Swimming (12 page)

Coach Coates looked out over the water and sighed, slowly chopping the air into neat slices with one hand:
Take them out one by one. They won’t know what hit them
.

I grasp the edge of the platform with my sturdy toes and watch them whiten. There are fifteen levels of muffled sound punctuated by bursts of sound, murmuring sound, last words between swimmers and their coaches, the best swimmers giving each other the
I’m going to win
leer. Champions walk around with Kansas champion swaggers, making a big to-do with their goggles, whipping their arms through the air like irregular propellers, shaking out their thighs in one smooth block of muscle. They don’t look at me. I have a stupid name and came with a guy in a collar, two clammy kids, and a gray, sweaty heart convict trembling somewhere outside.

Father Tim is standing on the other side of the pool, fidgeting with the program, looking down at his twisting nervous feet, which fills me with a biting pity and under that a roaring, volcanic rage:
Next time listen to me, God slave
. He doesn’t need a collar to look professional. Everything about him says priest: soft skin, gentle chin, the side part that stretches his springy hair across his unlined forehead, the white hands and the way he moves them as though he were wearing something with impressive sleeves.

At the first long whistle, I step onto the starting block. I crouch. My knees smell strongly of lime shaving cream. At the horn, I squeeze every single one of my muscles and spring into air.
Now
. My swim is tight, aggressive, strong, relentless. I touch in two whole body lengths ahead of the best swimmers in the state and I’m not even winded. It’s as if I no longer need air. I pull myself up and out, barely panting.

Timers get together in a huddle, whispering. I feel the glare of hundreds of sets of eyes studying me. I pop two almonds into my mouth, stretch all ten toes, lulled by the insular silence that exists when people realize that something’s just happened but they aren’t sure what. When it is announced I’ve broken the state record that Hanna Kia registered in the late seventies, that this time rivals national levels recorded earlier this year, my heart thoinks in my chest.

I hear people talking about cannonballs, flukes, one-shot wonders. I pay no heed.

I break a second state record in the 200 free.

Dot and Roxanne sit on their hands in the stands, jaws set. My eyes find theirs and hold. Blank looks with no obvious message inside. They think they are moving me with their thoughts, are afraid to break the spell.

Coaches who are not my coaches touch my shoulder blades and speak words of encouragement. Mediocre swimmers I’ve never met before give me a thumbs-up, the good ones carefully averting their eyes so as not to be damned. Everyone else moves out of my way, leaving a small circle of empty space around me. Father Tim blesses me in his head
one, two, three, four
. I ignore him, swooshing the almonds in my mouth, clicking the almonds against my teeth.

When I set a national high school record in the 100 butterfly, people start talking about the
Olympic trials
because next year is an
Olympic year
and maybe I could be an
Olympic hopeful, an Olympic
KANSAN.
Look at those numbers!
Coaches look at Father Tim with envy, one of the original sins. He tells me later it was one of the most exciting moments in his priestly existence, which he’d already explained to me was filled with the erratic bursts of pure joy that loving One God can give.

My mother is sitting in a Denny’s three blocks away reading easily solvable murder mysteries. Later, we find her in the car with her head leaning against the window, staring at the sky.
I prayed
, she says, when we tell her
. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and my prayers were answered
.

I should be happy, but I’m not. My happiness is dancing with something in a dark suit I don’t want to identify. They’re turning fast— bright, black, bright, black, my mind turning with them. I do not know what kind of creature I am. The deep fatigue of continuously being girl combined with the great width of an open future, the narrowness of individual fate, the shittiness of death, and the infinite immeasurable-ness of the human mind is making me shaky and bewildered and tired to the marrow of my bones.

Super Superior There Is But One

We’re sitting in the sitting room with the most celebrated Olympic Supercoach of all time: Ernest K. Mankovitz. I’m strongly wishing I couldn’t see his socks and the ginger-colored leg hairs curling out of the tops of them, but my mother has already informed me she’s noticed with significant use of her eyes. When he got here, he stood in the middle of the doorway, tan, with a white baseball cap on his head he immediately took off, leaving a crescent moon of deep dents on both sides of his ginger hair. He is short for a masculine man and tremendously fit; the hand that clasped mine squeezed so hard something creaked. I said
Hi
and waved, his excessive significance transforming me into an idiot.

I don’t look directly into his face, keep my eyes on the dent in his hair or one of his feet. Dot and I’d pulled Mom out of bed earlier, dressed her up in an attractive beige sack, tightening a dark brown leather belt in the middle as tight as we could, so it wouldn’t slide off and scare him away. We doubled the ration of vitamin C, supervising as she sipped an entire jug of frothy grimlock through a straw, and although she is sweating into the roots of her hair, she now has enough energy to pretend she has a collection of soft blouses in a highly ventilated walk-in closet with plush carpeting, because she instantly hadn’t liked him, the Mankovitz: his confident handshake, his steady gaze, the way he sat down on the couch and crossed his furry ankles, the way he requested a plain glass of water, ignoring the silver pot of lukewarm coffee sitting next to the hard cookies placed artistically in the middle of a polished tray.

I’m sitting next to her on the blue couch poor old Manny had been forbidden to sleep on when he roamed this mortal earth. I’m dying of fright.

Swimming families?
‘Mom’s voice is driving slowly up a high road in a sleek, classy car.

Yes. Families that recognize the swimming potential in one of their children and do the best that they can to help them maximize that potential
. He’s a friendly neutral.

If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, Mr. Mankositz
. Mom’s voice is settling into a philosopher’s leather-booked study.

You won’t get any gold medals with that attitude, Mrs. Ash
. He’s a friendly neutral.

Life isn’t a big game with fireworks at the end, as I hope you know by now, Mr. Manopitz
. The philosopher has opened her favorite book and is reading.

He looks at her without speaking for a minute, king of the pregnant pause although this does not detract from his natural authoritative manliness.
I agree with you; life’s probably not a game
, he finally says, his voice still relatively neutral,
and swimming is just a sport, but it’s a sport your daughter has a phenomenal talent for. I don’t think in all my years as … With some of the right training, she can go to the Olympics. We’ll talk about other opportunities such as a full scholarship to Stanford University later. But just think of the Olympics for a minute. She may be one of the best swimmers we’ve got and she’s had no real, formal training. Who’s to say what results concentrated work might bring?
He’s opening up his palms now, the universal sign of supplication.

She’s sixteen years old
. A flibbertigibbet, a will-o’-the-wisp, a clown.

It’s time
. He’s laced his fingers together, an indicator of imminent decision whether one likes it or not.

Time? Time? Just what do we know about time, Mr. Manolist? How much time is there?
Her car is bouncing down the peaks and valleys of an uneven hill. She’s losing him; I can tell by the way his heels dig into the carpet. I grow nervous, know what this can lead to, but she steadies herself through the power of pride. She swivels toward me so suddenly I jump.
Is this what you want?

I was born to race, Mom
, I say, shouting and whimpering at the same time.

She looks at me, thinking. I look at her looking at me, thinking— she’s wondering what kind of creature I am. This goes on for a while because my eyes get stingy and I notice that one of her earrings is pulling down hard on one of her lobes.

It’s time to stop talking now
. I tell her with my eyes.

I’ll stop talking when I’m through talking
. She responds with hers.

Yes. But it really is time to stop talking now. He’s normal; he won’t understand
. I insist with two brows and a quiet sigh.

I’m the boss now and don’t you forget it
, she says, pressing her mouth into a gravel road. She swivels his way.
Okay, we’ll see how it goes this spring. If she makes it to the Olympics later, good enough, but
I want her home next year
. She can train just fine with the coaches we have here until she goes off to university, I’m not losing anyone else in my life, Mr. Manlo … snitz. Do we understand each other?

He nods, stands up, his pants falling back down over his hairy red ankles, and it’s done. The nuns are informed that at the beginning of spring, when Lake Shawnee is preparing to flood the trailer courts and certain parishioners will lose their homes, I shall be flying to Colorado Springs to train for four months. I’ll be moving in with the Peggys.

Mother says:
That little Mankyvitz has a Napoleon complex—I’ve seen his type. Don’t let him bully you; that’s how they get their power
.

I don’t care.
He flew here … to Kansas … to Glenwood, I mean
.

She looks up at me from the vista of her bed.
I know how he got here. Just promise me you won’t follow blindly; I have a feeling about this
.

I still don’t care.
Okay, whatever
.

At the Glenwood International Airport, Roxanne says:
The deserter deserts
.

Dot says:
Have fun
. And I leave them standing with Father Tim in the gray terminal with the gray spatula seats. Mother doesn’t come to see me off; 1983 is the year she feels gravity is playing strange games with her; she suddenly loses balance while standing still. Father Tim puts up one hand, blesses me, then waves. Dot and Roxanne put up some fingers and toodle them. I don’t have any tears stuck anywhere. I’m perfectly fine.

The Peggys

Mrs. Peggy is standing in arrivals holding in a thin brown hand a card that says
PHILOMENA
in tight black letters. She’s styled her hair into a pesky red shrub and shined her lips with a pearl gloss, has hound dog eyes that tip down at the edges but are not sad. She smiles, giving me a thorough toe-to-temple scan in under a second, is difficult to impress.

The house is divided in two—a woolly rustic shag corduroy cabin and a brassy glass prison where everything you touch leaves incriminating prints. The kitchen is neutral, the refrigerator plastered with motivational literature and dietary fact. There are baskets suspended above the kitchen table filled with dried wildflowers, ceramic renditions of breads from all over the world, and a green plant that drops white buds into the air. I watch them spiral down into the food and eventually learn not to pick them out—one of the things I do to integrate my presence at the Peggys’.

I know that Peggy’s father is an orthodontist and her mother an orthodontist’s wife, know that Peggy is eighteen, one of the best back-strokers in the country, that she swims year-round with the Colorado Springs Aquatic Club.
Swimming
did a feature on her in their Spring issue. She talked about her dog, Dave; hiking; wanting to meet Ric Ocasek; her daily mileage; favorite sets, all under a barely hidden Olympic innuendo. There was a close-up of her at the FINA meet in Berlin. She is pretty in an even-featured lipless way, but she makes herself seem more so. She wears halters that tie around her neck under her sweats and says:
Look at my shoulders; they’ve gotten so big
, even though they haven’t changed.

I wasn’t for
.

This is the first full sentence that Peggy directs my way. Later, she makes light of it.
No, I said: You’re a fat whore. No, no, I said: What a skanky bore! Wait a minute … I remember now; I said: You stink to the core
.

Mrs. Peggy opens one door after another, now revealing perfectly made bed, now revealing neat toilet, now revealing perfectly made bed again.
And this is Peggy’s room and
this is Peggy!
You’re back
.

Peggy is lying on her bed with both legs up on the wall listening to music I don’t recognize.

She doesn’t change position, her wet auburn hair hanging off the edge of her bed, a gray toy poodle with a proud poodle face lounging on a velvet pillow by her side.
Looks that way
.

Mrs. Peggy’s voice remains
a visitor is listening
bright.
How’d it go?

The set of Peggy’s upside-down head doesn’t give a shit about listening visitors.
Fine
.

Mrs. Peggy opens one arm and says in a serious tone.
Philomena, this is my daughter Peggy
.

This is Peggy’s last chance to flip around and greet me like a good human and she knows it. She flips, her face flushed with the unusual amounts of blood it has just ingested, says
Hi
in a Colorado monotone.

Hi
. Kansas can be monotone too if it wants.

Mrs. Peggy sees an out, gets all sparkly.
I’ll leave you two girls alone to get acquainted
, and disappears.

Philohhhmenaahhh
, says Peggy. She sits up and scans me.
I wasn’t for. First of all, you leave my room alone. Second of all, during practice you’re like the other rookies—I don’t know you. Third of all, no talking about my family to anyone, not one word. And my friends are my friends not your friends, so don’t count on doing things together
.

I’ve had dealings before.
Okay
.

You can go now
.

Okay
.

But the desire to master the intrigue gets the better of her, as it so often will in her loud Peggy life.
Wait a minute … how tall are you?

Six-two
.

She lets out a whistly stream of air.
Mannishly impressive. What’s your personal best on the 200 fly?

Two-thirteen
.

Eemmmm. You’re from Kansas?

Yeah
.

That sucks … You can go now, Philohhhmeenahhh
. She gets in a fight with curiosity, loses
. Hey … Mom said your coach was a nun
.

It is not the first time I get the feeling I will wear nun like an invisible coat.
No … a priest, but I have a real coach … and a stroke master too
.

A priest?
She snorts.

And a real coach and a stroke master too
. We stare each other down. She has pictures of magazine people stuck onto a cork wall between pictures of real ones. I make a point of looking at the magazine people with Bron’s French-club face, then I leave.

My room has a window that looks out over a lawn that sinks down into a small wood that has footpaths that lead to a tall black fence. There’s a fragrance pine tree hanging in my closet. I open the window and throw it out. The air is different, tight and clean, but my bed has been sprinkled with a dose of synthetic lavender. I find a towel that smells like towel, put it over my lavender pillow, and sleep like a worn and tired worm. The first practice is at five-thirty the next morning.

Mrs. Peggy tries to wake me for dinner. She stands at the door and yodels.
Wake up now, it’s not ni-i-ght
. She comes in, leans over the bed
: Dinner, dinner, come now, dinner
, trying not to sound irritated when I shut my eyes harder. The world feels hostile. It’s their turn to take in a swimmer; Peggy isn’t for.

So what? Don’t love them
.

Serious training is so shocking, it pulls the old me out and puts a new one in. The new one laughs less, sleeps in the wrong places,
nods yes
. I’m totally surrounded by a cushion of professionalism directed by the hand of science and the amazingly effective Ernest K. Mankovitz. I work with a team of assistant coaches; every time I turn around, a different one is standing in front of me with my name, my stats, and orders I must obey. Earnestness, dedication, perseverance, seriousness, and swimming passion fill the air with purpose. I breathe purpose into my body as I sit at the edge of the pool at five-thirty in the morning, the new me thinking
Yes
.

When E. Mankovitz speaks, a hush skims the surface of the pool. He clears his throat and divides the world up into swimmers, and it gets so quiet the only sound I hear is the steady cadence of my own heart and the faraway purr of pool filters. It is during this period that the name
Fredrinka Kurds
makes its first auditory appearance in my life, followed by a picture of a big girl in a big face with a tiny nose planted in the center. It turns up on senior assistant Kyd’s desk with a bio that says she’s been training tough in the darkly celebrated Leipzig Institute since she was six years old and that her closest rival in the world is teammate Dagmar Bitten (no picture available). Supercoach E. Mankovitz squints and says:
You’ll have to prepare yourself for what’s out there
and my Kansas-based brain explodes.

I work my way up through the rank of senior assistants, listen to them harder than I ever listened to nun, so hard my brain gets stuck in their syllables and I momentarily stop understanding English so they have to say it again.

I’m Ron; let’s look at your kick
. Ron parts his hair like a priest, yells like Coach Coates, wants to coach a Division I team, preferably masculine.

He has me race from a dead start in the middle of the pool, swim full on for as long as I can. He has me tread water as the other rookies try to pull me under. I fight;
if there is room for only one, let it be me
. I drag myself across the water with shoes on, swim on my back with both arms limp at my side, put my chin on a kickboard and kick with both legs until I can no longer feel them for burning. He stands at the edge of the pool, says:
Again
, then passes me off to another one.

I’m Kyd. I want one hundred one hundreds
. A tall freckled blonde, former world record butterfly holder, lone female in a landscape of men. She watches me carefully, a whistle clamped between her teeth, designs my workouts based on her belief that one day women will swim faster than men. She’s careful to raise her voice in volume but never in tone. She studies me, yells,
Where’s Arch? We’ve got a thrasher
.

Mr. Arch Naylor aka the stroke doctor. He’s from the old school, coached Spitz, has a foxy mustache sitting under the gnarly spud he calls a nose. He uses eccentric breathing methods, is known to experiment freely with proven technique, can end a career with a quick shake of his head.

He appears before me, tall, with the slightly bent stance of a man used to ducking. He makes me stand in front of him, then slowly turn. He touches my neck with one finger, spends a long time studying my great feet.
They say you’re a thrasher
, he finally says in the swarthy voice of a renegade cowboy.

I’m squirmy with fright.
I don’t know
.

Well … let’s see about that
, he says, visibly at ease in the company of squirm.

I nod
yes
.

Suddenly he’s impatient, clapping his hands hard enough to make me jump.
Well … get in the water, why don’t you? What are we waiting for?

I stop, suddenly stupid.
What do you want me to do?

He shakes his head and my heart twitters. He sighs and says:
Swim. I would like you to swim
.

What do I swim?
I ask, dumb with fright.

He shakes his head again.
Your best
.

I swim slowly at first, groping for perfect technique:
fingers, wrist, shoulders, head, torso, streamline, teardrop, kneeballs, noseballs, earballs, windfalls
, then I decide to sprint like a nutcase.
Fuck him
.

When I finish, he isn’t on deck anymore, is speaking with the Mankovitz in the Mankovitz glass prison suspended above pool. I can see their dark smudges pressed against the window, both of them looking down.

Kyd stares at my feet as she sips her morning tar. Ron yells less, takes the time to explain what he is about to make me do before he makes me do it. Naylor appears at the edge of the water after one of my sets, explaining how the angle of my left shoulder creates unnecessary drag. The Mankovitz looks at his clipboard, squints, looks at me, then calls a meeting and asks me to come.

Naylor’s leaning against the window, long arms crossed over skinny chest. Kyd’s seated, strong legs crossed at knee. Ken is tapping his clipboard energetically with a pen until Naylor bids him
halt!
and he stops. The Mankovitz is sitting behind a desk buried under mounds and mounds of paper he presses down absently as he speaks.

He’s formal.
Thank you for coming. Arch, why don’t you begin?

Water is your element—you don’t need to fight. There’s too much movement, not enough glide. A strong voice doesn’t need to shout. You need to feel
your swim. You don’t feel your swim
. He pronounces
feel
like
eeeeel
, moves his hands like two sea turtles without breaking eye contact, as if he suspects that because I am young I am retarded.

Then … there’s the breathing situation
, he continues.

This makes Kyd jump.
How bad?

Bad enough
, Arch says.

How are you breathing?
She’s looking at me, her head cocked to the side.

I’ve learned to be careful about my responses to their simple questions. I pretend to think about it a minute, playing with my goggles.
Let me seeeeeee … I breeeeeeathe when … I neeeeeeed to
.

This shocks them. They suck lean muscle into lean cheek.

You need to breathe
before
you need to in case you won’t be able to breathe when you need to. Do you understand?
Kyd shrieks.

Swimming mechanics need to be revised so thoroughly they become reflex
, Arch drawls, ignoring Kyd’s feminine outburst.
And I’d like to take a closer look at winning the inner game
.

Mankovitz looks at me.
Do you understand.? I
nod
yes, yes
. A lie.

I swim from wall to wall to wall to wall, wearing weight belts, holding on to tubes with one immobile arm, pulling myself across the pool. I feel the pain, nod
yes;
pain is progress. I grow new shoulders, grunting like a wrestler as hard little tears slip out, mixing with water as they slide down my face. I come home at night with just enough energy to play with Peggy’s dog, Dave, until Peggy notices and calls Dave away. He’s a crafty toy poodle, prancy and intelligent, recognizes me in my baseball caps, licks my face, is genuinely kind.

I think about breath, count breath, swallow breath, time breath, holding oxygen in until my heart thumps in anger, but every time I race, I yuck it up.

This annoys Arch. His caterpillar eyebrows join in a deep
V
.
You didn’t breathe until the last five meters when you did not need to breathe
.

At the sight of the
V
, my heart sinks. I swirl the truth around my forked tongue, lie a lame lie.
I’m getting it down
.

His caterpillars dive sharply, turning his forehead into an
X
.
You stopped breathing until the last five meters. We were looking at you. If you would like to see yourself breathe as you touch in, that race was filmed
.
You stopped breathing, then you ran into the lane divider with your left shoulder. You lost
.

My heart deepens its descent into depth. I lie lamer.
I skimmed the lane …

He makes me work with him on breathing exercises he’s designed to resemble death so when I near the portals of nothingness, I won’t freak.