The Sea of Light Page 2

  “What a coincidence,” he said, “I am too.” Then started to cough again and I knew it was true. “They opened me right down the middle, Bren. Took out everything they could lay their hands on, zipped up the zipper. Told me, Mr. DeKuts, you’d better go home to die. So here I am. Interesting that you called. Say your piece now, though. We won’t talk again.”

  I was quiet and the receiver sweated in my hand. Then these words popped out of me—I meant them to be cruel, to pay him back then and always—but for some reason, I don’t know why, they came out very gently.

  “Is it the worst fear, Jan?”

  “Sure,” he said, “but that doesn’t really matter.”

  There were many states between us. His throat rattled, long distance, while he tried to keep breathing.

  *

  September 1st. What wakes me is fear and the dream. And Boz planting crusher paws on my chest, pink pit bull tongue dripping everywhere. Ugliest dog in the world. Kay’s choice, two years ago. Even then I knew I’d regret it.

  “Boz, cut it out.”

  Dawn sifts through the living room blinds. I remember everything with a big sick rush that seizes my throat again like a prison guard moving in to stay, so for a moment there’s nothing I want any more, not really, least of all to wake up.

  Personally, I adore pit bulls, Kay said. Putting her foot down. And I will have one, Bren, an albino, pink-eyed, rat-eared, Roman-nosed as can be. The ugliness is noble somehow, don’t you think?

  No, Kay, I think that’s bullshit.

  Another thing that never got said. But I loved it when she put her foot down. Her eyes blazed wide and deep, you could see the flush begin around her ears. It would just about decapitate me.

  “Come on, Boz.”

  He twists his thick body like a corkscrew. Starts doing what Kay called The Morning Dance, half-growling, half-whining, beseeching with tongue and whirling tail. Breakfast time. So without quite realizing it I’m off the couch, heading for kitchen and can opener, contemplating the upcoming hypocrisy of goading a bunch of college kids to set their alarms for six a.m. workouts when Super Coach herself has trouble finding any real reason whatsoever, these days, to crawl off the living room sofa at daybreak. Bless Boz, the living alarm clock. Who has probably become my reason for being—what Kay would call, in this beautiful academic French accent she could muster at will, a raison d’ être.

  Not that I will ever let on to the kids about that. Or about anything.

  “Okay, pal, here. Here’s your food.”

  He dances, toenails clicking the floor tiles in a frantic shuffle, eats with fierce gulping sounds while I refill his water bowl.

  Now the twisted tail’s flagging air again and Boz has that hopeful head-cocked look. Maybe uncertainty has crept into whatever his consciousness is. Maybe he misses Kay, expects her back any minute now, any day.

  “You want to go out?”

  I let him bite the ratty hem of my robe and drag me to the door, watch him lope across the lawn. Breeze ruffles the tips of grass, turning them over like thousands of tiny spears shimmering green, then silver, in the morning. He burrows through pine cones, dandelions, disappears behind some trees. I lean against the refrigerator and close my eyes. Then the handle springs. The fridge door flies open. Half-finished bottles of salad dressing and soda rattle dangerously, an opened tin of sardines splats against my bare feet while the fish oil spreads.

  Cleaning things up on my knees on the floor, I cannot help it: ripples surge along my spine, shock waves of memory. Come here, sweetheart. Her mouth moved in the mess of tubes. I’ll tell you a secret. I stepped in, then, toward the bed. Willed myself to lean closer. Saying this is your lover, Coach, and you must, you must.

  * * *

  You’re so damned obsessive-compulsive! she always told me. Exasperated. Resigned.

  Yes, love. Yes.

  I go through the house straightening edges and surfaces. Obsessively-compulsively—is that a word? Kay would know. Checking everything twice the way I usually do. Avoiding the bedroom. I shower, dress in the hall, toss cosmetics into a purse and sweat clothes into a gym bag, examining my face in the bathroom mirror from a variety of angles to see what, if anything, can be done. Boz watches, curious. Either it’s real loyalty, or just habit: to sit patiently, good-natured, ugly pink eyes noting every move, tough paw pads scuffing rugs and tiles and wood as he follows.

  “You and me, dude.”

  He thumps his tail.

  Powder under the eyes, dribble a little Visine in to clear the red. There’s this glossy lipstick Kay liked. When all else fails, bright lipstick, Bren. I took careful lessons from her, the veteran of countless departmental meetings and tenure committees. She was older than me, more familiar with the Straight White People, knew better than anyone how to spiff up an act.

  I pull my briefcase together.

  Obsessive-compulsive makes for good coaching. Maybe it’s a survival mechanism, too—not necessarily the best, or even the most appropriate—just what I have at hand, practically speaking. Kay would have agreed; I am nothing if not practical. And there are all these things to do. Partial scholarships. Team cuts. Big interview with a prospect this morning.

  Suddenly I understand about the dream, and about waking up afraid. At first glance, there is shocking similarity in the appearance of a shaved-down swimmer and a hairless chemotherapy patient. They are both creatures in limbo somehow—recognizably human but oddly so, poised on a starting block or the edge of a hospital bed in some transitional place between effort and finality.

  Cry, sweetheart, she told me, holding my head in ruined hands. Please, baby, let it out. You’ll feel so much better if you do.

  Yes, I said. Yes, love.

  But I couldn’t.

  Inner things came to me, things from the past. Images. Snatches of almost-understanding.

  A cold drink of water. Splashes of chlorinated powder in full basins. Showers. Steam. Whirlpool on damaged shoulders and knees. I have been around this stuff most of my life. First out of love, then out of fear, until it became a meal ticket for me, just work, obsession, nothing more. But it got so intertwined with the other things—the water did, I mean, and the swimming and coaching—that it wrapped around a stuck-deep root inside and meshed its genes with that root. The way the love did, and the fear. The way Kay did from the first time I met her. So that, now, I could not stand to lose it.

  I stepped in closer to the bed, plucked a tube aside. There were sores on her mouth and I put my ear to them. Something jangled in my head, a tangible rattling sensation. It made white and gray waver in front of my eyes and I knew that if I remained standing I’d faint. So I sat on the side of the bed, fighting it. She wanted to tell me something—her hands shook, beckoned—to tell me a secret. I was all weighted with heaviness inside, then I just lay down next to her. My ear pressed her mouth again while she whispered.

  What she said, I must not tell. But I know that after she’d said it the heaviness burst out of me like fever, so I was covered with sweat. I lay there pushing tubes aside and held her. Our heads rested together on the pillow, calmly, easily.

  Did I say I held her? That’s wrong. Because the tubes held her, held her up, and she held me. She was so light, hardly there at all. When I opened my eyes things looked different for a moment—like they were dissolving, losing shape and form, and beneath the shape and form they were losing was a bright white heat that burned.

  *

  Turn off Route 3, continue along past the stadium and you arrive at what Kay used to refer to as Bleaker Land: government-sponsored project areas, the buildings fenced off, access granted only to people with security clearance. And there are other places, places where they do things to animals.

  But all that is out in the sticks. From central campus, it’s impossible to believe anything exists except the morning. The sun’s always splendid when it shows, a sudden light over tree tops that obliterates dawn. Pure, sweet, wet-hot. Sometimes it brings tears to your eye
s.

  It would be nice to believe that there’s only this: leaves not quite ready to turn, lush hills to the west, fonts of knowledge overflowing, handsome young people playing to win.

  Defeated whimpers sound somewhere else altogether. At least that’s what most of the kids seem to think. Which is just as well. They don’t know what they’re in for later—and why should they? Give them a few years to agonize over midterms, or over how to pull off a good 200-freestyle. It’s all practice for when the shit really hits the fan.

  For now, no Terror 101. Just research papers, final exams. Football tickets. Swimming meets.

  The Department of Athletics and Physical Education has been renamed several times. They keep renaming the Phys Ed degrees, too, to make them sound more scholarly, and the buildings are all set apart from the centers of academic research.

  It’s the mind/body split, sweetheart, Kay said once.

  I resented that a little. Wordlessly, of course.

  To get there I turn west, skirting central campus and the graduate library where she’d had a fifth-floor study booth reserved, its table spilling over with books about Hawthorne and Melville, pass early-morning joggers along the road to the natatorium complex, and park in my spot, queasy at the thought of running into any of the kids I coach. As if I’d owe them an explanation.

  The building’s angular, clean, new. There’s something vaguely cruel about it, as if it could swallow you whole and alive—mash you up thoroughly, send pieces of you whirling into the pool, the diving tank, the sauna, weight rooms and equipment rooms and first-aid rooms with training tables—like that big white whale Kay was always going into philosophical rhapsodies about.

  This interview is at half past ten.

  Serendipity. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

  *

  There are unopened envelopes everywhere, letters requiring my signature, folders unfiled, a mug emblazoned with the name of the university that tips over when I sit, spilling pens and a chain of rusting paper clips onto the desk blotter. The lamp’s working, anyway—one of those full-spectrum things recommended for relieving competitive stress. Which is fine as long as you stay near the source of light. But I forgot to lock the door, and McMullen’s head is a ruddy, balding egg poking into the office, his eyes blinking cheerfully like twin beacons of primitive mischief.

  “Heard about your coup, woman. When do I get a peek?”

  I wonder what it is about him that makes me want to stuff an air conditioner up his nose.

  He settles into my swivel chair, grinning. “Don’t hold out on me, Bren, for Christ’s sake, I deserve some good news. These kids are a bunch of maniacs. You know the headaches I’ve got? Remember Canelli, my sophomore, All-American last year? Well, he decided to do some spelunking in New Mexico this summer. Great idea, huh? Spelunking, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, he broke both his arms and gained forty pounds. So after serious discussion with yours truly he decided to redshirt the year, and that’s swell, but it leaves me shoveling shit up an alleyway when it comes to my medley relay.” He plants both elbows in a pile of memos. “You girls have all the luck. Delgado—she could’ve made the national team.”

  “Could have.”

  “Look, when they’re good they’re good. You’re going to have to steal a free ride from somewhere, aren’t you?” The tiny eyes glitter. McMullen makes no bones about his nosiness. But, like an infant, he lacks perception—and this, the cornerstone of our relationship, is a saving grace. I still hate lying to him, though. Makes me feel like an ingrate. On the other hand, I was the one who came along and saved his butt. When I give him the nod his big face lights with triumph. “I knew it! Take my advice and buy her a damned Rolls-Royce if she wants one, never mind what kind of shape she’s in. You’ll have to come up with some dough, lady.”

  “I know.”

  “Lots of dough.”

  “Okay, Pete. But promise me you’ll try to be a little low-key, all right? She’s been through a lot.”

  “No kidding.” For some reason we’re out of my office now, heading down the hall, and I can feet the comfort of the specially recommended stress-relieving light fade away. I’ve let him take my arm and lead me along, like he’s got somewhere important to lead me to. McMullen is a salesman at heart—someone who gives you the feeling that he’s comfortable around snakeskin, bad real estate, phony ID’s. But exposure to genuine quality unnerves him. “Hear anything about the other kid, Hedenmeyer? Now he was a big animal, that boy would’ve dark-horsed it at the Trials. They say nowadays he can blink okay as long as they don’t unplug him. If you ask me it’s a crime they kept him alive in the first place. They removed a lot of that kid, just to keep him going on some fucking machine.” At the water fountain he drinks, splashing his chin and shirt front, talking all the time. “But the girl pulled through okay, didn’t she? Or is that what we’re waiting to find out?”

  “We?”

  “Well excuse me! Look, Bren, I’d have given my left molar for Kenny Hedenmeyer. Shit, I’d have given my jaw bone for either one of them. But if I’d done that I’d be in a different division, and I wouldn’t be able to talk the ears off these fucking delinquents I’ve got swimming for me here. Anyway, let me know how it goes.”

  “I will.”

  “Do that, girl. Let me know.”

  He storms down the hall, pounds on doors to annoy people. Out of one flies a paper airplane, aimed perfectly at the bald spot on his head.

  *

  I duck through an exit, sit on the landing that smells unused, faintly damp with leftover summer and sweat. An image of Boz mouthing silent yelps against the living room window as I drive away rises up inside so that, for a moment, I want to say it out loud: May I stop now, please? But there’s this interview. I head down a flight.

  Bob Lewison’s door is open, the walls trophy-cluttered, Lewison himself sunk deep into some text propped amid the mess on his desk. Everything in the room is askew. Not like the neat and orderly lines of an obsessive-compulsive’s office. Everything’s a little too large for the space—unlike Lewison, who is slight and rail-thin. An economy model, McMullen calls him, snickering. An economy model of man, old Bob.

  They’ve never really liked each other.

  “You look tired, Bren.”

  “Thanks. That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all day.”

  “Rough summer?”

  “Something like that.”

  He closes the book, pats it like a shoulder. “Tell me about it. My cross-country squad’s in leg casts. Last month I missed an alimony payment. My kids aren’t talking to me. And MasterCard wants five thousand bucks. That’s the good news.”

  Our hands meet across the desk, squeeze. I mumble the thing I always mumble with him: Poor Bob. Ah, business as usual, he tells me, what about you? and then I’m stuck. Hoisted on my own petard of lying secrecy—privacy, Kay called it, but that was a euphemism.

  It’s been a hell of a time, I say vaguely. Family business.

  “Anything I can do? Just let me know.”

  But I shake my head. Then grin the weary, wary grin that lets him off whatever hook is always swinging there between us, the grin Kay told me was handsome and bright and full of warning.

  “You know, you’re a good-looking woman. You’re good-looking even when you’re tired.” It’s shy, kind. Ancient discomfort, a mix of regret and panic, makes me pull my hand away. Say something diplomatic now. For all the boys and men in my life—well-meaning, virile, clumsy—whom I could not and would not love. Spilled beer suds, graceless dancing. Kisses and caresses that, after a while, I no longer even attempted. He’s trapped there in the too-long silence. Again I set him free of the hook, saying, Well, that is definitely the nicest thing I’ve heard all day.

  Bob lands with alacrity. On his feet, and smiling.

  “Since I’m scoring so many points, then, would you mind me making a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Before this girl shows up, gag McMullen a
nd shove him in a closet somewhere.”

  “Does everyone know?”

  “Pete’s been intercepting your mail for weeks. But I’m rooting for you. And another thing.”

  “What, Bob?”

  “Get some rest,” he says, so gently it’s a surprise. “Get some rest, quit driving yourself. None of this stuff is that important. You’re on a roll around here, enjoy it. Don’t you think there’s a critical point to it all? Winning maxes out after a while, you know. It does. Then you’ve got to say, Well, fuck the whole bunch of you, I guess I’ve won enough. And you sit back a little, you smell the daisies.”

  He reaches for my hand again when we stand, presses it with affection. We’re about the same height. Our eyes meet perfectly. I decide to avoid him from now on—a shame, because he’s been an ally, almost a friend. For now, though, I will just shake hands.

  “Good going, Bren. The girl—”

  “Delgado.”

  “Right. Well, listen, there’s money around here somewhere. I’ll back you up all the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Just ghost-write a couple of proposals for me later on this term. And good luck. Good luck raising the dead.” He pales slightly, then blushes. “I mean the idiots in Budget Accounting—not the kid.”

  Back upstairs I pass McMullen’s office on the way to mine. Luckily, he’s on the phone. Haranguing. Someone else is getting it now and, despite myself, I smile. His voice booms down the hallway.