Chapter 37 #2
The 2012 Olympics began, for Emily, in late July with the first U.S.
women’s basketball game. Connor and Stella, who had been out of school for a month, sat next to Emily on the couch as they watched the U.S.
team play Croatia and win, 81–56, with Shipley shooting a three-pointer mid-game and, toward the end, darting around an opponent for a soaring layup.
It was late morning in New York, five hours behind London, and Emily and the children ate pancakes while they watched.
Later that day, Connor had a playdate with Annika, a friend he had made at a weeklong robotics day camp earlier that summer.
“She has four cats, ” he had told Emily after the first day at camp.
His excitement had a nervous edge to it.
He spilled forth other details: Annika loved stuffies; she had lots of Pokémon, even a rainbow rare; she lived in a building with long hallways for running up and down.
Emily had signed with a literary agent. For a while, it seemed that no one was interested, but in June she received an email from Leila Alami, a junior agent at a powerful firm.
“It’s not bad that she’s junior,” Rory told Emily.
“It means she’s hungry.” Leila invited Emily to lunch and praised the manuscript.
She loved the prickly, pensive voice. Its unusual narration, too—restless, unwilling to settle fully into one way of telling a story, as though the book disliked routine.
“But Zeus is too villainous,” Leila said, “which makes it hard to understand why Athena waits. I get that she must figure out how to overthrow him. But the wait should also be emotionally driven. He should be slightly less bad. Charming in some way. It would help if we see that, in his own messed-up way, he truly loves his daughter, and she knows this and needs it.” Leila had some concerns about the ending, which she said was rushed.
A reader becomes a friend of a book, Leila believed; it’s important for the end to be a proper goodbye.
“Summer is dead for publishing,” said Leila, “but I’d like to go out with this in mid-August, right before the fall submission rush.
Enough editors will be back in the office by then and I want them to read your manuscript before they get swamped by a million of them. Can you revise the draft before then?”
After the meeting, Emily reached for her phone to text Gen. She caught herself and slipped the phone back into her bag.
The Olympic basketball games edged into August, when track and field began.
Gen hadn’t yet competed, but there was a television interview with her.
She praised the other athletes and said that it was an honor to be there.
No matter what happened, she was glad to be able to compete.
Emily hadn’t seen her face up close in so long.
She stared at the familiar lines of her.
The quick smile. Gen looked carefree, a picture of health and strength.
The sportscaster said, “It must be hard for you that your grandmother couldn’t make it.”
“That’s okay. She’s watching from home.”
“Any special words for her—or someone else?”
Gen’s smile faltered. Then she shrugged playfully. “No, I just want to make my gran proud.”
The segment changed to a panel of retired athletes and coaches, who talked about the importance of Gen’s first race the next day and how it would set the tone for her entire Olympics.
They discussed her impressive showing at the USATF trials, though one coach noted that she had favored her left leg—the one that had been injured previously—when she slowed following a race.
“We don’t know how that old injury will affect her performance,” said a gray-haired woman who had competed as a middle-distance runner in the ’80s.
“We always talk about athletes making history. What we mean is setting records. We forget, though, that athletes also make their own personal history. They measure themselves against who they were and what they accomplished in the past. Gen Hall knows she has a lot to live up to. Tomorrow could be the most important race of her life.”
Yet the following day, with millions watching, Gen did not appear at the track.
Sportscasters speculated, but no one knew. Was she injured? Someone on the team took Gen’s place at the starting line.
After the race, the team’s coach was questioned by the media. “She had an emergency,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”
Emily called her. The call went straight to voice mail. Increasingly concerned, Emily tried again, but Gen either wouldn’t or couldn’t pick up. Emily sent texts. They went green, unread.
Finally, Emily scrolled through her phone to find Shipley’s number. Shipley picked up on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?” said Emily. “What happened? I can’t reach her.”
“You wouldn’t be able to,” Shipley said. “She’s on a plane. She’s flying home to Ohio. She just found out that her grandmother is sick. Nella is dying. Gen wants to make it there in time.”