Head of the River (2 page)

Each oar has a story. European Champs, worlds, nationals, Olympics. All the names of my parents' crews are painted onto the spoon of the blade. When I was a kid Dad would lift me up and let me touch the raised gold lettering and show me the names, Jodie Cummings and Vasile Popescu. Even then I knew I wanted my own painted oar one day. I hope that day is coming.

I don't even realise I've fallen asleep until I wake to my brother tickling my upper lip.

‘Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,' he says. His traditional morning greeting. Which is better than his other favourite, ‘wakey, wakey, hands off snakey'.

We always sit in the same spots for dinner. Dad at one end, Mum at the other and Cristian and I facing each other on either side. Mum insists on family mealtimes if we are at home at the same time. Which is getting rarer. She says the dinner table is where families do their best talking. Tonight, though, the mood is murky.

Cristian eats in virtual silence and refuses dessert.

It's
papanasi
, sweet cottage cheese dumplings with sour cream and jam. A family recipe. Mum learnt to cook all of Dad's favourite Romanian dishes. It was her way of helping ease the homesickness that she says flattened him when he first moved to Australia.

‘So yum,' I tell Mum, hoeing in.

‘Are you sick?' Mum asks Cristian.

To my knowledge he has never turned down
papanasi
before.

‘I'm not sick. I don't want to eat stupid Romanian food all the time. It's making me fat.'

‘Don't call your mother's food stupid,' Dad says. ‘She work hard. She cook for you. Apologise.'

‘Sorry,' Cristian mutters.

‘You are a healthy growing boy. You need plenty of energy,' Mum says. ‘You're not fat. You're a big boy.'

I caught Cristian looking at himself in the bathroom mirror last week, grabbing a chunk of his tummy. He gets plenty of flack at the river for his size. Always has. Usually it doesn't bother him. But he was flogged badly today.

‘Big is the same as fat!' Cristian says.

He pushes his chair roughly away from the table and walks out.

Mum jumps up to follow him.

‘Leave him, Jodie,' says Dad, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘He is beaten today. Beaten men do not have celebration.'

Mum nods and we sit down and pick at our dessert in silence. As soon as I can, I leave the table to find out if he's okay. I knock on Cristian's door. Our knock. Three short raps.

‘You in there?' I call through the wood.

I hate seeing Cristian upset. It makes me jumpy and unsettled. We've always been close. Twins usually are.

He opens the door a crack and I see he's been crying.

‘I'm fine, Leni, go to bed.'

‘It's months until the Head of the River,' I say. ‘You'll come good.'

‘I've got to get fit again, like last year.'

‘We'll go for more runs together. Don't worry, there's still heaps of time. You've got a good base.'

‘I'm tired, Leni. I might just go to sleep.' He closes the door and I can't help feeling down. When one of us loses, we all lose.

I crawl into bed too, even though it's not even nine. I'm nearly asleep when my phone beeps with a text.

Hey pretty girl, congrats on your race. We sucked tho! Wish we were together tonite. Love u. Adam xxx

He's attached a topless selfie. I send a text back telling him not to worry about the race. But I don't attach myself topless because I don't want to end up on some dodgy website or Adam's Facebook page. I'm not that dumb.

The photo of Adam is hot. But I'm still not sure. Us. Adam and Me. Me and Adam. Six months ago I started to get the feeling Adam was into me. He'd look my way during training. He even got in trouble for it a few times.
Eyes in the boat, Langley.
I was flattered. Adam's popular and good-looking in a wiry, freckled way. He has beautiful eyes that are distractingly light blue with dark edges, a drop-off to deeper water. Word filtered down.
Adam Langley likes Leni Popescu.
I'd never had a boyfriend before so I froze. What next?

Adam texted me one night and I opened it like a present.

Hi. It's Adam. Are you awake?

I was little-girl-on-a-pony excited. We texted until after midnight and I fell asleep, my phone pressed against my cheek.

At school the next day he asked me to sit with his group. I usually sat with my friend Audrey and her knitting circle, but she pushed me to meet Adam instead. Something about it being my
Sixteen Candles
moment. When the popular guy falls for the quiet girl. Perhaps if she'd known a simple seat change would alter our friendship forever, she wouldn't have been so keen.

Adam and I ate lunch together with the whole of Year Eleven watching on. ‘See you at rowing?' he said. ‘Drink after?' I realised it was probably a date.

After rowing he took me for coffee, bought me a little square of caramel slice and asked me to a party that weekend. I said yes, with the taste of chocolate melting on my tongue. He held my hand across the table and, even though he acted confident and sure of himself, his palm was sweaty and shaking.

At the party we kissed in a dark corner of the garden. Then he held my hand again – this time in front of everyone and when he dropped me home he asked me to be his girlfriend. I said ‘yeah, okay'. Even though I didn't know him at all. Because that's what you say when a good-looking, popular guy asks you to go out. Don't you? Especially if you've been plucked from the wall like a creeping vine. The imprint of your body left behind on the bricks.

It was only later that I thought about the kiss.

First kisses should be lingering and exciting. Ours was rushed and awkward. He smelt and tasted all wrong. He kept poking his tongue into my mouth like he'd lost something in there and was trying to find it. It was like he was a piece of Duplo and I was a piece of Lego. Right from the start, Adam didn't feel like the right fit.

I should break up with him, but I don't even know how. Adam's the only boyfriend I've ever had. How do I tell him he's not the one?

Lying on my side I look at my inspiration board – always the last thing I do before sleep. It's a corkboard full of photos, quotes and inspiring things. It keeps me going when my body and head ache and everything feels too hard. When motivation hides from me.

In the middle is a cut-out of the Head of the River cup, which I've coloured in with gold pen. I want it so badly it hurts. I like to touch the cup with my hand and imagine my bow girl going over the line first, thousands of people screaming on the banks of the Barwon River. Thinking about it gives me goose bumps. There's a quote posted up that I think about during training: ‘Pain is just weakness, leaving the body'. To the left of that is an old newspaper story I found online and printed out.

Pocket Rockets win Gold!

Aussie double scullers Peter Antonie and Stephen Hawkins were 15 kilos lighter on average than every other crew when they lined up to race for Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992. Everyone thought they were too puny to take out the race. But they led early, ahead of Austria and Holland and went on to win Australia's first gold rowing medal in 44 years.

Peter and Stephen shouldn't have won, but they did. They stood up to crews that were bigger and stronger than them and took victory. Because they wanted it more.

I smile, flick the light off and crash.

I want it the most, too.

Cristian

Mum comes in after dinner and sits on the edge of my bed, shoving a pile of dirty washing off the end. She doesn't have much time for housework and Leni and I are supposed to hold our own. Leni does a better job than I do. In housework and all things, really.

‘Okay kid?' she asks.

Mum has a way of looking into my soul and seeing the black spots in it.

‘I'm not fit enough,' I admit, feeling ashamed. I wasted my pre-season dodging training and playing computer games.
Eating.
‘We shouldn't have lost today. It was a shambles out there.'

‘It won't be the last time you screw up,' she says. ‘Dad and I lost plenty of races.'

‘But you won plenty, too.'

‘Sure. But in rowing, you've got to learn to take the rough water with the glassy pond. Otherwise it will break your heart. Now show me your hands.'

I hide my blistered hands under the covers and she pulls them back out gently.

‘Let me do a little nursing. I like to take care of my babies.'

‘I'm 6 feet 4. I'm not your baby anymore,' I say.

‘I don't care if you grow to be 8 feet. You'll always be my baby boy. Now come out to my operating table.'

Under a light at the kitchen table she holds my wrists firmly, like I'm three years old and might squirm away. A pale yellow infection has crept in with the dirty river water.

‘We need to dry out this infection,' she says. She goes to her heaving medical cabinet and fetches methylated spirits, opening the bottle. The smell of alcohol clears my nostrils.

‘I used to look after your father's hands when he was younger. Terrible blisters. He was holding the oar too tight. His teammates called him Jack the Gripper.'

I can see my dad holding the oar too tightly. He's intense sometimes.

Mum dabs the sharp liquid on my hands. It stings the raw skin like the kiss of a dozen bull ants. I draw a breath back through my teeth.

‘It's primitive, but it's the only thing that works,' she says. She blows cool air on my burning skin.

Mum's hands are soft now; she prefers walking and yoga studios to rowing. Dad tries to get her back on the water. ‘Jodie, you need to get your heels wet again,' he announces. As if she's a sea creature who's drying out on land.

Dad's been relegated to masters crews after a kid not much older than I am now snatched his seat in the Australian eight. He's still strong as an ox, even with two surgeries on his shoulder and one on his knee. His hands are tough and leathery with blister over blister over blister. Like bark rings on a tree.

Mum bandages up my sores with a dab of Friars' Balsam and sticking plaster.

‘They feel better already,' I say. ‘Thanks, Mum.'

‘It's early in the season, Cris, be patient and do your work. Forget about what people expect of you.'

‘I wish I was more like Leni. She's so focused.'

‘She hates to lose. Do you remember our games of Monopoly when you were kids?'

‘Yeah.'

We smile, remembering Leni wiping us off the board and draining the bank of funds. Her tantrums if she happened to lose, which was rare.

‘I need to keep my scholarship,' I say, a flutter of panic rising in my chest.

Leni and I have to work hard to keep our full sporting scholarships at Harley. In the summer we row and in the winter, it's rugby for me and cross-country for Leni. We are expected to excel at both sports and make sure our marks are high and steady. There's no such thing as a free ride. I've got to get my rowing sorted out.

‘It was one race, Cris. Your scholarship is safe. Now go to sleep. It's been a big day.'

Lying in bed, all I can think about is our race, reliving the humiliation. It all came apart at the Big Bend. We were pulling hard and Nick lifted the rating, but Stotts was closing in. Then Adam caught a crab. In rowing, a crab isn't something you eat on a seafood platter. It's when an oar gets trapped under the water and you can't get it back out.

Adam stopped rowing for a few strokes and the boat started to flop around. We lost the plot.

‘Come on!' I shouted, even though technically I'm not supposed to talk from the middle of the boat. ‘Get it together! Sit the bloody boat up!'

That's when Stotts came past us. We were so busy watching them take our boat that we didn't ease off the stroke side. We skewed right and headed for the bank. Charley stood up in the boat, screaming at us to row hard on bow to avert a crash. He tried to help rudder the boat around by sticking his skinny leg in the water.

‘Check stroke side!' he screamed.

Everyone on stroke slammed their oars in the water to swing us back into line. Water was flying everywhere. It filled up the bottom of the boat and sloshed around our feet.

Miraculously it worked.

The boat started to creak around the bend. We escaped cracking our boat in two, but the race was lost. Stotts got away, two other schoolboy first eights passed us. Dad's shouting got louder, the worse we rowed. He yells at me in Romanian, which makes it worse. The guys like to mimic his thick accent in the sheds.

‘Cristian, more legs! Cristian, quick hands! Cristian, shoulders back!'

‘Would he just shut up?' I panted to Adam.

It felt like an eternity but we finally limped over the line at the Hawthorn boatsheds. All I wanted to do was collapse under a tree with a feed. The best part of regattas is getting the love at the parents' picnic. But our coach, Mr West, aka Westie, made us turn the boat around, without even going into the bank, to row all the way back to the city. Another 8.6 ks. Sadistic.

‘Bring back Mr Freedman,' muttered Adam.

‘Yeah, I miss Freedo,' I agreed.

Our old coach, Mr Freedman might have steered us to victory last year but he wasn't coming back this season. He was on stress leave. We knew something was up when he started turning up for training in his pyjama bottoms. After Freedo left, Dad was in line for the job until some
of the parents complained about his ‘grasp of English'. It
was the first time I was relieved Dad hadn't bothered to master the language.

After a little political manoeuvring Westie was bumped up from the seconds. Around the sheds, he's hated and feared in equal measure.

It was like him to keep flogging us after a humiliating loss. I was sunburnt, hot, exhausted and thirsty. The skin on my hands was tearing apart like tissue paper. Still he kept having Charley call out hard pieces and asking us for more.