Swimming (17 page)

That’s right, Mark
, says Sherm.
She’s got a full scholarship with Mankovitz this fall at Stanford University, so we’ll definitely be hearing from Pip in the future …

Nervous breakdowns pique people’s curiosity; they want to know why, even if they don’t care. Calls are made to the center of Kansas.
Glenwood Morning Star
archives are consulted. Later, at the press conference, the short, barrel-chested Milt from
Newsweek
gets a sad-but-professional look on his face and says:
What would your father have said … Your sister? Do you think they would have been … proud? And
I do accidentally dive over the table and push him and his chair over, and we do roll on the ground for a millisecond, and I do bruise my left elbow pretty badly, calling him the worst names I can think of, and it is photographed by that one bearded guy, but I win and Milt loses because I become America’s Saddest Sweetheart.

There are close-ups and, later, psychological commentary from a respected sports psychologist who explains the impact of drama combined with a never-lived youth. They have stills of me looking sad and sorry, pull out the photo of me with the orange face. People look at me, their faces dripping in pity. Peggy puts her arm around my shoulders, lowers her voice.
You could have said something. Now I feel like an ass
.

Well, that’s good
, I say,
because you
are
an ass
.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz puts a hairy red hand on my shoulder, squeezing.
Go get some rest now. We’ll meet up at the Farm
.

I nod and smile. The nod and smile mean Stanford University, the Farm, the future.

Later at a photo op, Mary Lou Retton gives me a bouncy hug that knocks the wind out of me, starting a pulsing ache between two ribs that I can still feel during times of physical duress. In the photo my eyes look like pasta shells glued onto a grizzly cub face, but I understand, finally, why my mother has so many nervous breakdowns; they empty your mind of every thought it ever had.

California Catholics
Wear Dark Shades

The Complicated Coast

There were things I did not know about Sunny Lewis when we decided to room together at Stanford. I did not know she was going to be a psych major, that she played sad songs on a sad steel-string acoustic guitar, that she hummed along as she strummed her sad guitar with wrinkly swimmer fingers, that she hummed and strummed other objects that were not a guitar when her guitar wasn’t around to calm herself down from all of the human behavior classes she was taking that were secretly making her crazy. I already knew that she liked to give free psychological counseling, but I didn’t know that I would be her guinea pig for the human emotional experience, that I would look up from my position on my recliner when the sad strumming suddenly stopped and she would be staring at me, analyzing.

Swimmers fall into two camps: those who want a balanced life and those who don’t care. Sunny cares. I don’t. I fall asleep every time I sit in a chair. I fall asleep in the middle of lunch. I fall asleep in the car with my key in the ignition. I fall asleep reclining in my recliner as Sunny strums a tale about what kind of horse a good cowboy rides in heaven. I fall asleep on the phone in the middle of a boring conversation with my mom twice in a row and she calls Napoleon Mankovitz the next day demanding action. They take my blood and analyze it for horrible things, but the verdict is plain and simple:
Just tired
.

I call my mother back and tell her to quit it, that swimming is an anchor, that it holds me steady, that I have to give it everything, then let it give back, that I have to do this or lose.

Full scholarship, Mom. It’s my life
.

It is not a life
, she says.

It is a life, I say.

It is not a life
, she says.

Shall we have discussions about life?
I say.

Your fath—

I’m hanging up now
.

Did you just hang up on your mother?
asks Sunny, staring.

No
, I say, reaching for the family-size pack of malted milk balls that I stash in the cubbyhole behind the phone.

Stanford University is easier than Holy Name. Nowhere, not under the cafeteria tables, not lurking in the wide corridors, not directing classes with long wooden rods that they point and jab, are there any stone eyes boring into my secrets, pulling every sin I have yet to commit to the surface and punishing me for it just in case they are not around when it happens. Neutral professors stand, clear their throats, and talk to those who listen. To those who listen not, they take no notice. Nun-inspired stenography skills turn out to be essential. I almost weep with pleasure as my hand slides across the page, every word down verbatim as other kids struggle, stuck in the middle of an unfinished thought.

My academic adviser is the handsomest man on campus and has the unfortunate name of Robert Boggs. Bob finds me
academically difficult to pin down
, tells me that my answers to his simple questions
create more questions
. Eventually it becomes clear that I am one of those people who should march toward a non-specific future, so I opt for an English major with a French option.

English is better than perfect. I sit around listening to real people talk about fake ones. Some students are animated, while others are tired observers, old beyond their years. Clever students who need their cleverness authenticated become quickly intolerant of other clever students, shouting and raising fists as TA’s scream
Keep it down
or lean their chairs back on two legs and watch, visibly pleased. The drama stimulates me, keeping me awake. Every day is almost exactly like the day before, bright orange and purple skied. I awake when it’s still night, eating breakfast and commenting on the new shapes Sunny has slept into her face as she ignores me through the power of radio, then we go to practice. Later, I sit through Comedy and Tragedy, Greek and Latin for Vocabulary Building, Chaucer’s Women, Astronomy, Basic Translation, then I practice again, going over the vast pockets of new knowledge in my mind.

O to talk to ye of little knownst yonder porridge
.

O ye of yonder porridge know thee of over yonder
.

OOOO ye weeping tears of leaking porridge yonder yonder yonder
.

We have a team dietician named Mona who wears skirts made out of plant. She explains the energy ratio output nutrition factor and has us keep food logs. Peggy says
I totally love your skirt
, totally lying, and Mona is pleased.
Thanks! It’s made from the yarn of a yucca!
I pack my food log with lie, halve the number of candy bars, turn cherry turnovers into fresh cherries, transform mint whips into protein bars. The only thing I don’t lie about is the banana and peanut butter sandwiches made on Texas toast, the vats of popcorn I smother in butter, then salt, the three bowls of optimistic breakfast cereal I cover in sugar and consume every morning.

Mona wants me to meet her in her office for a private discussion. She puts her face close to mine and tightly mouths the words:
Private discussion
. We meet after practice the next week. I put my big yellow watch on just in case I need to look at it pointedly; Mona is someone who enjoys a good talk so much she forgets to check how everyone else in the conversation is doing. She also takes too many vitamins and has no vices, which gives her excessive amounts of energy. She’s wearing an organic hemp sack with thin purple tights, offers me a cup of African tea she keeps warm in a silver thermos.

Bush people drink it when there’s no food
.

It’s the color of weak blood. I take a sip anyway, say:
Wow, hits the spot
. An obvious lie.

They walk through the Kalahari by night. Miles and miles. It’s really quite … well …

I look at my watch pointedly and she swipes the tea chat from her face. There are
urgent
things she wants me to know, that are
imperative
I do know. She fumbles, pulling out papers and graphs, articles high lighted in purple and yellow. She unrolls them, talking. She wants me to know that my body is an oracle or an edifice or a large library containing a memory of every thing I have ever consumed.
Do I know this?

Nod
yes
.

Would I throw garbage into a temple? Would I put rotten things on an altar? Would I offer poison to a loved one?
She stops, staring at me like an irritated Father Tod when he asks an obvious question about the devil.

I shake my head.
No
to garbage.
No
to rotten things.
No
to poison.

You are what you eat
, she says, using her hands like an Italian although I know she’s from Boston.

…
Yes O verily
, I say.

This is important
, she says.

I’m sorry
, I say.

Sugar does things. Unspeakable things. It takes your body hostage and your body
adapts …
like Patty Hearst. Am I familiar with Patty Hearst?

Nod
yes. I know who she is, Mona
.

Mona has a map of the human body standing skinless next to colorful posters of dancing señors and señoritas from Barcelona, her last, best vacation. The important organs are dissected into neat slices of pie; eyeballs are plucked, floating out like planets above the dry sockets of the human skull, the almighty brain rotating above like a beige Hormel ham. She swivels her chair, lowers her voice, solemnly says:
This is the human body … and
this
is sugar
. Teeth chew, sugar dissolves, teeth rot, falling. Planetary eyeball orbits contract, sugar laughs, igniting a fiery red trail that fuses straight to the heart, giving it a false sense of energy so that it ups its thumps. Sugar laughs harder, driving a truck straight into the human spleen. It jumps out, dances a jig, and the spleen dances with it for a while before collapsing from exhaustion. The pituitary, the epicenter of the human hormonal universe, goes haywire, trembles, barfing up some insulin, which sucks all the leftover energy from the human body, causing the human swim to collapse.

She turns, clasps her hands, weaving finger through finger.
Eventually sugar is … Do you hear me, Philomena? … There is no way on earth you can maintain a world-class time if you eat
breakfast cereal
from a
box
soaked in
sugar
for breakfast, and when I say no way, I mean it’s lucky you’re not pre-diabetic
.

She takes a deep breath.
You’re an addict
.

This makes me laugh. I’d copied stuff out of Babe’s perfect food journals. Under “snack” she’d written:
12 almonds, 1 pear
.

Sugar kills
, Mona whispers.

Sweetly
, I say, not mentioning the fried dough pockets stuffed with synthetic fruit and rolled in white refined poison powder that I buy from a baker so fat she has rolls on her wrists and sweats with the exertion of standing.

Mona taps my food journal with her knuckles.
I’m not kidding
, she says, and I notice that her dark brown eyes are the exact shade of Manny’s. I compose myself; Mona is making me feel ashamed.

Have you ever read Bud Lancer?
she asks, changing tactics.

No. I’m an English major, not a … you know, the great classics. Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc…
.

That’s fine. Personally, I think Bud Lancer should be required under graduate reading, but anyway. I want you to think about the original man … or woman, in their original environment. Think about our bodies, their bodies; what they were designed to do since the beginning of time; how nature hasn’t changed, how little we have … The nutrients that were needed to maintain a constant body temperature, help the body survive in extreme conditions. Do you think they would have survived for
ten minutes
if they consumed high amounts of sugar? Our bodies can’t handle it, and our brains, our brains … Let me tell you about br— We know nothing about brains, actually, but we will, and when we do, we’ll understand what all the excess sugar has done to us. Look around … Not in here. Out there. Look around. What do you see?

I look.
I see a light blue and orange sky that is stretching as far as the eye can see. The windowpane has a small hairline fracture …

She’s getting irritated.
The people … how are they?

Often irritated
.

She closes her eyes.
Okay. And …

Squinty …

Okay. And
.

Snooty …

And fat, no? They are fat, aren’t they?
She’s throwing her hands in the air like an Italian again.
You’re from Kansas, aren’t you? They’re fat there, aren’t they? Fat?

Well … it’s hard to say
, I lie.

Oh, ho … ho … hold on a minute here. There’s a lot of fat in Kansas
. She takes a sip from her African death tea to steady herself.
Let’s just say this: Sugar-based societies create sugar-based peoples, and sugar-based peoples
are characterized by intense unclassifiable yearnings, cravings that will never be assuaged…. Opening your dinner and heating it up … it’s nutritional nothingness, a large nutritional abyss filled—Are you listening to me— filled with hidden sugars and bad fats…. Some scientists say it’s slow suicide but it’s homicide if you ask me, and who do you think they’re killing? Not the smart advertising people and the wealthy manufacturers, noooooo. They wouldn’t feed those things to their dogs … and I mean it. My brother’s in advertising and you wouldn’t believe the things he says. His wife has an organic garden and they order all their proteins privately from farms where they know the names of all the animals; I’m not kidding, one hundred percent organic … Anyway … he helps sell … he used to be so … when we were … You just wouldn’t believe it
. She looks away, but not before I see her Manny eyes go shiny

Now that she is so upset, I accidentally become so upset also. The air in her office hovers with the heavy chill of the air-conditioned disappointment that exists in everything once you think about it. The African tea that sat steaming with health in my cup a second before has a rusty tinge to it like water in an old toilet. The fluorescent lighting has heightened a notch; her posters of Spain have taken on a sinister air. She opens a drawer and takes out some essential oils that she drips into a white ceramic dish before she decides to attack the subject of cells—original cells, dying cells, fresh cells—as I sit slumped in the chair, a complicated series of simple cells casting long, obvious looks at my yellow watch, whose face is as large as a plate.

I look at the body on the wall; it’s red and white and blue and yellow and green and brown and beige—exposed, veiny, dead. I interrupt.
Okay, okay, so I’m like a sugar addict
. She smiles with relief, then tortures me with nutrition and dietary fact until her face breaks into a million wobbly pieces, all of them with mouth. She slides a three-ring notebook filled with her inky blue swirls across her desk and says:
You’ll be needing this
, then, as an afterthought, hands me her favorite Bud Lancer book:
Destination Destiny
.

On my way home, images of Roxanne squirming her way around Glenwood with buds of marijuana tied up in a pair of gym socks and hooded groovy eyes ride through my mind. June opens a family-size can of beans, dumps them in a pot, throws in mound after mound of sticky brown sugar, a few squirts of ketchup, and stirs it up, her eyes as distant as new moons. Mom lies in a bed of book, her face folded in half, a two-pound bag of peanut M&M’s by her side. Dot’s laughing with Sister Augusta over fresh sponge cake. Nuns are roaming the malls on Saturday afternoons, pockets bulging with caramels, eyes hardened into stone. Leonard had a jar of Thin Mints in his desk drawer, ordered seven boxes of Holy Name Nun Fudge every fall, liked his golden almond solitaires with the Sunday paper, Life Savers and butterscotch drops in yellow cellophane for road trips. He flies through my mind with an open package of pink and white coconut delights in his hand, absently throwing them into the air one by one, watching them float upward unhindered by gravity, and I am as close to crazy as to be overtaken with fright.