by Lisa Luciano
“Everyone else seems to think it’s okay.”
“Everyone else isn’t my child.”
“I’ve already got enough problems and you’re just making it more difficult for me,” he explained.
“We don’t work as hard as we do so that you can live in an army barracks.”
“It’s only for two weeks.”
“A few weeks here and a few weeks there. Pretty soon you’ll forget everything we taught you… if you haven’t already,” she said.
“I want to stay with my friends.”
“Freeman, please don’t delude yourself. Your father and I are the only ones who are truly concerned with your welfare. That’s why he’s downstairs making arrangements to have your things moved to a more suitable place.”
Freeman’s breathing got heavier. He wished desperately that Leslie was there by his side to give him strength. But she wasn’t. He was on his own.
“You don’t understand. They care about me.”
“If they care so much, what are you doing here all alone?”
“They’re at practice,” he said.
“Exactly. They’re so anxious to beat you that they left you here to fend for yourself—”
“No!”
She glared at him.
“This has nothing to do with them. It’s about me. Me!” he shouted, slapping his hand against his chest. “I’m quitting.”
He didn’t know who he was yet, but his feelings for Leslie that were more powerful than any he’d ever known convinced him of one thing. He wasn’t a skater. Not in his soul. Not like the others who could somehow put everything else aside. More than any of them he knew that the only reason to go out on that ice is because you think you’ll die if you don’t. There was no way to articulate that to his mother. She was far too sensible.
“What did we spend all that money for?” she would ask.
That was always the bottom line. Maybe growing up in a shack in the backwoods of Georgia did it to her, he speculated. Except for her clothes, she didn’t even use most of the things she bought. She just wanted the satisfaction of walking into a store, pointing a finger and saying, “I want that without looking at a price tag.”
Every night at the elegantly set dinner table, she’d go on and on about the plight of their downtrodden people, and he’d want to laugh. Finally, Freeman offered a solution to the problem of poverty and homelessness.
“Why don’t you sell a few of our fancy cars and use the money to fix up a tenement?”
The speed of her reaction was impressive. Her wedding ring stung his cheek as the back of her hand found his face. It was the first and last time he questioned her sincerity—out loud at least.
“I’m quitting,” he repeated to be sure he’d actually said it.
He was more surprised that his words had forced their way to the surface than she was. It was done. Finally. So why didn’t he feel any relief? There was nothing worse than her acidic tongue except her deadly silences.
“Say something.”
“What would you like me to say?” she said, slicing each word at the end. “You’ve obviously made a decision without a moment’s regard for our feelings.”
“You’ve never asked me what I want. Just once can’t you see me instead of who you think I am or expect me to be?”
She stiffened her already straight back.
“Freeman, if you’re feeling pressure, that’s your fault. No one can put that on you. Frankly, I’m disappointed. I thought we raised you to be stronger.”
“You’re doing it again,” he said, thrusting a finger at her. “There were a million things you could’ve said. “Freeman, it’s okay. We understand. It’s natural to be nervous. We know you can do it, but even if you don’t win, it doesn’t matter. And what do I get? You’re a weakling! You’re a coward!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“No, damn it! I’ll yell if I want to!” he said, his voice bouncing off the walls.
“Stop being so dramatic. I never said—”
“Mr. DiNatale would accept it. Why can’t you?”
“Mr. DiNatale doesn’t know or care about what’s best for you.”
His hands went numb as he tried to make a fist. His eyes darted around the room to avoid looking at her.
“Damn!” his father said as he stormed in.
“What’s happened?” Mrs. Bennett asked.
“Not another decent place within miles of the arena.”
“Well, it seems that doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, slowly turning to her son. “Freeman, would you like to tell your father or shall I?”
He took a few seconds to control the earthquake rumbling in his chest.
Tell her. Tell them everything. Maybe she’ll have a heart attack and die. They can’t make me do this. I don’t want to. Jesus! I hate them.
“You’re right…” he began softly.
“Speak up, boy! You have something to say? Do it like a man!” his father railed.
Freeman pushed out the words.
“I haven’t tried hard enough. I can do it. I… I can do it.”
His mother’s nightmarish stare immediately transmuted into a self-congratulatory grin.
“We know you can, sweetheart. And we’re right behind you,” she said, pulling him toward her and patting his shoulders. “Get your things. We have a car waiting outside. We’ll take you to the practice rink.”
Chapter 13
The men’s practice began with a swarm of photographers and journalists lined up behind the boards like a firing squad. They clicked and clicked, checked and rechecked their hand-held recorder batteries, hoping to catch something they could use to generate a story. The competition was a bore. What they wanted was a good old-fashioned feud. The top contenders were purposely scheduled to work out together in the hopes that something would happen, though no official would admit to it.
“You need me? I wanna sniff around a little,” Brody asked Robby who was about to take the ice.
“Go ahead. I doubt anybody would pull something here,” he said, gazing at the dozens of cameras.
“How you feelin’?”
“Numb.”
Dale yanked at his wool gloves as TJ whizzed by, stroking as hard and fast as he could. He got off the first triple, much to his mothers delight. She scanned the faces of the others. Dale was of no concern to her. She didn’t consider him a real contender. Freeman hadn’t arrived yet. Robby and Dimitri were oblivious to the action, too busy exchanging greetings. Only one man noticed TJ’s challenge. And just as Sally Ann Tomasson hoped, he decided it couldn’t go unanswered.
Glenn skated toward center ice to attempt his favorite jump, the triple Salchow. It was the first one he ever learned. He took off, but aborted it midway, landing awkwardly. He went to the triple toe. Shaky. A few more attempts ended the same way, with near or complete falls.
As he continued to struggle, his mistakes fueled TJ’s predatory instincts. That much he had inherited. With each pass, TJ tried a harder jump than the previous one and made sure to land it right in front of Glenn who watched, but showed no reaction. TJ was not as adept as his mother. He couldn’t read his rival’s face in order to know if the reigning Olympic champion was beyond mind games.
Glenn leaned his hands against his thighs and glided his bent figure to the rail where Alex Forsythe was waiting.
“You’re entitled to a bad practice. It’s out of your system. Why don’t you call it a day?” his coach said casually, though secretly he was deeply concerned.
“How about calling it a career?” Glenn asked.
They stared at each other.
“You just have to hang on three more days.”
Glenn held up his small, boyish hands and rubbed his fingertips together.
“Do I have enough time to grow my nails? Think I’m gonna need them.”
Glenn was exhausted, but stayed on the ice. He circled in front of Forsythe.
“Come on. You can do the program in your
sleep. Let’s go back to the hotel and relax,” the older man suggested, looking almost as tired as his prodigy.
Glenn glanced at the bazooka lenses training on him from a few yards away.
“Are you kidding? This is the only safe place left, unless they start renting skates to the press.”
There was no communication between TJ and his coach, Donald Conway, who was chatting with some old friends behind the rail. What was there to say? Both knew he didn’t work hard enough and didn’t want to win badly enough.
TJ skated over to his mother, expecting a correction of his technique which he would ignore, only to find her occupied noting Glenn’s problems.
“Now is the time. You can take him,” she said, wrapping her full-length chinchilla coat tighter around her Rubenesque body.
As a reporter approached, she hurried away, assuming her son would do the same. She looked back at TJ with annoyance, but not surprise to see he had remained behind.
“Do you feel any special pressure because your mother’s been called the queen of the ice?” the reporter asked.
“No,” TJ answered, straight-faced.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m the clown prince.”
He twisted his face into a hideous mask and skated away, nearly ramming into Dale who had to pull out of his jump preparation at the last second to avoid a collision.
“How the hell did a first class jerk off like him get this far?” the reporter asked his camera man.
“Guess the bigwigs figure he’s good for the sport. With all the hype about him and his women, maybe they think people will change their minds about male skaters. Every time he puts another notch in his gun belt, he’s giving them just the kind of publicity they need. So when he screws up, they look the other way.”
“Yeah right,” the reporter said with a chuckle. “Who are they trying to kid?”
Dale had been on the ice for twenty minutes, but he still felt tight, not from pressure, but from Andre’s smug grin. Every time he glanced over, there it was. There had to be a reason. He’d only seen that look once before. The day he convinced Dale to leave Conway and work with him.
Carol wished Robby would get in some jumps before the session ended. Instead, he and Dimitri slowly stroked side by side. They circled and talked. Robby twirled his finger in the air three times and pulled his fists tight across his chest. Dimitri nodded. Blasko peered at them.
Such incredible arrogance! Telling him how to do the jump, Blasko thought, unsuccessfully trying to nudge out of his mind the fact that being the coach of an Olympic champion would do wonders for his faltering career.
Robby and Dimitri were lost in their own world, devoid of politics and strategy. Dimitri had never known what it was to trust someone so easily and so completely and didn’t know why he was able to do it now. Robby’s openness went against everything he had ever heard about the ruthless, win at any cost Americans he and his compatriots always believed they would oppose.
“How’s your little girl?” Robby asked, unable to imagine himself as either a father or a husband.
“Too young to know what’s going on. For that, I’m grateful. But soon, she’ll see the truth. I can’t afford to wait for that to happen.”
Robby wasn’t sure what he meant and Dimitri wasn’t volunteering the details. “Meet me at the front gate of the compound in an hour,” Dimitri whispered before he reluctantly broke away and skated over to Blasko.
“What did he say to you?” Blasko asked him sternly.
He merely offered a suggestion.
“Considering he’s only third best in his country, he would do better to worry about himself.”
“He’s the best skater in the world and everyone knows it.”
“Don’t you see what he was trying to do?”
“He was helping me,” Dimitri insisted.
“Perhaps. But see that you don’t return the favor. You can’t afford to be so generous.”
Freeman had ditched his parents at the main entrance. Fortunately, they had to attend to some pressing business matters. He wove his way through the backstage tunnels until he reached the area leading to the ice. Those on line ahead of him flashed their official badges as they passed through security. Freeman was preoccupied and didn’t look up until he was challenged by the guard.
“Oh, man. You think I’d spend a thousand dollars on equipment just so I could sneak a few autographs?” he asked, spinning around to show his duffel bag.
“I need to see a pass,” said the man in the brown uniform.
Freeman searched through his bag. Finally locating the pass, he flashed it at him.
“Okay,” the man said.
“Ziegheil!” Freeman answered, offering a stiff-armed salute.
Glenn and Dimitri had already retreated to the locker room, much to the dismay of the press corps who were slowly breaking away and heading back to their hotel, but Robby, Dale, and TJ continued their workout.
Freeman rushed to put on his skates, not even taking time to talk to his coach whose heart had started to beat again with his appearance, then immediately began stroking around, refusing to acknowledge the other skaters. For his first jump, he attempted a quadruple that sent him crashing to the ice.
“What the hell is he doing?” DiNatale asked no one in particular.
Repeating the move once again brought the same result. With each try Freeman drew more attention, but seemed totally unaware of the fact that he was being watched. Robby read his face and knew what it meant. The dead eyes that saw nothing but the task at hand. He’d been there.
As he pushed on, Freeman’s great reservoir of energy was sapped, yet he found the will to jump one more time. Again, he fell hard. Robby wondered if Freeman was punishing himself for not measuring up in his parents’ eyes. He would never lift himself high enough to do four revolutions with such a burden on his shoulders.
Freeman’s legs began to weaken. He gasped for air. His coach tried to get his attention, but he wouldn’t look over. The worried man stared at Robby, his eyes pleading and pushing him toward Freeman. Robby called his name. No response. He didn’t exist. Robby glanced back at the people who had started to gather.
“Hey, come on, man. That’s enough,” Robby said, hoping the microphones that were only a few yards away couldn’t pick up his comment.
He placed his hand on Freeman’s shoulder, but was instantly repelled.
“Get off me!” Freeman snarled.
“Are you trying to make us all look bad?” Robby joked.
Freeman ignored him and prepared to jump. He circled around Robby and missed again. Robby rushed over to prevent another senseless and possibly dangerous attempt. He took hold of Freeman’s arms. The larger young man struggled to break Robby’s grip. The other skaters watched, locked in place.
“A fight,” TJ observed. “Cool.”
“Stop it! It’s over!” Robby shouted.
They slid, each trying to get a solid foothold on the watery surface. Despite his weariness, Freeman’s rising emotions made him the stronger of the two, forcing Robby to fight hard to keep his balance. Finally, they fell. As their legs tangled, Freeman’s left blade sliced across his right calf opening a gash down to the bone. Blood spurted from the severed artery. Screams from onlookers stung Robby’s ears as he kneeled beside Freeman. Shutters clicking reverberated through the room.
“Somebody get help,” DiNatale’s voice cracked as he scrambled across the ice to them.
Freeman stared up at the lights. Vapor did a sadistic dance, rising from the oozing dark red pool around him. Robby refused to think. He laid one hand atop the other and pressed hard on the upper part of Freeman’s leg, hoping to find the main artery to stop the life from flowing out of his friend. There was no change. The muscles in his thigh were too thick. Robby rolled him onto his stomach, slid his hand down to Freeman’s calf, and pressed against the deep cut. He felt queasy as the open wound pulsated beneath his fingers. DiNatale yanked off his sweater and
placed it under Freeman’s head.
“Hang in, man,” he whispered as he pictured Mrs. Bennett hurling herself onto her son’s broken body while wondering if there was a decent dry cleaners nearby that could handle blood stains.
Robby’s hands and wrists began to throb, but he refused to ease up. Finally, the paramedics arrived and precariously made their way to center ice using their equipment for balance.
“How long has it been?” a somber-faced young woman asked as she knelt down and threw open the supply case.
“I don’t know,” Robby answered.
“About ten minutes,” said DiNatale.
Her partner took Freeman’s vital signs.
“His pulse and pressure are down,” he said.
“Can you hold on a little longer?” she asked Robby as she reached into the box.
He nodded. She withdrew a tourniquet and tied off Freeman’s leg just above the knee.
“Okay. Let go.”
A geyser of blood gushed into the air.
“Do something!” Robby yelled.
“Hang on,” the woman said, watching the wound closely.
Within seconds the flow was reduced to a trickle.
“Okay. Now we can move him,” said the other paramedic.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Robby assured his friend, too shaken to notice the serene look on Freeman’s face.
The emergency workers secured the wound, then several men carefully lifted Freeman onto a stretcher. DiNatale gripped a clump of hair in his fist and followed them as they took him away. Robby sat back with his wrists resting lightly on his knees. His practice clothes, now soaked and sticky from the red liquid, were glued to his body. He staggered slightly as he stood up, leaving a crimson trail on his way to the locker room.
Robby’s hands shook as the mixture of cold water and blood disappeared down the drain. It wasn’t until he noticed that he had thrown his stained clothes in the garbage that he realized he was crying.
What would his father think of that, he wondered. The man who as far as anyone could remember only registered three emotions—mild amusement, total apathy, and extreme anger. Robby immediately wiped away any trace of tears.