Flat Water Tuesday (6 page)

She lay down beside me. “The tapes are good. What I’ve seen. I skipped around. The footage is really … yeah … top notch.”

“I hope they think so at the channel.”

“They will.”

I rolled over on my side and looked at her, reached out and touched her face and she blinked. She took my hand and held it between us in a neutral soul brother handshake. “The water was cloudy in some of the shark sequences but I’ve already seen the shots we can use. It’s better than we could have hoped for. Really.”

I pulled myself closer to her and she didn’t move away. I went to kiss her and she put her hands up, shielded herself. “No, Rob. Don’t.”

She rolled over in the bed and turned off the light, plunged us into the cold, blue glow of the sleepy city, the sounds of the cars and the trucks outside new and unfamiliar and invasive after weeks on the Durban coast. I looked at the outline of her neck in the dark, and then came closer, pressed myself against her and rested my hand on her waist. She shifted slightly, quickly, claimed her half of the bed, more than her half of the quilt. “You get to sleep here just for tonight. Tomorrow you’re couching it. We have things we need to talk about, Rob. So keep that hand where it is.”

Silence reigned.

Then she exhaled heavily. “If you do that again you’ll be on the couch right now. I’m not kidding. You are
so
not getting laid tonight.”

I rolled over on my back and looked up into the darkness. I closed my eyes and willed sleep to return. I listened to the sounds of the loft. The push-out window creaked, and the faucet dripped. Water slushed through the pipes in the wall. The dishwasher whirred and hummed in the kitchen. The fridge kicked on, kicked off. A siren began to whine a block away. These city sounds. These American sounds.

She yawned and then said, “You were talking in your sleep, by the way.”

“What was I saying?”

“Something about rowing.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know.” She rocked back and forth, claimed yet more of the duvet from me. “You were going on about somebody named Channing. Who’s he?”

I smiled in the dark. Then I thought about Perry and his letter and stopped smiling. “It’s a long story, Car. Go to sleep.”

4.

The boathouse looked like a barn with an elongated top floor. It stood back from the river and was built to appear intimidating. The heavy outside sliding doors opened to the boats and the oars and you walked by them to get to another set of sliding doors that led to the tanks—two stagnant troughs of water with sliding seats and outriggers next to them. Here was where a rower’s form was hammered into him, where unforgiving mirrors reflected back every weakness in a place that smelled of dankness and mold and waterborne rot. There was only one window, high up and filthy, that barely let in any light. The way up to the attic rooms was easy to miss, just a simple wooden door, like a cabinet door, that opened to a narrow set of stairs.

I arrived early, before the others, to the first meeting of FSBC to get my bearings and not look like such a newcomer. At first I thought that the ergometers and weight machines would be up here, but soon figured out they were in the basement, a sequestered hell I would come to know all too well. The top floor consisted of the meeting room, such as it was, and Channing’s office. His real office. He had a carrel in the English department, but this was where he existed. The office looked over the river, and it was the kind of functional room you’d find in an army HQ. A wooden desk. A longer table near the desk. A computer that Channing obviously never turned on, steel filing cabinets. Pictures of the English Henley, banners, posters of races gone by and a crimson and white wooden oar suspended in the darkness—Channing’s captain’s oar from Harvard. The pictures and trophies in one of the cabinets looked neglected. He had one entire shelf just for tools. And above and around that, books. Hundreds of them. Huddled black paperbacks, waterlogged leather-bound classics, yellowing cloth-bounds, worn hardcovers. The wisdom of the ages moldering away.

I looked, but didn’t dare step inside. Amazingly, his office door just hung open. I had come from a school where everything was locked against the students; offices were protected by steel-clad doors and teachers walked the hallways with keys around their necks. Feared and hated as he was, it probably never occurred to Channing that a student might be insane enough to invade his personal space.

Nothing in his office, aside from the books and that oar, said anything about Channing himself or indicated he had a life outside the school. There were plenty of rumors. One was that he had been a criminal lawyer before Fenton and had quit for any of a thousand reasons: a client had committed suicide, he had insulted his boss, he’d been sued, he’d been disbarred. He lived off campus in an old white farmhouse—that was a fact—and his wife from the scumbag lawyer days was long gone. That was another fact. He had inhabited that office for thirty years and had either never thought to, or purposefully declined to, put anything personal in there.

*   *   *

The meeting room was all raw timber and rising damp and had the distinct feel of a fortress about it. It seemed intentionally stripped of any extravagance and was the kind of room that was always hot and close in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter. Uncomfortable by design, it had been built using the same architectural philosophy that went into constructing a monastery, or an interrogation room.

John Perry, Chris Wadsworth, Ruth Anderson and Connor came stomping up the stairs for the inaugural meeting. No one said anything to me, but Connor lifted his chin in acknowledgment when he saw me. His mouth was still swollen from our fall and his torn ear looked crusty and painful. I unconsciously touched my bruised ribs. They were followed by the returning JV four and about a dozen more kids who were going to try to make the team in the spring—sophomores and hopeful juniors from the club boats who only rowed at a recreational level, not competitively against other schools. Other students wanted to be here, but Channing was only interested in the contenders for the JV and Varsity boats. Mid-September and he was already calling us together for a sport that wouldn’t start officially until March. For top-level rowers, there was no off-season. Crew was always a reality.

When Channing stalked in, rumpled, mistrustful and radiating contempt, the room quieted down immediately. He looked like something that had stood up to the elements too long and was starting to fall apart. He was the best coach at Fenton. And the most despised. The way he looked at you, you knew he wasn’t missing anything. He was tall, still limber and easy in his movements for his age, which must have been early sixties. He taught a vicious AP English class and was a master of the pop quiz and the brutal exam.

He slapped his briefcase down on the long desk at the front of the room and removed his sheaf of notes, thumbed them for a full minute while he gathered his thoughts and made us sit there scratching, coughing, trying not to look at one another. That torn bouquet of yellow legal-sized papers had been stapled together enough times so the top corner looked like it had been chewed. He held these notes by his side while we waited and I could see lines and lines of his penciled handwriting. Even I could see he carried those notes just for show. They hadn’t made the school big enough for him. And so we looked at Mr. Charles Channing and he looked back at us and beyond us to the world outside the boathouse and I’m not sure which he liked less.

Seated in a folding metal chair in front of Channing’s desk, facing us, was Ruth Anderson, the coxswain of the God Four and the first girl to make the team ever, flouting eighty years of history. She was small, and her hands and wrists were those of an aristocrat; blue veined and bony. The bird-wing ridges of her collar bones were prominent and she had long, dark, feline hair. That year she weighed ninety pounds during the winter and dropped to eighty-four in the racing season. Connor sat next to her and the message was clear. Only the two of them had secure seats on the team. The rest of us would have to fight for them. Nothing was guaranteed.

Channing finally cleared his throat and set the notes down on the table. The gangling bodies in the room hunched forward, as if we were at the start of a session of prayer to a higher power. He began.

“I’ve called you together to remind you of some of the things you might consider before we gear up for the spring term. It is right that I let the students from the club boats understand how we work here. Some of you may think this meeting is premature. I assure you, it is not.”

No other teacher talked like Channing. It took me weeks to realize that he was not being ironic, that this was really the way he spoke. His was the dialect of a lost aristocracy.

He sighed, glanced at Connor and Ruth, rested his eyes on me. “Understand that the first boat at Fenton is a four-man shell with cox. As is the second boat. There are no eights, as there are in the clubs.” The kids from the club boats—the lower orders—looked on without reaction. They knew this. So did the returners. I wondered if this homily was for my benefit.

“This means there are only eight places in the Fenton School Boat Club. One club rower will be named our spare, but will not row with us. So if you do want to make this team, you will have to compete against one another.”

I raised my hand as he said this and he smiled. “We should also get to know Mr. Robert Carrey. Whom I had almost forgotten. Please stand, Mr. Carrey. Let’s see you.”

I stood up and he pulled his spectacles from his jacket pocket. “Mr. Carrey is one of this year’s PG recruits and hails from Niccalsetti, New York. He is a single sculler, a very successful one. We believe this has prepared him well for rowing in a four.”

“That’s just it, Coach. It has not,” I said.

Channing paused and the room tensed. “Excuse me, Carrey?”

“Rowing in a single is not good preparation for rowing in a four, Mr. Channing. I don’t know anything about rowing in a four.”

Channing straightened combatively. “Is that so, Mr. Carrey? Could this be an oversight, do you suppose? Let us see. In a single, a sculler—an oarsman—uses two oars. But in a four, the rower uses one large oar. This is the essential difference. Yes, I can see how this might be initially difficult for you to adjust to.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, please, this is important. In a four, the coxswain steers from the stern and the oarsmen each have one oar. We also do not row pairs by the way. Students flip pairs, you see, and drown, which is always irritating. Fours are more stable.”

“Nobody told me this before and I—”

“Nobody
told
you that we only row fours at Fenton? Even after you were
accepted
?” And then I knew for sure he had prepared this. That Connor had told him about our fight and that Channing meant to finish the argument once and for all. I’d walked right into it.

“Carrey, did you not carefully consult the admission package that was sent to you
to learn what kind of boats were rowed here at Fenton
? Or call the school to enquire? Or examine the school catalogue, which we print at great expense and send out to anyone who asks for it? I am quite sure there are only pictures of fours in that catalogue. We do mention this little affectation of ours. Very clearly.”

I waited. I could feel the blood rushing to my head and my hands and willed myself to calm down, to not blow up and have a tantrum. He sensed it and prepared himself.

“Coach, the letter that was sent to me said that I was accepted because of my wins in the single. That was very clear. I could even bring my own boat, it said.”

“Well, I am glad we can clarify this for you, Carrey. You are
permitted
to row your single from time to time on my river, when I say so, but my top team is a
four
. It is referred to as the varsity four and some may call it the God Four but there is
only
the four. We have a JV four. We have a club four, yes, and an armada of eights for the clubs as well. But the varsity four is the
only
team that we offer up for competition at Fenton at the varsity level. Is this clear, now? Is there anything I have left out?”

“I won’t row in a four.” This came out almost as a whisper, because I was trying to keep my voice down.

Channing put a hand to his ear. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t row in fours, Coach. I don’t row with other people. I’m a single sculler.”

“Carrey, I believe you mean you haven’t
yet
rowed in a four. Do not be overly concerned. You can easily learn. We have faith in you. We believe you can make the transition from two oars to one and row as part of a crew. Connor Payne, for instance, is a fine single sculler, too, but he is also the stroke seat in the four. I assure you, this is not difficult. Sculling will be a boon.”

“Coach, the problem is not me being
able
to do it. I don’t
want
to learn to row with three kids I don’t know. No offense, but that’s not—”

“None taken, Carrey, none taken. Do you think you are offending
us
? You are only offending yourself. We are trying to clarify things for you.”

“I’d like to race in the single.”

He slammed his hand down on the table. “
In what race
, Carrey? Against
whom
? What boarding school will you race against? Shall we have a special race just for you?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Channing, but I just don’t want to row in the four.”

“Then you are welcome to leave.” Channing pointed at the narrow staircase. “There’s the door, Carrey. Go. You can go right now. But I warn you if you leave this room, you will not be coming back.” He said this mildly but he kept his eyes on me. I found myself scooping up my bag to leave and then forced myself to stop. Because Channing meant it. I knew it and everyone else in the room knew it, too.

“If you want to row with us, Carrey, you will have to learn to row in the four. This could be a good change for you. A welcome change. Many single scullers row in the team boats. It is expected. It is not difficult. So think carefully about your next move and
do not sit down.
” He turned to the rest of the crew. “The God Four will again be facing Warwick this year.”