Flat Water Tuesday (32 page)

And Ruth counted, and the other coxswain counted. They counted out the final strokes of that race even as Dover took our stern deck, their coxswain’s shrill and urgent voice carrying clearly over the animal sounds of the crowd on shore, and the Fenton School Boat Club crossed the finish line one stroke behind.

*   *   *

“I have a crooked room you should see,” Carolyn had said. “It’s a studio on Broome Street.”

There are days you remember in their entirety, hours you know transformed you.

I now knew a beautiful woman with a crooked room in New York and on that early evening when rain was threatening down the East River, when clouds rolled over the streets, I had spent two lazy hours having dinner with her alone in a restaurant before the night-time rush. Her mention of the crooked room was the beginning of a storm of love. We were walking up Mulberry Street like tourists, holding hands, a bottle of wine left empty for our shyly grinning waiter on the white tablecloth. I remember every step.

Her unspoken question to me was not really a question, and we turned into Broome Street and walked past the galleries and the brick walls, under the hooked lamps and by the drunken graffiti and the tired traffic with me one half step behind her, wanting to savor this moment when the stars aligned and life was perfect. Walking along that old, broad sidewalk I knew I was sailing into something more than a relationship, something more than a love affair. Half-drunk, half in love, full of lust, I followed her without pause into the elevator. We stood there not touching each other, our eyes forward, Carolyn idly humming, pleased with herself, a formality between us still, as if there was a contract that had yet to be defined and signed and sealed.

It took a full minute for the doors to shut and the elevator to begin its scraping ascent. I felt her close to me, inches away. A dramatic face with deep eyes, a severe face, possibly. A woman who might be a shade too tall, too strong, her center of gravity too low, as if she was set to push you away. And she was strong—God, did I learn that—strong enough to bear whatever came our way, strong enough to tear that place to pieces. I had to turn my head and pretend to examine the three numbers on the faded elevator panel because it was hard to breath when I looked at her. She knew I was struggling and she was loving it.

When the doors opened to the loft, I was confronted with her life as it was then lived: the cavern of space, the pushed open windows, the lone couch from her parents’ summer house in the center of the room, the worktable and her equipment, the makeshift kitchen we would tear out a year later with the double bed beside it, unmade, her shoes jettisoned at the end. The air that rushed in over us was cold with the rain that had burst down on the street below and brushed against the windows, the traffic hissing against that summer cloudburst.

Undressing her sitting on that bed of hers, I chased her body as she leaned over me to pick up the blankets and the sheets off the floor. I gazed at her face as I explored her, Carolyn’s face all seriousness, as if she had found me herself and was discovering me methodically and carefully. I knew that somehow the two of us had carelessly joined hands and jumped into whatever was next in our lives, into that nothingness of the future. What was being done now was going to be impossible to undo without the greatest loss. This virtual stranger with the heat rising from her naked body, her shoulders round and graceful, neck bones perfect, her face close to mine, on those cool sheets. More. Her long arms and legs, the muscles of her forearms that stood out and shifted and twirled as she held my hand. The surprise of her fingers and palms which were rough, her nails clipped down for work. When I felt the mysterious subterranean muscles of her belly shifting under me, I was seized by a rush of love and longing so powerful I gasped, and she pulled her face from mine quizzically and I shook my head.

And what I wanted to whisper to her, if I had the words (if such thoughts come to a man so utterly overwhelmed), was that she could have this section of my life right now, and the rest, too, if she wanted it. It was the crazy, silent deal you make with yourself when you suddenly touch the woman who was made for you and feel that searing terror of loneliness after years of living by yourself. It happened to me in a crooked room against a body I yearn for like nothing else, need more than water, or blood or breathing.

“Just enjoy it,” she whispered. “I don’t want to hear you.” It was an urgent whisper. What do lovers do when they are confronted by that ocean of life, that electric field that develops between two people maybe once in a lifetime and mostly never? Where does all that power go? I learned that day it is not graceful, it isn’t even romantic. It’s two people clinging on for dear life. Afterward, with her lying next to me, breathing gently into sleep, the evening now fully upon us, the white light I would come to know so well making squares on the marred floor, I knew only that the worst fate in the world would be to lose her. I’d love her no matter what. So long as I had this I’d take whatever came.

I have a crooked room, she had said. Come and enter.

And so came her pregnancy, and so came the blood, and so came the doctors, and so came the news in the doctor’s office that Carolyn did indeed require surgery; that the infection was catastrophic and severe and had forever damaged her. She’d have her life but there would be no more. It was the best they could do, we were told, in that quiet office. In that awful place where I took her hand before she began to weep when we were politely left alone. Where she scraped her nails against my hands and then against my arms and then across my chest and then over my face as if scribbling me out. Where she wept and wept and then pushed me away.

26.

Channing watched the race from the coach’s launch, which traveled behind the two crews. When we crossed the finish he pulled the throttle and the boat cruised by us imperiously. He didn’t look at us, or make any sign that he’d registered our defeat. Connor was leaning out of the boat and retching. I knew I had done damage to the fibrous muscles around my back. Ruth’s voice was subdued as she ordered the boat turned around for the row back. Wadsworth threw up then and I realized that Perry had pissed his pants; the urine slopped along the bottom of the boat as we rowed.

At the dock, Connor slipped out of the boat and stood on shaking red legs. I tried not to think of the human effluent rolling in the hull. The Dover crew was already celebrating. They threw their cox in the water and looked away from us as we rose out of our boat.

We had lost even though we had driven the rating to thirty-nine. What I felt wasn’t anger. It was the urge to destroy something, a viciousness that I’d never outgrow. We had hit that high rating and been unable to move past Dover. We’d still been beaten.

Channing stood near the boathouse doors looking down at us while we stripped off our shirts and handed them over in the traditional signal of defeat. Connor went first and the Dover stroke received his dripping offering like it was something freshly killed. Connor stood pale and gangling in the sun, a scarecrow devoid of power. I ripped mine off next and handed it over wordlessly. Then Perry gave his soaked shirt to a giant of equal size from Dover, who contemptuously squeezed it out on the dock. Wadsworth shook hands with the Dover bow man as he gave up his.

When it came to Ruth’s turn, Connor faced her impassively. “Take it off, Ruth.”

She didn’t miss a beat, pulled off her shirt quickly, easily. She was wearing only a thin bra underneath and looked emaciated. You could count every rib and see the sharp outlines of her shoulder blades. The dark points of her nipples stood out shockingly in the cold. Her legs stuck out of her rowing trau like sticks. She handed her shirt over to the Dover coxswain in silence, Jumbo staring hard at every one of their crew, daring them to laugh. They did not. They looked on in stunned horror. Stripped, Ruth looked like a vulnerable child, skeletal and beaten. Pale with humiliation, she turned and walked by us with as much dignity as she could muster. Nobody said anything as we all watched her on her solitary journey back to the boathouse.

The vicious feeling passed. I lined up by the boat to swab it out and then flip it up on Connor’s command. We were showered with fouled water and loss. Ruth had already left the boathouse by the time we got the boat back up there, as had Channing. Connor sighed, glanced at me before his gaze returned to the jubilant Dover four. “Nice race, Carrey.”

“Yeah, right. We couldn’t move on them even on the high ratings. If we can’t beat Dover, we can’t beat Warwick.”

Connor looked, for the first time, like he might really lose his temper. It came on in a flash. “
You’re
not following me in the boat, Rob.
You’re still too fast on the recovery.
And Perry and Wads follow
you
.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “Just forget it.”

I spun him around. “Are you blaming this on me? Are you? You’re the one who pushed that rating up so high. And Ruth is so damned scared of you she didn’t push it back down.”

“Okay, so that was a surprise. But you guys were
good
for it.” He flashed me that elusive grin of his. “When you rush your recovery, Carrey, there’s something like half a ton of human weight—you, Jumbo and Wads—pushing us the wrong way for about half a second. There are two hundred strokes in a race. That’s a hundred seconds of us being pushed back because you can’t recover. We lost this race by less than two seconds. Just think about it.” He pointed at the Dover crew piling into their van. “Do you know why they are so happy? Because they didn’t expect to win. Yet there they go.”

He pushed by me and I watched the Dover van drive away, then looked out at the river and the dock. The Dover coxswain had left Ruth’s shirt there, a tiny sodden ball of indictment.

*   *   *

I wasn’t outraged by Connor’s treatment of Ruth. It was just one of his many transgressions. I might have felt indignant for thirty seconds. Less. I reminded myself that my own success at rowing was dependent upon my ability to tolerate cruelty. I heaped it upon myself for that entire year. I allowed it to happen all around me. I embraced it.
Ruth’s tough
, I thought.
She can take it. It’s not a big deal
.

Winning was a big deal, and we had lost.

Life at prep school is not something that can be idealized. Anyway, I figured, nothing the kids at Fenton went through could compare with what it was like at Niccalsetti Senior School, where you rode your bike seven miles to crew practice, where kids drank half jacks in the hallways, beat the living shit out of each other in the empty swimming pool during winter.

I would never have believed back then that in fifteen years I would care deeply that I had permitted people who meant something to me to be pushed around. Ruth was tough, I told myself. Perry was tough. I was tough. And the small cruelties of Connor Payne were not going to kill anybody.

*   *   *

Wadsworth and Perry dropped by my room after lights-out, midway through the following miserable week’s practice. I was sitting in the dark at my desk with ice on my knees, thinking I might sleep that way. They crowded into my room and looked down at me. Wadsworth was carrying a golf club. Perry held a glowing garbage bag.

Perry looked at me, shook his head. “Dude, you’re in bad shape.”

Wadsworth switched on my desk lamp. “This place smells like rubbing ointment, Carrey.” He pulled me up and my knees creaked. “You’ll stiffen up sitting there like that. You need exercise.”

“That’s no problem, because I’m never rowing again.” It seemed like a good idea. Channing was killing us in preparation for Warwick, dragging us through endless power pieces and starts. And I was getting the brunt of his displeasure.

“Yeah. We thought you might be a little bummed,” noted Perry. “Especially after Channing told you that a slave in a Greek galley could row better than you.”

“Still,” said Wadsworth, “you need to keep moving. Our times on the water were pretty fast, Ruth says.”

“Ruth didn’t tell me.” In fact, she had pretty much ostracized me all week. Had taken gleeful pleasure in announcing to the boat that my catches were off, or, as always, I was rushing my slide.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

Perry picked up the mysteriously glowing bag and hustled me out the door. “You’ll see. Just go.”

“Wads, why do you have a golf club?”

“It’s a driver.”

“And what’s in the bag?”

Perry shrugged. “Nothing. What bag?”

I followed them out to the fire escape stairs, up to the roof. Wadsworth pushed open the door and we were suddenly on top of the world, looking down at the river, the farmland, the town, the endless trees. “Have you ever been up here, Carrey?”

“No. The fire door is supposed to have an alarm on it.”

“Maybe ten years ago. We figured after Channing yelled at you, you might need to be inducted into our club. So feel privileged.”

Perry nodded. “We’re the only ones who are allowed to drive golf balls off the roof.” He shook the bag. “We used to use regular balls but it wasn’t as much fun as these. This is a super secret club, by the way. The Society of Glowing Golf Balls. We’re the founding members.”

“The school lets you drive golf balls up here?”

“No, but let’s just say that they turn a blind eye. And the rest of the kids in this dorm stay off the roof.”

“Maybe because we’re not allowed on the roof and all,” I noted.

“Yeah. That, too. But the point is, you can actually hit balls into the river. I’ve
cleared
the river a few times.”

I looked out into the darkness, saw the lights of the town beyond the snakelike shape of the river. Perry pulled a portable practice tee from the bag. He set it up, rummaged inside the bag. Inside there were a few dozen, multicolored, mysteriously glowing golf balls. He pointed. “It takes forever to get the little glow sticks in those things, but it’s worth it. Trust me. I save these for emergencies.”

“We loaded fifty of those babies,” said Wadsworth solemnly. It was cold up there, but he shrugged off his coat and rolled up the sleeves to his sweater. He picked up the driver, peered out into the darkness, then plucked a glowing neon green ball out of the bag. “Yup. The river is about fifty yards off the roof. When you hit the ball, it makes quite an effect.”