Swimming (11 page)

Press On

I dive into the pool with three swimsuits and my sneakers on and drag myself across like some guy in a muddy trench who doesn’t want to die. The first wins are small. I ride them like little waves that disappear neatly into sand. One tidy win followed by another. Certain swimmers congratulate me while others sulk. I make a goal, beat the goal. I make another goal, beat the goal. The inside of my head gets big ideas; the outside remains the same. Almost everyone doesn’t care. The world is sleepy and peaceful.

I think she broke a state record
.

You think so?

Two hundred free
.

When?

Two weeks ago. Then again yesterday
.

Coach talk. I stand in third person and listen with both ears while keeping my eyes parked elsewhere.

Coach Stan is consulting Coach Coates of the Southeastern Clippers, leaders this year in a highly competitive second division. Everyone knows he was on Omaha Beach on D-day, where the waves were red with froth and his swimming and apnea skills saved him. He has one of those mouths with the thin hard lips like Sister Trout. He turns toward me; I straighten up.

All right
, he says
. Warm up—I’ll tell you when to swim full-on. When I say full-on I mean give it everything you’ve got. Got it?

He coaches me on his own time Wednesday afternoons, is tough, expects rapid execution, secretly wishes I were a guy. The state meet is coming up and I easily qualify, but interest in female athletics has dwindled to a solid zero. Lilly Cocoplat has chemically straightened her curls and is hanging out at the track laughing at things she doesn’t really find funny. Girls are wearing subtle brown eyeliner the nuns have difficulty detecting. Some ugly people stop being ugly and become cute people; some of the cute ones retire from cuteness forever.

Kids pair off; unusual kinships are formed. The halls fill with tension and drama as the nuns sigh and frown, smaller in their skirts and crosses, fully aware that the older we get, the more their power diminishes. We stop needing the nicknames, use their full titles both publicly and privately with a hint of compassion.
Poor old girls, poor dear sweet ones, poor fatty nuns
. Puberty eludes me; other than my size, nothing changes. Boys treat me exactly the way they’ve treated me my whole life: ignoring me and my gigantic height with masculine suspicion. I am flat, lanky, pimple free, have the type of light brown hair that does not inspire romance, am still a hidden girl.

National Velvet

My life is freer now that I’m sixteen and have a driver’s license. Mom takes advantage of my newfound freedom and I’ve ended up doing the parts of her job she doesn’t like, throwing gallons of bleach into shopping carts next to family-size boxes of cereals, mounds of apples, doughnut holes, bananas, ginger ale, milk, eggs, sliced turkey, powdered potatoes in a big red box. I make a big scene about going, but grocery stores relax me. I push my shopping cart in slow circles, idling up and down the aisles, hypnotized by creative packaging. Shopping carts with mothers attached pass mine with friendly feminine utterings. But they wish they hadn’t seen me. And I wish I hadn’t seen them wish they hadn’t seen me. I wave
toodle dooo
, grabbing two giant pink boxes of maxi pads and throwing them in, shifting my eyes onward as if I’m in a hurry. As soon as they’re out of sight, I slow down, pushing my shopping cart in slow circles, idling up and down the aisles.

Leonard’s gone. Bron’s got both arms crossed over her chest. Mom’s in solitary confinement, doesn’t wash her hair as often as she should, wears pajamas all day long. June’s been transferred from electronics to the photo lab at Wal-Mart. She comes home with a selection of creepy pictures we laugh at. I discover with dismay that not only has Dot got her period but she’s been hiding two huge boobs under unsightly sweaters. I hide my dismay with indifference. When I say something to June about it, June says:
Let it go
, so I do. Roxanne cuts her hair; it looks awful, but she thinks it’s New Wave. I lift weights every day although it is not recommended, hang out with Stan after I’ve finished my sets, sit in the bleachers, watching divers hover, then drop. These are excuses not to go home. The Cocoplat is living on planet Boy Crazy, gets in big trouble for illicit note passing, her cheeks blooming with drama. The nuns are exasperated. I have no friends.

Father Tim’s office looks like the inside of a dusty walnut. He’s sitting behind one of those ancient desks with fancy legs, drinking an endless cup of the tea the nuns supply. Depressed leather books line the wall, their pages collecting moisture. Father Tim ignores them, wants Mother in Kansas City for the state meet. I can’t believe it. There has been much discussion about how to break her out of her bed-church-library pattern and now he’s found the carrot.

I’m firm, cross my arms, stare at the books.
I can’t believe this. She’ll throw me off
.

Ahhh, she won’t now
. He’s doodling holy doodles with a pencil.

She’ll have one of her episodes
. I don’t budge.

She won’t. I’m telling you
. He means business.

Something else will happen. I’ll be distracted
. I hesitate.

Nothing else will happen
, he says, putting the pencil in an empty mug embossed with an artfully stabbed heart.
You’ve trained hard; you’ll swim well. Your mother is just going to watch
.

She makes me nervous
. I’m starting to plead.

It’s the perfect occasion for her to leave the house. She’s so happy for you
. He’s a reasonable priest.

Happy! She … she doesn’t care about swimming
. I know more about this than he does.

But she does love you
. Priests see the big picture.

She’s not ready. I’m with her every day; I know it won’t work. She’ll have one of her … things. It’s too soon
. I’m serious about this.

But nothing can shake his conviction that priests are ordained to drive families together because life is designed to pry them apart.
We’ll give her a chance, won’t we? Let’s give her a chance!
And with that he defeats me.

Pilots treat highways like runways, drive fast as though for imminent takeoff, observing their own set of rules because they are used to having nothing around them but air and cloud. Leonard was a rapid weaver, weaving in and out of traffic as though we were in a video game and not on a highway. Fellow Kansans grew testy, would honk and scream. Father Tim takes zero chances on the way to Kansas City, is prone to indecision at inopportune moments, a thermos of watery coffee and a red and black plaid blanket by his side. He makes frequent rabid eye contact with rearview mirrors, lets cars pass, flicking his lights to give them the okay, slowing down to a crawl when in the proximity of truck. It takes us five hours to get there. With Leonard we whizzed in at four.

I make him pull over to put his magic fragrance tree into the trunk.
It’s making me sick
.

Mother turns.
Calm down. Everything will work out just fine
. Her eyebrows bunched together in the middle of her face like one of those stuffed animals that the troubled of Glenwood sew out of socks.

I am calm
. Father Tim gives me a look in the rearview mirror and I slide my eyes out the window before he catches them again.

Dot and Roxy suffer from a terrible form of moodiness whose only known antidote is absolute silence. We look out the window at cars speeding by, watching the billboards that lead to a happy Jesus, the billboards that lead to stacks of steaming pancakes, the billboards that lead to a happy Jesus again. We look out the window, lulled by the dark arms of trees stretching up into sky, wisps of lower cloud, high trenches of snow, Dot hiding her boobs under a fuzzy blue turtleneck, her head dropping off to the side in a half-awake sleep.

We stay in a motel not far from the natatorium. It’s filled with swimmers at the pinnacle of their form. They’re laughing and shrieking, getting sodas from the machine, throwing ice cubes at each other, playing loud music, dancing. We see them that evening in the restaurant still laughing and shrieking, complicating their ponytails with glitter, standing behind their chairs and twirling as sparkles rise up around them before settling on the floor. Our table is quiet. Father Tim closes his eyes and mumbles a short prayer. Mother pushes things around on her plate. She’s wearing a gray sack with a rope in the middle and her hair looks bad, dark and damp at the roots. Dot and Roxy have turned into two clams with long hair and four staring clam eyes that never blink.

I stare them down.
Quit staring, you guys. You look like—

Roxanne’s black mood reveals itself.
Shut up. You’ve been staring since we got here
.

Dot seconds her.
She’s right
.

I laser them with both eyes.
Have not
.

Calm down, Philomena … everything’s fine
, my mother says, her face folded tightly like an envelope with a letter in it no one wants to send.

Quit saying that
. My moods are swinging like the Glenwood Brass Boogie Band. Father Tim sighs and blesses me in his head.

Dot sleeps next to me, doesn’t move a muscle, just lies down and closes her eyes like Snow White. Roxanne puts her headphones on, turns her back. Mom sits up reading, the light shining down on her face. I wake up intermittently, sometimes to her dozing face, sometimes to her reading face. I watch her for a while, then close my eyes, but her face remains pasted on the inside of my lids and my mind becomes so involved in senseless, animated chattering, it won’t let me sleep.

The sight of people chewing at the breakfast buffet, their eyes morning-vague, trays filled with boxes of cereal and anything else that fits, makes me lose my appetite. Swimmers are quiet, exuberance transformed into anxiety. I try to chew, but my jaw locks. I try to drink, but I cannot swallow.

My mother looks at me with destroyed eyes.
Eat something, Mena … everything will be all right
.

I’ve had enough.
Quit it! I don’t want to hear that everything will be all right coming from someone who doesn’t think everything will be all right. Okay? So just stop
.

Philomena
. Father Tim is sugaring his coffee carefully with a leveled teaspoon.
Your mother’s right; eat something, take a walk, stretch, clear your mind
.

I send him a message with my eyes.
You know nothing about the world, God man
.

I run in looping circles to loosen up, yet do not loosen up. We get to the natatorium early, standing by our car watching waves of out-of-town swimmers flowing toward the building in groups, filing out of buses en masse covered in contrasting colors, drenched in complementary colors—the blacks and yellows, the yellows and reds, the blue and whites, holding stuffed animals, hanging on to lucky charms, listening to Walkmans, following people carrying victory balloons on strings, wearing backpacks covered in pins that say number
I
!, that say winner!, that say swim!, their parents hanging on to big sponge hands they are already starting to wave.

An uncomfortable internal buzz starts whirring inside me.

Father Tim goes ahead to check in and verify heats.
I’ll be back in just one minute
. Mother leaps upon the occasion to be normal for one last nanosecond, then stops, making an
oh
as though someone invisible were punching her in the solar plexus. She doubles over, falling to her knees on the snow. I look down at her sweaty, crumpled hair and see a vista of sadnesses as one sees Glenwood in its entirety from the top of University Hill when one stops one’s bike and looks down, prolonging the time between pool and house.

Not here, Mom, come on, Mom, get up. Please
. The begging in my voice sounds hollow in my own head, as if my ears have been carefully folded over and taped shut. A blackness takes over my features like frozen dirt. I’ve gotten good at talking her down. But that’s at home.

Roxanne is twisting her hair into twists, aching for a doobie. Dot is standing, both hands dangling, her smooth high forehead and empathetic eyes making her look too pretty to think straight. Both of them have their eyes glued to Mother’s folded form on the sidewalk. I know what they are doing; they’re willing her to
rise, rise like the sun! with
all the telekinetic power they do not possess. We’ve recently seen a TV show with a guy in a turban who moved a spoon and some pencils using only the energy behind his brown cow eyes.

I harden my face.
Your heart won’t stop beating. Do you hear me, Mom? It won’t
.

She’s still shaking.
It’s the stress, a consequence … you wouldn’t understand
.

I harden my face harder.
A heart won’t stop just like that. It’s designed not to. You have to stab it or fire bullets into it to make it stop and even then it’s fixable. There’s this monk in Tibet who doesn’t breathe anymore, but he’s not dead…. Ask Sister Augusta, she knows all about … Mom, Mom, I have to go now. I have to go in there and swim. This is important. Like right now
.

Father Tim jogs toward us, kneels down next to her, putting one hand on her shoulder in the international sign of priestly concern.
Are you all right?

My heart’s acting up again. I’m just going to stay out here for a minute and then I’ll be up
. She’s breathing in gulps like a runner.

Why don’t you take a nice quiet walk around the grounds and I’ll take the girls inside. Don’t you worry about a thing now
. He’s using the tone he adopts for the dying.

Yes. Yes. I’ll do that. Listen, Mena, don’t mind me. I am fine. Really. I’m not going to … This is an unfortunate setback in a …

One of the Dark Catholics convinced her that children choose their parents from their perch in the heavens, whizzing down to earth like ticks with a vision. This makes her feel good. Occasionally she tells us that we need her to be the way she is so we can become the way we need to be and we laugh.

I look at Father Tim and my eyes say:
Told you so, little priest man
.

His eyes don’t change.
We had to give it a try
.

I run into the immense locker room, bumping hard into a thin blonde with white eyelashes who’s peeling a tangerine over the garbage bin. The locker I find has liza sucks anyone who asks written in red Magic Marker, a bad sign that makes my heart slump. I take my socks off, revealing transparent feet, violet toenails, veiny soles. I struggle getting my swimsuit on; it’s new, pale blue with two burgundy stripes down the side, two sizes too small, for maximum speed. A couple of swimmers look me over in a mean competitive way. I’d made my pony-tail too tight, so when I take it down my head tingles in pain. The pain feels delicious. I sit bent over the wooden bench with my back curving over my knees in a deep stretch, listening to the growling storm of noise lots of people make when they’re in a high-ceilinged room together, and I think
Life fucking sucks life fucking sucks
in that deep-mind voice a couple of octaves lower than my own.

I plunge into the warm-up pool, pull myself through. I pray not to shake and vomit.
Please, God, Our Holy Father, no fucking shaking and no fucking vomit
.

Mothers in bright T-shirts lean over the stands mouthing
You’ll be great
to their children with trails of mascara dripping into the corners of their smiles. There’s an old package of smoked almonds in the pocket of my sweats. I rip it open, suddenly ravenous. I watch swimmers preparing, coaches consulting, timers flirting, people in the stands drinking soda pop, kids in and out of the thirty-three stages of boredom experienced at a giant swim meet, old people getting older by the second, sitting patiently on their seatbones. I keep two almonds in my mouth, suck off the salt, rub them together, swish them around my tongue. They make clicking sounds as I knock them against my teeth, staring blankly at the pool.

Coach Stan had a talk with me before I left. He slapped his clipboard on his knee, stuck his jaw out so that it looked like a box someone had sliced in half, and said:
Keep your head. Just—
he paused.
Don’t—
he paused. —
You swim the intelligently paced swim and it’s in your pocket
.