Swimming (31 page)

Stop! I Bid Thee

When I get back to Esther’s, I sit in my chair, gather my blanket about me, stare.

She looks at me.

I look at her.

She looks at me.

I look at her.

I break down first.
I can’t remember one thing straight. Not one thing. The good stuff seems unbelievable and the bad stuff’s fucking awful. How do people take it?

Take what?

This. This. This. This
. I say, jabbing the chair, the ceiling, the window, my feet, indicating the earth, the sky, mortality, the world.

In any old way they can
, she says, and when I keep staring at her:
More often than not, badly
.

Sing Noël Sing We Joyously

I forget about Christmas until it starts showing up. A flash of red, a glimpse of beard, a bottle of wine wrapped in shiny green foil, the sweet creaky voice of a child echoing out into the courtyard yearning for Papa Noël and all that he brings. Someone flips a switch and a million lights begin to blink from beneath the arms of cold winter trees, along arches of brick, upon steeples of steel, illuminating the dark world as ancient mechanical puppets adjust their wigs, dust off their shoes, jump out of their boxes, and begin to dance. Temporary ice-skating rinks emerge, supervised by trees swathed in silver pearls, corks pop, and the whole universe is soaking deeply in Christmas, mists freezing and falling, people hidden under layer upon layer of colorful cloth, eyes dreaming and wishing and hoping and praying, and I know the only way it’ll ever stop is when it’s done.

I go to many sad French movies. During the movies, I keep my face pressed forward with a headache behind each eye because the characters’ mouths are moving like motors. At the end, I should know how everyone dissolves into themselves, but I never do. When I leave the cinema, rain pelts me in the face, and the sidewalk becomes as reflective as mirror. The nuns make you think that everything happens up above, but all I see are clouds in heavy preparation, the crystallization of snow before it falls, the formation of wind, the pull of the moon, the occasional flick from a finger of sun.

My brain churns, singing:
Juuuunnnnne! It’s Ja———son!
I’m standing next to the window looking down into the drive. You can see the glow of his cigarette through the windshield of his car. June pulls me back.
Leave it alone
. He sits there for hours; it becomes oddly erotic checking the window. Roxy and I get giddy, jump around and dance. Dot is worried. June’s pretending to watch some TV show as she folds clothes, gnawing at her cuticles with her teeth.

Go tell him to fuck off
, she says, pushing me out the door.
Just say: Hey, you! This is private property. Get off our land! June says fuck off or she’ll call the cops!

He is the first person I ever see lighting one cigarette off another. He knits his eyebrows together as though it takes thought.

Hey
, he says, inhaling,
forgot my lighter
. I look at him, Glenwood’s best-known bad man; he’s cute in a rough, alcoholic sort of way.

Hey
, I say.
June says it would be a good thing for you to probably fuck off and get off our property or she’ll call the cops
.

Imperturbable.
Which one are you?

I hate my name.
Philomena
.

The animal lover…. How tall are you anyway?

The swimmer…. Five-eleven
. I lie.

Ahhh, the swimmer … tall order
. He laughs an economical laugh that does not hit his face.
Tell June I’ll be outside Gabe’s at ten. You got that?

Outside Gabe’s at ten
.

Tell her I’ll be waiting. And tell her I’m sorry, okay? Tell her Jason says he’s really sorry
. Then he smiles, nods, starts the engine, listens to it purr for a second before reversing down the driveway as cool as a dark green cucumber.

I beg her:
Don’t go, June
.

She sighs, runs her fingers through her hair, says:
I have to
.

When they are back in love again he calls, asking
for June bug
.

I stand in my kitchen waiting for dry spaghetti to absorb water so I can rinse the pan. My mind slips out the window and into the wind; everyone’s in their own corner this Christmas. Dot’s in Portland serving turkey to people who live in cardboard boxes, her heart a charred stump. Roxanne’s in San Francisco pruning one of the maestro’s expensive trees; it’s unusually cold, so she’s wearing fingerless gloves and an ugly hat. Mom’s in Glenwood with a bunch of Dark Catholics preparing a feast. During the feast everyone will moan and cry in sadness, and in their sadness their hearts will lighten and blink in accordance with the Christmas lights strung upon the banister as the chubby sheriff watches TV in the TV room with an ice-cold beer.

I grab a pen, find a space on the wall, write:

French men are big sissies
.

My skills off the wall are second to none
.

This morning Esther sat in her chair all smiles and eardrums, a dark red poinsettia on the corner of her desk. I’d spent the morning in a tiny church staring at a detailed Jesus so hard he turned to bone. Outside it was raining minuscule flakes of wet snow, sad people were sitting on garbage bags they’d placed on the ground, a piece of cardboard engraved with their needs, ladies with layers of new face painted over the old passed me by in a scourge of nasty perfume, and Esther seemed so contained and dry, so even-fingered and calm-spirited that I couldn’t help but be annoyed.

I looked at her and said:
What are you doing here anyway?

Here? she
asked.

Yes
, I said, pointing aggressively to the room, her window, the door, my feet.

I live here. I work here. I’m raising my family here
, she said.

There obviously must have been some sort of problem
, I said, digging.
Some sort of reason you would flee your own country and install yourself here like a fugitive
.

Is that what you feel like? A fugitive?
‘she asked, her jade earrings clinking faintly.

No
, I said, sitting up straight.
I definitely do not feel like a fugitive
.

She was quiet then and I was quiet then too until the quiet strangled me and I couldn’t stand it anymore.
What, do I look like a fugitive?

And she asked:
What does a fugitive look like?

How in the hell do I know what looks like what and who looks like who?
I sighed, not mad anymore.

The spaghetti softens, so I slush it down the drain, pee in the shower, climb up into bed, smacking my head so hard on the beam that my eyes leak as my ears hum in pain. I suck on a French vanilla truffle in a dark chocolate shell. I do know what a fugitive looks like. She’s a fifteen-year-old, six-foot-two secret girl. She has blue pebbles for eyes, sports uncomplicated ponytails, wears sweats to bed, has incredibly strong feet. She sucks on mint whips, chews on caramels, sits in planes daring them to drop.

Nature Is as Nature Does

French people are standing at a curb waiting for the light to change; there’s an old lady with a blue plastic bag on her head pushing a half-dead poodle in an old baby carriage. The guy standing next to me lights his cigarette with one hand cupped to protect the flame. His cigarette flares with his nostrils as he sucks the smoke in. The red hand turns green. We cross the street filled with glued-together buildings dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. There’s a window in front of me with tiered metal shelves housing delicious things I’ve never tasted. I pause, can see the outline of my reflection in the glass, the clouds zooming behind me, the earth twinkling and twirling, twittering like an idiot.

I have stopped looking at anything beautiful unless something unusual has happened to it. I notice: a statue covered in green tarp, a church with pockmarks, a stone face with a hacked-off nose, a gargoyle covered in dirt, a blackened mirror that can no longer reflect, a plant with brown flower, the dense quality of air, gray exhaust floating from diesel engines, a well-groomed dog squatting on a curb, a frayed golden sari lying in a heap underneath a filthy bridge, a handsome man with a machine gun at his hip. I squint at him; he ignores me. It takes four hours to cross the city on foot. When I get home my feet are puffy red boils. I soak them in a bucket with warm water as I watch the smaller droplets of rain smash into the window and slide sadly down until I’m sitting outside on a lawn chair underneath a tree, it’s fall, and the leaves are spiraling down into a vast kaleidoscope across our unkempt yard. I’m watching Roxanne and Dot play Ping-Pong, Bron by my side. She looks at me and says:
My money’s on Dot; she has hidden resources
.

Esther spends many dark and similar days quizzing me. Her quizzes are vast and glorious, spanning the length and breadth of self-inflicted human misery. I gather my blanket about me, struggle with the urge to sleep, learn that depression is not merely a moral sadness, that it does not have to be associated with the color blue. That feeling stumped is a simple pause in dynamics, that broken sleeps are not irrevocable like glass, that life is a series of breakdowns and regenerations, that being uncomfortable is often a clue. I learn that avoiding the beam in my bed only half of the time does not constitute a concentrated effort, that the athlete in me is not dead, that the person under the athlete in me is not dead either.

Esther says the toilet seat was my portal back into life. Esther says that if I fell through the portal into a new life, something, somewhere in my body probably knew it. Esther says that some people need slippery toilet seats in slippery porcelain crouching like tigers in their paths. Esther says:
We fall because that’s what we do
. Esther says:
Even the noblest of trees have dark roots
. Esther says:
It takes a true champion to break some important bones and drive herself to the hospital
. Esther says:
It takes a special type of person to notice that you can bounce rain off a colorful surface and its color will always remain rain
. Esther says:
You’re not doing so badly
.

I write things down.
I am not doing so badly
.

Nature is vast and glorious and generous and mean and small and shitty
.

All creatures, even tadpoles, worms, cockroaches, and fleas, have eyeballs that will eventually close one last time forever and ever amen
.

Hearts are designed to stop thumping; some will explode into brilliant pots of marmalade stew. Some will splutter and cough; others will have to be shot at, burned, stabbed, stomped on, crushed by unnatural force, or clogged with mixtures of sugar and lard, etc
.

Green bananas turn yellow
.

Yellow bananas turn brown
.

Brown bananas are good for cake, but when you’re hungry, everything tastes good
.

Russian people are as fucked up as Kansans
.

We’re designed to survive
.

When people don’t know anything, they make things up
.

Madame Madame nabs me in the hall, asks:
Is it true that American women believe if they don’t have wrinkles, they won’t ever die?

I’m not in the mood, say:
Yes. American men too
.

O Father, O Father, Resurrection

Esther has expressive eyes. Her eyes say:
Perhaps you suck on your own head like a leech because you do not feel as though it is your role to partake in the creative life. Perhaps you demonstrate your strong love for your family with your strong love for your team
. Her eyes say:
Nuns are funny doughnut eaters who don’t have sex
. Her eyes say:
Russian guys are probably as human as humans
.

But sometimes she gives her eyes a rest and speaks.
Let’s talk about your sister
.

I say:
Which one?

She says:
The one you don’t discuss much
.

She died
.

Yes. How old was she exactly?

Almost eighteen
.

So you had the time to know her
.

Yes
.

What was that like?

I think about it.
She liked to scare me so much when I was a kid, I thought my name was Boo
.

When I mention Leonard, she says:
Are you referring to your father?

And I say:
Yes
.

Why do you call him Leonard?
she asks.

Because he wouldn’t have liked it
, I say.

After that, she calls him
your father
, says:
You sound angry. Are you?

I’m surprised, lie:
Of course not. He’s dead
.

I start to call him
my father
until one day I say
Dad
and nothing happens.

Bronwyn skates into my mind, says:
See? I was more complex than you ever imagined, not your average under-the-weather young adult
.

My father looks up from his book, surprised.
You thought I flew into the ground? Why in the world would you think I’d fly into the ground? My engines died before I did
.

Esther has an expressive face. Her face is all face. Her face of all says:
Retirement is not a fat pig with purple breath
. I write it in on my wall under the blank future:
Retirement is not a fat pig with purple breath
. Retirement is also not a tunnel with a cement wall or a wobbly popcorn manufacturing meaningless piece of shit expendable end finality conjecture that pulls one from cradle to grave. Her face says:
Russian men are like all subhuman earthlings, scrounging for happiness and peace in any old way that they can
.

I’m swimming again. Just to see what it does. I wake up in the morning, go straight to the pool, where slower humans scatter as I plunge. I’m better. My arms move in clean, whipping lines, my feet churn out power. Within five minutes I’ve bullied all of them out of my lane, am gliding in space.
An excess of goodness is just another dread of being oneself
.

In the locker room, a woman comes up to me and says:
Is it true that in America you can go to war and die for your country, but you can’t drink a beer?

I’m not in the mood, lie:
No
.

The nuns said
flute
instead
of fuck
. That’s what Aloysius said every time I beat her at checkers:
Oh flute!
Roxanne played the flute for a while. She’d sit in the middle of her room and play it like a sad pothead
nah nah nah nah …
Her notes were death callers, rain makers, ear strainers
nah nah nah nah
. I’d bid her
stop!
as she sat on the ground Shawnee style, her breath flowing into metal, her fingers covering, uncovering, letting forlorn notes weep. I hear them again, the notes, as my ears break the surface of the water and listen to the hard dry world.