We Happy Band of Sisters

Maggie MacLean was standing in the tall, wide doorway of Newell Boat House, just at the line that divides the vast room stacked with boats and oars from the grey pier that slopes gently down to the Charles River. Like the other ten women who stood in a semicircle listening to their coach. Harry Parker, she was wearing gym shorts and a tank top--hers was grey, with blue letters that said "U.S.A. Rowing Team Camp." But unlike the others, on her large, strong hands she wore protective leather gloves.

Parker was standing on the pier with his back to the gray seven-in-the-morning sky that hovered on the edge of a drizzle, making a few dry, formal jokes in his New England-patrician way. After a minute or so, he moved on abruptly to the business of the day, calling out the names of the ones who would row in the first boat of four, the ones in the second boat, the unlucky ones who would have to stay behind to work on the ergometer machine. No one knows what Parker will do from one day to the next, so everyone listened carefully. But this morning there were no surprises. Two boats of fours meant seat races--a standard process of elimination that involves switching two rowers to determine who is slower--and that was pretty much what everyone had expected.

Seat racing was the method that had been used to weed out 32 women from the 75 who had competed at the women's National Championships at Princeton in June, and once those 32 had arrived at the Olympic Camp at Harvard, seat racing had been used to trim the number to 11. As the crowds thinned out, the pressure had grown less and less intense; no longer was there a swarm of women to speculate about, to compare yourself to, to try to rank in lists. Now everyone knew more or less where they stood. It only remained to eliminate one more person, and the ten women who would represent the United States at the World Rowing Championships in Nottingham, England at the end of the month would be chosen, settled. Except, of course, for the question of who would be chosen to race in the boat of eight, and who would be chosen as the two spares.

But today the pressure seemed to have lifted itself, at least temporarily, gathered its forces, and landed heavily in one big lump on the shoulders of one person, Maggie, and she was feeling it. She was the one who was being seat raced this morning, and even though no one said anything, everyone knew it. Two weeks before, she had developed tendonitis as a result of rowing incorrectly and had asked Parker if she could have ten days off--she could feel the resentment about that, as if Parker had given her a vacation. Now she was getting another chance, but something had gone wrong. In the ten days that she hadn't rowed, the callouses that rowers cultivate had disappeared and her hands had gone soft.

When she went out on the river again for the first time, her hands had gotten chafed and cut so badly that she had to go to UHS for treatment. Then Harry put her on the ergometer machine, the erg, a contraption that measures the speed of your rowing. It looks like a medieval torture machine, and two minutes on it is like agony. The pain was almost unbearable, but Maggie kept going because, well, when you want to make the national team and Harry Parker tells you to do something, you just do it. When she went back to UHS and showed them her mutilated hands again, they told her, "You don't belong here--you should be up on the fourth floor--Psychiatric."

But here she was again of course, striding down to the deck on her long, gangly legs, carrying the slender red-and-white-tipped oar that towered above her, hoping this time wouldn't be the last. Her tangled, sandy light brown hair was pulled back carelessly into a pony tail, and her hands were protected as best they could be by bandages and gloves. Along with the three women who would be rowing with her in the four, she heaved the boat into the river, following the orders called out by the coxswain in a long, low shout. "Okay, hold, Ready? Lift!"

The two boats of fours shoved off a few feet into the river, where they drifted waiting for Parker, who was still on the pier conferring mysteriously with an assistant: "I don't think she knows that we know"... "Well, I hope she works hard, because when she's good, she's very good." Finally Parker climbed into the launch, the motorboat from which he scrutinizes his rowers, and chugged off to where the two fours were already gliding along. The rowing was smooth, steady, rhythmic, as the oars skimmed through the water and flipped up, over, back, skim, up, over, back. Broods of ducks, a few sculls, the Boston skyline, the beginnings of rush hour traffic, and a Coca Cola sign that flashed "7:32, 74 degrees," all passed by; the emerging sun sent gold glints off the State House dome:

"Hoooooo, ready!" Parker called through his bullhorn, and suddenly the boats surged ahead, followed closely by the launch. Parker stood majestically in the bow, his white shirt flapping in the breeze, his chiseled profile silhouetted against the now blue sky. He held his head high and watched closely as the two boats sped forward glancing occasionally at the silver stopwatch he held in his hand.

The surge subsided, and Parker made some notes on a yellow pad. Then he directed Maggie and another woman, Annie Warner, to switch boats. This was it Maggie and Annie moved slowly and carefully, their movements synchronized: hands grasp the boats legs shift over, hips swing down, "Full power...Hoooooo!" Another surge, then another switch back, and a final surge, Maggie didn't do well.

Back at the boat house, the women heaved the boats out of the water and carried them over their heads to stack them inside. It was after nine now, and people were milling around, making plans for breakfast, chatting with Parker, greeting Claudia Schneider--who had been condemned to the erg for the morning workout. Maggie was off in the shadows of the stacked boats, removing the gloves and gingerly taking off the bandages. Her hands hurt badly, they were killing her. But she couldn't tell anybody. No one could know.

The group started to drift off in twos and threes to Eliot House, which has been home, more or less, for the past month. Maggie made her way across the Anderson Bridge with Nancy Storrs--she knew Nancy probably better than any of the others, having rowed with her all spring in Cambridge at the Eastern Development Camp, a private rowing club. They paused in the Eliot House-courtyard, where a few people are almost always sitting and talking on the steps or the grass or the patio. But Maggie was quiet, and she soon left to take a shower before breakfast.

Nancy stayed for a few minutes to talk to Daig O'Connell, a red-haired, sunburnt crew coach from Berkeley who goes out in the launch with Parker every day, trying to soak up what he can from the master. At the same time, he serves as a link between the inscrutable Parker and the anxious oarswomen, who try to extract what information they can from Daig.

"Was I better today? I was trying not to lean forward so much. Could you see that?" Nancy was sitting dangling her legs from the stone railing of the patio, her open, friendly face looking a little worried. "Yeah, I think I could." Daig was being encouraging, but not enthusiastic.

Wiki Royden wandered out of an entry, still in her gym shorts, and sat on the steps at Nancy's feet. She had been a junior at Radcliffe last year, but dropped out in the fall and went home to California to just do nothing for the first time since she was 12--the first time she hadn't been in school or working out regularly or both. Then she came back in the spring to train at the Eastern Development Camp, where she met Maggie and Nancy, and in June she won the Nationals in a single scull. Now she was looking up at Daig with an anxious expression in her dark, moody eyes.

"Was I better today?" Daig gave her the same noncommittal encouragement he had given Nancy. "Did Harry mind that I was goofing off so much today?" (During a break on the river, Wiki had called over to the launch. "Hey Harry, does that H on your bullhorn stand for Harvard or Harry?" "They're synonymous," Harry had called back.) Daig said no, Harry didn't mind at all.

Annie Warner was walking by on the way to do her laundry, but she paused to ask Daig a little hesitantly whether she had won her seat race.

"You won your second, but you lost your first just by a little."

"I lost my first?" Annie looked alarmed.

"Just by a little."

Annie disappeared into the laundry room, but she still looked worried when she came back.

"Does Harry notice when the boats start unequal?"

"Sure he does, he notices all that stuff. He keeps a whole log, he even looks at the pattern of a person's seat races it's very complex."

"When's he going to pick the spares?"

"Well, he doesn't want to pick them just now."

"So when's he gonna pick them."

"Sometime, maybe early next week. But once he picks them, they'll be definite. It'll be close anyway, and whoever he picks it'll be a fast boat, so no one should be too disappointed."

Annie looked at Daig like he was being naive. "Yeah, but who the hell wants to be a spare," she said darkly, almost to herself.

* * *

"I sure don't want to be a spare. I can tell you that." Jackie Zoch stretched her long legs down the seat at Tommy's Lunch and looked across the table at Carie Graves. Carle didn't have to worry about being a spare; she'd been stroke that morning, the most prestigious position in the boat. "I'm not doing all this just so I can go over there and watch other people row. So you get a free trip to England, so what? I can go to England on a tour, if I want go."

Jackie and Carle have been rowing together at the University of Wisconsin, and they both look and talk kind of like large cheerleaders--Carle is six feet one inch, and Jackie not much shorter--only they're tougher. Jackie is blonde and a little pouty, Carie dark and sleek and a little more sophisticated--she rows with large silver hoop earrings dangling from her ears. They've become breakfast regulars at Tommy's--another group, led by Nancy Storrs, drives over to "The House of 'Cakes" every morning, and today Claudia Schneider got a bunch of people to go to Zum Zum's because she was in love with their jelly. The waitress behind the counter at Tommy's made a point of calling over to Jackie and Carle to ask them if they wanted the last of the grapefruit juice, and later she came over to talk and joke around with them.

Carie had brought along her mail and was reading some of it out loud to Jackie and a couple of other rowers who were at Tommy's, none of whom had been lucky enough to get any letters of their own. The men's coxswain and the women's coxswain at Wisconsin had gotten married, and the coach had gone to the wedding and gotten all excited and jumped up and down, Carle announced. Mail gets to be very important when there's nothing at all to do except row and eat and sleep and row again--no T.V., no radio, no way to cook a meal, no mobility, no way to get away from people. Jackie was complaining. "You're dependent on others--I hate that."

The talk turned to the eternal subject, rowing, then to someone who'd been injured and had to drop out, then to Maggie.

"I have no sympathy with that kind of thing." Carle said, shaking her head. "My attitude is, you either make it or you break it."

"Yeah," Jackie agreed with vehemence. "It's her own fault. She should have known what she was capable of, she should have worn gloves or something. And you don't go crying to the coach or any of that stuff either. I mean, you can't go crying to the coach saying I have my period today and I don't feel well--I could have done that, I have my period today. But you don't, you just go out there. It's a kind of macho thing, really."

"Really, you just can't have sympathy with that kind of thing." Carie seemed to be trying to explain, to soften the harshness. "This is the big time--well..." She paused and looked at Jackie for confirmation. "Yeah, this is the big time, and you have to know what you're doing. You either make it or you break it."

* * * * * *

It had been a quiet afternoon in Eliot House, with just a few people hanging out in the courtyard and most apparently napping. Maggie's door had had a sign on it all afternoon that said "Sleeping," but at about 4:10 Harry Parker had knocked on the door and gone in. At about 4:20 he had emerged.

Now, at 5, he was standing on the pier at Newell waiting patiently for the joking and the chatting to subside so he could get down to business. Soon there were ten women sitting quietly on the bench, and he had their attention. He began quietly, in his deep, sonorous voice.

"I've...spoken to Maggie, and I...told her she won't be with us." He paused, scanned the group, and gave them a quick smile. "I guess now I can congratulate you all, and I guess now you can relax a little too. I'm sorry this past week has been quite as full of tension as it has. I just...wanted to give Maggie a chance and...see if she was capable of helping us."

The group was quiet, attentive. Parker continued, "Now I guess the question is when the boat will be settled. I guess the question I have for you is whether you'll be comfortable with having not eight people settled, but having ten of you all capable, and at some time I'll tell you what I think will be the best setup." He paused, seeming to sense the dissatisfaction. "If that proves to be too unnerving. I'd be willing to settle it. But that's my inclination right now." The group nodded, signaling their acceptance.

"There'll be no more seat-racing for a while"--Parker flashed a grim little smile--"but we might just want to look at a question or two." Scattered, hisses and some laughter broke the tension in the air. Carie Graves, who was sitting on the ground, started wriggling her six foot one inch frame. "I think a spider just crawled up my pants," she explained. The laughter spread, and the attentive silence was over. Questions were being directed at Parker from all directions, questions about the future. What about breaking the time standard? What kind of a boat would they have in England? How much time would they have to practice in it?

As the group broke up to get the boat ready, the atmosphere was relaxed, happy, almost festive. Chris Ernst, who seemed to be the team joker--the T-shirt she was wearing said "Slippery When Wet...isn't everybody?"--was keeping up a running commentary on the process of preparing the boat. At one point she came in making a low whistling noise by blowing through her hands, and soon everyone was sputtering through their clenched fists.

Lynn Silliman, the coxswain, who is only 16 and looks like a 13-year-old blonde-haired, pug-nosed tomboy, had seized the water bottle the crew takes out on the river and was impishly squirting Carie, who looked to be about twice her size. Lynn is obviously younger than the rest of the group, whose average age is 23--when Lynn saw Parker's son George reading a comic book called The Inkumans, she grabbed it and asked with keen interest, "Oh, have you read Swamp Things?"--but no one seems to notice the age gap too much, and today her mood was obviously in keeping with that of the team, Soon everyone was squirting everyone else.

Even when the boat had been heaved into the water, in an orchestrated response to the orders Lynn had barked out, the clowning around continued. A frisbee flew out from the direction of the boat house and looked seriously in danger of hitting the water, before Nancy Storrs made a deft catch and tossed it back. It went straight up, curved, and landed splat in the river. Everyone groaned. "Okay," Nancy said, "do I jump in now or later?"

But soon the frisbee was retrieved and the eight was on the water--eight pairs of knees bending up, eight oars gliding through the water, eight bodies pulling back, the whole thing working like a smooth, strong precision machine. The boat sped up the Charles, leaving behind Jackie Zoch who had been told to go out on a pair this afternoon.

Back at the boat house after the workout, the usual milling around was going on, and more water squirting and frisbee throwing, when Nancy suddenly emerged onto the pier with a cake. The team greeted her with cries of delight. What was the occasion, exactly?

"The occasion," Nancy announced, licking mocha icing off her fingers, "is that we are now a set unit--and you guys are gonna have to get along together."

There was a ripple of knowing laughter. "Don't we already?"..."Even if we hate each other?"

Maggie is sitting on the floor of her room, her back to the window that overlooks the courtyard where the team can be seen coming back from the river. The "Sleeping" sign is no longer on her door, but she can't hear anyone knock because her hair dryer makes so much noise. Her hair is flowing down her shoulders, clean and wavy and blonde, and her light blue eyes peer out from under it with a soft, sad look in them.

Ever since Harry Parker came in that afternoon and said, "Well, Maggie, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you," she's been in sort of a daze. The state she's in, after the last five weeks of training--the injury, the psychological pressure--well, it's just gotten to her. She doesn't even know whether or not she feels discouraged, she hasn't had time to really think.

She knows she wants to get out of Eliot House, as soon as possible, but what will come next is an open question. She has no apartment, no job at the moment--she took a leave of absence from her job selling computers until September--but she has money in the bank and a lot of options. Maybe she'll take a trip. The Harvard Business School has accepted her for next year and given her $7000, but she couldn't go to school and train at the same time. So maybe she'll defer admission--if she keeps rowing.

What is new to her about rowing in an eight is the element of competition. She's been involved in non-competitive sports, and she's rowed by herself. But by yourself, winning, she's found, is shallow, and losing is lonely. She likes rowing in an eight, and it has been a challenge, and she likes challenges, but has it all been worth it? She isn't sure now.

"I saw that if I wanted to do well, I was going to have to learn to hate people...I guess you have to like winning so much that you really want to beat someone else. I don't know, I'll have to think about it."

It was a challenge, but it was also tedious and, well, maybe a little disillusioning. "You get really tired of living with people, day in, day out--you didn't really have a chance to get away from people...And I didn't really like a lot of what I saw--things that were unsporting, just bad sportsmanship. I don't know, maybe it's because women's crew is such a new sport, but you'd think you'd be above that by the time you got to the world-championship level. I don't know." She hesitates, not really wanting to put into words what she wants to say. "It's a really dirty game. When you get in the boat, people just start playing games."

But she's still feeling unsure, there's still the possibility that she'll put off business school and go into training in the fall. "But I'll tell you one thing," she says with a bitter smile, "I like to do things well. And if I do go back, I'll be a real maniac.