“That’s how they afford the ice time,” Bernie chimed in.
“And the coaching.”
My mother nodded. “Even with Gloria’s help, it’s awful expensive.”
“Tell me, does the rest of the neighborhood know my mother is a janitress, or are our casual acquaintances as in the dark as I am?”
“I knew you’d make a big deal out of it,” my mother said, making a rolling right turn at a red light and proceeding without regard for the speed of the oncoming vehicles. “It just came up. Paul knew that the woman who usually cleans at night was going to be off for a hip replacement, so I asked Win Davies, the rink manager, if he thought I could do the work in exchange for Sarah’s ice time….”
I began making a mental list of the germs my mother had been coming in contact with over the last several months. In public bathrooms, strains of bacteria can meet and mingle, forming new, mutant strains that confound our limited arsenal of antibiotic defense.
“Do you realize, Mother—”
“Spare me, Franklin.”
Bernie patted my shoulder. “I wish my mother was like yours, Franklin. It’s not like my mother helps anybody achieve their dreams. All my mother does is sell Amway products.”
“Merilee gave us a great deal on bathroom cleanser, and Win knocked the difference off Sarah’s coaching bill. It was Bernie’s idea.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to worry you, Franklin. Honestly, if I told you the details of my work life, you’d probably never sleep again. And it’s not because my jobs are dangerous.”
Once again, I found myself in the perplexing situation of making my mother upset for pointing out that the lifestyle she had chosen was not optimally designed to avoid risk. What was so wrong with trying to avoid bad things?
And yet, in the case of the bathroom cleaning, the hygiene hypothesis could also be argued. Here my mother was warring with germs on a daily basis and winning. She did not suffer from allergies, asthma, or lactose intolerance.
As we pulled up to the arena entrance, my mother handed me her cell phone. Bernie extracted his camcorder from his backpack. We got out of the van and watched her speed to the back of the lot to park near Paul’s truck before we turned to enter the rink under the menacing sign, SKATE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I made a mental substitution, replacing skate with live. It was beginning to feel like my anthem.
As we took our seats, Bernie talked a blue streak, something about his queen and her recent perils. I checked for Gloria’s number on speed dial, and watched my mother’s boyfriend demonstrate his special talent for driving in circles. Sitting atop his Zamboni, Paul had only a T-shirt and a plaid shirt to protect him from the cold. I slapped my thighs, thinking of the relative warmth of the snack area, yet remembering my mother’s order to save her a good seat. We would be here for a while.
“But she has lots of ideas. She thinks it’s one of those lists you could even syndicate,” Bernie was saying as he panned the audience with his camera. “Like that little column in the newspaper, ‘News of the Weird.’ People like to read that stuff.”
I looked over at Bernie and tried to appear interested. “Uh-huh.”
“Glynnis says we should add nursery-rhyme characters too, like Jack, who’s always jumping over the candlestick. Or that Wee Willie Winkie, who runs all over town…he’s just asking for it, Glynnis says.”
At the mere mention of her name, I felt the color rise to my face.
“You and Glynnis have talked about our list of characters in literature? The ones most likely to die in preventable accidents?” I asked Bernie, to confirm that we were indeed talking about the same thing.
“Yup.” He nodded. “Glynnis thinks we should do more medieval stuff. You know, like Robin Hood and The Sword in the Stone. She’s big into knights and princesses.”
With its lack of sanitation, modern medicine, and adequate nutrition, medieval literature had presented a challenge so great it threatened to overwhelm our database. However, with a new research partner, it might not be such an impossible task.
The stands began to fill with heavily padded friends and relatives. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Perkins arrive with Miss Mathews, who was in a tight-fitting parka and warm-up pants.
“Look, it’s Mrs. Boardman!” Bernie said, waving his free arm wildly. “And Mr. Putnam, too.” It was indeed our old principal, helping our old library aide to a seat in the bleachers. Mrs. Perkins was right. Sarah Kervick would have a cheerleading section.
Though it was close to time to begin, the skaters were nowhere to be seen. I knew from past exhibitions that they were closeted in the changing rooms, hot curling irons dangerously close to their temples, eyelash curlers at the ready. It was lucky for Sarah that skaters wore heavy stage makeup for these events so that their features could be seen from a distance. Penny would have to do a pretty good plaster job to cover up that bruise.
I shuddered to think of Penny working over Sarah Kervick’s face. There was a twinge of sympathetic pain for her injury, but also concern over Penny’s general lack of hygiene. She might have run her dogs and grabbed a variety of public door handles since she last washed her hands. Now she’d be licking her fingers and erasing any mistakes on Sarah’s face with her own saliva. It is a simple fact that more than two hundred thousand cases of eye injury seen in ERs across the country are due to misuse and misapplication of makeup.
My mother took the bleachers two at a time, breathless and red faced.
“Have you seen Sarah’s dad?” she asked, wedging herself between me and Bernie.
“Nope.” Bernie trained his lens on my mother, who immediately pushed it away.
“Save the film for Sarah.”
As if on cue, four costumed girls burst onto the ice and began stroking to warm up. Sarah was not among them, and yet we’d been told she was in the first flight, or group, to perform.
“Penny says Sarah’s not going to warm up on the ice,” my mother said when I tugged on her sleeve. “They want to rely on the element of surprise.”
“No warm-up?” I repeated. “Need I remind you of the increased risk of injury—”
“She’s young, Franklin.” As if this settled everything, my mother shrugged off her jacket and waved to Paul, who was wiping the shaved ice off the front of his vehicle.
“What order did she draw?”
“Fifth.”
There is a definite psychology to the order you draw in skating competitions. It’s not good to go first. Even the crowd is not warmed up. It doesn’t do to go last. That gives you too much time to get nervous. It’s best to be settled in the very middle of the second or third flight. Sarah was skating last in the first flight, the positive and negative implications of which I could spin out endlessly.
But since this was an exhibition, the girls would not yet be judged, and I did not need to trouble myself about such things. Not all the normal rules of competition applied. Skaters were allowed props, for example. Most of the skaters were simply doing a dress rehearsal of the program they’d skate for the regional competition in a little over a week. But a few took the opportunity to explore their more creative side. The first skater to go, for instance, had a cowboy theme. She wore her hair in stiff braids under a hat that frequently blew off during high stroking. The possibilities for impaired vision and uneven drag clearly outweighed whatever charm points she might be making by donning the hat. That was my humble opinion, anyway.
Other than that, I have very little recollection of the first four skaters. In addition to the cowgirl, there was one with musical notes on her skirt who performed a mediocre routine to “Stardust.” Penny joined us in the bleachers as an “All That Jazz”–themed skater finished her program.
“Better call Gloria now,” my mother advised.
It had been my idea to arrange a phone call to Gloria during Sarah’s performance. No matter how well Sarah did, Gloria deserved to share in this moment.
“Gloria Nelots here.”<
br />
“Gloria? It’s me, Franklin.”
“You don’t have to shout, Franklin.”
We were forced to pause as the crowd erupted in cheers at the conclusion of some sort of Tinkerbell program skated by a rather robust fairy in a tiara and a tulle skirt.
“It’s almost time,” I told her after the noise had died down.
“For Sarah to skate?”
I listened for the telltale signs of Gloria relaxing. Of coffee being poured over crackling ice cubes, of the dull thud of her surely sensible shoes settling on her desk, but all those details were lost in the surrounding noise.
“I need a little help here, Franklin. I’m sitting next to a stack of reports on the dangers of young people ages six to twelve being left unattended after school. Bring me into your world, would you?”
There was a time when I would have recited the statistics on skating injuries, the tears in the rubber mat, the sharp edges of the metal seats, but I knew Gloria did not want that. Just as in other areas of my life, my job description seemed to be changing. I was to put a positive spin on the day. I thought back over the disaster with the costume, Sarah’s bruised cheek, my mother’s new occupation as a custodian. I thought hard.
“Frankin? Are you speechless? Set the stage!” Gloria barked, loud enough for the spectators around us to hear.
“Give me that,” my mother said, and unceremoniously yanked the phone out of my hand.
“Hey, Gloria, it’s me, Julia. Let’s see. Sarah’s up, but we don’t have a clear view from here of where she enters the rink. I’d say there are about a hundred people in the stands. I can see Debbi across the rink, holding up a cassette tape to make sure she’s got the right one….”
Penny reached over and poked me while my mother talked. “We had to make a few costume changes to cover the injury,” she whispered. “Keep your fingers crossed!”
I thought of the girl in the cowboy hat. “What sort of changes?”
“Just wait.”
My mother was so busy describing our environs that she completely missed Paul at the bottom of the bleachers and his thumbs-up sign. Bernie and I stood to get a better view as Sarah stepped onto the rink. As she skated toward the center, my mother broke off in midsentence, yet another member of the Donuthead clan to be rendered speechless.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olé
Instead of wearing just simple pants and a full shirt—the typical boy costume she had chosen from Fiona Foster’s metal ready-made cabinet—Sarah Kervick, now looking both exotic and intimidating, had on the tight-fitting jacket of a Spanish bullfighter, a jet-black cape lined in red satin, and a Zorro-like mask to cover her bruised face. Penny had pulled Sarah’s long blond hair into a high, tight ponytail that glistened as it fell down the back of the cape. My mind immediately went to the possible drag on her momentum this might cause. This cape would be far heavier than a dime-store cowboy hat.
“Get a load of Sarah,” Bernie said, sighing. “I gotta make a new character for that.”
The hand holding the phone dropped to my mother’s lap as her eyes followed Sarah Kervick gliding to the center of the rink.
I took it gently from her and said, “Gloria…um…” into the receiver as Sarah executed a couple of strong crossovers, extended her right leg behind her, and came to a T-stop in the center of the rink.
“Franklin? What’s going on over there? Franklin? Did Sarah fall?”
“Sarah’s wearing a cape, Gloria. And a mask. She looks like a…cross between El Zorro and a bullfighter.”
“We just picked it up at Costume Castle,” Penny explained to my mother.
“…it is an exhibition,” Gloria was saying. “I thought you said the girls were allowed some creativity.”
“I said she’s wearing a cape, Gloria. She’s never practiced with a cape so far as I know.” Not unless she and Penny had been going over it in the parking lot, for Pete’s sake!
Like my mother, I lost all capacity for speech. The crowd had fallen into a hushed and expectant silence. Debbi was so shocked by Sarah’s appearance that she stood there, tape in hand, as if she’d forgotten her role as maestro. Sarah was frozen in place, waiting for the music.
Someone needed to break this tension.
I stood and shouted a rousing “Olé!”
Several mittened mothers turned around to stare at me. Bernie was all over it.
“Olé!” he shouted over and over, ruining whatever potential there was for a quality sound track on his video. Debbi managed to jab the tape into the cassette player.
As the music crackled to life, Gloria said, “You might want to warn me next time you decide to shout into the phone….”
“Sorry, Gloria,” I said. “I’m all business now. Okay, she’s stroking…and she’s gliding…can you hear the music? Okay, she’s going into her first move. It’s a single toe loop. Wait a minute….”
I couldn’t talk and process at the same time. My mother was cutting off the circulation in my thigh, squeezing in nervous anticipation. Instead of folding her arms into her body as she’d practiced a thousand times, Sarah Kervick let the cape fill with air. The lining created a brilliant red border to her body as she executed the toe loop, her body firm, her landing solid, her extension elegant.
“Have you seen her practice with that thing?” my mother asked me.
I shook my head.
Gloria’s distant voice reached me as if from a dream.
“I’m warning you, Franklin. You have one more second…”
Bernie put down his camera and took the phone. “Hey, Gloria. It’s me, Bernie,” he said, as if they were close personal friends. “Okay, now I’m going to tell you. Sarah’s racing around the rink. She’s picking up speed. Looks like she’s gonna jump…”
Of course, I knew Sarah’s routine by heart. I knew that her next jump was a Salchow, and that led into a corkscrew spin. What I didn’t know was how the added weight and drag of this heavy cape would affect my abilities to predict her moves—let alone hers to make them!
And yet, she skated on, completely unfazed, using the cape as a prop as if she’d been skating that way all her life. Now, in her corkscrew spin, Sarah folded it around her as neatly as an umbrella and then—with a flick—she flipped it into the air and released it.
And I do mean released. Buoyed by a cushion of air, it remained aloft for an amazing three revolutions. By the time it floated to the surface of the ice—satin side up—Sarah Kervick had made a clean getaway. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.
As the music went into a crescendo, Sarah performed some of the required dance moves, picking with the toe of her skate; performing a chassé pivoting in a tight circle, one arm curved above her head, one finger snapping at her rib cage like a flamenco dancer’s. Though the mask hid the expression on her face, her body moved in the same liquid, languid way it did when she was fully content and performing her death-defying activities without the slightest hint of fear.
Sarah’s next several moves took her to the edges of the rink. But soon she would have to return to the center, and I began calculating the adjustments necessary to avoid the circle of red satin that now sat like a bull’s-eye in the middle of the ice.
You could feel the tension build as Sarah skated backward toward the obstacle. You have to skate backward to enter a lutz jump. In the same way that she routinely turned her back on Marvin Howerton when he was still in striking range, Sarah Kervick skated backward on a collision course with her own cape. At the very last moment possible, she extended both arms and her back leg and broke free of gravity’s hold at the edge of that circle of satin, performing her single lutz right over it. There was a communal intake of breath. In the silence, Gloria could be heard speaking sternly to Bernie: “I said put Franklin back on,” then thunderous applause as Sarah Kervick landed her jump and transitioned all that energy into a camel spin, a pull-up blade spin, and then a sudden cessation of movement with a front T-stop.
Olé.
My mother took the bleachers two at a time, rushing to the opening of the rink, where Sarah threw herself into my mother’s arms, panting and laughing. My mother tugged her ponytail and kissed the top of Sarah’s head. Watching them, I had that stabbing feeling of sadness, the kind you get when you realize these people who make up your inner circle are closer to each other than they are to you.
It was the kind of feeling that would send me to the phone to speed-dial 1-800-555-SAFE.
Uh-oh.
“Bernie, where’s the cell?”
“Huh?” Only Bernie Lepner could remove himself from the chaos of his surroundings to begin envisioning a flamenco-dancing bandito in his epic fantasy series. I heard a squeaky noise from below Bernie’s thigh.
“Franklin? I hope you treat invited guests better than this. This was your idea, remember?”
Gloria had a few more choice things to say, but I felt it necessary to interrupt her.
“Gloria,” I said slowly, “you would have been so proud. Sarah was…she was…perfect.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” The next skater had taken the ice, and her music made it hard, once again, to hear. “I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job.”
“Was her father there to see it?”
I glanced down at Sarah and my mother. It seemed like the same question had just occurred to them. They were scanning the bleachers, my mother’s protective arm around her shoulder.
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought as much. All right, then, you are going to leave those abysmal bleachers and take me through it again, stroke by stroke. You owe me that much, Franklin.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
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