The Peerless Four Read online

  The next morning I bathed and dressed and came back to life, and a reporter interviewed me. He asked me about my husband’s vote, and I told him no comment. He told me that our girls beat the American girls in overall scores, which I already knew. Then he asked me more questions about the girls, and I told him that I was happy about our wins, that it felt good to make history. It was a lie. That wasn’t what I felt. It was what I wanted to feel. It was what I expected to feel and what people expected of me. It was what I told myself to feel. The answer to his questions should have been a deep and profound silence. But clichés work best for the indefinable and for athletics, and so that was what I offered, and his pencil moved on his pad, because that was what we needed. I gave him the type of answers that his questions wanted, and we both were relieved.

  I spent the next hours roaming the streets, drinking strong black coffee in cafés and wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

  Chapter Nine

  Bell Lap

  I went home to Wallace. We treated each other with an awkward deference, our apprehension evident in our long sidelong looks and our silences, and when we did speak, we were polite. I began to sleep late, on the periphery of a bad Slip Away, but I made myself get up, waking to find Wallace up and dressed and staring at me with concern. During the day, he telephoned several times from his office to check on me, our conversations stilted. By the time he got home, I was usually in bed. We made love and it was sad, tender, and familiar.

  Often I visited the girls at the Athletic Club and watched them practice when I knew Jack wouldn’t be there. But there was a feeling that their glory had ended in Amsterdam, the reality sinking. Something important had happened, something untenable. The feeling, what it meant, had an elusive quality that we couldn’t quite grasp. The girls were discovering that life after the Olympics was a letdown. You were expendable. A heroine one day and a nobody the next. There were no college scholarships for women. There were no women coaches. There were no professional jobs. People were not ready for these things, and they still aren’t. The girls had competed for the love of sport. But now it was just expensive and hard to justify. If you didn’t follow what the press wanted from you like Ginger, they resented you and you hated them and it could only end badly. The papers speculating about a career in Hollywood for the Dream Girl (“I’d rather die a slow death by drinking poison,” she responded), and her boyfriends, and what kind of men she desired, and what she ate, how she did her hair, what clothes she preferred, and she sank further into herself each day. The articles were beginning to carry a malicious tone, the latest claiming that money lay at the heart of her relationships with men, describing a pair of black satin pumps with rhinestone buckles, white gloves, three silk scarves, a loose coat of dark gray chinchilla, and a gray velour hat that her latest boyfriend had bought her. Ginger might have gotten a quick thrill from nice things, but I knew that it didn’t matter that much to her. She might have been better off had she been more materialistic. But it was a mystery to me what inspired her, and it certainly wasn’t things, money, men, or fame.

  The other girls didn’t attract attention like Ginger. “No one really cares,” Flo said, “and there’s a bunch of girls ready to replace me.” Bonnie was engaged to a quiet businessman, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was her tactic for keeping away from Coach Frank and his family. Danny and Flo were living at the house by the Athletic Club, and Danny was taking secretarial courses. Farmer had this loyalty to give, this eager wisdom and heart, and although her body was breaking, I didn’t worry. Hamstring and hip flexor pulls, sciatica, tendinitis, stress fractures, arthritis. At twenty-three she was swallowing half the number of aspirins a day as years she’d been alive, and she was still the one I didn’t worry about.

  One afternoon, Wallace and I went to a track meet where Ginger was competing. I saw Jack standing there. I wondered if he saw me, but he gave no indication.

  Ginger ran toward the high jump, stopped abruptly at the jumping point. She waved her hands in front of her face as if swatting gnats. Then she walked away and the crowd booed and she picked up her pace to a trot. I knew then that the Peerless Four were done with competition, and they were done. Some of them quicker than others, but they were done.

  Driving home, Wallace said, “Why do women want to be men?”

  “Careful.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “No,” he said, “you be careful.”

  At the house, I brooded over what he’d said, wondering: does he want me to leave him? He was pretending not to know me or respect me, denying my core.

  By the next day, the incident didn’t seem as potent. I loved him and love was enough. But I couldn’t help but worry that what was important to me was what he wouldn’t acknowledge. What most defined me was what he didn’t want to believe. At times I would watch him when he wasn’t looking, and a fear would come over me that our marriage was an excuse for my giving up.

  Sometimes Wallace was responsive. Affectionate and tender, gaining energy as mine was exhausted, like a teeter-totter. In the middle of dinner, he might lean forward across the table and kiss me. His hand would reach to hold mine.

  Yet at other times I would catch him looking at me as if trying to gain dominion by the force of his concentration. Instead of looking away, he would continue to stare. I was amazed at the breadth of license he took in these examinations, as if controlling me through strength of will. I would feel a sickening depletion mixed with shame, wondering if it were true. Did he control me?

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I wondered, what if I hadn’t married Wallace? What if I’d never met him? Would it have all happened with another man? Would I belong to that other man? When I watched him one morning parting and combing his hair, I felt that I could not love him when he tried to control me.

  Alone in the house, I read books in Wallace’s study and practiced holding his guns before the mirror. I had no desire to return to my job. Jack said that I could come back anytime, but all that seemed unattainable now. I was broody, confused. While I was reading, my vision blurred. I napped often, twitched and jerked in my sleep. I dreamt my hair and teeth were falling out, my limbs dissolving. At times I wondered if I was crazy.

  When Wallace came home, I buried my face in him, and a sense of calmness and comfort came over me. When we made love, there was a reprieve. After, I lay with him with a sense of indulgence. I caressed him in admiration. His substantial body showed signs of age and decline and so did mine. Right above his rump there was a triangle of soft tufty hair that I adored. We were accustomed to each other, our sexual regimen comfortable. I wondered if he was bored by our familiarity, but he continued to reach for me.

  The weeks passed, and then Wallace started leaving for work early and coming home late. I woke after he left and ate my breakfast looking out the kitchen window, watching for hummingbirds at a feeder that hung in our tree.

  One day at the Athletic Club I walked over to find Jack sitting at the stands of the basketball court. He hadn’t shaved and he needed a haircut.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked and I didn’t answer. He said that his Dream Girl franchise was no longer in play, now that Ginger had eloped with a businessman.

  “Is it true?”

  He shrugged. “Probably.”

  We stared at each other, thinking about Ginger. I had an image of her as an old woman with her ukulele and rag doll, tossing her gold medals in the trash, hiding from people, bitter and alone. But maybe it wouldn’t be that awful.

  “They just wanted to win,” he said. “They didn’t know what it meant.”

  “We didn’t know, either.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “We didn’t.”

  The next morning, I ate toast with butter and two poached eggs and then headed to the Athletic Club again. It was a warm day, warmer than usual. The sky looked like the blue had been ble
ached a little, and there were no clouds except at the mountains. There weren’t many people at the club because of the good weather, and no Jack.

  At the indoor pool, I watched some girls tossing a ball, splashing and yelling, and they sensed me, one of them holding the ball for a second, sending me a stare. She wore a swimming cap that made her look bald, all eyes and mouth and stare, but it was over soon and she turned from me and threw the ball, and they were at it again. Water splashed on my dress, splotching the material a dark blue near my hip.

  I sat midway at the bleachers of the empty basketball court. I had my notebook and a novel, and I read and wrote and switched back again, pausing to smoke a cigarette. When I heard voices, I looked up to see a boy and a girl approaching the court, dribbling a basketball between them.

  The boy set the ball down and they stretched: touching their toes, swinging their hips, reaching their arms up and leaning from side to side. He was tall with a long chest and big arms and no extra weight to show. His dark hair was cut close, and there was a bit of chest hair springing from the V of his shirt. He wore vivid blue shorts, the color like the blue inside a flame. She was also tall, about to his shoulders, with bobbed brown hair and straight-cut bangs, and when she moved, her hair flicked about. She wore white shoes and bloomers and her legs were brown and muscular. They were young, probably in their late teens or early twenties.

  They began playing and I pretended to read but I watched. I could tell by their skills that they meant business. But then the boy seemed to be letting her win. After some time, he got serious because she was moving him around the court and making him sweat. I couldn’t tell if they were keeping score, but they seemed to have their own system. He got the ball from her and she sprung after him, slapping at the ball to steal it back. Their shoes squeaked. Elbows and knees butted against each other. She was pretty and quick and she reminded me of Ginger.

  As I watched I yearned to be on the court with them. I’m the kind of spectator who longs to participate. But then I remembered that my body and reflexes weren’t young and, for an overpowering second, that my life was that much closer to death. A little dot in a trajectory beginning at birth, nearer now to the end. It seemed to me then that the finish line at the end of a life was similar to the finish line at the end of a race, both giving off a magnetic, inevitable force.

  The girl got the ball from the boy and he was surprised. She dribbled, took a shot. The ball spun at the rim, then dropped through the hoop. “Yes,” she said, “my game,” and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his back turned to me.

  There was a twinge in my stomach and I wanted to warn her, “There’s going to be another game, and another, and another. It never ends, and you’ll end up losing. You’ll lose until you can’t win anymore.” I wanted to tell her that we cling to the clichés and fantasies of our meager selves. We play sports and buck against our insignificance. We talk, rant, swear, and debate with each other and to ourselves, because no matter what, life ends with the ultimate loss.

  But it was useless for me to impart my opinions because she would have to find out for herself the terrible beauty of losing. Stupefying, inevitable, necessary. Connected to the great empty spaces of death. Why should this be disappointing? Isn’t the emptiness at its essence similar to the blank whistle of nothing that courses through an athlete’s mind when she makes her best shot, jump, or throw?

  The girl might listen politely and nod her head, but she was young and wouldn’t believe me. She looked so youthful and open that for a second I didn’t believe me either. I didn’t want to believe me. But I had Ginger, Flo, Farmer, and Bonnie to remind me, the Peerless Four to thank for my knowledge.

  I left before their second game ended so that I didn’t see who won, but I heard the boy say, “Good shot,” and she said, “You’re not trying,” and he laughed. I wanted to kick him for feeding her the ball, because it was better to lose going all out than to win from fakery. I heard him laugh again, and I knew that he wouldn’t play his best. He wouldn’t let her plunge into loss.

  That way, no matter how good or bad she was, she wouldn’t be his equal. It didn’t matter if she won. If she wasn’t allowed to lose by the same rules, if she didn’t question the equation that men are always stronger, faster, smarter, and if she merely accepted her place as revolving around this assumption, then her life wouldn’t be hers because it would belong to him.

  That night, I sat in bed and stared at Wallace sleeping, trying not to stare too hard and wake him. Maneuvering my body beside him, I stroked his hair, arms, and back. I felt protective and sad. Then I must have fallen asleep because he was shaking me awake.

  I turned on the bedside lamp and he was looking at me in alarm.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I want you to leave,” he said. There was fear in his eyes. “Just go.” He said that I acted like a trapped animal. Then he lowered his head and was looking at his hands. He said in a low voice, “It’s better when you’re not here.”

  I said that I agreed. I would stay at the house near the Athletic Club with Danny and Flo.

  We didn’t talk much after that. He looked up and said, “I love you,” and I told him that I loved him, too. We sat and held hands but we didn’t disturb our equilibrium by opening a conversation to problems with no solutions. There was no way to sleep, so I made pancakes and we ate in silence and watched for the sun through the kitchen window. Later he drove me to the house, my three suitcases rattling in the backseat. It had rained sometime during the night, and in the glimmering sunlight everything had a light, washed, fervent look, as if just realizing what it meant to be a tree, house, roof, sky.

  Chapter Ten

  Flight Phase

  March 19, 1935

  My dearest Mel,

  Can it really be over a year since we’ve corresponded and over four since we’ve been in each other’s company? I take pen in hand to write to you, as you have been heavy on my heart and mind.

  The weeks and months spin past me and then a year has gone, and another, and another. I must admit that I did not know that period of time at the Olympics was to be the peak of my athletic life. It passed without my reflection on its ending. I still thought my skills would improve.

  My greatest achievement has come and gone, and I didn’t realize it until it was long gone. I’ve been rubbed, patted, squeezed, and kneaded, and still my muscles and joints resist.

  All of a sudden, it seemed like my strength got zapped out of me. I had no more strength to compete. I finished last in a race, and I’d never finished last before. I got home that night, and my legs ached like somebody had taken a knife to them. I got in the tub and soaked and said to myself, It’s okay. It’s over. It’s okay. It’s over. I’d never had that feeling before. That night it suddenly dawned on me that I had gone as far as I was ever going to go. I knew that I couldn’t go all out anymore, and when you know that, you can’t go on competing.

  As you know, I had eight months in bed in surrender to my physical maladies. I am reconciled to this life of aches and pains. Don’t feel bad for me! I find in it consolation and hope. There is pleasure for me in strength and fortitude. To sweat in agony and suffer and shed tears, and then to persevere and know that I can persevere. The satisfaction is greater, the peace, after the struggle. My greatest moments of well-being have come after pain.

  With improvement and resolve, I have cobbled together a very good life at the Toronto Daily Star, and now I am their top reporter and editor for women’s sports. Thank you again for your advice and suggestions. I didn’t mention your name, but you underestimate your reputation.

  I have been able, as you suggested, to get what I want by squeezing and hiding my words inside the words the paper demands from me, and thus have agency within their usual patterns. A reader must read close to find my words, but mine are there and that makes it worthwhile. I never did enjoy being a spectator. I was the type of athlete who went crazy watching, because I needed to be out there compe
ting, but it’s different now that I write about it.

  You’ll be interested to know that Bonnie has taken up golf and curling and is quite good. I wrote a brief article about her. Two children. Hung up her track shoes for the domestic, she says. Doesn’t want to compete much anymore. Says she can’t psyche herself up again. She’s not bitter. “If I’d won that gold in my event,” she said, “I probably wouldn’t be as happy as I am today. I wouldn’t have had to search things out.” She makes a point to stay out of the spotlight, but she is doing well.

  I saw Flo at a party and met her husband. She didn’t invite me to her wedding and so it was a bit awkward. I’m sure you already know that she is married. He’s a Bell Telephone district manager and seems devoted to her. She dropped out of high school but she told me that she graduated from the Margaret Eaton School of Physical Education. She never did like school. We talked briefly about the Games. “I was strong enough to win my heat,” she said, “but I floundered in the finals.”

  I told her that despite her injury, she had run her fastest time ever. She had to be proud of that. “You ran faster,” I said, “then you’d ever run before. That’s not losing. Some of the girls just happened to run faster than you on that day.” She said, “I didn’t do what I wanted to do,” and her husband said, “You were just too young.” She lives with regret and disappointment, but I hope in time she might realize the significance of her achievements.