The Sea of Light Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Praise for The Sea of Light

  The Sea of Light

  Dedication

  ***

  Angelita

  Terror 101

  The Clock

  Delgado

  Wisdom Teeth

  Sunday

  Big West

  The Rock, and Roll

  Broken Down

  Christmas Dinner

  Christmas Dinner

  Christmas Dinner

  Christmas Dinner

  The Plunge

  The Sea of Light

  La Bruja

  Finals

  Finals

  Finals

  Finals

  Finals

  After You Win

  Angelita

  The Sea of Light

  By Jenifer Levin

  Copyright 2012 by Jenifer Levin

  Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1993.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Jenifer Levin and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Snow

  Night of a Thousand Jeters

  Water Dancer

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  “LYRICAL, PROFOUND…WEAVES AN ABSORBING TALE.”—Square Peg

  “A POWERFUL NOVEL OF RECOVERY AND OF BRAVERY; AN EPIC, EVEN.”—Philadelphia Gay News

  “A BIG, OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY…A HAUNTING AND BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED TALE.”—OUT

  “BEAUTIFUL, POETIC…written in short but strong waves of prose.”—Pitch

  “A DELIGHT…AN INTELLIGENT, EVOCATIVE meditation on the ways women support, engage, envy, hurt, touch, dare, startle, and love one another.”—Lambda Book Report

  “THE SEA OF LIGHT ATTAINS A GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT THAT SPILLS OUT OF ITS PAGES; the novel’s characters pull readers along…and we go willingly. Her lyricism immerses us in the waters of competitive swimming, memory and desire, our own beginnings and endings. This careful balance between craft and emotional substance evokes hope, satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. What more can any reader, or any critic, ask?”—The New York Times Book Review

  “JENIFER LEVIN WRITES OF COMPETITIVE SWIMMING AND THE HEARTS OF WOMEN WITH AUTHORITY AND INSIGHT. The novel’s complex network of lives engages us and illuminates the power of love. Levin reminds us of what we need to know: that grace is there to be found, if we embrace it.”—Sandra Scofield, author of Beyond Deserving.

  “TOUGH, TENDER, RICHLY DETAILED AND GORGEOUSLY OBSERVED, The Sea of Light will transport you into a fascinating and unforgettable world.”—Lev Rafael, author of Dancing on Tisha B’Av

  The Sea of Light

  Jenifer Levin

  For Julie DeLaurier

  You will experience a glimpse of blinding light, subtle, sparkling, bright, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, like a mirage moving across a spring-time landscape in one continuous stream of vibrations. Be not daunted by this, nor terrified, nor awed. This is the light of your own true nature. Recognize it.

  —from The Tibetan Book of the Dead

  Angelita

  Rescue helicopters hovered over the water like great metal dragonflies. Below bobbed fragments of the 747 that had gone down more than two days ago, filled to capacity and carrying with it all the members of Southern University’s top-ranked NCAA Division I swim team. No one expected survivors.

  It had been one of the worst storms to hit the Triangle in years. Winds gusted to 150 miles an hour and more, swells rose higher than eighty feet, the ocean turned a savage gray color. Meteorologists dubbed the storm Angelita—Little Angel.

  Now, though, turquoise swells rippled mildly below, capped with white froth. It was as if this bright calm covered the entire surface of the earth, as if green-blue ocean had always spread everywhere like an undulating mirror of tranquility and always would. Sun seared the tropical sky unbroken by a single cloud. It was hard to believe in Angelita today.

  There wasn’t much left of the airliner: a few decimated wing parts, some salt-ravaged chunks of material that appeared to be seat cushions. U.S. Patrol ships cruised the area in their own search. Sometimes they’d launch an inflatable. Navy frogmen went off the sides backwards, hands gripping face masks, lead weights circling their waists. If there’d been survivors after the crash, chances were they wouldn’t have lasted an hour in the chaos of Angelita, with or without a flotation device.

  But the airliner’s demise had made headlines for two nights running, and, back on the mainland, scores of relatives clung to a hope that wouldn’t die.

  “Gringo to Chico. Over.”

  In his hovering bubble of glass and metal, Alonzo sighed. “What is it, Stu?”

  “I got news for them down there.” The voice crackled harshly from the instrument panel. “No fins, no bodies. Those Navy boys are a bunch of bozos. They say hammerheads got brains the size of a pea. But how much you want to bet, a hammerhead at least knows where to look? Listen, you want to hear a story? Over.”

  Alonzo’s eyes searched the blue swells. “Not really,” he muttered, but audio never picked it up. Something tugged at his insides. Nausea, maybe, mingled with an odd sense of expectation. Overtired, he told himself. Too many searches futile, too many end in failure, a bad storm at sea is indeed death’s little angel—no more, no less—but lately this thought had pierced his logical armor, led him through increasingly frequent moments of black nothingness. These moments had gone unnamed until a recent night when he’d woken in a bath of his own sweat, suddenly knowing the name. Now he scanned the waters below, hot with useless hope.

  “Ever hear the Chinaman’s advice to beginning divers, Chico? Over.”

  “No, Stu. I never did.”

  “Confucius say, always dive with buddy and always carry knife. If you see shark, take out knife. Stab buddy. And beat it the hell out of there. That’s an old proverb, señor. You can tell that to your mama-san. Over.”

  Sunlight streaked the water a shimmering platinum. It burned Alonzo’s eyes and he nosed the chopper down by instinct. One of the inflatables had edged close to something. A piece of material, discolored beyond recognition—one of those flotational seat cushions—he was surprised it had lasted so long. No, it wasn’t a seat cushion after all but something that resembled a bloated mannequin, stiff and crusted white with salt. The divers had gone crazy, surrounding it. They’d even sent in a couple of guys with electric prods to buzz off the man-o’-wars. Encased in his bubble, he watched them ease the thing over the inflatable’s edge. He thought he saw it flail an arm faintly, thought he saw it kick. But it was barely recognizable as a human body. Scraps of colorless clothing hung from it, the lips were big as balloons and the eyelids swollen completely shut, the limbs withered to a clawlike shape. He followed procedure and kept all frequencies open. Seconds passed. The panel crackled silence.

  Then, “Jesus,” he heard. “Jesus fucking Christ.” One of the Patrol
clippers had veered close. The inflatable rocked in its wake, filled with frogmen and the crusted white mannequin thing. “God,” he heard, “is there a doctor in the house?” Then: “Sure thing, Tarzan. Jesus. Jesus Christ. It’s a girl.”

  Terror 101

  (BREN)

  Terror 101: An Introduction to Adult Life. It’s this course Kay and I conjured up once over too much birthday champagne.

  Not that we were big drinkers. Not that the terror was present then. But here we were, in the place she used to call Pretty Land—State University country. Among the folks she called Straight White People, the ones we both worked with in our different ways.

  *

  Drive along Route 3 past clusters of dormitories, frats, classroom and administrative buildings, labs, greenhouses, a natatorium complex, soccer field, outdoor track—there they are, everywhere. Keep going into the light and you’ll see the apple of their collective eye: a new stadium, rising before you, blocking the sun. Pride of the East! is their motto. Football gets more important here every year, stirring up enough revenue to pay for the lavish spread of fieldhouses, tracks, pools.

  The place is big on basketball, too, and ice hockey, cross-country, track and field. Swimming, winning. That’s where I come in.

  *

  Super Coach.

  The title Kay gave me. She was like that, an English prof, quick with words.

  Sweetheart, she’d say, when things started to get bad, my baby. Why don’t you cry?

  Because I’m the coach, I’d tell her. Then try to smile. Super Coach. Try to laugh. But it wasn’t funny.

  *

  Super Coach has seen athletes do wonderful things to win, things that change them in positive ways for the rest of their lives. Some of the other things they do to win, though, go shamefully unmentioned. You don’t even want to think about it.

  But here—between the wonder and the shame—sheer luck, and the thing Kay always called my Great Protestant Work Ethic, have been pretty much on my side. Six years ago their women’s team was at the bottom of the division, and all the yahoos and hotshots over in Administration were busy trying to explain things to a bunch of angry alumni tying purse strings into vicious knots. Since hiring me they’ve been winning more than losing. That’s the truth. The kind they call incontrovertible.

  It’s just my job—winning, I mean. Not truth. Although there is some of that in me, too.

  *

  To her everlasting credit, Kay abstained from commenting on most of it—the job, collegiate sport, truth, winning, me. Except for an occasional stab or two: Yes, love, there is life after the short-course season!

  Fine, Kay, so what do you want me to do about that? Read the classics?

  Well, I’d think it, but never say it. That’s the way we handled most of our sore points, for better or worse, by sort of neglecting them. A lot of nastiness went unspoken. Bumps in the road avoided. Saved plenty of dishes from smashing against poor unsuspecting walls.

  And anyway, I loved her.

  *

  Everyone’s got rituals. People of discipline, more than most. Spit in the left goggle first, tap toes twice with your favorite bat, tie on a pair of good-luck track flats, pray to the gods of the javelin throw for a perfect tail wind—just hang around people sweating to win and you’ll notice a million rituals.

  Coaches have rituals too. And not too long ago, I’d certainly have described myself as disciplined. Now, though, what goads me out of bed isn’t discipline, but fear. Remembering this dream from last night. Makes me think of Kay, I don’t know why. Very weird: a bunch of naked young women in a cavernous, hollow-seeming big gray place shaving all the hair from their bodies, thighs, arms, together, like in a synchronized slow dance. Shaving their heads methodically, almost lovingly. Razors caressing broad lines above each ear. Around the temples. Over the crown of the head, across each nape of neck. Then they all slip easily, slowly, into identical racing suits, our team uniform. And disappear. Except for one—one kid. Who stands there in the strange gray emptiness staring silently at me, shaved and clean and raw. Something terrible is about to happen. I don’t remember what. In the dream, though, both of us know. We are both afraid.

  *

  “Fear,” DeKuts used to yell, “is always physical. Fear is in the body, and the body tells no lies.” He’d go into his spiel then, throw a kickboard at you if he thought you weren’t listening. Sometimes he’d miss and the board would bounce off a pool gutter, skim pastel blue water like a manta ray’s fin.

  “I want you to be afraid when you swim for me. Healthy fear of the pain it takes to win and a deeper fear of losing, and a much much deeper fear of me.”

  He’d stalk past every lane, his bare toes just missing your fingers as you hung on, his eyes glittering like brown, mean little bugs. “I want you to be afraid of ease and comfort, I want you to feel like if you stop or let up for a second you will die. I want you to work and I want you to race like your lives depend on it. If you do all that for me, you will earn my respect.”

  Once, the toes stopped near the wet gutter space between my thumb and forefinger. They were big, warped, specked with shiny black hair. They lifted with the foot, and his callused heel came down on my wrist, trapping it and me, sent a cold line of pain up to the elbow. Chlorine and a sour fleshy smell mixed in my nostrils. I felt tears about to spill, resolved not to let them.

  “You!” he shouted, “I’m talking to you! No talent. So show me some guts. Use your fear. Maybe you can swim with the big girls some day. Then you and I can be friends.”

  He made me do an extra set of 200s that day—ten on a short interval, and when practice was over I puked in the locker room sink. When my wrist swelled I wrapped an Ace bandage on. The fear settled deep down in a dark, living, inside place I couldn’t touch. I needed it. I got used to it. Like I needed him, got used to him. Dreamed of beating him to death. But wanted, more than anything, to be his friend. And found that, after all, having the terror inside is a useful thing. Toughens you for the rest of life.

  Getting used to it can be deceptive, though—you tend to forget it’s still and always there. But crisis never fails to remind. The day of Kay’s diagnosis I felt it flare up again, chilling and bright, vomit bubbling around in my throat and the sweat suddenly sliding over my forehead, down my belly, just like old times. Later we took a walk. It was right before New Year’s and things were sunk in ice-sheeted snow. We wore boots and sweaters and long coats and hats, I’d made her put on a couple of scarves, too, because of the fever. We walked with one of my arms around her shoulders, the other across her chest so I kind of staggered along sideways, shielding her from the wind. Neither of us talked. Until she said, very quietly, Baby, why don’t you cry?

  It was late afternoon. The air was red-tinged gray and wet, tasted like more snow.

  Because I’m the coach, Kay, I replied—for the first time, though not the last. Super Coach. Remember?

  I wanted to cry, but didn’t.

  *

  A lot of things happened that winter. Second opinions. Bad prognoses. The weather was particularly severe worldwide: plenty of frost, orange crops ruined, old folks freezing next to kerosene heaters, ice storms and airlifts in Alaska and, farther south, the storm they called Angelita—worst Gulf hurricane of the decade—and the 747 disaster. A banner year. I spent most of our savings on a new car with deluxe heater. Kay had these chemotherapy appointments twice a week, felt cold most of the time.

  And I thought getting tenure was rough, she said. Great way to spend a sabbatical, huh?

  In the midst of all this, my team started to win. Really win. I sort of watched it happen out of the corner of my eye. Afraid that at any moment they’d find out what a hoax I was—for all intents and purposes out to lunch, gone, kaput, busted up like no one ever told me I’d be, not even DeKuts. I flew on automatic pilot, put them through their paces twice a day. Shifted into an unearthly kind of gear and sewed together perfect training schedules. Bugged them at workouts,
made them dread the sound of my voice and my footsteps. Reminded them that I’d recruited them, each and every one. That they weren’t exactly the cream of any crop, weren’t exactly the stuff Industry Hills senior meets are made of, that they owed their barebones little college scholarships to me, and if they wanted to keep what I’d given them they would damn well cut out the crap and work hard. Because they were mighty short on talent, I told them, and if they won they’d win on guts and work alone. Forget all your Olympic medal fantasies, I said. Forget your dreams of Pan Am gold. The world’s not waiting for a single one of you. Better start thinking about survival.

  They wondered what was wrong, but didn’t dare ask. Hated me, but didn’t dare express it. So while Kay was dying, and the deep-down living terror kept boiling up from inside until my skin felt pale and slimy and I responded to every hello with a punched-out vacant look, those kids swam their guts out—and they won, and won, and kept on winning. Until, in the Division II land of the Straight White People, I became a rising star.

  *

  WASPs, Kay said. Never a tear. What on earth is wrong with you?

  Kay was Jewish.

  Our private life centered more and more around stained beds that winter. Around tubes like tentacles filled with colorless liquid, sick blood.

  I don’t have a lot of friends, and I was pretty busy worrying about all those tubes, and about fending off her relatives—with whom we had always coexisted in a state of mutual dislike—and about the insular whirlwind of athletic triumph at work that had placed me at its core. But I did keep in touch with Chick, calling once in a while to say how things were going. She came up to visit quite a lot at first. Then Kay got depressed and asked her not to any more.

  Once, just before spring, I called DeKuts. It had been years. He answered with a cough so hard and thick I thought his guts would spew out in chunks through the receiver. When he could breathe we talked swimming for a while. This and that. He congratulated me on the program I’d built at State. Said he’d done right to get me into coaching, hadn’t he? A mediocre swimmer, never go All-American in any division, nothing but a hammer with one talent, one talent only: to persevere. Outlast hope itself. A workout king. Queen. Some ability to organize, too, sniff out the talent in others. Still, girl coaches wouldn’t go far, not in the big clubs. Never coach a national team. But college sports, Division II—yes, that was right where I belonged. He laughed and the coughing wracked him. His voice was half of what it had been, though there was still that unmistakable hard-driven rage in it fueling the cruelty he’d use like a tool. Finally he asked why I’d phoned. What did I really want? I told him I was afraid.