Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  ***

  Tom McIlweath drew himself through the pool in long, relaxed, powerful strokes. That was his style—to propel himself with seemingly little effort, taking advantage of his overly long arms and strong legs. His slender trunk offered small resistance to the water.

  Workouts had become ritualistic for him. Where other swimmers looked to the daily training sessions with resignation, McIlweath saw them as a release, a buffer between the zones of his day. He had always kept himself in good shape, better, he discovered, than his new teammates, so the physical demands of the workouts, while considerable, posed no great problem. He could swim his laps well within the coach’s times for him. He could push himself on the sprints then, having a store of energy unburned from the longer parts of the regimen. He would be fresh enough to refine his strokes. Tom McIlweath’s body could withstand the workouts without draining itself to the last spasm and twitch. His fear that he would be too scrawny, too slow, too weak to swim at the college level vanished within the first week of training.

  His body secure in the demands placed upon it, McIlweath was free to approach his workouts intellectually and, on some days, even spiritually, a touch of Zen. It had to do with the water.

  As a boy, McIlweath had been frightened of water. His father would not long put up with the boy’s fears. He took his son to the beach at the height of summer and, suddenly made aware of the child’s reluctance to enter the great ocean, pulled his eight-year-old body into a pair of swimming trunks, grabbed him by the arm and dragged the boy with him into the surf. Tom, whose only experience had been gazing with overwhelmed awe at the ocean from a safe distance, who had been too timid even to risk putting his head beneath the surface while taking a bath, kicked viciously to break away. All that water, his brain screamed—so angry at the edge, and then endless to the horizon. Within a few seconds, young Tom realized that if he were to struggle against the bounding force of either his father of the ocean, he would most likely drown or, worse, be dragged back to dry land in humiliation. His irrational fear of the water dissipated under his very rational fear of his father’s wrath. He swam.

  In fact, by the end of the day he was doing more than swimming. He was running into the surf, plunging headlong into the smaller waves, and, with a sense of timing that surprised even his father, ducking under the bigger ones to come up laughing on the other side. Young Tom concluded that in water only one rule applied: if you’re underneath it, don’t breathe. Once he discovered he could float, and better still, that he could propel himself a bit in whatever direction he chose, his initial relief at conquering this potentially disastrous situation turned to joy. To his astonished father, Tom made a remarkable turnaround. The remainder of that summer Tom begged his father to take him to the beach every day the elder McIlweath was free. Tom frolicked through the surf like a warm-weather sea otter. He was not interested in combing the sand for shells or studying the tide pools for surprises. He only wanted to swim.

  The next year Tom’s father joined a swim club and Tom began to swim competitively. After the ocean, a swimming pool seemed tiny. If Tom McIlweath could not control the vast seas, he could at least master the small waters in which he now swam. He threw himself into his swimming, and became better each year, his times in key events dropping steadily. The move to Southern California where his new school had no swim team almost broke his heart. He swam with a private team throughout his last years in high school to stay competitive, to stay sharp. The Rutgers swim coach, always in search of young talent, took note of his times in the California state meet for sixteen-to-eighteen year-olds after an alumnus had sent a letter suggesting that Tom McIlweath might be worth looking into. McIlweath, discontent and dispirited at the time, had sought an escape, as far away as possible. Swimming had given him that chance, pointing him in a direction he could never have foreseen.

  Now, in this new pool, McIlweath found another type of release, more personal, more immediate. The water buoyed him, it carried him. The turbulent state of a swimmer in motion could hardly be peaceful in itself, yet the water calmed Tom McIlweath. So soft; so yielding. He plunged into it, it folded over him, womblike, until he parted it, broke the surface to draw air, then back again, head moving side to side, breathing in sips, rhythm, rhythm. In the water nothing mattered. No friendships mattered, no classes mattered, there was no heartbreak, for him no stress. Breathing in small sips, rhythm, rhythm. In the water it was warm. In the water he saw nothing but the green blur through his goggles, the grey brick of the wall, no depth beyond it, nothing above him. In the water he heard only the attacking splashes of his strokes, the sounds he created, and his own lungs, inhaling, exhaling, breathing in sips. Rhythm, rhythm. In the water he need have no thoughts, he need be concerned with no ideas, he need have no reactions; his mind might be like the very water in which he swam, quieted after the swimmers had left—unmoving, without the slightest ripple, where a few moments before all had been churning and twisting. He grasped the irony of it, that in the churning of the swim he found his tranquility. Once he ceased, he became ordinary again.

  He swam in a trancelike state, numb to his physical exertion, the sensual stimuli around him muted and regular. His mind, too, emptied itself; he became lost in rhythm, lost in the water that lifted him. Split the water, and go with it. And if he could, split the walls at the lane’s end and swim invisible, forever, through other people’s common space.

  McIlweath hit the wall as if to push right through it. “Time, 17:26. Good swim, Mac. Wait for your teammates. We’re going to finish up with some sprints.”

  McIlweath leaned one arm over the lip of the pool and watched the other swimmers move up and back in the lanes around him. He breathed heavily tiny drops of water spewing from his lips with each deep exhalation. It would be several minutes before all his teammates completed the distance. He would be well rested for the sprints. He would be well rested for the evening.

  ***

  Conor Finnegan meanwhile catered to his urge to play basketball. This was to be his first year, since he was eight, without organized ball. He found early on that he missed it. Three or four days a week he would walk across campus past the library to the old College Avenue gymnasium to spend a couple of hours after classes doing what he believed he could do very well.

  Basketball was a self-assertion, an exercise through which Finnegan could thrust himself forward and apart from the thousand strange faces he encountered every day. On the court he might be more than the casual student. He might be a touch less anonymous, even if he were only known as a white kid with a good jump shot. It was, in the least, a degree of distinction he suddenly discovered he missed, a part of his identity to which he had become accustomed.

  And so Finnegan inflated these pick-up games to take on more significance than they deserved. He believed that most of the outstanding basketball talent at a major college played on either the varsity or the freshman squads. Consequently those young men who spent their afternoons playing pick-up at the gym were bound to be a cut below. Finnegan believed that, had he wanted to spend the time and effort, he himself would have been able to play freshman ball. If he were lucky and stayed healthy, he might well have made the varsity as a walk-on. So he believed. The casual games he played at the gym, then, would necessarily be against slightly lesser talents. During the early part of the year, in late September and October, he found nothing to disabuse him of that notion. In most games he did indeed stand out as the best player on the court. Those in which he didn’t were the products of his own poor effort, or soft concentration, he told himself, and not a shortage of talent.

  On this particular afternoon Finnegan had had no trouble finding four teammates to play against the winners of the game currently underway on the center court. He had previously played with two of them: a heavily muscled, dark-complected guy about his height, and a tall, bony blond fellow. His other two teammates he did not recognize. They all introduced themselves at courtside as they waited for the current game to
end. As it did they walked onto the court and headed for the far end to take their warm-up shots.

  Finnegan loved the sensation of first setting foot on the hardwood. He tended to saunter a bit as he did so, thoroughly in control, returning to familiar lands. He loved the sound of the ball bouncing against the glossy wood. The cool, stale air flared his nostrils. He broke a slight sweat taking his warm-ups. Finnegan felt at once relaxed and powerful, a racehorse in the starting gate, his muscles tensed, his mind fully aware of what lay ahead, what he would be called upon to do.

  The game started with Finnegan’s team bringing the ball up court. The first basket came when Finnegan cut behind a screen set by his tall, bony teammate, took a pass and sank a twenty-foot jump shot with a flick of his wrist. He ran back down court lightly on the balls of his feet, in no particular hurry, pleased at his quick demonstration.

  His man took the ball at the top of the key as Finnegan crouched defensively. The short black guy started a series of head and shoulder fakes, one after another, back and forth in opposite directions. Finnegan had seen it before. He would wait for the real move. Instinctively he backed up half a step. His opponent launched his move with a quick step to the right then a crossover step back to the left. Finnegan reacted, but too slowly. His man shot by him, and his teammates, each concerned with his own man, turned around too late to pick him up. He went down the lane untouched for a layup. Finnegan said immediately, “My fault” with a confidence that indicated that he did not expect it to happen again.

  But it did. His opponent went around him twice more, once to score and once to pass off for an uncontested basket when Finnegan’s teammate, the heavily muscled fellow whose name was Lou, dropped his man to help out. Finnegan tried to compensate for the other’s quickness. He sagged three or four feet off him, laying back in the key to give him a split-second more to adjust to the other’s moves. His man read it immediately, a tiny grin settling onto his face, and with the extra room sank three long jump shots before Finnegan could step out to challenge him.

  Finnegan’s teammates changed their expressions as the game progressed. They frowned, muttering profanities after each basket, and Finnegan knew the object of their frustration. It might take the losing team half an hour to gain the court again, depending on how many others were waiting to play. The five of them had waited themselves to get this game, and now it was slipping away.

  Finnegan grew more intense. Unused to being beaten like this, he felt a desperation to do something in return, something to redeem himself, something to save the game. He got the ball to the left of the free-throw line, twenty feet from the basket. His opponent stood against him, virtually chest to chest, too close for Finnegan to let go his jump shot. Instead he took a short step to his left, then dribbled the ball behind his back and drove to the right. A good move, and he was sure he had beaten his man. Off the dribble he pushed his right leg upward to begin his shot, no more than five feet. As he brought the ball above his hip, his opponent, who had followed Finnegan’s drive, reached across Finnegan’s body, knocked the ball out of his surprised hands, then sprinted by him to recover the loose ball and lead the break in the opposite direction. Finnegan could not catch up.

  The next time his man got the ball, Finnegan got on top of him as tightly as he could. He pushed himself next to the shorter man, so close that he could feel his opponent’s breath on his neck. As his man made a move to his right Finnegan stayed with him, leaning hard on the other’s shoulder. His opponent stopped at once, Finnegan lurching ahead of him, off-balance. Just as quickly, the shorter man spurted to the left. While Finnegan could defend the first move, he could not recover quickly enough to defend the second. His man scored again.

  “Jesus Christ, what’re you doing?” said Lou, his face a scowl.

  “He’s quick, damn it.”

  “Or you’re too slow. You take my man, I’ll handle yours. Jesus Christ . . .”

  Against his will, Finnegan blushed. Regarded by the grunting Lou and undoubtedly by the rest of his teammates as a liability, Finnegan’s desperation to prove himself deepened. The game was to fifteen baskets. With the score fourteen to eleven against him, Finnegan shook free with a sharp cut to his left. He got the ball two feet under the top of the key, his favorite shooting spot, where he was almost automatic. In the instantaneous movement of thought, Finnegan made certain he was properly ready to shoot: hands across the seams, feet together, shoulders square to the basket. Up he went, drawing the ball smoothly to the side of his right ear. He fell into an autonomous rhythm, the actions rehearsed tens of thousands of times, his muscles tapping their collective memory to work harmoniously. There is a sense of order in that. There is a sense of control, of agreement, almost euphoric when it works correctly.

  Finnegan saw nothing but the orange hoop of the basket. His eyes burned a hole in the back of the rim. His muscles released in a pattern that had grown to instinct. The ball arced forth and Finnegan followed it with his eyes, the dirty brown sphere outlined against the dark forms of the gym’s second level of bleacher, now heading gently downward, spinning slightly in its usual rotation. Finnegan took three quick steps backward as he landed to get set to play defense, so certain that the ball was going in because that was how it had all felt.

  Except the ball let him down. It hit the back of the rim, bounced very softly to the front, then bounded away into the outstretched arms of an opposing player. Finnegan stood there, incredulous. The shot had been good, it had to be. Everything had been done properly.

  The missed shot robbed Finnegan of his last reserve. He defended limply, a balloon with no air. His man went inside and Finnegan followed, leaning on him to keep him away from the basket. A shot was put up. Finnegan’s man hooked his leg in front of Finnegan’s and pivoted toward the basket. The ball bounced off the rim right to him, and he put it back up for the winning basket. Mercifully, it had come to an end.

  Finnegan walked off the court, his eyes riveted on the floor in front of him. Three members of the winning team walked up to him in the established ritual of shaking hands, saying “Good game” as if they meant it. Finnegan shook hands in return, but made no other response. It had not been a good game, not at all.

  Three young men had been waiting to play the winners. They came onto the court now. “We need two more guys. Give us a couple of minutes,” one yelled over to the other team.

  “Get two guys from the losers,” someone yelled back.

  The three turned to one another. “Who do you think we should get?”

  Finnegan had overheard this, so he stopped at courtside. Perhaps another game, another team, might work for him. He would have a chance to get his rhythm back. It was obvious that he knew how to play, and play well. He had just had a bad game, that was all.

  One of the three new players came to the side of the court where the leavers stood, four near the baseline and Finnegan at mid-court near the exit. He glanced at Finnegan, then turned to the group of four. He pointed to Lou and to the tall, bony blond. “You two guys want to go again?”

  Finnegan picked up his sweatshirt, pulled it on and headed out the door. Usually he would run back to the dormitory, a short enough sprint to finish the workout. This afternoon he walked, very slowly, head down. Along the way he picked up a flat, smooth stone and tossed it at a tree on the library lawn. He missed. Finnegan chuckled to himself, certain that it all meant something but not having a clue as to what, and continued on.

  ***

  Lynda Hoelscher had immediately gained a reputation among her college’s male population as a black widow, beautiful yet deadly, and to be avoided at all costs. As her roommate, Glynnis Mear became guilty by association. Not that this bothered her. She would not have to deal with the advances of people whom she preferred not to know. Her short experience at college told her that most friendships made here would likely prove shallow, the products of their particular situations of loneliness, of being thrown together in one place, of responding for the moment to the s
trangeness around and between them. Besides, those who tended to regard her suspiciously were men, and there she could not for the life of her imagine a relationship beyond the superficial.

  Glynnis Mear did not mind. She measured her friendships in quality rather than quantity. Without the distractions of people who mattered little, she could tend more freely to her own concerns. And, although her outward manner remained calm, although she invariably appeared poised and very much in control of herself, she did have her concerns which at times broke her down.

  She found ways to step outside herself. When the reality of being Glynnis Mear proved oppressive, she would escape in an anonymous flight into the congealed mass around her. She loved the city. It invigorated her to pass through crowds of people who did not so much as know her name and who, if they did, would not care. It was like being invisible. And, if she was invisible, she could go wherever she wanted without fear.

  In her depressions she would take a bus into Center City, near Philadelphia’s city hall, grey and baroque with its asparagus tower. Usually she would come into the city near the end of the day. She enjoyed watching the day grow dark, watching the numbers dwindle. She would walk around downtown, glancing occasionally into shop windows but looking mostly at the people. If she had time, she would walk up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, past the cathedral, past Logan Circle, past the science museum and into Fairmount Park. She loved the greenness there, the sharp juxtaposition with the asphalt, granite and steel a few blocks behind her. In time she began to establish her favorite pathways in and around the city’s heart. She came to feel as comfortable in Philadelphia as she had in her native Boston.