Ugly, piercing pallor. Ceiling fans. Costumes circa 1900. Sitting at a fake marble tabletop, we examine some boat-sized chocolate fudge sundae, buried beneath cherries, sprinkles, whirling fists of whipped cream. He dabbles at it with a long-stemmed spoon. Once in a while he faces me, serious expression, very earnestly. And I listen—although, later, I will not remember any of it—while he tells me the story of his life.
You? he says. We’re moving again, walking through the windy, crowded dark. Time has passed—a lot of it, I think—so it must be late. I think. But I am not sure. I can feel myself giggle. It sounds odd, phony, girlish.
“Oh, you know me, Bob. My life’s a closed book.”
“No, Bren!” He faces me again with exaggerated urgency, grabs both my shoulders, while everything else twists around us both. “That’s just it! I don’t—I do not—know you. And I want to—”
“You want to?”
“I want to! Know you! That’s right! From the heart and from the soul, woman! Very, very much!”
“Well, caveat emptor, my friend. Buyer beware.”
Huh? he says, but I never reply.
*
It is later that things slow, and die. Later, on rolled-down sheets, in a hotel room, after all these strange foul-tasting kisses we have numbly bestowed on each other. I am feeling-less and naked, and he is merely naked. I can feel his fingers somewhere along my thighs. Doing something—I don’t care what. I’m sitting over his body, straddling him, thinking that he’s in good shape for his age, very lean but muscular, only moderately hairy, nice abdominal muscles, strong, strong legs, decent chest—but there are no breasts there; though, out of habit, I reach for them.
Now he is struggling, and I am, too. To help him, I think. But maybe it is to hinder something else altogether; both of us fumble, between his legs and mine. The part of him I hold is a little hard, mostly soft. We are both trying very seriously to insert it inside me. It seems important. I don’t know why. For a moment it fits, stiffens and he pushes up and forward, and I feel something I barely remember—it has been so long, so many, many years—a foreign protrusion, half ticklish, half bruising inside me, and I wonder what to do about it all.
Then it dies like the evening. His movement slows. He falls out of me, limp and tired; tiredly throws an arm across his eyes.
“Christ.”
“Forget it, Coach. My mistake.”
“Christ,” he says, “who’s Kay?”
“Nothing. No one. The love of my life. She died.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, Bob. I am not kidding.”
The spin of things seems to calm. More becomes visible: blankets under feet, drawn curtains, terrible art on the walls. The objects of this room. I lie beside him, numbly, a rumpled fold of sheet between us. Realize, for the first time all night, an actual, strictly physical sensation: my mouth is dry and sore, the tongue so dry it feels cracked. He looks at me sideways, eyes widening when they lose focus, narrowing when they regain it. Then he yawns, and closes them, hides them under his hands.
“Excuse me for not jumping up and ordering flowers, Bren. This is all a little rough on my dick.”
“I don’t give a shit about your dick, Bob. I don’t give a shit about anything. All I want to do is sleep.”
“Yah.” He rubs his forehead, glares at the ceiling. “Well me too, sister.” Then he props himself on an elbow, with difficulty, eyelids falling closed, barely opening, manages to keep his lips from slurring. The eyes stare at me accusingly. I watch them, and blink.
“So? What’s up, Bob?”
“So. That’s really the truth? You are some kind of dyke or something?”
“Yah, Coach,” I mock. Carelessly. Tiredly. “But skip the Or Something.”
“Well,” he says. And falls asleep.
I do, too.
*
The next day is a headache, during which I lie low—skipping all the conference panel discussions and presentations I’d planned to attend, dodging every phone call, checking to make sure the DO NOT DISTURB sign still swings firmly from the outside doorknob before double-locking the door again and staggering into the bathroom to vomit. Luckily, I have no actual assigned duties until tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes, Coach, I tell myself, luck is really with you.
Towards evening the nausea fades, the headache dulls. I begin to feel very sorry for myself, and consider placing a long-distance phone call to Chick—on the pretext of seeing how Boz is doing; in truth, to whine about my life—but don’t. I watch as much TV as my bloodshot eyes can handle, sleep off and on until dawn, wake up feeling drained, and empty, but no longer in desperate shape. I order a high-protein room-service breakfast, drink plenty of orange juice with aspirin, shower and do sit-ups and push-ups, shoulders complaining all the way, and put on lots of makeup, a terrific dress, jewelry, nylons, heels.
I spend half the day mingling with coaches and exercise physiologists and Ph.D. candidates in sports pedagogy. All the coaches have heard about Delgado, and want to know too much. The panel I moderate goes well. I manage to blurt out appropriately sophisticated introductions, and to tie all the seemingly unrelated strands together in the end—although, later, I will not remember exactly how. I do more mingling until dinnertime, take phone numbers and trade calling cards, eat sparingly at a bland hotel restaurant with two colleagues, wincing at the sight of mixed drinks. One is a female basketball coach—who lives and works down South, has a wedding ring, talks a lot about a husband—but our eyes meet often, and I wonder; the other an affable enough swimming coach from some school in Wisconsin, a little too young and too confident. But interesting things sometimes pop out of too-big mouths, and he went to school with Bart Sager, he says, long ago, so I listen.
A real tough-love kind of guy, Bart was. Nut case, really. Stuck on monster sets. Drilled them to the bone. Callusing, he called it. Though his eye for technique probably left something to be desired. But he loved them—he loved those kids so much, he would actually cry about them sometimes. Liz Chaney, now; that girl was, to him, the meaning of life. Rituals, he always said, make them stick to the rituals: Eat together. Shave down together. Draw blood together. Build up champions.
Draw blood? I ask.
Oh, he smiles, Bart probably meant it metaphorically. Still, you couldn’t be sure. There was always this edge to Bart—a hard, borderline crazy edge. He remembered things in biology labs, for instance, though they had not been partners; stuff Sager did with animals.
“Animals?”
“Yeah. Mice, rats, guinea pigs—you know, experimental fodder.”
“What, exactly, did he do?”
“Oh.” He sweats, gulps beer too fast, and avoids my eyes. “Just things I heard, really—I mean, nothing I can say for sure. So it wouldn’t do to go spreading the word, right? The guy was successful, he was going to be a great coach, there were always plenty of people jealous of him even then. So some other guy accuses him of being nuts, right? So what.”
“Nuts—how?”
He shrugs, shimmying out of it all with a distinct lack of grace. I don’t know, he mutters, suddenly abashed, suddenly very low-key. I heard he was into some sort of crazy shit. Like, some theory of sport as growing out of primitive ritual shit, sacrifice, all that sort of crap. Blood sacrifice, in which every athlete had to watch, and participate. But don’t believe everything you hear.
He excuses himself for the men’s room, and is gone a long time. In the meanwhile, our check comes. The basketball coach and I pay.
Bob Lewison passes by, head down, and keeps his distance.
*
Later, he is camped outside my hotel room, sitting on the hallway carpet with his back against the door, like some kid waiting for a busy professor’s office hours. His face and hands look older, tired and gray; I can see the way I feel reflected in them—and, probably, the way I look. But he stands when he sees me, rubs his own sore neck with a wry expression, as if anticipating something unpleasant, yet necessary
.
“Bren. Can we talk?”
After a little hesitation I tell him sure, why not. My chest thuds with anxiety; but the feeling is, luckily, muted by my own exhaustion and omnipresent headache. I let us both in. Settle onto the edge of a newly made bed, while he moves luggage aside to slump in an armchair. Suddenly, although I’ve never smoked, I wish I had a cigarette.
“Shoot, Bob.”
“It all really happened, didn’t it? Last night, I mean. And everything that I thought got said, got said—”
“Right.”
“Well, look. I’ll never tell—if you won’t.”
“What’s that supposed to be, Bob? Some kind of blackmail?”
He opens the tired hands in supplication. “Christ, no. To tell you the truth, lady, it’s more of a plea. I am embarrassed as hell.”
Staring at his face, I realize that he’s not a bad-looking man; nor particularly insensitive, really. He is just a man, and has committed no crime. But, on the other hand, neither have I.
I want to tell him how tired I am, how much I hurt inside. Something stops me, though, so I’m silent. Sitting there, I’m aware of rocking slightly back and forth. The dull room lamp illuminates us in tones more gentle than fleshy reality. Against a wall, our bodies move as shadows.
He shrugs. A big shadow bobs up, and down.
“I had a couple of guys on the team once—good, solid middle-distance runners, both of them; I know they were messing around with each other. I mean, it happens sometimes. But these kids were a couple of gentlemen. Genuinely seemed to care about the sport, and the team. Nothing ostentatious—looking at either one of them, at first, you’d never have a clue.”
“Oh Jesus, Bob.” I can feel my face crack wryly. “Forgive me for laughing—I know you’re just trying to be cool and understanding, at least I think you are. But my—I mean Kay, our relationship—it was a lot more than messing around, love; it has nothing to do with kids in a locker room. What it has to do with is adult, it’s for real, between grown women. I mean, you are talking about my life.”
I don’t believe I just said it all out loud like that. Panic takes hold. I can feel my forehead perspire. Stunned, vulnerable, I look away.
After a while, he grunts. In assent, or disgust, I can’t tell. Then he makes a fist of one hand, and mimes smacking his own face with it. He grins lopsided. Now his voice is quiet, somehow calming.
“When Janice and I broke up—”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t want to live. For a while, I mean. You know, I got addicted to that Sominex crap, scripts for insomnia and anxiety—you name it, for a while there I’d pop it. I didn’t know what to do, exactly, with the rest of my fucking life. A few nights I went out looking for hookers. Not that I could get it up too well, mind you, I felt pretty shot up inside, but I guess the point was to just sort of escape from myself, for however long, if I possibly could. Then one day—I don’t know why—I woke up, and threw out most of the meds, all the over-the-counter shit at least, and then I put away the pictures of her and me and the kids. And everything I’d taken with me from the house—bedspreads, towels, even a bunch of dishes—I tore apart, or broke against the wall, not in anger, you know, but very calmly and deliberately, and then I threw it all out. I cleaned up my place. I went out later and bought new things, cheap, lousy things. But they were what I could afford. And for whatever reason, Bren, that was the end of me wanting to die.”
I nod, dully. Yes, it means, I understand. But the truth is that I don’t understand—at least, not yet. There is still too much grief; I cannot feel that kind of anger; maybe, I think, I never will.
“So I know a little about what you’re going through,” he says. “And, thank God, Janice and the kids—even though, to tell you the truth, there are times when I hate their guts—at least they’re all alive. I don’t think I could take it, losing them completely.”
“Oh,” I whisper, “it’s interesting.”
“Yeah. Look, Bren—why the hell didn’t you tell me all this before? I thought we were friends.”
“Not really. I didn’t trust you.”
“Why the hell not? I’m a pretty nice guy!”
Despite myself, I laugh, gently, and he does too.
“You are a nice guy, Bob. You deserve some nice woman’s passion and love.”
“Just not yours, I guess.”
“Right.”
“No room for doubt?”
“Doubt? Oh no, Bob. Really, no.”
He sighs. “Kay, huh? Kay who?”
“I don’t want to talk about her, Bob. At least not now. She suffered a lot. I loved her. I’d like to just let her rest.”
We’re quiet for a while, and still. Finally he leans over toward me and reaches for my hand, and I pull his square, firm fingers one by one with my own, playfully, like a child. He tells me he is tired, very tired, and it’s time to get some rest. But he would like it if, in time, we became closer. He has always admired me. He hopes there is something about him that I find admirable enough to respect, too. Sometimes at work he feels so alienated and so lonely he could cry. He and I, we have been professional allies in a way, haven’t we? Complementary administrative talents; similar approaches to coaching and to sport. He hopes that, eventually, we’ll be friends.
The Rock, and Roll
(BABE)
Breaststroke:
Kick sweeps the water in, arms sweep it out, catch and down, shoulders and head up and forward, breathe, lips dripping, arms circle in, down and out, and in, and up, hands together like a prayer, kick sweeps out, circles down, and in, and arms sweep out, catch and down, and you just don’t stop, and you must not look. If you look, you lose.
There is no glide. No ease, or rest.
But there’s this: the rock and roll.
From crown of head to lips, to hands, to hips, and down. Like a dolphin, like a wave.
It’s in the timing. In the hips. You want to flex them, but not too much. Enough to generate propulsion, yet without intruding. Enough for motion, and optimal power. For the reach. The pull. The thrust.
*
October 1st, I step into the locker room shivering. Goose bumps on my arms, lips puckered, fingers shake so bad I can’t get the combination right, finally have to ask Ellie and she does it for me. Glancing up once, rolling her eyes when she sees the kind of shape I’m in, she mutters Oh just chill, Delgado, just get over your big bad self why don’t you? Then she makes a face, I laugh, the locker swings open. Quarter to six.
“Fifteen minutes!” she shrieks. “Fifteen minutes to mayhem and destruction!”
Someone groans, someone else giggles.
Then: “No! No! No! I confess, Coach.”
They are all watching her, faces washed pale in the pinkish fluorescent light. She twirls a pair of goggles like some bob whip, stands on a bench and stomps her feet, gasping.
“I confess—I am guilty—”
“Of what?” someone yells.
“Guilty of fear! Guilty of mediocrity! And you know what? It doesn’t matter! I’m gonna do it anyway! Because truth is in the body! And this body—on this team—tells no lies! So step aside!”
Her Coach imitation isn’t bad. By now, they’re all laughing.
“Step aside!”
“Aye aye, Captain!”
She jumps down, goes storming through the place turning on showers, flushing toilets, running sink faucets, alternating between her Southern belle and her madman imitation until everyone starts yelling back—at her, at each other—and the noise echoes, bounces off the walls and the water. When she passes by me foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling, I understand for just a second that part of it is serious. She’s afraid somewhere; somewhere deep down she’s hurting, and angry. And this—this weirdo team captain stuff—is how she gets herself through it.
I look around to see if any of them know. They don’t. Too busy howling at each other, stripping, getting suits on, showering, laughing.
I pull the
sweater over my head, unbutton my blouse and when my legs start shaking too much again sit on the bench, untie my laces. I look up in time to catch her eyes. She’s naked, pulling on her suit. Flash of muscle, curling hair, skin and belly button, and she turns away once, then around again to look back, jut her chin at me, jam the locker shut with a caveman “Huh!” so that, without meaning to, without really knowing I’m doing it, the sound comes out of me in immediate response: “Huh!”
“Huh!” she grunts, triumphant. “Time to see what we all are made of, right?” And pulls the suit up hiding her breasts, smoothes thin straps over each shoulder before heading for the showers.
It comes to me, then, this rhyme from some club locker room, long ago:
Made of lace, fall on your face.
Made of oak, sure gonna smoke.
Terror rushes back like worms in the pit of my stomach. I put my head between my knees. Okay, Delgado, get over your big bad self why don’t you. For a moment I do, and can sit up again, can start to get undressed. Five of six. I’ll be late, but can’t help it—have to wait until they are all gone, so that by the time I’m naked I’ll be alone. Because what I am made of is scars and flab—and even before the hospital there were the bad knees, sore ankles, aching shoulders, all the overused tendons and frayed cartilage held together with Ace bandages, or sometimes drugs. Now, despite dry-land month and the diet, there is all that, plus a still-noticeable amount of excess fat through which new muscle is just barely beginning to show.
It’s fear of what might happen in the lanes and the pool, yes. But also this motherfucking shame. See, I’ve lost it, don’t even remember it—the feel of the reach, and pull, and thrust. Flesh, muscle, moving in water. My breaststroke. The rock, and roll. And I am so ashamed of my body.
*
Before, at my worst, I was good. Smooth-moving, strong. Competent in the water. There was this thing about it, the key to it. What I said I’d never be without because no one and nothing could take it away from you once you had it—not Sager, not losing a race you ought to have won: A feel for the water and the stroke, that’s born in you.
Until Angelita took it away. And I had to fight, really fight, to find my way back—to even a dim flicker, a dull little chipped-off piece of it.
The Sea of Light Page 17