*
Like Coach’s pet, over the next few weeks I do her bidding. Making sure that I—and Babe—get to every single practice. Sitting with her at mealtime, in the cafeteria or at my place. Making sure she eats. Making sure she drinks enough water. Gets to the weight room often enough. Doesn’t overdo it or slack off when she gets there. Like a mother hen, making sure we get to bed before midnight every night and do not stay up for hours, even when she wants to and even when I want to so much I can feel the aching and the wanting everywhere, everywhere. It feels to me like I’m paying back some sort of bad karma or something; like I am paying all of my lifetime adult membership dues into some bizarre club of fate. Acting as if I’m really a good, unselfish girl inside.
*
She gets the letter just before spring. Final exams are coming up in a month. So are important meets, essential practice; it looks like we’re going to get a really good crack at a number-one ranking in the division, this year—a lot of which is due to the presence of Babe Delgado, none of which is due to the presence of yours truly—and so we’re destined for Short Course Divisional Championships, in the end.
But all this turns to Silly Putty.
I can tell, when she comes back up to her room on a Saturday afternoon, after going downstairs to get the mail—practice over for the day, nothing else on our minds but a little extremely necessary studying, maybe a walk out to this apple orchard I know about in the country; and, of course, some love.
Something’s worse than wrong. Her face has gone that pasty olive shade it is when she’s afraid, or sick, or upset. Her mouth is hanging open, the lips cracked and dry. She’s holding this letter in one trembling hand.
Hey, I say, what is it?
She doesn’t answer, just leans back on the door to close it. The door thuds, and she does too—falling back like a corpse against it—and I start toward her, to hold her, but she motions me away.
She sighs. Her eyes look red, and damp.
Kenny, she blurts. He’s going to die.
Then she shoves the letter toward me, gesturing for me to take it and read, and I do—first skimming, then in more detail. It is signed Tom and Joan Hedenmeyer, although written in what looks to be a woman’s hand—Kenny’s mother, I guess.
He has for a long time requested that they take him off his life support equipment, she writes. It is something he has obviously considered with care. Our hearts are and have been broken. At the same time, we respect his wishes. We have gone through several months of rather gruesome medical and legal bureaucratic legwork. Now that it is all done, Kenny has decided that he wants the machines unplugged next weekend. He asked me—us—to let you know.
After reading it a few times, I sit on the couch silently. Babe slumps into a chair.
I ask her what she’ll do and she says, God, Ellie, I guess I’ll go. I’ll call them and see if I can. I don’t know what else to do.
“But I can’t, can I?” She laughs, humorless. “We’ve got a meet then—we’ve got tests—”
“Yeah, but so what?” And I know it is the right thing to say, even though it makes me feel immediately abandoned; even though it’s completely at odds with Brenna Allen’s purpose.
“You’re right,” she says, “I have to go. Will you come to the airport with me?”
I nod.
“Will you tell Bren for me?”
“No, Babe. You should do that yourself.”
She shoots me a look of grief mixed with resentment. We’re quiet for a while. I can hear her fighting back sobs.
Okay, she says, then I will.
The Sea of Light
(KENNY)
Off and on, I travel.
Pack your suitcase, Babe. Dallas. Munich. Melbourne. Don’t forget the sunblock. Number 15, waterproof. Some of that Bullfrog stuff for the nose. You know what always happens: peel down your suit and there you are, in two colors: pale around the private parts, red or brown everywhere else.
I mean, I get red.
You’re brown.
Then I like it, the way it looks together, in the mirror—red and white rubbing brown. And you say: If your hair was blue, Kenny, you’d be the American flag.
*
They have propped me up near the window.
On good days, they turn my head toward the glass panes and sky, away from the machines. Gravel driveway. Seeded lawn, burned in the sun. Just below, a circle of rocks and wildflowers. My garden. Mom planted it.
For you, Kenny, for you. So you can look out, sweetheart, and see all the flowers.
Planting it, there was tired age in her arms and head. I watched. Stared down at the sunburned red of her neck, beneath the gray hair and a hat. She crouched, digging.
Talked to me, though I did not reply.
What do you think about these? Not exactly tropical, but we’ll give them a try. And when it’s not too warm, we’ll just open up that window. Too much air-conditioning makes the skin stale. Let you feel the air on your face. There, now, that’s better.
At first, she ran in every ten minutes. Adjusting dials. Pointing out flowers. Opening or closing windows. Filling food tubes with purified natural products. She plastered the walls with things she thought I would maybe have asked for, before: posters of mountains, of the sea. As if surrounding me with these figments of nature would heal. Would cure. Would make me speak. Or want to survive.
Patience, son, said my dad. It’s what she needs to do.
What could I respond with, except patience?
Every other morning he comes in to give me a shave. Dish, lather, towel and razor and brush—like some old-fashioned barber.
Sometimes, at night, he’ll sit with me. Stroke the thin remains of my hair. Hold my hand in both of his.
I can’t feel it, but I see it.
Perfect vision. Just one way that my eyes betray me.
Sometimes, at night, I will cry.
My boy, he says. My boy.
When the tears drip far, he takes a cloth and wipes them.
*
Last night, I traveled to the Pan Am Games in Havana. Neat. You could smell tropics in the air: fruit, palm leaves, sea and tobacco. Went to dinner with Liz and Babe—rice and fish and beans, something coconut, lots of bread, flavored shavings of ice chips in paper cups for dessert. Then we walked along a shop-lined boulevard, the three of us, past armed soldiers and rattling ancient cars. Touch of music, somewhere, interspersed with news in Spanish. Laughs. Romance. Dance, I thought, dance. Until there we were on an empty beach, propped up against low grassy dunes sprouting black bushes, watching sunset and the waves. Yawning, burping dinner, whistling out of tune to the far-off radio, me on one side, Liz on the other, Babe in between. Her left hand held in mine. Her right hand, one of Lizzy’s. After a while Liz dug an elbow into sand, lay there sideways looking at us both in the red-tinted dark, smiled and ran a hand along Babe’s forehead, down her cheek and lips and neck.
“Look you two, I gotta go.”
Babe closed her eyes.
“Where to, Lizzy?” I said. “And not alone, huh?”
“Nah, don’t worry. Sager said he’d pick me up and haul my rear end back to the dorms—I promised him nine P.M. curfew the night before qualifying heats, he swore he’d make me stick to it—so there you go, guys. I’m stuck.”
“Pinned.”
“Butterfly on the wall.”
She rubs my shoulder and kisses Babe, stands to shake sand off. Somewhere there are lights. A car honks, and she’s gone. I nudge Babe’s neck with my nose.
“She’s fucking him, Babe.”
“Who?”
“Sager.”
She laughs. “Not Liz.”
“How come you’re so sure?”
“Look, I just know, okay? Anyway, what are you doing?”
Nothing, I tell her, my hand up her shirt. Getting ready for a little romance.
She tells me doing it in the dark on a strange beach with sand up your butt is hardly romantic. I tell her to stop
resisting and just love me; which after a while she does—kissing back, touching back, getting naked, all the things she knows I like—with a lot less enthusiasm somehow than I am showing, but with real care and affection. She’s had a lot on her mind lately, I know: the battle of wills with Sager, and her slipping times, getting demoted from the animal lane, and all this bullshit she’s going through around her family, and around competing; sometimes, I think, it’s just Liz and I holding her up in the world so she can walk on her own two feet. But it’s not so bad being needed. Even if, most of the time, I cannot make her come. She makes sure I’m happy. We have a good time. I love her eyes, and tits, and long lean belly, and thighs. I mean, I’ve got no complaints.
That night, though, it bothered me: So that I held her face between my hands and she had to look straight up at me while I moved her knees apart with my own and slowly, slowly, like doing something sacred, I pushed inside of her.
“Keep your eyes open, Babe.”
No, she said, don’t.
“I love you,” I told her. “Stay with me, stay with me, I want to make you happy.”
She closed her eyes and I forced them open with the tips of my fingers. She tossed her head out of my grasp; I seized it again, hard, could see the whiteness of her teeth in the dark, and she bit her lip deep and moved her hips up into me, faster, trying to end it all much faster, and I fought against her but couldn’t win, finally bucked and pumped and groaned into her, went hot, blank, and came and came.
I opened my eyes against the damp side of her neck. She was trying to push me away, crying.
“Bitch,” I gasped, like in a dream, without knowing why, “who else is there?”
She shoved me off of her and rolled away. There I was in the sand, shirt off, pants down around my ankles, and she’s staggering to her knees mostly naked, gathering up her clothes, crawling off crying, then running. Hey! I yell. Babe, hey! But she doesn’t stop.
When I get back to the dorm all hell has broken loose. She’s running down the hall smack into me, sobbing, looking red-faced and crazy, her clothes buttoned on all crooked, still sprinkling sand. Her chin hits my chest. She stuffs a hand in her mouth to muffle the sounds.
“Babe. What is it?”
“No,” she says, and runs down some stairs. A door along the hallway slams shut. Liz races out, tying on a bathrobe. It’s too long for her and flaps the floor around her ankles. She heads in my direction, and when she comes close I see that her skin is flushed, mouth set anxiously, eyes uncertain, aggravated. She’s breathing really hard.
“Where’d she go, Kenny?”
“What’s going on?”
She ignores me, pointing. “Down there?”
“Hey.” I grab her by the shoulders suddenly, slam her against a wall and hold her there. The bathrobe’s not hers. It’s Sager’s. I can feel sweat drip down my face. Sand in my shoes. Up my ass. I can smell myself—a mean, pungent smell. “Tell me, Liz, why do you care?”
“None of your business.”
“No, it really is my business. See, in case you hadn’t noticed, I really, really love her. And along those lines, Lizzy, I happen to be fucking her.”
“Funny,” she says, her eyes damp and amused, “so am I.” Doors are opening, lights flickering on. People in various stages of undress—from our team, and others—are staggering into the hall, yawning, blinking. Out of shadows at the end of the hall I recognize one larger, older form, heading our way: Sager, jeans zipped haphazardly on, buttoning up his shirt. “Who else,” I whisper. “Who else are you fucking to win?”
“Shut up, Kenny. Just tell me where she is.” Sager’s too-big robe is open to the cleft between her breasts. Under tropical tan her chest is red, heaving, and for a second I don’t blame him for wanting her, but the feeling leaves me pissed off and sweating and empty inside. So empty that I let my hands drop from her shoulders, pull away, and she leans back against the wall relieved. “Listen, Kenny, you don’t know the half of it. Why don’t you just shut up and swim?”
“Oh, sure I do, Lizzy. I know at least half of it.”
“But you’re not the only person around here with feelings, big shot. I love her too—maybe I’m just more, let’s say, ambidextrous. Anyway, it’s all for her! I mean, she’s the one! She’s the one who wanted it.”
“Yeah? And you just cheerfully obliged? For how long?”
“Oh, months.” She smiles, tiredly. “Since Bart—since Sager told me to.”
“Told you to? What are you, Lizzy? Coach’s love doll? Some kind of fucking robot?”
For the first time, pain flashes across her eyes. They are empty of the laughter now, empty of the daily, self-assured teasing joy that usually beams out of them, makes everybody love her, makes everybody think they are missing out on something if they are not with her. But she seems to pull herself up and stand taller, clasps the opened flaps of robe together over her chest, and her face sets into granite-hard indignation.
“What I am, Hedenmeyer, is none of your business. But just for your general information, I happen to be a hero. America’s little sweetheart. As good as you get without drugs, gorgeous, and that means the unacknowledged best in the whole world—you know what that feels like? to be the best? and not be credited with a single world record, because a bunch of dopers set them all? I don’t think you do. Go tell that to your funny doctor friends—or maybe I am prying into your business now. All I know is that I can walk around the weight room with a clear conscious—I mean, I can do anything I want by myself, Kenny—and so could she, if she’d only grow up a little.”
At this point, memory blurs. The trip fades. And I tell myself: No, it wasn’t Havana, you never made it to the Pan Ams; it was San Juan, Kenny—San Juan, Puerto Rico.
*
Tall shadows at the door. Babe. Or am I traveling again?
No, say the voices—a chorus of murmurs, whispers—It is really her. So stay awhile.
“Kenny?”
As if there’d be anyone else here. At the same time, I understand exactly why she asked it. It is her voice, yes; same husky, musical, unmodulated tones, meaning to ask: Is there anything left of Kenny here?
There barely is.
But enough of him, anyway, to stay awhile.
She steps into light and I see her now: Still tall, a little heavier, her face looks oddly pale and she’s aged, seems a lot older than early twenties; when she steps forward I catch it, the almost unnoticeable limp, vaguely damaged stoop to the shoulders. But she’s still Babe, after all. And I want to ask: What did it do to you, Babe? And how have you changed? Almost six months of physical therapy for you, they told me. Never be what you once were. As if that would make me feel better somehow—to know of your misery, your loss. There must have been smart shrinks as well. Could they fix up your mind? Could they fix up your heart?
The machines beep.
“Kenny.” I feel her take a silent breath. Watch her face, her pose, as she crosses in the light. Understand the stillness of her expression, because I’ve seen it before; coming to see me, you prepare for the very worst. Then, at first sight, vaguely human figure resting propped up on pillows amid this clean shiny clicking whirring mass of machines, you recognize something about me and are momentarily relieved; and you tell yourself, Whew, thank God, it’s not as bad or as repulsive as I thought. You relax, begin to come closer. And your face grows absolutely still, under the firm fascist hand of self-control, as you realize, after all, that you were wrong. It is every bit as bad. It is much, much worse.
I twist my lips from the tube. “Yo Babe.” It comes out garbled. “You look great.” Twist them back, and breathe.
She sits right there, on the edge of the bed. Slowly, heavily, as if falling, or shedding a great weight. I am surprised she sits so close. Still nothing on her face. When she speaks it is simply, matter-of-fact.
“Your mom wrote and told me about what you decided. So I came down. She says move the tube when you raise your eyebrows. Right?”
&n
bsp; Hmmm, I gurgle, like nodding.
“Okay. It’s your life, Kenny. I mean, whatever you want. I’ll stay until you tell me to go.”
I raise my eyebrows. Slowly, shyly, she pulls away the tube. Her hand shakes a little, makes it tremble near the dimple in my chin.
“Good, Babe. Stay.”
She understands.
*
Open Hand—you called me; I was your Open Hand Boy. Came to you without fingers intertwined. Palms wide, hiding nothing. Strong. Brave. Ingenuous. Heart-on-the-sleeve kind of guy. What you saw was what you got. The only boy you could love.
Liz, you said, was different.
Seemed to hide nothing. In truth, hid a lot. Calculated. Manipulated.
The 200 demands craft, stealth, a smooth, smooth glide. She was sly in that way, you said: that middle-distance kind of way. Liked to play both sides of things. Keep all her options open.
Only pure race, you said, was the 50. No malice aforethought. Just jump in. Swim as fast as you can. Raw burst of power. Thrill. And the fastest thrill wins.
You were right, I thought. It’s what Sager said, too. The longer the race, the less you need talent and the more you need smarts and will; but not too much smarts, you have to be crude in a way, have to get things on your side and then not care that you puke all over them in the end; the main thing is will.
Which is why he preferred sprinters. He thought he could control us better. Talent, he said. Fast twitch muscle. Reflex. Instinct. Don’t think; just do. Then go in for the kill. It’s like eating. Like slaying. Original art of war.
He was on my side, because I had that—what he said, or so he thought—that speed, that murdering finish. Animal instinct; his favorite words.
He was not on your side, because you had that, that instinct, but contained it like a human; and he knew, urged it out of you, but you would not deliver.
Liz? He just wanted. Because she had what he did not.
Craft. Wit. Will.
Expedience.
All this was in another life.
*
As for Liz, and her accusations—well, she was right.
The Sea of Light Page 34