Page 30 of Spectacular Things
Soggy Bread Bowl
“As young as she was, your mother was more responsible than most parents,” Clint says the next day upon entering the house. Behind his back, Cricket makes an obscene gesture while rolling her eyes at Mia. This is going to be a terrible morning after the worst possible day.
Clint the lawyer is married to Amy the dental hygienist, which is why he is working on a Sunday even though, as he has already pointed out multiple times, his office is technically closed, and even though Mia had tried to push this off until Monday.
It was Clint who’d insisted. “Friends and family get me on my day of rest,” he jokes, making himself comfortable in the living room.
“And trust me, it’s much better to get this part over with. ”
“For us or for you?” Cricket asks. She has never been one to hold back, especially with men. In her mind, they are all unnecessary—or almost all of them.
Coach is also here, enduring the legal logistics of hell because Cricket asked him if he would.
He is the one man—aside from Steve Prefontaine—who serves a clear purpose in Cricket’s world.
His presence lends a sense of security to this nightmare, an emotional anchoring as Cricket’s entire life vanishes before her eyes.
But Clint sucks. Mia and Cricket know their mother never liked him—Liz would come home from the office Christmas party every year complaining about how Amy’s husband told tacky jokes and gave sloppy hugs.
Now he’s in their house and Liz isn’t. He’s here because their mom is gone, and it’s so unfair that Cricket wonders if Amy the hygienist would stand to benefit from Clint’s life insurance policy if he were to, say, trip over his athleisure pants and land on a tragically misplaced and upturned meat cleaver.
“This is it,” Mia says, handing Clint an old Primo Bistro menu, a faint ring of cabernet just above her mother’s loopy signature.
“It’s a good thing she thought to have this notarized,” Clint says, flicking at one nostril as he reviews the wine-stained document.
“Of course she did,” Mia snaps defensively. In truth, Mia had been the one to research the basics of estate law after reading A Little Princess in fourth grade and consequently suffering a string of orphanage-related nightmares.
“You okay?” Coach asks, leaning forward to look at Mia on the other side of Cricket.
Seated at the far end of the pink floral couch in a royal blue Stallions pullover, his five-o’clock shadow barely hiding his discomfort, Coach appears profoundly out of context.
Nevertheless, Mia finds herself nodding back at him—yes, she’s okay.
Coach matches Mia’s solemnity, but he is confused about his role in this moment and desperate to extricate himself. He’s here because he believes that the best teams show up for each other as family, but on a more tactical level, he’s here because he can’t figure out an appropriate time to leave.
The day before, when the ref blew her whistle and the Stallions returned to the field to resume their game, Coach gave his own car keys to his assistant coach and drove Mia and Cricket back to Maine in Mia’s car.
On the ride, the sisters oscillated between full-body sobs and an excruciating silence that made Coach itch to be back in his apartment, away from an agony he couldn’t fix, or stop, or shout into submission.
When he pulled into the driveway of 125 Knickerbocker Avenue, both girls burst into guttural wails that robbed him of his flight impulse.
He went inside, ordered them dinner, and, as he was trying to decide what to do next, Amy called Mia on her cellphone about the will.
She said Clint would review it pro bono, but did Mia know where Liz keptit?
Yes, Mia knew. She had been the one to purchase a lockbox to store important family documents in after she found her own Social Security card stuck to the back of a Thai take-out menu with what appeared to be peanut sauce.
“Such an attractive woman,” Clint says now, grabbing one of Liz’s throw pillows as a bolster for his back. “And surprisingly smart for a high school dropout—I mean, look at this.” He holds up the one-page will. “Efficient!”
“Unlike a bread bowl,” Cricket says, and Mia hears herself guffaw uncontrollably. The men stare at her, but she doesn’t care. Laughing suddenly feels as critical as crying.
“A soggy bread bowl,” Mia enunciates, wiping the corners of her eyes and grinning at her sister. She’d forgotten all about Liz’s nickname for Clint—or, more specifically, her description of his intellect.
“Sure, so you two share all assets,” Clint continues, unwrapping a Werther’s Original as he speaks.
“Which will be helpful in covering the cost of the funeral because, yikes, those do not come cheap these days.” He pops the hard candy into his mouth, sparing no sound effects but quite a bit of spit as droplets make landfall on Liz’s will.
“And just to be explicit,” Clint says, “Mia, you’re Cricket’s official guardian from now until she turns eighteen, and what’s—oh, this is sweet.
” He holds up a second, smaller paper and, in her distinctive handwriting, Liz had instructed: Take care of each other, my girls .
“Not to toot my own horn,” Clint says, “but I encouraged your mother, as a single mom, to take out a robust life insurance policy, and she did just that. So you girls have a financial bumper that will cover the mortgage and living expenses for—I’m not an accountant, but you’ll be okay for a while, as long as you don’t—”
“But Mia can’t be my guardian,” Cricket says, cutting Clint off. “She lives in Connecticut.”
Mia takes a steadying breath and closes her eyes.
She sees the road back to New Haven, mile after mile, state after state.
She feels the pages of old books, the taste of cold beers, the silence of the archival library.
But then, just as viscerally, she hears the voice of her mother, yelling from the sidelines of a windswept soccer field: “Get back on defense! Protect your keeper!”
Mia adapts, just like she learned to do all those years ago, on the beach with her mother.
She straightens her shoulders and turns to face her sister.
“I live in Victory now,” she says. “You and I are going to stay here until you graduate high school.” Her strength steadies them both.
Cricket nods. Staying here makes sense. Home makes sense.
“Everything stays the same,” Mia announces to the living room, keeping her eyes locked on Cricket. “It’s what our mom would have wanted.”
“What about you?” Coach asks, exhaling at the relief he feels in Mia’s authority.
“What will you do?” At twenty-eight years old, he is not so young, but he isn’t old enough to be responsible for Cricket.
And yet, he really needs his keeper if he wants to win the upcoming club championship.
Coach gets a hefty bonus for a championship, plus more name recognition and professional status within the coaching world.
His success is only possible with Cricket in goal.
“I’ll get a job,” Mia says simply. “And then I’ll go back to school when Cricket goes to college.” She cracks a smile before adding, “Who knows? Maybe we’ll both go to Yale?”
“But Yale isn’t one of the top soccer programs,” Cricket says, horrified by the prospect.
Mia tousles her sister’s topknot. “We’ve got time to figure it out, and it’s what she—” Mia’s voice breaks.
Clint coughs over her stifled tears.
“Everything happens for a reason,” he says, reaching over to pat Mia’s hair. “I have it on good authority that she’s staring down at you from heaven right now.”
“Soggy bread bowl authority,” Cricket says, unceremoniously removing Clint’s hand from her sister’s head.
Finally, Clint leaves. Coach follows suit, but only after promising the sisters he’ll be back with groceries and takeout around dinnertime.
Then it’s just Mia and Cricket. They scan the floors and counters, the walls and bookshelves in the quiet of their motherless home.
They are not looking for clues but still lifes to store in their memories: Liz’s scuffed restaurant clogs kicked off haphazardly beside the couch, her running shoes still double-knotted by the back door.
A green ceramic mug next to the sink, her faint kiss of ruby red lipstick on the rim and a few mouthfuls of cold coffee still patiently waiting in the pot.
Her orange cardigan on the coat hook, a quart of her favorite tomato soup from The Dutch Oven Duchess in the refrigerator.
“She couldn’t find her car keys,” Cricket says, staring at the front door. “I yelled at her because we were making the whole carpool late.”
“It’s okay,” Mia says.
“I said ‘I love you’—when I got out of the car, I told her I loved her.”
Mia nods. “That’s good.” She’d ignored her mom’s call yesterday morning because she was already caffeinated and studying. “That’s good.”
Slouched together in the living room, dazed and nauseated, Mia and Cricket imagine Liz walking in any second, asking for help with the groceries, reminding the girls to carry the bags from underneath using both hands.
Their mother is supposed to text them from the dental office break room, ask how Mia’s exam prep is going, how Cricket’s soccer game went, wonder if they think the preview for that new movie with those old Hollywood stars looks any good, and complain about how Cherry Garcia is never on sale anymore.
But their mother is not texting any of those things.
“How is this real life?” Cricket asks. Outside, a neighbor starts up his leaf blower, ignorant of the world’s loss.
Before bed, Mia emails her professors and Dr. Peters along with the director of financial aid, the dean of residential life, the president, and the provost to cover all her bases and create a robust trail of correspondence should her student status ever be questioned down the road.
Unsurprisingly, all the adults write back that they are deeply saddened by the news.
They offer their thoughts and prayers and encourage Mia to take off as much time as she needs.
In their Reply Alls, they each assure Mia that her spot will be waiting for her when she is ready to return to campus.
It is the last email she ever receives from any of them.