Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The last traces of sunset have already drained from the sky, casting low buildings into indigo silhouettes.
The fading warmth of daytime soaks my limbs even as a cool breeze ruffles my braid.
Maybe it’s the summer air, humming with possibility, or the high I’m still riding from my string of Skee-Ball victories, but I’m relaxed in a way that I shouldn’t be, especially considering the fact that I missed my evening foam-rolling session.
“Can I ask you something?” Adrian says as we pick our way past a pair of street musicians throwing a melancholy song into the twilight sky.
He presses a bill into the velvet lining of an open guitar case. It’s the tiniest gesture, but it reminds me of my mom and her sincere appreciation for anything artistic. I think she would like Adrian, if they ever met.
“Sure,” I say.
“I don’t want this to sound wrong, though.”
“Go ahead,” I say. “I’ve already pried about you and the job.”
“Okay.” He hesitates for a moment longer, then says: “In Italy…when I asked if you were considering quitting, you said no.”
I snort. “I believe what I said was someone would have to tear my cold, dead hands from my oars.”
It’s one of the only things about that night that doesn’t coat me with embarrassment.
Adrian smiles. “That’s right. Well, what I’m wondering is…why not?”
I pause, considering.
“I have a lot of goals for rowing. Making the finals at Worlds. Racing in the Olympics. In my biggest dreams, standing on the podium there, too. And, yeah, all of those goals involve winning, but to be honest, that’s not why I row.
Or why I keep rowing. Like, despite all the pain and heartache, I row because I love the predictability of my daily routine, the calm I feel when I get on the water.
Rowing makes everything else go quiet.” I glance at him.
“Winning is good, too. My collection of medals is probably the first thing I’d save in a fire.
But even if I somehow knew that I would never stand on another podium, I would still want to row. ”
A bus exhales a group of chattering college students as Adrian considers.
“I still remember the way you said it in Italy. That winning is about more than the thrill of victory. I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe you at the time.”
“Because rowing isn’t just my life,” I say. “It’s me. Quitting it would be like quitting a part of myself.”
Adrian’s eyebrows flash upward. “Damn.”
“Too much?”
“Not at all. As usual, you’re just the right amount of extremely fucking impressive.”
My cheeks heat to the point that I’m relieved for the cool evening air. “Well, anyway. That’s why I’m here. Living with my mom. Taking three hundred steps backward so maybe one day, I can go forward again.”
“I’m sure it’s nice for her,” he says, and I’m relieved he’s letting me change the subject. “To have you home, I mean.”
“That’s true,” I say. “And it’s nice for me, too. To be home with her. Between training and racing, it’s been years since we’ve spent more than a few days in a row together.”
I can feel Adrian’s next question radiating in the thud of his footsteps, the faraway rumble of traffic up Shattuck Avenue.
The next question is obvious: What about your dad?
Most people don’t have any reservations about asking that question—it’s as natural as asking if you’re married, if you have kids.
But for someone who is recently divorced or who lost a child, those simple questions are anything but harmless.
It’s the same with a parent, no matter how many years have passed since you spoke to them.
Adrian doesn’t ask. But his silence, and the dispassionate way he’s asked his questions, make me want to keep talking.
“My dad left when I was young,” I explain.
“Mom was a professional dancer. She was on the verge of making it big—she had been a guest with San Francisco Ballet and was offered a permanent spot. It was all too much for him, though. The long hours, the travel. She quit dancing to save their marriage. But by then, it was too late.”
Of all my mom’s breakups—the dozens of small chips that have torn away at the foundation of her life—that is the heartbreak I’ll never forget.
Mom and Dad were supposed to go to a New Year’s Eve party, but they’d been arguing all day.
Dad kept slamming cabinets and shouting about priorities.
Mom was sobbing, then yelling back about how much she’d already given up.
When the babysitter rang the doorbell, Mom was still in her robe, cheeks blotchy and stained with mascara-black tears.
I heard Dad say they weren’t feeling well, then the babysitter’s car rolled away.
I spent the night shivering under my bedsheets, listening to them argue over the occasional percussive thud of a distant firework.
The next morning, I awoke to the echo of the front door slamming.
Downstairs, Mom stood in the living room, fingers shaking, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
When she saw me, she lost her balance and crumpled onto the carpet.
I knelt next to her, patting her back, and puffing up my slight shoulders, hoping I’d be strong enough to hold her weight.
“I’ve lost them both,” she sobbed into my hair. She repeated those words, over and over, until they branded onto my skin. “They’re both gone.”
Without looking at Adrian, I shrug my bag higher on my shoulder, trying to get it to stop feeling like it’s dragging me backward.
“My dad and I haven’t talked in years, not since he got remarried.
I mean, he sends me birthday cards or whatever.
And a few years back our address somehow ended up on his Christmas card list and we got a glossy postcard with photos of him and his wife and three sons in matching sweaters.
Luckily, I was home for a break and could toss it in the trash before Mom saw it. ”
It’s not painless for me to see pictures like that, but I can handle it. If Mom had been the one to open the card, she would have been on the couch for weeks.
“It’s been, what, almost twenty years since he left,” I finish. “But she’s never really been the same.”
I don’t know what possessed me to just unleash that all at once, and I glance up to see if Adrian is bored yet. But his eyes are soft with interest, like he actually cares.
“She’s been heartbroken all this time?” he asks.
I tilt my head and watch my moving feet as I consider.
“Yes and no. She was devastated, obviously, but him leaving wasn’t only about him.
It was that she’d given up her life, too.
Her passion. And she never really found her footing again—after she quit dancing and Dad left, she powered through jobs like she powered through relationships.
If you can think of the profession, she’s probably done it. ”
“Nothing wrong with figuring out what you enjoy,” Adrian says. “Was she the one who got you into rowing?”
“In a way,” I say, thinking of Discover Rowing Day.
It was one of about a hundred activities she signed me up for over the years, at least when she had steady employment and we could afford it.
“She was always trying to get me into some low-cost class at the YMCA or the library. Dance. Pottery. Reading. Some Junior Ranger thing. Find my passion, she said. Rowing was the one that clicked. What about you?”
“What about me?”
I nudge my elbow against his to signal our next turn, and we drop onto a narrow alley with decorative brick paving.
“Well, you used to row, that much was clear from the erg.” And the fact that most coaches are former athletes, so it was a solid assumption, anyway. “Did your parents get you into it?”
He nods. “My dad.”
“A rower?”
Adrian releases an unsteady laugh. “My dad was a rower well after he stopped rowing.”
I smile because I can relate. “Boat?”
“Eight. Varsity crew at Stanford. He got a scholarship and it changed his life. Not just because of the degree. The life lessons. The teamwork and focus and, most of all, the mental toughness born from the ‘inferno of pain,’ as he called it. I can’t count how many times he reminded me that rowing is the most physically challenging sport to exist, and that’s what makes it the best.”
I laugh hollowly because this is where Adrian’s dad and I unequivocally differ.
I know his type well. They form big groups of sweaty men who run through pull-ups on a makeshift bar hanging from boathouse rafters, one-upping one another until they drop to the dusty floor because their shoulder muscles stop contracting.
The guys in the national team eight once disassembled their fifty-seven-pound ergs into two pieces, latched those to their backs, and hiked up a literal mountain so they could do a workout on the summit.
The idea was “teamwork,” but there’s more to it than that.
For a lot of rowers, the pain of our sport isn’t incidental. For them, it is the point.
This attitude is backward, of course. The pain is nothing more than the price we pay for the privilege of sitting in a rowing shell.
Now, I’m curious if Adrian was ever like that, and I’m about to ask what varsity crew he was on, but he says, “How’s your mom doing now?”
I blink, surprised he’s turned back to what I assume is a boring topic for him. “Better, maybe. She opened a yoga studio this year.”
“Yeah? What’s it like?”
I wince. “I haven’t seen it yet, honestly. I know. I know. She keeps asking. I should have gone already. If it sounded like regular yoga I would have. But this sounds like it’s all…I don’t know. Chanting and singing and heavy breathing.”
Adrian hums like he knows something I don’t.
“What?” I ask.
“There’s empirical evidence about the benefits of that kind of yoga. Studies showing it can lower stress and reduce anxiety.”
“So, just mental stuff,” I say.