The Sea of Light (56 page)

Bonding, Bren mutters. Leave it to you, Chick.

And, in that moment, I feel necessary.

*

Whole-grain bread, salad, fruit, some kind of rice and lentil mash served cold—no processed sugar, no salt, no fats. I ask if this is some new dietary obsession of hers. Yes. The right food for endurance. Does it become tasty after you get used to it? I ask. No, she says, but so what. Something about complex carbohydrates, muscular glucose absorption, good fatty acids versus bad fatty acids—what she recommended to the members of her team this spring, and it seemed to work. And as a coach you never instill a practice that you are not willing to attempt yourself. She flushes slightly with pride.

“Those kids really pulled through, Chick. Most of them raced
way
over their heads.”

“It must have been wonderful.”

Exhausting, she says. And exciting. A feeling it is hard to describe: something more than, and less than, you expect it to be. In that way—she grins, wryly—it’s actually a little like love.

“How so?”

“Oh, I don’t know exactly.” She pours spring water. “Just a feeling I have. You know, you go along feeling like you’re totally in control—”

“Right.”

“Then suddenly, one day, you find out you’re really
not.
Willpower, for instance. It’s very important, it can get you through a lot. But in the end it’s not the thing that lets you win. Something else takes over—I’m not sure what.”

There’s a struggle on her face. Words elude her. This interests me, and I toss more lentil glop on my plate and lean forward, questioning. She shakes her head.

No, no, she tells me, you can’t really say it. Something deep inside—it surfaces. Things fall away from it, sort of. At least that’s what I think. And you move differently, Chick. Like you’re not even yourself any more, but an organic part of something larger. You can feel it sometimes—I mean, in extraordinary moments of suffering or of joy. It’s hot, and cold, and everything, and so are you. Then you just stop
trying,
and you actually do it. Whatever it is. You live, you die, you win.

She blushes, embarrassed. “Does
any
of that make any sense?”

“Sure. But only in here”—I pound my chest—“and here”—pound my gut. Tap my forehead. “Not necessarily here.”

“Oh, well then, screw the mind. That’s good enough.”

In a way, we are back to a place we’ve visited, the beginnings of an argument we’ve had, almost fifteen years ago. I decline to engage in it this time—and, I see, so does she. We serve each other wretchedly unappealing health food instead. Dishing out rice that sticks to the serving spoon, slicing whole-grain bread—
sans
yeast—that is tough as a two-by-four and just as tasty. Forking over apple slices, banana chips, solicitously.

Boz attacks the screen door and Bren lets him in, pours out a man-sized bowl of water, tosses him a handful of biscuits. He gulps the water, eschews the biscuits. I blush guiltily.

“Confession time, Bren. I’ve been feeding him salami.”

“For meals?”

“Just for treats.”

She sighs, but with good humor. “Why not steak tartare?”

“Not fresh enough at the butcher’s,” I say, and we laugh.

She sits on the counter, tanned legs swinging lightly, so for a moment there’s something almost girlish about her. But she stops moving, the moment’s gone. And she’s smiling at me now with an open, odd combination of shrewdness and appreciation.

“I was just thinking.”

“What, sweetie?”

“It’s good to see you here again. Sitting at my table. With this quiet day outside, and the air blowing in—I don’t know, Chick, it feels very nice. It feels very right.”

I swallow, hard, and stand to do the dishes.

She snags my arm as I head for the sink.

“Chick?”

I find her eyes, try to break their gaze, can’t. Plates, bowls, and rice-encrusted spoons shiver in my hands.

“I think we should find out about that.”

About what? I stammer. And focus on the shadows of afternoon outside, gentle coloring of sky that hints twilight.

“About that feeling.”

Why? I mutter. Hearing my voice sound from far away, with a kind of cold detached terror.

Because, she tells me, what if it is true? And right? Would you want to let it slip? Let the chance to know it pass by? Die one day, and never have given it a try?

“Given what a try, Bren?”

Love, she tells me, just love.

I don’t say no, and I don’t say yes. But I pull gently away from her and start to wash the dishes, soaping a green sponge thoroughly, rinsing everything in water. I pick up a sopping glass and realize that I’m crying—matter-of-factly, silently, tears dripping past my nose. She stands close behind me, arms around my waist. Once in a while her palms press strong against hips or belly; once in a while her face slides forward alongside mine, rubbing cheeks, smearing tears.

*

Several tissues later, clean dishes racked, we take Boz along for a walk. It’s not quite evening, but the heat of the day seems muffled, broken. And the air’s noisy with insects, various flower and weed smells mingling in it like a riotously cheap perfume.

Bren wants to show me the neighborhood—which is mostly winding lanes in need of repaving after their usual winter beating, houses set far back from the roads, plenty of thick hedges, pines, oaks, maples, not a lot of people.

Privacy, Chick, I remember Kay saying once, it’s the key to serenity. My attitude toward neighbors and their kids is essentially this: “Howdy, folks! Have a nice life! But live it on the other side of the fence!” She’d winked, taken out an imaginary handgun and aimed, fired, blew smoke off the barrel. “That’s America for you, Chick. The ethic of Do It Off My Property, Pal. Land of the tough and the lonely. Lots of individual liberty, general lack of social responsibility. Best there is, though. God, I love this country!”

Yet you’re afraid to come out of the closet here, I’d rebutted. Afraid of the consequences of being openly and fully what you are.

Nonsense, she’d sniffed. You’re talking to a girl with
tenure
here, Chick. I
don’t hide my life—I just like my privacy. Besides, not
all
of us feel obliged to go around shrieking about what we do in bed! There are certainly other, more important
issues
to deal with.

The last point had been a sideways slap at me. But the impact, I remember, had been mitigated by the obvious tease in her voice, on her face; a gentleness of tone, an overt affection. Picking up a pinecone now and peeling off a chip, I understand something about her, postmortem: She could love me more fully than I could love her, in a way, because I posed no threat; I had tacitly ceded Bren to her from the very beginning, without any hint of struggle; there was nothing and no one I had ever, or could ever, take from her. From my point of view, the friendship was far more difficult. Maybe I was more than a little infatuated with Kay as well. Rendered defenseless by her subtle, tough, playful femme charisma, lipstick and rouge and perms, acute mind that let no one best it, ever.

I toss the pinecone. Boz, dragging Bren along clumsily, chases it with his tongue gaggling out of his mouth and each fang showing.

All right, Kay, I say to myself, wryly, silently. I was lucky to know you. Queer variation of a Jewish American Princess. Stereotypes can be true-to-life; and sometimes—as in your case—delightful when they are bent or bowed.

“Hey! Cut it out!”

Bren and Boz have become hopelessly tangled by his leash in some scraggly bushes and wild shiny-leafed growth which, on second glance, I hope is not poison ivy. I step into the fray.

Unsnap the leash from Boz’s collar. He yelps ecstatically and goes snuffling off through trees, lunging at orange-tailed squirrels that scatter up trunks like soldiers from some army in retreat, his thick fighting-dog paws showering us with chunks of dirt. I help Bren free the useless leash. We are both on our hands and knees in mud, unknotting it from twigs and brambles, faces whipped by branches, hands recoiling from pinprick thorns.

I start to laugh. She shoots me a dark, humiliated glance, and I understand something: This walk was meant to be romantic, a pleasant, seductive pre-twilight stroll through country spring. But I can’t stop laughing—at myself, at her—and, in a while, she is sitting in muddy undergrowth laughing too, a big, hearty, healthy laugh that I haven’t heard in years. She looks comical and also oddly beautiful, in her rough-cut way—this fiercely uptight, honest, dauntless, handsome woman whose reserve has blown its cover.

“Oh, sweetie! I’m sorry!” But I can’t stop giggling. Sitting in the ooze of a milky-stalked weed, hands and clothes grimed, she stares at me in an enraged sort of humor.

“It’s never the way it’s supposed to be, Chick.”

“What?” I gasp.

“Life.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way it
is
supposed to be—did you ever think of that?—just not the way we plan it.”

“Mmmm,” she says, grudgingly. “Well, maybe. I guess.”

Boz runs through the brush between us, spattering her chin. There is slime in my hair, sludge smearing the seat of my pants. He goes off in pursuit of something else and Bren looks at me, shrugs, grins. She wipes her face, reaches with the same hand to intertwine her fingers with mine, until both our hands are wet with wet dirt and her thumb caresses my palm firmly, very gently.

“Face it, Chick—you might really belong here.”

“Here?”

“Sure. Deep in the mud, with me.”

Mmmm, I say, avoiding her eyes. Then look and smile and imitate her, grudgingly: Well, maybe. I guess.

“Want to keep guessing? Or would you like to test it out?”

“Bug off, Bren. You sound like some slave-driving jock coach, issuing an ultimatum.”

“So what?”

“So
what?
”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I
am.”

“Oh come on. It’s not quite as simple as that.”

She takes both my hands in hers, swings our arms playfully.

“Tell me then, Chick,” she teases. “Tell me how complex it is.”

I pull away, annoyed. “You’re a pain in the ass, Bren! Has it ever once crossed your mind that maybe, just maybe, it’s not all up to
you?
Maybe
I
need to feel a little power around all this, too! Maybe
I
need to do some of the choosing!”

“Okay,” she grumbles, smile fading. “Choose away. I mean, take your time.”

She sighs.

So do I.

We look at each other sullenly. Brambles are beginning to pierce denimed thighs, a twilight chill sets in. Boz approaches panting blissfully, speckled with mud, leaves, burrs, thorny twigs. Bren wraps the disentangled leash carefully around her arm and stands. Reaches gently to help me up. My cheek finds her shoulder and for a moment we hug, stand apart, then our eyes meet; we are both frightened and hopeful, I think, and more than a little hurt.

She turns for home, whistles briefly for Boz until he follows, and I do too.

She stops once to wait for me. We walk side by side in softly burgeoning darkness.

Take your time, she mutters again. So quietly I can barely hear it. Take your time. We’re on the same side. Good for one, good for all. Team spirit—that’s what it means.

I know, then, that I love her still.

*

DeKuts said once that real strength bends, Bren tells me later, serving spring water with slices of lime on a clean, soft-lit patio. More like a phantom than a barbell. It changes form. Sometimes it masquerades. Masquerades even as its apparent opposite.

“DeKuts?
That woman-hating old bastard?
He
said a thing like that?”

She nods. “He was rotten, in a lot of ways. But he
knew
some things!”

“I guess so.”

Pretty weird to remember it, she murmurs. After all these years. “I don’t think I understood the first thing about what he meant, though—not back then.”

“Now?”

“Oh, sure. Now I think I understand
exactly
what he meant. Which is probably my pride showing, and not my common sense.”

“I don’t know, Bren. I’d say common sense is one of your strong points.”

“Well, maybe.” She smiles a little. “Let’s just say it gets me through certain patches of my life. But it’s not what gets me to a—an odd phenomenon. Oh, hell. Words fail me.”

It’s a physical thing with Bren, the turning of thought: a sweating and a grinding, and then a light, playful dance. She’d give up now if I allowed it, and the dance would take place in solitude, go forever unexpressed. I realized long ago that part of what I could bring to her was a catalyzing of expression. She might run away from that now, if I let her.

Insist, I tell myself. Don’t let her.

“What odd phenomenon, sweetie?”

She frowns. Then stands so quickly that Boz, encrusted with mud, resting happily on the patio between us, lifts his head and his license tags jangle. Stay there, she urges him. And me. Stay there, I’ll be right back. I want to show you something.

We do. I hear her rummaging in the house. The crickets have started to chorus, a high pitch that buzzes, ceases, begins again. There are a couple of stars in the sky, which is not quite night-dark yet. I make a wish. Boz jangles lightly beside me, and sighs.