My Year with Eleanor (4 page)

“Ten pills of Xanax says she doesn't jump,” Jessica stage-whispered to Chris.

“You're on,” Chris replied.

“I heard that!” I called out.

I crept up the ladder as slowly as possible while still being in motion. Seeing my white, disembodied hands clutching the rungs, I remembered something a surgeon had said in a documentary I once saw on TV. When reattaching a hand, the hardest part is not setting the bones or connecting the arteries—it's fixing the nerves. Once severed, nerves are not easily restored. After surgery they grow back at a rate of one inch per month. It's a long process. Sometimes they never come back and the hand will be forever paralyzed.

Jessica had told me that the scariest part was going up the rickety ladder, but once I climbed onto the platform I knew that she was a damned liar. Since the rig was atop a five-story building, the trapeze seemed to reach unearthly heights. I stood up on quaking legs and immediately latched on to a nearby metal pipe that looked relatively secure. Waiting for me on the platform was Hank, the sixtysomething instructor who ruled his aerial fiefdom with a firm hand and a mustache normally reserved for sheriffs in 1940s westerns. After a curt “hello,” he briskly clipped the safety lines to my waist harness. I hoped he didn't notice that the back of my tank top was soaked through with sweat.

“Now then! Here you go!” he boomed, holding the trapeze in front of me. I didn't reach for it. I could tell by his no-nonsense expression that he was going to try to shame me into grabbing it. “C'mon now, it's just like stepping off a curb. You're not afraid of stepping off a curb, are you?”

I didn't know what curbs were like in his neighborhood, but mine didn't include thirty-foot drops and signing a waiver beforehand “in the event of death or accidental dismemberment.”

I tugged suspiciously on one of the ropes attached to my safety harness. “Is there any danger of getting tangled up in these on the way down? Could I decapitate myself or something?”

“It hasn't happened yet,” he said, and I swear I detected a note of hope in his voice.

I looked over my shoulder toward the ladder and sighed. The only thing scarier than jumping off this platform was the prospect of going down that ladder backward. I wondered if they'd made it rickety on purpose to prevent people like me from backing out. I decided that I'd be okay with remaining on this coffee-table-sized platform for the rest of my life. I'd make it work. I could get a job manning the platform like Hank. I could get every meal delivered. “I live on the top floor,” I'd tell the delivery guy.

“Just think of it as stepping off a curb,” Hank repeated, less patiently this time.

“A
curb
?” I snapped. “Where do you live—with the Jetsons?” Bons mots were my preferred defense mechanism, though I would use homicide in a pinch.

Hank's ongoing patter was becoming part of the background noise like the traffic. But there was no ignoring the basic truth that the longer I hesitated, the more loaded the moment became. For the rest of class, the students and instructors would view me in the context of this moment. Yet, I couldn't seem to make myself move. Minutes were passing, which I could tell only because my eyes flickered to the ground every so often and each time, a different emotion was visible on the faces of my classmates staring up at me. Encouragement was replaced by pity, impatience, then irritation. Only Chris's and Jessica's expressions remained unchanged. They looked just as hopeful as they had fifteen minutes ago. And in the end, this was what compelled me to reach out for the trapeze again. To watch them lose faith in me would have been awful.
You don't necessarily have to jump,
I told myself.
You just have to lean far enough forward that you can't go back.
Gravity would do the rest.

A relieved cheer went up from the class as my hand grabbed the metal. Having long forgotten the Academy Award simile, I was caught unawares by the heaviness of the trapeze. The fifteen-pound bar yanked me forward, and out of instinct I dropped it. It sailed forward and with nothing to grab on to I teetered on my tiptoes, windmilling my arms. Gravity did the rest, and I careened off the platform. Ted, who was on the ground controlling the safety lines, jerked on the cables so I fell only about four feet.

“Quit moving your arms and legs!” he commanded. I went still and floated in midair, a marionette waiting for instructions. Ted reeled in the lines, and I rose up a foot at a time. When I was level with Hank again, he hauled me back onto the platform by the back of my waistband harness.

He
tsk
ed and shook his head. “Are you ready to get serious now?”

“I'm seriously ready to get
down
now.”

He dragged the trapeze back to me using a giant hook that looked, appropriately, like the kind used to yank vaudevillian performers off the stage when they'd overstayed their welcome.

“Just listen for the commands,” Hank reminded me. “When Ted says ‘ready,' that's your cue to bend your knees. When he says ‘hep,' jump off the platform. Got it?”

I gathered myself and nodded firmly. “Got it.”

“Ready!” Ted yelled.

I bent my knees.

“HEP!”

I didn't move.

“Do we need to go over this again?” Hank asked.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just got spooked. I'm ready now.”

Hank nodded at Ted again.

“Ready! . . . HEP!”

I took a bunny hop forward. I couldn't describe what it was like to take that first swing out, mostly because my eyes were squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes, open your eyes!” Ted shouted from the ground.

When I forced open my eyelids, I saw that I was traveling faster than I'd anticipated. A lot faster. It was exhilarating and dreadful. As I hurtled forward, Ted screamed at me to hook my legs over the bar.

“Your knees, your knees!” he shrieked.

My ass,
I thought, but surprisingly the backswing gave me enough momentum that I hooked them with ease.

“Now let go with your hands!” Ted yelled when I reached the height of my arc.

This was the part I'd been worried about since the beginning of class. I'd been afraid that once I let go, I wouldn't have the strength to pull myself up when it came time to grab the bar again. I'd just have to hang there. I'd be like those bears that break out of the forest, climb utility poles in suburban neighborhoods, and cling for dear life until they're shot down with a tranquilizer dart.

Gritting my teeth, I released my hands. The act of letting go—unfurling my body and falling back into nothingness—was slightly liberating, but also extremely unnerving.

“Arch your back, arms out!”

I held my arms out in front of me, Superman style. On the return swing, I glimpsed an upside-down Hank giving me the thumbs-up from the platform. Or maybe it was the thumbs-down? Before I could figure it out, it was time to grab the trapeze again. I curled toward the bar, and when my hands found the metal, I clamped my fingers down as tight as I could. Then I unfolded my legs so that I was hanging straight again.

“C'mon, Noelle, it's time for the dismount!” Ted called. As the trapeze charged forward a third and final time, I pulled my knees up to my chest, let go, and did a perfect backward flip into the net below. I also whacked my toes on the bar so hard that the scream is still echoing in the Catskills. But other than that, I did pretty well.

A
few days before, during my session with Dr. Bob, I asked him, “Why am I afraid of heights?”

“Because you're smart!” He laughed. “Take a look at people's top fears: snakes, insects, rats, and heights. Evolution has programmed certain fears into our brains to keep us alive. Fifty thousand years ago, people steered clear of snakes, insects, and rats because they carried diseases. Our distant ancestors who were afraid of heights didn't fall off cliffs.”

“But I thought fears were learned?”

He shook his head. “Some fears are learned, some we're born with. Get this: There was a study where psychologists placed an infant on a table with a pane of Plexiglas in the center. Now, the baby could easily crawl across this Plexiglas—but almost all the kids refused. Why?”

“Because the Plexiglas made it look like they were going to fall.”

“Kittens and puppies also refused to cross the glass,” he said. “Then they brought in some baby ducks. Guess what? The ducks walked across without a quack of protest. Now why weren't the baby ducks afraid?”

“Because they have wings?” I venture.

“Exactly.”

I think about this for a moment. “But if a fear is instinctual, aren't we just . . . stuck with it?”

“If we can experience a seemingly risky situation over and over, without harmful consequences, we can train our brains to be less afraid.”

“So you grow your own wings, basically.”

“Exactly.”

A
fter I limped my way back from the trapeze rig, Chris kindly lent me his cold water bottle, which was lying horizontally across my swelling toes. My cheeks were flushed with excitement over what I'd accomplished, but I was also more scared than I'd been at the beginning of class. Before my turn on the trapeze, there had still been a chance it wouldn't be scary, but now I had confirmation. Now I knew exactly how fast and high it was going to feel. But I also knew that while it was brave to do something you think is going to be scary, it was braver to do something you
know
is going to be scary. And to have faith that, eventually, it will start to be less scary.

This actually turned out to be true. After I had performed the knee hang and backflip combo three more times, my heart rate had slowed considerably. After the fourth turn, my hands stopped shaking. Right before our final turn, I noted with trepidation that a stocky Latino gentleman was sitting on the second trapeze at the other end of the rig. At which point Ted announced that it was time for us to do “the catch.”

“You'll swing out and hang by your knees just like before. But this time, when you put your arms out, my man Pepe here”—the man on the second trapeze, now hanging by his knees, gave a friendly upside-down wave—“will catch your hands. Then you'll let go with your legs and he'll swing you out across the net.”

A nervous tingling simmered in my stomach. I didn't understand the mechanics of this operation. What if he grabbed my hands but I didn't release my knees in time? I pictured myself ripping in half—my arms and torso carried off by Pepe while my legs and knees, still hooked over the bar, swung back toward Hank.

“I don't know if I can do this,” I whispered. Jessica looked equally uncertain.

“I don't know if I can hold hands with someone named Pepe,” Chris said.

The gymnast was the first to go. Because she was more advanced, Ted had given her a more complicated stunt to perform. Instead of doing a knee hang, she did a perfect upside-down split. I held my breath as she took her hands off the bar and reached confidently for Pepe.

“Oooh, aren't we special?” Jessica grumbled as the girl backflipped onto the net. “Sure, she can do tricks, but can she menstruate?”

As I climbed the frail ladder a final time, my terror had downshifted to mere apprehension. It helped that the sun had gone and the rig was now illuminated by spotlights. The effect was festive, like a real circus, but more important, my world had been made smaller, less overwhelming. Instead of looking around, fretting over how high I was, I could only see what was right in front of me. I focused on each individual ladder rung, the meditative rhythm of my hands, and made it quickly to the top this time. When I pulled myself up onto the platform, Hank looked impressed.

“We'll make a flyer out of you yet.” He grinned and I grinned back. I took the trapeze from his hand. On the other trapeze, Pepe was hanging by his knees, building up momentum. I tried not to imagine accidentally crashing into him. Instead, I assumed the position, leaning back, toes hanging over the edge of the platform.

“Ready!”

I bent my knees in anticipation. The tension was almost unbearable in its very
in-betweenness.
It was the pause at the top of the roller coaster when it's no longer going up but not yet going down. It was the moment after the track runners have taken their marks, but just before the horn blares. It was a moment between moments, defined by what's happened before it and what is about to happen. It was nothing, but it was everything.

“HEP!”

I sliced through the air, enjoying the sensation of it whooshing past my ears.

“Hook your knees, Noelle!” Ted's voice called from below. Using the last of my abdominal strength, I drew my legs to my chest and hooked them over the bar. Back arching! Arms extending! Here was Pepe! His meaty hands clamped firmly onto mine. I straightened my legs and my knees released the bar quite naturally. Now I was no longer upside down but soaring toward the twinkling New York skyline. I'd never been one of those people who described cityscapes as
beautiful,
but it was dazzling. Millions of tiny windows glowed crisply in the darkness. The class cheered—no one louder than Chris and Jessica—and someone let out a whistle. I flopped down onto the net and staggered toward the edge, grinning goofily. I felt the stirrings of something I hadn't felt in a while: pride. Not the pride that comes from a salary bump or a promotion, but the kind that comes when you've pleasantly surprised yourself. At the end of class we said our good-byes (Hank actually gave me a high five) and gathered our belongings.

“Now can we go get drinks?” Jessica asked.

“Absolutely. I'm buying,” I said.

As the three of us limped out the gate on sore legs, Chris asked, “So you're really going to do three hundred sixty-five different scary things this year?”