The Sea of Light (44 page)

Then the whole thing moves me forward, bright wet electricity pounding through my head, and I love her and can’t stop it, want her and can’t help it, and don’t care that I can’t stop it, or help it, it feels so very, very good. No one taught me what to do next. No one told me how. I did not find it in the movies, or on TV, or in books. But I am not worried. I am not even thinking. I move over her and across her and caress her and kiss her all over by instinct, and the whole thing of it teaches as it goes, moves me just right, strokes her into a matching motion too until her legs move apart and for the first time I move myself all the way forward, and feel just what it’s like inside her, and I can taste her too, and smell her, and it’s so beautiful, so beautiful, so creamy and living and good.

Maybe, somewhere, there are voices, telling me this is wrong. But the voices are far away now, small, insignificant, nagging, bleating, piteous. They have nothing to do with this, or with me; I feel sorry for them. And triumphant about what I am moving forward into, becoming part of now—all these pretty, good, living things that the owners of those voices never saw in books, or movies, or on TV.

Because they don’t even know what they’re missing.

She shudders, presses up against me. “Faster,” she breathes, and I do, I do.

*

Your left triceps, she tells me, is bigger than your right. And I tell her, Mmmmm, yeah, breathe to my right, left shoulder takes it, faults under water I have never corrected, all that freestyle.

Arms, arms. Everything seems to be arms now: mine around her, hers longer and larger encompassing me, everyone getting snarled in the bedsheets. Even now, at her most vulnerable, she is so strong. It’s a big, smooth, firm, fleshy strength that I
love, that I want, have loved and wanted all my life. Now, calmer, I can see all the parts of her. Quietly, examine them in detail. There are these veins that run the length of her forearms, crossing over the wrists to pump along the backs of each hand. Tracing them with a finger, I remember how she always worked her forearms so much in the weight room, and I wondered why; then she told me it was this feeling she had, just a feeling, unsubstantiated by science—when she began to work her forearms extra hard, her times in the 50 and the 100 improved a little; and if it works, even just psychologically, you don’t question it much, you just do it. I have daydreamed every physical part of her. Now, though, these forearm veins amaze me. I decide, for a second, that they are the part I love best. Then I think: No, I love her breasts. Shoulders. Thighs.

The mattress is unyielding, too small for us both. Therapeutic, she says, I have to sleep pretty flat or before you know it my shoulders and neck and lower back mess up. Too late in the season. Can’t risk that.

I run a hand through her hair. She was calm before, for a while, almost drowsy. Now, though, she’s begun shivering. It is arousing, a little frightening—to be here, rolled against the length of her body; I’ve done it all by instinct and, by instinct, my thigh moves between both of hers and is trapped by the flesh and by shivering muscles. I feel the dampness there, warm surge of elation cutting through me. Because I’m sure of her satisfaction; I rode it and felt it and heard it myself, with each muffled cry. But this shivering pains me.

“Babe, Babe. What is it?”

“Don’t know.” She grits her teeth. Laughs sharply, nervously. “Nothing.”

“No way—it’s something.”

“Yeah.” She sweats, mocks Brenna Allen: “Truth is in the body, and the body does not lie—”

“Okay, ace. So tell me the truth.”

“You want to know?”

“I want to know.”

“It feels like dying. It’s like, you lose yourself in this cloud, this light.” She sobs, bites her hand. “And, I mean, I told myself, in the hospital, you know, that I wouldn’t any more. Never again. Never again. No more flip turns. No more love. I mean, God, Ellie! I don’t want to die!”

She rolls away, sobbing and shaking, and I hold her close, stroke her hair and face and back, tell her comforting things, but it doesn’t work, she isn’t listening. Pain fills me like an empty canteen. What I wished for her all along, was only joy and pleasure; what I wanted for myself, all along, was to give her more and more—weird and funny, I thought, to start out so full of needing, to wind up so full of giving—like what would really, really thrill me, I found out, was her wanting and her satisfaction. But now she’s telling me that it feels like death. Now, it is making her cry.

“Oh, Babe, I’m really sorry.”

I whimper it against her back. Then I start crying, too. Until, crying softly, emptied out, dismal and exhausted and drained and confused, both of us doze off, and get some rest.

*

When I wake up, it seems darker. She is flat on her back holding me gently against her, eyes wide open, gazing at the ceiling. She smooths hair away from my face. Not shivering any more. There’s a quiet in her body, calm in each motion. I look up at her, afraid; but she catches my eye, and smiles.

“Your face is so pretty, Ellie. Sometimes, you know, I used to close my eyes and imagine kissing it—you.”

“You did?”

“Sure. What do you
think?”

She grins broadly, fully; there’s mischief in the grin, and a big, happy, relaxed joking feel to her that I’ve never known before. Suddenly, everything is changed. I mean, here I was, a while ago, dozing off filled with misery and desperation and a tangible sense of failure; but now, just because she is grinning, the weight seems lifted. So that I smile, too, and am flooded with pure delight.

“Tell me, Ellie—do you do this often?”

“Sure,” I lie. “But only with a chosen few.”

She is childlike, winking, teasing. “Well, you
are
one of the chosen people.”

“Mmmm. You too. I mean, if I was Castro, I would have
paid
your family to leave.”

“He practically did. And at the Bay of Pigs, you know? they fought back to keep us
out.”

“Yeah. You were the Expendables of the Year, right? Like, from everyone’s point of view. Nowhere to turn but a raft.”

“Not even that, sometimes.”

“Havana will never be the same.”

“Oh,” she says softly, “neither will Miami.”

I move away a little, prop myself with my elbows.

“Babe, I lied about this. I mean, I never have before.”

“Just wanted to—?”

“Right.”

“Well, did you like it?”

“Oh, God.” I am humbled now, and blush. “It’s beautiful. It’s amazing.”

She trails a finger across my lips. “Yes,” she says, “I think so too.”

I want to ask her so many things, then—like what she’d meant before, about freaking, and the feeling of dying, and the cloud and the light, and why it had made her cry, why she hadn’t been able to stop herself from shaking, why she’d said she wasn’t gay, and who had been the first for her, a man or a woman, and how many had there been since, and which of them had she loved? But there isn’t time. She has turned me flat onto my back and is full on top of me—so big and long and fleshed out and strong that, for a moment, I think I’ll faint.

“Too heavy?”

“God, no.”

“Bumpy. Feel that? I hate all my scars.”

“Don’t, Babe. Please don’t. I want you so much. I think you’re so beautiful.”

It is a fact: Bodies do not lie. Maybe Coach learned that truth just from swimming; but I doubt it.

She is looking down at me, touching my face, eyelids, hair, falling aside to touch my body with a knowledgeable elegance that feels absolute; and—I can feel this too now and it thrills me—urgency, yearning. She pauses and swallows hard. It’s in her face, all at once, twined together—so much want, so much terror. Sweat pops out on her forehead, nose, upper lip.

“Look, Ellie—um, this is hard.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Shhh,” she says, “no, never mind.”

She closes her eyes, shakes her head and sweat flies from her skin, her hair. Then she smiles. Opens her eyes like slits and looks far away into some distance I can’t even see. Whispers softly:

“No more pain.”

“Okay,” I say—uncertainly, by instinct.

“Patience, El, patience. One stroke at a time.”

“Whatever you want, Babe.”

“Whatever? I want?” She laughs. The sound comes out muted, choked, violent. “Just say it’s all right. Say you won’t leave—”

“I’m here, Babe, I’m safe—it’s all right! I won’t go!”

The eyes close again, perspiring hands reach to feel the pulse throb in my neck, my wrist, groin, breasts. She presses fingers against it, presses an ear against flesh, eyes shut, listening, measuring. “There. Mmmm. Okay.” She’s not talking to me, but to herself. “Yes, like that. Okay, okay.”

I reach to hold her while her eyes stay closed and she’s touching me, put my lips against her ear and speak right into it, telling her things that are light years beyond me, things I didn’t even know I knew: that minds lie, not bodies; limitation and barriers, like pain, are only in the mind, but the mind can be transcended, yes, until the body itself is too, until things flow on a different level from your everyday life—automatic, unselfconscious, limitless, free; death happens to the body, but not to the mind; the mind is sheer love—which is different from and stronger than death—eternal, limitless, free. I tell her she has never seemed so strong. So powerful to me. I tell her that, to feel her hold me like this, scarred and delicate and beautiful and powerful and strong, I would endure a hundred qualifying heats, face the harsh, bright barrier of pain many times over, swim any ocean. That I am glad, so glad she survived. And proud, so very proud, to love her.

Don’t, she says. Don’t say it if you do not mean it.

“I mean it, Babe. I mean it, I mean it”

“No matter what? Won’t quit? Sink or swim?”

“Won’t quit.”

“You have to hold on. Eyes open. Don’t let go.”

“I promise,” I breathe, giddy and tingling wherever she touches, “yes, I promise, I won’t let go.”

Hold on then, she says. Tight, yes, that’s right. Now, don’t quit on me. No matter what. Promise. You won’t let go. It is easy, you know. Just one more minute. What wait can’t you take for one more lousy minute? Real winners don’t quit. No pain, no pain. But first, tell me yes. I mean, Stateside. Stateside. Stateside. Stateside. Hold onto me tight. Hold onto me, love. Hold onto me, love. I am taking us home.

*

We miss practice. Miss all of our afternoon and evening classes. Then sleep when it’s dark, wake up in a timeless sort of fog, look at a clock and our watches and realize that a night has passed, it is the next day, late morning—we have missed morning practice, too. Aside from the time I spent sick, I have never even missed a warm-up, or sat out as much as a single stroke drill; now, though, I just really don’t care.

Judging from the pleased, half shy look of peace on her face, neither does Babe.

“How you doing, El?”

Fine, I tell her, beyond fine.

“So you still like it?”

Wide-eyed, I nod.

She staggers to the bathroom, bleary, naked, stiff-jointed and lame—I can hear her knees creak all the way across the floor. Then I hear water running, steam seeping sideways out of cracks in the door. Once, I think, I hear her hum a few bars of something foreign and lively. Caribbean, maybe. Salsa. No, not quite. Then:

“God!” she yells. “I feel great! I feel great!”

We miss another afternoon practice, too.

* * *

When we finally do show up the next day, we are late. Warm-up’s already started. I feel fractured, frazzled, out of touch, ecstatic. The locker room’s empty, except for us. Babe pulls off Ace bandages, pulls on her suit, grabs my head once to rub her cheek against it and heads for the pool without even stretching, half-running, half-limping. I take my time. No one really needs or expects me to swim for them, now. They are all fine without me. As I am without them.

Halfway between shower and pool I run into Etta, who glances at me over the rim of her clipboard, raises both eyebrows.

“Pushing your luck, white girl.”

“How pissed is she?”

“Hell hath no fury. But cold, like ice.”

Definitely bad news.

Everyone else is pulling and drilling and kicking their way through the end of warm-up. The air’s damp, hot. Babe has already hit the water in four and is swimming like shit. I grab a pull buoy, head for lane eight. Brenna Allen notices me briefly out of the corner of an eye, but doesn’t change expression. When she speaks it is quietly, her voice impassive.

“In my office after workout.”

Silently, I nod. Then I pretend to adjust my goggles, while doom shoots through me.

I follow the program, do what I can. Work as hard as possible—to show her, maybe, that I am still more or less old faithful—and, when I just can’t breathe any more, sit out a set. From the side of the pool I watch them all. I shiver a little, wrap my towel around. Smudge soothing cream on the indentations under my eyes. Ceiling lights glint off lane four. Babe is bagging it today. Slack timing, dolphining off her walls, touching in with too much left over, joking around between reps. The whistle blows.

“Swim down,” calls Brenna Allen. “Everyone take it easy. Except, of course, for Ms. Delgado, who has already done so, and who will therefore get out of the water and have a chat with me right now.”

Etta tosses her clipboard on a bench beside me.