Page 9 of Spectacular Things
As Division 1 soccer coaches begin reaching out to Liz, her parents find it endlessly amusing that respectable adults are sending their teenage daughter handwritten letters and plane tickets to come visit their campus, meet their team, tour their facilities.
Their only child has become the gleaming mantelpiece they’d always dreamed of, the talk of their gated community, the headlining story of the local news when she leads her team in back-to-back state championships.
In every article, there is mention of her red ribbon.
In November of her junior year, Liz verbally commits to play soccer at UCLA.
To celebrate, her parents take her car shopping, and at the dealership John makes it clear that even the nicest vehicle on the lot costs far less than four years of out-of-state tuition.
He springs for all the bells and whistles the salesman throws at them: the leather interior, the CD player and surround sound speaker system.
The first song Liz plays as she drives off the lot that day is the same hit pop song that kicks off her soccer team’s warm-up playlist: “Get Low, Fly High.” Liz adopts the song as her own anthem. Beaming in the passenger seat, her dad looks at her with anything but buyer’s remorse.
The summer before her senior year, Liz travels with her high school team to watch the 1999 Women’s World Cup Final in Pasadena. “It won’t be long until we’re all wearing Liz Lowe jerseys and shouting about how we used to know you,” her teammates tease as they enter the Rose Bowl.
A few hours later, when the United States wins in a shootout and Brandi Chastain famously tears off her jersey, Liz is so overwhelmed that she finds herself crying and cheering simultaneously.
That night, she uses her parents’ credit card to order bottles of champagne for the team from the hotel bar.
Her parents see the charges, but they don’t mind.
Room service is still far less expensive than four years of out-of-state tuition and they, too, believe a World Cup is reason to celebrate.
They, too, believe their daughter will be the next Mia Hamm.
In the fall of her senior year, Liz is awarded First Team All-American and whispered to be in the running for Gatorade Player of the Year.
In every photograph, she wears her hair up in a high bun with her signature red ribbon, which every opponent has learned not only to respect but dread.
And after she scores the game-winning header in the state championship, Liz returns to Highland Acres and sees each house in the community has displayed the same sign on their front lawn: LizLowe=OurHero!
Some nights, even at seventeen years old, Liz still stands next to her mother in the bathroom, both of them brushing their teeth in front of the mirror.
And so it makes sense that Lenora, ever vigilant of their contrasting appearances, is the first to notice Liz’s yellow pallor.
Eyeing her daughter, Lenora diagnoses her in the same disappointed tone she implements whenever Liz sprouts a pimple or declines an invitation to the nail salon.
Unfortunately, Liz has not been dabbling in bulimia, as Lenora had hoped.
To her daughter’s reflection, Lenora states with disdain, “You’re pregnant. ”
Liz won’t tell her parents who the father is or how she met him. When they ask and then beg for information, Liz only says that he will not be in the picture. But she wants the baby, Liz insists. It’s her body and her life and she is keeping the baby.
Liz’s refusal to simply take care of the situation is unfathomable to John and Lenora.
It’s also a betrayal. The mortifying shock of their new reality swings through the house like an axe at all hours of the day, every interaction ending in tears, swearing, or slammed doors, usually all three.
“We gave you everything!” is her mother’s favorite refrain, hurled at Liz’s back as she retreats to her room.
The joke is not lost on Liz that she worked so hard to earn her parents’ approval only to flush it for someone else’s affection.
Her father has no choice but to finally call Coach Ellis at UCLA and inform her of the regrettable development.
In the spring of her senior year, Liz counts down the days until graduation before realizing the baby growing inside her will not honor the engagements written in Sharpie on her mother’s calendar.
When Liz feels her first contraction, she is still weeks away from receiving her diploma, and the next morning, by the time the first period bell rings, she has become a mother.
The baby is so profoundly exquisite in her smushed-alien-face way that Liz instantly believes they will be okay.
She will make sure of it. It doesn’t matter that every single college soccer coach rescinded their offer.
It doesn’t matter that they all but laughed in her face when she promised she’d be back in game shape by preseason.
It doesn’t matter because Liz is not a quitter.
After the nurse on duty badgers her about filling out the Acknowledgment of Paternity form, Liz tears the blank page into minuscule squares and makes a show of pouring the white confetti into the trash can.
There will be no father on this new, undefeated team.
Her second day postpartum, Liz shuffles down to the hospital post office, mindful of her stitches, to mail a letter.
She expects nothing back, but Liz wants him to know their daughter’s name.
In the sanctuary of their hospital room, Liz watches her baby sleep and flips open the atlas she bought for this very occasion.
As soon as she recovers, Liz has decided they are busting out of her parents’ house and starting over.
“We’re the next Thelma and Louise,” she tells her newborn, whom she calls her best friend.
John and Lenora have not come to see her.
When Liz finally breaks down and asks to call them, the nurse says they left a message the day before to let Liz know they would be in Europe through the fall.
“They said to tell you congratulations and to please water the lawn while they’re away,” the nurse says, avoiding eye contact as she restocks the diaper cart.
Thumbing through the atlas, Liz imagines starting her new life in Charleston, or New Orleans, or Corpus Christi.
She pictures her baby on a boat, at Mardi Gras, in cowboy boots.
Ultimately, Liz decides to raise her baby in a tiny village on the coast of Maine.
The reason is simple: She still believes she is destined for greatness, and this seaside town pinned beneath her finger is called Victory.
Four and a half months later, the day before her parents are due back from their extended vacation, Liz packs her car so full of stuff that she worries about getting pulled over.
With her rearview mirror obstructed, Liz rolls down her window to see behind her, only to realize how rarely one must look back when forging ahead.
The soccer dream is not over, she writes in the letter she leaves for her parents.
I’ve just moved the goalposts . Merging onto the interstate, Liz decides her future depends on her own positive outlook, and so she thanks her lucky stars for giving her everything she needs to push forward: a full tank of gas, a road map spread across her lap, five thousand dollars in cash from her parents’ safe, a shoebox full of game-winning red ribbons, and her best friend asleep in her car seat.