“I don’t know. I wouldn’t worry about it. Don’t add to your own stress level.”
“Good idea.” Pam stretched and yawned. “I should unpack, go get some groceries and turn in early tonight. I want to look around tomorrow, and Monday morning I meet with the principal.”
“Oh, she’s nice. Everyone likes Miss Mackie. And she’ll understand about your limitations with MS.”
Pam leaned forward, her eyes serious. “I don’t plan to tell Miss Mackie or anyone else that I have multiple sclerosis. And I don’t want you to say anything, either.”
Slowly, Rosemary raised a questioning brow. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“I don’t know. I do know I need to prove myself, and I can’t do that if everyone’s waiting for me to fall over from fatigue or show up one day in a wheelchair.”
“But if they know, they can—”
“No. Please, Rosemary.” She had to make her friend see. “This is my life and my decision. When we first started working out together at the rehab center, I was going through the aftermath of depression, really feeling sorry for myself. Well, I’ve spent all the time doing that that I plan to. You’re the one who challenged me to learn to live with MS, and I’m honestly trying to. I realize that remissions are temporary, but I feel good and I don’t want constant reminders that I could slip back again any day.”
“Remission periods can last for months, even years.”
“I’m hopeful that’s the case with me. But I want no quarter given because I’ve got a problem here. I want to earn people’s respect, not their pity. Listen as my friend, Rosemary, not my therapist, and try to understand.”
Gracefully Rosemary untangled herself from the chair and walked over to Pam, hugging her as she sat down on the couch. “I do understand. I just don’t want to see you hurt. Over the past two years, I’ve grown to care about you a lot.”
Pam blinked back a quick rush of emotion. “Me, too. I just have to do this my way, okay?”
“Sure.” Rosemary stood. “Now, let me get your bag, so you can unpack while I start dinner. You can shop tomorrow. Tonight I’m cooking my specialty. Chicken chow mein.”
“Sounds great.” Pam searched for her keys. “I hope you’ll make enough so Samson can have dinner, too. He loves Chinese.”
“Not dog food?”
Pam grinned at her friend’s surprised look. “He never touches the stuff. And he likes a wedge of lemon in his water dish.”
“Of course he does.” Rosemary smiled at her friend. “I’m really glad you’re here.” Glancing down, she pointed. “Grass stains. I hope they come out of your slacks.”
Pam considered the green stain on her pantleg. “Think I could get Patrick Kelsey to clean them for me?”
“You really should get acquainted with him. He knows the boys at Tyler High better than anyone else. They trust him.”
Pam tossed her keys in the air and caught them in her fist. “Then I guess it’ll be my job to get them to trust me. Why haven’t you gotten to know him better, since you think he’s so swell?”
Rosemary shook her head. “I’ve been divorced five years and I intend to stay that way. Once burned is twice shy.” She sobered, studying Pam’s face. “Do you ever hear from Bob?”
“No, never. It’s best this way, really. When something’s over, it should stay over.”
“Amen,” Rosemary agreed.
“YOU LOOK even younger than your picture,” Josephine Mackie said, rising and offering her hand to her new football coach.
Pam smiled as she shook hands with the principal. “I know. It sometimes keeps people from taking me seriously.”
“Not after they hear about all you’ve accomplished,” Miss Mackie said, resuming her seat and indicating the chair across from her desk. “I’m very impressed with your credentials.”
“Thank you.” Despite her somewhat austere looks, there was a warmth about Josephine Mackie that had Pam relaxing.
“It must have been thrilling, being in the Olympics.”
“An unbelievable experience, yes.”
“You won your gold medal when you were only twentyone. I’m surprised you didn’t try again the next time. You were only twenty-five.”
“I’d planned to. I’d even begun training. But younger women were my competition, and although I hated to admit it, the body doesn’t respond at twenty-five as it does at seventeen no matter how hard you try. And the old-timers have more difficulty getting sponsorship money. I decided to turn professional.”
Miss Mackie smiled. She had no trouble understanding the body’s limitations. She glanced down at Pam’s file, then back up. “I hope you’ll understand that I need to ask these questions. Although the college where you coached spoke highly of you, you wrote on your application that they fired you. Why was that?”
“I have no problem answering that question.” Pam crossed her legs and adjusted her cotton skirt. “In training for the Olympics, I learned that an athlete must try to be the best he can be, to push as hard as physically possible and to keep a positive attitude about winning. When I began coaching, I approached the team with the same no-excuses, hard-work strategy. The college administration didn’t agree with my perfectionist methods, even though we’d gone from last place to second in our division. They thought I expected too much from the boys.”
Honesty, even at her own expense. Miss Mackie liked that. “Our Titans aren’t in last place, but we haven’t had a championship team since 1972, the third consecutive year they won the title.”
“That’s impressive. Who was your coach then?”
“Dale McCormick, the man who just retired. He was a real fireball back then, but he seemed to run out of steam.” She watched Pam’s crossed leg rock rhythmically as she sat. Not nerves, she decided, but rather Pam seemed to have trouble remaining idle. “You look as if you have a lot of energy.”
“I do. And a great deal of enthusiasm and love of football.”
Josephine crossed her hands over the closed file. She had no regrets about hiring this young woman, yet it wouldn’t hurt to bring up the concerns voiced by Patrick Kelsey last week. They were apprehensions shared by several others on the school board, she was certain. “Tell me, do you run into any problems as a female coaching young men in an almost exclusively male sport?”
Pam nodded. “A few. I find as I go in that the boys have their reservations. Many think that women don’t even understand football, much less how to coach the game. I usually let them make their jokes, get it out of their systems, and then we get down to work. Once they see that my methods work, they forget I’m a woman. The same theory applies to the school board.”
Miss Mackie found it difficult to believe that young men would forget Pam was a woman, but she let it go. “You certainly have a great deal of confidence.”
If only you knew, Pam thought, but she smiled. “I’ve found that focusing on your strong points and learning to compensate for your weak points builds confidence. And going into a game—or a new job—with confidence is half the battle.”
Leaning back in her chair, the principal studied the young woman seated across from her a long moment, then nodded.