Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

“Stop hovering,” Daniel manages to say.

Stefan takes the hat off Daniel’s head. “Give me your coat.” And his father complies. “Now your scarf.”

But Daniel is halfway down the hall. Stefan knows where he’s going: into his bedroom, where he’s set up his desk, where his computer is, where somehow Daniel feels he can breathe.

Okay, Stefan knows he’s got maybe half an hour before Daniel comes out of his room, calmer, ready for a beer and the dinner that Stefan has to go out and get. He does so most nights without a murmur of protest. He likes walking the streets. That’s his newest occupation during the days, and almost every day he ends up at the High Plains Ice Hall. Sitting high up in the bleachers, Stefan watches the Olympic ice skating hopefuls who come from all over the world to train there. For hours on end he doesn’t move until she — Mitsuko Kita — skates onto the ice. It’s only then that Stefan makes his way closer to the rink so he can watch her spin and swoop and jump and glide with a grace he finds mesmerizing. Often he’s late to pick up his father because he can’t tear his eyes away from her tiny figure on the vast white ice — so singular, so determined, and so vulnerable all at once. Stefan feels he could watch her forever.

That’s his skill, he’s decided. He’s a watcher. He notices everything. Every wrong turn of a shoulder, every tight twirl that lasts a split second too long, every toe pick that is an inch off its intended target. He’s taken to bringing a notebook with him and recording all Mitsuko’s triumphs and mistakes, day by day. He has no idea what he’ll do with the results, but his note-taking increases his pleasure in watching and so he continues.

Of course he hasn’t told his father what he does with his days. He knows him well enough now to know Daniel would have something harsh to say — something about voyeurism, about time wasted, about one more detour Stefan has chosen instead of the right road to success. Especially if Stefan told him that some days, when he can’t stop himself, he follows Mitsuko through the streets of town as she walks home beside her coach, a ramrod-straight Japanese man in his fifties. Every day the older man talks to her during the walks, rapidly, sometimes hitting the palm of one hand with the fist of the other as he explains a point. The young girl listens respectfully, her head dipped in deference, nodding from time to time.

Stefan doesn’t like this interaction at all. It verges on something unsavory to him, and so he walks behind and makes sure Mitsuko arrives safely at her apartment. Only when her coach leaves her there and continues on, only when the glass front door of the building closes behind the tiny skater and Stefan considers her safely inside, only then does he move on.

Stefan keeps this private pleasure to himself — the watching, the note-taking, the following. He’s not hurting anyone, is he? And maybe sometime he could even present Mitsuko with his notes. They might help her. They might even add to the likelihood that she will make the Olympic team in 1998, the Nagano Games. That’s all he wants. To be some kind of help.

On this Thursday night, the pregame show is on for the Denver Nuggets, and Stefan settles himself on the living room couch, a beer in hand, to prepare for the game, which will fill his evening. The play-by-play guy, Drew Goodman, is talking about their rookie guard, Jalen Rose, first-round pick out of the University of Michigan. The Nuggets’ record is nothing to write home about, perched at the break-even mark, but this Rose guy is going to be good, Stefan thinks. He can’t wait for the game to start so he can watch him. Maybe his dad will do delivery tonight so he can watch the whole game without interruption. Yeah, that would be sweet — the Nuggets game, another beer, Chinese food from the Lotus Blossom, and Stefan would be set. He easily acknowledges to himself, if not to his father, that he’s happier than he’s been in a long time.

Daniel, in his bedroom, sits upright in his desk chair and breathes deeply. Some doctor somewhere, when he was still consulting doctors about his condition, told him he might be able to quiet the panic attacks by deep breathing. It doesn’t work, but Daniel, in desperation each time one hits, tries it anyway. He has no other solution.

As a distraction he turns on his computer and scrolls through the in-box of his e-mail. Ruthlessly he deletes every message without a familiar name. Some of the deletions could be students whose names he never bothered to learn, but he hasn’t the patience to open each one to find out. And then, in the midst of the spam about refinancing your home and enhancing your penis, he finds Isabelle’s e-mail. The subject line is “Merry Christmas,” and so he almost deletes it. But he doesn’t. He recognizes her e-mail address and opens it instead.

Daniel,

I don’t know where you are but that’s the beauty of e-mail. I don’t have to know in order to write to you. I’m thinking of you and hoping that you will have a happy Christmas. My life has taken an unexpected turn. I’m trying to see it as a positive, but I have to confess (especially to you, since I only tell you the truth) that it’s a struggle. I hope you’re not alone this holiday season. It’s the time for family, isn’t it? And I hope you have someone with you.

Isabelle

What a melancholy Christmas message. So different from her last e-mails to him, in September, when she seemed to be flying high with optimism and fervor. It’s probably the guy, he thinks. He probably dumped her. That’s what it sounds like to him. The “unexpected turn” part of her message. And the worry that he not be alone, as she probably is.

Well, that’s what happens in your twenties. You often make a mess of things. He certainly did. Marrying Stephanie because she was available and there and wanted to marry him. Having two children he wasn’t ready to raise. Drinking too much, working construction, on a path to copy his old man’s miserable existence. Desperate. And then finally, when he hit thirty, beginning to write, a decision that saved his life. Too bad the writing can’t save his life now.

He should tell Isabelle some of this, he thinks, but how to say it so he doesn’t sound condescending? And she didn’t ask for advice. Maybe he should just wish her a merry Christmas and be done with it.

But he doesn’t want to be done with it. He wants her back in his life, with all the attitude and sauciness and appreciation she brought to him. He wants to matter to someone.

He hits Reply and begins his e-mail. His breathing slows, his panic recedes.

Isabelle,

I’m in Colorado Springs, Colorado, teaching a bunch of dolts. There isn’t one student who can hold a candle to you. My son, Stefan, is with me and he can’t find a job in Colorado either, although to be fair, taking charge of his old man, as he seems to be doing, could be described as a full-time job.

What happened to that guy you met? The one you wrote me about the last time, who convinced you to stay in Berkeley?

Daniel thinks about that last paragraph. Is that overstepping some invisible line? Does he have the right, the standing even, to ask her that? He stares out his bedroom window as he ponders. There’s another brick building right next door. Nothing to look at. Nothing to help him decide. Oh, what the hell — he wants to know the answer to his question, so he’s going to leave it right there. She can answer it or not. It’s up to her.

I hope the Bay Area has turned out to be the place that encourages you to write. Don’t let your gift slip through your fingers.

Merry Christmas,

Daniel

And he hits Send before he can reread it and delete the question he’s dying to have answered.