Letters to Nowhere

by Julie Cross

  “Can I ask you something?” I whispered.

  His fingers fumbled around in the dark until he found my hand and squeezed it. “Anything.”

  “Where do you put them? Your family, I mean. Jackie said I had to be putting my parents somewhere—to rationalize it—or I wouldn’t be able to function. Like people who say their loved one is in heaven, or they’ve moved on.”

  “They’re in a better place…I hate when people say that,” Jordan mumbled, catching on to my question. “See, that’s the thing, I don’t think I’ve been able to figure out where to put them. And I am functioning, but I can’t sleep without nightmares either. I know I made it sound like I only used to get them, but you had so much to deal with already, I didn’t want to dump all my crap on you.”

  “You have nightmares, too?”

  He nodded. “I have them when I’m asleep and sometimes when I’m awake, visions that I can’t shake. And there have been so many times I’ve wanted to throw dozens of objects into a garage door and watch them shatter. And times when I’ve wanted to hop on a plane to London and look for some of them, even in pieces on the streets or somewhere.”

  I turned my head, staring at his cheek in the dark. A pain the size of Texas sat on my chest. “So it’s just like me—you’ve put yourself somewhere, you haven’t put them anywhere?”

  He shook his head. “When you first moved in here, I knew you were doing the same thing as me, seeing the same things I saw. And I wanted to get to know you because I thought maybe if we couldn’t get the job done ourselves…maybe you could put my people somewhere for me and I could sort yours out.” He released a breath he must have been holding for a while. “I haven’t done a very good job helping you, though, have I?”

  A tear ran down the side of his face. I brushed it away with my fingertips, and then kissed his cheek. “I’d give you a perfect ten for effort.”

  He rolled on his side, facing me. “This changes everything, doesn’t it? What you found out today?”

  The ache in my chest grew from Texas–sized to Canada–sized. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to know right now. Take some time to process.” Jordan gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “I should go to my own room before my dad sees me. Will you be okay?”

  “I don’t know” was the most honest answer I could give.

  He kissed my forehead and pulled himself up off the floor. “Wake me up if you need me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I returned to lying beside a snoring Blair for a little while. Then my stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast the previous day. After sliding off the bed and walking quietly into the hall, I headed downstairs. I didn’t make it to the kitchen, though. I got distracted after hearing the sound of glass moving across the garage floor. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

  Bentley was pushing a giant broom, piles of glass and metal moving along with it. He wore flannel pants, gym shoes, but no shirt. My eyes zoomed right in on the scar on his bicep from surgery years ago. An injury that surely included Anna sitting by his side and holding his hand, and now there was no one. How could I be angry with him for not wanting me to hurt more than I already was?

  His back was turned to me now, and I could see black ink on his lower back. A tattoo. It looked like several lines of writing, but I couldn’t make out the words. And I was beginning to feel extremely embarrassed about my tantrum earlier and debated sneaking back into the house.

  No such luck. He turned around right then and the broom froze.

  “I’m sorry about the garage.” My face heated up as I slid on my flip–flops by the door and walked all the way inside.

  “It’s okay,” Bentley said with a shrug.

  I glanced around, spinning in a circle, taking everything in and feeling none of the heavy emotions I’d felt in here earlier. “It’s kind of like turning on the lights in a haunted house and realizing it’s just a bunch of…stuff,” I said.

  Bentley found a bucket, and after setting his broom down, he flipped it over and nodded for me to sit down. I stared at it, thinking of that day in laundry room with Jordan when he had made me say it out loud…my parents are dead. Why couldn’t they just be dead? Why did I have to put them somewhere?

  I sat down and Bentley pulled over a stool to sit on. “It was never my intention to keep the real details from you forever, even if your grandmother would have preferred that. I just didn’t think you were ready to hear it yet.”

  I stared at my hands. “I don’t think anyone is ever ready to hear that.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “I don’t know how to stop hating them.” My voice shook more with every word and when the tears tumbled out, I didn’t try to hide them like I normally would with my coach. “I feel like I’m going to be angry forever. All these months I’ve just thought of their accident as a really bad thing that happened and something I had to work through, but I’ve never felt like a victim. Until now. I’m the victim of them being idiots. I’m the thing that’s left in the aftermath. Aren’t people wired to think about these things when they become parents? Shouldn’t they have said, ‘You know what? We might kill ourselves driving drunk and then Karen would be an orphan. Maybe we shouldn’t drive?’”

  “You’re right. They shouldn’t have been driving,” Bentley said. “And you have every right to be angry, and no one should tell you otherwise, and no one can tell you how long it should take for that anger to fade.”

  I looked down at a broken trophy near my feet. “It felt good to throw stuff, though.”

  Bentley laughed a short laugh. “I bet it did.”

  I thought about his albums and the affectionate way Bentley had talked about Anna and Eloise in the garage a few weeks ago. “Do you think it’s wrong for me to hate them? It seems like you’re supposed to put people on a pedestal after they’re gone and make them sound even better than they were, but I haven’t been able to do that, and I really can’t do it now.”

  “I don’t think anything you’re feeling can be labeled as wrong,” he said. “It is what it is.”

  “Why did you want to keep the autopsy report from the media? I know why my grandma would want that, and my dad’s law firm, but you?”

  He nodded like he’d been expecting me to ask that question. “When I heard about your parent’s accident, I was devastated for you, of course, but I knew my head was much clearer than your grandmother’s or anyone emotionally close to your parents. And I knew whatever story was told by the media would haunt you for the rest of your life. Think about every televised gymnastics competition you’ve ever seen, think about the ones Stevie’s been in. Do they ever forget to mention that her dad was an Olympic sprinter?”

  I shook my head and started chewing on my thumbnail, anticipating the fact that I was about to implement Jordan’s Plan A. It was time. I needed to know what he really thought of me. “Did you feel guilty about keeping it secret from me? Is that why you’ve been letting me learn new skills even if I’m not ready to compete them? Even if I might not ever be ready?”

  Bentley looked a bit surprised by that question, then he nodded toward the door indicating we should go back into the house. “Let me show you something.”

  I followed him into the living room and sat down on the couch. Bentley opened his laptop case and pulled out a folder. After sifting through it, he slid a piece of paper in front of me. It was a list with twenty–four names.

  “These are the gymnasts that competed a tucked full on beam at the last Olympics,” Bentley said. “Now tell me how many of those gymnasts won an individual medal.”

  I scanned the paper, reading each name carefully. “One.”

  “Now tell me how many were from teams that made the finals. How many were in the top eight teams?”

  I was pretty familiar with the previous Olympic results in the sense that I had basically memorized all of it. Me and every other competitive gymnast in the country. “Um…all bu
t four.”

  “Nina Jones wants you to add that skill so she can put you first at Worlds and get a solid score for the team,” Bentley said.

  Nina Jones wants me on the World team? This was news to me.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  He pointed to the one name on the paper of a girl who was the current Olympic champ on balance beam. “If Nina Jones acts excited about your progress next week, it’s because she wants you to be the safe bet that everyone forgets a month after Worlds. I want you to win.”

  I was too shocked to say anything. My mouth fell open but no words came out. Here I was, deciding whether or not to jump into NCAA competition or compete at Nationals, which was nothing compared to the level of World championships, and Bentley had plans for me to medal. Was I in an alternate reality?

  “And what separates you from being first up and last up is probably going to come down to all those tiny details like landing with your chest higher on a tucked full, not pausing on your connections on beam, which I know Stacey has been drilling into you even more lately,” he said. “And it’s not because I feel sorry for you or because I feel guilty. You are so much better than Coach Cordes made you out to be, Karen.”

  My eyes traveled to the paper and then back to Bentley. “Is that what Stevie meant? She was so pissed off that I didn’t want to brag to Coach Cordes about my new skills.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Stevie’s very bright. She notices things. It took about a week of coaching you for me to realize that Coach Cordes had a World Champion in his gym and it wasn’t Stevie Davis. You take correction better than any athlete I’ve ever worked with. I’ve thrown all these corrections at you and you’ve done everything—the handstands on bars, all your amplitude on beam, your vaulting technique. And I’m not trying to put down all the work Cordes put into coaching you. There’s nothing small about getting a full gymnastics ride to UCLA, but I’m a technician, Karen, my coaching is more than a gut feeling about one kid having more confidence or being more of a fighter or learning skills rapidly. Those things are important, but they can be taught, and they come from mastering good technique.”

  “You weren’t just trying to let me learn on my own that added risk isn’t worth it sometimes?”

  “Of course I want you to learn that, but also that it is worth it sometimes. As long as you’ve prepared and you’re ready. I don’t like flashy for the sake of being flashy, and I doubt you do either, given your attention to detail. You speak my language when it comes to gymnastics—logical, mathematical, and realistic,” he said. “But you scared me when you threw that triple on the tumble track, and I thought Jordan and his daredevil stunts would rub off on you and you’d use that method to cope.”

  I bit my lip and didn’t respond, because he had kind of nailed it. “I don’t think Jordan uses that as a method of coping. I think he’s just naturally that way.”

  Bentley laughed under his breath. “You’re probably right about that. I was the same way at his age. I had a few injuries outside of the gym that almost got me kicked off the National Team.”

  I sat up straighter. “Really?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not giving you details.”

  “What am I doing in Chicago? What are my routines?”

  “What do you want to do?” he asked, like he meant it. Like he might actually leave it up to me. Two days ago I would have been elated to hear this.

  I exhaled and leaned into the couch. “I don’t know what I want. It feels like everything’s different now.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to say this before,” Bentley said. “But I will now, since you already know what I think of your gymnastics potential. I think you have all kinds of other potential, too. You can stay here with me and Jordan even if you don’t want to go to Chicago and even if you don’t want to be an elite gymnast anymore and even if you decide not to go to UCLA. Your grades are fantastic. You’re smart, you can get an academic scholarship. You can do a lot of things. Actually, that’s what your mom wanted for you.”

  This got me to sit up straight again. “My mom told you she wanted me to quit gymnastics?”

  He shook his head. “She talked to me in December, requested a meeting. She started off by saying she knew you weren’t going to be Stevie Davis and she was afraid, even though you’d signed your letter of intent, that any positive progression during the season would make you set your eyes on going to Worlds again and that you’d get your heart broken not making the World Team. She wanted you to officially resign as an elite, to scale back on practices, maybe go to regular school, experience life a little more, but only if I thought that college gymnastics was going to be the best you could do. She wasn’t lowering her expectations of you, she just didn’t know any better, and honestly, she hadn’t been told anything but that for years by Coach Cordes.”

  He waited for me to act shocked or surprised, probably, but I just shrugged. My mom and I had had the “scale back on practice and go to regular school” talk on many occasions, more like arguments. And of course that was a big item on Mom’s “Karen’s Future Plan” list. She probably went to Bentley secretly because it went against the compromise Dad had made both of us agree to. We all knew, to prepare for college, I could just train four or five hours a day, five days a week. That wasn’t enough for an international elite.

  “I know you’re angry, and I’m not saying this to try to change your mind or discredit the severity of what happened, but in the short time I knew them, your parents were the rare few who didn’t seem to be so caught up in your career that they couldn’t step back and see other options for you besides being an international elite gymnast,” Bentley continued.

  “Wait…was Jordan at the gym that day in December? When you had a meeting with my mom?”

  Bentley paused to think. “I think he was, actually.”

  That was when he’d met her. She was talking to Bentley about realistic goals for me. She wouldn’t have done that with me around. “What did you tell my mom?”

  “I told her that it was very risky to make predictions early, but I thought you would regret not giving the elite season your best effort, especially with your shoulder healed and that competitive fire present. I could tell you wanted it, and that’s not when a gymnast should stop.”

  “But if I don’t do well in Chicago, what are my chances of making the World team? And if I make the Pan Am team, are my chances of making the World team going to be that much better?” I asked. “I know I can wait until fall semester actually begins at UCLA to start training with the team, but what about beyond that? Am I risking my scholarship and my spot on the team?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, it will be difficult to make the World team if you don’t show up and do well in Chicago, and being on the Pan Am team will probably make it ten times easier to be selected and give you some international experience before Worlds. Even a great showing at Nationals doesn’t prove your worth to judges outside of this country.” He watched me closely, probably to see if I would fall apart hearing this.

  I mostly felt numb. Stuck between two places and not sure if I wanted to move forward or backward. At the moment, I wanted to stay put. “I figured that much.”

  He patted my knee and stood up. “Let’s finish cleaning the garage before the sun comes up. Just think about what you want to do next week. You don’t have to decide right now.”

  Coach Bentley,

  I’m not the only one in the room right now showing the potential to be great. You could be a great father if you decided to.

  Love, Karen

  I nodded and stood up, stretching before slipping on my flip–flops again. “Is Tony in trouble? I’m assuming you found the folder.”

  Bentley nodded. “I returned it already, and I think his mother is secretly impressed that Tony had the skills to swipe it. He’s never been more than a C student. Don’t worry, she’ll go easy on him.”

  Oh man…poor Tony. Poor, kind, easy to manipulate Tony. I’d h
ave to apologize in the morning.

  When we walked back into the garage, I noticed a trophy sitting on top of the deep freeze. On closer examination, I realized it had been broken and then somehow put back together. It was my oldest trophy. Level 7 state championships. I had won All–Around and Blair had won Floor, and we’d had identical trophies on our laps the whole car ride home.

  “Blair said you were going to regret breaking that one,” Bentley explained, noticing me looking at the trophy. “So Jordan super–glued it back together. Took him two hours to find all the pieces and another hour to glue them together.”

  Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes, imagining Jordan and Blair crawling around, looking for pieces to this stupid trophy and him gluing it all together. I glanced at Bentley, plunging forward with another big topic, since we were already on a roll. “He has nightmares, you know. Just like me.”

  “Me, too,” he said before picking up the broom again. “But I would take his if I could.”

  “Why is it so easy for you to talk to me but not him?”

  He was quiet for a really long minute and I thought maybe I had overstepped my boundaries.

  “I’m not sure, Karen. But I’m working on it. I promise.”

  I smiled at him before picking a second broom. “You have a lot of potential, Coach.”

  “You know what they say about potential,” Bentley said. “It only gets you so far.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I can’t breathe…I really can’t breathe.

  Sparkly dots formed in front of my face as my eyes tried to focus on the gym ceiling. Pain shot through my entire body, and I couldn’t even breathe through it.

  “Breathe, Karen.” Bentley leaned over me and stuck his hands under my back, lifting my rib cage off the floor. “You’re all right. It was a safe fall.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded just as air finally whooshed into my lungs. “Not enough…chalk…my fault,” I croaked out, one syllable at a time.