CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“How’d it go?” Miss P said, standing beside her desk. Her working space is a heap of schedules, pamphlets, her in/out tray loaded with sports catalogs still in their see-through envelopes. A first aid kit had popped open, elastic bandages and a cot splint.

I was tugging on the beret I had begun to accept as a fashion accessory, a part of my permanent costume. I looked pretty good in it. My street clothes were sweat pants today, and the kind of ancient, predivorce shirt of my father’s that Mom wears to hose down the fishpond.

“It went okay,” I said.

I wanted to swallow my tongue, turn myself inside out.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She took the cap off a tube of lip balm, applied a little. “You did the best you could.”

“Monday,” I said. I added, “It’ll be harder and harder, the longer I put it off.”

She sat. She said nothing, finding a place on her desk for the tube of lip moisturizer.

“Monday—I promise.”

Miss P leaned forward in her chair. “In the old days I would have told you to go back in there, suit up again, and drop your body off the top of that tower.”

I nearly said, I’d do it—go ahead.

Miss P leaned back in her chair. “Is anyone pressuring you?” she said at last.

“My mom never nags me about working out,” I said. That’s what we called it: doing back three-and-a-half somersaults with a difficulty rating of 3.3. “Working out,” like it was sit-ups and a jog around the track.

“Do I pressure you?”

“Sure. You tell me not to dive when my brain is seeping out of my head.”

She let herself laugh quietly and segued into, “The Pacific Coast Invitational at Stanford …” She turned to her wall calendar, a vast, paper tablet scrawled with red and black marker, circled appointments. She lifted the calendar page up so we could both see September, fierce red stars marking the date, weeks from now. She let July fall back into place. “If you aren’t ready—” She made her hands open like a book, closed them. “I heard about your father.”

I took a moment. I wanted my life in neat compartments, Miss P in one comic strip, my father in another. “He’ll be okay.”

“How about you?” she said.

I couldn’t talk.

“Platform diving isn’t your entire career,” she said. “You have family concerns, you have plans to take up medicine, make a contribution to society.…” She let her voice drift into what she thought was an agreeable tone of promise.

“You’re saying I can’t do it.”

“I’m saying you don’t have to.”

I had trouble meeting her gaze.

“You’re wondering why I’m not tough, like I used to be. The legendary Miss P.”

I was a little embarrassed. Her nickname was rarely acknowledged by her—it was always Miss Petrossian.

“It’s actually not a bad form of motivation,” she was saying, “the manipulative approach. Make the athlete see that it’s all up to her, while the coach looks on from a great height, noble, long-suffering.”

“Psychology.”

“If you can’t make the Pacific Coast Invitational, for sure you’ll miss Seattle, and there won’t be any Goodwill Games, no pre-Olympic Trials—”

The invitational was being held at Stanford in the fall. I told myself not to worry about something so far in the future, but Miss P always had next year’s calendar already on the wall, scribbled notes on weekends a year away.

“That’s all right, if that’s what you want,” Miss P said, putting a paper clip into its box. “Just don’t lie to yourself. Every hour that goes by and you aren’t working, there are competitors out there in Denver and Salt Lake City and El Centro relieved to hear it. Because they’re hard at work right now, Bonnie.” She gave me some silence. Then she said, “And you aren’t.”

“Subtle,” I said.

She was studying me, trying to read my expression. Dad always said, look them right between the eyes. “I’m going to tell you something I don’t want you to discuss with anyone. This is just between you and me.”

I waited.

Miss P likes sappy movies, the kind Mom likes, The Sound of Music, ET. One of her favorite movies was about a dog and a cat and a pig who traveled three hundred miles through raging rivers and snowbound hell to find their owners. “I’m starting to consider early retirement,” she said.

I was glad she kept talking—I wasn’t ready to make a sound.

“What gets harder is caring about scores and wondering what coach is deploying what computer program to teach center of gravity and angle of descent.”

I kept quiet, letting my emotions rise to the surface and sink.

“I want you to see that life is more than endurance conditioning,” she said, “and one-half twist layouts.”

“But you still care,” I said.

“Do I?”

For a few heartbeats we just looked at each other.

“My attitude isn’t the point. I’ll tell you what matters.”

At last the conversation was on solid, familiar ground.

“If you care, Bonnie,” she was saying. “If you still want to dive, the first thing you do on Monday is run three miles. You come here, nine o’clock, and we start you off on the springboard.”

“The springboard!” I protested.

“You’re too proud for that?”

Swimming I could handle. Maybe I could talk her into letting me swim laps all morning Monday. Maybe I could take up swimming, the two-hundred-meter breaststroke, and be realistic about my future.

I was going to say that my father was facing his arraignment on Monday. I couldn’t possibly be here.