Late Air Read online

  Murray’s hands felt clammier as he watched a female diver venture onto the board. She had broad shoulders, well-articulated collarbones.

  Once Anna got the feeling of number one, thought Murray, her speed would adapt to the mind-set. Dropping twenty seconds per mile was significant. It would call for drastic training modifications. He’d have to increase her mileage from fifty to sixty. Add an extra set of everything the team was doing, like Becky did. Murray’s eyes twitched. He touched his lips.

  The first male diver was up again. His back faced the water, skin glistening. A hard spring to tuck and then a flip forward. Though the splash was loud, rough, the team clapped.

  Murray glanced back down at Anna’s chart: sixty miles per week equaled a little over eight miles per day, but as he went to write the numbers in, he stopped, more sweat on his hands.

  The paramedic had noted some vomit obstructing Becky’s airway. Murray had caught sight of it, too, bloody mucus mixed with fibrous strips of orange.

  On his way to the men’s locker room, he nearly slammed into the athletic director. Rick Warner had been around longer than Murray. Formerly the lightweight men’s rowing coach, Rick had seen his rowers through five National Championship wins.

  “Murray.” Rick sounded breathless. “I couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you come to see me in person? The message you left—I can’t believe it about Becky.”

  Murray felt Rick’s eyes on his soiled sneakers, then on his lips, as if he could sense the taste in his mouth, its rancid tingling.

  “Have you heard anything more about the injury? The severity?” Rick kept in good shape, biceps bulging beneath a crisp navy sports polo.

  “No.”

  “She could die.” Rick had his arms crossed. “Aren’t you worried about that?”

  Murray turned away. Rick—even he would suggest negligence?

  “Look, it’s horrific.” Rick’s voice lowered. “A nightmare. I’ll understand if you need to cancel practice after you break it to the team.”

  “Thanks, Rick.” Murray barely heard himself speak.

  “Let’s keep each other posted, okay?” He patted Murray’s shoulder as he brushed past, eyes and mouth pinched in false condolence. Certainly, Rick wanted Becky to pull through, but did he wish the best for Murray as a coach? Murray thought, No. Rick had always looked down on him for coaching girls in the first place. He’d once asked why he hadn’t waited around for the men’s cross-country coach to retire, but when Murray explained his belief that girls responded better to a male figure, Rick had laughed.

  Then Murray thought that it shouldn’t have been news to Rick that there were still plenty of male coaches for women’s distance running teams around.

  The tradition had started with Ken Foreman and his Olympian Doris Brown in the sixties. Foreman had endured the worst discrimination too. Murray had read the coach’s autobiography in one siting, all about how Foreman used to have to hide in closets to stretch Doris’s hamstrings, how he’d been bullied off tracks, suffered countless sideline threats and intolerable rants because he’d been a male coach with young women under his charge. People liked to make assumptions, project their own insecurities onto what they hadn’t experienced firsthand . . . “Rick,” Murray muttered as he rinsed his face in the locker room . . . Rick didn’t understand Murray’s particular way with his team, how hard all of his girls worked for his approval, how much his quiet authority urged them to achieve.

  It had been the same for Murray and his father, who’d rarely affirmed Murray as a child. The first time Murray could remember was after he’d won the mile in seventh grade. His father had told his friends, the men he worked with at Blaschak Coal—Frank Stoltz and Lee Murphy—his father had told them Murray was going to break the high school record as a middle schooler, but the next year, when Murray didn’t, his father hadn’t said anything—he’d just looked away, down at his newspaper. He’d been sitting in a plastic patio chair in the yard, and Murray had said, Dad, I still won—but there had just been silence outside in their yard, the still trees and the near crinkle of his father’s newspaper, Murray’s hands in his pockets, digging at lint.

  The only time Murray’s father ever broke his silence was out of anger. When Murray was a boy, no older than eight or nine, he’d found a robin’s nest in the large elm he liked to climb. Murray had kept a jar of worms ready for when the eggs hatched, but one day, when he went by the nest, there’d only been the crushed blue shells. Murray had run inside crying. His father had called him foolish. Larger animals simply eat smaller animals, he’d said, but then Murray had cried harder, and his father had braced his shoulders and screamed at him. Stop it, he’d said. Stop it right now.

  Murray’s father died before Murray could achieve anything substantial. When he was fifteen, a methane gas buildup caused an explosion in the mine his father worked in. The mine had collapsed and trapped his father and ten others. As the eldest, Murray had had no other choice but to fill his father’s place, taking care of Patrick, only eleven then, while his mother went to work. Murray had helped cook dinners and do the laundry, had packed lunches. He’d been in charge of running his way to a college scholarship.

  It was there, at the University of Scranton, that Murray found his freedom. He’d been raised a fairly religious boy, Catholic, but he had not kept up his churchgoing over the course of those four years. He’d devoted himself to training, even on Sundays. His body, this hardened casing he’d come to imagine flowing with blood, became his religion. That, and the necessity of pain, its ability to blur boundaries of time and space, only if he surrendered to it utterly.

  He believed in the singularity of agony: the searing of his legs and lungs that could carry him into an oblivion more all-knowing than any God he’d ever read about or felt, even in “the holiest of moments” when he’d married Nancy that September day in 1996, or when he’d received the Eucharist every Sunday, certain she’d change her mind those first three months after they divorced, officially, six years later.

  It was already 2:57 p.m., and all the girls were waiting for him in the gym lobby. Under normal circumstances, they took a shuttle to the field house, and then ran two miles from there to the golf course as warm-up. Murray’s knees ached as he descended the stairs from his office to the lobby, and his hands shook over the sheet he’d scribbled his notes on—words like tragedy, act of God, and head in the game to frame their perspective, keep things general enough, so as not to upset them.

  Ginny and Emily were pushing off on a wall, stretching their calves. Rodney (who went by her last name), Anna, and Patricia were all doing the butterfly stretch, laughing about something. Liu was readjusting her silky black ponytail, so long it nearly reached her bottom. And then there was Victoria, who always came with her Differential Equation notes tucked into her sports bra. She mouthed the formulas with closed eyes. Tanya, a newer walk-on, sat cross-legged, hugging her shoulders.

  “Listen up,” Murray said before them. “Becky’s injured.” A few of the girls looked at one another; others stared straight ahead, eyes large. “She had an accident on the golf course.” He paused, took a breath. “She was hit by a ball . . . is in the hospital for head trauma. I don’t know anything more.” Liu gasped.

  How many times would he have to say this out loud? It had been the same for him and Nancy, when people wanted clean answers about what had happened. And he guessed she’d always blamed him—for pretending he hadn’t heard certain questions, looking down at his pad and scribbling numbers instead of engaging. Once, she’d cursed at him and shoved his pad from the table before he could reach for it.

  Victoria had begun to cry. “The chance of this occurring is one in ten billion,” he said, fighting to keep his voice firm. “Less than that.” He tried to picture a clean gray road ahead, not one undulation deterring his pace.

  “Will she be alright?” Anna’s eyes searched him. “Can we go to the hospital?”

  “I know very little,” he said. “Her parents have
been with her since early this morning. As soon as I have news, I’ll tell you.”

  Tanya was looking out toward the door, as if she assumed practice was cancelled, or wanted it to just go on—so she wouldn’t have to think any longer?

  “I know it might not seem possible to run today—” He sensed the machine in his tone, automatic, unflinching. He tried to embrace it. “But I want to argue for the opposite.” He covered his mouth with a sleeve, the acid rising up again, and breathed. “But like with every race,” he said, “we must stay in the moment. Becky wouldn’t want us to give up. She would want us to train.”

  Victoria looked at him with disgust. Rodney stared at the linoleum floor. She hadn’t been running well since a performance peak during her sophomore year. Murray wondered whether this news would serve as some kind of tipping point for her to quit. She didn’t believe in his high-volume method, had come to his office at the end of last season to tell him so. He’d never seen her cry before, so when she looked up, her eyes and face red, he was startled. He took another breath, sent signals to his heart to calm. Let it settle.

  “We’ll do an easier four-mile tempo run around campus.” He told Anna to shoot for a 5:50 or 6:00 pace and reminded the team that he’d be at the two-mile mark and the finish for giving times. A few of the girls went to the bathroom. Rodney led the remaining bunch outside. Through the main doors, he saw her gesticulating furiously to Patricia—she appeared to be venting about something—while Patricia stood with her arms crossed, listening. Patricia, a junior recovering from a hamstring strain, wiped her face with a sleeve.

  Just then, Anna came out of the bathroom with Tanya and Victoria. “Anna!” he called and motioned her over, hoping she’d separate herself from the other girls. She did, and he felt a balm of gratitude for her. He pointed to what was written on his pad.

  “I was taking a look at your times, Anna, and think you could do something great by November, at Regionals. I think we could have you under 18:00 by the Iona Invitational in two weeks.”

  Anna’s eyes darted nervously, but he went on: “It will require some extra training. Some serious dedication on your part. But if we amp up the intensity now and factor in a taper, it’s doable.”

  “Oh,” she said. “If you think so.” She had begun chewing a lip. “But I guess I don’t understand. Are you assuming Becky won’t be back?”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying that while she’s out, we have to stay focused, think like competitors.”

  They had a few classes together, he guessed. Introduction to Psychology and another one he couldn’t remember. He pointed to his pad and told her to aim for 5:30 pace.

  Anna sighed, then forcibly nodded. She had a pale, freckled face and fox-colored hair, such similar features to Nancy’s. Her green eyes were locked with his now, this time in desperation.

  “I want you to go out there and remind the team of what I said. You’re a natural leader. The other girls respect you. We can’t afford to let unknowns get in the way of moving forward.”

  None of the girls ran well. Anna’s splits were almost twenty seconds slower than usual. It was a terrible makeshift course, full of traffic lights and interruptions, but even if he subtracted a minute from each runner’s total time, numbers were still slow. Anna apologized afterward, sweat dripping from her lips. But he told her today was done; what was important was tomorrow. Eyes on the horizon. Get back on the horse. More tropes he’d come to live by as a coach.

  In the car, at a stoplight, he checked his phone again. No missed calls or messages. He considered driving back to the hospital and waiting in the parking lot, but depending on the severity, the schedule for surgeries, there was no guarantee Becky’s parents would ever be leaving, the chance of running into them slim to none.

  Instead of turning right on Edgewood Avenue like usual, Murray turned left, in the direction of the golf course. He passed Central Avenue, which overlapped with the two-mile course the girls had run today—the exact point where he’d caught Rodney walking. Her Adidas shorts had been grazing her knees, her broad shoulders outstretching her tank top. He’d been parked on the corner taking splits, had yelled at her to get going, but she’d only scowled at him.

  Murray had never really admitted it to himself before, but he wondered if Rodney had feelings for Becky, if Becky was the reason why she’d stayed on the team so long, even after last year, when her times and grades had begun to plummet. Rodney liked to make jokes about Becky lapping her at practice, and a few times he’d caught them immersed in conversation. He didn’t understand what they had in common, except that they were both majoring in the humanities. Or were these thoughts about Becky and Rodney—were they just him being paranoid?

  Murray did not feel his foot pushing harder on the gas pedal or his clenched grip over the wheel, just his mind spewing images uncontrollably, of Rodney trying to cause a stir, pushing her way to see Becky before he did, telling the team a different story about what had happened, just because she was rebellious. Because she could.

  At the entrance, he slowed to a stop and searched for a water bottle in the car. He kept dozens of spares rolling around on the floor—as he searched, he noticed some dried orange peel, some seeds. He stuffed the peels into an empty plastic bag and rushed out of the car, looking for a trash can, suppressing an urge to vomit. He focused on the clubhouse, the clear structure of its stone facade. But the heat, this humidity outside, made it impossible to focus—Murray wanted nothing more than for September to arrive. Just three more days until then.

  “How are we, Coach?” Jamie, the manager, asked when Murray was inside. The man had small moonbeam eyes that sometimes looked crossed. How did the man hit a straight shot? But when Murray told Jamie about the accident, he looked genuinely stricken.

  “We wondered what had caused the turf damage this morning—it must have been the ambulance.” Immediately, he got on the phone to call Seth Arthur, the director of the club.

  There was a hardened yellow spot over Jamie’s desk, and Murray watched as Jamie scraped at it with his index finger while he waited for the phone to ring. He thought of the daisy border in the bedroom he had scraped and scraped, because he’d thought Nancy had wanted it removed—but before he could see the white he’d scraped down to, there was the question of Becky’s ear, whether it showed Battle’s sign, this discoloration that could appear a day after severe trauma, tiny purplish-red splotches potentially populating her skin.

  Murray swallowed, mouth still parched, before walking over to a large bag full of newly minted clubs. He brushed the tops of wedges and irons, gripped the head of a thick titanium driver. This place smelled like paint and fresh tennis balls. He noticed a shelf with speed sensors that measured swings between thirty and two hundred miles per hour.

  “No one can believe it,” Jamie said, hanging up the phone. “Seth is sending out a club-wide memo.”

  Then Murray asked to see a copy of this week’s schedule, to make sure the morning hadn’t been booked.

  “Nothing,” Jamie said, pointing to a large spiral-bound day calendar on his desk, pencil poised over the blank lines by 5:00 a.m. As far as Murray could see, there were no erasure marks. He quickly registered the names of a few people that had been slotted later in the morning: Simpson, McDonald, Chadha.

  “Will you let me know if you see anything suspicious, or anyone who wants to book early morning?”

  “God,” Jamie said. “Of course. Let us know as soon as you hear anything. I just hope she’s okay.”

  Murray nodded. Baseball players suffered comparable injuries. He’d once read an article about one hit in the back of the head by a foul ball, but the player had not seemed injured; he’d gone on playing the game. It was only later, on the subway, when he’d keeled over. Brain swelling.

  Outside, Murray used the golf cart key he’d held on to and drove to the precise place where Becky had fallen. He kept his eyes on the edge of the woodland, a thicket of pines. He stopped when he saw a group of golfers ap
proaching tee-off.

  After Murray parked nearby, he watched a bull-necked gentleman sip beer in his cart. Most likely an early retiree, or perhaps he’d grown up with a trust fund and never had to work.

  Another man descended from the driver’s seat, black visor shadowing his face, but when he gripped his club by the tee, shoulders hugged the shaft to reveal small, taut breasts.

  The woman hit a stunning shot. There were some gasps, then laughs, most likely because she was better than everyone else. The woman laughed too.

  Becky’s nail beds had begun to blue. Hypoxic, the paramedic had said, pinching the tips of her fingers to trigger a motor reflex.

  Still another player left to hit. An older gentleman of medium height took a few practice swings, then paused to cough his smoker’s cough, like Nancy when they’d climbed up the stairs of Montmartre that day in the heat. The man swung hard and cracked the ball on its side, too late for him to help the angle as he followed through over his shoulder. Everyone watched the ball spin left toward a hem of trees, like when he and Nancy had once played tennis on the campus’s outdoor courts, and she’d accidentally hit a ball over the green caged fence, out of bounds.

  “Shit!” he yelled, slamming his club into the ground. He raised and pounded its head several more times, enough to divot the soft green earth.

  No matter how many ways Murray imagined it, if a golfer had been preparing to tee off from the holes nearest to where Becky fell, Becky would have been visible enough. Or maybe it had still been too dark then. No, he was sure of it: the sun had risen enough. The golfers were the ones expected to follow the rules, take every precaution. Everyone knew this was Yale’s course, that his girls trained here.

  “Sir.” The woman had stopped her cart in front of Murray’s, one ungloved hand over the parking brake. She smiled. “It’s all yours.”