The Cheer Leader (28 page)

I wake and the room is so dark that at first I cannot remember where I am. I get my bathrobe off of the end of the bed, drape it around my shoulders and go to the window. From there, I can see Moon Lake, a smooth green oval, the reflections from the lights on the pier so clear and so sharp that I think that the real light is coming from beneath the water. The sky is dark gray and misty; it would blend into the dark green of the water and form a perfect rim, that infinite edge of the world if it weren't for the line of spindly pine trees holding it back. I run my fingertip along the pane, up and down, the erratic pattern of the trees against the sky, and it frightens me but I can't stop, not until I have traced it, drawn that fine line that separates the two, connects the two. It is the gray that frightens me, that gradual gray blend that separates night from day and yet, the skies of dawn and dusk are so similar that I am confused, uncertain of what is about to happen, uncertain if I am seeing the beginning or the ending of day. My tongue will not work, my hand will not move from the glass. Then I remember that I sleep at night now, I remember the time, and the fear dissolves
in a laugh of relief. I laugh and my hand moves from the window. I laugh because night is almost over. I go into the kitchen, fill the copper kettle, place it on the eye of the stove, put instant coffee in my mug, and then there is nothing, a nothing that I am not even aware of until I am awakened by a shrill hiss, a sudden alarm that sends me, disoriented, into the kitchen where I find the fire-red eye glaring from beneath the empty kettle.

It was only a dream that has prompted me to look back, a dream that like those of the past seemed to slip into reality and I am without knowledge as to when it became real, unaware of the point at which I stopped watching myself and began going through the motions; the questions alone bringing with them that dull sense of dread, the sudden panic of waking. But, I am not there anymore. I am not a child sitting in the bathroom; I am not a college freshman sitting in a shower stall. I am Joslyn Marie Spencer, age twenty-three, spending the summer at Moon Lake, standing in my kitchen with a blackened copper kettle, wondering what to use to boil my water.

When I look back, it seems to me that those last few days of my freshman year when I cut my hair to the scalp and ran around eating dry cereal lasted forever. It's always springtime and there is always that fresh smell of everything thawing, warming. There is always a clear sharp picture as though every day was sharp blue and cloudless, as though the big dorm windows were always thrown open with the smell of near summer sifting through the screens. And it wasn't that way, not always. In the
three years to follow, there were long dark winters and rainy nights, occasional nightmares that threw me into the day before I was ready. And yet, glancing back, there is a slow motioned moment when I don't see any of that, as though everything was resolved in those last days. Perhaps several years from now, I will look back and see things more clearly, but for now, I'd rather accept it as a resolution. It is like Pascal's Wager where it is better to believe that there IS a God, since it can't be proven otherwise, so that if indeed it's true, then you would reap all benefits of the afterlife, than to believe that there ISN'T a God and take the chance of going to hell. For now, I would rather accept it all. For now, I choose to believe that life is like a cardiogram where you must always be moving up and down, back and forth, past and future, briefly touching down in the present, coming some distance before a pattern emerges. If you get stuck on any level and stay on the straight and narrow, if your beep beep turns into a low droning monotone and does not veer from that steady gray, then you are a dead duck, so I must look quickly back and wonder where all of the faceless people are, wonder if that pubic hair is still clinging to that shower stall, if there's a young girl sitting there right now, staring up at it, thinking that she is the only person who has ever seen it. But then I must touch down, work a little while on an overdue paper that I am doing for a graduate course, tracing back the witty sayings of the sixteenth century. Then I can look to the future for a brief while; I can think to myself that one day I will really fall in love, that Pat Reeves or someone very much like
him will suddenly appear at my door, take me to the movies, tell me about their childhood. I could be anywhere when it happens; I could be here, in this rented house at Moon Lake.

Red Williams is no longer a part of Moon Lake, though sometimes when I look out I expect to see him running back and forth, a bandana trailing from his head. He is not even Red anymore because he has grown into the name Claude, a name that suits him perfectly since he gained weight and married a large lumbering divorcee with bleached hair and two obese (they probably say “chubby”) children, and moved to Detroit where he is doing no more work on cars than what he was doing right here at K-Mart's when he was twenty-one. “Pumping gas and a fat ass make you dull,” is what I should say if he should ever find his way to my door.

No, I will fall in love with someone who can hold my hands right and I will have a cute, trim, “fit” child named something like Anaximander and we will finger-paint the walls of his room while my husband is out working and doing other husbandly things. I will paint one of the walls even though I am not artistically inclined; I will paint Noah and the Ark so that Anaximander will learn his animals and get a little Sunday School lesson to boot. Then I will paint the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Marie so that he will know historical facts. I will not yet tell him that it is believed by many scholars that Chris brought V.D. to the New World. And isn't that something? If it hadn't been for Chris, the father of our country never
would have gotten syphilis! How fascinating, the things that hold humanity together, the things that hold people together.

“There stand I like Arctic Pole,” Fulke says. Obviously, he has an erection. I am twenty-three so I can say things like that now. I can say anything that I want, tell the truth or tell a lie, but I still can't wear sunglasses. I try to wear them for days just like today when the sun is in the east, well above the pine trees around the lake, and its bright white light makes me see dark spots.

There are other dark spots. Bobby didn't marry Christine. He married Nancy Carson and they are living in Raleigh where he is doing his residency. They are “struggling” since they bought the house, Nanci reported to me in her last letter. (She changed her name to “i” when she developed an interest in “self help” manuals, started wearing beach towel skirts and ultimately went through EST training.) Still, we get along quite well. We only disagree on a few issues like clothes, politics, social dos and don'ts, movies, books, and life in general. The only thing we share is a love for Bobby Spencer. Lisa has already been married and divorced. Cindy is living with a pharmacist in Topeka. Tricia is marrying, of all ironies, Tom Fulton whom she remet in a bar in Charlotte less than a year ago. I am her Maid of Honor and we are wearing these awful purple dresses that are quite similar to the one I wore when I was the maid that fished out Baby Moses. Beatrice never left Maine and from what I know has never even been back to Blue Springs, though her
parents go to see her. She is married and has a baby. I sent her a Christmas card last year, wrote a note, signed it “your old friend, Jo.” When hers came, there was no note and she signed her full name, her new name. It occurred to me that maybe Beatrice doesn't want to look back, doesn't want to remember. I doubt if I'll send a card this year. Andy has been suspended from Blue Springs High three times for saying “shit on that.” None of the teachers can believe that he is related to Bobby and myself. He wears a paper clip in his ear and races dirt bikes. People often say that he is going through a phase, “just like Jo went through.”

Presently, I have many choices to make. Clearly I am not an I Love Lucy nor am I a That Girl.
The Feminine Mystique
says that you don't have to be an either/or and I am convinced that this is true, that there is a safe inbetween. What I can't help but wonder however, is that if this is true, why did Betty Friedan get a divorce? I am not a Total Woman and I am not a Libber. (I wonder why Marabelle Morgan hasn't gotten a divorce?) I shave my legs and under my arms but I do not wear Saran Wrap. I am smart but I am not Jewish. I am Christian but I am not Catholic and Catholics are Christians. What was Anaximander other than Greek? I used to imagine him being Southern Baptist and then I realized what a ridiculous thought! Anaximander at BTU or VBS, ducking his smart head under water, eating little unsalted saltines. Pat Reeves is an Episcopalian which I suppose would be a nice place to be. I called him not long ago, to tell him
that I really am a nice person, to see if he might still care, to see if he looks back, if he would ever come back, though I did not really say any of that. “Take care of yourself,” he had said.

On rainy days, I will roll back my nice oriental rugs and little Anaximander and I will roller skate while we watch old reruns on T.V. I will show him Alfalfa and Buckwheat and tell him how they have not changed one bit since I was a child or since his grandparents were coming along. I will show him old pictures of myself so that he can see me another way, a younger me in a cheerleading suit, Most Popular. If I married Pat Reeves, I could show Anaximander the May Queen picture but otherwise, I will have to keep that one hidden. It would upset him; he might draw on Pat's face and for some reason, I would probably switch the hell out of him if he did. I will have a few friends whose company I can truly find pleasure in and we will drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. I will not dress up on these occasions for there would be no need in front of a real friend and I'll just prop my mukluk bedroom slipper right up on the table if I like.

I really am not close to a lot of people because that is a very frightening thing. The further you stray, the more people that you become close to, then the higher the probability that you will lose someone. You could hear it on the radio, read it in the paper and all that you could do about it would be to sit and drink a gin and tonic, remember things about this person, the very last time that you
saw them, feel that jabbing anger and guilt of things unsaid, things undone, helpless to rectify, to get another chance. Besides, Fulke keeps me so busy lately.

When I am thirty and in love, exposed in a favorable light, happy with husband and Anaximander, I'll probably think back to right now, unable to wear sunglasses, working on this paper, sleepwalking and burning my kettle, spending the summer at Moon Lake, and I'll probably think that I was crazy (that I am crazy), and it will probably happen when I am forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety with fuzzy hair and no teeth, drooling and exposing myself in a childlike way. I will probably be on my deathbed and I will try to peruse my dance before the lights go out, faces coming and going, and I will probably think that the whole damn thing was crazy, up and down, around and around.

But at least I will know that I was moving. At least right now I know that I am moving, sliding, changing. At least right now I know that I am a little bit of everything that I've ever been. I look out at the lake, that cool green water, and I listen to the water in the pot begin to boil, a temporary replacement for the black kettle. The lake is so small now, too small to ever hold all of my Could Be's, all of the single celled creatures. I have gotten so big that the world is getting smaller, or is it that there is something out there so big that it has no answer, definition, beginning or end that makes it all seem so small? It is such a big thought and I really don't have time to think about it all right now. No, for now, I must simply accept it as a question which has no answer because the water is
boiling rapidy, spitting itself onto that white surface. I just have to leave it at that for now, touch down in the present and go and fix a cup of coffee. I simply must leave it at that, tell myself that I will return to this thought one day in the future and then I will know. I will know where this unbounded sexless feeling comes from; I will paint by number the hairs on my head; I will count the sexless single celled creatures and I will make sure that each has its very own home, its own life, and I will make the lake grow and grow, to spread and rise, slowly, cautiously, spinelessly, I will make it grow so that it will look just like it used to look, the way that I remember it all. And I will know where the earth and sky meet; I will know what keeps them from running together. I will recognize the beginnings and endings of days, years. I will know the plot of every
Andy Griffith
show in syndication. Or maybe I'll just live and that will be okay, too, but for now it is the water that I am concerned with, the water that has evaporated right out of the pot and hidden in the air. There is a choice to make, a chance to take. I must either sit and wait for condensation or begin to begin the whole process again and again and again.