia—as well as one familiar-looking stranger Tim took a moment to recognize as Jay, the Jenna Jameson fan.

A notorious stickler for punctuality, Pastor Dennis stopped midsentence and looked up from his Bible. Fixing Tim with a gaze of unnerving intensity, he raised his right hand and unfurled a stern finger of accusation. At least it felt like an accusation—when you knew you were guilty, lots of things felt like that—until the Pastor’s face opened into a smile full of warmth and affirmation.

“A righteous man walks among us,” he said, much to Tim’s surprise. “And we know from Scripture that ‘the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.’”

ONE BENEFIT of his dawdling was that his daughter was waiting on the front stoop in her uniform when he pulled into the driveway. Usually, no matter how he timed his departure, he managed to show up at her house a few minutes early and had to suffer through an awkward round of small talk with Mitchell while Allison flounced around in a skimpy nightgown, trying to locate Abby’s shin guards or electric toothbrush.

“You’re late,” Abby said, hugging him at the foot of the wide granite steps. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m just moving a little slow this morning.”

“Mom thought maybe you forgot.”

“Yeah, right. Like I’m gonna forget a game.”

Abby nodded. “That’s what I said.”

She headed to the car, but Tim hesitated for a moment, not quite sure if he needed to check in with Allison before he left. It seemed a little rude, driving off without even sticking his head in the door to say hello. On the other hand, it would’ve been nice to escape without his regular fix of misery, one more depressing reminder of how well she was doing without him.

Before he could make up his mind, she came hurrying out of the house, looking both flustered—she was carrying Logan like a football in one arm and clutching Abby’s overnight bag with the other hand—and unusually modest, in a knee-length robe over cotton pajamas.

“Wait!” she called out, as if he were driving away instead of standing a few feet in front of her. “Abby forgot her stuff.”

She made her way down the steps and handed him the bag.

“I told her four times: Don’t forget your stuff, don’t forget your stuff. Of course she forgot her stuff.” She flipped Logan into an upright position with a nonchalance that verged on carelessness, her face scrunching into a familiar expression of distaste. “Ugh. He’s a stinky boy. Second time this morning.”

Logan smiled proudly. Even with a dirty diaper, he was a happy camper, a plump wide-eyed cherub with a headful of chaotic ringlets, the kind of kid who got treated like a celebrity by the old ladies at the supermarket. Tim was fond of him, despite his uncanny resemblance to his father.

“Mr. Logan,” he said. “How’s the big guy?”

“Teem!” he exclaimed. “Abby Dad!”

Tim poked a finger into Logan’s doughy belly and smiled at Allison.

“You want me to change him?”

Allison kissed her stinky boy on the forehead.

“Abby Dad a silly man.”

“I don’t mind,” he insisted. “I’ve never had a problem with that.”

“You don’t realize what you’re dealing with. He’s not a sweet little baby anymore. He eats what you eat.”

“It has been a while,” Tim conceded. The fumes had just begun wafting into his airspace, and they were bracing. “I guess you forget.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, a hint of gloating in her voice. “Your turn’s coming. Then you can tell me how much fun it is.”

“I don’t know. We’re not even sure if we want kids.”

She tilted her head in surprise.

“I’m sure Carrie does.”

Tim didn’t reply. Allison pondered him for a moment. She seemed on the verge of asking him a question, but instead she lifted Logan into the air, brought his padded butt close to her nose, and gave a cautious sniff.

“Wow,” she said, with a small shiver of amazement. “What the heck is in there?”

AFTER CALLING Tim a righteous man, Pastor Dennis rose and embraced him.

“You did a beautiful thing,” he said.

“Who, me?” Tim glanced anxiously around the room, more bewildered than relieved. “What’d I do?”

The men of the Tabernacle laughed, as though charmed by his modesty.

“I told them about Saturday,” John Roper explained. He was leaning forward on the couch, sandwiched between Jonathan Kim and Andy McNulty, but eclipsing the two smaller men with his bulk. “What you did after the game.”

Pastor Dennis turned to Jay, the new guy.

“If you want to know what our church is all about, I couldn’t give you a better example. This isn’t some once-a-week-sit-on-your-butt-and-praise-Jesus sort of operation. It’s a twenty-four/seven ministry, and its purpose is to find new ways to inject our faith into every aspect of our lives.”

Jay nodded thoughtfully, as though he were beginning to get the picture. Pastor Dennis sat back down, and Tim made his way to an empty chair next to Marty Materia, who clapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Way to go.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Pastor Dennis went on, still directing his comments to Jay. “What we do isn’t easy. It’s hard not to get lazy and forget our purpose. It’s tempting to turn on the cruise control and let the car drive itself for a while.”

Pastor Dennis looked at the floor and shook his head.

“I’m talking from experience. I haven’t really discussed this with anyone but God and my wife, but these past few months, I’ve been a little lost. Don’t get me wrong—we’re growing, picking up lots of new members, but it was starting to feel like we were going soft like all these other so-called Christian churches. I mean, the reason we’re doing so well is because we made waves—we shook things up in this town and convinced maybe 2 percent of the people to really look at the way they were living; and then we showed them that there’s a better way in Christ.

“But I’ve known for a long time that we needed some new tactics, a way to get through to the 98 percent of the people who’ve been tuning us out. But for some reason I was stumped. The Lord just wasn’t telling me what to do. I thought He’d abandoned me, but I see now that He was just instructing me to be patient, to wait for one of my warriors to step up and relieve me of my burden. Because this church isn’t about me, it’s about us. What we can do together to be instruments of God’s will.

“So I want you all to think about the example Tim has set for us. If you coach a Little League team, or a soccer team, or Pop Warner football, or whatever, that’s great—now you know what to do. And if you don’t coach, think about signing up, because it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the children of your community, the ones whose parents won’t let them hear it because they’re the ones who need it most. And if the powers that be don’t like it, if they want to stop good Christian citizens from saying a simple prayer at a youth sporting event, I say bring it on. That’s a fight we want to be having.”

Pastor Dennis turned to Tim.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re an inspiration to everyone in this room.”

Tim shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“It really wasn’t a big deal,” he explained.

“Don’t listen to him,” Pastor Dennis told Jay. “Any time a man sticks his neck out for the Lord, trust me, that is a very big deal.”

ABBY COULDN’T understand why Tim didn’t have satellite radio in his car. As she frequently pointed out, her mother had XM in her Volvo and her stepdad had Sirius in his Lexus, and both services had top-forty channels way cooler than the crappy FM station she was forced to listen to in the Saturn now that Tim had banned her iPod (he’d gotten sick of waiting for her to remove the earbuds every time he asked a question). Even so, her scorn for the idiot deejays and the tacky commercials didn’t stop her from turning on WRZO before they were even out of the driveway, cranking up the volume and singing along with the soulless ballad that came blasting out of his tinny sound system.

Tim made an effort to humor her—he hated being maneuvered into the role of Uptight Dad—but he couldn’t help sensing something slightly hostile in the way she closed her eyes and swayed in her seat, a deliberate attempt to shut him out, or at least keep the conversation to a minimum. They hadn’t seen each other in a week; it wouldn’t kill her to talk to him for a few minutes. He waited for the song to end, then lowered the volume. Abby opened her mouth to protest, then decided to let it go.

“So,” he said. “How was school this week?”

“All right.”

“Anything interesting happen?”

“Not really.”

“Anything funny?”

“It was just school, Dad.”

They enacted this tooth-pulling ritual every week without a whole lot of variation. He’d hoped things would improve when she moved to the front seat—she’d only gotten the pediatrician’s okay a month ago—but having her right next to him only made him that much more aware of how little they had to talk about. These rides had been a lot easier last year, when a couple of her teammates carpooled with them—Tim had found it both amusing and instructive to listen to the three girls squeezed together in the backseat, laughing and gossiping the whole way—but neither Natalie nor Jess had qualified for the A team. Tim still missed those girls, Natalie in particular, a sweet goofy kid who would sometimes forget where she was and start turning cartwheels on the soccer field, and who thought it was hilarious to call him “Coachie-Poo.”

“Take any tests?” The only thing worse than interrogating her like this was sitting in silence, waiting for her to volunteer some information about her life.

“Just math.”

“How’d you do?”

“Eighty-seven.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“My teacher’s kind of mean, though.”

“Don’t tell me. Ms. Holly, right?”

“She’s Social Studies. Mrs. Harris is Math.”

“Harris, that’s right. I got them confused.”

Tim always felt himself at a disadvantage, discussing school with Abby. The decision to enroll her at Elmwood Academy had been made without his participation; he’d only been notified after the fact. Even now, her second year there, he still hadn’t visited the campus or met any of her teachers. All he really knew was that Elmwood had a stellar reputation—“nurturing but academically challenging,” was the word on the street—and cost nearly as much as a top-notch private college.

“They both start with H,” Abby conceded. “But Holly’s young and nice and Harris is old and crabby.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“You better.” There was a note of affectionate teasing in her voice that cheered him up a bit. “There’s gonna be a quiz.”

“You still like English best?”

“It’s not called English. It’s Language Arts.”

“Back in my day, we called it English.”

“When was that, the Middle Ages?”

“Ha-ha. So what are you studying in Language Arts?”

“We’re doing a unit on biography. This week we wrote an essay on the Man I Admire Most.”

“Man?” Tim was surprised. From what he’d heard Elmwood was a pretty PC place. “Not person?”

“We did the Woman I Admire Most two weeks ago.”

“Oh. Who’d you choose for that?”

She hesitated.

“Mom.”

He nodded, taking this in.

“Hey, that’s great. Did, uh, everyone pick a parent or grandparent?”

“Not everyone. This one girl did Condoleezza Rice.”

“So what did you say about your mother?”

“I don’t know.” Abby sounded irritated, like he’d asked an unfair question. “Just, you know, how nice she is.”

Tim didn’t press for details. He could easily imagine Abby’s portrait of a noble single mother who goes back to work full-time after her irresponsible husband falls apart and the bank takes their house away. Times are hard, but she keeps her spirits up, never complains, not even about the shabby apartment that’s the only place she can afford, or the pathetic Mercury Tracer that keeps breaking down on her. The story comes complete with a Cinderella ending: the woman goes on a blind date with a friend of a friend, a wealthy lawyer who falls in love with her at first sight, then whisks her and her child away to a suburban castle where they live affluently ever after.

“What about the man?” he asked, as if he were simply curious, as if he weren’t already imagining a piece of wide-lined paper, and a young girl’s careful cursive: My parents are divorced, but my Dad is a huge presence in my life. He coaches my soccer team, and all the girls love him. “Who’d you pick for that?”

Abby looked slightly mortified. She wasn’t always the most perceptive kid in the world, but even she seemed to have realized that the conversation had taken a problematic turn.

“It was stupid,” she said. “I couldn’t really think of anyone. I just, like, picked someone at random.”

A horrible thought came to Tim: My stepdad is the greatest guy. He’s really fun and knows more than anyone else in the world about patents and trademarks.

“I guess that means you didn’t write about me,” he said, hoping to defuse the tension with a joke, but not managing to sound as playful as he’d intended.

Abby turned her head, suddenly fascinated by the red brick buildings of downtown Gifford. He wondered if it was possible, if she really did admire Mitchell more than him. It was true that she spent way more time with her stepdad, and he bought her everything she wanted. But he wasn’t her father. That had to count for something.

“If you really want to know,” she said, “I wrote about Donald Trump.”

Tim’s immediate sense of relief only lasted a second or two.

“Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?”

“He’s cool,” she said.

“He’s not cool, Abby. Trust me on this one.”

“Yah-huh,” she insisted. “He’s totally cool on The Apprentice’”

“I can’t believe Donald Trump is your hero.”

“I didn’t say he was my hero. I just said I admire him.”

“For what?”

“Come on, Dad. Everybody admires him. He’s got a skyscraper, a private jet, a casino, and his own TV show. He can do whatever he wants.”

“That just means he’s rich. It doesn’t mean he’s a good person.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“I’m not jealous of Donald Trump.”

“You have to admit,” she said, “it’d be pretty cool to have a private jet.”

“I’m sure it would,” he agreed, as they pulled into the SUV-choked parking lot of Gifford Memorial Park, a six-field complex that would have been a prime soccer venue if not for the goose shit the kids were always slipping on. “I’d get one if I had a bigger garage.”

BECAUSE THERE were never enough playing fields to go around, the Stars had to wait for a Boys U-10 game to finish before they could begin warming up. Some coaches focused on stretching and others on passing drills, but Tim liked to get in the goal and have the girls shoot on him at point-blank range. It was a good way for him to interact with his players, to see who was psyched and who might be needing a little extra motivation, which he liked to dispense in the form of some good-natured trash talk.

Tim felt his spirits lift a little as the balls began whizzing in his direction, concentrating his mind on the here and now. We’re here to play soccer, he reminded himself. Just like any other week.

“Whoa, Slinky!” he wailed, slapping down a cannon blast from Sara D’Angelo. “Take it easy on an old man.”

“Come on, Hangman!” he shouted at Hannah Friedman. “My grandma coulda stopped that, and she’s been dead for fifteen years!”

“Bring it on, Monkey!” he told Maggie Ramsey, who seemed a little more tentative than usual, as if the memory of last week’s shame hadn’t completely worn off. “Show me the Big Foot!”

Maggie smiled at him—at least he thought it was a smile; the mouth-guard made it hard to say for sure—and began dribbling toward the right corner of the goal. Tim came charging out, modeling the aggressive goal-tending techniques he’d been working on with Louisa Zabel, but Maggie surprised him with a tricky stepover turn, suddenly reversing course to the left. Scrambling back into position, he dove for the shot, but it sailed past his outstretched fingers and into the net.

“There you go!” he gasped, pushing himself up from the grass and resting for a moment on all fours. He’d hit the ground harder than he’d anticipated and was having a little trouble catching his breath. “Just like that in the game, all right?”

He stood up gingerly, rubbing at his rib cage. At his age, he really didn’t need to be diving for saves, but he couldn’t help himself. Unlike most of his fellow coaches, he hadn’t been a jock in his younger days, hadn’t gotten the sports out of his system when he was supposed to. For guys like Jerry Writzker of Bridgeton, who’d been the starting point guard on his college basketball team, or Mike Albers of Green Valley, a highly ranked over-forty marathon runner, supervising a team of eleven-year-old girls must have been small potatoes, but for Tim it was a big deal, a weekly blast of adrenaline.

“Your turn, Nomad!” He bounced on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight from side to side. “Don’t hold back. See if you can take my head off!”

JOHN AND Candace Roper didn’t show up until a couple of minutes before the opening whistle, after the ref had completed his pregame shin guard and jewelry inspection, and Tim had selected his starting lineup. This wasn’t unusual; with three soccer-age kids, John spent his Saturday mornings rushing maniacally from one field to the next, driving like he had a freshly harvested liver packed in a cooler on the front seat.

“Praise God,” he said, embracing Tim with disconcerting fervor on the sidelines. “Today’s a big day for the Lord.”

“They’re all big days,” Tim replied. He extricated himself from the hug and looked at Candace. He could’ve sworn she’d grown a couple of inches since yesterday’s practice. “When we sub, I want you in at midfield.”

“Midfield?” she groaned. “Can’t I be forward?”

“Maybe second half.”

Turning away from the Ropers, Tim clapped his hands sharply and repeatedly until he had the attention of the whole team. It was no small feat, getting a gaggle of fifth-grade girls to stop talking among themselves.

“All right, guys! No overconfidence today. Let’s get focused and play our game. We pass, we hustle, we anticipate, and we stick to our positions, okay?”

“We need this one!” John chimed in over his shoulder. “Let’s play strong, just like last week!”

There was a moment of confusion as the players took the field, when the opposing coach—a cheerfully nerdy guy who wore a Bandits jersey with the words SOCCER DUDE emblazoned on the back—suddenly realized that he didn’t have a shirt for his goalie.

“I left it in the car,” he explained. “It’s been one of those mornings.”

Tim offered to loan him a couple of practice pinneys, but the guy begged the indulgence of the referee to make a quick trip to the parking lot.

“I’ll run,” he promised. “It’ll take two minutes, tops.”

Uncertain how to proceed, the ref—a nervous high-school kid with spiky hair frosted at the tips—deferred to Tim. A lot of other coaches would’ve made a fuss, but he didn’t think it was worth arguing about.

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “I guess we can wait.”

John shook his head as Soccer Dude set off across the field in the direction of the parking lot, which had to be a couple hundred yards away.

“What a space cadet,” he muttered. “No wonder they’re two and six.”

Tim thought about calling the girls back to the sidelines for a last-minute strategy session, but instead directed them to take a knee and sit tight. He really needed to talk to John and wasn’t sure when he’d get another chance.

“Listen—” he began, but John cut him off before he could go any further.

“Oh, hey, I talked to Marty last night. We’re all set for the Faith Keepers conference on Friday night.”

Tim was startled by this, but tried not to show it. The Bible Study guys had arranged this outing months ago, but it had always seemed way off in the future.

“This Friday?”

“Yeah. You didn’t know?”

“Kinda snuck up on me.”

“We talked about it at Bill’s the other night,” John told him. “Maybe it was before you got there.”

“It’s bad timing,” Tim pointed out. “I hate to reschedule practice before the biggest game of the season.”

“Don’t worry about that. The girls don’t care what day they practice.”

“Some of ‘em might not be able to make it. They have a lot of commitments.”

“We have commitments, too,” John reminded him.

Tim glanced at the dull gray sky looming over the field.

“I know. I’m not complaining.”

John squinted in the direction of the parking lot. The Bandits’ coach was jogging toward them at a pretty good clip, a mesh equipment bag slung over his shoulder. Tim knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

“Listen, John, I know what the Pastor said the other night, but I’m just not feeling right about praying today. A couple of the parents complained to me last week. They don’t think it’s fair.”

John took this news more calmly than Tim expected.

“I disagree,” he said. “What’s unfair is depriving these kids of the only thing that’s gonna save them.”

“It’s not just the parents,” Tim continued. “It’s the Soccer Association. If they hear about it, we’re up the creek.”

The coach was on the field now, tugging a garish orange-and-yellow jersey over his goalie’s head. The other players rose and began drifting back to their positions. John placed his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Jesus didn’t want the cup, either.”

Soccer Dude came jogging back to the sidelines, clutching his side and breathing raggedly.

“Thanks, guys.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s her lucky jersey. She’s kinda superstitious about it.”

“No problem,” Tim told him.

The ref set the ball down at midfield and raised his right hand. Tim looked at John.

“Jesus took the cup,” he said quietly.

“He had to,” John replied, as the whistle sounded to begin play. “It was His Father’s will.”

AS HEAD coach, Tim was responsible for keeping track of the big picture. He had to spread his awareness over the entire field, to make sure his players were where they needed to be at any given moment, and to communicate with them simply and effectively from the sidelines—directing this one to move up, that one to protect the weak side, alerting the girls to threats and opportunities before they materialized—while at the same time managing his subs, calculating who to put where, and when to make the changes.

It was a tall order, but he handled it pretty well, at least when Abby was out of the lineup. When she was playing, he often found it difficult to maintain his focus, to resist the temptation of thinking like a father instead of a coach. As soon as Abby stepped onto the field, his range of vision narrowed, his gaze drawn as if by magnetism to wherever she happened to be, regardless of her proximity to the ball, the game as a whole overshadowed by the riveting spectacle of his daughter in motion. He had to make a conscious effort to tear his eyes away from her, to look around and see what the rest of his team was up to.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much to him, why he felt such a thrill when Abby made a good pass or beat an opponent to the ball, or why all the air went out of him when she screwed up. Part of it was pride, he supposed, the simple selfish desire to see your own kid succeed, to prove herself better than—or at least equal to—other people’s kids. But it went deeper than that, down to something more primal. Because there were moments on Saturday mornings—amazing moments in which his mind and her body were in perfect synch—when he felt such an intimate connection with his child it was almost like they were one person. Just as often, though, in those bad-dream interludes when she flubbed an easy scoring opportunity, or stood frozen in place while an opponent dribbled around her, what he glimpsed was the impossible distance between them, a gulf that he feared would grow wider with each passing day and year of their lives, and it was this sense of hopeless separation that made him clutch his head, and cry out, “Oh, Abby!” with such anguish that John sometimes felt the need to pat him on the shoulder and tell him to take it easy.

It didn’t help that she was such an erratic player. On her good days, his daughter was a valuable member of the team, maybe not a star—she lacked Nadima’s nimble footwork, Sara’s intimidating power, Maggie’s competitive fire—but a solid and reliable performer, speedy enough to be an offensive factor, and surprisingly tenacious on defense, considering her waiflike proportions. On her off days, though, she seemed like an entirely different kid—sluggish, uncertain, emotionally disconnected from the action—as if soccer were just one more boring obligation in her overscheduled life. Weirdly, Tim could never judge her mood from talking to her in the car. He had to wait until the game started to see which Abby he was dealing with.

Today looked to be a good day, though he couldn’t quite decide if this was because she’d come to play or because the Bandits were so outclassed that it didn’t really matter. The Stars asserted their dominance from the outset, moving upfield at will against their smaller, slower opponents—oddly, many of the Gifford girls were short and stocky, not the best build for soccer—and getting off several quick shots on goal before the Bandits had even managed to move the ball across midfield.

A fairly predictable rhythm developed in the opening minutes of the game. The Stars would attack, and the Bandits would somehow manage to beat them back. But Tim’s girls were relentless; before the defense could catch its breath, they’d return for another try. Pretty soon the Bandits began to panic. They gave up any pretense of strategy or deliberation and just booted the ball randomly downfield to clear it away from their goal. Tim waved his sweeper up toward midfield to increase the pressure.

“They’re gonna crack,” he told John. “It’s only a matter of time.”

After making a nice diving save on Hannah Friedman, the Bandits’ goalie tried to punt the ball—she had a weak throwing arm—but it squibbed off the side of her foot, bouncing erratically toward the far sideline. Abby got to it first, but instead of passing right away—her usual impulse on offense—she took a moment to settle the ball and scan the field. Then, to Tim’s surprise and delight, she began moving toward the goal, something he’d been urging her to do all season. Without any hesitation or windup, she blasted a high, hard shot that sizzled past two defenders before bouncing off the goalie’s arm. As luck would have it, the ball landed right in front of Maggie Ramsey, who was perfectly positioned to bang in the rebound.

“Bingo!” John raised his hands overhead like a football ref. “Yeah, baby!”

Tim called for subs—no one ever complained about being taken out right after a goal—stepping onto the field to slap hands with his starters as they came charging off, sweaty and exultant. He could hear Frank Ramsey bellowing his approval from the far sideline—“Yo, Maggs, way to be there!”—and double-checked to see if he could spot Ruth standing among the spectators. It seemed odd for her not to be here, after raising such a big stink about last week’s prayer, but some people were like that—big on the bluster, weak on the follow-up.

Or, he thought, with a bitterness that caught him by surprise, maybe she has something better to do.

TIM HAD actually stopped by Ruth’s house the night before, ostensibly to drop off a sweatshirt Maggie had left at practice. Even at the time, he understood that this was just a pretext. Girls forgot water bottles and articles of clothing on a regular basis, and he’d never before felt the need to hand-deliver these items to their rightful owners. He was their coach, not the UPS man.

Although he was pretty sure he had an ulterior motive, he wasn’t completely clear about what it was. It would have been nice to believe he was acting as a responsible adult—a gentleman, even—going out of his way to level with Ruth, to let her know that his situation had grown more complicated since they’d last spoken, giving her one last chance to remind him of the bargain they’d made, and what a disappointment he’d be if he reneged on it. But if that was the case—if everything was completely aboveboard—then there was no reason to hide behind Maggie’s sweatshirt. He only needed the sweatshirt if something murkier and less respectable were afoot—if, for example, he were a married man in no particular hurry to get home to his wife, looking for an excuse to pay a visit to a divorcee whose kids, he happened to know for a fact, spent Friday nights at their father’s condo.

It must have been this lingering uncertainty about the propriety of his errand that kept Tim trapped in his car for such a long time after he’d pulled up in front of her house. She seemed to be home: the downstairs was lit up, the windows glowing warmly in the bluish twilight. The porch light was shining as well, almost as if she’d been expecting him. He could easily picture himself walking up the steps and ringing the bell, but at that point his imagination faltered. Did he greet her solemnly and inform her that they needed to talk? Or did he just hand over the sweatshirt with a sheepish grin and wait for her to invite him inside?

He’d been thinking about her a lot over the past couple of days, so much that it had begun to make him nervous. Not with lust—he knew what lust was, and this wasn’t that—but with a kind of hopeful curiosity, a sense that they had more to say to each other. He would’ve liked to know a little more about Ruth’s marriage, how she’d hooked up with a blowhard like Frank Ramsey, and at what point she realized it was a mistake. And why had she kept his last name even after the divorce? She didn’t seem the type. That was all he really wanted—a chance to sit down with her at the kitchen table and resume the conversation they’d started on Tuesday night.

Was that so bad?

AT ONE of the first Bible Study sessions Tim had attended after joining the Tabernacle, Pastor Dennis had proposed a simple test the men could use in case they found themselves in what they believed to be a morally ambiguous situation, and weren’t sure how to handle it.

“All you have to do,” he told them, “is to imagine Jesus standing right beside you, and then ask yourself, Would my Companion be proud of me right now? Or would He be ashamed? And you know what? Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. You need to turn around and get yourself out of there!”

Over the past couple of years, Tim had applied this test on a number of occasions, and for a while, at least, it had worked pretty much the way the Pastor had predicted. Tim’s Companion had been highly observant and easily alarmed. Lately, though, He seemed to be slacking off a bit, or at least becoming more tolerant of human weakness. Tim knew this wasn’t quite right—in the Gospels, the Son of God was often angry and harshly judgmental, despite His injunction against mortals passing judgment on one another—but there were times when the Jesus by his side seemed no more helpful than one of his old stoner buddies from high school, the kind of guy who’d watch you screwing up, then just chuckle and say, Wow, dude, I can’t believe you did that.

In thorny cases such as this one, the verdict usually seemed a lot clearer if he imagined Pastor Dennis looking on instead of Jesus. As far as the Pastor was concerned, it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference if Tim had come here to return a sweatshirt, or to have a serious conversation with Ruth about prayer, or to sweet-talk her into bed. No matter how you sliced it, the bottom line didn’t change: Tim was a married man and a Christian, and he belonged at home with his Christian wife. He needed to turn around and get out of there!

And that’s what he was about to do—at least he was thinking about moving in that general direction—when Ruth stepped out of her house and began heading straight down the cement path toward his car, peering quizzically into his passenger window as she approached. There was nothing for him to do but unbuckle his seat belt and get out, as if he’d just pulled up a couple of seconds ago, and hadn’t sat through five repeats of “Uncle John’s Band,” trying to talk himself into leaving.

“Tim?” she said, sounding a bit flustered. “Is that you?”

“Maggie forgot this,” he explained, holding up the sweatshirt as he circled his car to join her on the sidewalk.

“Oh, thanks,” Ruth said, accepting the garment with a certain amount of reluctance. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here. You could’ve just given it back to her tomorrow.”

“It’s no trouble,” he insisted. “I just thought she might need it tonight.”

“She’s not even here. The girls spend Friday night with my ex-husband.”

“I didn’t realize,” Tim said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother.” She glanced back at her house. “I’d invite you in, but …”

Her voice trailed off, as if she didn’t know how to complete the sentence.

“That’s okay,” he assured her. “I better get going.”

Ruth laughed nervously. Tim was surprised to feel her hand resting lightly on his forearm.

“I’m going on a date,” she confided, her face close enough to his that he could smell wine on her breath. “First one in a long, long time.”

“Wow.” Tim tried to ignore a pang of jealousy that made no sense. “That’s exciting.”

“Can I ask you something?” She sounded a bit embarrassed. “I kinda need a second opinion.”

She tossed him the sweatshirt and took a couple of steps back toward her house, where the light was a little better.

“Do I look okay?” she asked, turning in a slow circle. “I tried on six different outfits, and they all felt wrong.”

“You look fine,” he said.

“Really?” Maybe it was the light, but her face looked younger than he remembered it, touchingly girlish. “Just give me your honest opinion.”

Tim didn’t need to study her, but he did it anyway, just to make her feel better. She was wearing a belted leather jacket over a tweedy skirt, black tights, and high shiny boots. Her hair was loose, and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear, watching him closely.

“My honest opinion?” he said. “You got nothing to worry about.”

*   *   *

THE RAIN held off until midway through the second half. Just seconds after Tim felt the first fat droplet strike his face, the sky seemed to burst open like a water balloon. The players ignored it at first, running doggedly through the downpour as umbrellas blossomed up and down the far sideline and subs scrambled for their soggy fleeces, but before long they were glancing plaintively at their coaches, hoping for a reprieve.

Tim didn’t blame them. The game was a blowout, either nine or ten to one; he’d stopped keeping score early in the second half, after the Stars had scored for the seventh time, and the Bandits’ goalkeeper left the field in tears. In an effort to show a little mercy, he’d instructed his team to pass the ball at least three times before shooting, and to be sure to use their nondominant foot when doing so, but even that didn’t stop the bleeding. He’d gone so far as to consider an out-and-out moratorium on scoring, but had decided against it on the grounds that it was more insulting to stop trying than it was to beat your opponent by twenty goals.

With less than fifteen minutes to play, Tim had no objection to calling the game on account of bad weather—it would still count as a victory for the Stars in the Division standings—but the Bandits’ coach wouldn’t go for it. He insisted that his girls soldier on to the bitter end, apparently to teach them some sort of lesson about perseverance in the face of adversity.

Tim was annoyed at first—it was a cold November rain, and he had no hat or umbrella—but the longer the girls slogged on, the more he began to think Soccer Dude had a point. An oddly festive mood took hold in the last few minutes of the game, once the players realized they were thoroughly drenched and might as well make the best of it.

A broad shallow puddle had formed in a badly trampled patch of earth around midfield, and the ball kept getting stuck there. One of the Bandits lost her balance trying to kick it out, and ended up sitting on her butt in the dirty water with a comically forlorn expression on her face, a mishap some of the other girls seemed to find inspirational. Before long, players were finding all kinds of excuses to slip and fall in the muck. And then they dispensed with the excuses and just went for it. The moment the ref blew the final whistle, both teams converged in the center of the field and began stomping around, laughing and splashing one another, completing the transformation from game to party.

Standing next to John on the sideline, Tim hoisted the collar of his jacket up over his head and laughed as one girl after another ran squealing and flailing through the puddle, many of them so mud-splattered it was hard to tell which team they were on.

“I’ve got half a mind to join them,” he said, but John didn’t seem to hear. Tim turned to say it again, but then fell silent at the sight of his assistant coach.

John had his arms out and his wet stricken face turned to the sky, his expression frozen somewhere between joy and terror as he stepped onto the field. His lips were moving as he made his way slowly toward the girls, but Tim couldn’t hear a word he was saying.