After it was done, I felt something cold hit my back.
“You there,” Ryan said, tossing a bit of snow that had been caked to his blade towards me. “Shaniqua, Babushka, Muhammad, whatever your name is.”
“Alivopro,” I said. “And yes?”
“Actually, you’re pretty fabulous, I thought you should know,” he said. “Not as fabulous as M-O-I moi, of course. But fabulous nonetheless. That’s a compliment if you were wondering. Be pleased. Not as fabulous as me is still really really fabulous.”
“Give me a couple years,” I said.
“Sassy, I like that,” Ryan said. “Now sassy-ass, what do you think of my shadow? Glammy or tranny?” He closed his eyes to reveal lavender shimmering from his lids.
“Glammy and tranny?” I said.
“You pass the test,” he said, “You’re in.” Then he spanked my bottom into the locker room.
My new life had begun.
My routine was now two alarms, three egg whites, a sixty mile drive south, and stretching. Ryan would be there, girls would glare, and then there were hours of darting around trying to break the routine, trying to finally do it right. I looked over at the violet silhouette of Lauren’s jacket. I heard Mrs. Closerman scream “Straighter! Higher!” at Emma. I beat myself blue, flew and curled through the reps until my mother said she was going to leave me to freeze overnight. Through it all, I was regardless of the world. I’d vowed for better or worse, and I took the worse because it was the only way to get better.
Lauren drilled what I’d mastered to allow more time to try for what I hadn’t. Girls lost jumps all the time, and it was best to treat them like dishes. I did them every day so that I wouldn’t wake up to a mess a week later. I wrote my vocabulary of movements into the ice, little commas and periods punctured with pointed toes.
“See the double loop with your mind’s eye first,” Lauren told me once it was time to try to have what I hadn’t. I closed my eyes.
“My mind’s I did it,” I said.
“Now it’s up to you,” she said. “Remember, all you need to do is master momentum. Do not be deceived. Do not let it pull you off your axis. Momentum follows you.”
I took a lap and talked to myself. Follow me, I told myself. Follow me. Do not be deceived. I bent and sprung. I hung, topping air, whipping twice. And then I had done it, and I saw two purple arms flung up to the fluorescents approach, screaming. A white wave of ice sprayed up from Lauren’s blade. “Now again,” she said. “While it’s still in your legs!” A minute later: my first again of the loop.
“That can’t possibly be enough. One turn can’t possibly be the only difference,” my father said. He was sitting in front of the computer researching rules from the United States Figure Skating Association and couldn’t believe that the only difference in the flying spin requirement for the novice and junior level tests was a single rotation. His fingers scurried over the keyboard letters in cross reference over cross reference. “Who decides? Where would they get such a figure? How can one rotation make the difference between the middle and the upper reaches?”
“Just accept it,” my mother said.
“Arbitrary, don’t you see? There’s got to be a reason, Lou. I’m getting to the bottom of this number. I’m getting to the bottom of the reasons for minimal requirements.”
“Why do you need to know more than the minimum requirements?” my mother said. “Minimums are minimal. That’s the reason.”
“Because it’s exciting to find reasons.”
“Not for me,” she said. “I just want to eat a meal.” She had put their name in at The Common Man Restaurant so they wouldn’t have to wait on their anniversary, and now she was waiting for him.
“Go ahead without me. Order an appetizer,” my father said. “I’ll turn up.”
“This figure skating thing is a midlife crisis,” she said. “Figure skating is a convertible, a bimbo, guns and a gym in one. And I’ve been trying to let you have little hobby, but what am I supposed to do? Eat shrimp cocktail alone? On our anniversary?”
“Lou, you know that can’t possibly be true. The average life expectancy in the United States is 75.9 years of age and I’m forty-nine. Plus, with my family history, I’d be an anomaly with another fifteen years anyway.”
“What am I supposed to do with myself? What am I supposed to do with you? It’s almost nine, Alvin.”
“I’m seizing the day,” he said.
“Well seize and desist!”
“That’s ‘cease.’ Cease to stop, not seize to take. I’m seizing not ceasing.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Alvin. You’re not in college anymore. You’re not going to earn a good grade. You’re here, in our house, on our anniversary, and I, your wife, am hungry, and you’re correcting my grammar? Stop with the skating, and answer the question. Are you coming now or not?” She put her purse down. She looked over his shoulder. When he didn’t answer: “Are you sleeping with Lauren?”
“I would never jeopardize Ali’s career, Lou.”
“Career! She’s a little girl!”
“She’s fourteen years old! Comparatively geriatric! Tara Lipinski was fourteen when she won the World Championships.”
“I don’t know who the hell that is or what you’ve done with my husband. But I need you to stop talking about little twirling freaks right now.”
“Calm down, Lou. Ali can still beat the freaks.”
“Dad,” I said finally. “Researching skating statistics is not going to help me beat anyone. Can’t you just celebrate for mom’s sake? Skating will still be here tomorrow.”
“Success waits for no one,” he said. “Especially in the skating world. I’m surprised at you.”
I didn’t have an answer to this. His assessment of the sport was correct, but he wanted so to believe that he could help me win—that number crunching and research and analysis could glean victories of the body—and he couldn’t. What he could do was give my mother this one night for all the days she’d tried to make him happy.
“I could understand if you’d bought a motorcycle,” she said. “Bankrupted us. Blown half a year’s salary at the casinos. But this is not normal.” Peanuts would have been enough for my mother. She wasn’t above Red Sox spectatorship. Peanuts and a big warm arm around her neck as a stadium full of fans stood to scream for a man running home.
“For better or for worse. For better or for worse is what I have to remind myself,” she said when he stared at the computer screen and said nothing. I suppose what she was thinking was that she ought to have said, “How about for better or for best?” It didn’t matter. Through the world-mute of his obsession, my father didn’t hear her.
According to my mother, the horror of Boston traffic was why she’d married a man in New Hampshire, but now she was back in the thick of it, getting the middle finger every weekday as she drove me to the rink, her only rest the weekends when my father took me. She bought books that taught how to breathe through stress, books about how to empty the mind, but one thing we could agree on was that emptying the mind shouldn’t be done while