You Will Know Me(91)

It was just another convention center: dropped ceiling, thirty thousand feet of industrial floor divided into quadrants, long tables and metal folding chairs in the middle, between the beams and bars, judges seated there, Styrofoam coffee cups in hand, watching.

The mats daubed with chalk, uneven bars tentacled in one corner, the vast expanse of the carpeted spring floor. A few officials were milling around, and coaches walking their girls, hands to shoulders, patting their hard little backs, the shells of baby turtles. A tracksuited volunteer dragged a springboard across the floor as a girl hinged into a handstand, turning hypnotically on the beam, releasing a smattering of claps from the risers. In one corner, a purple-leotarded sylph slashed her legs through a floor routine as a boom box echoed wanly. On a tumbling strip, another rubbed her hands frantically, counting in her head.

The smack-smack-smack of the vault.

Farther down on the risers, an unshaven father, arms across his chest, looked like he might be praying.



The night before, all the booster parents had assembled at Gwen’s house, their faces gray and hoary from four weeks of punishing driving schedules, the pit-foamed air of the gym, the precompetition hysteria of “gymjuries”—overworked girls jamming fingers, rolling ankles, popping knees. Molly Chu, twelve pounds thinner from nerves, her cheeks hollow, kept sliding antacids under her tongue. Becca Plonski’s hands cradled her jaw, which ached from gum chewing, teeth grinding.

But there was something else on all their faces too: that feeling of being on the cusp, like generals on the brink of battle, bunkered deep in the Pentagon war room.

It was probably superstition, then, that no one wanted to talk about anything related to qualifiers, about their daughters least of all, their daughters who were all at home, bodies Gordian-knotted, hunchbacked over gym videos, soaking in blood-blooming bathtubs, their feet and hands shredded.

Instead, the parents gathered in one corner of Gwen’s palatial living room, their minds fired and their bodies responding with beer-pounding, overeating, and listening to a long, dirty story from Jim Chu about the time his roommate supposedly slept with Mary Lou Retton.

It was Kirsten Siefert who brought out the joint, swiped from her son’s backpack, and they shared it, all of them, even Molly, who said, red-faced, that pot made her “erotic.”

Eyes twitching and nostrils flared, Gwen tried to talk shop, but no one would join her. (Katie herself had not said one word to her since their conversation at Weaver’s Wagon. They glided past each other with the hooded eyes of those who’d shared a mortifying one-night stand.)

Finally, Gwen surrendered to the group, the gym-parent equivalent of a key party, returning from her kitchen brandishing a bottle of tequila in the shape of a skull, looking like she wanted to throw back the bottle and swallow the worm whole.

Who’s feeling dangerous? she asked, in her tall boots, the kind you might ride in. They made her look tall and frightening. Where’s the crop? Jim Chu had laughed, and kept laughing even as his smile fell, Gwen’s gaze on him.

The boots were magnificent, and worn, and when she walked in them, she looked taller, stronger, younger. Prettier.

A picture came into Katie’s head, Gwen at fifteen or sixteen, smart cap and flowing hair, arms latched onto a sleek mare, hands following the bit. Body radiating. Cheeks flushed. Her face the face of someone lost in a dream. Daddy, watch me. Watch me win.

“Eric,” Kirsten shouted, waving across the room, “the tequila yearns for you.”

The only remaining outlier, Eric had yet to join them in their revels, sitting in the far corner nursing a beer, rubbing his face, eyes bloodshot, brow graven.

(Katie, he’d said to her just three weeks ago when she’d first let him back into the house, though not into her bed, if Devon gets this… But he never could finish the thought. One of a thousand half conversations, neither of them able to finish one.)

“Eric, it’s your turn,” Becca Plonski demanded, lifting the shot glass, wiggling in her seat.

Eric walked over, took a swig from the tequila, grinned boyishly, faking it, faking it, faking it, that sun-burnished face, and how he could make his eyes dance, who could do that, make their eyes dance?

Eric could.

A few more swigs, and he began talking freely, buoyantly, about Coach T.’s near laryngitis, about how Bobby V. accidentally ordered the team towels from a massage-parlor supplier, about anything at all. Everything he said made everyone laugh and slap knees. Becca Plonski even reached out to touch his arm, as if to say, Oh, stop, Eric, but don’t ever stop.

Slipping off into the hallway, Katie spotted Lacey, that sex-doll face of hers, peeking through the rails of the staircase, watching them all, the manic chatter and gamesmanship, the way adults, parents, could talk forever and forever and without ceasing about nothing they cared about just to stop the worries churning in their hot brains.

(The next day, Lacey would fall during one of her qualifier routines, her heels catching one of the uneven bars and her body folding in upon itself. Everyone would watch her crumpled on the floor, face blue, Coach T. crying out. One fractured vertebra, another dislocated, and this would be the last time she’d ever compete. But none of them knew it now, except maybe Lacey.)

“Katie!” Molly said, finding her in the hallway, grabbing her by the arm. “I’m so happy for Devon. For what’s going to happen tomorrow. Her life will change forever. All of yours will. I always wanted to do it like you did.”