The Sea of Light (24 page)

Stop. Cling. Try hard to breathe.

The goggles leak, I think, that’s why they fogged. But when I pull them off they are warm and dry inside, hot where they touched my face. Under the wet my face is hot, too, and my whole body, almost sweating. Something throbs like a drum, makes my left breast move forward, recede, forward again, into the wall and the light—my heart, beating. I look up to see Brenna Allen nod, her voice calling out my time, echoing numbly, incomprehensibly away. She crouches over the lane and smiles.
:

“Good, Babe.
There’s
your pull. Good for you.”

“Can deal,” I blurt. I don’t know why.

“Sure you can,” she says, “be proud of yourself. Two hundred swim down, take it
very
easy, and you’re out of here.”

Then I see I’m the only one in the water. The bunch of them are out of the pool standing around, dripping, watching. Just staring intently, like they’ve never seen anyone swim before.

“Ouch.” Someone whistles. “Whoa, girl, whoa.”

Then, all at once, they applaud.

It clatters, rises, swells for minutes before Bren breaks through it with a sharp demanding clap of her own.

What do you think you’re doing? she says. This isn’t exactly individual time trial day yet, people, and if you think you’re ready for that you are sadly mistaken. In fact, I would say that by the looks of it you all have quite a way to go, quite a long and painful way to go. And, believe me, you certainly won’t get there by standing around watching. Ms. Marks, you’re not even through with your main set yet. Your fun is just starting. It’s going to be a long afternoon—I’ll put that in writing—and that goes for the rest of you too. Everybody back. Back. Back in the water.

But I realize that she doesn’t look angry. And she let them applaud for quite a while.

I push off to swim down, feel the catch of fingers on pale water, pressure against a palm, wrist, forearm. Bubbling effortlessly past toes. Freestyle toss, reach. Slide through the Jell-O. Pull like a snake. Easy, Delgado. Take it easy. For a moment, a glimmer, the first one in many, many years, I love it again, and I want it.

*

Unpredictably, in erratic bursts, nonsequential pieces, it comes back to me the following week. And with it, also in fits and starts, like disjointed parts of a puzzle long scattered, the effort of the 100. Hardly bearable undulating wire of hot bright sensation that’s too refined to be pain, really, and goes deeper than skin, deeper than muscle—grabs you and racks you at the level of the nerves. Fucks with your reflexes, with the electric impulses that make you move, and live, and breathe. Something shattering waits at its other side.

Bitching bust-up,
Kenny joked once. Then, seriously:
What do you think it is?

I don’t know,
I told him,
but it’s there.

Well come on, Babe. Let’s go for it.

I’d shake my head a little, weave back and forth.

Afraid?
he’d whisper.

Mmmm. A little. But more—um, just
—
respectful?

There’s this difference, Sager used to say, between sprint and distance events, so listen up, animals: Distance can make you hurt, it can make you afraid. But the sprint can shut you down, just like that, because what it really is, is a war between your own power and your ability to control it—to unleash it, yet at the same time to contain it perfectly for the fifty or the one hundred meters—for long enough, my animals, so that you win before it shuts you down completely. Not your run-of-the-mill discomfort. Not the kind you take on every day. No. For special people, special agony.

See, it doesn’t make you afraid. Not exactly. It makes you sort of shy.

Like a pussycat. Here, pussy pussy pussy.

And remember, pussycats don’t swim.

Breaststrokers! Who’s sprinting today? Lane three for my animals. Two for the pussycats. Delgado, which will it be? Have you decided yet? Or is all this wasting your precious time?

Two, I said. Lane two, Kemo. Meow.

And all of them grinned nervously, except Sager and me.

“Babe, relax.”

“Huh?”

“Relax. It’s the end of the repeat, not the end of the world.” Bren keeps an eye on the clock. I’ll go at the top—fifteen seconds ahead of the rest of them. Quarter of a minute less to catch some breath. The big red moving hand hits fifty-three, fifty-four. Heads ominously, inevitably, for the sixty.

“Sweet dreams,” she says, and a whistle blows.

*

The fourth week. Thursday. Morning workout. When I feel it coming more frequently now, can almost reach out to grab it—the pull, hip flex, kick, the timing, the harsh bright scream of it.

Afterwards in the locker room I strip and shower thoughtlessly. For a moment I actually forget to cover my torso with hands and arms, to twist and bend this way and that, turn halfway to the wall in some futile attempt to hide all the scars, the misshapen imperfections and excess baggage.

But the past two and a half weeks have begun to strip me down for real, and when I dare to look at mirrors I see something almost emerging now: a big, definable thing that will be firm but not hard, made for the motion, shaped like a woman.

I dress. Still early, there’s time to kill. No class for two hours, and the distance freestylers are just finishing their swim-down. I head upstairs. The steamy chlorinated atmosphere recedes, air freshens, cooling my skin.

The hallway leading to the lobby is long, lined with shatterproof trophy cases and old framed photographs of various teams. I wait there for Ellie. Thinking, all of a sudden, that maybe something good is happening now. Something inexpressible, inside me. That my skin feels alive. I am beginning to sense my real parameters, where I reach to, where I leave off—and, somehow, I need to let her know. People brush by, minutes. I stare at polished trophies. At dull-edged black-and-whites.

She stumbles off the landing looking tired. The tips of her hair are still wet.

“What’s the matter, Delgado? Turning into a gym rat?”

“I thought we could go for breakfast.”

“Lead on.”

“Are you sure? You look really beat.”

“How perceptive of you. I
am
really beat. In fact, it’s my middle name these days: Eleanor ‘Beat’ Marks. But you—you are beautiful, Delgado.” It occurs to me that she means it. Her voice is humble, matter-of-fact. “You are totally, totally awesome.”

We walk quietly past trophy cases. She’s acting strange, not yakking away like she usually does. I touch her shoulder, ask if she’s really all right and she mumbles Yes, sure, nothing heroin won’t fix.

I can feel my skin tingle in the air, muscles aching but healthy, hips moving more freely inside looser clothes now. Sometimes, lying flat, I can reach down and feel bones. And there have been other times during these past few days, moments that actually stretch longer now into minutes, when I’ve felt good, really good. So simple, so small. But I never thought I would have that again. Sometimes, during those moments, she has been there too.

I want to let her know. Like maybe she’d give a damn, or it would make her feel better.

The words go through me again so that I really hear them:
Beautiful, Delgado. Awesome.

They make me want to cry—I don’t know why. Because of something sad and sweet, floating on the tip of my mind, like a memory. I sigh and think I have it. Then, in a blink, it’s gone.

She stops, leans against the side of a trophy case. “Listen, I think I’ll skip breakfast.”

“Oh. Well, what about dinner?”

“Yes, what
about
dinner?” he says, popping up out of nowhere. The big guy from the second-floor landing, a month ago. Small bright dark eyes, fair hair with a dyed-in streak of black down the middle. Tall, about Kenny’s height. He has shaved so closely there are tiny rivulets of pink on both cheeks, a small chunk of red where he cut himself. “What’s the matter, Ellie—forget your manners? Introduce me.”

She shrugs and plucks his sleeve, plucks my sleeve, then puts our hands together. Weird listlessness in the way she moves. I try, but can’t catch her eye.

“Okay, Mike, this is Babe Delgado. Babe, meet Mike Canelli. Coach McMullen’s wayward star.”

He presses my fingers, presses my palm. His hand is big and cool. He keeps holding on, and the skin gets damp—with his sweat, with mine.

Then he lets go, babbles about how he was exploring caves out West this summer and broke both his arms, so he was going to redshirt this year, but not any more, the strength is coming back. He and Ellie get into some banter, which sounds half serious. Winstrol. HGH. Testosterone pills. This makes me nervous. But I tell myself to chill, it is all just talk.

Finally she sighs tiredly, pokes his shirted belly and suggests that he get cracking with some weights, some treadmill, some LifeCycle machine. She tells me to come over after workout tonight, if I want, and we’ll have dinner.

Okay, I say. But she’s already gone.

I press a hand against the trophy case. Glass glitters. My thumbprint stays there, cloudy and wet.

He traces it with his, cocks his head to meet my eyes. His own are glittering. There’s play in them, and something more serious—I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. “Dinner. You could have it with me some time.”

There’s a clean chalky smell to his clothes and chest.

Wind blows from the lobby. I head that way. He stays alongside, speeding up and then slowing down to match me, making sure that our shoes hit the floor in perfect rhythm. The cold breezes in more forcefully, swinging doors rush people through, waft the edges of paper tacked to bulletin boards.

“I knew who you were the first time, Babe.”

Right, I say, good for you.

Senior nationals, he tells me, Industry Hills, I was there, did the one and two but had a bad day, the worst. So here I am. And here you are, too. That’s lucky for me.

* * *

Kenny was eager, sloppy sometimes, and open. You could see it in the opened-up breadth of his chest. Shaved down, peaked, ripped, the skin was pink over muscles and looked stretched somehow, smelled of water and powder and nothing else, like a naked clean-washed newborn’s. He liked girls, women, really, really liked them—happily, fearlessly, without having to know them, in a way that most men don’t. Then, too, he had this thing for me, this adoration that was open-book earnest—like there was a hole in him I could fill. Even though he was strong. He was looking for, he was needing, completion. But the searching was honest, unashamed. And I loved him for it. For that.

Liz was different. Never sloppy. Except when she meant to be—which isn’t the same thing. And never open. I mean, not really. She was more sort of—incisive? Sure. She’d figure out what she wanted, reach for it and take it, just
it,
and leave the rest. Very exciting. Very
noblesse oblige.
On the inside, anyway. The outside was all for show.

They were my friends. My loves.

Strong, and noble.

Mike Canelli is neither. I can tell just by walking next to him, not listening. Even though there’s also something about him that feels both sloppy
and
incisive. Maybe it’s this weird combination—added to the fact that he is definitely not noble, or even strong—that makes him seem, I don’t know, inevitable.

We walk out of the hallways, across diagonal open blocks of cement between buildings and greenhouses and parking lots. There’s a hint of winter in the air, cold wind gusting, and everywhere students, bright coats, booksacks, dry, blowing leaves. Into a cafeteria. Nasty fluorescent lights. He’s talking the whole time. I don’t listen, really, just pretend to, nod once in a while like I understand, like I care. Thinking about what his chest would look like shaved down. Under the sweatshirt, under the lettered jacket. Kenny had this bright, stiff, thick curling blond hair that spread from the bottom of his neck across both nipples, and trailed down his abdomen, then ended. To swim peaked and clean, he’d take a razor to it. Electric, then hand-held, for a close, close shearing. Something Liz and I never had to do. But I’d watch him, and her, sometimes, in fascination. Their chests so different: One expansive, self-contained, male, nipples like two little buttons closed to the world; the other so soft looking, asking for lips and hands somehow, nipples larger, more versatile, a way in instead. But mostly, in both of them, I kept seeing these parts of myself.

Not physical parts, really.

Screw it—I can’t explain. Watching their skin come away baby-fine and raw made me shudder. I could feel the way my own skin would be, after shave-down: naked, open, sliding unfettered through the world.

There’s coffee. Toast. Sick purple jelly in little sealed plastic containers, dimmer lights of some student cafe where Mike Canelli is making a big deal out of paying for us both—and I’m still not listening to him, really, but I force myself to wonder, wonder hard, if he looks any good shaved down, and there are other, different things I want to keep thinking about, and other, different bodies, but I stop myself and concentrate on him.

Like that shrink said at the hospital. A nice guy, young and not yet jaded, horn-rims, Jewish I think—my mother loved
that,
you can bet—seemed unflappable, unjudging. Just a suggestion, he said. Suitable stuff for fantasy: Male figure, substitute
him
toward the end. Behavioral technique. To get you out of what we call this post-traumatic fixation, back to normal life, the everyday world. Try it, see how it works for you.

Only this nice Jewish guy, with all his best intentions, never asked what was normal, or everyday, about all the things that happened in the world that had drowned.