Chapter Four

 

Trixie Dalca was one of the twenty most recognizable people in Romania and by far the most popular athlete even though soccer, basketball, handball, and tennis were more prevalent in her country. While Ileana’s death caused barely a ripple internationally, it was the only thing people in Romania talked about for days. The Dalcas had Ileana’s body shipped to Constanţa for the funeral.

The Jewish community in Romania, particularly on the coast, had dwindled over the years down to practically nothing. Less than one percent of the population adhered to the religious tradition, and the Dalcas identified themselves not only as Jewish, but Gypsy as well. Their true group of peers was a small one, but they rallied for the family. A collection of women from the synagogue the family attended took care of washing, purifying, and dressing the body in proper shrouds. They also arranged for the coffin and burial plot, something no one in the family thought they would have to consider for five or six decades at least.

The Torah required that a body be buried as soon as possible after death, so Ileana’s funeral took place the afternoon following her passing. Trixie felt like the world was rushing past her, days were a matter of minutes, and a second after believing her sister was alive and happy, her cold, deformed body was being put into the ground.

In Judaism, there was no viewing of the body, which was just as well. By the time she died, Ileana’s face was grotesque, unrecognizable from the swelling. In the hospital, Magda spent most of her time with her hands on either side of her daughter’s face, rubbing her cheeks and temples lovingly. Praying for help, for salvation.

Embarrassed to admit it, Trixie could barely look at her baby sister. It was like seeing a completely different person in the bed. She wasn’t breathing, her brain wasn’t working, and eventually her heart stopped beating. The machines were more real to her than her sister’s soul. She had a feeling the true Ileana was gone the moment her skull slammed against the beam support.

The funeral service took place at the cemetery. Over five thousand people attended, and though Trixie knew some of them, no faces were familiar. The spring day was warm, the sun bright and reflecting against the Black Sea like a million tiny diamonds.

The scene blurred through her tears, and Trixie looked toward the beach, remembering a picnic she and her sister shared six years ago on that very spot. It seemed like an eternity ago. A couple weeks after the picnic, Trixie would be designated an elite gymnast and win the Junior National Championships: all-around, beam, and vault.

Ileana had just learned how to do a backflip.

Trixie had always been Ileana’s hero, right up until the day before yesterday, when she’d needed her big sister to protect her.

And Trixie failed.

The people who gathered to remember Ileana wanted to hear Trixie speak, but she couldn’t bring herself to deliver a eulogy, or what people of her synagogue called a hesped. As much as she resented it, she knew she would not be able to speak her sister’s name without dissolving into ragged weeping.

Evgeny Popescu, Ileana’s coach, was the first to eulogize. “Ileana was a beautiful, talented athlete who was destined for greatness. More than that, she was a kind soul. She loved her fellow gymnasts and was always the one in the gym with a smile on her face, picking up her friends when they were down. There are no words to describe the magnitude of this loss. Tavian, Magda, Trixie, I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved that child. For the rest of my life, a day will not go by when I do not think of her, and I will always be grateful to have known her. Rest in peace.”

Trixie wanted to throttle him. There were senior gymnasts at his studio that couldn’t do a double flip dismount off the beam in a tuck position, much less a pike. Ileana shouldn’t have been pressured into practicing it with nothing but the floor and a thin mat to greet her.

She didn’t hear the other hespeds. She didn’t care. No one knew her sister the way Trixie did, and she was not ready to accept she was gone. It didn’t seem possible. The old Jewish women said she was in aninut, an intense mourning, which explained her shock and disorientation. She thought it was normal for her to be shocked and disoriented considering what happened, whether she was Jewish or not. No one seemed to notice that Trixie had not said a word to anyone except her best friend since her sister died.

Five thousand mourners at the cemetery, but Trixie had felt completely alone. There was no solace for her mother, no break for her father, and she was left waffling between inconsolable sadness and intolerable isolation.

Secluded was not a new feeling for Trixie. As the country’s best gymnast, a celebrity no less, the pressure to be perfect combined with the expectation of excellence set her apart from her peers. She’d always been serious, and there was certainly no humor for her to fall back on now. Everything was horrible. There was no relief, no one who could possibly understand the breadth and depth of her despair. The only thing she felt capable of doing was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing for time to reverse. If necessary, she’d go all the way back to being three-years-old, two years before her sister was even born, and not call her father outside to watch her do a trick she’d taught herself. A front flip with a direct ass landing.

After the funeral, safely away from the crowds of people, and though it was expensive, for the second time in as many days, Trixie called the United States.

“Hello?”

“Shaye, it’s Trixie. What are you doing?”

There was a delay before the reply. The thousands of miles between them were noticeable only by a three second gap between question and response, but they might as well have been on separate planets. Trixie wanted to be in the same room as her best friend. They were competitors from different countries, but they had always understood each other intrinsically. It was difficult for Trixie to explain how much admiration she had for her chief rival and superlative ally. No other gymnasts in the world had come close to touching them in competition for the past three years, and in that time their relationship could have grown contentious. Instead, Shaye built a bridge of friendship to her, and this had become the foundation on which Trixie constructed her career.

Though they were virtually equal in athletic ability and gymnastic skill, Trixie looked up to Shaye. She always said what she wanted without worrying about what the world would think of her comments. Shaye was honest and forthright without being mean, and she truly wanted gymnasts she competed against to perform their very best. Then she wanted to beat them. Shaye was never okay with second place, and she didn’t settle for it often. She was outspoken when it came to the unsafe training practices and abuses heaped on young women in the pursuit of gymnastics greatness, and Trixie only wished she could be as tough and passionate as her friend.

Of course, Shaye lived in the United States, where ruthless mocking was the worst consequence of speaking freely. In Romania, Trixie did not have that luxury. The smallest infraction could get her kicked off the national team.

Trixie knew Shaye’s older sister, what their relationship meant, and that combined with her gymnastics pedigree made her the only person in the world that could even begin to understand the effects of Ileana’s death.

“I’m just on my way to the gym.” It was early in the morning in New York City, but that’s when training began. “Ileana’s funeral was today?”

“Yes, I got home an hour ago.”

“How are you?”

“Miserable. I feel like I want to go outside and find a stranger and...I don’t know the English phrase.”

“Beat the ever-loving shit out of them?” Shaye supplied.

“That sounds about right.”

“Go ahead and do it. No one would blame you. Of course, breaking your hand on someone’s face, an injury that would make you miss the Olympics, would be hard to explain.”

“I don’t care about the Olympics. I don’t care if I do gymnastics ever again.” She sighed and put her hand over her face. “What do I do, Sly? How do I move on from this?”

“If I were you, I’d spend every waking moment at the gym. I’d work out harder than I ever thought possible, and that would either make me the best gymnast in the world or it would kill me.”

“I’d be glad for either,” Trixie admitted.

“Come to America,” Shaye offered. “Spend the time between now and the Olympics with me.”

“Believe me, you have no idea how badly I want to. I just can’t leave my parents right now. My mother is a total wreck. If it’s possible to actually die of grief, she will. And my father’s completely ignoring the situation. He’s going to the restaurant tomorrow like nothing happened.”

“What about you?”

“I’m nothing. I’m nowhere.”

“It’s not your fault, Trixie. No one could have ever predicted this.”

She said softly, “Evgeny spoke at the funeral. He said a day won’t go by without thinking of her. For the rest of his life.”

“The next time we’re in the gym together, I could accidentally do a backflip into his nuts.”

“He won’t remember my sister next week, and if he does, it’ll only be to wonder how much better his life would have been if he could have coached the great Ileana Dalca longer.”

“Trixie?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to kick your ass at the Olympics.”

“What?”

“It’s not even going to be funny. People will just think it’s sad. Granted, you’re in mourning, so you’ll have an excuse. Which is good because you won’t come within five points of me.”

You bitchy shiksa!” she exclaimed but found herself unexpectedly smiling.

“Really, I wish there was something I could do to stop it, but I don’t see how I’ll be able to hold myself back. I’m going to do a double flip release on the bars.”

“Seriously?”

“Why not? And I’m going to do a one-and-a-half on the beam.”

“No way.”

“I haven’t tried it yet, but how hard could it be?”

“You’re crazy,” Trixie said.

“Maybe, but if I pull it off, like I said, I’ll beat you by five points, minimum.”

“Or you’ll fall off both the beam and the bars and end up outside the top twenty.”

“You think that will happen?”

“I think I’d better hit the gym.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Trixie chewed on her bottom lip and felt her cheeks once again grow damp with tears. “How do I make my family okay?”

“You can’t, Trixie. You’re not okay. All you can do is make it through today. Tomorrow we’ll worry about tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Impossible. There was no tomorrow.

“Call me anytime. I mean that.”

Trixie hung up the phone and stared at her open doorway. Across the hall was her sister’s room. The door was closed, and she couldn’t imagine ever opening it again.

She thought about what Shaye said and decided she would return to the gym tomorrow. Gymnastics was the only escape she had.

At least when she was working in the gym, especially on difficult moves, she couldn’t allow her mind to wander from the task at hand. As she knew too well, distraction could be deadly.