You Will Know Me(5)

Then, when Drew came along, their delicate, thoughtful son, nothing changed. Quiet, easy, he fit so perfectly—in temperament, in disposition—with everything that was already happening. Devon was happening.

After one meet, Devon medaling in three of four events, in the car on the way home, their fingers stiff from cold, Eric asked Devon, age nine, how it was, how it felt.

“I beat everybody,” she said, solemnly. “I was better than everybody.”

Her eyelashes blinking slowly, like she was surprised.

And Katie and Eric had laughed and laughed, even though Katie felt sorry, always did, for all those other girls who just weren’t as good, didn’t have that magical something that made Devon Devon.

“You gotta get her out of there,” a competition judge confided to Eric the following day. “Ditch that strip-mall gym. Get her to BelStars. Get her to Coach T.

“You keep her here, it’ll all go to waste.”

And that very night Eric began researching second mortgages.

It was, Katie had to admit, exciting.



Coach Teddy Belfour watched Devon’s tryout, rapt.

“Let me offer you a big, mouth-filling oath,” he told Katie and Eric, never taking his eyes from her. “Bring her to BelStars and she’ll find the extent of her power. We’ll find it together.”

That was how he talked, how he was.

The next day, Devon was on the BelStars beam, under the tutelage of the exalted Coach T., the most decorated coach in the state, the silver-maned lion, the gymnast whisperer, the salto Svengali, molder and shaper of fourteen national champions at the Junior Olympic and Elite levels.

That night, Eric told Katie how he and Devon had walked past the long rows of beams and bars, the fearsome BelStars girls whippeting around with faces grim as Soviets’.

He thought she would be terrified by the time they finished the gauntlet. But instead she’d looked up at him, her eyes dark and blazing, and said, “I’m ready.”



And overnight BelStars became their whole world.

Twelve thousand square feet, a virtual bunker, it had everything that jolly Tumbleangels, run by two sweet women both named Emily, didn’t. The color-coordinated foam wedges and cartwheel mats were replaced by mammoth spring floors, a forty-foot tumbling track, a parent lounge with vending machines. All of it gray, severe, powerful.

And she had Coach T., nearly all his energies devoted to Devon, beneath her on the beam, the bars, spotting her at the vault. Barking orders at everyone but Devon. (“She doesn’t need it,” he said. “She just needs our faith.”)

This was the place Devon began spending twenty-five hours a week, before school, after school, weekends. And, because it was thirty minutes from their house and Eric’s work schedule was unreliable, it was often the place Katie and thus little Drew spent four, five, seven hours a day, Katie’s default office, her laptop open, trying to do her freelance design jobs.

But it was impossible not to watch Devon. Everyone watched her.

Katie and Eric tried never to say the word Olympics. But it was hard not to think about. Because it was all anyone at BelStars thought about.

“Once in a generation,” one of the other parents said, watching Devon.

You never think you’ll hear a phrase that big in real life, much less find yourself believing it.

You never think your life will be that big.



Just after Devon’s tenth birthday, Coach T. pulled Katie aside.

“Let’s meet tonight. You and Eric and me,” he whispered so no other parent could hear. “To talk about our girl’s future. Because I see things bright and bountiful.”

And so it was, that night, sitting at the grand dining-room table of his grand home, Coach T. pulled out a large easel pad and showed Katie and Eric the flow chart, punctuated by fluorescent arrows, Sharpied hieroglyphics. It was titled “The Track.”

“My friends, this is a decision point,” he said, perpetually bloodshot eyes staring over at them. “Are you ready?”

“We are,” Eric said.

“Yes,” Katie said. “Ready for what?”

Teddy laughed buoyantly, and then they all did. Then, turning the easel paper toward her, he waved his pen, magician-like, and explained.

“Devon’s on the brink of becoming a Level Ten gymnast,” he said. “The highest level.”





THE TRACK





“And she can top out at Ten,” he said, shrugging a little. “And be proud of herself. Compete in big events across the country. Attract recruiters for a college scholarship.”

He looked at them, that forever-ruddy face, the dampness of his bloodhound eyes.

“Or she can take the other path, the narrow one. The challenging one. The one for the very few indeed. The Elite path.”

E-lite. It was all anyone talked about in the gym. Elite-Elite-Elite. A constant purr under their tongues. The trip of the l, the cut of the t.

“Going Elite means going from competing nationally to competing internationally,” Teddy said. “If this is the desired track, she needs to qualify as an Elite gymnast. First, Junior Elite, and she’s not even close to ready yet. I’m shooting for her thirteenth birthday. Then Senior Elite, the year she turns sixteen.”

All three were silent for a moment. Eric looked at Katie, who looked back at him, trying not to smile.