The Sea of Light (30 page)

“Fuck you, Karen. Why don’t you just ask her yourself, if you’re oh-so curious?”

“Wow, Ellie. Didn’t know it was such a touchy subject. I
apol
ogize
.”

But a nasty flicker remained in her eyes. It’s a part of her that flares up occasionally and makes me uneasy, and I saw it flare higher when the whole giggling mess of them poured in from swim bench and Nautilus, Babe tagging along silently, bigger and taller than the rest.

Karen did more push-ups, huffed, puffed and stopped, then sat cross-legged on the mat wiping sweat from her cheek. I watched her with a sudden sick feeling in my throat. Watched Babe, across the room, fitting plates on a barbell.

“Yo, Babe.”

She was fiddling with clinch pins and, when she heard her name, looked over.

“Ellie and I were just doing our push-ups here. And I was wondering.”

Karen’s tone teased. But the sharpness underneath it, if you noticed, would shut you up and make you watchful. For some reason, everyone had noticed. The noise level was considerably reduced. And they were watching.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Babe shook her head. I hung mine in dread.

“Have you ever had an after-death experience?”

Somewhere a bolt dropped, rolled against metal.

“No,” Babe said quietly.

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

No one moved. The attention seemed to feed Potalia in a way. Her voice got stronger, she smiled.

“Well, maybe you’ll tell me if all that
Sports Illustrated
stuff was true. I mean, can you really do
three hundred push-ups nonstop, every day?”

“Oh, that.”

“And bench two hundred pounds?”

“No,” said Babe, “not any more.”

“But you could? I mean, once upon a time?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s sort of, like, a before and after—right?”

The air was silent, sweaty. I could feel my face change from bitter icy pale to the scarlet letter and I glared at Potalia, furious, telling myself I should have stopped this at the beginning and had at least better do something about it now, even though it was too late. But when I looked across the room I saw that Babe was still crouched there calmly, cradling a five-pound plate in her hands. She didn’t seem upset. When she spoke, her voice was even.

“Right. Maybe there’s sort of a before and after in lots of people’s lives, Karen. Maybe you’ll have that in your life, too.”

“Hear, hear,” I said. ‘‘But not soon enough,”

Potalia blushed, stared at me with real dislike, then shame, and looked away. I became team captain again. Stood and clapped my hands, trying to get things back to normal.

“Okay, role models. America’s
finest
physical specimens. It’s caveman time.
Huh!
Pay no attention to that child behind the mirror! The Wizard of Oz has spoken.”

They started moving then, giggling a little with relief. Iron scraped aluminum. Palms smeared mats, left damply outlined fingerprints behind, and metal plates rattled up, slammed down.

I knelt next to Babe.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” she said. She adjusted one last pin, stood to snatch the bar expertly until it rested beneath her chin, then heaved it up and around to press along the back of her neck, so emphatically that you could hear something like metal creaking in her joints—and maybe that’s what it was, because she’d been totally bashed up, after all—but she made it look easy. I thought, for a moment, that there was pain in her eyes. Not hurt feelings, or anger, but a real deep physical pain; and because I was so consumed by it myself these days I recognized it, saw it give her pause, and stop her very briefly. Then she shut her eyes so I couldn’t see. Saying Shoulders, Ellie, shoulders. Spot me, all right?

I did.

*

That was the week I fell, once and for all—right down into the sway of things. The week Potalia stopped talking to me. Not that I cared. And Brenna Allen pulled me aside, to make more promises.

And Babe started waiting for me after morning workouts.

Something weird was happening. I’d try, but couldn’t any more—I could not meet her eyes. When I tried, I’d break out in a sweat. I didn’t know why. Until that one morning, walking next to her down the hall. Feeling the quiet, tired glow of pain that had trapped me every minute of the past three weeks, and this growing sensation of being touched, thoroughly touched, by a sadness I could not explain. Words came up from inside, out of nothing, swelled naturally to the tip of my tongue, so that I almost said them out loud but then recognized what they were with a shock, and trapped and silenced them just in time:

I
think that I love you.

She, of course, strode right along in the invisible sway, many inches taller, much much stronger, miles above me, awesome, emergent. Not even knowing about the sadness. Or that maybe she herself was a reason for it; which was why I could not look her in the eye any more.

But how would she have known? I’d just sensed it myself.

“Are you okay, Ellie? You seem really tired.”

“Oh I’m great. There’s nothing wrong with me that a variety of addictive drugs won’t fix in a jiffy. Whereas you, on the other hand, are looking really awesome in the water, Delgado. Really strong and beautiful. I mean, totally.”

She didn’t respond, and I wished I hadn’t said it. We walked along smothered by one of her deadly silences.

Then I was saved by the bell. Or, in this case, by the dumbbell.

“Wait up, girls.”

Canelli bumped his way between us, slapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed until it hurt.

“Two gorgeous ladies. God, can’t stand it. Makes me want to jump right in.”

His hair was buzzed close on the sides. He’d dyed a Mohawk streak of black right through the gold, from forehead to his wisp of a pigtail.

“Hiya, Ellie. How’s our new distance queen?”

“Funny you should show up, Mike. I was just talking about drugs.”

“Shame, for shame. Drugs are illegal. What about introducing me to your friend here—”

“Babe, this is Mike Canelli, Coach McMullen’s current hardship case, rumor has it a good breaststroker when his arms aren’t broken. Mike, this is Babe Delgado.”

We stopped in the middle of the hall, they said hi and shook hands, and he leaned over to kiss her knuckles.

“My hero.”

She pulled back a little, blushing. He hung on to her hand until his arm stretched, then dropped it with a reluctance that was almost all for show—almost—but, for a second, the thick blond eyebrows rose with something like acknowledgment, or admiration. He was tall, taller than her, much taller than me. Inside the baggy school sweatshirt his shoulders, chest, neck were a lot smaller than they’d been last year, and he was dragging around the remains of a sizable pot belly. But he is a big enough guy to carry all the defects without looking too bad. He tugged my hair, which he always does, and for some reason I let him. Maybe because I was feeling utterly underneath the heel of everyone and everything, and figured it was all that I deserved. Or maybe because Mike is one of those creatures who is always right in someone’s face, anyway, so by the time he lands in yours you don’t even notice. It’s a kind of gift, actually: when other people let you have your absolute way around them, without beating the emotional or physical crap out of you. A gift that I often have dreamed of possessing. And never will. But Mike Canelli does.

He glanced at Babe, who was watching quietly. For the first time in memory, I saw Mike Canelli turn red—a quick burst of embarrassment that whipped his features scarlet and passed immediately away. Strange misery seized my innards. And the morning loomed ahead like some devastating gauntlet: full of torment, impossible.

“Babe, I can’t do breakfast.”

She gave me a questioning look.

“But
I
can,” he said.

“Listen, Ellie, what about dinner?”

“Yes,” Mike echoed, “what
about
dinner?”

I ignored him and told her that would be fine, she could come over to my place after workout.

Then I left as quickly as possible. The sway let me do it—just walk forward, down the hall, past people and glass cases and lobby bulletin boards without looking back to see any of them. It carried me through swinging doors, out into browned trees and fresh cold air. I breathed with relief. But there were tears in my eyes, I don’t know why.

*

Dinner. It was the worst.

I got home from last class of the day in time to see what there was in the refrigerator—which was basically nothing—and grabbed some stuff to throw in my bag for afternoon workout. Then it was back to campus, kicking through piles of carefully raked leaves just because I felt mean. Babe was coming over. I’d have to get creative fast. That’s when I really started to feel it: all the force of being broken down with distance, distance. How I was getting smaller every day somehow. And something inside me—some deep-down important shameful and naked thing that had always been protected with jokes and weights and attitude—was getting revealed on the surface. Everyone could probably see: Ellie Marks, slug in disguise. My face turning to exhausted slime. Shivering like both parts of a worm somebody’d cut in half. Like some creature you’d find underneath a rock, or rotten log, or down below in an ugly underwater cave.

In the locker room, she seemed distracted.

“Are we still on for dinner?” I asked. Sure she said, sure. But with a faraway look on her face, like she wished she’d never mentioned it. Hey, I was about to tell her, don’t do me any favors.

Maybe I should have. But I let it slide.

Instead I said, What about seven? And she gave me that jock moron look she gives when she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t understand something, and said could we make it eight instead? she had some work to do. That was my real chance to call it off. I blew that one, too. The whole thing was causing me quite a lot of misery already. I didn’t know why—it just was—and I probably could have spared myself, but didn’t. Fine, I said, eight it is. I gave her the address, told her how to get there, wondered while she listened with a blank stare if she was hearing any of it at all. I realized she’d never been over before. Well, Big Girl, I thought, time to get social. There was a nasty intentional cruelty in the thought. It made me want to go bang my head against a metal locker, made me glad I’d kept my mouth shut for once and hadn’t said it out loud. On the way home, slashing through all the leaves I’d scattered before, watching the sky go gray and dark blue, remnants of sun fade with the last hints of color from the horizon, I had to ask myself: Okay, Marks, what the hell is wrong with
you?

And I knew, but wouldn’t admit it.

I stopped off in a store and spent the last nine bucks of the week buying things I couldn’t afford. Fish. Fancy ice cream. Miss Captain Gourmet. And all the time this thing like doom kept pounding in my chest. It was my heart, beating faster than normal, and in a hard, unhealthy way.

Halfway up the porch steps I realized I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. And that—the wanting, and the not being able to—that was what caused all the pain.

I was the only one home, and made a mess in the kitchen. Some of it I did on purpose, because Jean is such a stickler for keeping things neat, so it was liberating in a way to just sort of splash egg yolks and bread crumbs around and slop oil on the counter, finally shoving things into the oven and gazing in a sort of vengeful self-satisfaction at the general disaster of slimy bowls, crusted breadboards.

It was seven o’clock.

I noticed that my chest felt funny, like the lungs were a little raspy and my throat a little itchy. My nose was stuffed with chlorine, mouth dry, skin chilly.

I went into the living room and stretched out on the couch, and fell asleep.

The porch wind chimes woke me up, clanging loudly. Before the doorbell buzzed I guessed it was her; she was tall, and would have brushed them with her head. I stared at my wristwatch, the cloth band still slightly damp from workout. Eight-thirty. I felt chilly, the lights in the living room seemed too bright. A smell like a cloud filled the air, along with a sizzling sound. Both came from the kitchen. I sat up then, and for a second couldn’t figure out what to do.

So I ran to the door first, knocking over a pile of books. She was there in the dark, looking uncomfortable.

“Babe!”

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Where’s the fire?”

When I got to the kitchen sooty smoke was beginning to dribble from the oven. I burned my hand opening the oven door to a pan of encrusted black substance that stank totally, and saw through the gray cloud billowing out that there was a very expensive pint of ice cream melting on the countertop.

I heard Babe at the kitchen threshold.

“Can I help with anything?”

“No,” I said.

Then the smoke alarm went off.

I ran to the broom closet, grabbed a mop. Then I ran across the room and started smashing the alarm case with the mop handle. It wouldn’t stop.

“Ellie, let me.”

A hand pressed my shoulder aside. Another hand plucked the mop from me like it was plucking some straw out of a glass. Babe reached up calmly, twisted the case off, pulled a battery from between metal pincers. There was a sudden, smoky silence. I could hear myself breathing, sweaty and frantic.

“Towering inferno,” I said. Thinking, instead: nine bucks of fish. “Well, there’s your dinner.”