The Favorites: A Novel(9)
Kirk Lockwood: Sheila was the most driven, focused person I’d ever met. Then she’s pregnant, with twins, at twenty-two years old? I was shocked.
Ellis Dean: Bella and Garrett were born exactly nine months after the Sarajevo Games. Sheila refused to tell anyone who the father was, but it had to be an Olympic Village hookup.
Kirk Lockwood: All I know is, it wasn’t me. I’m proud to be both a gold medalist and a gold-star gay man.
Garrett Lin: I know my mother didn’t plan her pregnancy, but it’s almost like she did, right? We were a ready-made ice dance team, and she had us in skates as soon as we could stand.
Narrator: After revealing her pregnancy, Sheila Lin retreated from the public eye. Though she hadn’t announced her retirement, most assumed she wouldn’t return to competition.
In a series of paparazzi photos, Sheila pushes a double stroller down a city street.
Kirk Lockwood: We didn’t speak for months. When she finally got back in touch and said she wanted to start training for the ’88 Games, I almost told her to fuck off. Excuse my language. But c’mon—she thought I was waiting around for her? Well, I guess I kind of was, but that’s not the point.
Sheila laces up her skates at the Lockwood Performance Center, staring at the ice with fierce determination.
Kirk Lockwood: I figured, quit while you’re ahead, right? But she was so sure we could win again. And if Sheila Lin wanted something? Only an idiot would try to stand in her way.
Chapter 7
The next morning, the ache in my hip was worse. I told myself it was from the motel mattress springs stabbing into me as I tried to sleep through the combined noise of the highway traffic and the most definitely not faked cries of pleasure coming from the room next door.
I turned the shower as hot as it would go and stretched under the stream, willing my muscles to loosen. The first event started in the late morning and would be over by mid-afternoon, then I’d have the whole rest of the day to take it easy and recover.
In those days, ice dance competitions kicked off with the compulsory dance, where all teams had to perform the same exact steps—by far my least favorite event; unfortunately, the skating Powers That Be didn’t do away with it until near the end of my career. The original dance, which allowed teams to put their own spin on each season’s required dance style, was better, but I much preferred the final event, the free dance. There, we could choose whatever music and choreography we wanted.
After a scalding shower and lots of warm-up stretches, I made it through our compulsory Quickstep program without too much trouble. I wasn’t able to swing my leg as high as usual, but Heath adjusted his turns so we still had matching lines. Not our best performance, but enough to put us in seventh place.
It wasn’t until the next day, when I was getting dressed for the original, that I noticed the bruise. We didn’t have the funds for fancy costumes, so Heath wore the same nondescript black shirt and trousers for all three programs, while I had one more elaborate dress I saved for the free. My costume for the compulsory and original dances was plain black velvet with spaghetti straps and a slit up the leg—a slit that perfectly framed the furious purple splotch spreading from my hip down toward my knee.
“That looks bad,” Heath said.
“At least we match now,” I pointed out.
I’d been able to conceal the worst of the damage to Heath’s eye, but all the Cover Girl in the world wasn’t going to make the mark on my leg go away. It was obvious even through my thickest tights. My free dance costume was longer—a structured bodice over a gauzy, shredded skirt; I’d DIY’d it from a thrift store prom dress—so I put that on instead, ignoring the sparks of pain that lit up my thigh every time the skirt swished.
The required style for the original dance was Latin ballroom, and our program was a Rhumba to the old standard “Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps”—a mash-up of the Desi Arnaz version and a cover by the band Cake to provide the changes in musical character and tempo the judges wanted to see from a well-balanced program.
Later in our career, the Latin dances would become something of a specialty for us, since they made such good use of our natural chemistry (and plenty of the officials thought Heath had Latin heritage, an assumption he didn’t bother correcting if it boosted our scores). We weren’t as polished back then, but Latin was still one of our best styles. While the Quickstep relied on sharp, controlled movements, the Rhumba required formal carriage in the upper body and more exaggerated, sensual movements in the lower.
Not an ideal combination in my condition. Seconds into our program, Heath could sense how much pain I was in—and I could sense how desperately he wanted to stop and make sure I was all right.
We couldn’t stop. If we stopped, it was all over. So I let the momentum of the steps carry me, and we made it through. As we skated to the boards, Heath looped his arm around my waist, and he kept it there during the walk to the kiss and cry area to wait for our scores. He knew I wouldn’t want anyone to see me limp. Especially not the Lins, who were about to take the ice as part of the final warm-up group.
By the time we made it back to the motel that night, it was snowing so hard we almost drove right past the flickering neon Vacancy sign. And I was in so much agony, I couldn’t get out of the car without Heath’s help. He had to carry me over the threshold like a bride.