Swimming (33 page)

O Joy, O Sunshine

Lilly Cocoplat and I are standing on a dark stage waiting for the lights to come up. It’s taking a very long time; I’m starting to get antsy. Lilly senses it, grabs my hot dry hand with her sticky wet one. She’s wearing a starched yellow dress with a shirred front and a row of tiny green buttons, green and yellow daisies embroidered across the chest. I’m wearing something purple that’s pulling tight. The lights shine on us in a burst. The crowd claps. I squint. I’m wearing my ponytail on the side of my head, my mother’s idea. It’s pulling my eyes into a slight Oriental slant. I don’t care; I’m busy going over the words in my head. There are a series of complicated modern dance moves too, but I’ll cross that bridge when the music starts. It all seems impossible, very complicated.

The Cocoplat starts.
No one is happier than I. The God above, the clear blue sky
. Leonard has polished my shoes into a high-mirrored gleam. I look down at my face shining up through the laces:
Thanks, Dad
. He’s easy to find, an enormously tall molten smudge hovering above the little ones. I smile, move a couple of fingers in a mini-wave. I do not yet know a dead person, have no idea where Russia is, enjoy swimming as an extracurricular activity. I start, have an awful voice:
No one is luckier than I. The sun above, the clear blue sky
. I’m wearing a thin gold cross; when I jump, its edges stab into my skin. I do not like boys, they’re idiots. When one gets near us by accident, we pull faces, make farting sounds with our armpits, hold our noses tight in a pinch. Sister Joy’s banging away on the keys; she’s an emotional nun who plays the piano with her whole body.
I can be so happy
. The Cocoplat turns a perfect turn. I twirl, my ponytail whips me in the eyes; I hadn’t anticipated this. I believe in God; He’s Old and Strong, but Gentle with Love, burning sinners into charred butterflies when He feels like it with a bolt that whizzes suddenly from His Hand. I know the seven deadly sins by heart, can recite them in order:
superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, adcedia
but secretly avoid Jesus, still not sure about those thorns. I skid a little, catch myself in time.
I can be so happy
. We twirl together. We lock hands, turn, the Cocoplat slips, she’s as light as a pillow, I’m dragging her a bit, adjust. We look at each other. Her eyes tell me everything is better than fine. My eyes tell her everything is better than great.
And when He takes me in his arms, Oooooo gentle lambs, from gentle farms
. We haven’t learned the joy of changing the lyrics of songs into something terrible yet, but it’s in our cards.
No one is luckier than I, the sun above, the clear blue sky
. We kneel down, sway like flowers, twirl, put our heads down into our arms, lie back in a doze. The lights come up; the crowd goes wild. It’s my first major applause; my heart fills with love of life and all of life’s things. Joy stands, then bows, bringing both arms up, pointing to the stage. The Cocoplat bows, we hold hands. Everyone’s clapping. The Cocoplat twirls. I twirl with her. I do not know vaginas grow hair and bleed, that nuns are any different from other people except for the uniform. We start to dance. This is unplanned. The unplannedness is exciting. We’re jumping with exciting twirling, my cross stabbing, my ponytail slapping me in the mouth. Fergus calls to us from backstage.
Come, girls! Come now, girls! Come!
We’d forgotten about her. We don’t know death, but we know something bad’s out there hovering.
Come! Come!
This is the first time I am formally hypnotized; I follow her hands with two round eyes. Lilly’s immune, gives one more twirl a go, then a bow. Fergus pulls me gently with one hand, pushing one of the sixth graders out into the light with the other. He shoves Lilly back into the dark and we hug. It’s over for us, but the clap is still churning.

I watch fat white clouds wrestle their way across a jet-black sky, ragged edges of Paris glowing brightly beneath. She must be divorced by now, surrounded by flocks of comforting Cocoplats. I call her up.
Lilly, you okay?

She says:
Yeah, I’m better
.

I know things. I know that we are born to float, that we are gasping things, natural air captivators, breathing to the tick of the nanosecond, the microsecond, the backward, and the forward. I explain these known things to Lilly and we discuss them and she says:
Yes, this is true. But men suck
.

I talk nun, say:
Perhaps, my friend, but death should not be more of a problem than birth, although both being equally real, but for the apparent motion of the sun across sky, the phases of a finicky moon, the beat of the human heart. We can thus just forget about most of it and buy colorful sodas
.

She talks nun back:
Yes, but lo and behold I must cut my hair, for it is vast and unruly
.

And I say:
O verily. But one must not loseth oneself in the vast dillydally
.

And then we laugh.

Now, Now

I’m listening to the radio talk about the rain, looking at a map, humming.
I’m going to live each day as though there are amazingly many
. The sky’s spitting bullets across central Europe. Berlin is covered in a canopy of cloud coming in from the density of Schwerin, across the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic, past Greenland, and into New York State, where it slides down across the Mississippi Valley. The sun’s shining hard across Southern California, but certain parts of the Florida coast have been eaten by walls of wave; some people have their lives packed up in their cars; others carry what they have on their backs. My mother is reading a high-caliber book on asymptomatic agoraphobic cognitive behavioral response systems the chubby sheriff ordered for her. She’s lying in bed, a fresh package of M&M’s by her side. She’s going to give outside life a second go. There’s a new GP in town who explained that thoughts couldn’t kill, which was a form of synchronitic strangeness because Esther’s been trying to hammer the same thing into my own head. The GP explained that feelings couldn’t kill either, no matter how badly they make one feel. Mom fell to her knees with relief, wept, almost had a nervous breakdown for old times’ sake.

I looked at Esther and said:
It doesn’t feel like it
. And she said,
It’s a fact: human beings cannot kill themselves with thoughts and feelings. Can you imagine; we’d be dropping like flies
.

Mom said:
I wanted to kiss his feet
.

I said:
You didn’t, though
.

Mom said:
Noooo
.

Esther said:
You thought you could kill yourself with sugar?

I lied:
Not really
.

Esther said:
You thought because you felt you were dying, that you were dying?

I didn’t lie:
Yes, that is how it feels. Like it’s over, all of it
.

Esther said:
Do you understand now? It’s just feeling
.

I said:
Yes, I understand, Esther. Feeling. But that’s how I won. That’s how I did everything
.

Mom drives home from her doctor’s appointment through the mottled green streets of Glenwood with both windows open, the wind whipping her hair in three directions; up, down, and out. I congratulate her, say:
That’s great, Mom. I’m so happy for you
. She says:
Thanks
.

I walk home from Esther’s office, watching shafts of gray light penetrate the green of the leaves.
I’m going to live each day as though there are amazingly few
. I feel flashes of bad endings and death—
feelings—
let them swim past me like dark fish. I pass a bakery specializing in Oriental delicacies: mashed almond, sugar, oil, covered in golden brown honey. One of them would probably make me sick for seventeen hours, give me major visions. I walk by; what’s the point?

Father Tim is standing on a soccer field with an extra-large baseball cap on his head. He had a funny-looking mole removed from the tip of his ear that has left a hole kids make fun of and now he’s careful. The Russian guy is a smudge standing in a navy blue suit looking out a shiny window reflecting a million shiny windows and a small rectangle of orange-flared sky. He is alone. Fredrinka Kurds is taking a short nap; she’s sleeping on her side, her knuckles underneath her chin. Sister Fergus is invisibly whirling; all her radiators, lemon drops, donated tires, Virginia hams, Lawrence Welk shows, have morphed into flight, floating behind her like a tail of magic dust. Bron’s still sitting on a curb next to her ten-speed, idly braiding her hair down her back; it’s gotten blonder and she’s pleased. She stops letting herself grow old, says:
I guess I don’t have to do that anymore
. Leonard gets a crew cut and decides to be dead. He looks at me with that look he gets on his face when he’s reading serious news:
I’m going to go now, Sugarplum
. He lets go of gravity, flying backward like an astronaut, waving.
Aim for the impossibilities; they keep one positively occupied
. I wave:
Thanks, Dad, I will. Bye, Dad, bye for now. I love you, I love you, I love you
. June’s sitting in a car drinking something that no longer burns on its way down; she’s decided to remember the things that she wants, letting the rest wait until her last day on earth. Roxanne’s pregnant; she’s sitting next to her maestro, crying her body into thumping convulsions.
How can someone like me be a mother? How can someone like me be a mother? How can someone like me be a mom?
The maestro’s sitting next to her, so happy he’s uncomfortable. Dot’s cruising through downtown Seattle; she leans her head back into her seat, her eyes squinting against waves of watery sun. She’s dating an Andrew, tells me she doesn’t have to fix him because he’s already better than normal. Peggy’s standing in her kitchen trying to figure out what to mix; yesterday she steamed and puréed potato, pumpkin, twenty grams of fish both babies spat up over their white velvet jumpers. She’s wearing dress sweats she’s loosened under her belly and a hockey T-shirt. The Cocoplat’s getting her eyes checked for glasses; she already knows what she wants—the thick ones with the heavy rims that change your face. She’s moving to Minneapolis and wants to look smart.

I’ve never made a single decision in my life; the only thing I know is that I like to swim.
I’m going to live each day as though it contains meaning
. Madame Madame strongly suggested I repaint the wall so I do. Over the medals. Over the neck cords of the nuns as they slurp their Slurpees in the Kmart parking lot, over Ahmet Noorani’s yellow cigarette smoking in the snow, over a school of eleven-year-old autistic kids floating quietly on their backs in a heated, dark pool as their mothers watch. I teach them the Dolphin kick and they know joy. I paint over the sky as it opens up and spits wet bullets across the plains of Kansas, over Ernest K. Mankovitz fishing by himself, a small tin soldier in a tattered tin boat, all alone on a wide-open sea. He’s baiting the hook with thumb and forefinger. The light turns the worm translucent. They say they don’t feel a thing, but how the hell do they know? There is not one cloud in the sky. I paint over his boat as it rolls with the sea. I paint over the sea as it builds into a wall of living wave that roars in to shore. I paint over the shores, inland, up into the plains. I paint and I paint until it is perfectly white. I know I will never motivate another human being as long as I live, but other than that, nada, nothing, zip. This is a world where time is measured in accomplishment; this is a world where time is simply motion done.

My suitcase is sitting next to the door with its straps shut. Madame Madame is standing behind the door preparing to knock. She will smell of cold smoke and soapy roses. I have a thought:
The beginning of the end
. I pluck it out, whip it around, have another:
The end of the beginning
. I’ll hand her the keys, kiss both her cheeks, then this part will be over. I feel a feeling, a weep stuck in my gullet, but save it for later like a pelican. I don’t know how anything else will unfold. I can’t tell. People think a flip turn is a somersault; it’s not. It’s a roll. You twist your shoulders, you bend your knees, you touch the wall firmly with both of your feet, you push as hard as you can, you glide.

Acknowledgments

A poem for you Mr. Bill Clegg. Oooo how smart are thee, shiny brilliant almond guy? Oooo how wide and expansive is thy mind? How I shudder to contemplate the darkness of a life without thee
(here I fall on the ground in convulsions of sadness, unable to go on) …
Listen Bill: I hereby most formally declare my eternal gratitude, my love, my undying loyalty. I’ll never forget how hard you worked, how generous you were with your mind, how whiney and flabby you made me feel at the end, how whiney and flabby I actually was. It is what it is because your thinking made it so, my darling. When I crushed every single bone in your hand in that car—I meant every single word that I said. So forever it is then.

It has been a sincere privilege working from afar with editor Jordan Pavlin, who makes remarkable things happen. If we were really old Chinese ladies, I’d put my hair up in a poofy hairstyle, stab a fancy golden umbrella in it, slap on some rice powder, wear a dress I have difficulty walking in, and bow before you until you get really irritated and have me removed. I would also like to thank all the other incredibly talented, seriously creative minds at Knopf: Maria Montclaire de Montonnaire Massey, Carol Devine Carson
(Jesus in goggles!)
, and all the smart, dedicated, wonderful copy editors I will never know, but whose presence made everything a zillion times better. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking such magnificent care of the novel and infusing it with all of your energy. The honor is mine. And as for you, Miss Leslie Louise Amandine Levine—look! many middle names.

Mr. Matt Hudson. I hope you know I know how great you are and would like you to incorporate this knowing of your greatness into your being forever please. Thank you for all of your support and your patience and your faith and wishing you and Ms. Hannah Josephine love, love, and more love.

Thanks to Carol Gewirtz. From thought to realization to manifestation: I shan’t ever forget it as long as I live.

Thanks to my darling Chad Kia.
OOOO who put the muck in the clay that molds us
.

Thanks to Alice Notley, whose amazing mind helped open mine.

Thanks to Marie Houzelle and Amanda Bay, who worked with me through thin and thinner.

Thanks to Mr. Hugh O’Neill for deconfusing my confusion until I accidentally reconfused it again. Also for all of your kindnesses and your smartnesses and your generosities and your messy desk and your mustache and your great family and your boat and P.S. I know that lasagna I made was awful and am ashamed of it still.

Thanks to my family for all of the material they so unwittingly provide. My beautiful sisters: Hayley, Joeanna, Tara; my squinty brothers: James, Emmett, Andrew, and Geo. Special thanks to Dr. James Keegan, his gentle mind, his bats. In memory of my beloved Grandmother May, my broomdancingly fantastic Grandfather Daniel, and the wonderful Margaret Morse Young-man, whose elegance and warm heart have remained somehow somewhere within mine.

You cannot write a novel without being a weird and lonesome freak. I thank you my darling Margaux, Sasha, and Roman for your vitality, your patience, your love, your humor. Nothing makes sense without you my darlings, and that is a fact.

And thank you firstly, lastly, most foreverfully to my husband, Philippe. This novel would not exist without you.