Page 26 of Spectacular Things
Quarter-Finals
With three expedited passports, two connecting flights, and a backlog of good luck, Liz Lowe has forever changed the trajectory of her daughters’ lives.
From now on, Mia and Cricket will understand that anything is possible.
No one from home will believe what they’ve done or what they’re currently doing, which is driving through the streets of Paris before sunrise.
They are here to cheer on the U.S. Women’s National Team against the home team of France.
From the pitch black of the back seat, Liz holds up her phone screen to the cabdriver, who takes them to the only available bed in the only hostel with what seems to be the only vacancy left in the city.
Mia almost asks Cricket to pinch her, to prove it’s real, this is really happening— they’re in Paris!
—but decides against it. She’d rather see what happens next, even if it’s only in her mind.
Besides, her little sister is already asleep again, comfortably slumped against Mia’s shoulder.
Yesterday morning, they’d taken a bus from Portland to Boston, a small plane from Boston to New York, and then a big plane from JFK to CDG, where they have arrived at two a.m. on the day of the game that justifies this trip they can’t afford.
They will fly out the following night so Liz doesn’t have to miss more work, but the breakneck schedule doesn’t intimidate them—not here, not now, because no one anticipated this for them.
Collapsing into their shared hostel bed just before dawn, they are giddy with disbelief and the infinite possibilities that ride shotgun to hope.
The drunk German boys abusing their guitars down the hall do not bother the Lowes.
The thin mattress with scratchy sheets and questionable stains cannot dampen their euphoria.
Nor can the distinct sound of retching that wakes them five hours later. Just a couple of inches of plaster separate their pillows from the row of urinals in the communal bathroom. The unframed print of the Seine hanging above their bed shakes with yet another toilet flush.
“Perfect timing,” Liz says, yawning cheerfully. She kicks the sheet off the bed and hums as she gets dressed. Mia watches her mother through slitted eyes and remembers this is not Liz’s first time at a World Cup game: She was at the Rose Bowl in 1999 with her high school soccer teammates and with—
Mia snaps the hairband on her wrist to shake off the thought. She deserves to enjoy this day. Q isn’t here and Q doesn’t matter. Neither do her mother’s past decisions. Mia is in Paris for the first time in her life and she will savor every second.
Pulling over her head the white linen dress she wears every Fourth of July, Liz ties one of her old red game ribbons around her high bun.
Both girls watch their mother apply ruby red lipstick, using the camera lens of her phone as a mirror since the puking in the communal bathroom has continued, now with different voices cursing in German but still at steady intervals.
“Can I have some?” Cricket asks.
Liz shakes her head. “You’re too young for makeup.”
“What about me?” tries Mia.
“You’re too—this lipstick got me pregnant when I was your age—no, younger, actually.”
“Mom!” Cricket squirms, embarrassed by the thought of her mom’s sex life. Mia bites the inside of her bottom lip so she doesn’t ruin the mood.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” Liz says, blotting her lips with the back of her hand. “We’ll compromise.”
Mia sits down on the bed beside her mother, closes her eyes, and puckers, but instead of painting her daughter’s mouth, Liz draws a heart on Mia’s cheek.
“What are you—”
“Trust me,” Liz says.
“Oooh, me next!” Cricket chirps over her mother’s shoulder. “That’s perfect!”
At the Parc des Princes Stadium, the Lowe women keep close as they move through the metal detectors, the bag checks, and the ticket collectors.
Amid the ear-piercing screams of French and American fans alike, they find their seats, which are right at center field and just twenty rows back.
Cricket squeals as both teams jog onto the field for warm-ups.
“We’re so close I can see Alex Morgan’s blue fingernails!
” The team benches face them from across the pitch, and so Cricket can study every single French and U.S.
player on and off the field, especially when she uses Liz’s phone to zoom in until their faces turn granular.
Five minutes before the game begins, the teams leave the field and return to their locker rooms for last-minute pep talks and superstitious pregame rituals.
In the stands, Cricket stares at one of the empty goals, mesmerized by something Mia cannot see.
The air in the stadium is already changing, the barometric pressure rapidly dropping before the hurricane that is the match.
“Someday,” Cricket says, hypnotized by the swirling atmosphere, “I’m going to play here.”
“Of course you will,” Liz says, throwing an arm around her younger daughter. “And when that happens, can I ask you a big favor?”
Mia looks over with curiosity. Their mother rarely asks anything of Cricket.
“When you’re a famous soccer star,” Liz says, “can you make sure we get the very best seats to all your games? Like, seats as good as these?”
“Front row, every time,” Cricket beams, sticking out her hand for her mother to shake.
It’s a deal. She is well on her way to becoming a professional player—her mother tells her so all the time, and even her club soccer coach offered the same prediction last month, after Cricket made the U-16 Youth National Team roster.
A vendor walks by selling cotton candy. Liz digs into her wallet for euros and buys three sticks of spun sugar.
Mia gawks as her mother hands over the crumpled bills.
“When in Paris!” Liz declares, reading her daughter’s mind.
“Besides, other people paid fourteen thousand dollars for their tickets and we got ours for free!”
Mia takes an oversize chomp of her overpriced cotton candy.
She resists mentioning the credit card Liz opened to pay for their flights and reminds herself that her mother’s financials are not her problem.
As she learned this past year in college, Mia Lowe is only responsible for Mia Lowe, and right now, Mia Lowe is in Paris watching the World Cup Quarter-Final.
Ben and Landon and Nell have all expressed their envy in the group text.
Holding up her phone, Liz flips the camera to selfie mode. “Lean in, girls.” On each daughter’s cheek, a ruby red heart competes with Liz’s Siberian blues for the lens’s attention. Mia kisses Cricket’s cheek, as her sister lifts her chin and smiles proudly for the photo.
Since her return home, Mia has found herself guiding Cricket through the murk of early adolescence with a wisdom she didn’t know she’d accrued, like scraping the change from the bottom of her purse only to discover she has a stockpile of serviceable cash.
On car rides to and from soccer, Cricket has asked why her friends are obsessed with boys and she isn’t, and why their mom hasn’t found someone new, and why anyone would wear a pad instead of a tampon during a soccer game if they didn’t have a gun to their head, and why Mia is dating Ben when Cricket hasn’t even vetted the guy.
It’s been an entertaining and surprisingly fun summer for Mia, even if she has kept the knowledge of Q to herself—or, rather, it’s been a great summer only because she has kept Q to herself and her mother at arm’s length.
“It’s starting!” Cricket squeals, hopping on her tiptoes.
As the players jog out from the tunnel and take the field, the stadium feels ready to ignite.
More than forty-five thousand fans rise to their feet, desperate for their team to win and hungry to see where the story goes from here.
For reasons beyond the pitch, this quarter-final game between France and the United States boils with the intensity of a final match.
Two days earlier, the president of the United States tweeted three times at the purple-haired American forward, goading her to engage, provoking her when she needed to focus.
Megan Rapinoe did not respond to him then but delivers her answer now, in the form of a free kick she converts into a goal, just five minutes into the match.
She runs to the corner of the field and transforms into Lady Liberty, a moment that makes her an icon forever.
Mia looks over to see her mother wipe tears off her face as she screams her approval.
Cricket throws her arms around both of them, about to combust from the thrill of it all.
The Jumbotron finds them just then, and for a moment they are famous together, the three Lowe women who have traveled all the way from Victory, Maine, on the wings of Liz’s smile to witness greatness in person, history in the making.
That day, the Americans prevail over France, 2–1, knocking the host country out of the tournament and advancing the United States to the semifinal.
Mia, Cricket, and Liz join the thousands of fans in celebration and then book it directly to the airport where they manage to just barely make it to their gate.
Boarding the plane, the three Lowes look over their shoulders as a crew member locks the plane door behind them and it feels like a portal shutting, like they’ve just lost access to Narnia.
Four hours into the flight back home, the main cabin lights are off, the attendants are elsewhere, Cricket’s asleep with her head against the window, and there’s a long enough lull in row 33 that Mia almost wills herself to speak the words burning on her tongue.
She wants to release the secret thumping in her chest.
“Did you have fun?” her mother asks, interrupting her thoughts.
“That was amazing,” says Mia from her aisle seat. “Like, truly unbelievable.”
Sitting between her daughters, Liz struggles to origami her long legs in the middle seat. She spools a dark ringlet of Mia’s hair around her own finger before pulling Mia’s head onto her shoulder. Mia doesn’t fightit.
“So how serious is this boyfriend?” Liz whispers.
Mia leans forward and glares at her sleeping sister, who clearly betrayed her confidence. “I don’t know,” she says. “But I like him.”
“He’ll be a senior?”
“Mm-hm.”
“And that’s okay?” Liz’s voice strains as it climbs an octave. “He’s not too old for you? Because at that age, some guys will really pressure you and—”
“Seriously?” Mia asks, barely suppressing a torrent of sudden rage.
“Never mind, sorry,” Liz says, putting her hands up to imply no foul. She redirects her attention to Cricket, who has conveniently just woken up. “Hey, Cricky, was today the best day of your life?”
The gangly fourteen-year-old picks up the World Cup program she’d tucked into her seat pocket. “For now.”
Knees pressing into the seat in front of her, Cricket traces the face of each player in the U.S. team photo with her finger. She is excited to go home: back to her Stallions teammates and her upcoming training camp with the Under-16 Women’s Youth National Team.
“It was the best day of my life so far,” Cricket says after several moments of consideration.
“But not forever.” Mia and her mother exchange amused looks.
“Because someday I’m going to be the goalkeeper for the National Team,” Cricket says quietly.
Mia strains to hear her sister over the plane’s engine.
“And we’re going to win the World Cup, and then that will be the best day of my life. ”
“Something to drink?” a flight attendant asks, holding out cocktail napkins. When Liz asks for a glass of red wine, Mia asks for the same. Her mom is clearly surprised but says nothing, and Cricket is too busy quoting her Stallions coach to notice.
From her aisle seat, Mia half-listens to Cricket recite the supposed MAP to excellent goalkeeping. She misses Ben. And parties. And the way her room remains just how she left it when she comes back from class, never pilfered through by little sister paws.
But it’s not only that she misses her life at college—she misses her mom.
That’s it. That’s what it is. Mia downs her plastic cup of wine in three deep glugs.
She misses her mom, who is sitting right next to her, their arms touching on their shared armrest, but this huge lie cratered between them, it’s too much, and it’s not fair, and it’s—
“I know Q was your coach,” Mia confesses, lifting up her tray table so she can turn to face her mother.
“Huh?” Cricket asks, leaning forward.
Mia stares at Liz, who stares straight ahead, either strategizing or recovering from the blindside. In Liz’s stunned silence, Mia tells Cricket, “Our dad was Mom’s high school soccer coach—like, when she was in high school.”
“What?” Cricket makes a face that Mia has only seen once before and that was yesterday, when she learned what escargot was.
“Mia—” their mother tries.
“You should have told us,” Mia says, energized by molten anger. “The so-called love of your life was a fucking predator.”
“Language!” Liz hisses. “Where is this coming from?”
“I found out at school,” Mia says. “In the fall.”
“Mia—” Liz tries.
“I searched your name and saw Q in a team photo.”
“Okay,” Liz says, looking down and spreading her long fingers on her lap.
“Okay. Wow. Let me just—” Liz snaps the hairband on her wrist and closes her eyes.
Mia and Cricket watch her four-count inhale and wait for the exhale.
The Lowe family reset. “Okay,” Liz says, taking a small, slow sip of wine. “What do you want to know?”