Early Warning

Mom often said, “I have given up on you, Charlie,” but she always said it with a smile, and then, “You are bound and determined to go your own way. It’s a good thing you’re such a handsome and charming boy.” Once in a while, Dad sat down with him and had a serious conversation, in which they discussed consequences. Mom and Dad lived in fear of consequences, mostly because Dad’s brother, Uncle Urban, whom Charlie had never met, had died when he was sixteen as the consequence of getting drunk and driving his car into a lamppost on a bridge over the Des Peres River. The lamppost had been infested with termites and had fallen over the edge, and the car, which was going a hundred miles an hour (Charlie thought), went right with it. Urban, or “Urbie,” had never understood consequences. When Mom and Dad had adopted Charlie from the hospital, they had vowed to our Lord Jesus Christ that Charlie would be properly taught, and so they went to Mass every Sunday at Holy Redeemer. Mom wanted him to be an altar boy, but Charlie could see that the altar boys had to stand very still — their legs never jiggled, and they made no noise that they weren’t supposed to make. Also, they had to say things the right way. “And with your spirit” could never be said, “With Dan in Roy’s stirrups,” for example, which was a phrase Charlie often contemplated during Mass, and if he contemplated it, it was sure to pop out. Now that he was taking diving off the high board (the three-meter board, it was called), Mom was going to Mass every day, but she dropped him off with a smile and a “Have fun!” and so he did. He knew she was praying for him — she prayed for everybody, including Jimmy Carter.

Coach Lutz made them stretch every single morning. “Point your toes, touch your nose, hold your pose, stretching shows” was the rhyme for that way of bending so that your nose touched your knees, and “Stand up tall, show it all, stand up tall, see it all” was the rhyme for making sure that their bodies were straight, from their flat hands to their elbows against their ears to their shoulders, hips, knees, and pointed toes. Once they were allowed on the one-meter board, they spent a long time going straight down the board and into the water, no matter what. Charlie tried to be like Moira, who knew what she was doing every step, and always rode the board perfectly.

Then they had to learn to tuck. Off the low board, a tuck was just a fancy cannonball. If they got to the water without a good, tight tuck (pretty hard off the low board, but not impossible), they lost ten dollars of the hundred the coach said they started the day with. Supposedly, someday he was going to pay them real money, but Charlie knew this was a joke. Every day, as often as he could, Charlie asked Mom and Dad for a trampoline in the backyard. Mom said he must stop pestering her, and Dad said they couldn’t afford it, but apparently Mom had lit some candles at the church, and now they were thinking about it. In Charlie’s experience, pestering worked fine.

Off the high board, they had to tuck and then lay out and go in feet first with their toes pointed. They got ten more dollars for no splash. Charlie was getting better: if he untucked smoothly rather than jerkily, his splash was good, though not worth money. Today they were going to tuck and lay out in a dive, flat hands first. Charlie had been thinking about it all weekend and all morning, so intently that he’d dropped his book in the pool and had to slip in and get it, then spread it out on the concrete deck and hope that it would dry.

Now was the time. Moira had gone, Emma had gone. Emma’s head popped up, and she waved. Charlie climbed the ladder, pulling himself with his hands and pushing himself with his feet, consciously lifting the weight of his body in order to get stronger and bigger. At the top, he took a deep breath and looked around. The blue pool and the green park spread away from him, and he lifted his arms, thinking that this was surely how a bird felt. He took another deep breath — right foot first, three big steps, bend your knees and hips, jump, bounce, tuck, roll, open up, lay out, and wait for the water, with his hands gripping each other and his elbows flat to his ears.

Maybe, Charlie thought later, this was what passing out felt like, because, after he looked at his right foot stepping, he really didn’t know what happened. All he knew was that he had never felt anything like it — the world turning upside down and right side up and upside down again, his body unwinding like a string, his hands entering the water as if piercing a hole in a piece of paper. He awakened when he touched the bottom of the pool, shook his head, and swam to the side. Up. Deep breath. Coach Lutz was standing right there. He shouted, “What was that all about, Charlie?”

Charlie said that he didn’t know.

“What was that dive?”

Charlie shook his head.

Coach Lutz stared at him, then said, “Don’t you realize you did a front one and a half?”