“Jesus,” Luke said, stopping to laboriously backtrack up the hill to make sure she was okay after her tenth fall of the day.
I could have predicted he’d dump her, but I wasn’t ready to imagine what came next.
A few days later, as we were finishing up at the gym, he said, “Hey, let’s ski backcountry tomorrow. There’s supposed to be fresh pow.”
The snow was perfect—the kind of airy powder that makes us all better skiers than we’d otherwise be. I took my training seriously, but there was nothing like just being on the mountain with my friends. It returned me to my primal love for the sport: the brisk air, the spray of snow, the connectedness with the natural world, the spikes of fear and adrenaline and joy that pumped through my veins. I don’t remember learning to ski; I only remember that my life was always divided into skiing and everything else, which naturally faded into the background.
Leaving Luke and me alone in the massive chalet was either a sign of trust or obliviousness on Tad’s part. Luke was always indulged, given a long leash, since he would have snapped anything shorter in half. Because Luke had appeared to have taken the divorce the hardest, Tad had done the most to win him back. It was Blair who had to be perfect, not just on the slopes but also in school and in life. He was also expected to somehow keep his brother out of trouble, which was no small feat.
After we got back, Luke and I split up to shower, then met on the deck, where the hot tub was. This part of the house had a majestic view, especially on a sparkling day like this one. I stayed in my room for a long time, suddenly feeling too aware of my body in the black bikini that I’d bought for a trip we were planning to Hawaii that summer. I’d never worn it. I put it on now and told myself that this was just my friend Luke, so who cared how I looked in a swimsuit?
Luke was in the hot tub already and had pilfered a bottle of red wine from his dad’s cellar. As I dropped my towel to join him in the tub, I could feel him staring. I’d never had a damn thing against my small breasts until that very moment, when I unhelpfully pictured the top-heavy Breanna and how she might have looked in my new bikini.
“What?” I finally said, scrambling up the steps to submerge myself in the water.
Luke shook his head, snapping out of his apparent trance. “Nothing. I mean, not nothing. You look good, Bomber, that’s all.”
He poured me a glass of wine and we fell into our normal conversation: rehashing our best runs of the day and talking about the final races of the World Cup season, which would resume after Nagano. It wasn’t until the bottle was halfway gone that Luke finally kissed me.
Liz after Dark
“YOU’RE COMING tomorrow, right?” Gianluca stops me and takes me by the shoulders as class is dispersing. I feel embarrassingly thrilled by his attention.
It’s my third class that week and we’ve moved gratifyingly quickly. We learn walks, rock steps, crosses, and ochos. Gianluca’s partner, Angelina, teaches most of his classes alongside him, walking around the class with the teaching assistants correcting our form, often stepping in to follow or lead. She’s a good lead, but it feels bizarre to be in an embrace with her, held by her delicate, bird-boned arms. The moves are simple enough: there’s no quick, explosive choreography, no hard-to-remember patterns. The difficulty comes, I soon realize, when you’re not given instructions on which moves to do. Turned loose, you had to rely on your ability to pick up the directions from your partner’s body, the signals translated to you via their embrace. When you manage it, it feels like witchcraft; when it goes badly, it feels as discordant as bad sex.
“What’s tomorrow?”
“The social!”
“Oh yes,” I say, now remembering from the website. “Social” brings to mind grandparents and Dixie cups of ice cream. “Should I come?”
“Of course! You need to practice. It will be fun, and you can meet the rest of the team.”
I’ve learned about “the team” by now—in every class, we’re joined by teaching assistants who are also team members, dancers handpicked by Gianluca to represent the studio locally and internationally at dance conferences.
“I’ll be there.”
I begin my new job and quickly realize that I’m plenty prepared. The job is a cakewalk. Most of my tourists are from the United States; some are from Japan or Canada. On my first tour, all eight tourists are from the States, and I feel a trill of fear that they’ll recognize me, but I learn quickly that people mostly see what they’re expecting to see. I needn’t have worried about my shallow knowledge of the city: people want to see the beautiful Spanish-style facades, the elegant ramshackle villas, the faded Belle Epoque glamour of the place; they don’t want to look closely enough to see the bullet holes that mark the side of the Casa Rosada, the bloodstains on the sidewalks, the ghosts of young people that linger outside the cafés they were snatched from. On my second tour, I have a backpacker kid who is fresh out of the Peace Corps. He wears his manky hair in a preposterous bun that bobs in time as he explains the city to me, even though, according to him, this is his first visit. After that, if ever I’m feeling self-conscious about leading a tour, I try to embody his know-it-all energy.
Between classes I think about Gianluca more than I’d like to admit. It’s a greedy crush, and he’s more an idea than a man: a living embodiment of tango and this beautiful dark city, the hope for something beyond the wreckage of my old life.
On Friday night, I arrive at the social right at ten, just as a drop-in class is finishing. I take a seat on one of the couches, already feeling a little more at home in the studio. I change out of street shoes and into my dance shoes. All around me, I watch people doing the same. Observing this little ritual of people stretching and getting ready to take the floor is oddly comforting. The setting and accoutrements couldn’t be more different from the start shack at the top of a mountain, but there’s a feeling that’s familiar, a coiled readiness. We’re preparing to drop in.
The first two hours are all tango, for beginners like me who’ve come to practice what they’ve been paying Gianluca to teach them. Feet nervously find purchase, uncertain hands seek tenuous connection, occasionally a daring leg slides up the side of a partner’s. Gianluca asks me to dance three times, and each time it feels like dismounting an old bicycle and stepping into a top-of-the-line sports car—all smoothness and control and plush, delicious-smelling leather. I feel drugged when he steps away.
As the hour creeps toward midnight, more of the advanced dancers—all of whom seem to know each other—arrive, and I become increasingly intimidated. The team members are all lean and fit, athletes, my people, even if they don’t realize it. They glide and swivel and turn effortlessly, and the music appears to move straight through them. Their upper bodies remain fixed and still while their legs swoop beneath them, frictionless. Eventually I move to the sidelines, realizing I don’t really belong on this run. I shake my head a bit at the clueless beginners who still clumsily pick their way across the floor, occasionally colliding with the better dancers.
Cali, the beautiful assistant from the first class, arrives around eleven thirty.
“Hi. Liz, right?” I’m flattered she recognizes me, even though I have been here a lot.
I nod. “How are you?”
“Good.” She smiles. “Glad you came. Are you having fun?” The way she asks is almost proprietary, and I wonder how she came to feel so at home here.
“I am. It’s a little scary to actually dance in the real world.”
She laughs. “This studio is very far from the real world. But I know what you mean. Are you staying nearby?”
“I’m renting an apartment in San Telmo.”
“I work over there, a few nights a week. A bar called Red Door,” she says. “You should come by.”
I smile and am about to say something when I’m interrupted.
“Ca-leeeeeee!” Gemma, the British woman from the New Year’s party, tumbles in behind her, along with Edward. I’ve been hoping to see them again.
<
br /> “Oh hello!” Gemma says when she sees me. “From New Year’s Eve, Edward! Our American friend.”
“Liz,” I say, in case she’s forgotten. “Good to see you. You take classes here too, right?”
“Gemma just finished the level three class,” Cali says. “We’re very proud.”
“And I’m just here for the pretty girls,” Edward says.
“That’s complete nonsense,” Gemma says. “Well, he is here for the girls, but Edward’s an excellent dancer as well.”
“None of the pretty girls would dance with me otherwise.”
Gemma rolls her eyes and they go to change their shoes, leaving me alone until a moment later when Edward comes back and asks me to dance.
At midnight, Gianluca turns the lights off, and at first I think the social is over. I feel an immediate letdown, the specter of my empty apartment rising up. But then I see people heading back onto the floor and notice that the music hasn’t stopped, just changed. All of the other beginners—with the exception of one or two confused stragglers—have left now, and I wonder if I should too. But I watch Cali and one of the other team dancers going out on the floor in the now-low light, and I’m so mesmerized that I’m frozen where I am. A pop song with a throbbing bass beat plays, and Cali’s body is languid, released from the stiff frame of tango, and she undulates and rolls her hips, tosses her head as she spins. She and her partner dance first in an open frame and then he pulls her in close, and the way their hips are moving together, it seems like something I shouldn’t be watching.
Gemma appears beside me.
“Well, that’s not tango,” I say.
Gemma laughs. “They’re dancing zouk, it’s very popular down here. Quite hot, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say. I feel like I should leave.”
“Why do you think we dim the lights? After midnight, we get into the hard stuff: zouk, some kizomba, some sexy freestyle. Have you had a good night? Got some good dances in?”
“I did. This place is incredible.”
“Careful,” Gemma says with a laugh, “you’ll get addicted.”
Penny Finds God
BY THE time I was nineteen, we were traveling so much that it had ceased to feel as though I lived anywhere other than in a never-ending series of hotels. I’d podiumed in my first World Cup race that season, but I wasn’t yet a star on the team the way Blair and Luke were, so I was usually stuck rooming with a teammate. For the first time in my life, I had an entire gaggle of girlfriends: gutsy, outspoken women who understood me. Still, they were minor players, I was never as close with anyone as I was with Luke and Blair. Even before we’d hooked up, Luke had been greedy with my time and Blair’s, and there was always the fear that he’d go off the rails without us, especially during the off-season, when he was without the structure of his competition schedule.
Unless you were at the very top of the sport, there wasn’t much money to be made in skiing. Once I’d made the U.S. Ski Team, I attracted more attention from sponsors, who matched my winnings and supplied all of my gear, but the team dues were hefty, and travel expenses were not always covered. I still relied heavily on the support of the trustees, leaving me endlessly indebted to Tad. Being on the road was exciting at first—the world-class resorts, the downtime in towns all over Europe, but it wore on me too. I felt like I never had enough clean laundry, like the bed was always either too hard or too soft, like I would never be free of jet lag for as long as I lived. In retrospect, these complaints could not possibly feel more petty; I’d give anything to have those happy years back.
I treasured the chances to come home to see my parents or visit Penny at the bachelorette pad she shared in Boise with Emily. I often felt like I’d been in space when I came to see them, as though time progressed more quickly for her and Emily than it did for me. There wasn’t anything I’d rather be doing than skiing, but there was an undeniable monotony to it. The repetitive hours of training and dryland workouts, the spectacular views from the various start houses that nonetheless began to blur together: from Lake Louise to Sölden, it became one long glittering stretch of Alpine. Meanwhile, Penny’s and Emily’s lives progressed as they made their way through school, observing more ordinary coming-of-age rituals, such as living on their own for the first time, figuring out how to budget for groceries, and how to hold their liquor.
Penny’s health troubles had continued to get worse. She’d needed surgery on her back, but it did not get rid of her pain entirely, and worse yet, the surgery had messed up some of the nerves in her bladder, meaning that for a time she had to use a catheter. She’d also been diagnosed with lupus, which caused swelling in her joints, fatigue, and sometimes horrible unsightly rashes. It seemed like such bad luck, and here I’d hardly been sick a day in my life. I was still invincible then. I’d had my share of tumbles into the giant safety nets that lined the race courses, but I’d sustained nothing more serious than some spectacular bruises. Maybe it was this sense of bad luck, of being marked for suffering, that caused Penny to seek out religion.
Though the chasm between my sister’s life and mine was growing ever more vast, she still reminded me of home and I missed her when I was traveling. Penny even came to visit me in Sun Valley once. I remember being so touched that she’d made the effort, I fell all over myself to introduce her to everyone as though she were a visiting dignitary. I showed off the house as though it were my own, showed her the special home gym Tad had installed on the lower floor.
Neither Luke nor I had gotten into Dartmouth, but I’d belatedly started at Arizona State University, which offered a bachelor’s in communication that could be completed online. Luke eschewed the idea altogether. I would study between training sessions, reading my textbooks while the ice bath percolated around my exhausted legs. I had the vague notion that I might someday work as a sports correspondent or a brand rep, but any future that lay beyond skiing wasn’t one I wanted to think much about.
By her junior year of college, Penny had abandoned the idea of medical school and was instead pursuing a combined bachelor’s and master’s program that would put her on the fast track to becoming a physician’s assistant. Despite this intensive course of study, that year she seemed mostly consumed by her studies of Brandon—a hunky, milk-fed white boy from southern Idaho. She couldn’t wait for me to meet him! He wasn’t her boyfriend—at least not yet—but they’d kissed once after a Young Life party.
“Brandon doesn’t drink,” she said proudly, “which is just, like, so refreshing compared to the rest of the boys my age.”
Religious zealousness was an odd addition to Penny’s personality; suddenly, she was quoting scripture during my phone calls with her and telling me that my body was a temple of the Holy Spirit. Despite our many differences, Penny and I possessed a similar capacity for obsession. But where mine was single-minded, Penny’s was ever shifting—usually from one boy to the next. In the moment, however, it was every bit as laser focused as mine. And in that period of Penny’s life, it had found a home in the cuddly, inclusive Christianity peddled by the Young Life campus ministry. And, of course, by Brandon.
I asked Emily what she thought of all this.
“You know how she is when she has a crush. And she’s been having such a hard time with the lupus and everything,” she said, sounding unconcerned. Penny’s constant health troubles could make it hard to criticize her decisions; it automatically felt unfair.
My parents and I were a bit dismayed when Penny told us that she wanted us to come bear witness to her baptism. Those were her words: bear witness. This was especially confusing because we’d both been baptized, christened in those strange, old-fashioned little baby gowns that look as though they’re meant to accommodate an infant with alarmingly long legs.
“This is different,” Penny said. “This time I’m making the choice, I’m accepting Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior. Being sprinkled with holy water when you’re a baby doesn’t count. If I want to walk with the Lord, I need to rece
ive Christ on my own terms.”
These did not sound like Penny’s words but someone else’s. Brandon’s, I guessed.
On a Sunday in early June, we watched Penny and Brandon’s goatee’d cool guy minister walk with Penny, her petite frame engulfed in a white gown, into the chilly waters of a lake at the edge of Lucky Point State Park. He said some blessings and then Penny crossed her arms over her chest as he guided her backward into the water. When he lifted her up again, her face was full of wonder. Her Young Life friends cheered madly from the shore while my parents and I smiled, bemusedly.
Nothing ever developed with Brandon. I wondered what sort of half-bit Christian Romeo this kid was. Did he go around college parties making out with girls and then abandoning them post baptism? Didn’t seem very Christlike to me, and I was pissed on Penny’s behalf.
Penny was so sensitive that her happiness always seemed precarious. She was easily thrown off course, so vulnerable to illness and injury and heartbreak. Even though my skiing took up no small amount of my family’s time and resources—something I didn’t fully appreciate until much later—I was the easier child in many ways. I was simple: I just wanted to ski. There was a burgeoning chaos to Penny, a deep unpredictability.
Despite the brief, strange foray into religion, I talked to Penny whenever I could that year: she and Emily were the only ones I could talk to about Luke. I didn’t dare share it with any of my ski friends while it was this nascent.
It seemed simple at first. Luke and I already spent so much time together; now we would just do so as a couple. Nothing definitive had been said, but we’d kissed passionately that first night in the hot tub. We’d moved inside after a while and into bed, where hands had wandered, and we eventually fell asleep exhausted by our own churning, circling desires.
Luke and I had been friends since we were five; if he was going to cross that Rubicon with me, it must mean he wanted to be with me, right? It wasn’t as though he had any trouble getting girls. Despite spending all my time with boys, there were many things about their inner lives I didn’t understand: in this case, the gulf between their immediate desires and any thought of the future.
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