Delta Girls

by Gayle Brandeis

  I slit the blinds with my fingers and looked outside. The whales must have moved on for the time being; the Coast Guard boat was gone, leaving just the shadow of a wake. Sam would have to catch up with them somehow when she was done talking with Ben. I tried not to think about how long she had been up there with him. The helicopter had thankfully left, too; only the barest of its reverberations still shivered across the water, rocking the boat gently. Everything left a trace in a slough; the water showed when something had been there. At dusk, the setting sun caught every wake, made the trails behind the Coast Guard boat, behind the whales, shimmer like quicksilver. I wondered what markings Quinn and I would leave behind here. Hopefully ones that would briefly glimmer, then disappear, impossible to trace. Unless Ben wanted to find me.

  IN NASHVILLE, DEENA HANDED KAREN A KEY TO HER own room in their giant atriumed hotel.

  “You’re turning eighteen this weekend,” Deena said. “Consider it your birthday present, sweetheart.”

  Karen raced up the glass elevator as her mom and Nathan were still checking in. Her very own hotel room! She stripped off everything but the necklace Nathan had given her and jumped on the bed naked—something she had never let herself do at home—the necklace thwacking against her chest. She threw the comforter aside and rolled around on the velvety blanket. She felt like Marilyn Monroe as she smiled for an imaginary camera above the bed, posed with her legs in the stag position, her head arched back.

  Then her mom knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” she called, and Karen immediately crawled under the covers, embarrassed.

  “Fine!” she called back, grabbing her tracksuit out of her luggage, quickly wiggling into it.

  “Get some rest,” her mom called. “We’ll head to the rink in a couple of hours.”

  Karen lay on the bed, catching her breath. She was tempted to slip the tracksuit back off—it felt scratchy against her skin—but didn’t want to risk having her mom show up again.

  THINGS HAD BEEN tense with Deena since New Year’s. They hadn’t talked about that midnight kiss, but every once in a while, Deena sidled over to Nathan as if it had made him hers, and Karen’s stomach would press in on itself.

  She thumbed through the heavy binder full of hotel information, lingering on the room service menus. When she dialed downstairs and tried to order a hamburger and crème brûlée, though, she found out Deena had put a block on her account. The minibar was locked, too, with no key in sight. She wandered over to the small bowl of fruit that sat on the table overlooking the pool; a card stuck inside read Congratulations, Skaters! Karen found herself getting excited again. They were really here! She took a bite of the waxy green apple and jumped around a little bit more.

  NATIONALS WERE THE first major event held at the new Nashville Arena. Karen could hear other coaches and skaters grumble over the fact that the place was so big and impersonal, that it didn’t have any skating history, any lore, any old gossip ringing in the rafters. Karen was glad it was someplace new. It meant they could forge their own fresh history.

  Gossip did make it into the stadium, though. Tonya Harding was briefly kidnapped—or so she said—in Portland, Oregon, but everyone seemed to agree it was a ploy to stay in the skating news during Nationals. People were still buzzing, too, over Oksana Baiul’s drunk-driving accident in Connecticut in January, a few towns away from where Karen and Nathan trained. She had insisted she wasn’t drunk after four or five Long Island iced teas—“I’m a Russian,” she told Oprah—but her car was still totaled.

  “You want news,” said Deena. “But not news like that.”

  She handed them a tube of toothpaste as they headed in for their first practice session. “I saw Eisler and Brasseur do this,” she said. “It’s supposed to keep your mouth from drying out during your program.”

  “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to try it for the first time here,” said Karen, but Nathan grabbed the tube from the center and squeezed a thick worm of the paste, striped white and blue-green, onto his finger. He must have been nervous. She had never seen him follow her mother’s orders so readily. Plus, he had always bristled against any associations with Lloyd Eisler and Isabelle Brasseur before—he didn’t want to be seen as the American version of the bad-boy/good-girl Canadian pair, even though they had been world champions a few years before. He wanted them to be seen as their own team, unlike any other to step onto the ice.

  “Just rub it on your teeth,” said Deena, licking her own like someone in a commercial. When Karen scowled at her, she said, “It’s better than the beauty pageants. They use Vaseline to keep their lips from sticking to their teeth.”

  Nathan was rubbing away. Karen could smell the mint wafting out of his mouth. He smiled at her, a glob of the paste stuck to his lip, and she couldn’t help but smile back. She squeezed a small dab onto her finger, then swiped it over her teeth, staring into Nathan’s blue eyes. This was it. Nationals. Here they were, together, minty fresh, ready to take on the best the country had to offer.

  BEFORE THE SHORT program, some of the skaters—skaters Karen didn’t really know, skaters she had only seen on TV, but who somehow knew about her—came out holding a birthday cake covered with sparklers, big white 1 and 8 candles rimmed with green stuck in the center. The sparklers sizzled with orange light, like cigarettes skittering along the highway, tossed from a moving car. She could feel their hot pinpricks on her skin. The whole rink—the crowd, the announcers, maybe even the judges—started to sing “Happy Birthday.” Their voices roared off the walls.

  She didn’t have to think hard about a wish, but she squeezed her eyes shut anyway and blew with all her might. A mighty cheer rang through the arena. She opened her eyes and waved to the bleachers. Gray smoke spiraled up from the wicks, two thin ghosts braiding and dissolving.

  One of the coaches cut the cake and started to hand her a slice, but Deena intercepted the plate. “You’re not eating that,” she said. “All that sugar before a competition?” She glared at the coach as if he were deliberately trying to sabotage their performance.

  It was chocolate cake, moist and dark, with a darker frosting, topped with pink frosting roses. The smell of buttercream made her light-headed.

  “Couldn’t I have just one bite?” Karen asked. “It’s my birthday.”

  “And now you’re losing your focus.” Deena lobbed the plate into the trash.

  A few fans tossed stuffed animals and flowers down from the stands; they fell around Karen like soft shrapnel.

  “They couldn’t have waited until after the program?” Deena was exasperated, as she often was at competitions, but Karen bent to pick up the gifts, then blew a few kisses into the stands. Nathan usually got the bulk of the fan presents, but these were for her alone.

  “Happy birthday, sweetness,” Nathan said as Karen dumped the stuffed bears and cats and giraffes, the roses and carnations and irises, into her mother’s Macy’s bag. They’d have to make another trip to the children’s hospital soon to drop off the toys she didn’t want to keep. “You ready to do this thing?” He held out his hand. The tuxedo unitard had looked seal-like and rubbery to her before, but now it looked dapper, like he was going to escort her to a ball. Deena had decided to sew a little skirt onto Karen’s matching unitard a couple of days earlier—she realized she didn’t want them to be too unconventional at their first Nationals.

  “As ready as I’m going to be.” She put her hand in his.

  THE STADIUM WAS the biggest Karen had ever skated, the crowd the biggest she had skated for; her mother had estimated at least eight thousand people—they filled only about half the stands, but it still felt intimidating. The lighting was harsh, bright; it made the ice seem extra shiny, extra slick. The bank of television cameras didn’t make the place feel any warmer, either.

  Nathan put one knee down in the center of the ice. She sat on his other leg, splayed one hand over her face, waited for the first notes of the music so she could sweep it aside and smile at the audience
. Her heart felt bigger and faster than usual in her chest; she wondered if Nathan could see it beat through her clothes. He took a deep breath behind her; she could feel a little tremor of fear in his leg. She squeezed his side with her other hand, and the music began.

  It felt good but scary to try a new routine in public, especially on so important a stage. The short program felt shorter than usual, somehow—it went by in a blur, but she could tell it was a clean blur; they hit every jump, every spin, every bit of footwork. At the end of “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” she knew that not only had they seen her; they had liked what they saw.

  ———

  BECAUSE IT WAS her birthday, and because they were, amazingly, thrillingly, third after the short program—the top contenders, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, had ended their program on their backs after botching a death spiral—Deena said they could have a night on the town, as long as it was a relatively early night. Karen wanted to go to Opryland, especially since it was rumored to be closing soon—she had never been to an amusement park before—but Deena was worried that the rides would make Karen sick, and she’d be too tempted by all the fried food. They went to the Grand Ole Opry instead, after having large salads for dinner—not Karen’s idea of a birthday bash, but the show was historic, and lively enough, even if some of the music made her nerves stand on edge.

  “Maybe we should do a country number next,” said Deena, sitting between them in the cab on the way back to the hotel. “The judges eat that patriotic shit up.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Karen. “Too twangy for my taste.”

  “She turns eighteen and she suddenly thinks she has taste!” Deena rolled her eyes, then kissed Karen on the cheek.

  “I think she has excellent taste,” Nathan said, and Karen wanted to climb across her mom, climb onto his lap. “I’m not a country boy, either, Deena.”

  “Fine.” Deena pouted theatrically. “Gang up on me.”

  Nathan leaned forward to look at Karen and said, “I’m glad to be part of your gang.” She couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present.

  BACK AT THE hotel, Karen wondered if she should invite Nathan over to her room. She tried calling him on the hotel phone to say good night, to say thank you, to talk about the coming free skate, maybe slip in “Why don’t you come over here so we could run through the choreography one last time,” but there was no answer. Maybe he’s on his way over here, she told herself. She waited for a knock, but nothing came; he must have taken the phone off the hook to get a good night’s sleep. She slipped off all her clothes so she could sleep naked for the first time, her birthday gift to herself. The sheets felt smooth and cool against her skin.

  I’m eighteen now, she thought, running her hands over her body. I can do whatever I want.

  THE SACRAMENTO BEE COINED NAMES FOR THE whales—they named the mother Bartlett, to honor the mother pear of the region, the baby Seckel, a small, sweet variety. The names caught on, and soon all the reporters, all the spectators, were calling the whales by their given pears.

  “Pears and whales go together,” said Mr. Vieira as we walked back into the orchard after lunch. “My grandfather used to spray whale oil on the trees; whale oil and tobacco to kill the pear thrips.”

  “From real whales?” Quinn was aghast.

  “Their blubber. Blubber all over the trees. Killed the thrips.”

  Quinn pressed her face against my ribs.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Quinn,” he said. “They don’t make whale oil no more.”

  I wondered if any whale molecules were left in the tree trunks, if whales had braided their way into the branches, blossomed out from the buds, if when you bit into a pear you were tasting some ghost sliver of a long-dead whale.

  “We use fish oil now,” he said.

  A breeze sent the leaves shimmering on all the trees, and for a second, out of the corner of my eye, I saw them as schools of fish, sardines corralled by humpbacks, flashing and beautiful and about to be devoured.

  “My people came to this country on whaling boats,” said Mr. Vieira. “Wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for whales.”

  “I thought they came here for gold,” I said.

  “Gold was what they wanted. Whaling was how they got here.”

  “And pears kept them around,” I said. Even though I was pretty sure Ben was a lost cause, I liked knowing more about where he came from. I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t seen Sam, since she had gone looking for him, plus there was the small matter of the fiancée in Oregon, but learning about his family somehow made him feel close by.

  Mr. Vieira nodded, looking out at the orchard.

  “What will you do if you can’t get enough pears picked this year?” I asked. “Will you be okay?”

  “We have the eau-de-vie,” he said.

  “Will that be enough?”

  He didn’t answer me. Just kept walking through the trees.

  SEVERAL OTHER AGENCIES got involved in the whale rescue effort—the California Department of Fish and Game, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, different oceanographic schools and county officials wanting in on the action. A lot of people to keep Sam busy, keep her away from the orchard. There was a “stranding manager,” a team of veterinarians, a “herding team,” biologists, ethicists, animal rights activists, trying to figure out how to get the whales back to sea. Thankfully, we got a bit of a reprieve when the whales took off and decided to hang around the Rio Vista bridge for a while. It was nice to have the place more quiet, even though a few spectators and media people hung around just in case the whales came back. The rescue team was trying to give the whales a bit of a rest, too. After the recordings didn’t work, they had tried fire hoses to get them to head south, but that only stressed the whales out. The team was hanging back, giving Bartlett and Seckel the weekend off to see if they’d decide to swim under the bridge on their own. I hoped Sam would take some time off, too, preferably somewhere far from Comice.

  EVEN WITH SMALLER crowds, it was going to be a busy weekend for us. Every year, the Friday before the Sunday of the Pear Fair, the Vieiras made a big feast for all the workers to celebrate the harvest. There was still much picking to do, not a whole lot to celebrate, but, as Mr. Vieira said, tradition is tradition, and Mrs. Vieira lived up to her reputation. She and some of her women cousins set up a mini festa on several picnic tables pushed together in a line—huge vats of sopa and that wonderful dense, sweet Portuguese bread, plus salt cod, rice, fava beans, fried potatoes, sausages, and a sort of bread salad made with garlic, coriander, and shrimp, next to a simple salad of tomatoes and onions dressed with vinegar and olive oil. Plus pears in all shapes and forms—tucked into preserves, chutneys, sweet breads, stews, even a few fresh ones that had ripened in paper bags and in bowls on the Vieiras’ kitchen counter. Not to mention bottles of Madeira wine.

  True to the spirit of festa, the Vieiras gave all this away for free—even to the whale spectators. Even to the reporters. There were probably at least fifty people crowded around the tables, digging into Mrs. Vieira’s food. I made a point of sitting as far as possible from the journalists. As close as possible to Ben.

  “So you’re engaged, huh?” I tried to sound casual as I scooped some more potatoes for Quinn, her favorite dish of the evening. She was deep in conversation with Abcde, who was teaching her a bit of Spanish.

  “I just said that to my dad to get him off my back.” He sounded sheepish. “He’s in a hurry for me to settle down.”

  I tried not to get too excited, especially since he had been spending time with Sam. “Does your girlfriend know you’re not engaged?” I didn’t want to talk so loudly, but everyone else was talking loudly, a din of English and Spanish and Portuguese. Most of the workers were still sweaty and dirty from the fields, but some had cleaned up as if they were going to a fancy restaurant. I wondered where they had been hiding their clean button-down shirts; maybe they were saving them just for this occasion. I myself had put on a clean bu
t wrinkly sundress, and the mosquitoes were making their own feast of my bare arms.

  “It’s more of a friends-with-benefits kind of deal,” he said. “Neither of us gets out much. If one of us is lonely, horny, whatever, we have someone to turn to.”

  A couple of people looked over at the word “horny.” Thankfully not Quinn, but Abcde gave me a wink.

  “Must make fieldwork more interesting.” I tried hard to keep any jealousy out of my voice.

  “On occasion.” He grinned and spooned more fava beans onto his plate.

  A ROUND OF toasting started. “To pears!” said someone, and everyone lifted their glasses.

  “To whales!” said someone else.

  “To Bartlett and Seckel, in specific,” shouted Quinn, to laughter.

  “To the Vieiras, for this amazing spread!” said a meaty-faced reporter with grease on his chin.

  “Here, here,” everyone called out; a couple of the sorter women gave ululating whoops.

  “To fieldwork.” Ben raised an eyebrow and clinked my glass, and I almost choked on a sardine. Before I could say anything in return, he smiled and headed off to talk to his father.

  ———

  MRS. VIEIRA AND her cousins set out a table of desserts just as the sun was going down—rice pudding spiked with cinnamon and lemon, custard pastries, pear tarts, and some pungent sheep’s milk cheese, along with more ripe pears, more bottles of Madeira wine. They also uncorked a bottle of Eau de Vieira and gave people samples in Dixie cups. I was tempted to try it again, but I wanted to keep my wits sharp with so many people around. A couple of workers had brought their children, and Quinn wanted to run around with some kids her age, maybe a little younger; as always, I told her she could if she stayed where I could see her, especially since it was getting dark. She practically growled at me.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Abcde. “I don’t mind hanging out with kidlets. I’m a big child myself.”