Letters to Nowhere (31 page)

“When did you get here?” I asked her.

“You weren’t at practice and neither was Bentley and you didn’t answer your phone, so I called Jordan and he told me what happened and then came and picked me up. I tried to wake you up, but you were out cold.”

My eyes filled up with tears again. “They were drinking, Blair. Why did they have to drive home? My dad was the one driving. But they were both drinking. How did this happen? Did he tell her he was fine and she believed him? I hate him for saying that and I hate her for believing. If that’s true, she picked him over me.”

“I’m so sorry, Karen,” Blair whispered. “I hate them, too. I really do.”

Tears ran down the sides of her face as she put her arms around me, and I let her hug me.

“I feel like a total psycho,” I whispered. “You should have seen me. Bentley’s going to kick me out for ruining his garage.”

She shook her head. “Bentley’s really worried about you. He feels terrible. I’ve never seen him like that before. He’s not angry at all. And Jordan…well, he’s here sleeping on your floor, so you already know what he thinks.”

I leaned over the side of the bed and looked down at Jordan, sound asleep, using the blanket and pillow I had used during my sleeping–in–the–closet phase. That seemed so long ago, and yet, had I really gotten any further in dealing with my life?

Blair squeezed my arm and settled back into the pillows. “Just get some sleep. Everything will be a little less dramatic in the morning. You’ll see that Bentley’s not going to give you the boot or send you to the psych ward.”

“Thanks for coming over,” I said. “Thanks for being here.”

After Blair drifted off to sleep again, I climbed off the bed and lay down on the floor beside Jordan. He stirred and then woke up with a start, like maybe he hadn’t planned on falling asleep.

“Can I ask you something?” I whispered.

His fingers fumbled around in the dark until he found my hand and squeezed it. “Anything.”

“Where do you put them? Your family, I mean. Jackie said I had to be putting my parents somewhere—to rationalize it—or I wouldn’t be able to function. Like people who say their loved one is in heaven, or they’ve moved on.”

“
They’re in a better place
…I hate when people say that,” Jordan mumbled, catching on to my question. “See, that’s the thing, I don’t think I’ve been able to figure out where to put them. And I am functioning, but I can’t sleep without nightmares either. I know I made it sound like I only
used
to get them, but you had so much to deal with already, I didn’t want to dump all my crap on you.”

“You have nightmares, too?”

He nodded. “I have them when I’m asleep and sometimes when I’m awake, visions that I can’t shake. And there have been so many times I’ve wanted to throw dozens of objects into a garage door and watch them shatter. And times when I’ve wanted to hop on a plane to London and look for some of them, even in pieces on the streets or somewhere.”

I turned my head, staring at his cheek in the dark. A pain the size of Texas sat on my chest. “So it’s just like me—you’ve put yourself somewhere, you haven’t put them anywhere?”

He shook his head. “When you first moved in here, I knew you were doing the same thing as me, seeing the same things I saw. And I wanted to get to know you because I thought maybe if we couldn’t get the job done ourselves…maybe you could put my people somewhere for me and I could sort yours out.” He released a breath he must have been holding for a while. “I haven’t done a very good job helping you, though, have I?”

A tear ran down the side of his face. I brushed it away with my fingertips, and then kissed his cheek. “I’d give you a perfect ten for effort.”

He rolled on his side, facing me. “This changes everything, doesn’t it? What you found out today?”

The ache in my chest grew from Texas–sized to Canada–sized. “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to know right now. Take some time to process.” Jordan gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “I should go to my own room before my dad sees me. Will you be okay?”

“I don’t know” was the most honest answer I could give.

He kissed my forehead and pulled himself up off the floor. “Wake me up if you need me, okay?”

“Okay.”

I returned to lying beside a snoring Blair for a little while. Then my stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast the previous day. After sliding off the bed and walking quietly into the hall, I headed downstairs. I didn’t make it to the kitchen, though. I got distracted after hearing the sound of glass moving across the garage floor. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

Bentley was pushing a giant broom, piles of glass and metal moving along with it. He wore flannel pants, gym shoes, but no shirt. My eyes zoomed right in on the scar on his bicep from surgery years ago. An injury that surely included Anna sitting by his side and holding his hand, and now there was no one. How could I be angry with him for not wanting me to hurt more than I already was?

His back was turned to me now, and I could see black ink on his lower back. A tattoo. It looked like several lines of writing, but I couldn’t make out the words. And I was beginning to feel extremely embarrassed about my tantrum earlier and debated sneaking back into the house.

No such luck. He turned around right then and the broom froze.

“I’m sorry about the garage.” My face heated up as I slid on my flip–flops by the door and walked all the way inside.

“It’s okay,” Bentley said with a shrug.

I glanced around, spinning in a circle, taking everything in and feeling none of the heavy emotions I’d felt in here earlier. “It’s kind of like turning on the lights in a haunted house and realizing it’s just a bunch of…
stuff,
” I said.

Bentley found a bucket, and after setting his broom down, he flipped it over and nodded for me to sit down. I stared at it, thinking of that day in laundry room with Jordan when he had made me say it out loud…
my parents are dead
. Why couldn’t they just be dead? Why did I have to put them somewhere?

I sat down and Bentley pulled over a stool to sit on. “It was never my intention to keep the real details from you forever, even if your grandmother would have preferred that. I just didn’t think you were ready to hear it yet.”

I stared at my hands. “I don’t think anyone is ever ready to hear that.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“I don’t know how to stop hating them.” My voice shook more with every word and when the tears tumbled out, I didn’t try to hide them like I normally would with my coach. “I feel like I’m going to be angry forever. All these months I’ve just thought of their accident as a really bad thing that happened and something I had to work through, but I’ve never felt like a victim. Until now. I’m the victim of them being idiots. I’m the thing that’s left in the aftermath. Aren’t people wired to think about these things when they become parents? Shouldn’t they have said, ‘You know what? We might kill ourselves driving drunk and then Karen would be an orphan. Maybe we shouldn’t drive?’”

“You’re right. They shouldn’t have been driving,” Bentley said. “And you have every right to be angry, and no one should tell you otherwise, and no one can tell you how long it should take for that anger to fade.”

I looked down at a broken trophy near my feet. “It felt good to throw stuff, though.”

Bentley laughed a short laugh. “I bet it did.”

I thought about his albums and the affectionate way Bentley had talked about Anna and Eloise in the garage a few weeks ago. “Do you think it’s wrong for me to hate them? It seems like you’re supposed to put people on a pedestal after they’re gone and make them sound even better than they were, but I haven’t been able to do that, and I really can’t do it now.”

“I don’t think anything you’re feeling can be labeled as wrong,” he said. “It is what it is.”

“Why did you want to keep the autopsy report from the media? I know why my grandma would want that, and my dad’s law firm, but you?”

He nodded like he’d been expecting me to ask that question. “When I heard about your parent’s accident, I was devastated for you, of course, but I knew my head was much clearer than your grandmother’s or anyone emotionally close to your parents. And I knew whatever story was told by the media would haunt you for the rest of your life. Think about every televised gymnastics competition you’ve ever seen, think about the ones Stevie’s been in. Do they ever forget to mention that her dad was an Olympic sprinter?”

I shook my head and started chewing on my thumbnail, anticipating the fact that I was about to implement Jordan’s Plan A. It was time. I needed to know what he really thought of me. “Did you feel guilty about keeping it secret from me? Is that why you’ve been letting me learn new skills even if I’m not ready to compete them? Even if I might not ever be ready?”

Bentley looked a bit surprised by that question, then he nodded toward the door indicating we should go back into the house. “Let me show you something.”

I followed him into the living room and sat down on the couch. Bentley opened his laptop case and pulled out a folder. After sifting through it, he slid a piece of paper in front of me. It was a list with twenty–four names.

“These are the gymnasts that competed a tucked full on beam at the last Olympics,” Bentley said. “Now tell me how many of those gymnasts won an individual medal.”

I scanned the paper, reading each name carefully. “One.”

“Now tell me how many were from teams that made the finals. How many were in the top eight teams?”

I was pretty familiar with the previous Olympic results in the sense that I had basically memorized all of it. Me and every other competitive gymnast in the country. “Um…all but four.”

“Nina Jones wants you to add that skill so she can put you first at Worlds and get a solid score for the team,” Bentley said.

Nina Jones wants me on the World team? This was news to me
.

“What’s wrong with that?”

He pointed to the one name on the paper of a girl who was the current Olympic champ on balance beam. “If Nina Jones acts excited about your progress next week, it’s because she wants you to be the safe bet that everyone forgets a month after Worlds. I want you to win.”

I was too shocked to say anything. My mouth fell open but no words came out. Here I was, deciding whether or not to jump into NCAA competition or compete at Nationals, which was nothing compared to the level of World championships, and Bentley had plans for me to medal. Was I in an alternate reality?

“And what separates you from being first up and last up is probably going to come down to all those tiny details like landing with your chest higher on a tucked full, not pausing on your connections on beam, which I know Stacey has been drilling into you even more lately,” he said. “And it’s not because I feel sorry for you or because I feel guilty. You are so much better than Coach Cordes made you out to be, Karen.”

My eyes traveled to the paper and then back to Bentley. “Is that what Stevie meant? She was so pissed off that I didn’t want to brag to Coach Cordes about my new skills.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Stevie’s very bright. She notices things. It took about a week of coaching you for me to realize that Coach Cordes had a World Champion in his gym and it wasn’t Stevie Davis. You take correction better than any athlete I’ve ever worked with. I’ve thrown all these corrections at you and you’ve done everything—the handstands on bars, all your amplitude on beam, your vaulting technique. And I’m not trying to put down all the work Cordes put into coaching you. There’s nothing small about getting a full gymnastics ride to UCLA, but I’m a technician, Karen, my coaching is more than a gut feeling about one kid having more confidence or being more of a fighter or learning skills rapidly. Those things are important, but they can be taught, and they come from mastering good technique.”

“You weren’t just trying to let me learn on my own that added risk isn’t worth it sometimes?”

“Of course I want you to learn that, but also that it
is
worth it sometimes. As long as you’ve prepared and you’re ready. I don’t like flashy for the sake of being flashy, and I doubt you do either, given your attention to detail. You speak my language when it comes to gymnastics—logical, mathematical, and realistic,” he said. “But you scared me when you threw that triple on the tumble track, and I thought Jordan and his daredevil stunts would rub off on you and you’d use that method to cope.”

I bit my lip and didn’t respond, because he had kind of nailed it. “I don’t think Jordan uses that as a method of coping. I think he’s just naturally that way.”

Bentley laughed under his breath. “You’re probably right about that. I was the same way at his age. I had a few injuries outside of the gym that almost got me kicked off the National Team.”

I sat up straighter. “Really?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m
not
giving you details.”

“What am I doing in Chicago? What are my routines?”

“What do you want to do?” he asked, like he meant it. Like he might actually leave it up to me. Two days ago I would have been elated to hear this.

I exhaled and leaned into the couch. “I don’t know what I want. It feels like everything’s different now.”

“I haven’t had a chance to say this before,” Bentley said. “But I will now, since you already know what I think of your gymnastics potential. I think you have all kinds of other potential, too. You can stay here with me and Jordan even if you don’t want to go to Chicago and even if you don’t want to be an elite gymnast anymore and even if you decide not to go to UCLA. Your grades are fantastic. You’re smart, you can get an academic scholarship. You can do a lot of things. Actually, that’s what your mom wanted for you.”

This got me to sit up straight again. “My mom told you she wanted me to quit gymnastics?”

He shook his head. “She talked to me in December, requested a meeting. She started off by saying she knew you weren’t going to be Stevie Davis and she was afraid, even though you’d signed your letter of intent, that any positive progression during the season would make you set your eyes on going to Worlds again and that you’d get your heart broken not making the World Team. She wanted you to officially resign as an elite, to scale back on practices, maybe go to regular school, experience life a little more, but only if I thought that college gymnastics was going to be the best you could do. She wasn’t lowering her expectations of you, she just didn’t know any better, and honestly, she hadn’t been told anything but that for years by Coach Cordes.”