Chapter 43 2012
I woke early and looked out my childhood bedroom window toward the lake, sadder than I could remember.
I missed skating with a physical ache. For five years, it had been my focus, my dream, my world, my everything.
Training had taken up most of my life, and skating was who I was and how I defined myself.
If someone had asked me to introduce myself, I’d have said, “I’m Patch, and I’m a figure skater.
” If they’d asked what I planned to do when I grew up, I’d have said, “I’m going to skate in the Olympics, and then someday, I’m going to coach future Olympians. ”
Suddenly, all that had changed. I was Vivien Kendall, a girl with a large nevus on her face and no prospects whatsoever.
Returning home felt odd, like pulling on an old leather shoe that had been left out in the rain.
It chafed, irritated, and hurt with every step.
I was shocked when I saw Mother for the first time.
She no longer wore the gold wig or her signature pink lipstick.
Her face was gaunt, and her hair was shorn short and gray.
She looked a dozen years older than when I’d left, and she suffered debilitating headaches that forced her to spend most of her time in her bed with the curtains drawn.
It was almost as stunning seeing Profe. Though I’d seen him on Skype, I was not prepared for the old man who picked me up at the airport.
He looked so different that my eyes skimmed right past the old man standing at the curb.
I kept looking for Profe, my tall, dignified teacher, then I saw the stooped man with silver wispy hair waving and realized it was him.
Even the Lincoln had aged, its once-glistening black paint dull and molted in places. Nothing was as it was. Nothing was as it should be.
Forcing myself from my bed, I got dressed. I would go for a run and do my morning exercises. Though I didn’t know what for. It stunned me each time I thought of it, my whole life devoted to a single thing that seemed so important, and whoosh, just like that, it no longer mattered at all.
I brushed my curls in front of the mirror, studying my nevus as I bundled my hair into a ponytail.
I put my right hand in front of it to see the girl I would be without it.
No great beauty, but cute, perhaps even pretty.
I removed the hand, and like a magic trick, I reverted to marred, undesirable me.
Disgusted, I turned away, tied on my shoes, then left the house and started to run.
I listened to Rihanna’s album Talk That Talk and ran until the last song ended.
I was deep in the trees when I stopped, and as I turned to walk back, a gray rabbit scuttled out of the brush in front of me.
I hadn’t seen a rabbit since I’d left Minnesota, and the sight made my heart surprisingly full, like a helium balloon lifting in my chest. It was the first moment of happiness I’d felt since my return.
“Splendiferous!” Profe said when I reached his cottage. “You’re here. I thought we’d start the week with an adventure. Spelunking!”
I looked at him, doubtful. He groaned as he stood from his chair, and I couldn’t imagine him hiking into the mountains and climbing rocks to find a cave.
But he looked so happy, like he’d been waiting all the time I’d been away for this single wonderful thing, so I matched his smile and said, “Sounds great,” my inner child leaping despite my reservations.
Before we left for the Sawtooth Range, we checked on Mother and let her know we’d be gone the next two days and that there was food in the fridge.
She barely acknowledged us. “Okay,” she mumbled and turned away.
“Is she okay?” I asked as we walked from the house.
Profe took a moment before answering. “Life is what you make of it. If you focus on everything that’s gone wrong, it will feel as if everything is wrong.
But if you find the nuggets of light within the gloom, those small glimmers can change your perception entirely.
For your mother, too much has gone wrong, and somewhere along the way, she lost her ability to see the treasures in front of her.
” He grinned at me, letting me know I was the treasure he was talking about, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the Lincoln.
Because he was the one person who knew everything about me, I decided as we drove to ask him about love.
Since Heinrich and Esma had gotten together, the idea of being kissed would not leave my mind.
Mostly it was Dylan I thought of, though I hadn’t gotten a letter from him in months.
Sometimes, I also thought of celebrities—Taylor Lautner, Chris Hemsworth.
And sometimes, embarrassingly, I thought of my coaches or some of the boy skaters at the institute.
It was as if my system went haywire each time a boy popped into my brain, which I found disconcerting and, quite frankly, confusing.
Especially since I believed I loved Dylan, and my thoughts betrayed that every other minute.
I was fourteen, so of course I knew about sex, but my knowledge of it came from dirty jokes, movies, and television. I understood vaguely that a boy had a penis and that was what went into the girl. But the idea of a boy doing that to me was horrifying.
Mother had texted a few months earlier:
I read an article today about a girl your age who got pregnant. I want to remind you that sex out of wedlock is a mortal sin and those who partake in it will go to hell. The lord be with you.
Which only added to my confusion. It meant nearly all the coaches as well as most of the senior skaters at the institute were doomed.
It was an awkward, bewildering time, and while Profe knew the whole of me, I could not talk to him about those things, so instead I asked, “Have you ever been in love?”
He nodded, and his fingers tensed around the steering wheel before he said, “Her name was Elena, and we met when I was already certain I was going to live my life alone. For so long, I’d been so devoted to my work I didn’t believe there was room for anything else.”
Elena was such a pretty name. I imagined a woman with skin the same deep color of Profe’s and thick black hair.
“Of course, she was a fireball and had other plans,” he went on. “We met at the art show of a mutual friend, fell in love that night, and married a month later.” He smiled a sad smile. “She was the great and only love of my life.”
I did not ask what happened. I knew Profe left Mexico because he had no other choice, and I imagined that included leaving Elena behind.
The only thing he’d ever told me about why he left was “I drew cartoons about powerful people, and it turned out some didn’t have a sense of humor.
” In addition to being a professor at a university, Profe had been something called an editorial satirist, which meant he drew comics for a newspaper about politics, issues, and events.
I was surprised when a minute later he said, “Actually, I take that back. We had a child, a little girl, Rosarito, Rosie. She was also the love of my life.”
My throat grew tight as I realized he was speaking about his family in the past tense. I wanted to ask what happened but knew by the set of his jaw that talking about them was causing him immense pain, so I stayed quiet.
He turned the conversation back to me. “Do you have a bad case of it? Love?”
I did. Though I’m not sure love was the right word for my affliction. Every boy I passed made me wonder about what it might be like to kiss them, and at night, I dreamed of Dylan.
Basically I was a complete lovesick mess.
Spelunking went wonderfully. We discovered a cave filled with bats and another with countless fossils embedded in its walls. And most importantly, Profe made it through the adventure without hurting himself. Several times, as we climbed, he slipped, but each time managed to catch himself.
“Someday I will die,” he said at one point to my alarmed expression, “but not today on a morning as glorious as this.” He spread his arms wide, then pretended to wobble as if he might topple off the narrow ledge we stood on, nearly giving me a heart attack.
“Not funny,” I snapped. Though he was joking, I did not like thinking about him dying and leaving me to live in the world without him.
On the drive home we listened to the audio version of Water for Elephants. It was wonderful, and I texted Kai to tell him about it. We always shared what we were reading or listening to with each other.
His response came a few minutes later. He sent a cartoon of an elephant in a courtroom being interrogated by a lawyer: “If you were in the middle of the room the whole time, why can’t we find a single witness to corroborate your testimony?”
Profe loved that. And he loved Kai. The two had never met, but Profe understood that Kai had protected me my first year at Gaines, and he never forgot that.
“Invite him for a visit,” Profe said.
“Do what?” I said, the idea outrageous. While Kai and I texted constantly, we hadn’t seen each other since I was seven and he was ten. Now he was a seventeen-year-old, soon to graduate from high school and join the army, and I was a nerdy teenager living in the suburbs of Minnesota.
“You can’t spend all your time with me,” Profe said. “You need friends. And Kai is your friend.”