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expression of surprise and delight while placing her hands on a waist so tiny it would make Scarlett O’Hara seethe with jealousy. Meanwhile, on the bottom bench of the bleachers, I overhear Tina Sinclair and Maddy Holmes try to carry on a conversation about the virtues of composting while their toddlers takes turns sliming each other with their half-eaten yogurt pops. On the far side of the field, Weight Watchers compatriots Lily Reyburn and JoAnne Malloy watch practice from their beach chairs andsurreptitiously binge on their sons’ bite-sized Nutter Butter sandwich cookies.
    Still, I far prefer the soccer moms to the baseball parents who take the whole sport so seriously you’d think they were watching the majors. Those people are ferocious! The Beach Cities League (yes, Garden Hills is a beach town, despite its incongruous name) is well known around Southern California for the number of professional baseball players it produces. Therefore, all of the parents take the process very seriously, and there is a certain tension that permeates the practices and games (even though ninety-five percent of the kids are taking part in the sport merely as a hobby or a way to get out of afternoon chores). Most of the moms and dads stand along the fence line shouting encouragement or, more to the point, yelling criticisms, at their children; erupting into fits of hysterics when their child hits a home run; and falling into vociferous despair when one of the kids, God forbid, makes an error. I once heard a T-ball mom offer her son twenty dollars if he hit the ball past second base. Twenty dollars! To a five-year-old. The mother was inconsolable when her little boy’s hit made it only as far as the shortstop, at which point her husband told her she should have offered him a puppy.
    Today, I am sitting next to Rita Halpern, who is the maternal grandmother of Peter, a classmate and pseudo-friend of Matthew. Rita took Peter in and will serve as his guardian until his mother’s stint in rehab is complete. Apparently, Roberta became a slave to OxyContin and had even gone so far as to set up an online “companionship” service for the Garden Hills male population in order to support her habit. I find myself inexplicably envious of her. It’s not that I condone excessive drug use or that I am a staunch supporter of prostitution. But Roberta certainly can never complainthat her life is boring. Criminal activity, arrests, convictions, and the county lockup followed by withdrawal tremors and group therapy—her life can be compared to a gigantic roller coaster. Dangerous and frightening, yes, but definitely not dull. And now, she gets the added benefit of not having to sit through seven tedious hours a week watching her children attempt to play sports.
    On the surface, Rita has a cavalier attitude about most things, including her daughter’s plight, but I sense that deep down, she feels things very intensely and uses humor to hide it. Right now, she is joking about one of the kids on the field (thankfully not Matthew) who is struggling to catch his breath and has to keep going to the sidelines to puff on his inhaler.
    “Jiminy Cricket, someone get that kid an oxygen tank!” she says in her usual strident tone.
    “Rita, he’s asthmatic,” I tell her.
    “Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, then why the heck is he playing soccer? Is his mother writing a book?
My Life in the ER
? For God’s sake. Take him home and put him in front of the TV!”
    I laugh. I can’t help it. Rita is one of those people who says whatever she is thinking, consequences be damned. I like to think it’s because she has reached an age where she no longer cares what other people think. I myself will never reach that age, of course.
    “And look at that chunky kid,” she continues, ignoring the sharp look that Maddy Holmes casts in our direction. “Couldn’t they find a uniform that fits him?”
    It’s true, Lionel Malloy’s shorts constantly ride up, exposing his