The Sea of Light (42 page)

“Ellie. What should I get?”

“Rice and beans. Black beans.”

“How do
you
know?”

“How come you
don’t
know, Delgado?”

The guy behind the counter approaches grinning, dark skin and neat-clipped black mustache making his teeth glow. His white apron uniform is splotched with red sauce. He speaks to me in Spanish.

“Um,” I say. “Rice—I mean,
arroz, con—”

“Frijoles negros,”
says Ellie, “okay?”

It pisses me off a little that she seems so comfortable. But, also, something about it feels valuable, precious; this place is warm, and the food is pretty good, and so is the coffee. In my heart I love her for bringing me here.

Christmas Dinner

(
BREN
)

Christmas day. I don’t know why, but after the boy’s phone call I find myself driving around, directionless, then parking, getting out, wandering the campus. Crossing the quadrangled courtyard in front of a library. Walking slowly, methodically, a good-looking, still-slightly-tomboyish woman of thirty-five, authoritative, purposeful, in a fine long coat, commanding respect.

Sooner or later I stop, and glance up to see that I’m here again, in front of the Athletics and Recreation building.

Thinking about loneliness. Thinking about Kay.

Damn you, Kay. Where the hell are you?

I take elevators instead of stairs. Wander down spic-and-span glass-cased halls, past many numbered rooms, to Bob Lewison’s office. Not expecting him to be there, half hoping that he won’t be. Because what, after all, am I going to say to some straight man coach, in the middle of a shut-down college campus, on Christmas Day? But the door’s open; I poke my head around it, tap nervously.

Your Christmas celebrations, Bren. So Protestant and proper. So subdued, dear. Rather Nordic. Strindberg, Ibsen. Ingmar Bergman. Edvard Munch. Hour of the wolf, wild strawberries. Suppression of Freudian feeling. The scream. Beaten with belts, in closets. Locked away in the cold, and the dark. My poor sweet baby. All those centuries spent in winter.

Yes, Kay, you are right about that.

Discipline did what suffering could not: took something tender and tropical from the depths of the heart; stole something away. Yes, love. I know all about winter.

“Hi, Bob.”

“Bren.” He looks surprised.

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Really? What in the world for?”

“Oh, nothing much. Well actually, something. Have you got a minute?”

“Sure.”

‘Thanks.”

Inside, I sit. Examine his walls. Stuffed bookcases. Good. He isn’t even stupid. I remember a few stiffly whispered gibes: Lord knows what a brain like Kay Goldstein sees in her—some callous lady jock; you’d think, if she was going to swing that way, it would be with another professor type. Someone well-read, and verbal. Some soft plump thing, maybe, another sensitive Jew. A liberal Jew in law, or in the humanities.

“Well,” he says.

“Well, Bob, we have something in common. We’re both alone on Christmas Day. Tell me—is it out of choice? For you, I mean?”

“Shit, no. My kids backed out on me. Janet’s boyfriend’s unseen hand.”

I blurt it, unthinking: “None of the real crap shows up on the surface, does it? At least, not at first. You know it’s probably there—you intuit it, anyway—team garbage, family garbage, the sadistic coach, rotten mother, ineffectual father, stress galore, enough to screw
anyone’s
competitive ability, never mind
hers.
And it breaks my heart, Bob. I see how hard the kid works, sometimes, just to function.”

“Did something just happen? Delgado?”

“Not really. Oh, sure. Her kid brother called.” I grin mirthlessly. “Nice boy, actually—maybe you should recruit him, a decent little cross-country runner. Anyway, it seems the family’s putting the screws to her. He says she got home—for the first time all season—had a fight with the mother that sounds pretty gruesome, and left. No one knows where. So I calm the boy down, make a deal with him to show up at a meet some time, at least
once
this year. To give her a little support, for God’s sake! But who knows what all this will lead to? Maybe a few meets down the drain—I wouldn’t doubt it. Well, terrific!”

“Fine, Bren. But you’ve done all you can, you’re not a counselor. Neither am I.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that she’s been to counselors, right? And a bunch of dieticians. Physical therapists. Psychiatrists. But what she wanted, this year, was normalcy.”

“How can
you
know that?”

“You told me.”

“She could not have normalcy, Bob, any more than you could pay off your MasterCard tomorrow. Any more than I could have McMullen’s job. Or have Kay back again.”

There: it is out. Sitting, furious, sweating, I feel relieved, yet also somehow defeated.

If he feels any resentment, he doesn’t show it. He says only, quietly, “Listen, Bren, it’s what she wants. She’s twenty-one. She can drink, she can vote, she can sink or she can swim. Normal or not, she
is
a grown woman.” His eyes meet mine. “Now, Coach. What about
you?”

I sit silently for a second, brooding.

“Rough day?” His voice is kind.

“Oh. Yes, sure.”

“I know what that’s like.”

Sure you do, straight boy.

But out loud, I say: “Okay. Tell me about it. Tell me what you know. Because, Lord knows, I could do with a friend.”

*

Later, I will tell him, he helped get me through the worst part of Christmas. That thin little straight man.

I trusted him, for a change; I don’t know why. Maybe because he already knew some of my secrets. Thinking about my life with Kay, about having this known—by even just one other straight person—made me cringe. It felt like a betrayal of Kay, really. But, on the other hand, she was the one I was hopping mad at.

*

Over a Spartan dinner—made of things we picked up at some 24-hour package store—in my house, in the country, he told me about his wife and kids. About women he had dated since. Some of them nice. None of them for him. How the emotional impasse of his life sometimes seemed insurmountable. And the fact that he would never get back all the treasures he’d once
thought
he possessed—but never really had—deadened his heart inside.

Well, Bob, I said. Well, Bob, it’s a personal thing, but it’s common, too. I mean, we all have problems.

Afterwards, I almost called Chick. But didn’t. Instead I drank wine and floated past the fireplace, the drape-covered window. Like a crazy woman, floated. With nothing to give but the wine and the fire. And a touch, a vestige, of snide gay humor; I shared it with him, over wine, and it made him laugh.

He helped me haul in wood from outside—logs and logs. We lit a fire.

I started hauling more things into the living room, stacking them near the fireplace. Boxes of clothes. Boxes of toiletries, and of makeup. Papers. Books.

“Kay’s things,” I said, “I’ve kept what I want. Look through the books, Bob. If there’s anything you like, please take it.”

He looked them over. The fire and the booze made us sweat. Cast bright hot shadows over his face, made him look half-black; probably made me look molten pale, and half-black too. Some of the books were good finds, he said. He took a few. Then asked me what I was up to.

I’m feeling mad, I said.

Crazy? he asked. Or angry?

I didn’t reply.

After a while I just crumpled up some papers from the stacks and tossed them in the fire. A flame blazed higher, seared the crumpled little mounds into quick black nothing.

“I’m mad. Bob.”

“Deserted?” he said, “Abandoned? Pissed off at Momma? Little girl lost?”

I nodded.

“Sure, Bren. Women. It’s like that when they leave you.”

I tossed in a book. Then another. Then a few more things that took longer to burn.

After a while I asked my friend to help me. He seemed reluctant at first, then glad. We sat there, burning Kay’s things, until Christmas was gone and the fire died.

The Plunge

(
ELLIE
)

A month goes by, heavy with new courses, make-up tests and papers for the old ones, and increased practice time—which, though I cannot spend entirely in the water yet because I am still too weak and too tired, I must still, as team captain, attend. Babe is solicitous. We spend a lot of hours together—she even comes over a couple of times and cooks some disgusto vegetarian mash with Nan and Jean, and makes me eat it—and I catch her watching me, sometimes, in the locker room; once, when she notices me giving an appreciative glance in the direction of that fine physical specimen, our Coach, she even winks.

Later, that afternoon, we wind up at the Donut Hole and then in her room, side by side on the bed, doing homework.

That’s when I take the plunge. Pressing a hand against my stomach, because maybe it will calm the merciless thudding of my heart; while my other hand, like it has a life and a will of its own, creeps firmly up her back, under the sweatshirt.

“Hey! Beat it.”

She shakes it off, flaps the soft folds at me. I’m turning to Silly Putty inside. Even my ears are shaking. Even my kneecaps are sweating. But I grin as if I know exactly what I’m doing, and my hand, with that life all its own, inches under the sweatshirt again and presses along her back, touching the tips of scars, caressing.

“Goddammit, Ellie.” She jumps from the neatly tucked edge of the bedspread, stands there confronting me, hands on hips, looking very tall, and strong, and bitter. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hmmm.” My fingertips are tingling. “Trying to turn you on?”

“Really? Really? Well, you can forget about
that.
Who do you think you are, anyway?”

“Well, obviously, for starters, I am not exactly a world-class backstroker—”

“Oh, go to
hell,
Ellie!”

“I am Eleanor Josephine Marks. That’s who I am. Ugly name, huh? but it’s
mine.
Another thing I am, is your friend.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.
And I happen to think you’re very, very hot.” The words tumble out, sounding oddly gentle; I can feel my eyes cross in fun, stick my tongue out at her and wiggle it; I give up absolute control of myself and of everything, resign myself to taking a belly flop after all. Tell myself: fuck it! go for broke! because what, in the whole stupid world, do I really have to lose? Maybe I will gross her out completely, and she’ll never have anything to do with me again; but, on the other hand, if I don’t tell her the truth, and all of it, I’ll be twisting things up between us so that we won’t even be friends—and, in either case, I would never have her anyway. I puff out my cheeks and lips, mock pouting. “So
there.”

She seems frightened now. “Ellie—you’ve got me all wrong.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. I mean, you do. I’m not into that any more—”

“Into what?”

“I’m not queer. I mean, not totally. I mean, I’m sorry, I mean, gay—or—”

“Fine,” I goad, feeling myself blush, and then I toss it straight at her—this arrow I’ve been saving all along: “Not even for Liz Chaney?”

“Dammit! I wish I’d never told you
any
of that.”

“But you did, didn’t you? And it wasn’t a lie.”

She heads for the door. Through it and through the front room of the suite, past a crystal-clean kitchenette, perfect window drapes drawn against the glass panes caked with winter, obscuring the far-below view of a quadrangled courtyard, a rich kids’ parking lot.

“And when you pulled me down on my very own bed, and you put your hands right here”—I pound the center of my chest until it hurts, but don’t stop yelling—“I mean, right
here,
Babe, all
night,
right against my tits—that was
not
a lie—”

The bed squeaks as I slide off it, CD blares too loud for a moment when I turn the knob, then shut it off with one quick push. Coughing up remnants of pneumonia, yelling after her anyway.

“And when you watched me watching Brenna Allen today, and you smiled, and winked—
that
was no lie, either.”

“Just shut
up,
Ellie!”

“Come on, Delgado—get a
clue!”

It hurts, leaves me gasping for breath, but I run and head her off at the pass, block the closed door, turn to face her.

Here I am, trying to stop her from running out of her own room. Who
do
I think I am? And where does
she
think she is going?

I’m panting for breath, she’s panting in rage and frustration and a kind of fear, and we stare at each other. I watch the panic blaze high in her. Feel it burst open inside myself, like fever sweat, then diminish just enough so that I get dizzy. She has stopped. She tries to say something, but her mouth shuts agonized, the large dark eyes search mine. I lean back against the door, spread-eagled.

“No way, Miss Top Seed. Don’t run from this.”

“Look,” she pleads, “get out of my way.”