Swimming (16 page)

Cold War II
XXIII Olympiad
Los Angeles, 1984

The press people are constantly surprising me. I wait for them to ask me questions about the dramatic Eastern bloc boycott, my new fantastic breathing technique, the hours spent torched by the legendary Arch Naylor, the unusual dryland stretching sessions, how many seconds I dream of cutting off my personal best, but they pretend to consult their fake notes, then respectfully inquire if I have a boyfriend back home in Glendale, and how long does it take, exactly, to ride my bike across town, and wherever do I go during those highly destructive tornadoes.

This annoys me.
It’s Glenwood. Twenty minutes if I pedal fast. And we go to the basement with a flashlight and a radio like everyone else
.

They lean in close. California
must seem like an entirely new
planet
for you, Pip
.

This doubly annoys me.
No, California seems normal … just fine … and my name is not Pip
.

Peggy bullshits with them, hooting and joking, rolling her eyes, flipping her hair, emphasizing her best profile, but I can tell they unnerve her because she’s talking a mile a minute, tapping the legs of the table with one of her ugly red shoes. She’s having a difficult time hiding the fact that she’s thrilled not to be swimming against someone she refers to as the daughter of Thor. She screws her face into fake, says:
We’ll really miss them
. Babe had gotten the shaft for the Olympic boycott in Moscow in ‘80 when she was fourteen and already one of the fastest middle-distance swimmers in the world. She smiles calmly, murmuring assent, and speaks about the result of hard work, dedication, devotion, and a world-class coach. But she’s as pissed as she’ll let herself be, was dying to race the best in the world and beat them fair and square. She’s clicking her nails together under the table like a Kansas cricket before a storm.

When we’re alone, Peggy drops the bullshit.
Can you believe all this boycott bullshit?

The breaststroking chick from Arizona I will gladly trounce until the day she retires says:
They’re probably chicken
.

Babe says:
Don’t forget; we did it to them first
.

Peggy says:
Yeah, but they deserved it
.

I say:
Maybe we deserve it back, then. What if something’s happened to them? Like what if poor old Fredrinka …

Peggy says:
Whose side are you on all of a sudden?

I get annoyed.
I’m on our side. But without …

Arizona starts hopping.
It’s all bullshit. They’re afraid
.

I’d learned to scoff from Peggy.
Afraid?
I scoff.
Look what they did to us at the Worlds
.

Peggy stares at me.
Seriously. Whose side are you on?

Ours,
you idiot, but remember the Worlds
.

Babe sighs.
The Worlds are over
.

But without Buffalo Kurds competing, I have a chance at gold; many chances, even. I eat my protein-enriched oatmeal visualizing gold, swim vast, easy lengths visualizing myself swimming vast, easy lengths visualizing gold. My mind is synchronizing, the future has caught up with the present, the past has slipped away, everything is perfect, and I am saturated in a high-energy peace that does good things to my face.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz says:
Babe, I know how deeply disappointed you are, but you go out there and swim your best against the clock. Back home in East Berlin you-know-who is probably watching; let’s send her a message she won’t want to read
.

Peggy won’t let it go.
We would have kicked their butts for sure
.

Leonard thought of the world in terms of an interesting inter-connectedness; if someone left the door open too long in Siberia, he and Dr. Bob would eventually feel the draft in Glenwood. I think about the world in a more personal way. I’m interested in it in terms of myself and all things connected to myself. If I am not directly involved, I don’t really think about it until someone else makes me. I look at myself in the mirror in my dorm room in the Olympic village when no one is around, praying with my palms together like a realistic figurine, trying to remain focused, because being an Olympian is like striding around an important cakewalk naked while everyone else is in their Sunday best.

When the Superior E. Mankovitz catches my eye, he nods. I’m not sure what the nod means, but I nod back as though I am. Mankovitz is more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him, except he’s chewing a tight wad of gum so hard the muscles in his jaw contract the muscles in his face and he looks stern. He chews it economically but hard; you can see his neck cords move, but the sound that comes out of his mouth when he speaks is smooth and modulated as though he were discussing cake with a nun on a yellow and blue Sunday afternoon. He’s very quiet, unemotional, and calm.
Everything we’ve done until this moment has led us to this moment. Not one second of it has been wasted. Think of all the years you’ve spent in the pool in order to reach this point. There is only one thing to do now and all of you know what that is
. His words resonate in bright holographic splendor:
One. Thing. To. Do
.

Olympic drama is starting to excavate sleeping Catholic ceremonial practices planted in my mind long before I could think, and I now have to fight the urge to bow or genuflect when the Mankovitz speaks. He looks at me and nods and I have to restrain myself in order not to genuflect or cross myself in response. He schedules a private conference with each of us. I sit on my hands, compose my face, listen. He knows everything. He clasps his hands together, evokes the lonesomeness of a life understood by only the very few who understand the terms of a dedicated train. He leans on his elbows and reveals what I am living now, what swimmers all over the world are living now; baby swimmers, adolescent swimmers, swimmers who gave up a long time ago, master swimmers who almost made the team, how they are watching, waiting, searching for inspiration to continue. He takes a sip of coffee, sits back in his chair, and tells me who I am, what I am, what I am capable of.

Now
, he says, opening his palms.

Here
, he says, closing them.

I want to fling myself on the ground and slobber with relief. I want to unleash the wave of water that is pressing hard against my eyes, put my head down on his desk and sleep fourteen hours. But I am aware this might cause concern, so I stand up and thank him.

Thanks, Coach
.

No, Philomena. Thank you
.

I face each new day filled with universal excitement and happiness. The Buddha in me has awakened Jesus, God, all the angels and saints, renewing the possibility of a secular heaven. The pool at the Olympic Aquatic Center at USC is a sheet of glass floating in a gravity-free zone, and I accidentally become semi-famous for eleven days for having a nervous breakdown on the podium.

I stand next to a smallish West German Berliner, a Dutch chick, a Swedish chick, two Aussies, and a French chick who keeps pulling out her bottom lip while making a sucking sound through her teeth like a precious locked-up monkey. The West German Berliner whips a fist at the air and says:
I’m going to smash up everyone
, bobbing up and down like an emergency light. I hide some almonds in my cheek, use reverse psychology, speaking slowly so she’ll understand:
Yes, I believe you will
, and she gets so confused she shuts up. I know what I am, who I am, where I am, why I am and so does Ernest K. Mankovitz. That makes two.

I take my mark.

I wait for the beep.

I plunge.

I am ferocious animal, my brain engaged in physical behavior that ceaseless repetition has made deeper than urge. The pool is hard and so fast I feel like I’m gliding on ice. When I look at my races later on film, all I see is one arm floating out of the water and one arm following, very quiet, almost sedate, half a body length ahead of the flailing arms behind me as I move toward the now.

I discover the joy of the international relay. We stand in a huddle holding each other’s shoulders. Babe says:
Let’s get the world on this one
. Peggy nods.
The world is ours
. When I feel their eyes light on me, I try to think of something great to say that doesn’t include swear words, nun-generated Latin phrases, lyrics from songs I can’t put my finger on. I roll my hand into a fist, bend down low on one knee, close my eyes, and pump the air
go go go go go go go go go go
.

Peggy hops.
She’s yucking right; let’s go
.

Babe gets businesslike when she’s nervous.
Save it for the pool
.

We put our palms together, six sweaty, two dry.

The crowd creates a disturbing rhythmic African sound: thick, melodious, and so intense it causes my skin to contract. I don’t feel the starting block beneath my feet, don’t see the watery sheet of glass as it opens before me, don’t feel my own body cutting through air, the pressing buoyancy of lungs, the ropes of water twisting with convecting energy as I let them pull me through. The only tangible sensation is felt at the wall and that’s when I touch it.

The Mankovitz catches my eye and nods and I know exactly what the nod means; the nod means
now
. I take my first Olympic gold. The Mankovitz remains calm, squeezes my shoulder softly. I pull my hood up over my head, close my eyes, click the almonds, wait. I open my eyes when someone taps my knees and there, dancing across my line of vision, is Peggy, huge and hopping, her eyes frantic with exhaustion and a deep inner excitement. I nod, pull the hood back over my head, take another gold: 200 free.

I do not cry. Tears sit behind my eyes, lodge in my throat, swell up my neck, get stuck, cause other bodily things to happen. Sometimes when I want to cry my head tingles, my throat swells, my swallowing reflex goes into overdrive, my chest constricts, my gastric juices clutch, but no tears. During one of Mom’s nervous breakdowns, she sat at the edge of my bed, grabbing at my shoulders with her fangs, weeping
Cry, cry, cry
, water firing out from her eyes in all directions like bullets from a machine gun in the hands of a child.

I hop up on the central podium as I hop up on all central podiums, proudly. On my left, the bronze, that psycho Aussie with the moon-pie eyes. On my right, the silver, the white-haired Petra with the strange feet that flop loosely from her ankles like empty socks. I hop, raising one arm high above my head. I bow my head, wait for the lady in the blue suit with the red white and blue bow to anoint me in gold. The noise of the crowd explodes in my mind, the world rolling into a sea of face. The national anthem starts to wail, creating a dreaded musical pressure in my chest as the flag slowly rises in a celebrating-the-dead kind of way. Something churns and my mind says:
Wow! This is exactly like a giant funeral!

That nasty photographer from
Time
zooms in, capturing the red eyeballs, the heaving shoulders, the grinchy grimace, the rivers of snot. I split in two, now horrified and ashamed, now crazy and disgusting. I wipe my dripping nose with my Team USA jacket, try to tuck my head back into my shoulders, fail. I don’t think about the fact that I’m being attentively televised until I watch two guys in navy blue suits and red silk ties talking about me later on national TV as I lie like a zombie on my Olympic bed.

There I am hopping up. There I am grimacing.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an athlete react quite like this one, Sherm
. There the flag rises gently as I wrestle with myself, lose.

There was Hanna Markindovia at the world wrestling championships in Bucharest
, says Sherm in the low conversational tones that made him famous.

My snot is flowing; they’ve superimposed a translucent weaving flag across my red scrunched-up face.

I don’t remember that, Sherm…
. Cut to Petra, who’s staring at me, her face filled with a mixture of pleasure and pity.

After the brutal headlock when she relinquished her four-year winning streak to Anke Tarnowski …
Sherm’s leaving space for Mark to consult his inner database of useless knowledge.

That’s right! That’s right! Her teammates had to carry her off the mat…. Come to think of it … remember Lippy Sultz at the five-hundred-meter mark of the ’76 marathon?
I’m thumping and trembling now. They cut to the Mankovitz, who’s staring calmly at the flag, his hat over his heart.

They were worried she’d lost her sight … that was terrible … terrible, Sherm, grueling … but here in L.A. at the sunny, hugely successful twenty-third Olympiad we have the seventeen-year-old Flipma Ash, who seems to be suffering from some sort of emotional exhaustion on the podium
. I’m wiping rivers of snot away with the back of my sleeve.

I’d have to side with you on that one, Mark…. There’s definitely a lot of emotion today here at the Olympic Aquatic Center, which took five billion dollars and fourteen tons of cement to create. Newcomer Philipma Ash has broken one world record and just this morning won her third gold; that puts her up there with …

I’m told even Mankovitz wasn’t expecting this one
, Mark interrupts, as images of me wobbling like a Weeble flash across the screen. It’s almost over.

Ohhh, I doubt that, Sherm; Mankovitz knows exactly what he’s … Ooops, it’s
Philomena,
Sherm, Philomena Ash, who hails from the sweet state of Kansas … Hey! It says here that her teammates call her Pip
.

Well, Mark, that’s quite a funny name for such a tall girl
, says Sherm, looking straight into the camera with his famous eyebrow raise.

She’s six-two, weighing in at a healthy 145 and I’m with you on that one, Sherm; she certainly doesn’t seem like a Pip, but I have to say she’s a kid who’s got one heck of a career ahead of her
. They cut to me levitating out of water as I beat the world.