Letters to Nowhere by Julie Cross
CHAPTER ONE
January 18
Mom and Dad,
We’re meeting with a lawyer today. Grandma’s not telling me what this means, but I’m not stupid. I’m seventeen. Still a minor. My house is in St. Louis with no adults to live in it. Grandma’s house is in New York and something big is going to have to change in my life. I like logic. I like lists of pros and cons, but I can’t decide if it’s right for me to shift into that mode or if I’m too distracted missing you to think clearly. The house already feels cold and dusty. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t want to move to New York either. Grandma doesn’t even know me. We have no idea what to say to each other. Our conversations over the past week have all revolved around funeral arrangements, schedules and meetings, and gymnastics practice. She hasn’t asked me if I’m okay. I lost my parents and she hasn’t asked me a damn thing. But she lost her son and I haven’t asked her a damn thing either.
I think I’m stuck. I think we’re all stuck. How do I get over being grateful that I wasn’t in the car with you that night?
Love, Karen
***
When Coach Bentley dropped me off at home after morning practice, an Audi that didn’t belong to my parents was already in the driveway. I figured he’d let me out and leave, but he parked the car in front of the mailbox and walked with me to the door. I was too distracted by the impending lawyer meeting and Grandma’s tense face to take much notice of Bentley shaking hands with Mr. Johnson, one of Dad’s law firm partners, and taking a seat in the living room with Grandma.
I wandered over to the love seat and sat down while Mr. Johnson spouted off the entire law school dictionary, filling his sentences with words like living will, estate, legal minor, and power of attorney. Two minutes into the speech, I tuned out. Until my coach dropped an unexpected proposition, surprising everyone in the room.
“I’d like Karen to stay with me, or at least I’d like to offer her that option.”
My attention snapped from gazing out the living room window to watching Coach Bentley rub his bald head, showing clear signs of nerves. Something my gymnastics coach hadn’t shown in the seven months I’d worked with him. To be honest, I didn’t know much at all about Bentley outside of gymnastics. He wasn’t one to get personal. Another reason this proposition had shocked me.
Grandma’s eyebrows rose, but she maintained her polite and proper nature.
Mr. Johnson obviously had a script to follow and this interpersonal stuff was making him squirm. “Now I understand why Mr. Bentley asked to be present.”
Live with Coach Bentley? How weird would that be? He wasn’t exactly a gifted conversationalist and I wasn’t either—with my teammates, yeah, but not adults. Would we sit in silence all the time?
I turned my gaze to the mantel above the fireplace. The picture of my parents and me sat perfectly centered. I couldn’t stop replaying the back and forth bickering between Mom and Dad over Thanksgiving weekend. She kept making Dad reposition the nail over and over until it looked perfect. He’d let out a frustrated sigh every few minutes, Mom would snap at him, offer to use the drill herself, and he’d do what she asked right away, hating to hand over a power tool.
I need to get out of this house.
A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it back and turned my attention to Coach Bentley.
“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Johnson said. “You want to be Karen’s caretaker until she graduates high school? She won’t turn eighteen for another year, correct?”
Bentley opened his mouth to answer, but Grandma interrupted. “She’s a year ahead. Karen has a gymnastics scholarship for college. She’s supposed to move to California in June.”
“I signed a letter of intent to compete for UCLA next season,” I explained.
A letter that I signed more for my parents and my old coach than for me. A letter that was meant to buy me some time to prove myself to the National Team Committee and my parents (well, mostly my mom), who wanted me to adopt the NCAA rules of limited training hours as soon as possible. I couldn’t be a contender for World and Olympic competitions training only four hours a day. I’d be laughed out of the competition arena. I think my mom worried that I’d get my heart broken if I put everything into a goal that was so impossible to achieve, though she never explained in those words exactly.
“So what you really need is a temporary place to stay and maintain your skills for college–level competition?” Mr. Johnson asked.
Since he was looking to me for an answer, I decided it was easier to nod and mumble yes and not explain the secret dream I’d been harboring against my parents’ wishes. Against the plan the three of us had agreed on.
“She’s been at the same gym her whole life,” Bentley said. “Her teammates are there. I think moving somewhere new with National training camp next month and the upcoming meet season could be detrimental to her training.”
He was right about being at the same gym my whole life, but until last summer, Jim Cordes had been my coach, not Bentley. My parents and I had known for a couple years now that Coach Cordes would replace the UCLA coach when she decided to retire. That happened last summer and right before he left, he brought me and my parents into his office at the gym, said he was going to miss coaching me, and since I did all my schoolwork online and could technically be finished this year, would I consider signing with him a year early. NCAA competition for women’s gymnastics is more of a bowing–out phase. It’s something many gymnasts do after competing in Worlds or the Olympics. Which was exactly why I wanted my shot before bowing out. I’d worn the Team USA leotard before in Junior international competitions and it wouldn’t be easy trading that in for UCLA colors.
Last year would have been my first year as a Senior National gymnast, but I had surgery and sat out most of the competition season with a shoulder injury, competing only in bars at Nationals. Last summer, after my shoulder had healed and I’d been given clearance by my doctor to train full–out again, my mom and I were practically at each other’s throats arguing about my gymnastics future. After Coach Cordes presented his plan, the tension in my house got even worse. So, my dad made Mom and me sit at the kitchen table with him and each of us separately wrote down a one–year plan for my gymnastics and academics.
Mom’s looked like this:
Sign letter of intent to compete for UCLA next year
Go to regular high school for senior year
Train with the level 10 team instead of elites thus reducing practice hours from 40 to 24/wk
Graduate from a real school with a cap and gown and let Mom throw a big party
Head to California in June to train with Team UCLA (Go BRUINS! Remember, blue is one of your best colors, Karen)
My plan looked like this:
Train full–out with my elite team and be ready to show routines on all 4 events at the first National Team training camp this fall
Finish all required high school courses this year so that I can focus on World Championships 100% next fall
Make the American Cup and/or Pan American Team next Spring
Receive my high school diploma by mail (I have no desire to parade around in a cap and gown)
Place high enough at Nationals next summer to make World team trials, make the World team, win a medal with my team (preferably Gold)
Decide which college to attend/compete gymnastics for (UCLA is my #1 at the moment)
Dad took both lists, studied them, then reminded me of the probabilities of some of my more extreme goals, as Coach Cordes had drilled into my parents’ heads already. Then he asked Mom and me if we trusted him to come up with a fair compromise based on both our lists. We had to swear to agree to it no matter what.
So we did.
And this was what Dad had come up with:
Karen signs letter of intent to compete for UCLA
Karen lets the new coach know of her college plans but is allowed to continue taking classes online and training as an elite
Karen is allowed to attend any and all National Team training camps that she’s invited to until June of next year
If Karen makes either the American Cup Team and/or Pan American Team she may represent her country in those competitions next spring
Karen receives high school diploma by mail but will agree to one photo in a rental cap and gown for her mother
Karen heads to California in June
My mom had cried but didn’t protest, mostly because we’d already agreed to accept the terms. I’d been completely elated. All I’d heard was that I could keep doing everything as I’d been doing all along, at least until next June, which had seemed like forever to my sixteen year old self—plenty of time to change their minds. Nothing would change for almost an entire year.
If only I’d known how untrue that statement would become. Everything was different now.
Bentley knew about UCLA all along, of course, but he never discussed college routines with me. Maybe that wasn’t his job?
Maybe I’m only thinking about all this to distract myself from dealing with my parents being gone.
“How does your wife feel about having Karen stay with you?” Mr. Johnson asked Bentley.
Coach Bentley looked down at his hands, twirling the gold band on his left ring finger. “My wife passed away years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Grandma and Mr. Johnson both said.
I finally made eye contact with my coach. Why didn’t I know this already? Or maybe my mom had mentioned it and I had tucked it away as information not important enough to remember?
“I’m sure you can understand some concerns people might have with a young girl staying in your household,” Mr. Johnson said, his tone flat and unemotional.
My face immediately flamed and I dropped my gaze to the coffee table. I did catch Bentley rolling his eyes. “I have a son. I’m a father. I understand what parents do.”
He’s got a kid? “You have a kid?” I blurted out, ignoring Grandma’s stern glare.
Bentley gave me a half smile. “It’s not a secret, Karen. He’s not a baby, so I don’t cart him around everywhere. Jordan’s in high school.”
Grandma’s face had changed from skeptical to eager at the mention of not having to take an orphaned child back to New York with her or figure out what to do with me. I’d already been back to the gym to work out and it was the only place where my head felt clear, where I could forget everything, at least for a few hours.
Suddenly everyone’s eyes were on me. Mr. Johnson waited a few moments before saying, “Well? What do think, Karen? Is this arrangement suitable for you? Or would you prefer—”
“I’ll take care of her finances, bill payments, and any legal matters needed from my home,” Grandma said.
The doorbell rang, saving me from having to answer without the chance to make a pros and cons list, to think it through. Both Grandma and I rose to answer it. Glancing outside through the kitchen window, I recognized the car from the funeral home. Grandma opened the door, allowing the cold January wind to sweep inside. A man in a navy suit stood on the doorstep, a cardboard box in his arms, and I knew what would be inside.
I sucked in a breath, my heart drumming up into my ears.
The urns. My parents’ urns.
Nausea hit me like a punch to the gut. I clutched my chest and pulled at the zipper of my warm–up jacket. The thud thud of blood pumping inside my ears prevented me from hearing Grandma’s words as she spoke to the man, but I saw her mouth move.
A large warm hand clasped my shoulder and Coach Bentley’s voice broke through the pounding sound. “Breathe, Karen,” he whispered into my ear.
Years of competitive gymnastics had trained me to follow a coach’s directions. Even mid double twisting double back somersault on floor, I heard directions, I followed directions. My chest rose and fell as I forced air into my lungs. Even Grandma looked shaken when she led the man to the mantel where we’d apparently decided my parents would rest for eternity. The second the two of them were out of the foyer, I fled the house, walking quickly through the snow, and because I could no longer stand the sight or smell of my house or my parents’ car, I jumped into the passenger seat of Coach Bentley’s car.
I bent over and put my head between my knees, trying to rid myself of the dizziness and nausea. After a couple minutes, Bentley joined me, but didn’t start the car. He sat in his quiet way and waited for me to speak. I raised my head, leaned back against the seat, and closed my eyes. “I can’t go back in there.” Telling Bentley I can’t wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do and I was sure he knew that.
“We can go somewhere else for a little while if you want,” he said. “We can go back to the gym or to Blair’s house if—”
I shook my head, feeling the panic creep back in. The last thing I needed was a trip to my best friend’s house. The place where I had first heard the bad news. A house with a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister. No way.
I opened my eyes and forced myself to tell the truth, to make him understand. “I mean I don’t want to go back in there, ever. It’s too hard, I just . . .” The lump in my throat grew too big to swallow. I used the back of my hand to wipe away a few tears. “Can you please tell my grandma I need to leave now?”
Bentley’s forehead wrinkled. “So you do want to go with her to New York?”
No. I don’t want that. At least there was one thing I was sure about.
“If I stay with you, I can keep training like normal?” Like an elite, not like a girl headed for college and only needing watered–down routines. “I can go to National training camp and everything?”
“Absolutely,” Bentley said with a firm nod.
I exhaled. “Then that’s what I want. Can you tell her?”
Bentley didn’t move right away like I’d hoped. He watched the guy from the funeral home get into his car and drive off. “Karen, you’re going to have to go back in your house eventually. You’ll have to come inside and pack. There’re things to take care of before making this change. It’s not something we can do in a day.”
“Right.” I nodded and opened the car door, planting a foot in the snowy grass. I made it two steps toward the house before collapsing onto the ground. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face. No matter what Bentley or Grandma said to try to coax me out of this state, I couldn’t get myself to do anything but crawl back into Bentley’s car.
It was humiliating, and I don’t think anyone knew what to say or do except to let me have my way.
Eventually, Coach Bentley took me back to the gym, and a couple hours later, Grandma showed up in her rental car with suitcases for both of us and a room booked at a hotel between the gym and the lawyers’ office, where we could stay and finalize the details. It was the only time that I got scared and didn’t fight through it. I didn’t even consider fighting through it. I just needed to move on. Even if that meant agreeing to therapy for my panic attacks (Grandma’s idea) and regular calls with her to check in.
I’d do anything she asked if I could pretend that they were still there in that house while I stayed somewhere else. Like being out of town for a competition or training camp. And therapy was something I’d be willing to try if it got rid of the visions I kept having ever since the policemen showed up at my best friend’s door to deliver the bad news—the sounds, the images, the video playing through my mind of a black Toyota tumbling off the interstate, the semitruck slamming into it, the woman inside with a half–crushed skull and the decapitated man beside her with seventy percent of his body still determined to remain with his wife…All of it was contrived by my own imagination and sometimes, like right now, I couldn’t help but wish I’d seen the real accident, because nothing could be worse than this. Nothing.