The Sea of Light Read online

  “I don’t mind telling you, pal, this place is going to hell in a handbasket! They keep pouring money down these kids’ throats and it keeps coming out their rear ends! And guess who has the honor of mopping it up? Yours truly.”

  *

  The girl is prompt. McMullen’s secretary buzzes me at twenty-five past and I head out to meet her. She’s the kind we don’t see much of around here: big-framed, five foot ten, once lean but carrying too much weight around now. Taller than me, when she stands she comes close to taking over the room. We shake hands.

  “Ms. Delgado.”

  “Um—Babe.”

  “Bren Allen. How was your trip?”

  “Okay. I mean, fine.”

  “You didn’t have any trouble finding us, I hope?”

  “No!”

  It sounds like panic. The kid’s very pale—there’s something vaguely upsetting about her presence when we head for my office—an awkwardness of the body. Nice-looking face, a little puffy yet ragged somehow. Like a thoroughbred beaten and lamed—maybe the bone sets, but the animal never runs the same.

  Then I’m ashamed to evaluate her so coldly. Even though it’s part of my job, to evaluate coldly—it seems inappropriate now. I take her along a couple of detouring hallways to avoid McMullen, go around to my office and we both sit inside. Now I can meet her eyes directly. They’re large, dark eyes that don’t blink. There are tiny streaks of red across each cornea. It makes me feel the weariness acutely in my own self, and for a second I can almost swear that some kind of sigh passes between us, sounds somewhere close by in the world.

  “You know, Babe, I was impressed by the honesty of your letter. I thought it took courage to write that. But I think you were a little rough on yourself. A certain amount of physical potential can stay with you, you know. It can. The rest is all in the mind.” This gets no reaction, not even a blink. Only tension and pallor, and a pain that the fixed, nervous smile cannot hide. “Tell me, how have things been for you this year?”

  “Lousy.”

  “That’s not surprising. We aren’t machines, after all. Sometimes our bodies seem to be—machines, I mean—but because our emotions are inseparable from what we do physically, we can’t ever function as predictably as machines.”

  It’s all come out fluidly, perfectly. I tell myself: Coach, you’re good.

  “Everything really has to be in balance for excellent performance. But when we go through something traumatic it can throw the system way off, right? Different emotions cause different levels of hormones to be secreted, and this makes you feel lousy. You try to pull out the good times, the right splits, the extra effort—but it’s just not there to give.”

  The kid breathes, her lips tremble a little. “I don’t want to lie about anything. I told you—I told you how bad I am now.”

  “Well, let’s just say that right now I’m more concerned with how you feel about it. How do you feel about it?”

  She shrugs stiffly. I remember first seeing her at a senior meet, knowing just by looking that she was one of those kids into whom time and money had obviously been poured. Tall, broad-shouldered, clear-skinned and lean. That meet had been filled with them, a cream-of-the-crop high school gathering cut from the same god/goddess mold. Barefoot, dripping, they couldn’t help but strut. Like greyhounds, they’d been simultaneously pampered and hard-pressed. They knew a lot about goals and discipline and prodigious physical effort. But they moved in a rarefied atmosphere. Trained to excel, but only at certain things. The rest of life sometimes eluded them—or else maybe they were sheltered from it—and, watching, I knew that when the shit really hit the fan many of them would abandon sport altogether.

  She was being touted as the next up-and-coming breaststroker, already an American record holder in one event, heir to someone-or-other’s throne, expected to make the national team that year or the next, go to the Pan Ams, eventually the Olympic Trials. Impressive size, speed, talent. But I remember thinking even then that the girl lacked something. No killer shark instinct. She’d come this far on a gold-platter combo of genetics, practice, obedience. There wasn’t any brute in her—no spark of desperate effort, no trace of need or hunger on her face, in her pose. Too perfect. No hate, no fear. Sans desire. Anyway, she’d already been successfully recruited by Bart Sager at Southern—which was a place flooded with talent, as many qualitative levels above State’s program as the gods in heaven are to folks on earth.

  “Um—”

  Encouragement is needed, Coach. I nod and smile.

  “I don’t know what I care about any more.” The voice sounds cold and detached, which surprises me. “Like I told you, I feel I could at least give it an honest try. But, you know, I don’t think that I’m, like, interested in ranking nationally any more. Or qualifying for the Trials or anything, you know, or the Pan Ams, or like that. I just don’t have the ability or the interest.”

  “What about competing? Are you still interested in that?”

  “I think so. Maybe. I’d just, like—I promise I would do my best.”

  I bend a paper clip out of shape, curl it into a distorted circle and drop it on the desk. Like my insides. Twisted metal. Funny how life follows some blueprint other than your own. The fluid words of Super Coach have deserted me for a moment. I must meet Babe Delgado’s tired eyes with mine.

  “Listen, Babe, I’ll be honest with you too. I’m proud of our program here. I mean my program—credit where credit is due.” Then I can’t help grinning, can’t help being pleased when the girl grins back. “When I came here this school was at the bottom of the division. I told them I could rebuild things, create a good solid program and produce a team that would win for a change. That’s why any coach is hired in the first place. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. It hasn’t been easy, but I’m good at it, and I’m proud of the accomplishment. We’ve been ranked in the top three of this division for the past four years. Last year we missed out on first place by a few points—and that gives me some administrative maneuverability. I recruit better athletes, for one thing. Put yourself in my shoes a minute. You were ranked nationally. Why wouldn’t I want you here, even if you’re not at your best this week or this month or this year? It gives my program prestige. Now, the semester starts in two weeks. I can offer you a free ride. No frills”—I wince at the word, which is McMullen’s, not mine—“but I think you’ll see that the offer is not unreasonable. It certainly won’t hurt your pride.”

  The kid says nothing. This makes me nervous but I don’t show it. Then Super Coach kicks in again.

  “If you decide to enroll, we’ll try to make sure you get into any courses you like. I don’t require the women on my team to room together, socialize together, eat together or anything like that. I do expect them to make practice—and most of the time that’s doubles, a.m. and p.m. unless you’re tapering—but again, what you do outside of practice is your business. I won’t expect you to win all the time and I won’t expect any records. But I’ll want you to participate in all aspects of the program, and to encourage everyone else, and to expect no special treatment, even though you’re head and shoulders above them. Also, I will build a medley relay around you. That’s all.” I toss another paper clip and it hits the rim of the mug, bounces in perfectly.

  “My own room,” she whispers, blushing. But the eyes never blink, stare straight in at mine. “I need my own room. A single. In the best dorm, okay? But not with all the jocks.”

  I toss another clip. So easy. God. I dare not breathe.

  Basket.

  “Okay, Babe. Let’s take a walk. I’ll show you the facilities. Then we can have lunch.”

  We stand and the tense face seems to shiver for a second, and I see it’s covered with sweat.

  “Jesus. I can’t do them any more, you know. I mean I just cannot deal.”

  “What,” I urge gently. “What can’t you do?”

  “Flips.”

  “Well, I guess you’ll have to do open turns then.”

&
nbsp; It sounds right: brisk, matter-of-fact. I motion for her to follow. Another door, loss of the calming, clarifying light. Down many halls, past weight rooms and whirlpool and sauna. Recruiting, you spend time sussing out what each kid wants and figuring how to deliver it up to them on the spot. Some of them want to be entertained, some just to feel at home, some to be ordered around a little and have all the limits set from day one. Some are withholding, push their luck. Few ask for nothing but the contract, though. And because it’s so rare, I tend to disbelieve that it’s happening now.

  Still, I will do what it takes for those extra points between first place and second. Improvise. Steal. This girl’s got plenty of problems, but so do I. First place—cold, bright, accessible, final—is the only home I want now. One national-class kid and it’s in the bag.

  The pool’s empty, glinting a clean pastel blue, lanes sharply delineated. We stop to look through unbreakable glass windows on the observation deck. Babe Delgado looms next to me. Taller. Bigger. Something I recognize now in her: a fear of the water. We both glance sideways at the same time and our eyes meet. Then there’s this silent question I read in the puffy damp face, honest, searching, not a plea but a query: Are you going to help me?

  I let Super Coach speak through my own eyes and say: Yes, sure, you help me and I’ll help you. For those few extra points.

  I smile calmly. “It used to terrify me.”

  “What?”

  “Competing. Even thinking about my race sometimes. I’d throw up.”

  She laughs. “Really?”

  “Sure. No matter who you are, the pressure is there.”

  That strikes some chord. She sweeps hair impatiently behind an ear, glances down at the pool again and back at me and then smiles. The pallor lifts a little.

  “Okay. I think I can deal, I’ll do it.”

  “Good.”

  “But I have to lose some weight. I mean before I get in the water—”

  “I don’t want you to worry about that now, Babe. We’ll set up something with our nutritionist, okay?”

  “Oh. I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Really? Well, to each her own. You’ll be doing some running anyway, and some swim bench and medicine bag—everybody’s going to be working pretty hard around here to get rid of a few extra pounds, including me.” I pat my abdominals, risk a wink and breathe an internal sigh of relief when the kid smiles again. “September’s dry-land month, anyway. Now let me show you around downstairs. Let me show you the Nautilus.”

  *

  I stay late, clearing up all the paperwork I can. There will be hell to pay later on in the week. Another rickety bridge to cross in a flood. Free rides don’t rain down from heaven, and this particular one will have to come out of some other coach’s hide.

  Toward evening I pass a free-weights room, hear the clink of dumbbells, plates, bars, a female voice I recognize, a young man’s I do not:

  “Ah, shit, Danny!”

  “Get it up, goddammit! Get it up like a dick!”

  “Ten!”

  “There! There you go—here, I’ll take it, Miss Macho Deltoids—”

  “Oh shut up.”

  “Ellie, you did it.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  The two of them spill out, towels around their necks, T-shirts damp with sweat. An uncommonly handsome boy in his early twenties, short, muscular, definitely gay. The girl medium-built, with tenacious fists gripping the towel, a pretty Semitic face that looks hurt and swollen now around cheeks and mouth. She sees me and blushes violently. I nod.

  “Ms. Marks.”

  “Hi!”

  “Welcome back. We’ll talk about it later, but I want you to do the four hundred IM this year. That means the long warm-up.”

  “What? Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  “Because, I’m the coach and you’re not.”

  On my way down the hall, I hear gagging sounds. Then footsteps and the slap of damp towel on skin and cloth.

  “Coach? Excuse me,” The girl’s eyes sparkle, embarrassed but shrewd. “Do you have any time maybe? I mean, can I talk to you?”

  I tell her why not, and we head back to my office. There she perches on the edge of the chair Babe Delgado sat in earlier, looking much smaller. She keeps pulling at her sweaty shirt, twisting the towel with nervous hands. Pain pounds out the back of my head. I think lovingly of aspirin.

  “What happened to your face, Ellie?”

  “Oh, nothing. I mean, I got these two wisdom teeth pulled.”

  “If there’s still some bleeding you should not lift weights.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Well, then. What’s up?”

  “I have to talk to you.” The voice starts out breathy, gets hoarse with nerves, then faster and faster. “Listen, maybe you were being a little too hard on us last year. I mean, it’s like, basically everyone really wants to work really hard for you and to just win, you know? So I thought that you could sort of give us a break. Not, like, expect any less from us or anything like that. But more encouragement sometimes. I mean—you know what I mean.”

  The pain becomes an obstacle in my throat, and I clear it. There’s a silence you can sink back into, always waiting like the fear, but waiting to hold you up instead and comfort you. I sink into it now, realize how long I’ve wanted that, just that: to sink back into something. Then I look at Ellie Marks and wait for her eyes to stop darting around and meet my own. When they do she blushes—suddenly, a deep scarlet.

  I lean forward and speak softly. “I’ll take your advice under consideration.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course. It’s possible I was a little out of touch with everyone’s needs last year, and that’s why we came up short at the end. But this year will be better. I think I can promise that.”

  Yes, Coach. I bet you can.

  She stands mumbling thanks, thanks for listening. Thank you, I tell her, calmly, with mastery, thank you for bringing these concerns to my attention. It is part of your job, after all.

  When she leaves I sink back again, thinking that I like the kid—my team captain and a hard worker, with mediocre but consistent times in the 100 and 200 breaststroke, an honors student most semesters. Comes from a difficult family background, racks up points by being a real team workhorse. Has a scholarship. And a crush on the Coach, which, like all such things, the Coach will pointedly ignore.

  *

  Later, I change into sweats myself. The place has pretty much cleared out, I’ve managed to avoid McMullen all day, and one of the weight rooms is empty. I shouldn’t, but do—heavy reps of bench press and even a few shoulder dips. The amount of healthy cartilage remaining in my left shoulder is laughable—old war wound, DeKuts would call it—and several specialists have recommended surgery. I keep putting it off. Too much to do. Anyway, I’ve had enough of hospitals.

  I work triceps, lats, pecs, abs, deltoids, until I can hear the gristle rasping against bone in there, and when I raise the left arm to stretch it, tears burn my eyes. There’s this rule of mine: to do whatever I make the kids do. Last spring I didn’t, got alternately underweight and flabby, remote and mean. Thirty-four years old and I started to see facial lines. Elasticity was leaving me behind. But that stuff is over now, Kay three months dead. And if I cannot do this out of desire any more, I will do it out of habit.

  *

  Warm breeze mixed with post-twilight chill washes through the open window driving home. Send head honchos out to rich alumni—real estate bigwigs, investment bankers—and get them to establish a new scholarship. Or siphon free rides away from less successful teams and call the siphoning something else. A plot for McMullen to work out with the boys in Administration.

  It is on my head, this recruitment. Their money’s buying damaged goods, but damaged goods are sometimes salvageable. Maybe Babe Delgado deserves something. A different kind of chance—for what, I don’t quite know. And maybe the kid can be fixe
d. Enough to pull a few good races out of her, anyway. Then, like Lewison says, she and I can tell them, Hey folks, fuck off, because we have won enough around here. But I don’t know. What I saw in her face today was long-term loneliness, a barely contained revulsion at the world. Can’t say I blame her.

  *

  To check out the competition, McMullen used to joke whenever we went to these national meets. And both of us knew what a joke it was, because the kids we saw there were the big-time burners, Division I stuff, national-class material, a lot of them world-class. Still, there’s no law against looking.

  Which meet was it? Indianapolis. Two, three years ago. Bart Sager was there, with bells on, because Southern seemed headed for another national championship—The Big U, they called it. A totalitarian-run stable of talent and power. But some of his kids looked unhappy to me, and one of them was Babe Delgado.

  Not so for the backstroker Liz Chaney—she was a real live monster, a confident sort, set an American record in the 200 and we saw her do it. She is dead now, along with most of her teammates, buried by the winds and waves of Angelita. But that day in Indianapolis McMullen ignored the electronic timer on the wall and zeroed his own stopwatch. I want to get these splits. This kid’s going to set a record soon, girl. I asked him was it in the air and he said yes, it’s in the air. He was sweating excitement. For a moment I liked him because he was genuine, almost worshipful, without the usual bullshit. She’s a cool cookie, huh? Knows no fear. Every backstroker was in the water ready to start—except for Chaney in lane four, who was wiggling to the rhythm of some dance tune in her head, feet shuffling, arms rocking, hips thrusting. There was a bratty smile on her face. She turned completely around until she was facing Bart Sager. Then stuck out her tongue.

  I REPEAT. ALL SWIMMERS IN THE WATER. THIS IS THE WOMEN’S TWO-HUNDRED-METER BACKSTROKE. FOUR LENGTHS OF THE POOL.

  Liz Chaney scratched her ribs like a monkey.

  SWIMMERS IN THE WATER. A WARNING IS ISSUED TO LANE FOUR.

  She took a small hop and jumped in feet first. Shouts echoed to the ceiling mingled with laughter. I glanced at Sager, saw that his face was sweating red, and he was smiling. Then I asked Pete if there was any truth to the rumor.