The Sea of Light

by Levin, Jenifer

  Which one? he asked. They say Bart Sager’s in love, I told him. And he said It looks that way, doesn’t it.

  TAKE YOUR MARKS.

  In lane four, Liz Chaney grabbed the rung of the starting block, back curved perfectly toward the water. A split second wiped the grin from her face. When the beep sounded, eight swimmers arched backwards, hands piercing the crayon-blue surface, went under, pulled, came up, but she was already a length ahead.

  I drive into purpling sky, turn off the campus road and left onto Route 3. There were other things in Indianapolis. Sitting there by myself in those stands after the meet, McMullen and his stopwatch gone, noticing how bright ceiling fluorescents successfully eliminated tired old stains from the walls. The only thing new about the place was the pool, gleaming, bright, sparkling a cool welcome. I was waiting for some sound. A drip. Aware—for a second, suddenly, out of nowhere—of this dark all-alone thing in me that could pull me right down into it. It would happen easily, if I let it, would happen when I was alone.

  But I wasn’t quite alone then. Someone else was there, and I watched her: this big, tall, broad-shouldered girl meandering back and forth behind the starting blocks looking wistful, a little lost, unutterably lonely as she paced, swinging the embossed equipment bag that said SOUTHERN—THE BIG U on one side. Words left me thoughtlessly:

  Babe.

  I leaned over the bleacher railing to offer a hand.

  Babe, I’m Bren Allen. The women’s coach at Northern Massachusetts.

  We shook hands then. Her face had changed since that high school meet—wasn’t, after all, as open as it had been then. It was older, strained, full of a surprising discomfort that seemed to run very deep. Still, the body was lean and perfect, designed for the sport. Great genes. Kay would have said I was being a fucking Nazi—all that crap about genetics. Anyway, I smiled.

  So. You had a bad day.

  She nodded once, tiredly.

  Listen, we all do. Anyone who tells you she doesn’t is lying. But I noticed something, I think—I think you can get more out of your walls.

  You do? The response was immediate and eager. That’s what I keep saying, but he—I mean—the kid stopped suddenly, embarrassed, unwilling to speak his name. I was being diplomatic and waved a comforting hand.

  Ah, well, never mind. Sometimes it just takes an old breaststroker—then gave a conspiratorial wink. We’re specialists, right? We can see these things very clearly sometimes—sometimes the rest of them just don’t know. A dim light of hope sprayed the face. I could see her grabbing at straws. You’re so good that it’s difficult to see your mistakes, Babe. But I think you’re a little flat coming off your walls. Not much, just a shade. Still, it’s probably worth half a second right there—

  God, you’re right.

  Anyway, I said, maybe you can use that in the future.

  The kid thanked me profusely, a lot more profusely than the information was worth, and I wished her all the best of luck. Then watched her leave, gym bag sagging against her legs. A perfect athlete, the likes of whom I would never coach.

  *

  The driveway’s in rotten condition twisting through trees, past a garden in even worse shape. Kay spent plenty of weekends watering and weeding. It was her thing entirely. Early on she’d asked if I had any interest in learning about roses and I told her, None whatsoever, why? Case closed. But once in a while, when I least expected it, something would send gentle shock waves up my neck and I’d turn to see her holding petals between thumb and forefinger with a teasing look. Saying, Well, Coach, are you still uninterested?

  Things spill from briefcase, purse, and gym bag as I head up the steps. I open the door and Boz jumps out panting welcome.

  “Hey guy.”

  He slobbers all over the first draft of some long memo I’m supposed to read, wags so hard his entire rear end shags from side to side while he noses through my sweats.

  “Come here, dude.” I sit in the middle of everything and he licks my face. I pull his ears, scratch and rub and caress. He’s hungry and his whines prick me. Things point accusingly—frantic paws, untended grass and flowers, overgrown trees.

  “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  I do, then walk him, then head inside to turn on every light in the place, pull every shade, draw all the curtains. Thinking about Delgado. My original prediction turned out to be right. After that senior meet she’d been absorbed quickly into the fifty-meter expanse of big-time college swimming. It looked for a while like she’d maintain her top-ten ranking in the 100 breast-stroke, but she didn’t. Nobody heard that much about her until a few years later. Sager had taken his entire team to San Juan for winter break—a few of his kids were slated for international competition there later that year and he must have wanted to give them practice in the Pan Am pool, which tended to run shallow. They spent two weeks there, doing heavy doubles and getting to a peak. Not Sager’s fault—given the resources, I’d probably have done the same thing. But their flight back soared into Angelita.

  People talked about it for a while. It made every newspaper, national radio and TV station—one of the worst disasters of the century. No one expected survivors. Unbelievably, there were two. One was Babe Delgado.

  *

  I stop halfway to the bedroom. My robe’s draped over a bathroom door and I undress in the hallway instead, shower, rummage through the medicine cabinet for aspirin and take three. There is nothing in the refrigerator that I’m hungry enough to eat. Now, just tired, too tired to do much else but sleep.

  The horror is that, if I sleep now, I’ll be awake for good in an hour or two. But if I wait until the exhaustion passes I will be awake all night. And a couple hours’ sleep is better than none.

  I give Boz a biscuit and he curls in front of the dark television set, munching. I take a blanket from the linen closet and stretch out on the couch. Listen to his tail thump the rug.

  Kay, what now?

  A clock ticks. Lights blaze. I’m ashamed of this—return of an old childhood phobia. But lack the energy to fight it tonight. I’m afraid of the dark.

  Soon, for an hour or so, I will sleep.

  *

  Before I do, she comes to my mind very sweetly.

  Aside from the swimming, things always seemed sorry and confused to me. Then there were women, and life got comprehensible, began to seem very real somehow. But even then there was this split between one life and the other: love and a couple of friends here, work and everything else there, and the thought of ever bringing these lives together sent frightened chills of nausea right through me. It still does.

  A closet case, Chick always said, I don’t know why I bother with you, Bren. But aside from that one incident in our college days—which was a mistake, and at least never ruined the friendship—Chick and I went way back deeply, comfortably. And she was the one who introduced me to Kay.

  It was at this bar, a few of us were sipping beers together, and after Kay asked me what I did and I’d told her, after I asked what she did and she’d told me, and after we’d both oohed and aahed politely about it, we didn’t really have much to say to each other. But once in a while, in the middle of cigarette and liquor and perfume smells, electronic songs and all the talking, our eyes would catch and hold. Some nice music came on the jukebox and, just to pass the time, I asked did she want to dance.

  One dance turned into another. In between, we talked, I don’t remember about what. But it felt good, we bought each other things to drink and after a while danced some more. I turned around once, very late, to see that Chick and the others had left. We laughed about that. Then Kay said, .Here we are, a big cold beautiful WASP and a plump warm little Jew, and do you really want this kind of trouble? and if so, what are we going to do about it. .I’m not so cold,. I told her. She said, Yes you are sweetheart, but everybody’s got their reasons. We kept dancing and I held her close, thinking that what she’d said was probably true. Thinking how obviously and immediately different we were: her dar
k warmth and all the scholarly talk talk talk I would never be privy to, while the career I wanted was stretching gradually, logically ahead the way DeKuts had always said it would, into this collegiate annex that had nothing to do with books—the living, working fear and the need to use that fear for myself and for others, to physically win, that she would never understand either. And I thought how everything was going along just fine as it was—the path straight and clear, the work absolutely separate now from anything like love—how safe and simple that was, and how this woman I was dancing with could be a real diversion, a hammer in the works. How I didn’t really want any hassles, certainly didn’t need the thing she called This Kind of Trouble.

  Dancing with her, I decided all this. And at the same time felt something in her give before anything in me did. What happened then was that the soft silent force of it pulled me right in, so that the thing I didn’t want was also somehow the very thing I needed, and I knew suddenly it was in her that I’d find it, in the dancing together of her and me, and whether I wanted it or not it was the thing I must have and be part of. I held her closer with each passing second, closer and closer without even meaning to. Until the grip was fierce, full of an irrepressible ache. Until I felt myself holding on for dear sweet life itself like someone being saved from drowning, and I couldn’t let her go, so I just kept holding on.

  The Clock

  (FELIPE)

  It chimes from the hallway—Barbara’s father’s clock, old polished wood and a brass-rimmed glass case dark with age. I noticed it the first time meeting her parents. Palms soaking into the knees of my best dress trousers, scotch on the rocks swimming untouched in the tumbler before me. I was suddenly glad I’d had no time for the beach that summer and therefore no tan. It made me more acceptable to them—in other words, more white.

  I focused on the clock then, right across the living room. It was enclosed in burnished brown, possessed no blue or gray Anglo-Alsatian eyes to drill the countenances of potential sons-in-law like ice picks. This comforted me at the time.

  Ten, eleven, twelve, it chimes. Midnight. The gentle ringing fades. I rest in the dark, and listen.

  *

  I always listened at night for a sound from my daughters or my sons. Sometimes, with Barbara still asleep, I’d get out of bed, walk barefoot down the hallway. I would open the door to each room and go inside, and stand there looking at each face.

  I listen now for other sounds: a car engine, squeal of the garage. Early this morning she left. I heard the press of her weight on carpeted stairs, jangle of keys before the front door creaked open and shut, and I listened to her drive away with a flame like fear in my throat. But I said, Delgado, calm yourself. Examined shadows on the ceiling. Felt the rise and fall of bed-sheets as Barbara breathed next to me, reached over once to touch the blanketed curve of her body.

  I slide out of bed, throw on a robe, walk the hallways of my house feeling like a thief, as if it’s something that is not mine at all and will, in the end, be taken away. The carpet’s wall-to-wall, very thick. I love to tread it without shoes or socks, gliding across the hard-won luxury. It reminds me of a time—not so long ago—when I knew I was a man who had everything.

  Teresa’s door is open. From the threshold I watch her sleep, mouth agape, in the dim illumination of the nightlight she insists on. Because, she says, there are things under the bed that crawl out in the dark.

  Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, Roberto taunted once. She hid her face, soft dark hair falling over it in shame. Jack rescued her that day, saying, Shut up, asshole. There’s no law against being scared, you know, and flicked his thumb against Roberto’s ear. A painful snap.

  *

  Faint pools of light glow against the base of the stairs. Plastic crackles, the refrigerator door booms shut.

  At the kitchen table Jack’s piling tuna fish on slabs of bread. Chocolate-chip cookies are heaped in the bowl before him. Standing there, he sways slightly like a bear on scent, sucks mayonnaise from a fork and blinks in surprise.

  I wave, “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. Want some?”

  “No thanks.”

  My son’s face is changing. A serious, handsome face, ridged by black curling hair and thick brows. He’s begun to shave sometimes. And at sixteen he’s as tall, now, as Babe. But while she’s taken after my side of the family and is naturally muscular, solidly built, Jack has taken after Barbara’s and is slender, all legs and elbows, big feet planted firmly on the ground.

  Hot breeze comes through the screens. He gives me his look of pity, the one that says: You’ve been pretty jumpy lately, old man.

  It’s true. Up at night a lot, dreamy-eyed and far away from them all at breakfast.

  “Any idea where your sister went?”

  I try to make this sound casual. Watching the wary expression that lights his eyes, I know I’ve failed.

  “Babe?”

  “On second thought, I’ll take one of those cookies. You didn’t hear her go out this morning, did you?”

  “Here.” Jack straddles a chair, shoves the bowl across the table. I sit too.

  “Did you?”

  “Nah.” I know he’s in on whatever the plot is, covering for her. But he smiles openly, shamelessly. “What’s the matter, Dad, couldn’t sleep? You want some of this sandwich?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you ought to try and turn in. I’ll bet she gets back soon.”

  From where? I ask silently. He acknowledges it silently, too, covers up by munching bread crumbs through his grin. A good boy, Jack, good soldier in the war between generations. We sit and I watch him eat for a while. Then I must admit defeat, cuff him gently on the shoulder and turn to go upstairs, saying You get some sleep too, señor.

  But the clock doesn’t leave me alone. I listen. Soft wooden ticking. Twelve forty-five. Water runs in the bathroom, the sink, toilet, fluorescent shafts stripe the hallway carpet then disappear. At the door to the master bedroom the nerves seize me again, invisible insects crawl around the inner walls of my stomach and no, no, I can’t go in there just yet.

  *

  They said You must expect some emotional problems, Mr. Delgado. Any survivor of a disaster like this is bound to suffer psychologically. A certain amount of anger is not unusual. Yes, and a great deal of suppressed pain. We call it a post-traumatic disorder. It precedes the period of mourning.

  I wanted to ask many question then. How long would it last, this disorder? And what can it possibly mean to mourn when there are no tangible symbols left to speak of your loss—no coffins, no urns of ash, nothing to mark the extent of grief, to ritualize it—no powerful healing words to chant to yourself?

  In the hospital room those first few days her eyes were swollen shut, big, like the scarred halves of ruined Ping-Pong balls. I wanted to cry. To pluck out my own eyes and give them to her. I sat in waiting rooms wishing more than anything else that I could trade places with my child. It would have been so much easier.

  * * *

  To sacrifice.

  What Tia Corazón said when, as a final act, I brought Babe there. Telling Barbara I was taking her to a highly regarded nutritionist in Florida. Because she would eat nothing at first, starved herself down to skin and bone, and the doctors were threatening to put her back on an IV. We had tried everything. Special food supplements, vitamins in megadoses, various foul liquid protein mashes made in blenders. More internists. A hospital social worker. Until, in desperation, I took her to Miami.

  Tia Corazón. Remembering, I can feel myself flush with a kind of shame.

  But who is to say that that, after all, was not the thing to turn the tide? Isn’t it true that she began to eat again shortly afterward? So maybe we have that mad old witch to thank, Tia Corazón with her candles, her powders, her incantations and her spirits—because, yes, my child began to eat again. And lived.

  Sacrifice. Felipe, how much do you want her life, and how much the treasure she wins? Pick up this card and look. Crown of
the heart or of world kings, muy señor mio, you’ll have to choose. Sacrifice. Your house disappears like wind. Bastante. Excess of the body. She’s trying to turn into air now. For sacrifice. Take the egg in your hand, my child, it’s enough struggle. Eat. Eat. Drive out the death in your heart, and eat.

  She lit candles, eyes rolled up into her head, the feathers spread across my daughter’s chest sprayed with warm red droplets. Calling on the Seven Powers.

  That mad old witch.

  I stared into candle flames and saw them: the hearts for sacrifice, raw, soaked with life. Smoke singed tears from my eyes. They ran down onto my fingers, and when I held the fingers up against flame and shadow the drops were thick crimson, staining my face and hands. Then the thick dark stain turned to gold in front of me, burned pure and clear by the shimmering, flickering light.

  *

  It’s what I’ve waited to hear: hum of a car, methodical crunch of a garage door closing. Rubber soles on cement. Then the sure scrape of keys against a doorknob, driveway lights switched off, and I am already down the stairs.

  She sits on the living room sofa with a single lamp on. Ankle on knee, arms stretched wide, easily, she looks relaxed and then sees me and starts a little, flashing a tense smile.

  “Hi.”

  “Went for a drive today?”

  “I had some things to do.” In the lamplight her face looks colorless, bloated.

  Beneath this pale puffiness the face is young, big tired eyes and a child’s lips. When I sit opposite her the eyes shift anxiously. I wiggle bare toes against my carpet. Look down and for a second find them very ugly, misshapen and unfamiliar, as if they’re monstrous digits belonging to someone else. My words sound lame.

  “Rough day?”

  “I don’t know. I drove up to see this coach at State.”

  Calmate. Not too many questions. They said it at the hospital, Let her lead the way, do not force anything, express your interest but above all do not pry, and I wanted to ask how would it be possible to achieve all these attitudes simultaneously? but in the end was embarrassed to say it.