Coach Taylor was on the move, striding up the steep, uneven path like there was a mountain of Twinkies waiting for us at the top. Shayla was hot on his heels, though she took three steps for each one of his, and they were miraculously managing to carry on a conversation as they climbed. I, on the other hand, was a fair distance behind, breathing like an asthmatic heifer in a marathon and squinting up into the distance with the hope that Sausenburg’s tower would suddenly materialize out of the forest.
I had three problems with the adventure at hand. One, it required physical effort. I was okay with physical effort if I could work at my own pace and self-medicate with my foods of choice along the way, but this was most definitely Scott’s pace we were keeping, and the food of choice he’d brought along was oranges. Oranges. ’Nuff said.
My second problem was the fact that it was cold—bitterly cold—and I didn’t like it much. It had taken me ten minutes to get Shayla decked out in so many layers that she now moved with all the grace and agility of the Michelin Man. This fact, however, wasn’t slowing her down, what with her growing infatuation with the guy in the lead, whose enthusiasm and energy made me feel like I was moving at the pace of, say, a tree stump. A tree stump with screaming calf muscles and something wet trickling down the middle of her back, but I didn’t think I had the fortitude to consider that just yet.
And my third problem was causing the kind of internal head-slapping that threatened to dismantle the precarious can-do attitude I’d brought along for the hike. The problem was that I had no one to blame for this excursion but myself. And maybe the Betty Crocker syndrome. Back in the good old days when my idea of cooking had been boiling up some water for Kraft macaroni and cheese, I hadn’t had any delusions of grandeur. I’d gone about my business in the kitchen in the five to seven minutes it took to cook the noodles; then I’d plopped down at the table and declared myself a genius. That simple. But now that I was possessed by Betty Crocker’s ghost, I’d been doing things that were as foreign to me as, say, bringing soup to ailing men, which had led to climbing up a mountain to a castle on a frigid day with a four-year-old and her way-too-fit partner in crime.
Scott had returned to school on the day after the soup incident
and had tracked me down in my English classroom during lunch. He’d handed over my Tupperware and cocked his head to the side again, which had the unpleasant effect of making me wonder how weird I really was.
“Stop looking at me like that. It was only soup.”
“It was great soup. I think Shay’s carrots put it over the top.”
I’d been wondering since yesterday what had put me over the top. “She was adamant about bringing it to you,” I lied. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Score one for being a mom—you got to blame things on the kid.
He took a deep breath. “Okay, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and revisit the battlefield of skirmishes past,” he started.
I held up my hand. “You sure you want to go there? ’Cause I tend to pull out my zingers when things get weird, and I wouldn’t want you to get, you know, injured or anything.”
He laughed. I loved it when he laughed. It made me feel less fat and more funny. Which was good. He propped against one desk and I propped against another.
“Can you maybe keep them sheathed until I’m finished talking? Then you can let ’em fly.”
I made a mental leap back to the humiliating monologue about turkey I’d submitted him to and decided that the least he deserved was a chance to put me through the same.
“Shoot,” I said.
“First, I need to apologize.”
Huh? I felt a monologue coming on. “What for?”
“Pouting.”
I fiddled with some papers on the desk and said a clueless, “Uh-huh . . .”
“It’s a character flaw—another one. And not very adult of me.”
I smiled and wondered if that was the appropriate response. I was a bit outside my comfort zone here.
“So anyway,” he continued, raking his fingers through his hair and shifting to sit on top of the desk, “remember the gym?”
“Yeah, it’s right over there.” I pointed over my shoulder.
He did his play-along-here-will-you? look. “I
mean
—do you remember the last conversation we had in the gym?”
“Sure.” It was on a par with the time Trey had crushed my thumb in a car door when we were little.
“I acted like a jackass.”
“Is that any way for a missionary to talk?” I was trying to lighten the mood.
“And I’ve been acting like a jackass ever since.”
“I prefer ‘horse’s patooty.’”
“Shelby . . .”
“Sorry—please go on.”
“So I apologize for that.”
“You’ve been fine.”
“I’ve been distant. Like I said, I was pouting.”
And here I’d blamed it on my hair. I really liked Scott at that moment. One, because he looked good in forest green, and two, because he was acting like a grown-up—and doing so for my sake. It felt kinda flattering, in a dangerous sort of way.
He let out a quick breath and said, “So here’s my question.”
“Is this the battlefield part?”
“I really think Lady Shay would like the Sausenburg ruins. And I think you might enjoy the view from the tower. And I guess what I’m saying is that I’d love to take you ladies on a field trip—to make amends for being a horse’s patooty.” He paused. “And . . .” It was what you might call a pregnant pause, and pregnancies—real and metaphorical—had always made me nervous.
“We’ll be happy to!” I jumped in. Maybe too fast and too loud, because he looked a little taken aback.
He cocked his head again.
“Stop doing that.”
“What?”
“Looking at me sideways.”
“Was I doing that?”
“You were.”
“I’ll try to stop it.”
“Good.”
“Saturday?”
“Whatever.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Sounds like optimum castle-climbing time to me.”
“Good—looking forward to it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He walked to the door and turned back. “No zingers?”
“I’m being good,” I said. “But you should see the verbal constipation in my brain.”
He laughed.
And here we were, days later, turning a field trip into a fitness test. The air was like a sheer sheet of ice, and it seemed to amplify the brightness of the sun.
“You okay, Shelby?” Scott called from up ahead.
I’d stopped to catch my breath and work on my attitude. “Just enjoying the view!”
“You’re surrounded by trees!”
“I like trees!”
He trotted down the path to me with a grin on his face that looked like it said,
You’re so cute when you’re winded.
The winded
part made sense. But the cute part? I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination.
He came alongside me and matched his pace to mine. “You doing okay?”
I nodded. He had his hand on the back of my neck, a gesture I’d seen him use a hundred times while talking with his players, and certainly the furthest thing from an intimate touch, as my scarf and coat formed a pretty thick barrier, but still . . .
“You coming?” Shayla was waiting for us up ahead, her purple knit hat a little askew on her head.
“Coming, Shayla! Wait right there, okay?” She crouched down to peer closely at something on the path. “How much farther?”
Scott looked around for landmarks. “Not far. Maybe another couple of minutes.”
“Well, good,” I said, “’cause you’re starting to look a little tired, and I’m sure you could use a rest.”
“Not your idea of fun?”
“Put it this way,” I said, and I realized that the walk had gotten much less painful since he’d turned up at my side. My lungs were even starting to work better. “Would I enjoy sitting by a fire with a good book? Yes. But it’s good for Shayla to get outside and it’s good for me to get exercise, so . . .”
“You really don’t like exercise, do you?”
“Exercise is okay. It’s exertion I despise.”
He smirked. I liked his smirk. “Want a piggyback ride?”
“I can’t afford your hospital bills.”
We reached Shayla and spent a few minutes admiring the entirely unadmirable stone she’d found on the path. She taught us how to say
stone
in German, clearly disapproving of our accents, then declared that we should set off toward the castle again. I wasn’t pleased that my daughter had gained an elementary understanding
of German in the time it had taken me to forget the fifty words I knew.
When we got to the ruins, Shayla went a little nuts. It’s not like it was anything extraordinary. The tower was impressive, but only the bottom half of the castle’s outer walls still stood. There were piles of rocks and gaps where windows used to be. These were definitely ruins. Except in Shayla’s mind. To her, this was an ornate vestige of the days of kings and queens and princesses with long, flowing hair. Though she didn’t really have the verbal skills to paint the picture of what she was seeing in her mind, the expression on her face said it all.
She and Scott started up the tower together. It had a circular wooden staircase that wound up into the dark interior before changing, toward the top, into a zigzagging section of steps. As this wasn’t really a tourist attraction, there were no lights inside, just a dank darkness and uneven steps that scared Shayla into whining. Her voice reached me from inside.
“I don’t like it. I don’t like it anymore. I want to go out!”
I could hear Scott’s softer voice trying to coax her up a few more steps to where daylight streaming through a narrow window would make the space brighter, but Shay’s voice was rising as her panic increased. Like a dutiful mom, I entered the tower and started to climb.
“Shayla, honey, are you up there?”
“I want to go
dooown
!”
“But you’re almost at the top! Look up—do you see more light, Shay?”
There was a little hiccup from far above me. “N—no . . .”
I heard Scott’s voice whispering, “Here—let me carry you.”
“I want to go
dooown
!”
She had to be nearly at the top. “I’m coming up too, honey. You go on up and tell me what you see, okay?”
“Look, Lady Shay, see the door up there and the light shining through it? We’re almost there.” Scott’s voice was soothing and calm. “Just a few more steps and . . . Here we are!”
I climbed the last few steps and came out on top of the tower, where a panoramic view of mountains and valleys stole my breath. Or maybe it had been the climb. I preferred the beautiful-view scenario. Stepping to the edge of the platform where Scott stood with Shayla in his arms, pointing in the direction of Kandern so she could get her bearings, I marveled at the simplicity of the moment. Shayla wasn’t even aware of my presence, so entranced was she with the height of her vantage point, the breadth of the view, and the now-clearly-visible outline of the castle’s ancient perimeter. I caught myself wanting to hook an arm through Scott’s and stare out at the scenery with them, but I held back and merely stood next to them, contemplating the view.
A few minutes later, after a mildly traumatic descent back through the darkness, Scott and I sat on a wall and watched Shayla gathering leaves. We were deep into November, so they were half-decomposed and sodden, but she was building a princess bed with them, and in her mind, they were golden.
“She’s a keeper,” Scott said, his eyes on the little girl so absorbed in her task.
“Yeah, I figure I’ll hang on to her for a while.”
“A while?”
“Oh, you know, until she’s forty. Maybe fifty.”
“You’re lucky to have her.”
I contemplated my pre-Shayla life and felt tears stinging my eyes. “You have no idea.”
“So . . .”
I giggled. Sometimes I did that when anticipating tough questions.
“Shayla told me you weren’t her mother; then you told me she wasn’t your daughter. I asked Bev and Gus and they told me to ask you, so . . .”
“I’m her guardian. I kind of . . . inherited her when her dad passed away.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“How long ago?”
“He died last December. I got her in February.”
“Were you close?”
“Shayla’s dad and I?”
She came running up to show us a tattered leaf. We dutifully told her it was beautiful and she ran back to her task.
“No, we weren’t close,” I said.
There was a silence while Scott absorbed the fact and sifted through the questions it brought up.
I didn’t know how much to say—what to explain. The sordid details of my family’s derailment hung in the air, suspended like strands of spiderweb. I feared his reaction were he to know the truth. Would he find me too sullied? Too broken? Too complicated? If he knew all the facts, would he step back to a safe distance and become polite-Scott again? Friendly-Scott, who smiled when we crossed in the hall and greeted me when we passed in the street but didn’t initiate Sausenburg hikes?
I braced myself for the worst and started to fill in some of the blanks that resonated like voids in the stillness around us. “Her dad was—not a kind man. He left my life when I was much younger and I didn’t hear from him again until . . . until his lawyer told me he had died and left something in his will for me.”
“Shayla?”
“A cuckoo clock.”
He turned his head to look at me.
“And Shayla. He’d designated me as her legal guardian should anything happen to him.”
“Wow.” Scott looked over at the mound of dead leaves Shayla was trying to shape into a rectangle. “And you took her in right away?”
“Look at me, Scott. Do I look like I suffer from any Mother Teresa delusions?” He glanced at my
hellooo
face and cracked a smile. “No, I didn’t take her in right away. I’m way too convoluted for anything that simple. I tried every trick in the book to talk myself out of it and finally gave in because it was the only right thing to do. And because I fell in love with her a little bit, with the Heidi mountains and the sunshine and all.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“The bottom line is—I took her in and haven’t looked back.”
“And coming to Germany was . . . ?”
“A new beginning. For both of us.”