“It’s delicious,” Jasmine gushes.
She would grow up to be the kind of woman who raves about lettuce.
“It was so interesting to watch Hallie compete today,” she says. “You know, knowing you coach her now.”
“ ‘Interesting’?” I echo.
That sounds like a euphemism for bad.
“I loved her new floor routine,” Jasmine insists. “I made a note of it on-air, even—I was talking about how you choreographed it yourself, and how excited I was to see Hallie compete it for the first time today.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “That’s actually very nice of you. Thank you.”
“I’m sure she would’ve liked to do a little bit better in the rankings today,” Jasmine says. “But, hey, you know I always love to root for the underdog.”
She winks, as if there’s a camera waiting somewhere to catch her reaction. There’s not.
“She’s a good, hard worker. I think she’ll bounce back just fine,” I say.
“She’s not tough to discipline?” Jasmine asks.
The question catches me off guard. “We don’t really need to discipline her.”
“Sure,” she says skeptically.
“No, really. It’s actually been really interesting, figuring out a coaching style that’s different from the one we grew up with,” I continue. “You remember, Dimitri always said he was hard on us because that would be best for us. But with Hallie, I don’t know, she just works hard.”
Jasmine doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she sips quietly from her wineglass. I regret speaking so candidly about Dimitri in front of her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to imply anything about the way he coached. I know, obviously, things are different now that he’s your… husband.”
The word still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“No, it’s all right, you don’t need to apologize,” she says, twisting her diamond engagement ring and staring down at her salad, like she’s trying to find the right words. “I know he… I mean, he was…” She trails off and sighs heavily.
“Is he still like that? I mean, when it’s just you two?” I ask tentatively.
I know I’m prying, but it occurs to me that Jasmine might not have anyone else she can talk to like this. We used to confide in each other all the time—more often than not about the man who’s now her husband—but I wouldn’t be surprised if she stays tight-lipped about what he’s really like among her new set of friends.
My salad arrives. Jasmine pauses, politely watching the busboy set it down in front of me. She looks grateful for the opportunity to collect her thoughts before she speaks.
“He’s a good man,” she finally says in an even voice. “He provides a beautiful life for us, and he is so respected in the community, and he makes me happy.”
I know what Jasmine looks like when she’s not being totally honest. I’ve seen it before, back when we were kids. It was easy to lie about doing two sets of reps of crunches instead of three, or to pretend we didn’t eat the extra whipped cream on our chai lattes at Lolly’s. I’m not married, so I can’t judge firsthand what’s normal and what’s not in her relationship. But she doesn’t sound like a woman in love. She sounds like a defense attorney.
“Right,” I say.
Discomfort clings to me like an itchy, too-small sweater. There’s more I want to know.
“But what’s it… like? Being married to him? I mean, I can’t imagine,” I say.
It sounds like I’m openly gawking, and I guess I am. I’ve spent years wondering what their relationship could possibly be like, and after getting a glimpse of it at their party, my curiosity has only intensified.
She gestures to the bartender for another glass of wine.
“I mean, you know him,” she says, shrugging. “Sometimes, he has his… moods,” she admits. “You remember those.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And he… he’s particular, you know? He likes things to be a certain way. Sometimes, he gets upset when things aren’t right.”
“He used to take it out on us,” I say bitterly.
Maybe that’s a step too far, but Jasmine doesn’t disagree with me.
“He meant well, but it wasn’t right,” she says.
“It took me a long time to clearly see how that affected me, because at the time, it all felt so normal,” I say. The words come more easily now, since I know Jasmine will agree with me on this point. “Or, at least, if not normal, like everything was in service of a greater goal.”
“Glory,” we intone at the same time, like we’ve heard thousands of times before.
In the back of my head, I hear the word in a guttural Russian accent, and I bet she does, too. For a moment, the past seven years collapse, and I feel like we’re just kids again—giggling friends who finish each other’s sentences. It makes me miss how we used to be. Nobody has ever replaced her.
“But I think that’s changing, no?” she says. “Dimitri’s old-school, but he’s pretty much the only one left.”
“I mean, Ryan and I do our best,” I concede. “Hallie’s mostly pretty easy, but even so, we don’t push her any harder than she’d push herself. I mean, god, the world is not a good place for gymnasts right now. You know what I mean.”
“I do,” she says heavily.
We don’t even need to say it out loud.
“But as horrible as that is, this isn’t the first time there’s been a scandal like that—awful things like that have happened before,” I point out.
“In dark, shady fucking corners, yeah,” she says grimly.
“The rest of the sport, though? I think it’s getting a little better,” I say.
“I think I see that, too,” she says. “At competitions, it’s like… whoa. The girls all have muscles and thighs and don’t hide the fact that they eat.”
We both look limply down at the remaining salad on our plates.
“I don’t know about the girls Dimitri works with, but Hallie has personality. Sass. Or, as he might call it, attitude,” I say.
“Nothing we were allowed to have,” Jasmine adds, shaking her head.
“Ha. No. But Hallie’s good. Happy.”
“She’s okay with food?” Jasmine asks.
“She eats, she does yoga, she’s confident…” I say.
Jasmine lets out a low whistle, understanding the implication: Hallie’s not like we were. “Good for her.”
“She has a tutor, but she has a whole plan: Olympics first, then college. She talks about going to law school someday. For her, there’s a whole world out there,” I explain.
I don’t have to spell it out for Jasmine. For us, there was no other world. We’re here, after all, aren’t we? I stab a piece of lettuce with my fork.
“I wanted to be a fashion designer,” Jasmine says suddenly. Her eyes are spacey, vacant, like she’s dreaming about some far-off memory. She turns sharply toward me. “Did you know that?”
“Maybe?”