by Helen Conrad
“How do you know what's going on deep down inside Jim?” Kathy teased. “Does he bare his soul to you when I'm not looking?”
Maxie couldn't hide her grin. “You'd be surprised,” she said saucily.
“Would I?” Kathy's smile faded. “Would I really? What's going on with you two? Is he finally noticing that you adore him?”
A look of horror flashed on Maxie's face. “Who said I adore him?” she shrieked.
“Oh, honey.” Kathy laughed. “Your face is a dead giveaway.”
Maxie's eyes sparked. “You're imagining things.” She hesitated, then leaned closer. “I think Jim . . . I think he holds off because he doesn't think he could be attractive to a woman, I mean, in the wheelchair and all.”
Kathy regarded her frankly. “But he's attractive to you, isn't he?”
Maxie bit her lip, then nodded, eyes huge. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, Kathy, do you think he would ever think of me as . . . something more than a friend?”
She took the her friend’s hand. “He's crazy if he doesn't,” she said. “But Maxie . . .” She searched for words, not sure if she should be getting into this. “Do you think he can, I mean, has he ever . . . oh, darn, you know what I mean. He's in that wheelchair, and how do you know he could . . . make a woman happy?”
Maxie's face flamed bright red. “I don't care about that,” she declared shrilly. “That doesn't have anything to do with love, you know,” she added. “And anyway, it's none of our business.”
Kathy retreated hurriedly, but she retained her doubts. Her night with Jace had taught her just how much physical love could enhance emotional love, and in her euphoria she wanted that kind of joy for her friend, too.
“Well, good luck,” she mumbled, escaping to her room.
Kathy and Jim wrapped things up at the university pool and moved their operations to the hotel. It was more a resort actually, with three high-rise buildings grouped around an enclosed central courtyard that held a small amphitheater and a very large swimming pool. The courtyard had been designed to look like a quasi-tropical island with palm trees and tropical plants and a waterfall spilling into a pond full of huge colorful carp. Huge glass windows gave viewers access from all sides.
It was strange for Kathy at first, having so many strangers watch her curiously while she trained. She felt nervous when she first walked out in her Lycra suit and a murmur of anticipation rippled through the small group of onlookers. But she held her head high and dove into the water for her warmup, and by the time she'd completed her yardage, most of the crowd had dispersed. She could easily ignore the few who remained.
After a few days she began to realize that she liked it. It was fun to have people ooh and aah over her looks in a swimsuit and clap when she made good time in a split. After a lifetime of swimming the lonely laps, she was discovering audience power.
But the best part was that Jace was always there. Jace and Jim could never be friends, but at least they found that they could work together if their goals were the same. And for now, their goals did seem to be the same. Jace concentrated just as hard as Jim did on her technique, her turns, her timing.
At least once a day he got in the pool with her—another real applause-getter from the onlookers. His speed was amazing for someone who'd been away from swimming for so long, more than enough to keep her working hard to beat him.
The hotel pushed the publicity angle, as agreed. There were articles in all the local papers and even in the national news magazines. She got letters from ex-swimmers from all over the world, some urging her on, others scorning her efforts. She enjoyed them all, pro and con. It didn't matter. She was on her way. She could feel it.
Jace took occasional weekend trips back to Los Angeles for business, but he was always there for her Monday morning workout. Even Maxie began to hang out around the pool whenever she could tear herself away from the business.
She was one of many who appreciated how Jace looked in a swimsuit.
“He's very sexy, isn't he?” she whispered to Kathy the first time she saw Jace in the scant Lycra briefs he wore for swimming.
Kathy gurgled with laughter. “Yes,” she agreed. “That he is.”
Jace seemed almost as committed to her goal as she was, spending every moment he could with her. He swam with her and watched beside the pool while she trained, making suggestions, giving encouragement. He drove her to work. He drove her home. He made slow, exquisite love to her, and then he massaged her tired muscles to make sure she'd be ready for the next day's training.
Kathy moved in a haze of joy and anticipation. Loving Jace was like nothing she'd ever known before. He gave so much, she sometimes worried that she was taking without giving anything in return, but when she brought it up, he laughed at her.
“Do you think I'd be doing all this if I weren't getting plenty in return?” he asked her. “Wise up, girl. I like being with you or I wouldn't be here.”
He seemed to mean it. She basked in his attention. But she was afraid to think too much about their relationship, afraid it might evaporate on her. At times the way she felt about him seemed to consume her. She wondered now and then how she could have any room left for swimming, but somehow she did. In fact, she seemed to have even more energy and commitment. She still hadn't proved herself the way she had to, but she was deeply determined to do so.
Occasionally Kathy and Jace did things beyond the pool with Jim and Maxie. One September Sunday they took a picnic lunch to the park. They ate and laughed together, and by late afternoon Kathy had decided it was one of the best days she'd ever had.
“I wish this could go on forever,” she murmured, during a private moment after they'd eaten and drunk their fill.
He didn't answer, but stopped stroking her hair. She raised her head out of his lap to see what had captured his attention. A few yards away a little boy was playing with a yo-yo. The string was tangled, and he was frowning with the effort to get it free.
“Hey,” Jace said to him. “Need some help?”
The big blue eyes gazed at him suspiciously, obviously trying to decide if this was one of those dangerous strangers he wasn't supposed to talk to.
“Here.” Jace took the yo-yo and pulled the string straight for him. “Try it this way.” He put it back in the chubby little hand and showed him how to go through the motions. The little boy tried it. Success, at least for one trip down and up the string. A huge smile broke over his face.
“Thanks, mister,” he said, and promptly ran off to show his friends.
Kathy watched Jace's face as he followed the boy's progress across the grass. She glanced beyond the trees. Maxie and Jim were playing Frisbee out of hearing range. “Tell me about Bobby,” she said abruptly.
Jace looked down at her, startled.
“Please.” She sat up and met his troubled gaze. “I want to know, Jace. I want to know everything about you. Can't you share this with me?”
He looked away, his face set. “There's nothing much to tell,” he said gruffly. “Bobby is Beverly's. She won't let me see him.” He shrugged. “That's it.”
She put a hand on his thigh. “That's not it. You told me . . . you implied that you couldn't give Beverly a baby.”
He nodded. “That's right. We tried, and nothing happened. She went to the doctor. He said it wasn't her fault, so it must have been mine.”
“You don't talk about 'fault' in cases like—”
“It doesn't matter.” He shrugged. “She got pregnant anyway. I don't even know who the father was. I'm not sure if she knew. She wanted a baby, and she went out and got one.”
Kathy sat very still, shocked. “You mean . . . ?”
“I mean she got pregnant and I hadn't touched her in months, so the baby wasn't mine.” His voice softened as he looked at her face. “I loved him, though. He was the cutest little guy. I was ready to consider him our child. But Beverly had already decided to move on to greener pastures. When he was two and a half, she left, taking him with her. I haven
't seen him since.”
Kathy ached for him. “Oh, Jace . . .”
He smiled at her. “He's about five now. I just hope she's being better to him than she was to me ... or to herself.”
Maxie's last Frisbee throw came perilously close to taking off the top of Jace's head, and the subject was dropped for the moment. But Kathy couldn't get the picture of Jace smiling at the boy with the yoyo out of her mind. It was awful to think a man who loved children as Jace obviously did might never have a child of his own. She couldn't help but wonder if the right combination might not come up with different results. Herself, for instance. What would happen if she and Jace . . . ?
But she couldn't think about that. She had other things she was supposed to be thinking about.
The word began to get around and soon she began to see more and more people she knew showing up to watch her train. So many Carringtons showed up, it began to be a joke between her and Jim.
“How do you keep them all straight?” he teased her. “I mean, almost anyone could show up and claim he was one of your many cousins. How are you going to prove he’s a ringer? Is there a list somewhere? A Carrington Cousin Register perhaps?”
“We Carringtons have a secret signal we give,” she said with a cocky grin. “We know us when we see us.”
One afternoon, her brother Rick stopped by with his two children, Erica and Jeremy. She had to break one of her own rules and suspend practice for half an hour to give her time to spend with them. It had been so long since she’d seen twelve year old Erica and five year old Jeremy. Their mother, Claire, had left Rick a year or so before and taken them with her to live in Louisiana. But Claire had died recently and now the children had come back to live with their dad. From what she saw in that brief visit, Rick’s family was definitely at risk of some sort of breakdown. That sent her into one more spiral of guilt. She knew she couldn’t do anything to help her brother until this swimming mission was accomplished. Was she really the most selfish person in the world? Sometimes it felt that way.
Shelley came by every couple of days. That brought up other thoughts. She was always alone. Young and beautiful, she was totally immersed in her career as a psychologist. But where was the man in her life? It bothered Kathy that she seemed so lonely.
And then there was her cousin Tag. He showed up more than anyone else, as though he was somehow emotionally invested in her quest. He was her best supporter.
“I remember in high school when I used to go to your swim meets every chance I got,” he told her when she took a break and he came into the pool area to talk to her. “You were really good.”
“Yes, I was. And I aim to be again.” She smiled at him. They were about the same age and she had forgotten that he was one of her biggest supporters in those days, too. At least someone in her family had cared enough to show up back then.
“Have you ever told Uncle Stephen about this?” he asked her curiously, referring to her dad. “I remember he used to be so proud of you, bragging all over town.”
Bragging? That was a strange word to use. She didn’t remember it that way at all.
“No,” she said quickly. “He must know by now. It’s been in all the papers.” She winced, remembering how it had really been. Her father’s pride only happened in front of a few people and even then it only lasted as long as she was winning internationally. Other than that, he mostly made it very clear he thought she was wasting her time.
“You’re falling behind, Kathy,” he would say impatiently. “Time to pick a career. Get on with your life. Stop trying to be a kid forever.”
But that was par for the course. He hated the way she dressed, the friends she hung out with, the boys she dated. He told her why often enough.
“Being a Carrington means something in this town,” he would lecture her. “You have a reputation to uphold. I expect you to get into an Ivy League college, qualify for a professional career, and basically make your family proud of you. This swimming nonsense has got to stop.”
What he didn’t seem to understand was, swimming was the only way she could stand out and be one of the best. Swimming was her life and her identity.
“He probably knows,” she told her cousin, “but we don’t talk about it.” And she very much doubted he bragged about her much these days.
“How’s Missy?” she asked, referring to his younger sister. Missy was a mystery to her. Was she overly shy? Agoraphobic? Depressed? Nobody seemed to know for sure, but Tag seemed to feel responsible and he took pretty good care of her.
“She’s ok, I guess. I’m about to go over and see her.”
“Oh, say ‘hi’ for me.”
He nodded. “You ought to stop by and visit her sometime. She’d love to see you.”
“Maybe I will.” She smiled at him and wondered about his relationship with Mickey. It was obvious there was something going on, but she knew that Mickey was quite a bit older—and supposedly dating a banker. What a contrast to Tag.
Shelley had an opinion on that, and of course, she threw a little psychological analysis into the mix. “Do you think it might have something to do with the way his mother was never there for him?” she posed one afternoon as they sat side by side in the pool area. “You remember she took Missy and Tag with her when she ran off and from all reports, she left Tag alone to babysit when he was much too young for all that responsibility.”
Kathy frowned. “So you think maybe Tag is just looking for a mother image in Mickey?”
Shelley shrugged. “Well, she is a lot older.”
Kathy thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. There are all sorts of reasons people are attracted to each other. It’s how they feel about each other, and how they treat each other, that matters.”
He came to watch her train pretty regularly after that, and once he even brought Missy along—and she loved him for it.
The days sped by, and soon they were into November. Kathy knew she was getting stronger all the time, but didn't have any hard evidence. She hadn't been in an official competition for months.
“It's time to try our theories out,” Jim announced one day. “To test you.”
“A meet?”
Jim nodded. “There's a four-star special in Las Vegas in three weeks. Some world-class competition is going to be there. I'm signing you up for the long events.”
Kathy felt the sort of butterflies she hadn't felt in years. “Do I have to?” she wailed.
Jim grinned. “You have to.”
During the first few months of her training they'd gone to a few meets to get their bearings, and she hadn't done anything spectacular. But that was to be expected. She was just beginning then. This was different. It was time to prove a point or two. She was terrified.
“Better to be terrified now than at the World Games,” Jace said when she went to him for sympathy.
She knew the two of them were right. “Okay,” she said. “When do we taper?”
Tapering meant slowly leveling off her workouts so that her muscles would get thoroughly rested. They began to taper right away, and gradually she found she had more and more time to spend alone with Jace.
“I'll go to meets all the time if I get to taper like this,” she told him between kisses one love-filled afternoon.
Jace chuckled. “Just don't tell Jim. He'd think I was diluting your energies.”
“Dilute me, darling,” she sighed, abandoning herself to his embrace. “I'm all yours.”
But her mood wasn't quite so good the day before the Las Vegas meet. The four of them—Jace, Maxie, Jim, and Kathy—all crowded into a van for the ride, leaving early in the morning so that they would get there in plenty of time to do a little sightseeing before getting a good rest. The others were in high spirits, but Kathy could hardly muster a smile.
“What's the matter?” Jace asked solicitously.
She tried to shrug it off. “Nothing much. My stomach is upset. And I feel a little achy.”
&
nbsp; Nerves, she told herself. Pure nerves.
They stopped for a picnic at the red rocks and hiked around a little. Kathy was the first one back to the van. They drove on through the desert, singing old songs along the way, and finally rode into town like conquering heroes, each of them excited about what the next day might bring.
“We should have painted a sign on the van,” Maxie said. “'Kathy Carrington, Future Swimming Star.'“
Kathy laughed along with the others, but she was getting more and more worried. She didn't feel right. There was a dull ache in the middle of her abdomen. Was it really nerves? Or something else?
“It's all in your head,” Jim assured her. “You're excited and nervous. It's only natural. And your body is trying to find an excuse not to do this thing that terrifies it. Just ignore the symptoms.”
She tried, but they were pretty difficult to avoid. She slept fitfully through the night. At times she felt as though she was having chills, but she tried to tell herself it was all in her mind. But would imaginary chills wake one up out of a sound sleep? Somehow she didn't think so.
The meet was an early one. She and Jim went down to the pool, and she swam warm-up laps. When she climbed out, she was scared.
“Jim,” she said, clutching her towel. “I don't feel well.”
He turned on her sternly. “Kathy, get hold of yourself,” he said. “We haven't come this far to be sidetracked by your stage fright. You can do it. We've trained a thousand hours for this day. Now you get out there and do it.”
Stage fright. That's all this was. And Jim was right. They'd come this far, there was no backing out now. She did stretching exercises to stay warm and waited for them to call for the 1650 freestyle race.
Jace was going to turn her counter for her and give her signals to keep her on pace. She saw him making his way to the far end of the pool. He waved and she waved back, letting her hand fall limp when he turned away. A part of her wanted him to come to her, take her away, and make this ill feeling stop.
“I can't lean on him,” she told herself through gritted teeth.