THERE WERE ONLY fifteen days between our soup and cheese dinner and the John Mischa Petkovich Interpretive Free Skate competition. Mom and Jilly went to work at once, that very night—studying their fashion magazines for color concepts, yanking dresses out of their closets to test out shoulder styles and decorative bits and all the things I will formally confess right here that I have never noticed. Every now and then they would make me stand up and turn, first slowly, then more quickly, so that they could configure, in their own minds’ eyes, an image of me as a skater. We did the work in that part of the house that wasn’t a room or a hallway—their dresses and magazines in a messy stew. Jilly sat on the steps with a notebook on her knees while Mom contemplated hem lengths and leotards, sleeves that flared and didn’t, the kinds of beads you could see from a distance, even if the spotlights weren’t on.
Saturday, the next day, we set off for the rink—just Mom and me—so I could get, as my mother put it, a mental map. We had to drive straight past the school and Romance Hill, which still had the aftermath of Valentine’s hearts lying about, toward the two cross streets that make for the minuscule heartbeat of our town—one street with the shops, one street with the institutions: the library, the post office, the old opera house that had stood empty for years until someone turned it into a movie theater.
Border Road Rink was beyond all that, on the industrial road where civilization ends. You might have thought the rink had been built whole centuries ago, but Dad once said that though it wasn’t quite that old, you could trace its beginnings back to a few heroic guys who pulled skaters out of thawing ponds. A glass case inside boasted the antique stuff—the rescue hooks, the double-runner skates, the old rabbit-fur mufflers that the skating ladies wore.
From the outside the rink looked like a concrete eyeball that had fallen to the asphalt from the sky. An old faded blue sign announced the public-skate hours, and the door was one of those heavy metal doors you imagine needing only for maximum-security prisons. Even when it was cold outside, it was always colder in the rink, where there was no direct sun, only the frosted-over glass of windows that ran high along three sides. The light that came from those windows was the color of smog. It told you nothing about the weather outside.
Running along the two long sides were two sets of wooden bleachers, and at the far short end there was the little cave where they stowed the old Zamboni, a monster that lived like the last of its kind. On the other short end, nearest the door and ticket booth, was the coffee shop where the artifacts were housed and where you could buy hot chocolate, coffee, or candy bars—anything and all things for three dollars.
Above the coffee shop was a balcony that you reached by a set of wooden stairs, and on that day there were little girls up there in leotards draping themselves across a ballet barre. A tiny old woman with tight, wound-up hair was standing before them counting out first position, second position, fifth. She had a scarf the size of a quilt around her neck and a you-will-listen voice, and all the girls did that finger-pointing thing, with their arms just as high as they could reach them.
Still, it was the ice itself that had me in awe. I hadn’t understood how purely white and smooth rink ice could be, how perfectly even end to end, without twigs or wings or bug eyes.
My pond was smaller than that rink, and the rink was slippery smooth, and that day it had been divided into long halves by six orange cones, one half for beginners in a big group lesson, one half for one girl in pink and her exceedingly French-looking coach. He stood on the ice in a pair of fuzzy boots, demonstrating the attitudes he wanted. Then he stood back and stroked his almost-white mustache while the pinked girl did her best to imitate him. There were times when even I could tell that the girl had it all wrong, and when that happened, her coach walked straight out to her, grabbed her limbs, and pushed them into proper place. He worked her like she was sculpture. Then she’d try the move again, and it would be right or it would be wrong, and he’d nod or shake, as moved to do. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” my mother said, and of course she was, how couldn’t she be—so pinked like that, so small.
Mom had said that I should have my own pair of skates for the coming competition, that her old, stolen, nicked-up skates would not do, and so we headed off toward the skate shop, down the alley between a pair of those bleachers. “My daughter’s skating in the Petkovich competition,” my mother told the little Geppetto man. She leaned across the counter and gave him one of her most irresistible Hollywood smiles.
“Well then,” he said.
“Size eight, I think.”
“The options are many.” Giving my mom a wink, Geppetto pointed to the benches, where I went to sit while he went into a dark back room to sort through boxes. All the time we waited, my mother studied the photographs of skaters that were posted on the corkboard walls of the shop. “Oh,” she said, “I always wanted to be a skater. Look at how pretty they all are.” She got up close to one particular photograph and with deep appreciation squinted. When at last Geppetto reappeared, he plopped himself down on a rolling stool.
I tried skate after skate over sock after sock. In the end he sold us the most premium skates that came with the blades already on, because we didn’t have time, as my mother said, to wait for screws. “Leotards?” she asked him, and good thing he sold those, too. My mother gave him her credit card. He boxed things up. We were done.
It was on the way out of the rink that I saw the stack of flyers that announced the competition; they’d been put out on the ledge near the ticket booth. Immediately then I understood: Theo had taken Lila skating, but he’d also thought of me.
“Looks like the public-skate session is about to start,” my mother said, of the crowds that had begun to work their way through.
“We should go,” I said.
“It’s so exciting,” she said, and she smiled in a way she hadn’t smiled in weeks, in a way that made me wonder inside if things were getting fixed with Dad.
Mom would spend the rest of the day out, at the crafts and fabric store. She’d go through bolts and bolts and bolts, she’d later say, testing each fabric for its shimmer and glow, keeping my auburn hair in mind. She’d buy a new pair of shears, packs of needles in every sharp size. Then later that day she’d climb the thin steps up to the attic and carry her old Singer downstairs. She’d fit it on the kitchen table, like a fancy centerpiece.