“Asshole,” Coach Kepplemen yelled, and smacked me in the back of the head.
We were in the locker room. I was naked and standing on the scale. He’d cuffed me hard enough that I shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands to block another blow. He set the Detecto’s poises back to zero. He was blinking and stiff-mouthed and now spoke quietly, which was terrifying. “Step off, please,” he nearly whispered, and I did.
He slid the poises to my weight class’s limit, 121, and then, after indicating I step on the scale again, fingered the square forward, to 125, to 129, and then just over 133, when the balance finally floated.
“Two days from now we have a match,” he said. “You knew this over break.”
He rubbed his eyes with one hand, then ran his palm over his mouth, down to his neck, which he held as if he were about to choke himself. “What are we going to do about this? I got no one to replace you.”
“I can make it.”
“I’m going to have to forfeit your class.”
“I’ll make it.”
“It’s twelve fucking pounds.”
He pinched the pudge at my waist and then pushed me off the scale. He punched the wall near my head and got in my face. “You put on a rubber suit. You practice in it. You sleep in it. You bathe in it. You piss in it. You don’t take it off until you make weight. And if you don’t make weight, you’re gone. For the rest of the season.”
Kepplemen kicked a locker as he left the room. Santoro, the team captain, was sitting on the bench. He’d been late to practice and witnessed the whole exchange. “Here,” he said, removing a rubber suit from his locker along with a roll of athletic tape. After I put on my jock and singlet, I pulled its first piece over my head. For a moment, everything was lightless. I smelled a stink so personal to Santoro it was as if I were inhaling his very guts. I put the pants on and then let him tape my ankles, then my waist, and then my wrists. “You can cut the weight,” he said softly. “Just no liquids. For the next two days.”
I was in something like shock during warm-ups. This gave on to panic. I redlined everything as practice proceeded, drills to rolls, as if I might outrace gravity’s pull on my increased weight. Twice I thought I might puke and welcomed it. What had I done to myself? At the end of practice, we did ten sets of sprints on the long straightaway between the upper and lower school. Afterward, Kepplemen made me run five sets of stairs. By the time I’d finished, nearly half the team had left the locker room; the rest were finishing their showers. Kepplemen handed me a jump rope and said, “Stay in there until I tell you otherwise, and don’t stop jumping until I say you can.” My teammates knew to leave the showers running. The room was filled with steam. I skipped rope for what seemed like an hour. My throat and mouth felt stiff as a dried rag. Kepplemen appeared and, one by one, turned off the showers until there was only the sound of the wet rope slapping the floor.
“Enough,” he said. Gently, almost lovingly, he added, “Arms up, please,” and when I raised them, he stepped so close our foreheads nearly touched. He peeled the athletic tape from my waist, wrapping his arms around me so that he might pinch the end piece behind my back. When he was done, I stretched the top’s tight elastic hem away from my belly, and so much sweat poured forth it was as if I’d slung a pail full of water from a window. Kepplemen removed the tape from my wrists. Liquid coursed in rivulets between my fingers.
I stepped onto the scale. Kepplemen slid the poises into place. I had lost over four pounds during practice. “See,” I said, “no problem.”
Kepplemen remained stoic. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Jog home,” he ordered.
It was snowing. I had on my wrestling jacket and sweatpants. I was warm enough at first, but the perspiration between the layers only grew colder. My wrestling shoes, already soaked from practice, were no defense against the slush-filled curbs, and my toes were soon numb. I had no hat, and my hair was still wet from the shower and stayed thus because my scalp melted the flakes that settled there. I cut west to Columbus Avenue; a bus gargled past. The snow fell so densely that the buildings’ higher floors appeared shrouded, the illuminated apartments visible as if through gauze. By the time I reached Eighty-Sixth Street, I had so little energy that twenty more blocks even of walking seemed unimaginable. I was shivering and miserable, and yet, at the same time, I distracted myself from the discomfort calculating the energy my body was putting out to warm itself, all the BTUs and effort of respiration, imagining the arrival on my scale at home and all its progress.
Two blocks later, I caved and hopped on the bus.
I sat in the very back and had a view out all the windows. The snow was a cherished painting I had torn to pieces; it was all white yet somehow formed an image; it was the thing I most cared about, and I had dumped its torn bits in great heaps over the entire city and was now ordered to reassemble it on penalty of my life.
Mom had made meat loaf. I could smell it as soon as the elevator dinged open on our floor. I was famished, and I pictured the ground beef singed a darker brown beneath its layer of ketchup, the onions in each slice translucent and glossy as shrimp shells, the clear grease spreading on the plate toward the mashed potatoes. I hung up my coat, went to my room, greeted Oren, who was working at his desk, and then went straight to the bathroom to shower again. I hung up the rubber suit on the shower rod to dry and, with nothing but a towel around my waist, hurried to our bedroom closet and stepped on the scale, tapping the poises to the weight I was at when I’d left school.
I hadn’t even lost a half pound.
Now before me lay temptation. Dinner was a crossroads. Eat now, and the next two months organized themselves around this choice, every day issuing inevitably forward from it. As Oren helped himself to a full plate, I pictured the ref calling the opposing wrestler to the mat’s center and turning to Kepplemen, who would shake his head and, along with the rest of the team, not even look at me when our opponent’s arm was raised, amid sporadic applause, to accept the forfeit. Six points awarded to their team, the same as a pin but without a fight.
At the table, Dad said, “Eat already,” and Oren, glancing at me with an expression of apology—he could tell something was wrong—dug in. I cut myself a small square of meat loaf and speared it. I took a bite. The juice flooded my mouth’s cracked Mojave; the ketchup’s sugars coated my tongue. I closed my eyes while I chewed, wine-pressing the ground beef with my tongue so its grease flooded my palate. If I was going to do this, I thought, if I was going to fail, then best to enjoy every bite. The phone rang.
“That’s probably the agency,” Dad said, and pushed back from the table.
I made a decision and took the opportunity to wipe my mouth with my napkin and deposit the bolus into its paper. And in this fashion, I was able to make it appear as if I ate something close to a meal.
Later, lying on the top bunk, I did corporeal calculus, a metabolic math. I weighed just under 129 pounds. If I lost my usual one pound overnight and then four again at practice, that put me at 124. If I neither ate nor drank until Wednesday morning, and assuming I dropped at least another pound overnight, that would put me within a couple of pounds the day of the match. I’d have until the afternoon to cut the rest.
From the bunk beneath me, Oren said, “How much do you have to drop?”
“Eight pounds.”
“By when?”
“Wednesday.”
While Oren contemplated my predicament, I was recalling when we filmed the intro and outro sequences for The Nuclear Family, on location in Van Cortlandt Park, shots of us running in slow motion, leaping from what appeared to be great heights, throwing fake boulders, standing on cranes with their baskets just out of the frame to give the illusion we were flying. And then breaking for lunch, two foldout tables covered with a smorgasbord of crudités and bagels and breads and every kind of cold cut and condiment imaginable, pasta and potato salad, broccoli salad and fruit salad, and, for dessert, doughnuts and Danishes to be washed down with hot coffee. Was that, I wondered, really all so bad?
“Let me help,” Oren said.
I woke to a blue-gray morning. In our sliver of a view, I watched the ice floes on the Hudson nose south. The entire river looked the color of slush. It appeared as if it might freeze over at any moment. What I felt was not soreness, although there was that in my neck and arms, but rather an overwhelming fatigue. It was a cousin to sadness, closer, in feeling, to guilt. Gingerly, I climbed down my ladder and hopped on the scale.
I had lost nearly two pounds overnight. This might’ve filled me with hope, but my mouth was so parched that my spit, what little I had, was the consistency of caulk. Oren entered the closet, had a look at my weight, and, without derision, said, “It’s going to be close.” The hunger pangs had already started. They were signal flares, slowly arcing from some barge floating in my deepest gut toward my diaphragm, with the acidic hiss that sputtered into my esophagus. I welcomed them, but each one also seemed to leave a contrail that hollowed out my limbs and emptied my mind, so that I did not so much long for sleep as for stillness.
Dad had WQXR softly playing on the stereo. He stood in the living room wearing a turtleneck, briefs, and black dress socks. He said, “Your breakfast is on the table.” The central air unit that was half the window’s length rattled. Snow had painted our terrace’s railing, the building’s ledges, the trees’ branches, and the fire hydrants’ caps. Cold radiated from the glass. Overnight, the temperature had fallen even further. The drier air had spun the snow to sugar, pedestrians shielding their eyes against the stinging gusts. My father had poached an egg atop my mound of corned beef hash, and with my knife I punctured its yolk and watched it slowly run down the ridges of cubed potatoes. He’d added green and red peppers, which gave the food a more delectable palette. My mouth watered and then absorbed the moisture. Oren sat and glanced at our father’s back and then took my plate and forked half my serving onto his. I allowed myself one sip of café au lait. It was the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted, and the milk, which had formed a skin across part of the top, had, in my mouth, the consistency of food. Dad, who finished washing the pan, said, “I’m headed to the Y,” and left us. Oren, who watched me drink with no small worry, said, “You better get going before you set yourself back.” I licked the froth from my lips and departed.
At Boyd, I lay with my eyes closed on one of the pews in the front hallway before the first bell rang. Cliffnotes was there along with Tanner, and they framed my outstretched body so that we formed an H.
“Kepplemen’s looking for you,” Tanner said.
“What does he want?”
“To amputate your leg,” said Cliffnotes.
“Where you at?” Tanner asked. His tone was serious, solicitous.
“One two-seven…ish.”
Tanner wagged his foot. “That’s tough,” he said.
The bell rang. I swigged a mouthful of water from the hallway’s fountain, which I swished around my tacky mouth, allowing my tongue, dry as a dandelion’s corona, to be mercifully submerged. Then I spit in a dribbling stream.
I could rely on my colon’s clockwork, and at the end of first period, right at the 9:15 bell, its Pavlovian ring shunted my morning shit into place. I had a free period before me, and I hurried to my favorite bathroom on the upper school’s second floor. I had high hopes for the turd’s heft—for one of those transcendent, evacuative experiences. But mine was a pebbled bit of business, not enough to fill even the bowl’s throat. I didn’t shy from marching back to the locker room to weigh myself. I had lost almost a half pound since breakfast. I decided to capitalize on my progress and work out, even though my bones seemed sucked of marrow and, down the hallway, the cafeteria’s scents—canned ravioli and broccoli steamed so soft it was nearly white—withered my resolve.
In the weight room I removed my tie, untucked my shirt, and lay on the bench; the space was sauna hot and dimly lit, so I closed my eyes for a minute. The dark made it easier to ignore my stomach’s burbling, my tongue’s sand-dipped stickiness. I opened my eyes and placed the key in the slot; after just a few reps, I had to contort myself beneath the bar, twisting, bridging at the neck, and then I let the plates slam home. I laced my fingers together over my chest and promptly fell asleep.
It was a deep doze, anchor to seafloor, fluke sunk well beneath the sand, and I felt the entire nautical calm of this nap: the space between boat and bill, palm and prow, floating and submerged, the broiler’s thrum creating a submarine silence. There was a boy’s voice just a flight above me, like a gull’s sharp and becalming call, and then nothing again except the ambient noise. I might have slept there for several hours had Kepplemen not shaken me awake.
“Let’s go,” he said.
It was a fact that anger didn’t come naturally to him. Frustration, as now, and anxiety could stoke his temper. But true anger, the rage he might direct our way to elicit fear, this was always something of a put-on, a state into which he had to work himself. What he wielded most powerfully was approval, our desire for his approbation. He ambled ahead of me, swinging his arms more forcefully than was usual, as if he were disgusted, when really all he wanted, I was sure, was relief—he wanted to stop worrying about me. In its way, the experience was no different from when we rolled: it was about satisfying him, and I suffered the same inversion. I was ashamed I’d once again made Kepplemen feel so bad.
Back in the locker room, I stood naked and shivering as he weighed me. Kepplemen, once the balance finally fell, cupped his great beak in his hands so that his face was only his two large eyes. When he finally spoke, his mouth sounded as dry as mine. “Layer up,” he said. “We’re going outside.”
For the rest of the period, I jogged around the snow-covered turf. I was tempted to dive, mouth open and tongue first, onto its accumulation. The field’s length was oriented north-south; the chain-link fence surrounding it was perhaps thirty feet high and lacked only a guard tower. Along its northern perimeter, facing Boyd on Ninety-Seventh Street, was an apartment building fashioned of red brick that in design was a near copy of Lincoln Towers. Twenty stories tall, its balconies bisected the center of its unadorned facade; the thin white railings fronting them put me in mind of birdcages. I swung around, past the lower school, the old building, its brownstone closer in color to coal. Children watched me through the dormer windows; their teachers had called them away by the next lap. Kepplemen, standing out of sight by the entrance’s steps, his only added layer an absurdly long red-and-yellow scarf, encouragingly clapped his gloved hands as I passed him. Their muffled thumps were like a coxswain’s drum. I was miserable and freezing at first, but then something shifted, some invisible, inner spigot was turned, and working up a sweat, I felt flooded, briefly, with fluid and its attendant energy, so that my thirst was miraculously quenched. Soon Kepplemen waved me inside and, my torture ended, I enjoyed a relief that lasted until afternoon.
At practice, any mercy Coach felt for me disappeared. We started with wheelbarrows, taking our training partner’s ankles while he walked on his hands two lengths of the gym, and Coach paired me with Angel Rincodon, our 180-pounder. When we did piggybacks, he made me carry Max Ceto, who clocked in at 195. I was assigned to Ben Bonaci, our heavyweight, for sit-out drills. And when it came time to roll, I was fed first to the team’s lions—to Santoro and Freeman and Adler, who seemed to be determined to toy with me by securing positions I had to fight my way out of with maximum effort, body rides that forced me to carry their entire weight for the whole period, as if they were a carapace that I had not yet grown strong enough to support. Next I was offered to Kokra and Vrock, birds of prey who hooded me such that I was pinned over and over again. At practice’s end, sprawl drills. Belly empty, I thought I might puke. When we returned to the lockers, when I peeled the tape from the rubber suit this time, the fluid issuing from it seemed more vital. When I went to piss, urine sputtered into the bowl. Its color had darkened from rusty green to an ocher dust.
My teammates showered, dressed, and weighed themselves. Because I could not see them behind the bank of lockers, they left soft ghosts of their laughter there with me when they departed. I sat on the bench in my underwear, steadying myself until the dizziness I was experiencing stopped.
Pilchard was perched at the end of the bench, watching my expression with concern. He was naked but for a towel around his waist. His hair hung just above his eyes, which like mine were sunken and—I’d noticed in the bathroom’s mirror earlier—rimmed with purple. Coach, who was almost always last to leave, appeared from around the corner, strode between us, in a towel as well, and entered the showers.
“How close are you?” Pilchard asked.
It was difficult to lift my head to answer him. “Three pounds. More like four.”
Pilchard was sitting up very straight. He clutched his towel’s knot. The shower’s jet turned on and we could hear the water crashing around Kepplemen.
“You should suit up,” Pilchard said. “Skip rope in there.”
I shook my head. “I’m too tired.”
Steamed crawled along the ceiling. Kepplemen hawked and then spit, and the sound made both Pilchard and me tense up.
“Stay,” Pilchard said.
For an instant, he reminded me of Oren.
“I need to go,” I said.
I was grateful for the Mercedes’s warmth. For the heat blowing through its vents, to whose grilles I raised my iron palms. For the darkness, after I shut the passenger door; for the silence, as if the car’s thick steel not only sealed off all the city’s noise but that in my mind as well—the subway clatter of my thoughts, the cabs’ horns and buses’ roars, the relentless and ceaseless hurry of it all, and to where? Naomi sat back, ever so slightly, as if startled by my appearance. She asked, “What happened to you?”
I shrugged. I was furious but wanted to laugh. “I’m sucking weight.”
She didn’t know what I meant. She pressed her hand to the side of my face; she covered my ear, cheek, and temple with a firm pressure and then collected my hair between her fingers and, with her thumb, rubbed my forehead. I followed her arm’s path to her shoulder and rested my head there. “No fever,” she said, and kissed my scalp.
“Do you have anything to drink?” I asked. It was difficult to pry the question out of my mouth. My tongue seemed adhered to my jaw’s floor. She handed me her can of Tab, started the car, and drove while I contemplated it. I took a dangerously large swig, which I did not swallow but held and then swished over my teeth. I could feel, I was sure, every bubble of carbonation, and the lubrication was bliss. I lowered the window and spit it out.
Naomi found a parking space. She cut the engine. The West Side Highway’s traffic flickered through the barriers. New Jersey’s skyline silently considered Manhattan: there was a mile of river between us, and I believed I could drink the Hudson to its bottom.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
She considered this. “Something,” she said.
I stared at the river.
She said, “I’ll wait.”
We waited, I did not look at her, and then I said, “It’s hard to explain.”
“Maybe just talk then,” she said.
I told her about everything I’d ignored. How over Christmas, with every second helping of every meal, I’d heard a voice that said, Don’t. How I did that all the time. All those hours I could have spent reading and catching up over break and I didn’t. The scale I never stepped on before or after New Year’s. The milk I drank, straight from a cow, and the cream chipped beef.
“I don’t understand,” Naomi said.
My words came like a torrent that I didn’t exactly understand either. I told her I was always behind, I was always late. I told her that I didn’t say what I saw when I saw it. When I saw it and knew what it was, I ignored it. That I didn’t listen to myself when I spoke.
“So speak,” she said.
I said, “Coach Kepplemen—”
She said, “The one who slaps you.”
I said, “He slaps everyone.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
I told her how the moment I stepped on the scale yesterday and was overweight, the leverage he’d wanted was his, he was applying it, and he would not let up until I’d done his bidding or failed.
“Done what?” Naomi asked.
“Made weight,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Failed at what, then?”
“Making weight.”
She shook her head. “Like this person’s controlling you?”
I told her how sometimes in the school hallways, Coach might ask what our schedules were, what periods we had free to practice, though I knew he already knew, having once seen on his basement office desk, in his open binder, on his own schedule’s master grid, Monday through Friday, our initials penciled in—GH, TP, CB, SP—so he would know where we were at all times.
“I know he knows, but I just pretend I don’t.”
Naomi placed her hands over mine, threaded her fingers through my fingers. She pinched this skin gently and then pulled at it, as if it were a glove I wore. It stretched but did not retract. It held its form, remaining bunched, as if it were a cheap costume, and she stared at this deformity, shocked.
“It happens whenever I’m dehydrated,” I said.
Naomi took me in her arms. Until it was time to go, she rubbed my back, to warm me through my coat.
“You’re not making this easy,” she said.
Later that night, she called our apartment.
When I answered the phone, her voice had the same formality it did when we saw each other in restaurants or at parties: an act, as if we hadn’t just seen each other. “Hey, Griffin, how you doing? May I talk with your mother, please?”
I waited for a moment, then opened my study’s door; it let in a bit of cooler air. “Mom,” I said, “Naomi Shah is on the phone.”
Naomi and I waited silently on the line until my mother picked up. She said, “Hey, Naomi, what’s going on?” and I replaced the receiver.
That night, before bed, while I was sucking on an ice cube, Mom appeared in our room. I could hear the television on in hers. Ted Koppel began, It is day four hundred thirty of the hostage crisis. She was wearing her nightgown. When she opened our door, the light from the hallway reflected against our window, and her silhouette was visible in it. She stood by my bed and let her eyes wander over my face. She placed her palm against my cheek. “Naomi said she ran into you earlier.”
When I told her that was true, Mom said, “Are you feeling okay? She said you didn’t look so hot.”
When I told her I felt fine, she said, “Griffin, is there something you want to tell me?”
I shook my head with her hand still on my face and said, “No.”
“Nothing at school?”
“Uh-uh.”
She said, “Because if there is, you know you can, yes?”
There was nothing she could do to help me, so I said, “All right.”
“All right, or you know?”
“I know.”
“All right,” she said.
She left and closed the door. In the dark, I heard her close hers, which lowered the TV’s volume. My ice cube was the size of a coin, and in my mind’s eye I watched it disappear.
“That was close,” Oren said.
At five, when my alarm sounded, I climbed down my bunk, walked across the cold parquet, and shut the window, which whistled in protest. I went to the closet, yanked the light’s chain, and dropped my pajama pants. I slid the poises along the beam until it balanced: 124.
Morning of the match, and I was still three pounds overweight.
Oren stood at my side, rubbing his eyes. His breath was bad and his hair insane. After considering my predicament, he said, “We’re going for a run.”
It was still dark as night. We bundled in our warmest clothes. Oren rode his bike alongside me. There were more runners in the park at this hour than I expected. I felt as if I were running uphill and downhill at the same time. It was more like a slow-motion impression of running, robotic and powerless. Sometimes I slowed to barely a jog. Because of my pace, Oren rode as if we were on a crowded boardwalk; he barely pedaled, one hand on the handlebars and an elbow resting on his knee. Occasionally he got ahead of me and then circled back. We hugged Central Park South and then bore north along the east drive, past the carousel. We took the Seventy-Second Street hill, past the boathouse and up the hill past the obelisk and then behind the Met. I ran parallel to Fifth Avenue, past the Guggenheim on my right, past the reservoir on my left, the sky just purpling above the trees. We wound down the snaking descent to 110th Street, and on the west drive Oren had to stand on his pedals to pump up Heartbreak Hill. The tennis courts came into view. The nets were down. We passed the reservoir again and then the lake was visible on our left. Oren waited at the top of the hill as I walked the slow incline toward Sheep Meadow. Now the skyscrapers’ background had blued. Bearing west, I resumed my shuffle past the Tavern on the Green, and soon we were home.
Mom and Dad had still not woken. I disrobed as if I’d fallen through ice and my wet clothes might freeze me to death. Oren watched me step on the scale.
I had lost just under two pounds.
Oren breathed a deep sigh I could not read and consulted his calculator watch. “You’ve got eight hours to lose a pound and a half,” he said.
Kepplemen was waiting for me in Boyd’s front hallway. He was the rock around which the morning’s river of students streamed. He looked as disheveled and as stressed as I felt. He said, “Follow me, please.”
In the locker room, after weighing me, Kepplemen, furious, showed me the lineup on his clipboard. He’d left my weight class blank.
“You’re on your own,” he said, and left.
In science class, I was the blackened base of a test tube. My mouth felt like the dusty plains of Tatooine. In English, Miss Sullens read aloud from Darkness at Noon: “ ‘History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth; for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development.’ Do we agree or disagree with that?” I raised my hand and, when she called on me, asked if I could go to the bathroom. In the stall I sat on the lid and thought of nothing. In Spanish, Miss Daniel asked, “¿Qué les gustaría ordenar?” to which I replied, “Un helado y dos cervezas.” Math may as well have been taught in Spanish. In American government, it occurred to me that I forgot to thank Oren for his help, and when I wept I could not shed a tear.
In the locker room, right before the team was to depart for our match, I weighed myself. I was still a half pound over.
Kepplemen had parked the team bus at the upper school’s entrance. Our dual meet was a little over a mile away, at Collegiate, so it seemed odd to drive there. He was formally dressed, in a blue blazer, blue button-down, and navy-blue tie with the Boyd Bruin dotting it. I was the last to board. Kepplemen appeared on the black treads of the steps. Tanner and Cliffnotes lowered their windows; so did the team captains. “Well?” Cliffnotes asked. Beneath my jacket, I was wearing my warm-ups, with my singlet underneath. My gloves and stocking hat.
Kepplemen said, “Don’t get on this bus if you haven’t made weight.”
“I’ll see you there,” I said, and ran.
To add distance and to try to peel off the last half pound, I jogged down Ninety-Sixth Street, a rolling hill that terminated at Riverside Drive. I could spot the Hudson from here, the highway overpass, the cars blurring at speed. The wind, further chilled by the water, blew into my face with great force. As soon as I turned left on West End Avenue, the gusts’ noises were nullified, I was shielded from them by the buildings. I felt strangely liberated; I considered not going to the meet at all. I would run to an entirely new city, in a new state, and live my life. At which point I spotted our former building’s awning, Five Seventy-Five emblazoned across it, and Pete, our doorman, standing outside—I hadn’t talked to him since we’d moved. I crossed the street to greet him. He’d just hailed a cab for a tenant.
“Pete!” I shouted and, remarkably, he recognized me. He said, “Mr. Griffin!” and took his fighting stance. He had loved my Candid Camera appearance with Ali all those years ago. He said, “The boy who boxed the champ!” As was our ritual back then, I put up my guard, and we bobbed and weaved and feinted and jabbed, just as we had done every day when I came home from school. He said, “Look at you, all grown up. Come get out of the cold,” and then opened the entrance’s iron-grated doors, and I stepped into the building’s lobby. It was radiator warm, was the same bright, vaulted space, the east wall dominated by the gilt-framed mirror tall enough to reflect every bulb of the chandelier and the curling marble staircase that led to the second floor. Pete still had the burst blood vessel, as brown as a burned steak, in his brown eye. He said, “How’s Oren? That boy was so sweet, I worried about him.” He said, “How’s your mom and dad?” He said, “Your momma was so pretty.” He said, “Your dad—he still sing?”
I recalled Sunday mornings as we talked, late spring or early summer, when my mother would raise the two large windows in the living room that faced West End Avenue. There was next to no traffic. I could look north or south and lean onto the ledge and listen to the trees, whose tops reached our third-floor apartment and whose leaves indicated the wind’s prevailing direction. And I could call down to Pete, who’d stepped out from under the awning and was standing watch below.
“He doesn’t sing as much but sometimes,” I said.
“He has a beautiful voice,” Pete said.
“I’m sad we moved away,” I said.
“Sooner or later,” Pete said, “everybody moves away.”
“But not you, Pete.”
“Pete’s right here.”
“I have to go now. But I’ll come back and say hi soon.”
“You do that,” Pete said, and opened the door.
Standing in the lobby’s heat, I had worked up a good lather, but now, as I ran, my sweat turned terribly cold, and a few blocks later, I suffered a full-body cramp. I seized at every extremity. My fingers clawed, my calves balled up, my quads locked. The bands of my hamstrings retracted like raised venetian blinds. Like a cowboy shot on a canyon ledge, I stiffened before falling to the pavement. On my hands’ heels, I managed to sit myself with my back to the nearest building. Pedestrians walked by, indifferent and unfazed. To uncoil the knot I’d become, I flexed my toes and then reached my fingers to grab the balls of my feet and stretch out everything. I sat for a while longer, breathing tentatively, on high alert, should I contract again.
And I had the most vivid recollection of the first time I’d met Coach. I was in seventh grade. It was my first week at Boyd. I’d come to school very early. I knew no one, I had no friends, and was seated in the front hall, alone. Kepplemen appeared. He spotted me and stopped. I saw him see me. It was as if he recognized me, although I had never seen him before. He looked toward the entrance and back in my direction. He seemed to hover there for a moment, and then he drew closer, gliding forward to join me on the pew, though it felt as if I were the one being pulled in. For maybe a minute we watched the front entrance together, but no one arrived. That he’d sat so close in spite of the fact that we were completely alone shut me down. If the front hall had been crowded to its gills I’d have been unable to speak, I was so unnerved. He’d placed both palms on the bench. His long pinkie nearest mine was spread so wide ours nearly touched. He spoke, but softly. “I saw you playing football the other day. You look like you’re an exceptional athlete. Have you ever considered wrestling?” That was it; that was all it took. From that point forward I was in his grip. And seated on the cold pavement, I had the first adult thought of my life. Something so simple and revelatory the calm it imparted was wondrous: This will end. I had no idea if I’d made weight, but, oddly, I recognized the wait was over. This state of being I suffered wasn’t permanent, no matter what happened. It was mine to declare concluded, should I so choose, and that broke the spell. I got up, gingerly, and was able to stilt-walk, with almost no bend at the knees, for the remaining blocks. I was laugh-cursing the whole distance, and both feelings were real. Pedestrians gave me a wide berth, as if I were a madman.
The teams were at weigh-in when I arrived in the locker room, standing lightest to heaviest. Coach Kepplemen did not even acknowledge my presence when I entered. He stood with his clipboard, filling in the rosters, and gave me only his profile while Collegiate’s coach clacked the scale’s poises into place, spoke his wrestler’s name aloud, checked the pair of wrestlers’ weights, and then waved the next boy forward. I removed my damp hat and gloves and unbuttoned my team jacket. I stepped out of my warm-ups, my singlet, my socks and shoes. I dropped my drawers. I considered the delicate, almost deerlike diffidence of these two rows of boys as they stood, cross-armed or slouched, arms loose or hands folded over their genitals. I took my place in line, though I’d have just as soon cut straight to the front, I was so furious. When it was our turn, the Collegiate coach adjusted the scale to 121 and said his wrestler’s name aloud, which Kepplemen penciled into the lineup sheet, nodding to him warmly, respectfully. To me, Kepplemen said, “Step on, please,” although he still would not look at me. I waited until he did. I could tell he was scared. He was certain he was about to be humiliated, some way, somehow, not because I would let him down but simply because I was here. “Step on, please,” he repeated, and I did not move until we made eye contact. When Kepplemen finally did look up from the clipboard to meet my gaze, I held it as he often did when we were in private, but until he averted his eyes. Until I could take in the entirety of his person, unabashed and uncontested. His fingers were trembling, but so were mine. Because I realized that I hated him. I always had, all these years. Not for who he was or what he wanted. I hated him because he’d showed me who he was without knowing he had. Because I knew him better than he knew himself, and this seemed the very condition of his being an adult.
“Name,” the opposing coach asked me when the balance fell.
“Griffin Hurt.” And then to Kepplemen, I said, “Write it down.”
At school the next day, Cliffnotes asked me, “Are you in trouble?”
When I asked why, he said, “Because I just saw your mother coming out of Mr. Fistly’s office.”
Practice that afternoon was canceled. No explanation was offered. At dinner that night, I was too scared to broach the subject with my mother, but she surprised me by bringing it up herself. “I met with your principal today,” she said, and glared, adding, “Now eat.” She’d made spaghetti Bolognese. I recognized her ferocity, that it carried repercussions if I disobeyed, so I forced down every bite though this did not appease her. The following day passed without event, although Kepplemen was still absent. Through our captains came the news practice was canceled, and I remember the feeling that something tectonic had shifted. Cliffnotes, Tanner, and I shot looks at one another in the hallway as if we were hiding something, were keeping this secret, even though we did not know what it was—if it somehow implicated us and promised some undreamed-of reward.
On the following Monday afternoon, after suiting up for practice, we were greeted in the gym by Mr. Tyrell. He had a chipped front tooth and a scraggly mustache. His brown hair, threatening a mullet, was thin and parted down the middle. He had us sit against the wall and informed us that an announcement was going to be made. His West Coast drawl was raspy; it sounded like he always had a smoker’s loogie lodged deep in his lungs, which he occasionally paused to bring up, fist to mouth, and swallow again. When Tanner asked, “What’s this all about?” he said, “Patience, my bros, all questions will soon be answered by the man himself.”
And then Fistly appeared, his heels clacking against the waxed floor. He strode to the edge of the mats and did something remarkable: he removed his loafers. He padded to the mats’ center and stood on the Bruin insignia. Beneath his socks we noticed him flex his toes. If he’d removed these garments to reveal feet as downy and taloned as a snow owl’s, I wouldn’t have been surprised. He considered us one end to the other. It was difficult to tell whether it was with pity or disapproval, though he let his eyes rest on me just long enough to communicate I was somehow the catalyst. He carried several papers with him, which he’d rolled into a tube. He smacked it against his leg several times. When he did speak, his tone was somber, apologetic. Could it be that he was the one who was actually embarrassed?
“I have some rather unfortunate news,” Mr. Fistly began. “Mr. Kepplemen has abruptly decided to take a position at the Fessenden School in Massachusetts. His explanation is that he was made an offer he could not refuse. I am, of course, deeply troubled by the fact that he is leaving both this team and the middle school program without a coach, not to mention our physical education program short-staffed. I consider his behavior appallingly unprofessional, and I have told him as much. But to no avail. We bid him adieu and shall think of him no more. I can assure you that we have begun conducting a search in the hope of replacing him, but this late in your season I’m afraid you must lower your expectations regarding its success. In the meantime, Mr. Tyrell has generously offered to step in as head coach pro tempore. As some of you may know, Mr. Tyrell was the assistant varsity wrestling coach before Mr. Kepplemen began his tenure here. You will join me in welcoming him into this role, and I am confident you will be patient with Mr. Tyrell as he gets his bearings during this transitional period. We have high expectations of our students at Boyd. We have even higher expectations of our faculty. In this case we have been sorely disappointed, and for that you have my sincerest apologies.”
Fistly, eyes downcast, gingerly walked to the mats’ edge, slipped into his shoes, noisily marched toward the exit, and departed.
All of us shot looks at each other. Some shrugged, confused. Others covered their mouths, dismayed. I, like a boy whose pockets were stuffed with candy, awaited the shout from the storekeeper that I’d been caught. And like an unwilling accomplice, wanted someone to blame.
Tyrell turned back to us. “Everyone, this is heavy, for sure. I know you’re feeling some uncertainty at the moment, but as we used to say back home, there’s no one way to ride a wave. So let’s get back up and have a wicked hard practice.”
As the team began warm-ups, Tyrell pulled me aside. “Mr. Hurt.”
“Coach.”
“I’m bumping you up to one twenty-nine. For the rest of the season.”
“But Swain starts at that weight.”
“You want to wrestle off for the honor, you get the opportunity once a week.”
“But—”
“No more buts. This comes from on high.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning your mother.”
Now, of course, I realize what had happened. It was the same thing that was happening at schools like Horace Mann and Saint George’s and Choate. The offending teachers and coaches were simply handed off to other institutions, out of sight and out of mind, while we—the school’s charges—were abandoned to silence. Maybe this was the shift I had felt, the continent on which my friends and I had been cast away. Maybe that isn’t the right figure. Because Kepplemen’s departure left a hole. Strangely, at the time, his leaving us felt like a betrayal. As for my mother, she thought I was just starving to death.
Walking home from the bus that evening, I spotted Naomi’s car. The interior light was on. It shined brightly, almost unforgivingly, on Naomi’s head. It made her hair’s part resemble a field’s furrow, revealing the white of her scalp, which disgusted me. She was reading the paper, glancing up to track, I noticed, pedestrians across the street and then checking her side mirror. I banged my fist on the window. I pulled the door closed with all my strength and stared straight forward, bear-hugging my book bag. I felt her staring at me, and then she sighed. “I guess I better put on my seat belt,” she said, and then started the car.
After she’d parked, she cut the ignition so slowly and gently it was as if she were trying to silently unlock a door. She let go of the wheel with her palms out and eased back into her seat, whose leather creaked. Then she turned to face me.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“My season is over. I’m done, understand? Because of you.” And then I was crying, which I hated myself for.
“He was hurting you,” Naomi said. Now she was crying too.
“No, he wasn’t.”
“You were hurting yourself. You were in danger.”
“I was handling it.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I can’t—I can’t not protect you.”
Naomi took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. It occurred to me that I’d almost never seen her face without them, that their gold frames and blue lenses hid her features’ plainness.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think that you need a friend. Other times I think that I do. That I’m lonely, and that listening—” She shook her head now and grimaced. “That listening to you and being with you is my way of ignoring that.”
“Why are you talking about this?”
In response, she cried more freely. She closed her eyes and began to nod.
I couldn’t stop myself. I put my book bag down and took Naomi’s hand in mine and kissed her palm. I pressed her palm to my cheek, so that with it I wiped my tears until she wiped them, and I clutched her and said, “Please don’t cry.”
She gripped me very hard. We sat in the car like that for a time. She whispered, “Every day I look forward to seeing you. Every day I wake up and wonder if you’ll come walking by. I dress for you in the morning. I look forward to hearing about your day. I think about how we’re alike. That you might be the loneliest person I know. But this,” she said, and then sat back against the door, “this is ending.”
I waited.
“My daughters are done for the season. There are no more performances. And they’ve decided to leave the program. I don’t know when I’ll be seeing you again.” She paused to cry more freely and wiped her eyes. “Which is probably for the best.”
She said this almost like a question.
“I did what I did because you needed help. It’s what grown-ups have to do sometimes for kids, even if they don’t understand. So maybe one day you will. Maybe one day I will. Understand all of this, I mean.”
Then she smiled, weakly, and started the car. As we approached West End Avenue, she indicated my building and asked, “Do you want to get out here?”
I shook my head. “I’d like to drive for a while,” I said.
She was pleased by this, and when I said, “Uptown,” she turned left, north. When she passed the familiar facade of my former building, she tapped the window with her nail and said, “There’s where you used to live.” I asked her to turn west, to Riverside Drive, and she did. “There’s the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument,” she said at the light, “where you and your brother would roller-skate.” She asked, “Where to next?” and I said, “Go right.” We continued north for several blocks. We continued to Ninety-Sixth Street, which I suggested we take east. We rose up the steep hill. “Keep going?” she asked, as we crossed Broadway. I nodded. We were approaching Central Park West now, and when Boyd Prep came into view, I thought about our first drive together, how I was in command this time.
“Crosstown?” she asked.
“Right,” I said.
We caught a streak of green lights, as far as I could see, although Naomi did not accelerate. “There’s the Museum of Natural History,” Naomi said. And at Seventy-Second Street she nodded toward the Dakota. “Over there’s where John Lennon got shot.” She read my mind and made a right, so we could drive past the entrance. People still laid flowers around the NYPD’s newly installed booth and along the building’s black railings.
“And this,” said Naomi, stopping a few moments later, “is where you get out.”
Oh, that gigantic X, as on a treasure map, where Columbus Avenue and Broadway intersected, where cars and pedestrians streamed in every direction, where people rose from and descended to the subway stations or shopped their wares on the nearby crossing island, knickknacks and foodstuffs, honey-roasted nuts and hot dogs, steam rising from their carts and the orange-and-white tubes like colorful chimneys releasing the service lines’ condensation.
“Goodbye,” I said to Naomi.
“Goodbye,” she said.
The strangeness of saying goodbye, how I’d never thought of us or life in terms of goodbyes, how I’d never thought things ended. I opened the passenger door, exited the car; outside, I tapped the roof twice. I walked several steps facing backward, smiling at Naomi warmly, unabashedly; she returned this expression in kind, and, skipping now, stretching whatever hold she had on me until I passed Juilliard, I broke into a run, down the hill toward home. A blue sea wave swelled under my heart and, buoyed, I lengthened my stride. I believed that I had gotten away with something. That I’d been forgiven a debt, that this break was clean, my parting with Naomi final. A fact about which I was entirely wrong, and a lesson I’d already unlearned. Because very soon afterward, I fell in love.