Chapter 14
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The Q&A panel at the rec center was on Friday at seven in the evening, in a small carpeted multipurpose room that smelled, faintly, of basketball.
Ada had dressed for it carefully — a charcoal sweater she had had for six years, the same flat ankle boots from the donor reception, jeans, a thin silver chain.
She had pulled her hair back to make the lines of her face clean for the camera Marin had brought.
She had taken two extra ibuprofen because she had taught a long class the previous Saturday and her right hip was, as the physical therapist would have put it, engaged.
The format was supposed to be soft. Marin had said, three times in advance, this is a community Q&A, not a press conference. The audience is people who skate at your rink. They are going to ask you about the rink. Some of them are going to ask you about yourself. Answer what you want to answer.
Marin had been correct about most of it.
Marin had been correct, for forty minutes.
The audience asked Wes about the youth program, and Wes, after his usual half-second of consideration, talked plainly about Saturday-morning skill sessions and Thursday-morning skate-and-shoot in a sentence so flat and clear that the audience laughed at the wrong beat, in the way an audience laughed when a man stopped trying to charm them and they decided, on their own, to like him.
The audience asked Ada about her learn-to-skate classes.
Ada said a true thing about Glenn the forty-six-year-old, with Glenn’s permission obtained beforehand, and Glenn — who was in the second row in his Sunday sweater — turned the color of a winter sunrise.
The audience asked Joanna, who was at the end of the row in her good coat, about the building.
Joanna said the building is sixty years old and we are doing everything we can to keep it that way for another sixty.
The audience clapped, the small and serious clap of a room of people who lived in a town and wanted that town to keep being a town.
The audience asked Marin, sitting in the audience because she had said, very clearly, I am here to listen, not to speak, exactly one question. Marin said, in her brisk voice: Tidemark is enormously pleased to be supporting Harbor Ice this season. That was all.
At minute forty-two, a woman in the third row raised her hand.
She was a woman Ada did not know by name.
She had on a knit cap and a sturdy brown coat and a kind, slightly nervous face, and a small girl on her lap who was asleep on her shoulder.
The woman raised her hand. The moderator — a councillor named Lucia from the city’s parks-and-rec board — pointed at her.
“Hi,” the woman said. She did not stand up because of the sleeping child.
“Hi. This is — I am sorry, this might not be the right kind of question. I — I have been a — I am a fan of Ada’s.
From, you know, before. From when you were skating.
I — I have a daughter who is starting to ask about skating lessons.
I — I have been wanting to ask you. I — I have been wanting to ask you.
How — how is your hip? I read a thing online a couple of years ago that said you might — you might not be able to skate anymore.
And I see you skate. And — I would like to know.
How is it. How are you. Sorry. I am sorry.
I have wanted to ask for a long time. I — sorry. ”
There was a small silence in the carpeted room.
Ada had — she had been ready for the question.
She had been ready for the question the day she had agreed to the campaign.
She had been ready for the question on the wharf in Portland and at the donor reception and at the Family Skate Night and at the launch breakfast. She had been ready for the question, in some form, for two years.
She was not, today, ready.
She was not ready because of the small girl on the shoulder.
She was not ready because the woman had said I have wanted to ask you for a long time.
She was not ready because the woman, in the asking, had given Ada a glimpse of an entire room of people who had been wanting to ask her this question for two years and had been, out of kindness, holding it.
Ada opened her mouth.
She heard her own breath go in.
She heard her own breath catch.
She did not, in front of the room, look at Wes.
She did not need to.
Wes did not, for a beat, do anything. He did not rescue her. He did not redirect. He did not pivot to a soft sentence about the rink. He looked, briefly, at her — the smallest possible turn of his head — and waited for her to give him the smallest possible permission.
She did not, immediately, give him permission.
She let the room have her face for a beat. She let her own breath catch in front of the audience. She let, in front of forty people, the small, hard truth that the question had landed.
Then she said, into the microphone: “Thank you for asking.”
Her voice was — her voice was hers.
It was not the press-conference voice she had used in Toronto. It was her speaking voice. It was the voice she used in the lobby at six-forty-five.
She said, “I — I am going to answer your question. I am going to answer it short, because — because the gala is in nine days and I think I will have more to say about it then. But the short answer to your question is — my hip is a thing I live with. It is a thing I will live with for the rest of my life. It does not stop me from skating. It changes how I skate. I do not skate competitively anymore, and I will not. I teach learn-to-skate. I teach private lessons. I am, this year, in the early stages of starting to write a curriculum for a — for a different way to teach skating at Harbor Ice, that takes into account that not all of us have bodies that move in straight lines, and that some of us want to skate anyway. I am — I am okay. I am — I am better than the article you read online said I was. The article online was published two weeks after my injury, and I was angry and I was tired and I was twenty-six, and the person who wrote the article wrote what I said, and I said it. I should not have said it. I was wrong about what my body could do. I have learned more about what my body can do in the last two years than I learned in fifteen years of competitive training. Thank you for asking. Thank you, especially — thank you for asking with your daughter on your shoulder. I would be glad to meet her in a class one day. Bring her by. She will be very welcome at the Barn.”
She stopped.
The room did not, immediately, clap.
The room sat very still.
The woman in the third row was, Ada noticed at minute one, crying very quietly into her daughter’s hat.
A man in the second row reached over and gave the woman a tissue.
The councillor moderating, Lucia, opened her mouth to say thank you and did not, in the end, say it. She looked, briefly, at Marin Pell at the back of the room. Marin gave her the smallest nod. Lucia closed her mouth.
After a beat, Wes leaned, very slightly, sideways toward his microphone.
He did not look at Ada.
He looked at the woman in the third row.
He said, very quietly, into the microphone, “If you bring your daughter by — Glenn here, in the second row, started learn-to-skate at forty-six. He is at thirteen weeks now. He falls like a soft potato. Glenn will tell your daughter. Glenn is — Glenn is the best advertisement Harbor Ice has.”
The room, gently, laughed.
Glenn turned, in the second row, to face the woman in the third row, and said in the voice of a man who could not believe his luck: “Honestly, ma’am. Bring her in. The teacher is excellent.”
The woman in the third row laughed through the crying, and the laugh broke the silence, and Lucia — relieved — said thank you all so much, and the panel moved on.
By minute fifty the panel was over.
By minute fifty-five Marin Pell was at Ada’s elbow with a paper cup of water and a sentence Ada did not have the bandwidth to parse, which was that, Ada, was the campaign.
By minute fifty-eight Joanna Mendez was on her phone with the city council and her shoulders had come down two full inches.
By eight-oh-five Wes was at the door of the rec center in his coat, holding Ada’s coat in his off hand.
She let him put the coat over her shoulders.
She did not, in the room, take his arm.
She walked out into the parking lot ahead of him, by half a step.
The night was cold and dry. The sky was full of small clear stars over the harbor.
The rec center parking lot was half full of the cars of forty people who were now, in twos and threes, walking out under the streetlamps in their coats, talking softly about a thing they had not expected to hear at a Friday-night Q&A.
She walked to her car.
She unlocked it.
She got in.
Wes opened the passenger door.
He did not get in.
He stood in the cold with his hand on the door frame and waited — one beat, two — for her to decide.
She nodded once.
He got in. He closed the door. He did not turn on the heater. He did not ask her where she wanted to go. He put his hands on his knees and breathed once, slowly, the way a goalie breathed between periods.
After a long beat, in the parked car, in the dark, Ada said, “I am going to cry, Wes.”
“Yes.”
“In a moment.”
“Yes.”
“I would like — I would like for you not to — I would like —”
“Yes.”
“Just — be in the car.”
“I am in the car.”
She cried.
She had not, in two years, cried in front of any person.
She had cried in her own car. She had cried in her own shower. She had cried, once, in the locker room of a rehab clinic in Toronto. She had not cried in front of any other person.
She cried now.
Wes did not, in the parked car, touch her.
He did not put his hand on her hand. He did not put his arm around her shoulder.
He did not say it is going to be all right.
He did not say you were brave. He did not say I am so proud of you.
He did not, in any way, make himself the center of the moment by performing care for the camera that was not there.
He sat in the passenger seat with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the windshield, and he kept her company while she cried.
It was, she would think later, the kindest thing anyone had done for her in twenty-four months.
After three or four minutes she stopped crying. She fished a tissue out of her glove compartment. She blew her nose. She wiped her eyes. She drank from the paper cup of water Marin Pell had put in her hand, which was now in the cup holder.
“Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“You were quiet.”
“Yes.”
“That was — that was good.”
“I am very glad.”
“You did the thing — the thing in the panel.”
“What thing.”
“You let me have the question.”
“Yes.”
“You did not redirect.”
“No. I looked at you. I waited for you to tell me to redirect. You did not. I — I have been working on it. Halloran on Tuesday told me. Notice, ask, then act. The asking was the looking at you. You answered without saying anything. I did not, then, act.”
“You acted at minute fifty-three. The Glenn line.”
“That was for Glenn.”
“That was for Glenn.”
“That was for the woman in the third row.”
“Yes. That was for the woman in the third row. And — Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“For you.”
“That was — that was perfect, Wes.”
“I know.”
She laughed, hoarsely.
“You know.”
“Halloran, I do not, often, know. I knew this one. I am sorry. I am — I am trying to learn. I knew this one. I am keeping it.”
“Keep it.”
They sat in the car for another minute.
She put the key in the ignition.
She did not, in the end, turn the key.
She put both hands on the wheel. She looked through the windshield at the rec center, where Lucia and the woman in the third row were standing on the lit sidewalk talking softly. The woman in the third row was holding her daughter against her shoulder. Lucia was patting the woman on the back.
Ada said, very quietly, “Wes.”
“Yes.”
“In the booth on Wednesday you asked me about the lobby door, and I said I didn’t know.”
“Yes.”
“I know now. Keep the lobby door. Keep the tea. Keep the heater. Keep the folder — hand me a copy, because I want to know what this building looks like to you. And Wes.”
“Yes.”
“Keep the thing in your head.”
He did not, in the passenger seat, move.
“You sat in a car and did not touch me and did not fix me and did not perform a single thing,” she said.
“That is the difference. In the booth I told you I did not know whether I felt kept or catalogued. Tonight I know which one it is. Kept. I am telling you while I know it. And the rest — I will be ready to say the rest sooner than I thought.”
He was, for one second, very still.
Then he said, “I am — Ada, I am — I am here.”
“I know.”
“I am here at six-thirty Saturday morning.”
“I know.”
“I am here Sunday morning. I am here Monday morning. I am here, and the lobby door is going to be unlocked, and the heater is going to be set, and the kettle is going to be on, and you are going to come in and do your warm-up to the cello in the lobby at sixty-five percent, and I am going to be in the equipment closet, and you are going to be on the lobby bench, and that is the rhythm. The rhythm is the rhythm. You can come find me in the rhythm whenever you are ready. I do not — I do not need a date. I do not need a moment. I am — I am here.”
She nodded.
She turned the key.
The engine started.
The heater, when she switched it on, blew cold for the first thirty seconds and then, slowly, came up to warm. She drove him home, four blocks, in silence. He got out at the curb in front of Frank Nakamura’s hardware store. He paused, briefly, with his hand on the door.
“Halloran.”
“Berglund.”
“Thursday’s the dress rehearsal.”
“I know.”
“Six o’clock, at the rink.”
“I know.”
“I’ll see you.”
“Berglund.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll see me.”
He closed the door.
He went up the back stairs to his apartment over the hardware store.
She watched him go all the way to the top of the stairs and through the door and the door close behind him, before she pulled the car away from the curb.
She drove home slow.
She slept eleven hours.
She woke up Saturday morning at five-forty, dressed, brushed her hair, drove to the rink.
She arrived at six-twenty-six.
The lobby door, at six-twenty-six, was unlocked.
This morning, the unlocked door felt like something else — like being met halfway down a long hallway by a man who had been walking toward her, in the dark, for a year and a half. She let herself feel it all the way to the lobby bench, and did not look away from it.
She drank her tea.
She watched the ferry come home.