Chapter Twenty-Six

 

Trixie did not think she and Shaye were fighting. She knew her friend well enough to discern she was simply trying to find the right way to apologize. It would have to be a moment when it could seem both minimal and sincere and absolutely not draw any attention to the fact that she did something wrong, Trixie realized—a little cynically.

They ran side by side along the shore as they had done every morning since Shaye arrived in Romania, though the jogs had been silent for the past two days. This morning was particularly hot and more humid than Trixie could remember in recent days. The coastline was experiencing an irregular drought, and the heat pressed heavy on the port, giving everything a dull yellow hue.

They reached the end of the pier and turned around wordlessly. As they headed up the beach, Shaye stopped and put her hands on her knees, panting, sweat dripping off the end of her nose.

“It’s freakin’ hot,” she said unnecessarily. Without waiting for Trixie to reply, she slipped out of her shoes and socks and dove into the surf wearing her shorts and sports bra.

She wanted to protest but the water looked so refreshing that she followed. Within minutes, they were both about twenty-five yards from shore, floating on their backs, bobbing gently in the waves. The sun was warm on their faces, but the water was cool. Trixie spread out her arms and closed her eyes, half hoping to be carried out to sea forever, half comforted when her hand occasionally brushed against Shaye’s body. She was so solid, so real, and her presence was the only thing anchoring Trixie to reality. Most of the time lately she felt like she was evaporating into mist, like there was nothing holding her to earth.

Her friend might be hardheaded, but she was bigger than life, and she was the only thing keeping her going.

After twenty minutes, Shaye rolled forward onto her stomach and dipped her face into the water for a minute before treading around. “We should go. We’re gonna be late for practice.” They swam to the beach, grabbed their shoes, and wiped the sand off their feet on the floor mat outside a small grocery store. They jogged home feeling refreshed, and when they walked through the front door, Shaye said, “I’m taking a quick shower before we leave.”

She went upstairs, and Trixie pulled a pitcher of cold water from the refrigerator, pouring herself a glass. It was so hot outside that her clothes were already dry, and she sat down at the kitchen table.

Five minutes later when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs, she assumed it was Shaye, so when her father appeared in the doorway, she wasn’t sure what to say.

Tavian opened with, “Good morning.”

“Hi,” she replied. “I thought you were sleeping.” Over the past week, her mother had returned to the restaurant in the morning. She wasn’t exactly an effective manager, but at least she was getting out of the house and interacting with the world.

“I was. Shaye decided to sing in the shower. It got kind of loud.”

Instead of smiling as the situation called for, Trixie sighed deeply. “Look, Dad, I know you don’t like Shaye, but—”

“I like Shaye,” he interrupted, genuinely surprised by her claim.

“Really?”

“Of course. I love Shaye. And her family.”

“I didn’t know.”

“For the past five years, we’ve seen them seven or eight times each year at various international competitions. We always stay together, eat together, socialize together when you girls are in training or warm ups or competing. I like Shaye. I don’t even mind waking up to her singing. I wish she weren’t the only teenage girl in this house who felt good enough to sing in the shower.”

“Yeah, well, there’s not a lot to feel like singing about for me,” she mumbled.

“Beatrix—”

“She was right, you know. When she told Mom it’s Ileana’s own fault she’s dead. Shaye was right. And if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be able to go to the gym because I would be terrified of getting hurt.”

Tavian looked nervously at the video camera pointed at them from the counter. “Do we need that on?”

“Abby said to record everything. So we’ve been recording everything. We promised. I doubt anyone will go to the trouble of translating all this.”

“You’re right. Sorry. Listen, if you don’t want to do gymnastics anymore, you don’t have to. No one will make you.”

“I can’t quit gymnastics. It’s my ticket out of Constanţa, my ticket out of Romania. It doesn’t matter how scared I am. I won’t give it up.” Most importantly, it was her ticket out of this depressing house. What went unsaid was louder than any of her words.

“Would staying be so terrible?”

“Look at my life. Mom won’t look at me, blames me for everything, and you...I have no reason to stay. I could go to college in America on a scholarship. Leave all this behind.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, Dad. I do.” She didn’t say it to be cruel. It was simply the truth. “My friend might be brash, she might be abrasive, she might be blunt, but Shaye lives her life unafraid. I called her a coward, and it wasn’t fair. She’s not a coward. She cut her father out of her life because it was the only way to protect herself.”

Tavian stepped forward, ready to sit down at the table but thought the better of it. “I talk to Seth Sylvester.”

“Shaye’s father?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean, you talk to him?”

“At meets. He’s always there. We usually sit with Simone because the other parents are intense and sometimes mean-spirited toward some of the girls, so we sit with the Sylvesters, and I talk to Seth.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell it kills him to be on the periphery of Shaye’s life. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Trixie got up from the table and rinsed her cup out in the sink so she didn’t have to look at him as she spoke. “You already made your decision, Dad.”

“I know we had a fight—”

“This isn’t about one fight. You made your decision years ago when you decided I would always come last in this family. You regret it now because I’m the only one left, but this has been a long time coming and probably would have happened even if Ileana were still alive.”

“Bea, you don’t mean that.”

He had no idea how serious she was, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of explaining herself. That would only give him a chance to argue. “I’m late. I have to go.” Though she wanted to take a shower, it could wait until she made it to the gym.

Throughout the day, Trixie and Shaye continued their dance of purposeful avoidance, but they found their eyes meeting more often without immediately looking away, and Trixie even risked giving her friend a small smile and a thumbs-up as she was going through her daily ritual of trying the double flip release move on the uneven bars and inelegantly crashing to the ground. Shaye grinned back and winked before repeating the process.

When it was time to warm-down at the end of the day, Trixie took her usual spot in the corner of the floor exercise square and kept her head down so she would be left alone. After a few minutes, a shadow fell over her, and she looked up to see Shaye. She opened her mouth to speak but thought the better of it and simply sat down across from her. Shaye spread her legs into a loose straddle and leaned forward, resting her upper body on her elbows.

“Nothing happened, you know,” Shaye said in a rush.

“What?”

“Between me and my father. Everyone thinks we must have had a big blowout, like you and Tavian, but nothing happened, not really.”

“So why did you stop talking to him?”

“I only lived with him for four years without Simone, when she was in college. Luckily I started kindergarten that same year she left. I’d go to school at six o’clock in the morning at their program, eat breakfast, and tumble on gym mats, play games. After school, a friend’s mom would drive me to gymnastics practice with her, and I’d stay for five hours, twice as long as the other kids. He’d finally pick me up around eight or eight-thirty, we’d stop for greasy food on the way home, and I’d go straight to bed. That’s how it was.”

“Sounds lonely,” Trixie surmised.

“I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. After a couple years, I spent more and more nights away from home, with friends, and it started to seem like every time I came home, something was missing. First it was the DVD player, then the television. A lamp, the recliner, the ceiling fan. Dad said he was trying to simplify, and it was so rare that I was actually home, I didn’t think much of it.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I got a little bit older, found the receipts from Atlantic City, caught him playing online poker at all hours of the night, wondered why most of the time we were broke, but when we weren’t, instead of using a debit card like all the other parents, he walked around with a wad of cash. I know it doesn’t sound so terrible, but I felt like I was fading away, you know? Like every day, I became less and less of a person in my father’s eyes. Like I was ceasing to exist.”

Tears filled Trixie’s eyes, and she pressed her heels together butterfly-style. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I packed a bag and showed up outside my sister’s apartment the day after she graduated college, and my father didn’t even pretend to put up a fight. He basically said I was better off away from him. My sister was waiting tables, she didn’t have any money, and all of a sudden she had a ten-year-old girl she was totally responsible for. Simone never complained, she never said or did anything that would make me think she resented me, but how could she not? I tried to be perfect. I tried to get straight A’s, tried to win every meet I entered. I went to Houston because maybe she’d still have to support me financially, but at least it wouldn’t be a day-in, day-out struggle. When I was in Texas, I talked to Simone every day, and once every couple of weeks, my father would call.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing, really. By that point we had completely run out of things to say to each other.”

“When did you go back to New York?”

“I hated living in Houston. I hated the training style and the accents and my school, the quietness of the town compared to the city. I was going to quit gymnastics. I felt like I hadn’t improved since moving away, and they wouldn’t let me try anything new. Then Galya found me, and three months later, you beat me at Worlds. If I had still been training in Texas, I wouldn’t have made the first cut. I talked to my dad on the phone every once in a while, but then I started avoiding his calls. I refused to answer the phone, and if Simone did, I refused to talk. We’d exchange a few words at my meets. A couple years ago at the Pacific Rim Championships, he called my name, and I ignored him. He took advantage of my sister, he abandoned me, and enough was enough. I’d had enough.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what he’s really like.”

“Do you hate him?”

“I don’t know,” Shaye repeated. “The weird thing is, I never would have gotten into gymnastics if it weren’t for him.”

“Because he left you at the gym for so long?”

“Actually, after my mom died, Simone and my dad were so sad, the only thing that made them laugh was when I acted silly. I would flip around the living room, bouncing from the walls to the furniture. My sister told me once she couldn’t believe some of the things I’d do, and she told our dad I’d be an Olympic gymnast someday.”

“And here you are.” She was glad Shaye was finally telling her the story of her life. Seeing the chinks in her previously impenetrable armor did not make her weaker in Trixie’s eyes. It awed her how much her friend had been through in her life but was always able to believe in her dream with unwavering confidence.

“Can I tell you the truth?” Shaye asked.

“Of course,” Trixie said, unsure what she was referring to but willing to listen.

“I was hurt by how my dad treated me, and I did feel abandoned, but that’s not why I cut him out of my life.”

“Then why?”

“Kids grow up to be like their parents, and I don’t remember my mother. Simone does, and she can follow in her footsteps if she wants. I didn’t have that option, and I could feel myself turning into my father. Selfish, isolated, manipulative. So I cut him out.”

“You’re a good person, Shaye,” Trixie said, resting her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “You came all the way to Romania to help me.”

She shook her head, ashamed. “I wish I could say that was the only reason, but I didn’t want to go back to Houston to train. It benefited me, too. I cut my father out of my life, but it’s too late. I’m already just like him.”

“You don’t remember anything about your mother?” How strange a world, Trixie thought, not knowing the person who gave you life.

“I only know what Simone told me. She said Mom was allergic to perfume and deodorant, so she was always using baby powder. She said Mom’s arms and hands were always soft and smooth and dry and smelled flowery. Simone never knew how to describe the scent until she was ten, before I was born, and she went to church with a friend of hers on Easter. She said that’s what Mom always smelled like, a Catholic church on Easter.”

“That’s nice,” Trixie said. “Ileana smelled like me, like the gym, but there was always a fruity fog following her around because of the lip gloss.”

“That she stole from you,” Shaye said, giggling.

“Sometimes at night, Ileana would have nightmares. She could never remember them, but they scared her half to death, and when they happened, she would come to my room. I sleep on my side with my legs bent, and she would curl up in that little nook, her head on the back of my thighs, her arm below my knees. She tried to be silent and disturb the bed as little as possible, but I always felt her. I’d reach down and run my hand through her hair until I felt her breathing get deep and even, and I knew she felt safe enough to sleep.”

“Like a little cat.”

“Ileana was the one who drew people to her, who was the light in whatever room she entered, but when it was the two of us alone, it was like the responsibility of living up to that reputation was so difficult. She could only stop performing and be herself around me.”

“She wanted to be exactly like you,” Shaye understood. “It’s what little sisters do. I still want to be like Simone.”

“That’s what my mom said. That’s why she hates me. That’s why she thinks Ileana died.”

It was Shaye’s turn to be supportive. “It’s not true.”

“She slapped me. In the hospital. The doctors tried to tell her what was wrong with Ileana, tried to explain her prognosis, but she wouldn’t listen. I told Mom the measures they were taking to save her life might not work. I know it sounds crazy, but I wonder if someone else had told her, if someone else had explained the truth, maybe she wouldn’t blame me so much. Maybe she’d be able to forgive me.”

“Trixie, you know that’s not the truth,” Shaye said. “Your mom doesn’t blame you, not really. She thinks she shouldn’t have allowed Ileana to go to Deva in the first place, she thinks she didn’t pray hard enough, she thinks she did something in her own life and her daughter was punished for it. She’s mad at Ileana for dying, and she blames herself for everything. You’re a convenient target for her anger. She can’t yell at her dead daughter. I know your mom. She loves you.”

“When did you turn into a psychologist?”

“I’ve been to a therapist or two over the years. I’ve learned some things about what we do when we lose someone we love.”

“How do I get over all the horrible things she said to me when she finally realizes that again?” Trixie asked sadly.

“I don’t know. I’m not great at forgiveness.”

“What a pair we make.” She chuckled, and Shaye joined in.

“Unloved,” she mused.

“Cold and ambitious,” Trixie continued.

“Emotionless,” Shaye kidded.

“Anorexic.”

“Probably bulimic, too,” Shaye vamped. “And lying about our ages.”

“I’m only thirteen,” Trixie joked.

“I’m only eleven.”

“I secretly wet down the balance beam before the next girl goes.”

“I open jars of killer bees into other girls’ duffel bags and cover their grips with peanut butter.” Shaye tried to keep a straight face but could not do it, and she dissolved into giggles. Both girls rolled onto the floor as they shared a much-needed and well-deserved moment of levity and bonding. When they finally returned to their bottoms, they noticed they were alone in the gym. Normally, if they were sitting around talking instead of doing their stretches, either Galya or one of the Romanian trainers would have barked at them to pay attention, and there was always a crowd of younger gymnasts around. Today, no one said a word, and they found themselves alone on the floor exercise mat.

Trixie still had one serious question to ask. “Does the hurt ever go away?”

“I don’t know. Does it hurt now?”

“Not especially,” she said, surprised at the truth of it.

“At least that’s something.”