Heat (12 page)

“Smart,” said Mom after a short silence.

“She's good at it.”

“Are you hungry?” Mom asked, meaning: Did I want to keep talking?

“Not yet,” I said.

It got dark before we even noticed none of the lights were on.

Mom's swimming career had burned out in her sophomore year at UCLA, a sprung rotator cuff in her right arm. The coaches drove us
like this
, she would say, showing a fist being shoved into someone. Maybe that's why she stressed that swimming was ninety percent legs, because she had such ruined cartilage in her shoulders. The coaches, she thought, consumed her career, forcing laps when the team was puking water. I knew Mom would love to have me swim competitively, but she wasn't crazy about platform diving. An eavesdropper would have wondered that the subject of my father never came up.

We sat in the dining room running my options, detailing, once again, her past growing up in Victorville in the Mojave Desert, the lights of LA blue on the horizon. Every morning as a girl she used a pool rake to skim off yucca spears and shiny black beetles
this big
, she would say, indicating an insect the size of a blackbird.

“Let the coaches push you around,” Mom said, “and they'll kill you.”

I called Cindy, and she said the arraignment was set for the courthouse in downtown Oakland, but there was no way to predict any of the details. She said this in a way that told me she was familiar with the world of bail bonds and court calendars, and that I was not.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I slept pretty well that night. I realized it when I woke a little after four, according to the red digits on the clock radio. It defied logic, my dreamless sleep, because as soon as I was awake the dread hit me, like a power that had been stored up and waiting.

I wasn't going to be able to go through with this. I put both feet on the floor, but did not stand up.

A voice in me said:
Stay here
.

Don't go
.

It was damp-warm outside, dark, but too cloudy for meteors. Besides, the annual Perseid shower, the sight of which had so excited Dad that early morning, wasn't due yet. I didn't bother with stretching exercises, just jogged in place on the sidewalk, then kicked into an easy stride, uphill, toward the fading stars.

I was running well when I hit the overpass, the Warren Freeway already packed with traffic I could have easily outpaced. I passed the home where Denise and her parents lived, the au pair girl's cottage nestled among Monterey pines. I used to love running with Denise; she can jog hours without complaint. I had gone out of my way to stop by the iron-spear fence of her front garden, but there was no sign of her.

I took a flash shower, toweled dry, and had milk and egg protein powder, no banana, no toast. Myrna sallied forth to greet the morning and accepted a scratch on her head. Some people think animals are a lot like people. I think they are nothing like us, except that they like attention.

I tossed what I needed into the gym bag. I took the shortest route, but I made myself stop and give my greetings to one of the local terrors, a Great Dane. The beast planted both paws on the cinder-block wall that protected the neighborhood from his wrath and gave a ragged bark, half threat, half hi.

There was no way I was going to be able to do it. I nagged at myself, aware that I was trying to fool myself, and it wasn't working. I was afraid.

One of the custodians was unlocking the arena, whistling a tune. He did not act surprised to see an athlete here so early. He said, “Good morning how are you,” in a rush, the words all together, maybe one of those people who understand English but don't like to speak it.

I wondered what happened if you suffered a subdural hematoma in the same place after a recent injury, how much damage it would do, how much permanent harm.

The locker room was dark except for the twenty-four-hour glow from the coach's booth, where the fire extinguisher and bales of clean towels are stored. The overhead fluorescence stuttered on, slow to wake. The locker room has a strangely yeasty smell, clean cotton and disinfectant. A drip somewhere splashed,
tap tap tap
. My swimsuit did not feel as tight as usual, as though I had lost weight.

Poolside was dry. My feet whispered on the rough surface. I didn't look at the tower as it approached.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I once saw a man hit by a car. A hefty Detroit monster, with rust holes where a strip of chrome had fallen away. The man was jogging in place in the middle of the street, the intersection of MacArthur and Fruitvale, and the vehicle brushed him lightly, a kiss. It was only when the man danced to one side and couldn't bring his leg along that we all saw what was wrong.

Maybe in the following minutes I decided to be a doctor. My mother was riveted by the sight, and half-shielded me as the adult world gathered in to bunch its fists and look grimly around, waiting for the ambulance. But I had seen the empty cut of the man's mouth, a gray-haired man dressed in the brightly colored, zip-fronted jogging wear that had been in style then. I heard his angry “Don't touch me!” and I knew as though I had read a computer printout—it didn't hurt yet. The pain would be later. We all knew that, that some miracle of the nervous system stunned him, kept him unmoving.

Or maybe it was during my first eye checkup, Dr. Wong holding a device like a flat spoon over my right eye and telling me to read the numerals in a spot of light that glowed, in a muted way, like a moon. When he peered into the caverns of my eyes with his pinpoint light, I saw the reflected blush of my veins, crooking like the roots of trees. When I gave a laugh of amazement, he said, in his exacting accent, “The smallest blood vessels in your body—some so small they let through only one blood cell at a time!”

I like emptiness, a theater before the crowd, the swimming arena before anyone in the world thought to arrive and slip into the water.

The lines on the pool bottom were exact, perfectly straight. I dipped my toe, slicing the surface of the water, and that entire plain, so calm, quaked outward from my touch. At once, water gurgled in and out of the filter valves, a sound like a dog lapping water very, very slowly. The metal and plastic disks in the poolside, the access vents to the inner plumbing of the pool filter and the pumps, gleamed in the light from the windows high above the bleachers. The Stars and Stripes hung motionless at one end of the arena, beside the water polo team's home/visitor Scoreboard. My bare feet made echoing
slap slap
sounds on the concrete.

I walked briskly now, decisively, aware that I should use pumice on the calluses on my heels.

Habit marched me upward, three steps, four. Or perhaps it was a victory, my will asserting itself. Halfway up the tower my nerve failed. My knees locked and I had that bizarre sensation that my knee joints were going to bend backward and render me a sports-medicine freak. I stiff-legged my way higher, not letting myself count the remaining steps.

My pulse flickered in my vision, the retinal net of blood vessels hammering, hammering. Deep breath, I told myself. A long breath, all the way in, head to toe. Breathing belongs to us, Miss P said. Control respiration, you control your soul.

Like so much else wise people say, it is only a little bit true. I steadied myself on the steps, guessing I was more than two thirds of the way up. I looked down. I would have gasped, except that I did not let myself give in to such a sound.

I gripped the chrome rail, left hand, right hand. I wanted to laugh, but couldn't. I had no memory of the tower being so high. A seam in the poolside ran from the edge of the pool and all the way to the bright blue wall, the sort of rubberized seam contractors build into structures in California to make them earthquake resistant. If I weakened and fell from here, I would plummet headfirst.

If I fainted.

The scar in my scalp burned. I ground my teeth and won another step, and another. I began making hectic deals with myself, shouted thoughts, mental bargains. This time I would climb to the top of the steps and then I would rubber-leg down. That was all. My breath shuddered in and out, and to my horror the rail was curving, rounding to its summit. I had reached the top.

I felt betrayed by the stair railing, abandoning me to a narrow, open flat. But a new railing took up where the ascent rails surrendered, and I clung to the side of the platform without rising to my feet. I stayed on my knees, hobbling forward, hand to hand.

They were like the protective barrier along the side of a ship, I told myself. Solid, firmly welded into place. I played a mental animation for myself, a welder at work, sparks flying. This is steel, I told myself. Anchored. Going nowhere.

A metal crash.

A loud, echoing sound. I would be all right if I didn't move. If I stayed right there and never released my grip.

The sound faded, reverberating, and from far away I heard the tuneful whistle of the custodian. He had been performing some janitorial task, checking the door to make sure it was unlocked, or testing the door's crossbar, going off to get some oil—the thing tended to stick. I let the sweetness of the song he whistled tease me into optimism for a moment. The world was lovely. I could be somewhere else.

I hung on so hard it hurt. But the realization of the exterior world awakened me to the potential that Denise would arrive for her workout, and Charlotte Witt for her sweet, ordinary dives, and all the rest of them, unthinkingly confident. They would see me and wonder, and then turn to each other with whispered understanding. Poor Bonnie, creeping along on the platform.

I crawled a little farther, and then I pulled myself to my feet and stretched first one leg, then the other. I sidled outward, halfway to the edge.

Divers have a favorite place on the platform, an imaginary equator. You know when you reach it, and I was there now. Three steps would bring me to some eighteen inches from the void, and then I would launch my hurdle, the last skipping step—and I couldn't remember how I used to do it. I was like a little girl studying ballroom dancing from a library book, footsteps connected by sweeping dots, none of it making sense.

I had seen beginners like this, cocky seventh graders introduced to the tower for the first time, huffing all the way up, and then balking, avoiding setting foot on this mesa, this slab of emptiness that you could walk out on and disappear. I had glanced up at skinny kids, up there above the pool, and felt a quiet, interior laugh. I would have laughed at myself, at the sight of me like a scarecrow in the middle of the platform.

Miss P says that if you can't dive well, dive badly. I gave the seat of my suit a tug.

What part of our minds makes the decision, on a cold morning: Get out of bed
now?
My arms and legs chose the time. It was a sloppy dive, a front dive from a layout position, my arms outstretched. The sort of dive you see caught in photos, the diver's arms like wings. A classic dive, the athlete face first into the approaching wall, the water.

All the way down I felt my form crumble, my legs falling forward. I was starting to tumble. I rotated my arms to stop the roll, sure I would hit the pool before my form totally dissolved. I didn't. There was plenty of time. I pancaked, back and rump slamming the water.

My body remembered this very well: the artificial aquamarine of the pool bottom, the steely grin of the drain, the wooden pressure in my ears. It hurts, hitting like that. I did a mental assessment, damage control, standing on tiptoe in an almost soundless environment, warped whale-song noises from the inner workings of the pool, and from my own body, holding its breath.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Alameda County courthouse is a chunky white building, like the capitol of a foreign country you can't quite name. In morning light it looks almost pink, a substantial place, surrounded by rivers of rushing traffic. The structure has been made earthquake resistant, its foundation far underground consisting of huge wheels. A jolt and the building will roll, but not crumble.

In theory. The view from the courthouse steps isn't bad, Lake Merritt to the east, and the tall apartment buildings that grace the shore. You pass through a metal detector, and a sheriff's deputy makes you open your purse, your briefcase. I had to pull my beret off and let the deputy dangle it in his fingers, as though he was surprised it didn't keep its shape.

People extend their arms out from their sides, detector wands waved up and around their limbs. You can tell which ones are lawyers, cracking their briefcases, gazing past the security barrier to the bustling figures beyond. Some of the citizens are new to it, though, and they thank the woman holding their car keys out to them on a tray, careful to show no offense.

An arraignment is usually simple. I knew this from war stories of my dad's, from when he first started out defending marijuana dealers and bosses' daughters caught shoplifting. You plead innocent, you post bail, the legal system digests things for a few hours, and, unless you were arrested for butchering a family of five, you go home.

That didn't explain why I was so nervous. “It's just a bad way to start the day, that's what I'm saying,” Cindy was explaining. She had gotten a parking ticket right outside the office, just a five minute walk away. “It's an insult, what with everything.”

“Think of it as a donation,” said Jack, holding open the door for both of us, “to the city of Oakland. Be philosophical.”

“It's just a bad way to start, is what I mean,” said Cindy.

The man at the gum-and-candy stand in the lobby said, “How's it going?” to Jack, and the lawyer bought himself a roll of Certs. “Anything for either of you?” he asked, peeling money off a roll he kept tidy with a gold clip.

“No sweat about any of this, Bonnie,” said Jack as we headed down a corridor. He was dressed in a heather-brown suit with a narrow waist, and a pair of shoes I recognized from Christmas shopping at Nordstrom, hand-lasted, five hundred dollars tied up in footwear.