The Sea of Light

by Levin, Jenifer

  Now she does that thing she does each September when she’s giving the first speech: swivels around with her shoulders, head and eyes following—suddenly, dramatically, focusing in on one person at random to make sure they’re listening. Because what she truly, truly despises is when you don’t even look like you are. She shoots daggers around—but everyone is.

  Aye-aye, Captain.

  Still, she’s a little tired or something. When her eyes flicker over my face briefly, then on to the next one again, they look bloodshot and weary.

  “You will find your balance, you will learn how to maintain your mental and physical integrity, and sooner or later you will find that you’re not necessarily alone. Someone else is there in the water with you, struggling towards the same goal. You’re part of something much bigger than yourself. We just don’t generally see all the ties that bind us, because they’re invisible, they’re more or less psychological. But, believe me: On this team, in this program—in my program! on our team!—they exist, just as surely as this exists.” She picks up a towel from the stack. Laundered, folded, red lettering across it, waiting. “And sooner or later, when you’re holding on to something for dear life—a dream, a hope, a goal—you will discover that others are there at the opposite end of whatever you’re holding on to. You will find that training, learning the proper techniques for your own self-preservation, understanding the elements that make up your integrity of body and mind, automatically leads you to give your best effort consistently. But not just for yourself. It leads you to do your very best for everyone else on this team. Let up, or stop caring, and you let someone else down. Let up, or stop caring, and it’s not just yourself you watch go under—it’s others, too. So when you work for yourself—in this program—on our team—you must automatically work for everyone else. That means cooperation. Encouragement. That means team effort. That means we hold on to each other mentally, during a meet, when things get tough, and we just do not let go.”

  Okay, I say, silently. Enough already.

  “Now. We have a lot of work ahead of us. There’s a big, big prize that I want you to keep in sight—”

  Zone-out time again. I look at the faces. Especially at the one that refuses to know I am here. Recognizing, now, the essential form of her: shoulders, thighs, flexible ankles, arms for days—strip the blubber away and she’s some kind of swimmer. The kind I used to dream of being, but never ever would be. Because I had no talent. No breeding.

  So, Big Weird Girl. Who the hell are you, anyway?

  Because, for sure, you are someone.

  Someone, anyone, Zischa used to tell me. It had to be someone. It could have been anyone. I lost two daughters and a wife, your mother, a son and husband. We met, we had a task to accomplish. Unite in defiance. Procreate. But we did not expect to succeed.

  Unite? I wanted to ask. Against what, Zischa? But never did.

  He’d go on then, talking the way he always does, about them—fascists, overseers, bureaucrats. Those people, he’d say, the gray people, who would turn this whole world the color of birdshit—if you let them.

  Then: Ellie, my child. You must not let them.

  Brenna Allen introduces me as team captain. I stand, take a bow. Around me, they’re all laughing and applauding. Then she introduces some freshman, a new scholarship kid, does a really good 200 freestyle and butterfly. And another girl, a walk-on, I should listen for their names, but don’t. We can get around to all the Welcome Wagon stuff later.

  “—someone who we’re very glad and very fortunate to have swimming with us this year—”

  Someone, my child. Anyone.

  “—Delgado.”

  And then I know.

  Record holder, 100 and 200 breaststroke. National team. World-class kind I fantasized about being myself, until reality set in. Like, Mission Viejo, Foxcatcher type. Stanford, Michigan, Indiana. UCLA. Southern. Pan Am Games. The Olympic Trials. A perfect contender. Then that thing happened—the whole team. It was, like, totally grotesque. All those champions, the big big boys and big big girls. All the U.S. Olympic hopefuls, practically, down the tube at once. Didn’t even wait for the East Germans to decimate them.

  You are waving faintly, Big Girl. Waving feebly from your seat on the bench. Not standing to take a bow. As if you are, for some reason, ashamed. Avoiding everyone’s eyes. But you can’t banish remnants of recognizability from that face—the years of color photos beaming artificially back from the pages of swimming magazines—once, I think, even Sports Illustrated—at all of us high school and college nobodies.

  But what is she doing in this division?

  “Christ,” Potalia mutters next to me. “Guess I’m dead meat now. The game sure has changed around here.”

  But our Coach is judging everyone, eyes daring us. For a moment, the eyes have settled on me. Captain Hammerhead Marks. I am expected to do something—something appropriate.

  I stand, grinning. Daring her back somehow. Most of all, daring Babe Delgado to look up, and look at me, and recognize my face, too—I want this very badly, although I don’t know why. But I put my hands together and clap, vigorously.

  “All right,” I say, with enthusiasm. “Watch out!”

  I do my job: Stand and lead them all, applauding.

  But Babe Delgado remains sitting as if she is more or less frozen there, big hands laced nervously together in her lap, pale face turned down, eyes fixed on the concrete ground.

  *

  In the hallway there’s an almost continual scuffing of feet, basketballs echoing against hidden surfaces, barbells slamming on rubberized mats. I lean against the wall near a water fountain.

  Babe Delgado takes some time getting her things together. In fact, she’s the last one out of the locker room, and when she steps into the hallway I’m waiting. Then we’re face to face. I think I can see something aside from glazed tiredness in her expression: something shrewd, almost friendly, flashing back at me momentarily from the big dark eyes webbed with red. I feel myself grin nervously.

  “Hey.”

  “Ah-hah.”

  There’s a wry tone to her voice.

  But at least she has noticed me. Whether she remembers the bookstore, though, remains to be seen. In an embarrassing, needy way that is new to me, I want her to.

  People jostle around us in the hallway. The doors at one end open and heat blows through, touched with a smell of something—the beginning of crushed leaves, maybe, and a faint odor of sweat. It seems like she might want to talk. I see her mouth form words once or twice, then the lips purse in a kind of exasperation. She looks frightened. I blurt out something to save her.

  “Which way are you going?”

  She shrugs. But when I head down the hall she walks alongside me, a good five inches taller, and for a moment I feel like I’m much, much younger.

  And I’m trying now—very hard—to think of things to say. A passing sleeve snags the spiral binding of my notebook. She bumps into me and mumbles an apology. Then words are tumbling out of her quickly, as if they’re very important.

  “You’re on the swim team, you’re the captain.”

  “Yes, I’m on the swim team. But not exactly in the same league as you.”

  “What,” she says faintly, blushing.

  “My name is Ellie. Ellie Marks.” I maneuver a hand from bookbag straps and offer it. She stops to shake it, her grip very firm—this surprises me.

  “Babe Delgado.”

  “I know. I know that’s who you are.”

  The hallway has ended, glass doors swinging in towards us. Babe Delgado’s blush fades, leaving in its wake a sheet of sweat across a forehead that still looks all wrong being so pale. Nervously, she wipes it off. Something warns me to continue with the innocuous chat.

  “Coming on the team retreat this weekend?”

  “I guess so. She requires it, doesn’t she.”

  It’s not a question.

  “Tell me something—did everyone always call you Babe? Or does it cover
up some deep dark secret?”

  This, however, goes over about as well as toxic shock. She starts to look strained. So, even though there is something repugnant and frightening about it, I grab her arm for a moment in a kind of pity, and squeeze it gently before releasing. Thick forearms. My fingers don’t circle all the way around.

  “Hey!” I say, “just kidding! Listen, do you have a class or anything now? We could go get some coffee—there’s this cheap little place I’ll show you where everybody hangs out.”

  “Um—some other time.”

  “Come on,” I urge. Not because I particularly want to spend any more time with her if I can help it—especially at the present ratio of work to social results—but because I am suddenly flooded with the urge to be nice, to fulfill my designated role. “Come on, I’ll even tell you my nickname. Now that’s a horror story, for sure.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “I can’t.”

  Then she’s down the hall before I can respond, walking very, very quickly, amazing for all that bulk. I ought to be pissed off but a warm, quiet pain fills me instead. Something in her has evoked it. So that, for a moment, I want to race down the hall, press her arm again and hold it and say, Hey, hey, slow down, Big Girl, it is going to be all right. But I don’t.

  *

  The Team Retreat. Brenna Allen believes in it, says it is good for the individual mind and collective head-set, so we do it at the beginning of every season: a weekend away at this place upstate that has cheap cabins, smooth hills, woods and lake. We’ll run together, do push-ups and sit-ups together, eat together, listen to her yammer on about goals and discipline and glory. Coach’s intensive seminar in teamhood.

  On the other hand, aside from workouts, there won’t be much more regimentation for the rest of the year. I guess her theory is that it’s better to start out with a lethal dose. Catch us during dry-land month and we’re baptized, immersed before we even hit the water.

  On the bus I want to sit back and plug into a Walkman, wear my wraparounds, shut out the world. My exalted team position doesn’t allow for this, though. The freshmen have questions. Everyone else, complaints.

  As we head farther north, you can see leaves just beginning to tinge gold, sense a hint of cold in the air. Our Coach sits in a front seat, right next to Babe Delgado. Neither of them appears to be saying much. Delgado stares out the window.

  After lunch there, and cabin assignments—I’m stuck with the freshmen, one of whom spends a great deal of time bemoaning the lack of a suitable electrical outlet for her blow-dryer—there’s the usual: talk, medicine ball, more talk, calisthenics, visualization. At one point we’re all lying flat on our backs on a breeze-rippled grassy hillside, eyes closed, arms and legs outstretched, creating mental images of our race. I try, getting through each lap in detail up to 200 yards. I can push the details on to 250, then 300. After that, though, it blurs. People in the stands yelling Pull! Pull! Pull! turn into people laughing. I breathe in water, snort and choke, cling to a wall and then turn badly. It rushes by me—chlorinated foam and wake against plastic lane dividers, the hollow swoosh of an arm, gasp of breath, skin and limbs glowing in the bright pale blue like ghostly elements, breathe, stroke, pull, stroke, pull, up, around, breathe, twisting my mouth sideways over the waterline to suck in air. After a while I can feel it, a little—the rhythm. But I still catch myself cheating on each turn, cutting almost, dangerously, too close or flipping too soon, barely brushing toes against tiled cement, gasping lung pain, losing treasured seconds. Smashing pool gutters with outstretched legs. Scream of the ambulance as I am rushed to a hospital, shattered left ankle wrapped in ice, and multiple murmurings in the background: See, Coach, you should have let her stick with the one and two. Never should have made her do distance. Oh, why? Why?

  Enough already.

  I open my eyes to blindingly sunny sky, puffs of clouds, Brenna Allen gazing down at me with a hard, dark irony in her face.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Marks? You look like you’re in pain.”

  “Last hundred!” I shriek. “Oh no! It’s the wall!” And everyone around me laughs, their female tones light, giggling, sharp music in the bright, bright air. I grin up at her mirthlessly and don’t laugh at all. And I can tell by the glint of understanding in her eyes that she knows, how for just that moment, I hate her.

  *

  Her lookout post, we call it—the porch to Coach’s cabin, scattered with broken-down old lawn chairs that she’s folded and stacked neatly in a corner. Except the one that she sits in herself every night after dinner, facing out to the lawn and lake and mossy-smelling woods, watching.

  That first evening I’m heading past the lookout post on my way to shower. She’s sitting there, legs crossed and feet propped on a porch rail while the sky purples, mixed gray and red around the edges of trees. She’s entirely in shadow. I can feel her watching, though, and I wave.

  “Ellie. Come on up for a minute.”

  I creak on five ramshackle steps.

  “A nice sundown, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Awesome.”

  “Have a seat.”

  I perch near the stair railing, holding my towel and bottle of shampoo, ease away from a rough spot threatening splinters. Her face is hard to see. Once in a while, there’s the flash of glistening eyes, white teeth. Sometimes a hand gestures, and the flesh seems to shine against all the sawdusty wooden dark.

  “Well, how is everything going so far?”

  “Okay,” I say, without quite meaning it. Knowing, anyway, that it’s not quite what she wanted to ask either. She smiles briefly.

  “Keep your hand on the pulse, Ellie. What does it tell you?”

  “Listen, Potalia’s afraid of being cut. Come to think of it, so am I.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Maybe you should tell us that.”

  I blush and am glad the darkness hides it. My voice sounded harsh just now, very clumsy, surprisingly bitter. Not my own at all.

  Brenna Allen’s chair tilts backward. I can’t see her expression, but the even keel of her own voice doesn’t change.

  “I certainly will. I will tell her that. And I’m telling you now.”

  “Good.”

  “Now, there’s something I’d like you to do.”

  The last time she said that signaled the end of all my modest expectations. I steel myself. More bad news for Miss Captain Drill Sergeant Team Workhorse. But this is the reason I was called up onto the porch and invited to have a seat. So I listen.

  “I’d like you to keep an extra-careful eye out for the new team members this year. Especially Babe Delgado. Please try to be her friend, if you can. Show her the ropes.”

  I laugh. “Ropes? You think she needs me to show her the ropes?”

  “You might be surprised.”

  I kiss even my dreams of relaxation good-bye. Last year. Last chance. It occurs to me that I was probably always destined to be just this—Hammerhead Marks, Coach’s hand on the pulse, good for a giggle—nothing more. Destined always to strive, never to improve. Bus rides to meets will be me doing the mother hen, team nanny number again.

  But in the dark, now, something’s changed for me. I look in her direction without adoration or fear. Words leave me, as thoughtlessly as the day I was conceived by naked survivors—two beaten people rolling on top of each other—that was all it took.

  “Can I ask you a question, Coach?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you do it? I mean, make me change events? I’ve been working so hard! And it’s my last year.”

  “I just think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Why? Because you’re the coach, and I’m not?”

  She nods. And we both know it—but don’t say it: Someday soon, the answer won’t be good enough any more, and I will want to hear something real. The truth, for instance. Babe Delgado.

  “I don’t like it,” I mutter.

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “No? You prom
ised me! Stick to this program, Ellie, you’ll have your chance. But now it’s, like, you take away that hope, you basically just take away my faith—and you think it doesn’t matter?”

  “Not as much as you think. See, from my point of view, perseverance is really much, much more powerful than faith. Or hope. You’ll find, as you get older, that you really don’t always need hope in order to go on. You only need an ability to see things through. An active will—with or without hope—that’s much stronger than any instinct for happiness.”

  “You’re wrong! Completely wrong.”

  “Well,” she says, “we’ll see.”

  “What—I mean, what, exactly, do you think we’ll see?”

  “What you’re made of,” she says quietly. “We’ll see what, exactly, you, and all of us, are made of. Things are shaking up and shaping up a little differently this year, we’re in unknown territory, so it’s a good opportunity—right? It’s a good opportunity to see what we all are made of.”

  “I can tell you that, Coach. Personally, I am made of this—here”—I hold out an arm, pinch the flesh—“See? Skin, muscle, et cetera.” I tug my hair. “This too. You can cut it, shave it, kick it—burn it—you can even kill it. And that’s all there is.”

  “No—that’s not all there is.”

  “What do you mean? You’re always saying it yourself—all that stuff about the body, how truth is in the body—”