The Sea of Light

by Levin, Jenifer

  When I respond, I do so with utmost care. I will hang up liking but not trusting him—which is okay; but it will not be okay if he hangs up without both liking and trusting me.

  “Listen, Phil, I want to be completely honest with you.” Which is not really true, but I want him to think it is. “Your daughter is a very talented and mature individual. I think you know that.”

  He mumbles assent. Over the wires, I think maybe I hear his strain. Choking of vocal cords. But I’m not really sure.

  “And you also know that she’s been through a lot. Enough, some people would say, to have killed an ordinary person. But here she is with us, alive.”

  “A Dios” he whispers, “Thanks to God.”

  “So when we talk about her, let’s be very clear about the fact that we are speaking of an adult here. Whatever her assets or deficits, she’s a grown woman. Sure, I’m her coach—and sure, she talks to me sometimes. But, out of respect for her, and for our working relationship, I think that whatever she says to me, whether it’s of a personal nature or not, ought to stay confidential.”

  “Ah,” he mutters. “I see.”

  “Although, certainly, if you feel you need to discuss something with her, I encourage you to do so. Directly.” I am careful, now, to sound anything but hostile. Openly friendly and admiring; full of praise; above all, kind. “Parents who really care about their children’s happiness as openly as you do—well, that’s pretty rare. And let me tell you, I think it’s great.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  He sounds subdued. Relieved. I am, too.

  We chat about weather, and other things. He is calling long distance, he tells me; he’s on a business trip. In Miami. Yes, he misses the family, misses being back home. Although he has a few relatives there and, once upon a time, knew the city like he knew his own heart. The place has changed so much over the years. Still, some things never change. The heat, for instance. Ninety-eight in the shade, but air-conditioned hotel rooms. Glad he has finally had the chance to speak with me, one on one. Babe thinks highly of me. Now he knows why. She’s been through so much pain, too. He’s proud that she has the courage to live again, even compete again. He hopes she knows how much he loves her. How it is not him trying to force her to attain some standard of national-class or world-class excellence—no, not now, not ever. Because he loves her for what she is. Yes, he thinks he can say that with a clear conscience. Unlike other people he could mention. Other people, and their kids. The things he has seen. Well, no need to tell me about it. But Babe is so fortunate to be swimming for me now. Just speaking with me, he can tell. Strong, honest. Respectful of the kids—yes, he likes that. And this conversation has been a great relief. He’s glad Babe’s okay. He’s glad everything is on the up and up.

  And I think: the up and up. Inaccurate use of the term. Sounds odd, too, coming from him. Kind of an Anglo, Protestant American, upper-class euphemism. What Kay would have called WASP Vocabulary. Country Club Phraseology.

  Absolutely amazing. How, with one simple phrase, Bren, your people can make everyone else feel like dirt.

  Fine, Kay. What would you like me to do about that? Study Yiddish? Convert in my spare time?

  God, no! My people have their own shit to work through—

  Shit? Or schtick?

  Shit, darling. But good for you.

  “Listen, Phil, it’s been great to talk with you, too. There are some really fine individuals in this program, and it’s always a pleasure to get to know their families. I want you to feel free to call me at any time. Okay? If you have any further questions or concerns, or whatever.”

  This part is a memorized speech; I could recite it in my sleep. I wonder if he has heard many like it before. Chances are that he has. Were they convincing? All those other coaches? The famous ones at expensive clubs—what kind of raps did they have to dole out to parents? Speeches better than mine?

  *

  It’s time for a break. McMullen and I usually have lunch once a week, on this particular day. But he’s obviously avoiding me; his office door is locked, and no one in. I curse him on the one hand, wish him balm for his bruised ego on the other, am secretly glad that he won’t be at this conference to hassle me, secretly on edge at the suddenly new possibility here of departmental warfare—which would automatically put me, the younger party, the more recent addition occupying a more junior position on paper, and a woman—in jeopardy, regardless of my comparative value.

  But I’m not hungry anyway, and skip lunch for a brief session in the nearest weight room. It’s pretty empty during lunch hour, with just a couple of heavyweight crew members pumping away on the squat machines, and I’m glad for the relative solitude. There, though—somewhere between bench press and lat pulldown—whatever healing my shoulders have managed to do during the past couple of days comes completely undone. I sit on an empty hydra-press machine in defeat, shoulders, neck, and upper arms throbbing. I’d like to whimper, but won’t allow it.

  Sometimes I am my own Coach, too.

  Shower, and sauna. Wooden heat box blessedly empty. On the upper bench I stretch out, soak in warmth, long for Kay. But there’s a strange twist to this longing: it makes my mind ache, then crushes any arousal of the body as soon as it begins. So that, lying there, I feel oddly, physically dead, unattracted and unattractive to the world. Sweat rolls readily down my cheeks. Tears do, too; but they blend right in.

  *

  Half an hour before afternoon workout and I’m examining individual training programs, comparing actual results with predicted results, cheering myself and the kid on whenever things jibe or exceed expectations, figuring out where to start troubleshooting when results fall short of a reasonable goal. So far, so good; there are more pluses than minuses on my side. Always, in my head, I keep count.

  DeKuts used to have a belt hanging on the wall in his office—worn, cracked brown leather, tarnished buckles—that he’d actually notch with the long blade of a camping knife whenever something he could claim as a victory transpired. He also kept a well-used flyswatter around. Sometimes you’d walk in and he’d point to the wall the belt hung on, raise his wiry dark eyebrows quietly, but with a kind of menace. See that? he’d say. Which do you want to be, little lady? A notch on my belt or a fly on my wall? You’d look to the right or the left of the hanging belt, then, and see what he meant: a crushed fly, black body shattered to a single bloody streak, fractured wings translucent, almost invisible.

  I eschew such methods. It’s a point of pride.

  Still, there is this lust for keeping tabs. Omniscience of the win/loss tally, the imperative for tangible triumph. It’s as much a part of me as of anyone. But I wonder sometimes—like this afternoon, pausing over a log book, watching the last pale cold streak of sunlight fade west across my desk—how much of triumph ever is truly tangible; and how, in the end, is it measured? By being really exceptional? or simply by being a little faster, fading a little more slowly, than anyone else around you in a certain event, on a given day?

  Or none of the above.

  And if you cannot measure it absolutely—genuine victory, I mean, in sport, in war, in any kind of endeavor—then how do you account for your life, in the end?

  Just accept, Super Coach. Accept the whole deceptively chaotic, troublesome patterned mess of what was, what is. Accept this. Even this. And live.

  No, I tell her, softly. It’s not what I can do.

  Oh? And what can you do?

  Win, Kay. I can win.

  But what if you do not win?

  I want to call her now, bury myself in her voice the way I’d cover my face with her arms, her breasts. Like an ostrich, feeling as if, that way, I could hide myself from the world.

  I almost pick up the phone, dial her extension. Then I remember that I can’t, really can’t. She will not be there today; will never be there again, on any day. If I call her office, Ralph Brown will answer. He has cleaned out all her files. Maybe read some of the letters I sent her as a young lover
, long ago. She liked to keep them with her in a secret place at work, she said; to remind her, on bad days, of what in her life was real.

  Kay’s little office, with room and phone numbers that I knew as well as I know our home address, is gone to me now, just as surely as she is gone. For a moment, my throat closes, and what washes over me is a wave of panic and grief in which, abandoned, I am lost.

  No, I tell myself, don’t. Workout is in less than half an hour. You cannot fall apart.

  Somehow, this stern command works. I stop the tears. My throat begins to clear.

  I realize that there are certain tricks to be pulled out of the bag here. For instance: If I acknowledge that she is gone forever, that I will never, ever see her again for at least the rest of my life, the tears swell and throat aches again, and I cannot stand it. But if I tell myself that she is not here on this particular day; that, for right now, for today, I will not see her, the weight feels smaller somehow, and easier to bear.

  The telephone buzzer sounds, flashing bright red.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a Barbara Delgado for you, line three.”

  “Kathy, could you tell her I’ll be with her in just a minute?”

  I use the minute to purge throat and sinuses and damp eyeballs with tissue, toss the ruined wads perfectly into a wastebasket, make peace with the fact that this is undoubtedly the worst possible time for me to have to deal cogently with anybody’s mother. But necessity beckons, regardless. Win or lose, I accept its dare.

  Some things, after all, are working in my favor. Better, far better that I will have this chance to be a calm, authoritative, disembodied voice to her than a wretchedly tired, grief-smeared face.

  I press the third button, and am pleased to hear my voice come out as rehearsed—friendly, firm, knowing: Hello. This is Brenna Allen.

  “Coach Allen, we haven’t met. I am Mildred Delgado’s mother.”

  The voice is refined. Words perfectly formed. High alto, maybe, second soprano. Dancing classes. Finishing school.

  Bren, I tell her, call me Bren.

  “Bren. Brenna. Wonderful name. I went to school—oh, about a million years ago—with a girl named Brenna. Her family was German, I think. Possibly Danish.”

  Well,” I say, “we are scattered all over.”

  Uncomfortably, both of us laugh.

  “I suppose I called just to more or less sort of touch base, Bren. My daughter tells us absolutely wonderful things about you!”

  Maybe. But, I know, that is not the reason for this call.

  “Thank you. We’ve developed a good program here. Babe’s participation will enhance it even more.”

  There is a pause.

  “Well, since you bring it up, I suppose I ought to tell you that that is partly why I called. You see, I have some concerns, some very serious concerns, about my daughter.”

  Silently, I wait. My nose drips, remnants of the would-be tears; I would like to blow it, but don’t.

  “Now listen, Bren. May I speak frankly? On the up and up?”

  “Of course.”

  “My daughter is in—has been in—a very bad state. Part of it is due to the accident, of course, and the trauma of that, you know, all the injuries and shock. But the rest of it. Well, quite frankly. There were some really very serious problems even before that—I mean during the time she swam for Bart Sager, training for the Pan Ams, I could tell, I knew, that she was really not herself. Please don’t misunderstand; she was always difficult; but this was different.”

  Different? I echo. Calmly. Openly. Willing her to speak, and at the same time wishing she had not called.

  Yes, she tells me, different. Because it was then—oh, about halfway into her second semester at Southern, that this truly intolerable behavior around food began. It was apparent during a brief spring-break visit, from the physically overweight, bloated way she looked, the neurotic way she had begun to behave—well, for goodness’ sake, it was apparent to the world from the deterioration of her times in every event—that something was not quite right. During meals with the family it became obvious what that was: Her eating habits were now disgusting and strange. She would gorge herself at dinnertime on red meat—always center cuts, always rare; barely touching her bread or vegetables; eating until she looked ill, then asking to be excused. And breakfast—that was worse, in a way. Because of what she did with the eggs. Eggs, eggs—it was always eggs; eggs hard-boiled, or sunny-side up. The hard-boiled eggs she’d take apart as if dissecting something in a laboratory—peeling back crumbled pieces of shell, prodding the white apart in pieces, rolling the yolk whole in the palm of her hand, or staring at it, as it lay on her plate, in a kind of fascination. Sunny-side up her fascination with yolks continued; she’d poke them with a knife, watching as mystified and intent as a child, jerking backward in a kind of fear when the warm yellow gel-like globes burst.

  “What,” I say quietly, “what did you feel the reason was for all of this—behavior?”

  “I don’t know! She claimed that Bart Sager had put his sprinters on a high-protein diet. But it seemed obvious to me, after a while, that this was in fact something she’d taken on herself. Because—wouldn’t you know it—by the end of that semester she told us she’d decided to become a vegetarian. Why? I—we—wanted to know. Oh, she said, because the very sight of meat made her sick. She would never eat it again. And what did Bart think of all this, I asked her. Oh, she said, she didn’t even care what he thought. Didn’t even care! It was her own business, she said; he would think whatever he wanted; but there was no way he would ever change her mind. Well, for goodness’ sake! What on earth were we supposed to make of all that?”

  I don’t respond, but don’t have to. She continues without pause:

  “And the next time she came home she was impossible. Really. Just impossible.”

  “In what way, Barbara?”

  Now there is a silence; she is somewhat taken aback by my use of her first name, and, without really fully understanding why, both of us know it. Still, I’m glad. It has, somehow, given me an upper hand—which I need—because this, for all its careful disguise, is combat.

  And for a moment I am this young, young woman, barely past adolescence, standing in shadows at the top of some stairs, about to do battle with my own enraged mother.

  But that, too, is a way of connecting.

  “Well, Bren, you know how it is—we take care of these children as if they’re pure gold—flying all over the country with them, or for that matter the world, and rushing them off long-distance to the best internists or orthopedists every time they suffer a sniffle or an ache or pain. Then there are coaches and teams to cope with. And the other parents. And special diets. And separations. Sometimes, to be honest, you find yourself wondering if you’re doing them a favor or a disservice—you wonder if it is all really worth it in the end. You worry: Are you neglecting the others? Being fair to everyone else, and true to your child’s talents and desires, and to your own desires and values, at the same time? And then one day they look at you with resentment. Because, for all your efforts, encouragement, support, you have failed to do everything perfectly.”

  There is anger in the voice. Disappointment. And a terrible suffering I cannot pinpoint.

  I ask her, very quietly, if she thinks that children expect perfection from us, after all? If, given the choice, they might not choose love instead? It occurs to me, as I say this, that Chick would surely approve.

  Oh, of course, she replies. But there is so much more they need to learn, to succeed in life! So much more than love.

  It occurs to me that maybe she’s right.

  There is success, there is winning.

  And if I want Babe Delgado to win for me, insofar as I am able I must keep these people—these privileged people who gave birth to her, raised her, fed her, coddled her, drove her, loved her, punished her, supported her, came closest to her—completely off her long, thick back.

  “Keep an eye on her, Bren.
You will, won’t you?”

  “From the point of view of her swimming? Of course. And her health? Well, as much as I possibly can. Sufficient rest, nutrition, healthy habits—these are all things we like to emphasize here—”

  “Yes, good, but I mean her weight. Her weight. It is imperative, absolutely imperative, that she face up to reality and start to lose that weight. You know, and I know, that unless she gets her body under control again her swimming will never be the same.”

  “Barbara,” I say, “what if it never is the same?”

  “Her body?”

  “Yes. Or her swimming. Is that something you can live with?”

  Oh but it’s not me, she says, It’s her, don’t you see? It is all just for her, in the end.

  This is a stalemate, and we both know it.

  Still, I tell myself, stalemate is better than defeat. For all I know, Barbara Delgado is telling herself the very same thing. That, like me, she will live to fight again.

  We chat about this and that. Weather. Massachusetts neighborhoods. She is being a bachelorette this week, she says. Bachelorette. The word sounds odd somehow, as if it ought not to really exist. Yes. Taking care of the kids. Going out with the girls. Her husband is away on business. In Los Angeles. Unfair, don’t I think? that husbands get to go away like that, develop splendid tans on some beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and do a little business in their spare time? But what about us ladies?