Flat Water Tuesday (24 page)

In the last year I had taken on more and more shoots inside South Africa, which was comfortable, in many ways easier to navigate than the States. I had quietly turned down shoots in Russia (tiger); India (tiger again); and most recently, one in the Himalayas (tahr) purely because getting myself there with all my equipment, working out the visas and the food and the overland travel was just too uncomfortable. I had been doing the hardcore assignments for a while and I’d had enough.

Instead, I took on pieces like the sardine run off of the very developed city of Durban (really just a more run-down version of Miami), a shoot I could have easily outsourced to a South African crew but May in Durban was
far
nicer than May in rainy Cape Town. My next shoots were going to be on Table Mountain (kwagga) and maybe—
maybe
—in the Kruger National Park (an elephant relocation that would take place not far from the clean, air-conditioned chalets they offered visitors). It was easy work. Dream work. But watching Carolyn edit the shark footage, I felt no yearning whatsoever to be anywhere but where I was. With her, steps away from a shower and a comfortable bed. Our bed.

My current self would have disgusted my younger self.

But I wasn’t about to tell Car any of this, just out of pure, dog-stupid stubbornness.

*   *   *

Fall term was suddenly over and it was time to write the first exams of the year. The mood on campus shifted and everyone became preoccupied and brooding. Connor holed up in the Rowing Cottage desperately trying to pass all his courses. Even if he was a quadruple legacy to Harvard and a Junior National team member, they could not take him if he was actually failing classes, and his board scores were a complete joke.

I spent this down time studying, sleeping, running and studying some more. The exams were harder than any of the tests I’d taken back at home and I wasn’t taking any chances. After I finished the last of them—AP chemistry, an upgrade of the course I had taken in Niccalsetti Senior School—I wandered into town, hoping I’d find somebody on the team to hang out with. I hit it lucky. Ruth was in the Station Shop, alone and reading. The Station Shop was Fenton’s idea of a café: it served all the usual coffee concoctions and also ice cream and snacks for the tourists. Most of the kids preferred the Pizza Garden, where they could get away with smoking if they were careful. At this time of year the teachers were too swamped to come into town and patrol the place. For all they cared we could be ordering shots and shooting up in the corners. I knew better than to look for Ruth there.

A jagged row of icicles outside the Station Shop window dripped and sparkled in the weak, white sun. I could hear the fat, melting drops slapping the wet snow. I came into the shop wet from the cold and Ruth turned away from me when she saw me. She was poring over a black-spined Penguin paperback.
The Brothers Karamazov
. She was actually reading it on her own steam. I knew this because our English exams were over. I sat down in front of her and she tried to ignore me, then looked up and sighed. “Can we please, please, please not talk about crew? Or the team? Or training?”

“Okay … Are you done with all your exams?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to talk about them either.”

“What are you doing over Thanksgiving break?”

“Definitely not a good topic for discussion.”

“Tell me something I don’t know about you then,” I said in exasperation. “You know all about me. I don’t know anything about you.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at the square of light on the floor. “Like what?”

“Anything.”

“Just sit there for a second, Rob. I’m busy reading this. I have one more page and it’s over.”

I liked watching her read. She looked pale and exhausted and she moved with a quiet deliberation. I wanted to reach out and touch her but resisted the impulse. After a few minutes she closed her book, slipped it in her bag, then took a breath. “I think I love my father more than my mother.”

It was a surprise to hear that. I was expecting her to tell me to go away. “Yeah? And, so…? How come?”

She stood up abruptly, clearly ready to go. I followed her outside into the afternoon cold. The flagstones leading from the shop door were dark and muddy with footprints. We walked a little way along the road and then headed toward the school. We cut across the last lawns in front of the town and started down the hill leading to the river.

“What do you want out of life?” Ruth suddenly asked me.

Her questions were all over the place but the answer was easy. “I want to be untouchable, the way the guys on the team are untouchable. The way Connor is untouchable.”

“Why is he?”

“The same way you are. Because you’re rich. Because you’re smart and have connections and tradition and you’re everything everyone aspires to back home only they can’t even visualize or imagine it so they’ll never have it.”

“It’s just luck, Rob. It’s not about being special at all.”

“Do you want to know something I’ve found out in the last month?”

“No. You’re going to talk about crew and I can’t bear it.”

“People want something more and more the closer it gets to them. As long as it’s just out of reach, you want it like you’ve never wanted anything, because you can see it so clearly. You can smell it. Until you can’t imagine wanting anything else.”

“You think being on a team is like that?”

“I think winning is like that. And leaving home behind. Leaving the past behind and starting again, somewhere else. Being a whole new person.”

“Do you really think you can leave the past behind just like that?” She smiled, as if she pitied me. “And what happens if you get what you want? What happens then?”

“The past is dead, Ruth. It’s over. You have to be able to dump it.”

“I hope so. For both our sakes.” She stopped midway down the hill, her fingers hooked in the cuffs of her coat. I looked over the river with her, saw the school in a sparkling haze through the trees.

“Here’s what I know about leaving the past behind and being close to things you want,” she said. She still hadn’t turned her eyes to me. “When my parents got divorced—separated, sorry, they got divorced later—they told me right before a cocktail party they were throwing for some German conductor. I was in the kitchen of the old apartment in New York and my mother came in with a big smile on her face. She asked me what time it was. Then she asked me what I thought about her leaving Daddy.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I was holding my balance, facing her on the wet hill.

“I should have pulled her hair out. Instead, I said that I thought her leaving Daddy was a bad idea. There were all these people walking in and out who were there to help with the bar and the hors d’oevres and everything. Then the caterers arrived and my father came out of his room and I thought that if I pretended my mother hadn’t asked me that question, then everything would be fine. And since Mom was doing the exact same thing, and Daddy didn’t even know we’d spoken, we could
all
pretend things were fine, and that’s what we did.” Ruth’s face was getting red in the cold.

The good thing was that I’d found something to say. “Ruth?”

“What?”

“I once went to this funeral where the dead person’s brother got into a fight with one of the mourners. The brother hit him so hard that the guy threw up.”

“That’s pretty unreal, Carrey.”

The story was true. Tom hit me so hard that I had to go out behind the hearse we’d rented for Wendy and puke while they finished putting dirt all over her.

I was walking backward now and pulling Ruth down the hill with me. She was having trouble with her balance. I was lower than her now, my boots digging into the snow. I was unbuttoning her coat. Her lips were cold and her mouth was warm and tasted like coffee and something else. Hope, maybe. I slipped and we fell but it’s funny how sometimes you don’t mind the cold.

*   *   *

Connor received a video in the mail from Warwick a few days after we came back from Thanksgiving break. The five of us assembled in the Rowing Cottage to watch it.

“Warwick has three Junior National team guys on the boat,” Connor informed us in a monotone. “Eddie McFarlane, a cox named Brendan Cooper, who is a total psycho, but that’s beside the point, and Tony Brickman, the captain, who has hated my guts since we went to Trinity together in kindergarten. I hate to admit it but Brickman is good—he has a place near my parents’ house in Osterville and he’s a beast, he’s the
missing link
. Their coach, by the way, is on his way to Princeton to take over the freshman crew.”

The video flickered to life on the TV screen. It had been shot from the bow of a coaching launch. You could see how fast Warwick’s crew was by the distance between the puddles left by their oars in the water. They were smooth and ominous looking. There was absolutely no sound, just frame after relentless frame of their perfect form. I allowed myself to consider if we were up to competing against a boatful of champion returners.

We watched for two minutes and then Connor shut off the machine, popped out the video and dropped it in the garbage. The message was clear. It had been a mistake to watch that video and see how good their boat was when the Fenton God Four hadn’t even been formed. I hadn’t rowed one stroke with these kids. I hadn’t even been officially selected yet. It was too late, though. I looked around the Rowing Cottage. Everyone was subdued. The video had done exactly what Warwick intended; we were intimidated.

WINTER

19.

Only two rowers came back from Christmas break early; Connor Payne and me. My father didn’t raise an eyebrow when I said I was going back a week before the start of winter term. He handed me some cash, told me to call the bus station myself and not to ask for any more operating capital until the end of February.

I took the bus out to Albany with my bag next to me on the seat. The bus smelled like old, stale food. The seats were mostly empty but a guy got on and came and sat directly across the aisle from me. He put his boots up on the seat next to him and pulled his wool watchman’s cap down over his eyes. It was snowing outside while we cut through the darkness. Once, the guy rolled his hat up and gave me that deadeye look you get from ex-cons. Finally he asked if I had a cigarette and when I shrugged and shook my head, he rolled the hat back down and went back to sleep. I had to switch to two more buses before I got to Fenton. Fifteen hours of travel in all, half of it through sleet.

When we hit the town, I was let off opposite the Fox and Fiddle Inn. I could look right across the street at the glowing windows and the people inside dressed up at the bar. I walked down the main road swinging my bag, thankful for the fresh air. I crossed the front soccer fields to the school in the clear dark and the air had a real bite to it. I ate in the snack bar, collapsed into bed and slept for eighteen hours straight. I awoke to watch the numbers on my bedside clock flip by 6:00
P.M.
I swung my feet to the floor and shed my blanket, felt the freezing dusk air brush away the warmth of my long sleep. I pulled on my stiff running pants, my T-shirt, sweatshirt, and running shoes, and trudged into the weirdly silent hall breathing the odor of old showers and Lysol that would probably never leave that building until they tore it down.

I ran stiffly down the main walk and passed the Rowing Cottage. There was Connor, sitting idly on the front steps leading into the cottage, as if he was enjoying a warm sunny day rather than the blustery cold of late December in Fenton, Connecticut. He looked up at me as if he barely recognized me or remembered me.

“Carrey. Long time no see.”

“What are you doing back here?”

He reached into his sweatshirt, pulled out a letter. “Reading the mail. Catching up with my affairs of state. How was your vacation?”

“It was all right.”

“You have a good time with the folks?”

“Yeah. What about you?”

“Do you really use that word?”

“What word?”

“‘Folks.’ I asked you how your
folks
were and you didn’t call me on it. Where’d they find you, Carrey?” He squinted in a sudden hard gust of wind that came off the river, and stood up. He held out the letter as if looking at it for some sign of hidden value. He waved it in the air. “From my dad. What a man. What a towering figure. Fuck him.” Connor stuffed the missive into the pocket of his sweatpants. “Let’s run to the boathouse, see if Channing opened it for us.”

We started out at half speed, the wind blowing against us. Connor labored beside me, slipped once and swore. When we hit the main drive of the school leading to Route 7, I pushed up our pace. I felt the air in my chest flow ragged suddenly and I pressed by him but I knew he was directly behind me. I could hear his quick, harsh breaths. When I saw the boathouse rising out of its own narrow, unplowed drive, I made for it, my arms swinging, my hands unclenched and free. Behind me, Connor slipped again and a quick, rasping sound escaped from his throat. In ten paces I had beaten him. I touched the boathouse door and rattled the icy lock. He bent over, put his hands on his knees, and sucked the air in rattling gulps. Then he stood, patted my shoulder. “Good job.” He tried the lock himself, clearly irritated. “Channing told me he’d open this up for me.”

“He probably forgot. Who wants to work out in this weather anyway?”

“True. We’re supposed to be on vacation.” His nose was running and he pushed his hand across it. He walked away from the boathouse doors, looked out at the lonely drop to where the dock would be in a few months’ time. The gray sky seemed hushed and expectant above. Connor stared at the river, which had yet to freeze, mesmerized by the black water running by us. I breathed its cool, living smell.

“So what did it say?”

“What did what say?”

“The letter you were waving around.”

“Oh, that. My father dropped me a note. He wished me well for the winter term and informed me that he and my mom will be in London for the foreseeable future. If I need anything, I’m welcome at my grandmother’s. I love that.”