Page 30 of Playworld
Perhaps I was still upset that Kepplemen had humiliated me, or that I sucked ass at wrestling, but when I spotted Naomi’s car on my way home, I felt as if I’d summoned her from some secret part of my soul.
“I’m getting my butt kicked,” I explained to her. We’d been parked on the Dead Street for maybe five minutes, and I’d already spilled my guts about everything. “In middle school we were all mostly the same size, but now everyone’s so big and good.”
“Better, stronger, faster, huh?” Naomi said.
“If I could just win once,” I said.
“You will,” she said.
Naomi was thrilled to see me. When a car passed in the opposite direction, the headlights revealed her giddy expression. She giggled once the darkness cloaked us again and then leaned forward to muss my hair, which she gathered in her fist and pulled me toward her to inhale my scalp, to kiss my temple, my cheek. I was still scurfy with sweat. “You taste like you’ve been swimming in the ocean,” she said hungrily. When I did not reciprocate, she sat back against her door and smiled, and as ifby some trick of the dimness her features were separate unto her, floating like a lily pad. That she had missed me so much made me both glad and uncomfortable.
“My first tournament’s this Saturday,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
“Friends Academy.”
“The Quaker School? On Long Island?”
“I guess.”
“Huh,” she said, and considered this for a moment. “Your parents ever come watch you?”
“Dad’s not much into sports.”
“What about your mother?”
“She doesn’t like it. Both times she saw me last year the kid I was wrestling got hurt.”
“You mean like bad?”
“One broke his wrist. The other guy some ribs.”
“Mr. Ferocious over here,” Naomi said. She gave my shoulder a gentle push and then, resting her hand there, shook me. I went rag-doll limp and smiled, which encouraged her enough to embrace me. She did this with a great bustle at first. She bunched me to her, so that it all seemed nearly innocent. It bothered me, this attempt to disguise her intention, and she may have felt me withdraw, because when she pressed her lips to mine, she said, almost petulantly, “Kiss me back.” And I remember thinking I had violated the rules between us, because I did one of the only decidedly cruel things to her I would do that year and which I still regret, since I already knew the answer to the question I asked.
“Where are your daughters?”
Naomi tensed. She sat back, slowly, and then looked down at her manicure. “They’re performing tonight,” she said softly. She glanced at her watch, even though they wouldn’t be done for another couple of hours. “I should probably get back,” she said, and then slid the key into the switch and started the car.
—
On Saturday, just before six a.m., our team boarded the bus and departed from school. Kepplemen was driving. The sky was still black, the buswarm. Pilchard sat at the front, behind Coach. Atop his lap there lay a large baking tin; it was an apple crisp his mother had made, tightly covered in Saran wrap and foil, to be eaten after weigh-ins, and its just-out-of-the-oven aroma drove us mad.
We woke in a parking lot on school grounds, outside a complex of buildings. The sky, rimmed by dawn, was blue-whale blue. Kepplemen led us inside the nearest structure, past the cavernous gymnasium, downstairs into an even darker locker room—a vast space. Other teams had gathered here. There was a crush of competitors. We heard the showers running and a skipping rope’s wet whip. A long line had formed, leading toward a carpeted office, its interior lit. The queue snaked toward a tall scale with an oval face, where a pair of coaches stood holding clipboards. The moment we entered, we disrobed again. The host team’s coach took our name and school and weight class as we stepped on the scale.
Back in the parking lot, the sky was shot through with sunlight now. It was so bright on the horizon we covered our eyes. The wind was fierce, the day freezing. The Ferren bus had just arrived. Oren, first to exit, upnodded to me; I signaled surreptitiously back as we headed in opposite directions. We boarded our bus and went straight to McDonald’s. The gassiness of the egg and bread in that first bite, all of it gone before I could sayMcMuffin. The hash browns’ crunch and then the salty oil seeping from the mashed mouthful. Soon we were shambling back to the bus. Our stomachs stretched our warm-ups’ waistbands. Pilchard, first on board, was again seated behind Kepplemen. He had resisted breaking into his apple crisp. If you tried to touch the tin he’d have snapped at your hand. When we returned to the campus we took our gear this time. In the gym, a block of bleachers had a sign above it that readBoyd Prep, and we piled our bags here. Pilchard, seated dead center, finally removed the foil to his food and was greeted by a puff of steam. He’d brought a box of plastic forks. We passed these around while we let him have the first few bites and then set upon the food from every side and angle. Pilchard looked like Dr. Octopus, with so many arms bristling from his shoulders and back and each acting independently. But now it all was too much,nowwe’d done it. We were landed fish, worm-bellied and air-engorged. We were in so much pain the only solution was sleep.We smushed our gear bags into pillows, some of the seniors having known tobringpillows. Kepplemen said, “I have to go to the seeding meeting.” Still, he couldn’t help it: he paused to smile at us before departing. His love for us was palpable. He looked like he wanted to kiss us each good night. We buttoned or zipped up our jackets to the tops of our collars; we covered our heads with our hoodies or pulled our stocking hats over our eyes. And we slept the sleep of the shipwrecked, safely ashore.
We woke. We sat up. We blinked at the brightness.
The gymnasium was larger in size than the one at Boyd, with high windows running its length on both sides. Our eyes were visored from the sunshine filling these by the multiple state championship pennants in every sport hanging from the ceiling wires. What gave the space its grandeur was, first, the mats, four of them arrayed atop the hardwood, with walking lanes in between each, a pair of foldout chairs for coaches and assistant coaches on points north and south of their circumference—a gladiatorial pit, then, given our bleacher’s elevation, with giant Roman numerals fashioned of athletic tape, denoting each and adding to the effect. In front of these, the scoring tables, atop which sat timers and air horns and scoring charts in red and green and flipped to zero, the rolled towels taped at both ends to throw at the ref to signal each period’s conclusion. The PA came on with a deafening buzz; it was as if lightning were attempting speech. A voice said, “Matches will begin at nine a.m.” We were a half hour from start time, and just now, as if having been introduced, as a sort of preamble, the referees were arriving in their official outfits but still wearing jackets over their striped tops. The event’s scale was now apparent, eight teams in attendance, their managers wandering the floor, talking to officials, to coaches. These were girls predominantly, although Cliffnotes was acting as ours today since he wasn’t starting. I spotted Oren, also managing, who spotted me. I waved him over, and he broke away so we could steal a moment to chat, although he did this furtively, guiltily; he kept checking over his shoulder as he approached. So far as his teammates were concerned, he explained, I was a rival instead of a brother and was to be treated with extreme prejudice. “They don’t think we should be talking,” he said, sadly, before he departed. And thenpointing to the gym’s far end, as if to provide guidance: “Seeding charts are up.”
Here, one of the managers was taping the posters of each weight class’s brackets to the wall, a mass of wrestlers forming a crescent before her. Kepplemen appeared, along with the other coaches, at the far entrance. He looked anxious as he joined us, as we surveyed our first-round opponents.
I’d drawn the top seed, Vince Voelker, a senior from Dalton. I’d seen him wrestle in the weight class above mine in our dual meet a few weeks ago. He was fearsome enough at 129—he’d destroyed my teammate Frank Swain, pinning him in the first period—but had sucked down to 121 for today’s tournament. He would go on to win league and state later that year. Still, looking back, what I first recall was sensing Kepplemen behind me. He already knew my opponent but seemed to be suffering its grim reality with me.
“Can I beat him?” I asked.
Something about the question made Kepplemen smile, made his eyes twinkle. “We’ll see,” he said.