The Sea of Light

by Levin, Jenifer

  I nod.

  “Well, that’s sort of the way it is with them.”

  “They have a before,” I say, “and an after.”

  We both look at each other then, and grin.

  “Anyway,” she says, “she spent most of the war in Bergen-Belsen, and Zischa was in Auschwitz. They met afterwards. In this camp for DP’s—displaced persons. And the rest, as they say, is history. But it’s all history, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” I sit on the bed with her, cross-legged at first, but it hurts the knees too much and pretty soon I am lying there, relaxed, head propped up, and she is telling me things in bits and pieces. About growing up with them, mostly, and the way Zischa would just blurt out some terrible true story at the weirdest times, out of nowhere, about stuff he saw in Auschwitz—things you didn’t want to know, even—at breakfast, or dinner, or while you were sitting around minding your own business, watching TV; and this thing Lottie had once about rescuing homeless animals, which she doesn’t do any more because of the expense.

  “She’d get them all cleaned up, all de-fleaed and de-loused, whatever, and she’d take them to this vet down on Houston Street for their shots—rabies, boosters, all of that. Zischa got pissed after a while—it must have been pretty pricey, and I guess you can see that we don’t exactly live in Trump Towers around here—so he made her stop. But you know something, Babe? When she stopped, it left me feeling kind of sad. I mean, all I ever wanted to do, when I was a really little kid, was to keep these pets—I’d, like, cuddle them with me on my pillow at night, puppies, kittens, whatever, and I would beg Lottie to let me keep one, just one. And I’d always think, maybe this time she’ll let me. She never did.”

  “My dad brought us a dog once.”

  “Yeah? What was it like?”

  “I don’t remember, really—I was really young, I think maybe Jack had just been born or something. It was a big old puppy though, a golden retriever—he was great. All floppy ears, big paws. We named him Paco. But, um, he didn’t last long. I mean, he ran into the street one day and got run over. Poor little guy. Like a lot of other living things I’ve been around—huh? Soon you’ll all be calling me Kiss-of-Death Delgado.”

  She rolls her eyes, sighs with exaggerated exasperation. “God, Babe. You are so hard on yourself.”

  “Yeah. Look who’s talking.”

  “Okay, but with me it’s different. At least, I think it is. I mean, I figure I’m just sort of trying to be the best I can be, and I don’t have much natural talent or gift, so I’m hard on myself in that way. But you, Delgado, you—I don’t know. It’s like Zischa says: There’s a lot of pain in surviving—sometimes, maybe, you think it would be easier to have died—”

  I tell her to chill, seriously chill; tell her I have had enough of all this talk, talk, talk.

  Then for a second, even though I don’t want to hear anymore, I want to tell her all the other things: about Liz, and Kenny, and Sager; about what happened. But just the thought of it makes things go far away in front of my eyes, like I’m gazing down a long, dim tunnel, and I can’t, I can’t.

  “Okay, Delgado. Tell me about your brief visit home.”

  I sigh. Remembering it all, I feel numb. Maybe that’s why my voice sounds far away from me, too, when I speak; matter-of-fact, like I’m telling her about some everyday occurrence.

  “My mom and I had this fight. I don’t even want to get into it, Ellie. A lot of the same old shit we always used to fight about, before—just before, you know? except this was worse. It was, like, all this stuff about swimming, and how, like, she expects me to be some world record holder again—you know, with this for a fucking body!” I pound my chest, a shoulder, a leg. Pull my shirt up over my rib cage, exposing scars. All of which she has seen a million times, of course, in locker rooms and whirlpool and sauna, but somehow I want to reemphasize it again, the hatefulness of it and the ugliness. I don’t feel mad, or hurting, but I notice that I’m panting, as if I have been running too far and too fast and am now plain out of breath.

  She lays a hand over stitch marks. The palm is cool, dry, light. Friendly and nervous, somehow, but not really afraid or repelled. Then she takes it away. “I don’t know, Delgado—I don’t think you’re in such bad shape.”

  Thanks for the charity, I mumble.

  “And neither did Mike Canelli.”

  I groan into a pillow cover. Tell her that I really, really, really don’t want to talk about that, either.

  She asks, then, if I want to just pack it in and get some sleep, she personally is pretty tired and thinks it would be a good idea. I realize again how weak she still is, how pale and thin. All the old physical strength of her is gone for the moment; even though she’s getting better, it will be a long time before she can do a lot of the stuff we did together—treadmill runs, wall pulley, spotting each other for squats and bench press.

  She says she’ll get some sheets and blankets for me, and go make up the sofa. I tell her I’ll do it myself, she ought to get some rest. And I mean it. But then, without thinking about it, I pull her back down when she makes a move to get off the bed, and she falls so that her back is to me, and I curl against her, just like that, and wrap my arms around her skinny, tired shoulders. My hands meet and touch against the center of her chest. They can feel her heart beat, a rapid patter, and the fading hint of a cough rattle in her lungs and throat. She puts her hands over mine. Her palms are damp.

  “What is this, Delgado?”

  “Nothing.” Skin, hair. Fuzzy back of a neck. She smells familiar. It reminds me of things that are dead now, and gone. So that I still am numb, so numb that if you pinched me with pliers I swear I wouldn’t flinch, but tears come to my eyes.

  “Well, it doesn’t feel like nothing.”

  “Shut up,” I whisper, “shut up, shut up.”

  She does.

  I tell her things I have never told anyone before. About Kenny, and Liz. Sager. Angelita.

  There’s a quilt folded at the foot of her bed, and after a while I sit up to haul it over us before curling all around her again. She lies very still, not turning to look. My hands can feel her breathe.

  That is how we fall asleep: light on, door half open, under a quilt, fully clothed, warm and very still, in this small, small place that smells of cooked vegetables instead of Christmas trees. I don’t even take off my shoes.

  *

  Ellie shows me around the next day—Central Park, Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue. I want to go either to the top of the Empire State Building or to the top of the World Trade Center, but in the end it’s all this blur of coats and shopping bags and boots and ice, she admits she’s too tired, has overdone it a little, and we just head back downtown.

  Before we go across town to Lottie and Zischa’s, though, we stop off to eat at this cheap little Cuban diner place on lower Broadway. She makes me do it, saying, with mischief in her voice, Come on, Delgado, it’s time for you to get it together about your heritage. Sure, I snort, half joking. But we’re both half serious, too.

  Inside it’s darkly lit, framed by storefront windows with Spanish words on them filtering through the gray outside, and it smells of smoke and coffee and sweat. There are a couple of tables of middle-aged guys hunched over cigarettes and empty greasy plates, talking in Spanish; there’s a guy behind the counter who looks a little like my father; and a woman—his wife, I think, wiping tables—who looks a little like me. I examine the menu, painted on boards hung on the wall. I had to study a language in high school, and took Spanish, but can’t remember much of it at all.

  “Ellie. What should I get?”

  “Rice and beans. Black beans.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How come you don’t know, Delgado?”

  The guy behind the counter approaches grinning, dark skin and neat-clipped black mustache making his teeth glow. His white apron uniform is splotched with red sauce. He speaks to me in Spanish.

  “Um,” I say. “Rice—I mean, arroz, c
on—”

  “Frijoles negros,” says Ellie, “okay?”

  It pisses me off a little that she seems so comfortable. But, also, something about it feels valuable, precious; this place is warm, and the food is pretty good, and so is the coffee. In my heart I love her for bringing me here.

  Christmas Dinner

  (BREN)

  Christmas day. I don’t know why, but after the boy’s phone call I find myself driving around, directionless, then parking, getting out, wandering the campus. Crossing the quadrangled courtyard in front of a library. Walking slowly, methodically, a good-looking, still-slightly-tomboyish woman of thirty-five, authoritative, purposeful, in a fine long coat, commanding respect.

  Sooner or later I stop, and glance up to see that I’m here again, in front of the Athletics and Recreation building.

  Thinking about loneliness. Thinking about Kay.

  Damn you, Kay. Where the hell are you?

  I take elevators instead of stairs. Wander down spic-and-span glass-cased halls, past many numbered rooms, to Bob Lewison’s office. Not expecting him to be there, half hoping that he won’t be. Because what, after all, am I going to say to some straight man coach, in the middle of a shut-down college campus, on Christmas Day? But the door’s open; I poke my head around it, tap nervously.

  Your Christmas celebrations, Bren. So Protestant and proper. So subdued, dear. Rather Nordic. Strindberg, Ibsen. Ingmar Bergman. Edvard Munch. Hour of the wolf, wild strawberries. Suppression of Freudian feeling. The scream. Beaten with belts, in closets. Locked away in the cold, and the dark. My poor sweet baby. All those centuries spent in winter.

  Yes, Kay, you are right about that.

  Discipline did what suffering could not: took something tender and tropical from the depths of the heart; stole something away. Yes, love. I know all about winter.

  “Hi, Bob.”

  “Bren.” He looks surprised.

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Really? What in the world for?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Well actually, something. Have you got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  ‘Thanks.”

  Inside, I sit. Examine his walls. Stuffed bookcases. Good. He isn’t even stupid. I remember a few stiffly whispered gibes: Lord knows what a brain like Kay Goldstein sees in her—some callous lady jock; you’d think, if she was going to swing that way, it would be with another professor type. Someone well-read, and verbal. Some soft plump thing, maybe, another sensitive Jew. A liberal Jew in law, or in the humanities.

  “Well,” he says.

  “Well, Bob, we have something in common. We’re both alone on Christmas Day. Tell me—is it out of choice? For you, I mean?”

  “Shit, no. My kids backed out on me. Janet’s boyfriend’s unseen hand.”

  I blurt it, unthinking: “None of the real crap shows up on the surface, does it? At least, not at first. You know it’s probably there—you intuit it, anyway—team garbage, family garbage, the sadistic coach, rotten mother, ineffectual father, stress galore, enough to screw anyone’s competitive ability, never mind hers. And it breaks my heart, Bob. I see how hard the kid works, sometimes, just to function.”

  “Did something just happen? Delgado?”

  “Not really. Oh, sure. Her kid brother called.” I grin mirthlessly. “Nice boy, actually—maybe you should recruit him, a decent little cross-country runner. Anyway, it seems the family’s putting the screws to her. He says she got home—for the first time all season—had a fight with the mother that sounds pretty gruesome, and left. No one knows where. So I calm the boy down, make a deal with him to show up at a meet some time, at least once this year. To give her a little support, for God’s sake! But who knows what all this will lead to? Maybe a few meets down the drain—I wouldn’t doubt it. Well, terrific!”

  “Fine, Bren. But you’ve done all you can, you’re not a counselor. Neither am I.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that she’s been to counselors, right? And a bunch of dieticians. Physical therapists. Psychiatrists. But what she wanted, this year, was normalcy.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “You told me.”

  “She could not have normalcy, Bob, any more than you could pay off your MasterCard tomorrow. Any more than I could have McMullen’s job. Or have Kay back again.”

  There: it is out. Sitting, furious, sweating, I feel relieved, yet also somehow defeated.

  If he feels any resentment, he doesn’t show it. He says only, quietly, “Listen, Bren, it’s what she wants. She’s twenty-one. She can drink, she can vote, she can sink or she can swim. Normal or not, she is a grown woman.” His eyes meet mine. “Now, Coach. What about you?”

  I sit silently for a second, brooding.

  “Rough day?” His voice is kind.

  “Oh. Yes, sure.”

  “I know what that’s like.”

  Sure you do, straight boy.

  But out loud, I say: “Okay. Tell me about it. Tell me what you know. Because, Lord knows, I could do with a friend.”

  *

  Later, I will tell him, he helped get me through the worst part of Christmas. That thin little straight man.

  I trusted him, for a change; I don’t know why. Maybe because he already knew some of my secrets. Thinking about my life with Kay, about having this known—by even just one other straight person—made me cringe. It felt like a betrayal of Kay, really. But, on the other hand, she was the one I was hopping mad at.

  *

  Over a Spartan dinner—made of things we picked up at some 24-hour package store—in my house, in the country, he told me about his wife and kids. About women he had dated since. Some of them nice. None of them for him. How the emotional impasse of his life sometimes seemed insurmountable. And the fact that he would never get back all the treasures he’d once thought he possessed—but never really had—deadened his heart inside.

  Well, Bob, I said. Well, Bob, it’s a personal thing, but it’s common, too. I mean, we all have problems.

  Afterwards, I almost called Chick. But didn’t. Instead I drank wine and floated past the fireplace, the drape-covered window. Like a crazy woman, floated. With nothing to give but the wine and the fire. And a touch, a vestige, of snide gay humor; I shared it with him, over wine, and it made him laugh.

  He helped me haul in wood from outside—logs and logs. We lit a fire.

  I started hauling more things into the living room, stacking them near the fireplace. Boxes of clothes. Boxes of toiletries, and of makeup. Papers. Books.

  “Kay’s things,” I said, “I’ve kept what I want. Look through the books, Bob. If there’s anything you like, please take it.”

  He looked them over. The fire and the booze made us sweat. Cast bright hot shadows over his face, made him look half-black; probably made me look molten pale, and half-black too. Some of the books were good finds, he said. He took a few. Then asked me what I was up to.

  I’m feeling mad, I said.

  Crazy? he asked. Or angry?

  I didn’t reply.

  After a while I just crumpled up some papers from the stacks and tossed them in the fire. A flame blazed higher, seared the crumpled little mounds into quick black nothing.

  “I’m mad. Bob.”

  “Deserted?” he said, “Abandoned? Pissed off at Momma? Little girl lost?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure, Bren. Women. It’s like that when they leave you.”

  I tossed in a book. Then another. Then a few more things that took longer to burn.

  After a while I asked my friend to help me. He seemed reluctant at first, then glad. We sat there, burning Kay’s things, until Christmas was gone and the fire died.

  The Plunge

  (ELLIE)

  A month goes by, heavy with new courses, make-up tests and papers for the old ones, and increased practice time—which, though I cannot spend entirely in the water yet because I am still too weak and too tired, I must still, a
s team captain, attend. Babe is solicitous. We spend a lot of hours together—she even comes over a couple of times and cooks some disgusto vegetarian mash with Nan and Jean, and makes me eat it—and I catch her watching me, sometimes, in the locker room; once, when she notices me giving an appreciative glance in the direction of that fine physical specimen, our Coach, she even winks.

  Later, that afternoon, we wind up at the Donut Hole and then in her room, side by side on the bed, doing homework.

  That’s when I take the plunge. Pressing a hand against my stomach, because maybe it will calm the merciless thudding of my heart; while my other hand, like it has a life and a will of its own, creeps firmly up her back, under the sweatshirt.

  “Hey! Beat it.”

  She shakes it off, flaps the soft folds at me. I’m turning to Silly Putty inside. Even my ears are shaking. Even my kneecaps are sweating. But I grin as if I know exactly what I’m doing, and my hand, with that life all its own, inches under the sweatshirt again and presses along her back, touching the tips of scars, caressing.

  “Goddammit, Ellie.” She jumps from the neatly tucked edge of the bedspread, stands there confronting me, hands on hips, looking very tall, and strong, and bitter. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hmmm.” My fingertips are tingling. “Trying to turn you on?”

  “Really? Really? Well, you can forget about that. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

  “Well, obviously, for starters, I am not exactly a world-class backstroker—”

  “Oh, go to hell, Ellie!”

  “I am Eleanor Josephine Marks. That’s who I am. Ugly name, huh? but it’s mine. Another thing I am, is your friend.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And I happen to think you’re very, very hot.” The words tumble out, sounding oddly gentle; I can feel my eyes cross in fun, stick my tongue out at her and wiggle it; I give up absolute control of myself and of everything, resign myself to taking a belly flop after all. Tell myself: fuck it! go for broke! because what, in the whole stupid world, do I really have to lose? Maybe I will gross her out completely, and she’ll never have anything to do with me again; but, on the other hand, if I don’t tell her the truth, and all of it, I’ll be twisting things up between us so that we won’t even be friends—and, in either case, I would never have her anyway. I puff out my cheeks and lips, mock pouting. “So there.”