Chapter 25: Say Anything
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"--and so Kevin actually told me that he didn't want me to get too close to the hockey team. Can you believe that?" Marvella rolled her eyes, then tried to look fierce, which probably wasn't such a great idea because she had been setting up for an toe loop, and the loss of concentration caused a move affectionately known as a "Wanda Beazel". Gina helped her friend up off the ice, and, unfazed by the fall, Marvella continued with her rant. "How does he expect me to be a cheerleader, if I can't hug the team. Hello. Which is what I said to him. And then he said --air quotes-- I don't want my baby attracting the wrong kind of attention. Can you believe it?" She put her hands on her hips and glared.
Having met Kevin once, Gina did indeed believe it, but what could she do except smile and nod, and then murmur something about men being pretty annoying creatures to have around, but can't live with them, can't shoot them. Marvella, done with venting for the time being, regained some speed and then let loose with her showstopper move, a Russian split jump so high that the tips of her toes appeared to reach the level of her shoulders. Gina applauded, wishing she had both Marvella's flexibility and her ability to brush off falls as matter of fact.
You're just tense because today is lutz day.
"You should see that when all seven of us do it at once," Marvella said, going over to the boom-box, and sifting through a box of cassettes abandoned by their previous owners. She picked out one, dropped it into the machine, and then turned up the volume. The whole rink echoed with the sound of Madonna singing, Vogue. "Come on, let's jam!" Marvella yelled.
"I'm supposed to be warming up," Gina said, but she couldn't make herself heard over the music. Marvella gave a war whoop of some kind, and then proceeded to Vogue energetically, hopping around on her toe picks with more enthusiasm than skill. Giving in to the twin temptations of the catchy song and the need to not think about her jump problems, Gina began to improvise some footwork of her own, bracket, cross-choctaw, back chasse, toe pick stop, twizzle, half-loop--abrupt stop.
Her coach stood rink side, watching them intently. Gina couldn't read the expression on his face, but she was sure she was in trouble. Motioning Marvella to stay back, she skated over to him. "I'm sorry." Her apology came out louder than necessary, because he reached over and shut the music off when she began speaking.
He raised one eyebrow. "Whatever for? You weren't doing anything wrong, although a split falling leaf might have fit the music better at that point."
"But I was supposed to be warming up, and instead I was fooling around. I should have been skating." But she hadn't had a chance to catch up with Marvella in a couple of weeks, and when her friend decided to join her on the ice during her warm-up, she'd been unable to say no. "Anyway, I should have been working harder."
He looked away from her for a moment, sighed, and tapped his fingers on the boards. "Don't work so hard that you forget why you're out there in the first place--because you love it. You looked like you were having fun out there, and just because it didn't feel like work, doesn't mean you weren't getting anything accomplished." He looked back down at her and smiled. "Or am I wrong in thinking that that creative footwork warmed you up?" Then, glancing past her, he said, "Is that the type of skating that hockey cheerleaders do?"
Marvella skidded to a stop at the boards in a spray of ice chips. "Pretty much. We all have to be able to land a salchow, but it's mostly toe pick work. You gonna come out to a game?"
After an almost too long pause, he said, "No. I don't think so." It was strange, but during that pause, Gina had been successfully picturing him cheering at a hockey game. She wondered why that was since he didn't seem like a sports fan, and then realized that the 1992 Olympics tape had included a snippet of Jonathan, with a pretty blonde girl at his side, cheering on Team USA. He'd looked like he was enjoying the game more than the girl, she remembered. She wondered if he actually liked hockey, or if attending that game had been merely a part of the Olympic experience.
"Ok. Whatever." Marvella grabbed her skate guards and swung herself over the boards. "If you change your mind, let me know, I can get you free tickets." She reached over and hugged Gina good bye. "Call me when you can and don't work too hard, girlfriend." With a backward wave, she sashayed out toward the locker room.
After Marvella disappeared from view, Gina sighed. "I guess today is the day, huh?" As if babbling inanities would make do anything more than postpone the inevitable.
"If you keep dwelling on it, you're going to build the jump into such an obstacle that you'll never be able to do it. That's why I was pleased to see you improvising out there--you needed to blow off some steam."
He might have a point at that. When she was goofing off with Marvella, she'd been able to stop worrying about that damned jump and just revel in the fun of it all. If only she could turn off her brain and stop thinking about it again. "You want me to finish jamming to Madonna? Or dig up a Spice Girls album from the stack?" She indicated the cassette reject pile.
For a moment, he looked horrified. "You don't have to go that far."
She smiled at the look on his face, though her mental state was far from relaxed. There was a knot in her stomach that probably was never going to go away. "I think I should just get skating, and try to get through this."
"Alright, Gina, why don't you show me single lutz. I just want to get an idea what the problem is first." He made it sound like he was a doctor asking her to open up and say, "aaahhh." Even though her stomach was churning, Gina nodded and began powering across the ice with strong back crossovers, trying to keep her memories from interfering with the task at hand.
Everyone was watching... the little novice girls who had just moved up to junior level, the mothers, the test judges... mommy. Didn't they understand that she didn't have any idea what she was doing wrong? Didn't they understand that she was going to hit her head on the boards? Were they all just waiting for her to crash? Mommy said that they were always looking for weaknesses. Don't ever show them that you're scared.
It felt wrong. It felt so... so wrong, and Gina didn't know how to make it right. She hated her awkward and out of control body, she hated her breasts, and the curves that were starting at her hips, and the fact that nothing was behaving the way it was supposed to. And everyone was looking at her.
"Now!" shouted her mother and Alfredi at the same time.
Gina started to slam her toe pick into the ice and just then remembered that old coach Fritz had told her the strength of the jump wasn't in the picking, as Alfredi seemed to be telling her now, but in the spring from the outside edge. Was she even on an outside edge? What if she was flutzing? Fritz had always seemed concerned about the flutz. Alfredi was more focused on speed.
The wall! Too close, too close too close!
Instead of jumping, she pivoted around in a modified hockey stop, sending out a large spray of ice chips. "Sorry!" she muttered.
Alfredi sighed and checked his watch. "Go ahead and cool down, Gina. We'll work on it some more tomorrow. Just keep on with those visualization exercises tonight." Lisa Truong, Alfredi's next student, was already warming up at the far side of the rink. Lisa had just skipped from novice to senior level, and mother was always telling her that if she didn't work hard, Lisa would surpass Gina as well. Alfredi glanced from Lisa to Gina; his hands were already patting his front inside pocket for his cigarettes.
Half upset that she still hadn't re-mastered the move, and half relieved that she could stop jumping now, she stretched her shoulder muscles and began doing a few back crossovers to cool down. Alfredi left the rink at a fast pace, apparently determined to get in at least half a cigarette before his coaching Lisa.
And there went her buffer.
"Goddamnit Gina, we are not leaving this rink until you land three triple lutzes in a row. I did not uproot myself across the country so you could fuck around during your practices. Get your ass in gear!" Her mother's voice sliced through crisp air, riveting all eyes to their end of the rink. Anyone who hadn't been watching her before was certainly paying attention now. Lisa shot her a look of sympathy, but that just made Gina feel worse.
It was hard to choose which Gina dreaded more, the jump or her mother. She bit the inside of her mouth, nearly crying out because she already had sores all over the inside of her cheeks, and one more time began the long entrance into the lutz. To her surprise, she actually landed it, too, although she'd felt the outside edge flatten out and then hook inward at the last moment. Flutz. She looked over at her mother to see if she'd noticed the error.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Two more."
Determined to just get the punishment over with, Gina landed the jump a second time, but then two-footed the landing on the third try. Without waiting for her mother's comment, Gina powered around and then set up for the another attempt. She felt her ankle turn over on the takeoff, but at least it held on the landing. It hurt, but she didn't give in--she stayed in the landing position a good long time so that everyone in the whole rink could see that she had it under control. It was done. She landed three triple lutzes. Finally time to escape this wretched practice session. As soon as she got home, or rather the small apartment she and her mother were living in--Gina refused to think of anything in Sun Valley as home--she would put an ice pack on it.
Not even bothering with a cool down, Gina headed for the boards and reached for her blade guards.
"Three in a row, Gina." Her mother warned.
Something snapped inside of Gina. With a motion she didn't even remember making, she threw her blade guards across the rink. "No! I won't do it, I can't do it! Don't make me do it! I just want to have a normal life without people watching me!"
Out of the corner of her eye, Gina saw the boards hurtling at her again. Instead of jumping, she did an abrupt three turn and skated back to Jonathan, waiting for the inevitable lecture. He was leaning forward on the bleachers, which his elbows resting on the boards, looking at her intently.
"I panicked," she said, probably unnecessarily. She looked down at her feet and scuffed the back end of her skate along the ice, digging up a long furrow. There were no words from Jonathan until she looked up at him again.
"Does that happen often?" He asked, sounding more curious than chiding.
All the time.
"Pretty much. At least since I've been back skating singles seriously. For a long time, I didn't even try to do them." Actually, she would prefer to never do the jump again. But that wasn't possible. "I know I have to do a triple lutz." She tapped her head with her finger. "I mean, I know it up here. But when it comes down to actually doing it, I don't know, it's like all I can see is the wall coming up fast."
"Hm."
Hm?
"Guess it's kind of hard to see the problem on the jump when I don't actually even do the jump," she offered, wondering if she'd just stumped him. He'd picked up his cane and was absently rolling it between his hands as he gazed off into the lutz corner.
Finally he looked back down at her. "From what I could see, up until the moment you aborted the jump, your technique was fine. You were on the outside edge, your speed was perfect, and you weren't about to dig a huge divot in the ice on the takeoff. Have you ever seen Donna's so called triple lutz? She leans so far forward that she rolls over to the wrong edge, first of all--then she slams her foot into the ice so hard that I'm always sure she's going to hit the concrete underneath. All power, no finesse."
"Megan says that she's working on a triple lutz-triple toe." Gina said, glad to shift the topic of conversation.
He shook his head. "She'll never land it in competition the way she's going. Now, her triple flip is beautiful, probably the best jump she does. But the triple lutz--no way. She's got lousy technique. So just imagine what you could do, considering that you seem to have the correct edge approach, at least."
As a pep talk, Gina didn't think that was incredibly helpful, but since more commentary didn't seem to be forthcoming, she assumed that was her cue to try the jump again. Once again, she did a few back crossovers across the ice, then got onto her back outside edge and traveled halfway down the ice with her foot poised to lightly pick into the jump.
I gave up everything for you--my house, my marriage, my future. Don't you dare quit on me, Gina, you're all I have left.... Wall!!
She skidded to a stop. Useless! Idiot! Sneaking a look over at her coach, Gina noticed he was rubbing his temples with his fingertips. Wonderful. She was giving her coach a headache. He motioned her back over.
"The wall again?"
She nodded.
He drummed his fingers against the boards for a moment. Gina didn't think he was upset or impatient though--actually, he seemed to just be thinking carefully. In his blue cable knit sweater, he almost looked like a professorial colleague of her father's. "Have you ever actually hit the wall on a lutz?"
"Not in midair--although that's what my nightmares are about. I crashed on the lutz in my first major Senior International--I was too close to the wall going in, tried to jump anyway, landed right at the barrier, and then skidded into it and fell." She'd hit the back of her head on it too. The whole arena had gasped in sympathetic pain, but Gina had just been in shock. A jump had never failed her that badly before.
"I saw a tape of your Junior Worlds from the year before--you were jumping awfully close to the boards even then. If you had a growth spurt after that...?" He looked at her questioningly.
"I did, actually. Went from 4'11" to 5'2" in about six months."
"That would have been enough to throw off your jumping for a while--but you know that, don't you?" As Gina shrugged, she noticed that he was drawing a pattern on the board with his finger... looked like a bunch of connecting 't's. "Let's try something else for a moment. Go to center ice, do a back outside mohawk, and then as quickly as you can, tap your free toe pick into the ice and just jump up. Don't worry about any revolutions... just do a take-off and the landing."
An outside mohawk was one of the simplest turns--and it would put her on the same edge as the lutz take-off. She followed his instructions, did the turn, leaned into the outside edge, and tapped. It was pretty easy to spring upward and then land on the jumping foot.
"Good," Jonathan called to her. "Now, try that again, only this time rotate in the air once, ok? Stay center ice, don't worry about the wall."
Adding one revolution to the hop she had just done before was a pretty simple step. Without the distraction of the wall, added to the need to just get into position and jump quickly, Gina found her muscle memory had taken over.
"Congratulations, you have just landed a single lutz," her coach said to her when she had returned to his side.
"Well, that was almost like doing footwork," she said. "I feel pretty stupid. The single lutz is on the pre-juvenile freestyle test. And I don't know if I could ever get enough speed from a mohawk to do a triple lutz from that entrance. And I would still have to--" he held up his hand and put his fingers against her lips.
With a gasp of surprise, she shut up and he pulled his hand away as if it had been burned. "Sorry," he muttered. He cleared his throat. "One step at a time, Gina. Get comfortable with the single again. We'll worry about the double later on, and then worry about the triple. I am concerned about your thought process during the set up. I can work on the technique, the speed--you'd be surprised how much speed you can get from a mohawk, and I've seen skaters do a lutz out of footwork, even alternating bracket lobes--but I need to figure out what is making you freeze on the long entry. What happened after the bad fall you had? Is that when your panic attacks started?"
She thought back. That year had been so confusing, with the move to Idaho, her parents' separation, the problems with her jumps, that she wasn't sure what had happened first. It was all snarled together in her mind, until the audience gasp at Skate Canada merged into her father's shout when he saw--. She closed her eyes for a moment. There was just so much about that year that she didn't want to remember. Even now, her stomach hurt just thinking about it all.
Soon after that outburst, they had had to leave Sun Valley. It was only out of fear of her mother than even got her on the ice, although her practices were half-hearted at best. Alfredi didn't want to coach her if she didn't want to skate, and he had been relieved to see the backside of her mother. Though her coach accepted her decision, her mother hadn't. As soon as they got back to Cincinnati, she started calling around to major ice rinks and coaches to set up a round of interviews. Gina knew she was stuck in a situation that would never change and never improve. She didn't care about anything anymore, she just wanted out.
And then she thought she'd found a way.
She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. "Gina?" She brought herself back to the present--Jonathan was looking at her with concern. "You disappeared on me for a moment. What were you thinking about?"
"Just trying to get everything straight in my mind, that's all. I don't know when exactly I started freaking out on the lutz. A lot of things happened that year-- my mom wouldn't let me take my cat to Idaho with me--she gave him away, and right about when I quit skating, they were talking about a divorce, which was my fault, because if I hadn't been having jump problems in the first place, Mom and I never would have left Cincinnati, and she and Dad wouldn't have been separated. And she didn't care about me. If I wasn't going to skate, she didn't want me. I was just a little doll to her... Skating Barbie, complete with wardrobe and blades." She hadn't realized her nails were digging into her palms until Jonathan reached over and opened her hands. There were little half moon craters across them.
He gently ran his finger over the marks. "I don't think you can blame your parent's divorce on your skating. It doesn't sound like your mother was the easiest person to live with."
With a bitter laugh, Gina said, "Now that is definitely an understatement. But Dad didn't really seem to mind. He never was around the much anyway."
"Which is pretty telling, if you think about it." He paused, then said, "how does he feel about you taking up skating again?"
Since Gina hadn't actually gotten around to telling her father that she was seriously competing, she looked down at the ice again.
Letting go of her hands, he said, "Ah, I figured that was the case. Don't you think you'd better talk to him? Especially before classes start up again?"
"I should, I know... I just haven't found the right moment."
"That's the thing about serious conversations," Jonathan said. "There never is a right moment for them. But I think talking through some of this with your father might help with the panic attacks on the lutz. You said yourself, it's all mixed together in your head--he might be able to take some of that off your shoulders." He put his hands back on those shoulders and turned her around so that she faced the ice. "I can give you the technique, the moves, the choreography, and the time. But as much as I ... well, I can't get into your head. So for the rest of the evening, we'll work on the single lutz. When you get home--talk to your father."
He gave her a tiny nudge and Gina skated off towards center ice.
If she had been left to think about it, Gina probably would have put off talking to her father, as luck would have it, when Gina got home, she discovered that only her father was home. So to speak, anyway. As he was at the kitchen table, hunched over a stack of student essays and completely ignoring the fact that Emma was on the table stalking his dinner, Gina assumed he was home in physical presence only. She went to the refrigerator and got herself a glass of lemonade before she sat down. "Jean would be having conniptions if she saw the cat on the table."
Her father looked up startled. Seeing Emma's position relative to his steak, he picked her up and dropped her gently to the floor. She meowed loudly, and then went over to Gina, apparently hoping for back up. "Oh no, I'm not falling for that again," she told her. Then, looking back to her father, she said, "where is Jean, anyway?"
"Citizenship class." Her father pushed the papers away from him and brought his plate closer. "I can't believe they conned me into teaching Freshman Comp this summer. You'd think there would be enough slave labor from the TAs." He rifled through the papers for a moment and pulled one out. "Listen to this sentence. They were going to have the party in a raven, so just getting there was a problem. What are they teaching them in high school?"
Gina spent a moment puzzling out the sentence in question, finally figuring that the appropriate word was ravine, before she answered, "I don't know. Remember, I was tutored for a while and then educated in England." Then, because he had provided her with the appropriate lead in, she said, "speaking of education, I've been thinking over my fall schedule, and I'm having a problem getting excited about my classes."
"No surprise there," her father said. "I wouldn't be excited about accounting classes either. I never did see you as the calculator and ledger type." He looked down at his plate as if he were surprised to find it in front of him, and absentmindedly cut a piece of steak.
She took a sip of lemonade before continuing. "I think I picked accounting because it was as far away from skating as I could imagine. It was a bad idea."
He looked at her for the first time. "Considering changing your major?"
Actually, Gina realized that in a sense, that was exactly what she was doing. "Yes and no. I don't want to be an accountant--that's a definite. But I also...um... think I want to concentrate on skating this year."
When he put down his knife and fork and stared at her, Gina had the absurd mental image of a 1950s sitcom father figure getting ready to yell at his mischievous son. "I'm not sure what to say, Gina. I thought we'd agreed that you'd put your education first."
"I'm not planning to abandon college. I still want to get a degree--but I think I want to study dance or theater, and I think I want to take a year off to pursue the skating."
"I don't think that would be a good idea."
And Gina knew he was thinking about what happened-- what almost happened--before.
With her mother at the travel agent planning a trip that would include visiting ice rinks in Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, and Michigan, Gina had the house to herself. In spite of the fact that she had insisted she never wanted to set foot in an ice rink ever again, her mother had insisted that Gina was just going through a phase. But it wasn't a phase. She was so tired of everything. Of skating and falling, of people watching, of being away from home, and of never ever being good enough. She wasn't good enough, and the things that had gotten her through before weren't working. She just couldn't see any way out.
Except one. She knew her mother took Valium fairly often for her "nerves," and she knew that the prescription had recently been refilled. And she knew where the pills were kept.
That was when her father had come home unexpectedly.
She knew they were remembering the same moment--the split second that had lasted a hundred years when their eyes had met in the bathroom mirror. He'd seen the still full bottle clutched in her hand and he'd known what she had been about to do. Without saying a word, he'd taken it out of her hand, led her out to his car, and driven her to the small apartment that he had moved into a few weeks before.
They'd never talked about it though. Instead, he asked her if she wanted to come to England with him, and she gratefully accepted that escape. Her mother had put up a fight and begun a custody battle that she very well might have even won, had she not finally understood that Gina was serious about not wanting to skate. After that--well, a Gina who would not skate was no daughter of Francesca D'Allessandro Logan.
Now, years later, he finally asked. "If I hadn't come home to get the rest of my books--If I hadn't been around to stop you, would you have taken those pills?"
"I don't know." She really didn't know either. She'd wanted out--but maybe she'd just wanted to prove to her mother just how serious she was. To have her mother put her arms around her and tell her that it was all right, that she loved her anyway. "It's so hard to compare then and now. I'm not the same person and I don't think I could ever feel as desperate as I did then."
She noticed he was unfolding and refolding his napkin--Jean had insisted that they always use cloth napkins in the house, otherwise, Gina was sure that she would be looking at a pile of shredded paper. "Was it the situation, though, or the skating?" he asked.
In other words, if you become wrapped up in skating again, how do I know it won't drive you to that kind of desperation again? The scary thing was that Gina wasn't sure herself. She didn't think she would ever do that again, but she didn't know. Remembering how confused she had felt after the exhibition, well, if she blew it this time....? But even if she slipped back into that kind of depression, she had a stronger support system now. Her father, vague as he could be, was there for her, and she had Jean and Cody and Marvella and just maybe Etienne and... Jonathan. "I think it was the combination of the skating and the situation. Now, the situation is different, and there are people around me I trust to help me if the skating gets to be too much."
"I wasn't there for you before. Not until the last possible moment," her father concluded. "I should have been, but I didn't know you needed me. You and your mother were so close."
We were?
But, upon reflection, Gina remembered how it had been before that last year. When she was little, when she was just starting skating, her mother used to do up her hair before she would go out to skate. They used to have a bunch of silly rituals and songs. And shopping for costumes was always fun with her mother around. Mommy used to make fun of the sales girls when their backs were turned, and later on, in the car, she would mimic their lockjaw style speech. They'd talk about all the things they would do when Gina was Olympic champion, all the fun they would have together on the tour. Yes, she and her mother had been close... as long as Gina was winning. "How did you and Mother ever get together in the first place?" Her father flinched, and Gina regretted her awkward phrasing. "I guess I don't remember ever seeing you two spending time together... you seem so different. I mean you and Jean are different too, but your differences compliment each other. You and mother...?"
Her father got up and took his plate over to the sink before answering. He put some scraps in Emma's dish, and then said, "I had this weird college roommate--Myron--no, you've never met him, he lives out in California now, I think. I get emails from him every once in a while. Sorry--digression there. I had just finished my master's thesis, and gotten accepted into the Ph.D. program at Columbia, and Myron had this bright idea of celebrating by going to a townie bar."
"Townie bar?" Gina didn't recognize the term. She joined her father at the sink, and prevented him from emptying half a bottle of Joy into it.
"Sorry. You'd have to have been to Bloomington to understand. Basically it's a bar where people who actually live in town--not college students-- hang out. So Myron convinced me to go to this bar, and within five minutes of getting there, was chatting up a couple of girls who were partying at the bar. I sat down at a table in the corner and was wishing I had never come, when he drags the girls over. He tells me that the girls are ice skaters, and therefor very hot."
Gina burst into giggles, trying to picture herself, or Megan, or even Donna as hot. She put her hands on her hips. "And you believed him?"
"Watch it. I was a sheltered innocent farm boy, what can I say? I didn't know what to think, but I figured I had to be polite so I started talking to the two of them. You mother was one of the women, and the other one, whose name, if I ever knew it, I have since forgotten, was celebrating having just gotten a part in the Ice Capades. Myron, of course, got that one and they were playing tongue hockey before too long--ummmmm." He broke off, perhaps realizing that this was information he shouldn't be sharing with his daughter.
"No worries, Dad, I'm 21." She started loading up the day's dishes in the washer, since her father invariably put all the pots in places that blocked the water flow from the rest of the dishes.
He looked at her closely. "Twenty-one? Are you sure?"
"I turn 22 in October." Not that that meant she was as experienced as the average 21 year old.
"Now I am worried." He scratched his head. "I suppose I shouldn't think about that too much, right. I don't need an ulcer."
Gina wrinkled her nose at him. "I think me being 21 means you don't have to worry anymore. Legally."
"Tell that to my stomach. Where was I?" He looked down at the emptied sink in surprise.
"Some bar in Indiana," she reminded him. She turned to the refrigerator. "Do you want a fruit popsicle?" He shook his head, so she got one for herself and sat back down at the table.
Her father retrieved the cookie jar from over the microwave and took a handful of "digestive biscuits" (aka English cookies that Jean swore she couldn't live without, and had dragged Gina on a tour of the local gourmet grocery stores in order to find) and then joined her again. "Right. Bar in Indiana. So I started talking to your mother and soon learned that she was upset because she hadn't been cast in the Ice Capades. I don't know, at first she brought out my protective instincts, I guess. But she looked at me like I was her hero, and no one had ever done that before. It was really flattering. I hadn't dated that many women, and I looked around and saw all my colleagues were getting married, starting families. Your mother... she loved the idea of going off to New York City with me... I thought I was in love with her... I loved the idea of her at least. We were married within three months of meeting. And at first it was lovely. Two kids from Indiana in the big city, but she started resenting the amount of time I spent at school."
Yeah, Gina's mother did have an obsessive quality about her. Gina remembered that too. She shrugged, and indicated that her father should continue.
"She was overjoyed when she got pregnant. And when you were born, and she was so possessive of you, I suppose I was relieved, because it meant that I could spend more time on my dissertation. Lucky for you," he winked, "you were a quiet baby. You used to laugh a lot in your crib. I guess slowly, I let you bear the burden of keeping your mother occupied."
She hadn't though of it in those terms, but in essence, that was the truth. A feeling, maybe it was anger, went through her. "That wasn't fair."
"I know. And I'm very sorry about it now." He took a deep breath. "You're probably right about the situation being different now. And even when I saw you skate last month--you were different. Happier out there. I didn't want to admit it--probably because I blame myself--but you weren't happy those last couple years. I knew it, but I didn't want to deal with it. The thing is, I don't think you should base your entire life on skating, not even now."
"To pursue it as I want to pursue it," Gina pointed out, "I'm not sure I could handle school full time."
"What about part time, then? Not as," he gave a theatrical shudder, "an accountant though."
"Part time might be doable, provided I could get permission to miss class for certain competitions."
"That would be something you would probably have to take up with your professors."
Gina took that to mean that he was going to be ok with the idea. She smiled, and then dropped her second bomb on him. "Dad, I'm going to miss your Shakespeare survey class for two days in October for a competition, a three days in November for Regionals, and then if I do well in November, a week in December for Sectionals." At least, if she could get into the class as she planned. Her father was a very popular teacher.
A cookie dropped from his fingers onto the table. "Oh no. Don't take my class. Please. I really will get an ulcer if I have to teach a class you're in."
Laughing, Gina got up, and pressed a sticky popsicle kiss on his bald spot. "I'm looking forward to discussing the misogynistic symbolism in Titus Andronicus with you," she said over his groan.
Yes, it will be different this time.
Text Copyright © 1999-2000 Karen Frank
