Chapter 48 2013
“Have fun,” Meryl said.
She was in the kiss-and-cry box, and I was on the ice. I was the thirty-third skater to perform in a pool of forty-eight. The top twenty-four would advance to the long program the following day.
I felt great. My warm-up had gone well, and I could skate my short program in my sleep. My base value was off the charts, which meant, if I skated clean, I’d be in contention for a medal.
“Hair okay?” I asked.
My curls had a tendency to escape my tightly twisted bun no matter how much hair spray I used.
Woven into the coils, hidden out of sight, was Boodo’s orange-and-silver amulet.
I never skated without it, the superstition of my six-year-old self still very much with me.
Normally, I hid it beneath my skate skirt, but a bodysuit didn’t allow for that.
“You look perfect,” Meryl said.
We’d settled on a silver LYCRA bodysuit with a mesh back and scoop-neck front, a second skin that left little to the imagination.
It put my compact muscular body on full display, and I loved it.
It didn’t feel like I was trying to be something I wasn’t.
Boldly I was declaring, “Here I am. This is me.”
“Don’t overthink it,” Meryl said. “As a matter of fact, don’t think at all. Just skate.”
Her nerves were jumping. I could feel it. It was her moment as much as my own, a culmination of everything we’d been working toward for more than six years.
“Welcome to the ice, from the United States of America, Vivien Kendall.”
I beamed a reassuring smile at her that said “I’ve got this,” and glided away. As I passed the judges table, I smiled politely, just as Coach Blood had taught me all those years ago. There were nine judges, five women and four men.
I settled into my starting position in the middle of the ice.
The music started. I was skating to “Love at First Sight” by Australian singer Kylie Minogue.
Profe had suggested it. He’d first heard it when it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording.
It’s super upbeat and fun, and he immediately emailed to say he thought it might be a good song for my short program.
He knew me well. As much as I loved watching other skaters perform to classical music, I would have looked silly performing to “Swan Lake” or “The Phantom of the Opera.”
I skated two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of the two-minute-and-forty-second program perfectly.
On my first pass, a double-jump-triple-jump combo, my adrenaline got the better of me, and I over-rotated and needed to catch myself with my second skate.
Other than that, I’d never skated better, and I finished breathless and beaming.
The audience clapped loudly, and I heard Esma wolf whistle.
Meryl pulled me into a hug in the kiss-and-cry box and squeezed me tight. “Brilliant,” she said into my hair. “You were absolutely brilliant.”
Her arm still around me, we made our way to the bench to wait for the scores.
I would get a small deduction for the toe touch, but based on the technical difficulty of the program and the rest of my performance, I was confident I’d placed in the top five, which would put me in solid contention for a medal going into the long program.
“What?” Meryl said, followed by a growled, “Are you kidding me?”
I looked with her at the scoreboard.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Meryl said. It was one of the few times I’d heard Meryl swear.
My score was the lowest I’d ever received. I stared at it, stunned, the pixels blurring, certain it couldn’t be right.
“Let’s go,” Meryl seethed and pulled me up with her as she stood. Her arm wrapped protectively around me, she led me into the tunnel.
It was only when we were out of sight that my brain started to work again and that I heard the audience, boos and hisses and one very loud “You judges suck!” which sounded like Esma.
I placed eighteenth in the short program. Nicolette placed seventh.
If I’d been a big and good person, I would have been happy for her. But I wasn’t a big and good person. I was an angry, small person unable to puzzle out why she’d placed so much higher than me.
That night, Meryl spoke with the president of the ISU, the International Skating Union.
She insisted he watch a replay of my performance, and while he agreed that three of the judges, all eastern European, seemed to have been rather harsh with their deductions, he saw no clear evidence of collusion or malice.
They obviously hadn’t appreciated the unconventional style of my performance, and it was within their prerogative to score me as they did.
“So much for progress,” she seethed when she returned to the hotel. “Figure skating remains firmly rooted in the Dark Ages, as much a beauty pageant as a sport, which is utterly ridiculous.”
The loneliness stone, mostly absent from my life those days, returned, hard and cold at the base of my gut.
I didn’t know any other way to skate. I would never be a slender, graceful butterfly like most of the girls I competed against. My body was compact and strong with tight muscles that bulged.
I was a born leaper who exploded off the ice and spun at an astonishing rate.
That’s what made me special. I skated with the sort of athleticism more often associated with male skaters.
Coach Botan said the first time he saw me it was like watching a Jack Russell terrier imitating a greyhound.
“Technically everything was right—the jumps, the spins, the landings—but visually it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.
Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized I was witnessing something extraordinary, a Jack Russell terrier able to defy gravity and fly. ”
“So what do we do?” I asked Meryl, who was wearing a hole in the hotel room’s carpet, pacing back on forth in her frustration.
“We show them they’re wrong.”
The next day, Meryl told me not to do my warm-up on the ice, so I stayed in the shadows of the tunnel until my name was announced.
“Skating for the United States of America, Vivien Kendall.”
I took my starting position for the long program without acknowledging the judges.
I wore a dazzling bodysuit in a swirl of amber and gold, which fit the fast pace of my music—“Wonderwall” by Oasis.
With the first note, the world and my worries fell away, and I was no longer thinking about the judges or my short program or my scores.
Muscle memory took over, and adrenaline-laced joy raced through my veins.
The long program is a free skate, which means you can improvise and change your program during the performance so long as you perform all the required elements.
If you’re feeling wobbly or just came off a fall, you might downgrade a triple toe loop to a double.
Or if you’re feeling great, you can add an element or change a double to a triple.
I planned to finish the long program with a double axel, double toe loop combination—a combo I could land in my sleep.
But as I sped around the rink, the faces of the audience a blur, my spirit flame blazed, and with no thought at all, I stuck my toe in the ice and performed the biggest triple axel, triple toe loop combination of my life, landing with so much momentum I nearly skated into the wall.
I careened away at the last second, caught up with the music, and glided to my ending, my chest heaving and a smile spreading out my cheeks.
The crowd whooped and hollered and roared.
The next day was my sixteenth birthday, which meant, at fifteen, I was the youngest female skater to land a triple axel in competition.
The judges weren’t moved.
I placed twelfth in the long program and fifteenth overall.
I woke up on my birthday to a text from Mother.
Fifteenth place. Was it worth it? I’m leaving Minnesota and moving to London for the foreseeable future. God be with you.
Pulse pounding, I wrote back:
What about Profe?
Her response was instant:
I let him go.
I stared at the words, fury blurring my vision. Profe had worked for our family for forty-five years and had lived in the cottage beside the lake for most of them. He was seventy-eight years old.
Hate is an ugly feeling, and I hadn’t experienced it in its raw, unbridled state since Bart had killed Nick.
Slowly and deliberately I wrote:
I think based on the changes in your life it would be best for both of us if I were no longer in your care. That way you will no longer need to be concerned with me or my skating.
She didn’t text back but signed the emancipation papers I sent two weeks later without protest, freeing me from ever needing to contact her about anything again.
From that day on, I competed under the name Patch, no last name, just Patch.