Chapter 2: Fast Cars and Misunderstandings
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There. Finally, I was warm. I put my foot up on the top of the boards and gingerly stretched my inner thigh muscles. As they gave, I stretched them more. Then I switched legs and did the other. I stretched my back, twisting right and left and bending low over my outstretched legs. I stretched my arms, slowly rotating them past my chest and holding the stretch. Then I gathered my concentration and glided out onto the ice.
I wasn't feeling very awake yet so I started doing crossovers around the ice, going for maximum extension and coverage. I did forwards and backwards in the"right"direction and then I did forwards and backwards the"wrong way." My legs were getting back to where they didn't ache when I skated clockwise for longer periods. By the time I was well and truly warm, I was also well and truly awake.
The only thing that I can say that I like about taking the graveyard practice is that I have it completely to myself. No one watches. With how I've been skating in the last month, it is a real relief that no one is here to see me. I supposed that I shouldn't be so hard on myself. There was no way that I could control the onset of puberty and as much as our poor showing at nationals last year was my fault... NO! I wasn't going to think about that!
I started with spins. They had come back to me much easier than the jumps. Before, I was pretty balanced, a decent spinner and a decent jumper, not good enough at either to skate singles well... lucky though for some reason I had never wanted to skate singles. I had always wanted to skate with someone. Mama said that even when I was 4 and couldn't have been expected to know anything about pairs, I had been enchanted with them. I watched the pairs skaters on TV and completely ignored the singles.
I decided to leave the spins for tomorrow and try to throw some jumps. I saved the jumps for the end of practice so that if they went too badly, I could just put it down to tiredness and quit for the night. I'd been managing my doubles pretty well.
It was a real improvement from a few months ago. Since last winter, I had grown almost 8 inches. Puberty had held off until I was almost 17, but when it hit, it hit like a ton of bricks. Within 6 months, I had a totally new body.
I also had no jumps, not even doubles and even my best spins were shaky. Nationals had been a complete humiliation, only to be topped by the subsequent abandonment by my partner. We had been together for 5 years! We fought so much those last few months. I remembered the day he said I was never going to amount to anything and I said that he should find another partner if I wasn't good enough. I never really expected that he would.
That's how it is in American pairs. The men are so in demand that he had been able to pick up a partner within a month. Thank God they weren't training here. I was hardly training here. We were my coach's last pair. She had even headed out to Pensacola. So I was left partnerless, jumpless and coachless. During that summer break, I almost quit forever. I grew another 2 inches. I put on weight and started to look like a woman instead of a child. I was rudderless.
One August day, Mama hustled me into the car and dropped me off at the rink.
"You haven't been happy since you've stopped skating. I know that these changes have been hard for you, but you are going to have to come to terms with them and get on with your life. I won't have you moping around for the rest of the year. You don't have a partner, but moping is not going to get you a new one. Go in there and work until you get your jumps back. Then we will see about a partner."
The only private ice time I had been able to get was at 3 AM. I did manage to get 2 hours, because no one else had wanted them. I stayed away from club practice because I was ashamed to be seen falling on single jumps. Now that I had my doubles back, I could think about being seen in public again. I had dropped 5 pounds, that helped.
I wasn't as skinny as I had been, but I could not be considered heavy. I weighed all of 110 lbs, which while it was far too heavy for a pairs skater, was just right for my height otherwise. On the other hand, Camilla Reece would still have moo-ed at me.
I shook the thoughts out of my head and decided that this was the moment of truth. I was going to have to try it sometime. The triple. I had not done a triple since that fateful day at Nationals. I wasn't feeling tired and I put any small shred of fear out of my mind.
I stroked around the ice, building up speed. The toe or the flip? The flip I thought. The triple toe had been the nationals jump, I never fell on the triple flip. I set the jump up at a corner of the ice. I glided forward on my left foot, trying to keep all the speed I could, then I pushed my right toe pick into the ice and did a quick three. I bent my knees, reaching way back on the ice to toe off. I hit it.
I could tell that something was wrong in the air. It was only a split second, but I could hear Stephen's voice saying over and over... " You'll never amount to anything." I landed the jump on 2 feet just not quite past 2 1/2 revolutions. I fought for that landing, and as ugly as it was, I didn't fall. That was the worst flip I had done in years! Damned"Stinkin' Thinkin'!"
"I WILL NOT THINK ABOUT IT!" I yelled defiantly into the empty rink.
"What aren't you going to think about?" A voice said in Russian. The voice didn't shout, but it didn't whisper either, but the rink was so big that the normal tones sounded like a whisper. It was not a voice I recognized.
"Who's there?" I asked, alarmed." Who are you? Step out to where I can see you."
A tall figure stepped out of the shadows. He had been sitting on the side. Someone had been watching my practice! He had on a heavy coat, so I couldn't tell much other than his height.
I realized that he must be a skater otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get into the rink. Only the late night people have the combo to the lock box. Well, that's not quite true, some of the really elite people also have keys to a back door. They're so valuable to the rink that they get special treatment. This man spoke Russian, so it made him one of a very small group. That group was the most elite of the elite.
I approached him with caution. As I came across the rink, his features resolved into someone that I had seen, but never wanted to meet. He was a Russian, of course. And as I had suspected, one of the elite skaters.
"What are you doing here?" I asked "Surely you don't have ice time this early in the morning?" I spoke in Russian out of consideration.
"So you do speak Russian."
"My mother was Russian. She married an American. I've always lived here, but I've always spoken Russian."
"I had heard something like that. Your mother must be Muscovite, you have the accents of a woman from Moscow."
"I didn't catch that. I'm really not that good. There's lots of words I don't know and when someone speaks too fast, I get really lost."
"I will speak with more precision and more slowly then," he paused." It is good to hear the accents of home. All I hear is English all day, and these Americans talk too fast."
I didn't know what to say. "You haven't told me what you are doing here. If you didn't come to skate, what did you come to do?"
"I don't know... I guess I just couldn't sleep. I didn't feel like running, so I came down here to see if the ice was free."
"It's not."
"I can see that."
"I have to go practice, now." I started to skate away.
"Please... wait."
So I circled around to him.
"I came down here because I was lonely for the sound of a Muscovite speaking Russian. I've been trying to talk to you since that day you yelled at me at club practice. You remember?"
My face felt hot. I nodded. I remembered.
"How did you ever learn something so filthy?" There was that look again.
"In an old movie, one that Mama doesn't know that I know about. I knew that they were bad words, but I'm not really sure what they meant."
"Why did you say them?"
"It was a dare," I said and when he looked at me quizzically, I continued, "Camilla Reece dared me, she dared me to say something really filthy... "
"Then you weren't serious?"
"About what?"
"About what you asked me?"
"I told you that I didn't know what the words meant," I insisted. He chuckled. "Are you going to tell me?"
"No, I think that I'll let your mother tell you, if you have the courage to say them to her."
"That's not fair!"
"Just be glad that I was the only person present who speaks Russian. You might have been very embarrassed. It was a pretty emphatic invitation the way you said it."
"No, don't tell me any more. I'm about to die of shame as it is. I'm sorry if I offended you."
"I'm glad you did."
"Huh?"
"I've seen you walking to afternoon practices every day, day in and day out, rain, shine or snow, for months. You shout something provocative at me in practice one day. It's the first Russian voice I've heard in months that wasn't thousands of miles away. I've tried to get to talk to you by approaching when you are with your little friends but you excuse yourself from any group I'm in. All of a sudden you disappear... completely. I have been pining for a Russian voice. My phone bills are horrendous!" He paused while I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. "You look surprised."
"To say the least."
I heard the door open and I saw the next skater come in. Sure enough, my watch said 5:05 AM.
"My practice is over. I need to go."
"Are you going to walk?"
"Yeah, I do it all the time."
"It's still dark. It's not safe!"
"No one's ever bothered me. I've been cutting across the meadows for years."
"You're mother allows it?"
"My mother delivers newspapers. She needs the car. I'm fine walking. I really have to go."
"I could take you."
"No... that's okay, really."
"I want to."
It was getting late. "Well... I guess it'll be all right. It's not like you are a total stranger, but I didn't mean anything by what I said."
"I know. That Camilla Reece told me you are a virgin."
I didn't want to know what the context of that conversation was.
I took off my skates and slipped on sweats over my practice outfit. As we left the rink, I could just see the sun coming up. It was incredibly beautiful; 5.7 technical, 5.9 presentation; amongst the sunrises which I had seen. The car he lead me to was almost as impressive.
"Whoa... That's your car?"
"Yeah, just a little one I picked up."
"It's a 1991 Porsche 959." It was a peach of a car, perfect condition... it was boxy and swoopy and Oh So Fast.
"You like it?" he asked as he opened the passenger door. I sat.
"I'll bet it's a real... " I searched for the words in Russian and finding none, continued in English, "... pussy magnet."
"I do not have a problem with cats." He closed the passenger door, went around to the drivers and got in.
"No... uh. That's a crude Americanism for meaning that... girls... uh... women like it."
"You like it." He started the car.
"It's fast, so I like it, but I've never been so shallow as to like boy for his car."
"You like fast cars?" he asked interestedly. He paused. "We'll need to wait a bit, I don't drive her when she's cold."
"Yeah, that 'Oldsmobile shit heap' I drive doesn't look like much, handles like a 'tank,' but it's got a '455 Rocket' in it and it is 'hell on the straightaway, ' "I commented, mixing English and Russian.
"I didn't understand half of what you said."
"Sorry, my Russian isn't up to car talk. This thing must handle like a dream."
"It does. You want to see? If you don't have to be home right away, I could take you for a ride."
"Well, I shouldn't but Stev... I've always been interested in cars and this is extremely hot. I should go right home, but I'm dying to see how it handles."
"When did you get interested in fast cars?"
"My old partner liked them. When he wasn't on the ice, he was elbow deep in his hot rod. I learned alot about cars through the 'nod and smile' method."
"What's that?"
"That's where the girl looks on adoringly as the guy fixes cars and nods and smiles interestedly when he says anything. Now I'm the family mechanic."
"Did you adore your former partner?"
"I... I had a big crush on him," I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. "He was older and I thought he hung the moon."
"That was what you meant... about not thinking about it. He broke your heart," he said, reaching over to take my hand. "You didn't deserve that."
"Especially since I couldn't help it." I was losing control... "I couldn't help that I started growing."
"Pardon me?"
"I got... " I struggled for the words in Russian. "... my womanhood. I couldn't skate anymore. I lost all my jumps and he didn't want to wait for me to get them back." Now I was crying. "My partner dumped me, my coach left, and I'm so fat I can't bear to be seen at club practice."
He still held my hand. He pulled on my arm canting me over towards him in an awkward way. "Shhh shhhh," he said. "It's not the end of the world. Your spins are looking good and you look like you are getting your jumps back. You've got beautiful lines and real flair. You are not fat."
"I am for a pairs skater."
"You're not skating pairs."
I sat up straight. "Not any more. But it's all I've ever wanted to skate."
"Then you will. just keep on working. And don't stay away from club because you think people will think that you are fat. I don't think you are fat and I don't think any less of you for having lost your jumps. In fact, I quite admire you for getting them back."
"You do?"
"Yeah, I do." The engine idled down. "Now for that ride."
He put the car in gear and we slung gravel as we slid across the parking lot and out onto the open road.
Text Copyright © 1998-2003 Mary E. Tyler
