Hazard

by Margaret Combs

  It wasn’t so much that I needed to win another medal; I was no longer competing for that. It was the familiarity of my body in the air, the liquidity of swinging, the exhilaration of blind sight—knowing where the floor was when I couldn’t see it, switching to deeper sensations for navigation and landing. It was a language I knew and spoke effortlessly with my teammates and my husband. Subconsciously, I knew my team was my family, my tribe—my talented, smart, funny, passionate, bonded family. Not only did we spend inordinate hours in the gym together, we ribbed and cajoled each other out of bad moods, took care of each other’s disappointments, cheered each other on, shared our fears, hung out together, laughed ourselves sick: all the things I had longed for in my real family. Finally, I had a small circle of siblings who knew and needed me, who gave me the closeness and harmony I had longed for as a child. I couldn’t bear to live without them.

  Emerging from the scaffolding, I scooted to the exit door and down the stairs to the locker room. Bending over the sink, I splashed icy water on my eyelids. The door creaked and in came a middle-aged woman, no doubt someone’s mother. She smiled, but her expression quickly melted into concern and pity as she looked at my face. I ducked my head back into the sink and splashed until I heard the stall door click closed. Then, I looked into the mirror to see what she had seen.

  There, gazing back, was a red-eyed, gray-skinned, exhausted young woman. Her tightly bunned hair was bleached and brittle, and the tendons in her neck and bones of her sternum pushed out through her skin.

  A stone of uneasiness dropped and sent rings rippling to the outer edges of my stomach. I knew something was wrong: my determination and stoicism were no longer helping me. I was agreeing to things I did not want to do, as if I had no choice. The thought of scratching from the competition and sitting on the sidelines taunted me like a seduction: a luscious and dishonorable desire. I was done for, my body woefully compromised, but I didn’t have the bravery to bow out, to feel myself beached on the sidelines. The thought opened a vast hole in my chest. In the darkness of that hole lurked my childhood: the loneliness of being a spectator, sidelined and helpless—waiting out my brother’s fits, my mother’s rages. My gymnastics had eased my mother’s mourning, as well as my own, and had given me an escape route to another life. Now I had this new family, a passion and talent, a way to shine. I had the joy and anticipation of greater heights, of flying to a higher horizon. And I had a deep-seated fear that I could fall and lose it all, just as my mother had so many years ago.

  Above me, through the ceiling of the locker room, the stands rumbled as everyone stood for The Star-Spangled Banner. The burn in my left shoulder pumped down my arm and into my hand, like a deep and fast-running pulse. With my one good arm, I opened the door.

  Part III

  Fortuity

  Chapter 23

  Coppertone

  My mother’s coffee pot was an ancient Sunbeam, the kind that wields heavy in the hand and percolates the grounds to a watery gruel. Lord above, how I longed for a French press and a bag of dark-roasted beans. Pouring myself a cup, I moved through the back door into the Florida sun. It was a sultry morning and I was stepping into it gingerly, much as I had the three mornings before—with a stolen hour on the patio deck of my parents’ pool, a breakfast of caffeine, and a slender volume of Marie Howe’s poetry, her words a portable cave into which I could vanish.

  I was twenty-three and not entirely sure why I was there, however briefly, in Orlando, the sprawling, tawdry town my parents now called home. They had moved from Colorado, where I’d grown up, to a part of the country that felt utterly alien to me. I found the blistering heat and spongy terrain, enlivened by June bugs the size of pocket knives, peculiar and slightly horrifying. Yet, there I was.

  “Honey, I’m off,” my mother trilled, startling me. She poked her head through the back door, sweeping her eyes once around, searching the jumble of chaise lounges and worn lawn chairs, and then casting farther, out to where I stood, close to the lip of the pool. “Need anything before I go?”

  Her voice was tender, laced with a girlish gaiety. In honor of my surprise visit, she was fetching Rod home for an overnight, picking him up from his group house where he lived with three other autistic young men and where he was supervised by a high-turnover staff—a constant worry for my parents. She was pleased to have me there, though a tad puzzled. She’d been careful not to ask many questions and I hadn’t offered clues as to why I’d arrived. I was her independent child who stayed away for long stretches without calling home, who had married outside the Southern Baptist fold—to a Jew, no less.

  “I’m fine.” I pecked my cup with a fingernail. “This’ll do me.”

  She studied me, one hand holding the door ajar. I watched her retreat into watchful silence and wondered how she saw me, the daughter who had strayed and would stray again. Some years from now she would tell me I had been her easiest child, sunny and busy, winning blue ribbons, heels never touching the ground.

  “Did you eat anything? You ought to eat something.” Her chin tilted, as if she were about to say “You’re skin and bones.”

  “I’ll make myself some toast,” I said. “In a bit.”

  She paused, two beats. She knew I was hedging.

  “All right then,” she said. “Back in a jiffy.”

  I cupped one hand around the back of my neck: the way I wanted to be comforted. For as long as I could remember, my mother had been a woman of fractured attentions, pulled by a long line of needs and wants. First, and always, my father; then, especially, Roddy; then, my two much-younger siblings—Cami and James, late-in-life babies who’d arrived fifteen years after me and who in a few hours would clamber off the bus from elementary school, demanding things of my mother in ways I never had. My hope that I might find something different, that I would claim a moment of my mother’s attention now that I was an adult, proved how disoriented I was.

  A week ago, a flurry of arrangements had put me in my car, tattered map beside me, sandals and sunscreen stuffed in a duffle. I had been gripped by an urgent need to flee the March winds of New England, where every breath was cut with cold and snow hung in gray jowls from the wheel beds of my car. If I had reflected for even a moment I would have known I was fleeing emptiness, partly from my shelved life as a national championship gymnast, and partly from my marriage, which was faltering, though I didn’t fully believe this yet. I was too young to know there are forces in life stronger than me, deeper than my own will. I believed I would navigate back to my husband. All I needed was a respite, I’d assured him. A brief reprieve. I had taken a hasty leave from my part-time job at a bookstore and had driven nearly nonstop down the long scrambled coast of the Eastern seaboard.

  Now, I stood on my parents’ patio in lonely despair, hardly touching my coffee. The heat from the concrete deck penetrated the soles of my feet and flickered up my legs. Shifting my cup to one hand, I clutched the flimsy metal arm of the lounge chair and spun it so I could face the sun. Easing onto the battered webbing, I sighed from the dry ache in my joints, like an old retired greyhound.

  For a small moment I felt relief. Splashes of sun washed my thighs and penetrated the threads of my suit. I was dressed scantily, in a maroon swimsuit cut high on the leg, which bared part of my pelvis and, if I was careless, a crescent of my nether region, the hair of which I’d cauterized nearly to my pubic bone. I burned easily and should have been more vigilant about sunlight, but it was 1975. These were the days of cultivating golden skin, of basting oneself with buttery oils and flipping like a fillet so every surface was evenly cooked. Sundrenched limbs meant ripeness and youth, each of which I wanted again, desperately. If I gained nothing more from the next few days, I could at least capture the sun’s glow and with it, hopefully, some replenished desire.

  In the hot glare, my bare legs looked like rutted roads, shin-pocked by old collisions with balance beams. A slender ribbon of scar tissue seamed the inside of my left leg where a trampoline spring had once
zipped my skin open. Matthew had saved me on that fall—early on, before he was my husband, when he was simply Matthew, a graduate student whose stipend as an assistant coach put food in his mouth. I flushed now with the memory. I had relished being coupled, of belonging to another, especially him. He had split me open with laughter and, when we weren’t provoking each other, we were crashing and daring ourselves beyond fear. It was everything I had imagined, a thrilling and heightened life—before my body wearied; before injury sent me to doctors and injections, relegating me to a slinged shoulder on the sidelines; before the next crop of freshmen bodies spilled into the gym and captured the attention of my husband. Matthew was fueled by new talent, the possibility of reaching new heights. I had no reason to suspect it was more than this, his staying after hours and working with one of the most promising new young freshmen. But it felt like more. When I dropped by the gym on my way home from the library, bringing him his favorite deli-Cosmo and Coke, I lingered on the bleachers. I watched him urge her back up onto the bars, catch her mid-air and, putting her on her feet, cajole her to try again. I heard his quip and their dual laughter tumble across the gym to where I sat, fully clothed, in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater, sandwich half-eaten on my lap.

  I closed my eyes. A wisp of cool air lifted from the pool, skimming my hairline. I had hoped to seal a bond with him, to make a nest of my own. It was too early for me to realize that my desire for joy, for a family of easy informality, of humor and generosity, would draw me again and again into mismatched unions. I didn’t know I was a woman whose origins would make coupling a hard climb in life, that my patterns of attraction, to lively and charming partners who thrived on attention, who took all the air in the room, were rooted deeply in my childhood. In my marriage, I mirrored the role I had always played in my family: the independent one who not only took care of herself but persevered, who didn’t make demands or ask for affection, who tempered the drama around her with self-control and seeming indifference. Who was fearless and who felt lost if she wasn’t perfect, nabbing the blue ribbon, the top prize.

  If I was in denial about just how this wasn’t working for me, I only had to take note of where I was sleeping (in my parents’ den with no privacy) and how I was living (out of a poorly packed bag). The night before, as I had made my way to the bathroom in the dark, feeling with flattened palms in total blackness, I had rammed straight into the door frame, a blow that had watered my eyes and slithered me to my haunches.

  I lifted my finger now, lightly touching the aching district above my eyebrow. It felt meaty and overwarm. A blinding shard of light glanced off the chrome of the barbecue cart and some shuddering movement scurried along the edge of the pool. I jumped from my chair, shielding my eyes, and spotted a lizard, over by the ladder, clinging to the edge of the concrete. He flicked his eyes, tick-tick, uncertain whether to move into the shade or stay where he was, clinging to the hot stone, burning his pads.

  I couldn’t bear to look at him. I felt parched and cooked. The single palm tree squatting on the far side of the pool, the thorny grass suffocating in the sun, the six-foot slatted fence wrapping the yard and walling off the neighbors, closed around me. Swiftly, I moved across the concrete. The pool was a small peanut-shaped affair, no more than ten feet deep and ill-suited for even a shallow dive. But I launched from one foot anyway, off the pool’s edge, soaring out over the glassy green surface like a low-flying pontoon.

  In an instant, my head pierced the shimmering surface. The bright cold took my breath and I scraped the pool’s floor with my palms, my legs pumping as I pulled forward, slicing and parting the water with cupped and stinging hands. Within seconds I’d reached the shallow end, where I gulped a quick, hard breath and dove again, heading back to the deep end, dragging along the floor. Rays shot from above, rippling along the walls; chlorine seared my eyes. I squeezed my lids, feeling for the wall, slapping it and flipping, heading back the other way.

  I kept on like this, lapping the pool ten, twenty, thirty times, until my lungs groaned and I gulped water. When I surfaced again at the shallow end, sputtering and pushing ropes of hair from my eyes, I flinched. A few feet away, at the pool’s edge, sat a blurry figure, watching me.

  “Oh, hi, Rod,” I said.

  “Hi, Mossie!” he shouted.

  Pain bloomed in my ear. It had been two years since I had last seen him, long enough for me to have grown sloppy with the nuances of how to pitch and temper my voice. Low and languid was the rule. I paused, then tried again.

  “It’s nice to see you,” I said.

  His eyes darkened. He looked down, thinking this through.

  “Yaas,” he said, at last.

  It didn’t occur to me, either then or for many years to come, that my brother had missed me. Easing gently forward, I moved through the water slowly, as if traveling through syrup, to where he sat on the pool’s edge. He was eighteen years old, dressed in a pale blue, baggy-legged swimsuit, which covered his thighs and framed each of his ivory kneecaps in navy trim. His tank top dipped low enough in front to reveal a chest sprouted with dark hair—a new thing. His feet, rippling underwater, rested on the first step of the pool, pigeon-toed.

  I paused at the bottom step, not too close.

  “May I sit with you?” I asked.

  He held a frosty glass of iced tea, the contents of which he was sipping in miniscule swallows, like a bird pecking at a bird bath. He made a soft sound, part hum, part snort.

  “Okay, I’ll just dry off first,” I said, rising up the steps, dripping, edging to the left so as not to spray him.

  I wasn’t sure how to be around him now that he was a man. Now that he had turned dark and resentful. His sweet nature had disintegrated with the beginning of puberty, his body whipped around with hormones and urges he couldn’t understand. The last time I’d visited, two years ago, I’d been sharing tea with my mother in the kitchen when Rod exploded in the back bedroom, yelling at my father and stomping down the hallway and into the kitchen, opening and slamming drawers, picking up a saucer and throwing it into the sink. I had sprung to my feet, spilling tea and moving behind the counter, away from him.

  “Now, Rod,” my mother had said, her voice tinged with anxiety, though she was not surprised.

  I had not seen him act that way since he was a child, his frustration and anger exploding in hot tantrums. All I’d had to do when he was smaller than me was lean over him and turn his attention to a Popsicle or a bag of marbles, or take him outside. Now, he was a man, nearly a foot taller than me, and I didn’t know what he was capable of. I wasn’t sure I knew how to distract or appease him.

  Warily, I reached for my towel. Rod cast a furtive glance back to where I stood rubbing my legs and scruffing the cloth through my hair. The towel made me wince. My skin felt tight and raw, my back like a tenderized cutlet, exposed. Aside from thin spaghetti straps, my suit bared the whole of my back, its lines plunging nearly to my tailbone, and, foolishly, I had neglected to rub myself with suntan lotion. Grabbing up the Coppertone, I hastily slathered my limbs, then my face, and finally came to my back.

  Despite my years of stretching my limbs, my body held onto a stubborn and uneven flexibility. My left shoulder, with its history of inflammation, had a tightness that would one day pop my rotator cuff and send me into surgery. Right then it meant I couldn’t reach my upper spine. I thought suddenly of all the times Matthew had granted me this small favor. Early in our courtship we had spent many a steamy afternoon at the beach in Belchertown, during which he had smeared lotion all over me, taking special care with my back, massaging it between my shoulder blades as I lay half-asleep on my stomach. We had stayed in the hot sun for hours, oblivious. By the time we’d packed up and retreated to our tiny apartment in North Hampton, showering in the sweltering closeness, we knew a stinging and sleepless night lay ahead. But neither of us had minded; we were blurry with desire.

  Now, this deep and wounding memory came back to me. Tears pricked my eyes. I snatched up my towel
and turned toward my brother, about to say I’d changed my mind, that I’d had enough sun and I’d see him inside. I didn’t want to say the truth: that I needed to escape myself, that coming south had failed to comfort me, that I didn’t belong here, any more than I belonged back in my old life, my dissolving world.

  But as I caught sight of Rod sipping his tea, the fingers of his other hand patting the water, it came to me that I didn’t want to flee him just yet. Something about his glances and the way he smiled into his tea glass made me sense he was pleased to have my company.

  Years before, when Rod was ten years old, he had come out of our house wearing that same smile, holding my mother’s hand, to where I was bouncing on our new backyard trampoline. It was June, and that morning two men had arrived in a truck, hauling out metal frame parts, a box of springs, and a nylon bed. In short order, they’d set up my surprise birthday present. I was fourteen and thrilled with the sensation of flying, spinning in the air, landing on my feet or stomach or back, and spinning again. I couldn’t get enough: the thrill of being weightless, of being released from the ground.

  As I had flipped and landed on my back, then flipped again, my mother had stood at the end of the trampoline.

  “He’s been watching you for an hour,” she said, at last. “I think he wants to try.”

  I stopped and stared at her, hesitating, not at all sure my brother belonged on a trampoline. I knew how to control my own body, but not his. My mother lifted him and I reached for his hands, helping him onto the nylon bed, a soft, mischievous floor.

  “Okay, Rod,” I said, firmly, gripping his arm, a jittery nervousness in my stomach. “You need to learn how to stay in the middle, and then how to stop your bounce. That’s all.”

  I said this more to myself than to him—and to my mother. What could she know of a trampoline’s moods and how hard it was to stay on? Cautiously, I showed him how to bounce, how to halt, devising simple steps so he wouldn’t be afraid, so he’d try just enough to succeed. He puffed through his nose, listening, not looking at me. And then, he did exactly what I had told him to do. I clapped with surprise and let him do it again. It was all going so well, I lost myself.