The Sea of Light (50 page)

“Babe says hi. She’s back.”

“Yes,” I say, “how are you?”

“Oh, well, feeling sort of like a jerk.”

I motion for her to sit. “How so, Ellie?”

“I don’t know. It just feels like the year sort of fell apart on me. I mean, it wasn’t all bad or anything, not by a lot, but it wasn’t what I expected, either.”

I tell her that I think I know what she means. Ask her is she ready to swim. Ready to watch, she jokes, half bitterly. No, I insist, to swim. She glances at me uncertainly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re not looking too ill these days during workout. Neither are you tapered, granted. But do you have a four hundred IM in you?”

The young face stares back at me; I examine it for signs of distress or panic. There’s a moment, perhaps—when some of that flashes through the eyes, changes the set of her mouth; and I recognize something of myself in the expression: a kind of pained excitement.

“The four?”

I nod.

“What about Potalia?”

“She won’t, Ellie. She’s pregnant. With some complications. I can’t really say that I blame her.”

She listens, then, when I tell her what I have in mind. Some paper will have to be shuffled. A couple of lies told. She has never seen this side of me—the sly and manipulative side—openly before, although she has certainty felt it; but a part of her, too, accepts it, knows that I’m presenting it to her as a kind of gift. I could tap Babe Delgado for the 400 IM, if I had to—even though it would be overworking her, even though she would hate it—or one of the good, promising freshmen; but I am offering her a place in the final competition, instead. It is her last chance, anyway. She knows it. Her face cracks into a painful smile.

“I guess I’m, like, suddenly not expendable.”

“You never were, Ellie.”

I tell her, then, some of what I really think: that she is very strong, and growing into completion, and brave, and deserves a shot at something. That, in the end, there is a kind of detriment to grandeur and to winning, anyway. The bigger things get the broader they are, the more complex; the farther back from them you have to stand to see them; the easier it is to superficially admire and the harder it is to genuinely love—because grandeur in and of itself is incapable of the small, essential effort, the intimate urge to get close, proceed, to survive; it must always be propped up by smaller things.

Oh, she says. Oh, wow. And we’re silent.

How are things, I ask her, after a while. How’s your life?

“My life? Ah. I think—I mean, it’s good these days, really good.” And it’s obvious, from the hot pleasurable red flooding her face, that she’s discovered love. Watching, I feel like an intruder. But it also makes me quite happy; and the shock of the sensation—happiness, I mean—ripples through me. It has been a long time.

“I’m glad, Ellie. I am very glad for you.”

“You are? I mean, you
are,
aren’t you.”

This is teasing, forthright and tender, surprises us both.

She tells me, then, that she thinks she has known me in a former life.

What? I say.

She blushes. She is taking a class in World Religions, she says. And she likes it. She believes a lot of it. Hinduism and Buddhism, reincarnation. Karma. It’s the only thing that makes sense—to her, anyway; otherwise, we wouldn’t necessarily be who we are, and love who we love, would we? We’d just be simple products of our environment in this lifetime. But, in so many ways, we are not. And there’s so much suffering, so much—if it’s all random, in the end, if there’s no meaning to it, if through suffering you can’t balance some kind of cosmic scales for yourself somehow—then what is the point? So she believes in that stuff, yes. In stuff that does not require faith, really; but only a sort of spiritual common sense.

I don’t respond. She doesn’t ask me to. Just looks at me now, fully, a little shyly.

“How are
you?
”

“Fine,” I say, too quickly. And want to follow it up: Just fine. But I realize I’ve pressed a hand to my mouth, to hide something, and my face has gone numb, and I can’t lie any more.

“Actually,” I say, “I’m not fine. Although I
am
getting better.” Don’t cry, Coach, I tell myself. I don’t. “I’ll tell you something, Ellie, since you ask. Recently, I lost someone—no, not someone, Kay, I lost Kay Goldstein, my lover of many years, she was very ill, and she died. So, last season and this, I think you can understand now, have been very tough for me. It was quite—it was the most difficult thing in the world. Sometimes, I still don’t believe it actually happened. And I think I’m going to be all right; in fact, I know I will, eventually. It’s all just a matter of time. I guess that’s partly why I believe—about life, I mean—that it’s all time, anyway.”

I wonder how I can speak these words, now, so calmly, so simply. But maybe the truth is always simple; never as nerve-racking as artifice; and, I know, we should carefully choose our lies, be sure they never own us.

“Your lover,” Ellie says cautiously, “must have been a very wonderful person.”

“Ah. She was.”

Papers rustle under my hands on the desk. My phone buzzes suddenly, insistently. Five rings, six. I let it go unanswered and then it’s silent; and we wait, watching each other, little separating us, in this moment, but the years. She stands and puts her hands flat on the desk, leans suddenly across it. I don’t think, or pull back. She kisses my lips firmly, chastely. Then she stands apart blushing, and looks away.

I swivel in my chair. Right. Left. Back to center. Finally, I clear my throat for attention, and face her with a stern expression mitigated by vague embarrassment.

“That,” I say, “is something that will not happen again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Bren.”

“And as long as you swim for me, you will refrain from addressing me informally again. Even in private. Even face to face. We may some day be friends. But that would be later—much, much later.”

“I know, Bren. I mean, okay. Okay.”

The mantle of authority remains perched perilously on my damaged shoulders. I can feel us both relax.

I tell her I’m glad we talked. That I expect to see her, and of course Babe Delgado, on time tomorrow morning.

She blushes. Faintly resentful.

“Love and work are the same thing, Ellie. You don’t have to understand that right now—just remember it, will you?”

“I guess. I mean I’ll try.”

She leaves. But halfway down the hall, starts humming—happily, it seems, on key—and, sitting at my desk, I hear it.

* * *

On the bus, at the airport, I’m a nervous wreck but do not show it. The kids have all dressed identically, for a joke: striped gray-and-white pants, gray cotton shirts, white Aerobics shoes. Over the weekend, they have all shaved down. Somehow, too, they have each streak-bleached tailing strands of hair along the backs of their necks and above each ear. I detect the unseen hand of Ellie Marks in this. A cabal, for sure. Passing by on their way to the departure lounge, as Etta and I take count, each says a too-jolly
Hi Coach!
while the next echoes, in turn: Hi Coach! Hi Coach! Occasionally, there is a whisper or a giggle.

When I’ve taken the right count twice, I sit among them, next to Etta, who is fiddling with her engagement ring. It is a modest, thin band of delicate matte silver with a single, tiny, dainty diamond embedded, and against the darkness of her skin it glows. I notice, glancing at her face, that she seems happy these days—and I am glad for her. This thought crosses my mind:
Next time I’m married, we will both wear rings to declare it.
I don’t know where the thought comes from. But although brief, it makes me happy for a moment; for a moment, gives me hope, and a sensation of physiological warmth and comfort that I never believed would be mine again.

They look at me expectantly, with teasing expressions. One of them cups her hands, whispers to someone else; there is another giggle, and then they all watch me with sly grins about to burst, in their matching pants and shirts and shoes, their matching strands of hair.

“Very teamlike,” I say, finally. “Nice sense of unity. Love the decor.”

One by one, the bubbles of tension prick into laughter that is entirely female, and soft, but tinged with an element of hysteria. I look around at the faces, each flushed and damp. They are all trim, tapered, full of energy and restless calories, ready to burn. They’ve exceeded themselves over the past few months; and, now, it comes down to this, this attempt at a perfection of readiness, of will, this stillness before action, this waiting.

Then it will be over. And whatever happens is a truth they will have, inside, for the rest of their lives. Some will not surpass it. Some will never redeem it. But others will. And, in that way as well as in many, many ways, all these lives will diverge, continue, crisscross again or not, shrink and grow, and ultimately end.

On my other side sits Karen Potalia. She is silent, fully made up. Fiddling with
her
engagement ring. I am sandwiched between two straight women with engagement rings, one black, one white; across from me, feet cluttered with luggage, Ellie Marks and Babe Delgado sit side by side, carefully not touching, glancing at each other to share some ineffable sensation when they think no one is looking. It’s amusing—in a gentle way that is also somehow painful—because here, among this group of alert young women, whatever they believe they are hiding is an open secret. As I have been to them, myself, all along: a walking secret utterly unveiled, an open wound.

Well, probably.

But in some way, maybe, it has made me perfect for this job. Because I know what it is to love them.

A modulated mechanical voice spills over intercoms, announcing the flight boarding. With sighs and shrieks, all the gray-shirted, striped-trousered, white-shoed hordes stand. Except for Babe Delgado.

“Rules, rules!” Etta demands. “No booze, no drugs. Cool it on the sugar and fat—moderate caffeine.” She waves her clipboard—always an implicit threat. “Anyone who doesn’t deal straight with me around the stuff will sooner or later—and probably sooner—have to deal with Her Majesty”—and she gestures my way.

There is a collective groan, the fear only partially faked.

They line up to board. Out of the corner of my eye I see Ellie Marks leaning down, hand on Delgado’s shoulder, insistently whispering. Babe doesn’t look up.

I approach. “Let’s go, you two.”

“She won’t.” Ellie blushes, agitated. Delgado looks up to meet my eyes. Everything’s written across her face, suddenly: grief, exhaustion, fear.

“Come on, Babe. What’s up?”

“I just don’t feel like it.”

“Tough,” I say, “that’s just too bad.”

When I turn to take my place in line I can feel them behind me—gathering luggage and equipment bags, plastic seats squeaking, new shoes scuffing synthetic surface under the constant hum of inaudible intercom, dumped baggage, traveling sounds. First one pair of feet. Then another. I turn once to nod in brief approval. Ellie looks on edge. Babe glares at me, strong and resentful, icily determined, very angry. As if, touching her flesh, you’d strike sparks. Which, after all, is just the way we need her to be.

*

In locker rooms, in the past, I have made these speeches. Today I don’t; I just come in and stand near a bench while they sit there in their warm-ups, and wait for silence. But they’re already silent; they’ve been silent, and nervous, for a long time now.

It occurs to me that I don’t know exactly what to say. Super Coach would have known. But the woman I am feeling myself to be these days, doesn’t really know.

“Is everybody ready? Ready to really
swim?”

One by one, they nod.

“Good, then. Let’s go.”

We do and, walking out into a sterile wet damp well of echoing sound, palms on bleachers, announcements and scattered applause, I miss Kay very much, I wish she could be sitting there now to see, and then push her out of my mind. Behind me, the disciplined line breaks at its tallest link. Babe Delgado has turned aside and is gesturing excitedly to someone in the bleachers. A dark-haired, slender teenager, with long hard thin arms and legs, large lips and eyes like hers, reaches down to her, palms open for a congratulatory slap. And there is someone else beside him who she’s reaching for, also: a stocky brown-skinned man with thick black mustache, handsome features, ample eyes and lips; he is smiling tiredly, face lined with emotion, waving. Now the boy is leaning over perilously, grasping her hand. She gestures toward me, and he looks my way; then stands, and, for the first time, meets my eyes, and smiles, waves.

The ally.

I nod once, before turning to proceed with my team. Mouth the words:
Hello, Jack.
And give him a grin.

Then, to myself, sing a song of relief.
Thank you, kid, for coming through.

Delgado turns to follow the rest of us to the tiered benches where we are clustered amid a flurry of towels, equipment, bodies and nerves. Around the big damp bright-lit arena of glistening pastel water, lane dividers float colorfully in perfect tight parallel lines, pool lights gleam beneath the surface. The sloped starting blocks are clean, waiting, empty; there are similar sections of tiered benches, specially set off from the spectator stands, where other teams wearing other colors are taking their places. The spectator stands are dotted, here and there, with individuals or with groups of people—not as few as I thought there’d be, but a pretty sparse crowd just the same. These are qualifying heats, and people work during the day, but maybe they will fill up a little each night for the finals.