You Will Know Me (25 page)

Katie looked down at the table, its bleach-streaked whorls. She thought of Eric on the phone with her. The two of them plotting together. It was like finding him in bed with her, with anyone. Naked and ugly. It was worse. Why it was worse, she didn't know. It was.

“I don't want you near my daughter again,” she said, her voice a low growl. “Or my husband.”

Gwen smiled dimly, leaning against one of the booths.

“You can make me the bad guy if you want,” she said. “The tiger mom, the rich bitch. The husband stealer. That one's flattering. But I never got my kicks that way. I know where I want my energies invested. And Eric does too.”

She looked at Katie, eyes narrow and crackling.

“You don't know anything about him,” Katie said, tight and low but every word like a scream in her ear. “He brought you in for your sacks of cash. He works to keep you here for them.”

Gwen's face loosened a split second, a jolt of surprise, or hurt. “Look at you,” she said. “Well, I may not know everything about Eric, but I know about you. You've always wanted to play the selfless mom, the good sport, the one with the kid whose talents just fell in your lap. Like she was born a gold medalist and you just stood on the sidelines and clapped. But we both know it isn't like that.”

“Stay out of my daughter's business. You have—”

“What I have are resources. As you kindly pointed out, that's why you brought me on. That's why that smart, ambitious husband of yours found me, courted me, won my favor. So I could pull out my checkbook and make sure that racehorse of ours keeps running.”

“My daughter's not your goddamned horse. She's not anyone's horse.”

Gwen smiled, leaning back farther, resting her hand on the banquette behind her.

“But none of it works without a Devon,” she said. “A Devon lifts up the gym, raises everyone's game. Gives all those parents the delusion that they too could produce a Devon.”

A hot gust blew from the swinging kitchen doors but Katie felt herself shiver.

“She's not ‘a Devon.' She's my Devon. And she's not there to serve anyone else's fantasies.”

Gwen lifted an eyebrow, blond and precise.

“And this isn't a problem to solve, like a failing coach, bad equipment,” Katie said. “A boy died. A boy we all knew.”

Gwen sighed, her eyes returning to the ketchup-slicked dish bin beside them

“A boy died, yes. A pretty boy who made us all feel prettier.” She paused a moment, then looked back at Katie. Looked at her like she'd look at Lacey, and Lacey would tighten her braids. “And, from what Ron Wrigley tells me, the police stop investigating these hit-and-run cases in a few days. I mean, a few paint chips, what do they mean?”

They locked eyes for a moment. A moment that seemed to crackle and buzz between them. What they both knew and neither would say.

Finally, Gwen opened that perfectly painted mouth of hers. “You haven't asked me, but I really don't know what happened to poor Ryan Beck that night. It's not my business. All I know is it was my daughter's birthday.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Lacey was so glad Devon came to the party. It meant a lot.”

“Gwen—”

“It's a shame she had to leave before we even got to the presents. Though Devon's gift was very nice. Lacey wears those glitter bracelets constantly, even if they make her wrists itch.”

“Devon doesn't enjoy parties,” Katie said, the words coming automatically, not liking the feeling, the sound, the prickly edge of this. “She never stays for long.”

“She got a call right before she left. She sounded very anxious on the phone. But she promised she'd find a way. That's what she said. I guess she did. Find a way.”

The bad feeling, it was growing.

“You just follow my daughter around, do you? That's all any of you do. Do you think Devon has time for your little-girl parties?”

Hearing herself, her tone, the thickness of everything, Katie felt queasy.

“I saw her through the front window. Charging down the lawn like it was the vault runway,” Gwen continued. “I called after her. It didn't seem safe, at night. But she's very fast, as you know. Lacey should sprint with half her power.”

A loud crash from the kitchen, the sounds of bottles rolling, breaking.

“Luckily, you don't live very far. She was moving with great purpose. As if she had someplace she needed to be. I was the only one who saw her.” She paused, looking at Katie. “But no one will ever hear it from me.”

“There's nothing to hear,” Katie said, but in her head she was picturing it all. Her daughter dashing through the night, those soundless sneakers, all stealth and speed.

Gwen nodded as if she could hear Katie's thoughts.

“Katie, don't mistake me. I know my horse in this race,” she said. “We all do.”

“My daughter,” Katie repeated, “is not a fucking horse.”

“What I'm saying is don't worry, Katie. I'm taking care of it. That's what I'm here for.”

“To protect your investment.”

“Isn't that what parents do?” Gwen said, smiling. “When we're young, we don't know what we want. We're blobs. We need shaping.”

“She's shaping herself,” Katie said. No one ever understood.

Gwen shook her head. “They think they want things. Tits, sexy boyfriends, McGriddles every weekend. But they don't really know what these things mean. That's why we've got to want things for them, Katie. The right things.”

“I'm not like you,” Katie said. “I'm nothing like you.”

Gwen just smiled.

“It's funny. Teddy always says girl gymnasts are like horses, high-strung,” she said. “I was never a gymnast, couldn't even do a cartwheel. But horses. Well, I rode horses from the time I was five. Every day for years.”

“And here you are, still trying to ride horses.”

“My dad loved them,” Gwen said, not seeming to have heard. “He used to take me to the stables every day. My whole world was saddles, hay, bridles, and bits. Chantilly—that was my first horse, a ravishing OTTB mare.”

As she spoke, her face turned younger, softer.

“When I got her, she was lame on the right. Dad showed me how to use a rasp on her. File the flaring, nip the crack. After that, she never put a foot wrong. I rode her all the way to the jubilee. My dad was so nervous he bit the tip of his tongue clean off when I won.”

She looked at Katie, shaking herself from the reverie, or trying to.

“It's important that we do that,” she said. “
That's
important, Katie.”

“Do what? Gwen, you're—”

“Whenever I doubted myself, my dad would say, ‘Grab that dream by the hands, Gwennie. Clutch until the knuckles go white.'”

“Whose dream?”

“It doesn't matter whose dream it is,” she said. “Just that it's a dream.”

Katie stared down at her hands, the rock salt still under her nails. There were many things she wanted to say, like that she'd never had a dream for Devon, had only followed her daughter's desires. But then her thoughts snagged on that word,
desire
. That word that was all over Devon's essay. Desire, desire.
Now it is only desire that rules me
. Whatever desire meant to Devon. Whatever it had done to her.

“Gwen, you're wrong,” Katie said. “About everything. And this gym, you boosters, all of this—it's poison. It's poisoned everything. I'm going to BelStars now and I'm taking my daughter away from all the poison of that poisonous place.”

“As if
we
were the poison. It's us. It's me. You and Eric were delicate virgins when you arrived at BelStars all those years ago, right? Katie, that just doesn't fly with me. Eric
made
the boosters. The two of you
are
BelStars.”

“Not anymore,” Katie said. “You'll see how little we need you.”

The bell over the front door rang, and Gwen's gaze turned to it, the older couple walking inside.

“And Gwen,” Katie said. “I'm sorry your daughter's second-rate, second-string. I'm sorry she'll never be your elite, your Thoroughbred. Her legs aren't strong enough and soon practice won't matter anymore.”

It was as if Gwen didn't hear, and, the customers arriving at the hostess station, Gwen's eyes landed on the dish tub with the ketchup lapped up one side. She shook her head.

“Heather! Jeff!” she shouted, so loud and so sudden, Katie nearly jumped. “Come get the fucking tub. Get the fucking tub now.”

“I'm nothing like you,” Katie said again, wanting to say it a hundred times.

Gwen turned, as if surprised Katie was still there.

“No,” she said, a grim tug to her mouth. “You're much better.”

“I changed my mind,” Katie said. “I want him with me.”

Mr. Watts nodded as if it made some kind of sense, helping Katie rouse Drew from his sickly slumber, tug on his coat.

“Where we going, Mom?”

“The gym.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Watts followed her outside, Drew lagging behind, resting on the porch steps, tying his shoes.

“Are you okay?” Mr. Watts looked at her. She had no idea what he saw.

“Thanks for watching him.”

“I like him. I don't need any thanks.”

“Mr. Watts,” she said, looking at Drew on the front steps, pulling at the tongue on his sneakers, “you said something before. About the day Devon got hurt. The mower.”

“I did.”

“That you saw me. You said you saw me.”

“Standing at the screen door. You had your hands over your ears because of the mower. You were watching her run to her daddy. You always loved to watch her run.”

“You're remembering it wrong,” she said. “I wasn't at the door. I was in the kitchen and I heard her scream. Then I ran to the door. It was over by the time I got there. So you had it wrong.”

He looked at her. Her keys jingling in her hand, her body fixed and tight. She didn't move.

“Well,” he said, blinking slowly, “my memory isn't what it used to be.”

“No.”

“Memory can be a funny thing,” he added softly.

“You ready, Drew?” she called out, voice rasping.

He rose, and then began running toward her.

“Safe drive, Mrs. Knox,” Mr. Watts said as she hurried Drew to the car. “You be safe, okay?”

On the drive, she let Drew sit beside her in the front seat.

She was thinking of the first time she'd ever visited BelStars. Walking into that hallowed space. Seeing all those girls, the older ones, impossibly strong and fresh-faced, practice their floor routines. The music echoing from the old boom box Teddy used to use. Russian folk songs, high opera, tragic arias, erotic tangos. Bouncing, running, diving, propelling themselves into the air to music grim, dramatic, melancholic, carnal.

At the time, she'd thought how strange it was, all these little girls performing to such adult songs. Songs about things they couldn't possibly understand—songs of desire, longing, sorrow, passion, loss. What did they know of such feelings, the big emotions of life?

Slowly, Katie and Drew walked up the stands, to their usual spot, 13-J.

She didn't look at the other parents, the boosters, but she could hear them behind her, whispering excitedly, pointing and churring and chattering and pant-hooting, about the new beam coach, how three of her girls earned top spots on beam at the last qualifier and how Teddy must've poached her from EmPower, what a coup.

On the floor, bodies were moving—bounding, swooping, flicking, spinning. Girls on the ropes, climbing with ferocity. Girls on the bars, swinging layout flyaways, straddle backs, baby giants. As if nothing had happened. As if the last ten days had been a fever dream.

“Do I see sickled feet, missy?” a familiar voice rumbled. “Because those are deductions, my dear. The ugliest kind.”

Coach T., feet planted on a stack of orange mats, face red, mouth open,

Just a few hours before, he had been sitting across from her, pleading his case, pledging his troth. And now here he was, along with Amelise and Bobby V. and two new coaches, both with necks as thick as tree stumps, their log arms flipping girl after girl, their voices low and steady and constant.

“Swing! Swing! C'mon, strong. Strong.”

“C'mon, fivers! That's sad juice. Garbage in, garbage out.”

“Work your arms in the double lay, Cheyenne. Work straight. Head up, head up.”

All the shouts and grunts and squeaks, hands slamming on beam, feet punching the mat, the hiccup of the vault, the squeeze of the springs.

“Big smiles, no mistakes, Li'l Miss Weaver.”

“Come on, Jordan. Arms, arms, arms. Sell, girl, sell, perform.”

“Don't let me see it hurt. Remember: everything's beautiful, nothing hurts.”

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Katie felt the words shiver through her, and it was that moment that she saw Devon taking the beam, Teddy on the floor, approaching her.

Devon leaning down, hands on her knees, listening to him, nodding.

That's my daughter
, she thought.
Look at her. Look at that fawn-eyed little girl. She would never harm anyone
.
She would never do any of these things.

It's not possible
, she thought.
Drew's wrong. Gwen's wrong. Everyone's wrong.

She knew he'd arrived the minute she saw Devon straighten her spine, lengthen her form, shift her center ever so slightly to the rear of the gym.

Katie turned, and there Eric was, standing just inside the doors on the far end of the stands.

Face gaunt, hollow, eyes russet-ringed, he was watching Devon, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, the same jeans from last night, the knees darkened with dust.