Swimming (10 page)

Dark Angel Laugh and Dance

I’m a sloppy-shouldered, small-breasted, strong-jawed, tall girl sitting next to an undistinguishable lump in the bed and studying my feet. My slippers are the fur-lined suede ones I got for Christmas one hundred thousand years ago. They’re too small and have splotches on them from spilled things, but I don’t care. I’m guarding Mom. I can’t leave her alone under the creepy canopy of Dot’s praying eyes. I’m afraid they’ll drive her to the dramatic end. I’ve stopped swimming cold turkey, am watching Mom sleep, moving in close to make sure she’s still breathing. When I’m not guarding her, I lie on a couch and watch the TV shows that make me laugh. I catch myself wondering how the TV people are when the television is dark, although I do realize they don’t exist. Sometimes I watch the TV shows twice and laugh just as loudly twice. I’m universally unpopular; highly subtle avoidance techniques have been put into operation. I often find myself on my own.

I pop corn and chew as I look out the window at the swinging bird feeder no one bothers to refill. I’d have to take the ladder out of the garage and lean it against the house, climb up with a small sack of grain. My mind sends out urgent messages:
You should refill the feeder; go get the ladder!
which I ignore while making stacks of unusual pancakes I take the time to arrange in attractive shapes. When my mind isn’t yelling, it busies itself with disinterested commentary.

The Cocoplat is uncomfortable being herself around me. When I strongly suggest she be normal again, she lies:
I am normal
with a sad smile pulling down hard on her face. Roxanne says we’re under death quarantine, that people are afraid they’ll die if they spend time with us, and although I know Roxanne is a crazy pothead, it seems true: death pulls everything down with it; we are the obvious proof. Father Tim looks at me insistently on Sunday mornings but says nothing. Coach Stan calls and tells me to come back to the Dolphins when I’m ready. Mother creaks around the house as I listen to the TV speak quietly to itself in a corner.

We lose all notion of time and are often late for school. I blame the slashing rain, the howling wind, the thin layers of sleet, and later, when the storms abate, I blame the sudden disturbing lack of weather; the flat skies, the flat sun, the flat air that contains a stillness that causes us all to sleep and sleep and sleep. Sister Trout, the office nun, listens, holding her mouth in a wide flat line, until we start always being late, standing vaguely in her doorway like thugs.

I do not explain that Mom does not care about school, sunshine, vocabulary, general nutrition, tight schedules, winter clothing, personal hygiene, poor grades, curfews, bedtime, the quality of air, scientific discovery, international politics, the famine in Africa, discussions about mental health. I do not explain that Roxanne needs to smoke a doobie the size of a spear before going to bed, that Dot’s yelping in her sleep like an animal, that June’s dating a guy who’s up to no good.

Roxanne decides that according to her calculations, Mom is now three-fourths agoraphobic.

I’m watching some groom drop his bride on the ground as the TV cracks up.
She goes to the grocery store, the church, the library
, I say without moving my eyes from the TV set.

She opens the refrigerator and looks inside.
See? Nowhere else. Like ever
.

I don’t look over.
She picked me up from school the other day
.

She doesn’t look up.
Did she get out of the car?

I look over.
No
.

She opens a cupboard as the TV laughs loudly.
See?

Roxanne plants the seeds of worry in Dot’s fertile garden. Dot runs upstairs shouting:
Mom, Mom, can you take me to get a haircut?

Mom doesn’t budge.
Have June do it
.

The need causes Dot’s voice to rise. I turn up the volume.
June can’t
.

Mom doesn’t budge.
I can’t either; I’m not feeling well
.

They devise scenarios to get her out of the house and shake things up, putting their heads together and knocking new ideas around. But Mom is always one step ahead.

Roxanne brings up the fact that I don’t do anything.

I bring up the fact that doing something accomplishes nothing.

Dot says:
That’s not the point, Philomena, and you know it
.

I only appreciate drama when it happens to fake people. Roxanne doesn’t like drama unless she’s creating it. Dot accepts drama as the weight she has to carry as naturally as her bones, but drama opens a third eye in my mother, who now sees the drama in all things. She hyperventilates in front of the open refrigerator with both hands clutching her throat; she hyperventilates on the highway, slowing the car down to five miles an hour on the part with rocks, blue-knuckled; she hyperventilates at night in a bed surrounded by books, spines open about her, anti-hyperventilation medication on standby.

The Encouraging Catholics stop by in twos and threes. They make their own tea and sit on the couch, knees together, legs pressed to the side. Mother gives herself illnesses through the power of suggestion: bronchitis, flu, sinusitis, insomnia, mysterious intestinal disorders, pulsing headaches. These things are discussed in loud whispers punctuated by frequent nervous breakdowns that require breathing into a brown paper bag.

The Encouraging Catholics leave. One of them stops by the door, opens her purse with a soft click, pulling out a mint she hands to me with an encouraging smile. June rinses their teacups and dries them by hand. I put the mint in my pocket, eat leftover cake. The TV keeps talking quietly to itself, sometimes it chuckles, sometimes it weeps. The brown paper bags are for my sandwiches.

The Suffering Catholics come in droves: widows, divorcées, mothers of the morons of Glenwood, the sick ones, the old maids, those who have memorized the schedule for the visiting days at the state prison. They converge in the living room, spilling out into the kitchen, lurk in the hallway, scanning the photos on the wall. They make pots of coffee, arrange cinnamon rolls in dripping layers that would make a nun sigh, settle in, sip their coffee, stretch their legs, and suffer, because nothing is as keen as the joy of suffering together when one has felt the emptiness of suffering alone. I watch them, first amazed, then bored. Mom tries to keep up, crashing quickly, bitten by a deep inertia, worse than before. I walk her up the stairs, taking the steps one by one, waiting for her to catch her breath on the landing. Dr. Bob stops by, has talks with her, has talks with us about her, then changes his mind in the middle and has talks with us about us.

I say:
It’s okay, Dr. Bob. We’re okay
.

Dot says:
We’re okay
.

Roxanne doesn’t say.

I don’t like the Suffering Catholics, but they keep coming back. I frown at them when they ring the doorbell, step outside, putting my body in front of the door like a linebacker, say:
She’s still asleep
in an aggressive tone while tapping my foot, my eyeballs staring pointedly at their cars. I smile encouragingly at the Encouraging Catholics on Sundays, but they seem to feel as though their job is done.

The Suffering Catholics soon tire of Mom’s lack of participation and their visits trickle down. I fling myself on the couch in front of the TV set, relieved. I have no idea that I am experiencing the unnatural calm that heralds the arrival of the Dark Catholics.

They’ve lost husbands to alcohol and sons to speeding cars, overcome teenage pregnancies and adoption scenarios. They’ve been tried and tested and denied like Job, and like Job they are not going down. They easily push past me carrying sponge cakes, packages of herbal tea, essential oils, small figurines with creepy eyes said to represent the lesser-known saints. They go straight upstairs to my mother’s door, rapping with tender knuckles, softly slipping in. When she’s resting, they stand sentinel beside the windows, silently observing the naked trees outside. Sometimes they go into Leonard’s office, touch one of his books, ask:
This was his?

This annoys me. I have Roxanne flush the toilet with the clanky pipes just to watch them flutter and jump.

They take over, hovering in the kitchen with an arsenal of recipes to serve a person who won’t eat. I supervise them. They ignore me.

It has to have no taste
.

Preferably liquid
.

Put some protein in it. We can crush some C
.

That’s a good idea. And oat. Oat has no flavor
.

Here’s some vanilla
.

She won’t eat that
, I say. I’m just giving them the facts.

She can sip it through a straw
.

Just make this for her and put it next to her bed
.

She won’t drink it
, I say, just letting them know.

She will. You’ll see. We’ll make up a couple of batches and freeze them until June gets the hang of it
.

She sips. Her hair becomes shiny, her nails take on a rosy hue, her eyeballs whiten; she gets a toasty look as if she spent the weekend in Florida. I call it grimlock.

June has a strange effect on the Dark Catholics. When she walks into the kitchen, her thin arms full of groceries, a pack of menthols hanging out of the back of her jeans, her hair a gorgeous, frizzy mess, they scatter, and my heart lurches with joy. When they show up, I have her paged at Wal-Mart, begging her to come home. She says
I’ll be there in a minute, honey
, and sometimes she is. June relieves my mind. She understands my need for atmosphere, leaving the radio on all day, a small light in every room. She opens all windows, sometimes all doors, as the cool air sweeps through the house in streams, and all the curtains billow, lilting up into the air like kites. She understands my need for the cereals with dancing rabbits and 452 types of sugar, knows I like the zest and the color and the milk that turns pink. I sit in front of the TV watching Diana become Princess as June smokes a cigarette out by the tree. I wave. She holds her cigarette between her teeth and waves back, her face lost in a veil of minty smoke. I rip open a package of pie, one of those half-moon crescent things filled with shiny red stuff and pieces of exploded cherry skin but no cherry.

Dot appears in the doorway with an apple in her hand.
You can’t eat that
.

I don’t look up.
I beg to differ
.

She takes a bite, admonishing me.
You’ll be sick; eat some vegetables or an egg or something
.

I sigh.
Where’s Roxanne?

She sighs back.
I don’t know. Out, I guess
.

Days sink. When I open my eyes, a new one with the same face rises. Weeks roll into months punctuated by rain and heavy thunder until spring arrives and Mom wakes up before dawn one morning to find the mystic holograph of Mary the Bless’d Virgin and Mother of God floating at the foot of her bed. The general Dark Catholic consensus is that She was most likely messengered in to make Mom feel better about her awful, shitty life.

She was standing at the end of the bed not saying anything for the longest time. Then shook her head very slowly and looked sad and sweet … then after a while she motioned to me with her hands: Come, come, come
. Mom’s lying in bed in an ugly light blue housecoat with silver frog buttons, a gift from the Dark Catholic with the underbite. She’s just washed her hair and it’s starting to dry. The mystic holograph of Mary has made her both calm and deeply excited.

I’m standing by the window, sucking on a watermelon pop, my arms crossed over my chest.
Where do you …

A flock of Dark Catholics turns toward me, murmurs:
Shhhhhhh …

… I don’t know. But I said no, no, no, no, not now of course; I have three children left. I can’t just …
says Mom, pausing to find the right word, …
vanish
.

I look at a herd of clouds trotting across the sky, pull the pop out of my mouth, say:
Was she floating?

A flock of Dark Catholics turns toward me and mutters:
Shhhhh!

No. She wasn’t
, says Mom, rubbing a silver frog’s head with one finger.

I look at the bird feeder swaying in the wind, pull the pop out of my mouth, say:
Did she have a Middle Eastern accent?

A flock of darkened Catholics turns toward me and hisses:
Shhhhh!

No. She sounded normal
, says Mom, taking a sip of chamomile tea.

I turn, keep the watermelon pop in my mouth, stare down the frog buttons.
You mean like us
.

Yes
.

I look at the Dark Catholics, pull out my watermelon pop, say:
Well, then it wasn’t the real one
.

They roll their hands into fists, fighting the natural human penchant for spiritual bloodshed, hissing
Shhhhhhhh!

Of course it was
, says Mom, looking around uneasily.

The Dark Catholic with the putty face grits her teeth, says: Real
angels don’t sit in the
heavens
watching
real
people suffer in
hell and I realize with a pang of excitement that she hates my guts.

The one with the flabby neck tries to get rid of me.
Why don’t you go downstairs and wait for Father Tim?

I stare at her neck, take the easy way out.
Why don’t
you
go wait downstairs for Father Tim?

She cares more; I go. I take the stairs down two by two until I reach the bottom.

Climb Ev’ry Mountain

I’m staring out the window watching a storm brew during algebra class as Sister Nestor makes complicated mathematical phrases with letters and numbers, her chalk hitting the board like an angry woodpecker. She stops; the Trout’s standing next to her, whispering into her ear. She hands her a dreaded yellow slip, then both of them look over at me. I feel a keen bite of dread as Nestor brings it to my desk and says:
Gather your books
.

Fergus is standing in front of the window in her office looking out at a sky that storm has divided perfectly in two. She looks like the Mother Superior in
The Sound of Music
but her wimple is short and dark blue and her skirt is knee length and not long like a nightgown and we aren’t in Austria and I’m not funny like Maria with a hat and a guitar and an ugly dress although my skirt is very saggy and droopy and the pleats are not lying flat like they should because either the high sugar consumption is making me skinnier or I’ve grown taller again but don’t know how much because I haven’t been in to see Dr. Bob for my annual and no one is making me go.

Good memory requires she not ask me to sit, so she doesn’t. Good memory also requires she not look me in the eye, so she doesn’t. We watch one half of the sky try to take over the other.

Father Tim tells me you’ve stopped the swimming
, she says, watching a branch of lightning shock a dark spot with yellow veins of energy.

Yes
, I say, as the trees shiver in response.

Does that feel right?
she asks, as a couple of birds swoop for shelter.

Nothing feels right
, I say, turning toward her.

Yes. It wouldn’t
. She sighs
. You’ve had trouble. Difficulty. Eventually
we all do. No one is spared. But you’ve had it now. You’re young enough to let it fester. Festering begets sores. Sores beget misery and misery begets more of the same. You’re going to need to hold on to something. Reading is good. Studies in general … Swimming. Why not? Choose something and hold on to it, young lady. If you continue wavering with lassitude, you risk stagnation, waking up one day, perhaps decades from now, filled with regret, remorse … Who knows? All that misplaced energy
. She sighs again.
I’ve seen it happen more than I’ve seen it not happen. Thou … No one other than you can give you what you need. Such is our lot
.

God obviously doesn’t exist
, I say with my eyes.
I feel better when I’m in the pool
, I say with my mouth.

Then swim
. She smiles, and the sky cracks open like a black and purple egg.

Human people don’t like facing the sad facts and nuns are just human people
, I say with my eyes.
Yes, Sister
, I say with my mouth.

She studies me and I let her because I want her to see. She isn’t wearing a wedding band. Some do.

Things can go either way; up or in, down or out. I am close to popping endless bowls of popcorn in a pair of ratty pajamas, observing pats of yellow butter as they melt into transparency over sufficient heat. I am close to lying on the couch and watching the sky birds fly by remembering when they used to land, close to watching the empty feeder sway in the wind, my heart pretending that life is this way for reasons I am too temporary to understand. I walk past windows revealing various wimple in phases of explanation, past maps of the round world flattened into two dimensions, past kid’s stretched-out feet crossed at the ankle, past kid’s leaning on single elbow, past kid’s hair hanging over kid’s face, past kid’s eye glazed and shiny, listening and not, all in the midst of becoming. I look down at my gigantic feet—gray of lace, loose of sock, limber of ankle. My knees are moving rhythmically, my heart bleating in my chest like a simple toy. I kick the ground, squeaky rubber on cement breaking the hush of the empty corridor.
Swim
. Why not? At least I love it.

Father Tim is standing on deck in a V-neck cotton sweater sweating with a whistle around his neck that he’s blowing so weakly I keep on going until he swooshes his hand in front of my face to make me stop. I’m out of shape, easily winded, breathing hard after an easy drill. My lower body drops into the water at an angle that is heavy to pull. A couple of tennis players glide past me with triumphant feet. I curse into water.

Father Tim is confident.
Well done, well, well done. That’s good for today
.

He buys books—
Swimming Faster, Coaching Girls, True Speed—
reads about splits, yardage, form, technique. He has discussions with Coach Stan.
If you really want to double up, you can train with Coach Stan in the morning. I spoke with him and we can work it out
.

My strokes become tighter, my body begins to glide. I swim myself into serious hypnotic swim states, swirling into a vortex of internal calm. Swim joy. Swim Trinity. Serious hypnotic swim states are so good that once you start to experience them, they become necessary.

Coach Stan isn’t sure what to do. He checks my stats, scratches his chin, warns:
You’re coming in too fast; you could break a finger that way
.

The snows come and Mom occasionally braves the outside world to take me to practice. She looks at me as she drives, checking her bag for almost forgotten things, noticing new paint jobs on front doors, reading garage sale signs as if she cared, waving an
I’m still sad but have to continue for the children’s sake
wave to people on the streets as our car veers across the center line before she lurches it back with a lurch that makes the tires squeal. I have to remind her.
The road, Mom; you’re driving
. She never knows whose turn it is at stop signs, takes her foot off the gas, then jams it down again as other drivers raise their fists and swear. When there’s ice, she skids sideways into things, and some of the more energetic witnesses call the police. The presence of the police sets off some secret bomb inside of her; her eyes sprout, her body shakes, her horrible story pouring out into the air while I silently observe the windshield, my face as smooth as stone.

The plains are filled with neighborly people who grow visibly quieter and steadier when confronted with someone of obviously vacillating character. The person under the police uniform is eventually disarmed, even the nastier ones with the neutral glares end up towing us out of the ditch, all of us: the lost husband, the lost daughter, in the dead winter, streetlights flickering on at five p.m., illuminating vast mounds of sullied snow into glittery shards of diamond.

Treating undiagnosed semi-agoraphobics in denial is a tricky business. She goes to church, driving with skewered, graveyard eyes. She makes it to the grocery store, where she buys the essentials, sometimes sweating, sometimes not. She comes home out of breath, leaving the bags on the countertop even if there’s ice cream inside, gets into bed, giving the rest of her orders quietly from there. We are well provided for; there is no sense of the widowed urgency some of the darker Catholics have. June whips up spuds from a box; I drink Mountain Dew, chew pink gum with soft liquidy centers that explode in my mouth, watch TV.

Dot, Roxy, and I see Benny Chap on Wednesdays, thirty minutes apiece. He wants me to keep a dream journal, which accidentally brings out the liar in me.

I sit in my orange bucket chair and fabricate:
Nothing to report, Dr. Chap. I don’t dream
.

He sits in his orange bucket chair and says:
What makes you say that?

Just that morning Leonard flew across my mind held up by the seat of his pants by a flock of quarrelsome brown bats, his face dark and cavernous, long legs dangling.

There is nothing in my head when I wake up. I did what you told me; I lay there breathing and not moving for a long time. Nothing comes
.

You’re probably trying too hard, Philomena. It will come on its own
. He’s smiling his wide-open psychologist’s smile, his poor skin covered with deep pallid craters. I smile back, the sad smile of a liar, but I enjoy basic smooth sailing and swim-fed exhaustion until Manny dies.

I wake up one morning to find him lying outside the front door as hard as a rock. I touch his fur and his fur is rock. I touch his nose and his nose is pebble. I drop onto the ground beside him to think, my insides swirling as I touch his poor fur. June didn’t come home last night. I am alone. We need a man to bury the dog so I call Father Tim, waking Father Tod, who puts the receiver down so hard I jump. When Tim gets on the phone, I explain the situation and suggest aggressively that he bury the dog. When everyone wakes up they are surprised to find me sitting in the kitchen waiting patiently, both hands at my sides. I explain what has happened in the hushed voice of an in-church nun, and my calmness overtakes them too; they stare back at me patiently, both hands at their sides. At the burial out by the tree, I maintain the quiet until the quiet stops, and I find myself rolling around in some soggy leaves. My mother kneels beside me and I can tell by her kneecaps and the freckles sitting on the kneecaps that she does not know what to do. She has sad little hairs growing out of her kneecaps and kneecap wrinkles like the rings on trees, which carries me into a deeper nervous breakdown. She does something to my hair with her cold hands. This enrages me. I speak quietly:
Get your fangs off me
, in a possessed-by-the-devil voice. She immediately removes them and steps aside.

Dot gets down on her knees, eyes leaking, tries to explain some Dark Catholic/Buddhist emergency procedure. I don’t listen, prefer watching Roxanne smoke openly in front of a tired Father Tim, who is leaning on a shovel with one green rubber boot on the metal part, ignoring her. I grab on to the tree, pull myself up, wipe thawed mud on my pants, say:
Give me that cigarette
, smoking it so hard I almost barf and eventually someone calls Dr. Bob, who comes over dressed in a brand-new gray sweat suit with a great gray hood. By the time he arrives, I’m on the ground again, calling for June, my face to the sky, watching the underside of the tree weaving above me like a living umbrella. Dr. Bob kneels down in the mud next to me, says things I do not listen to, giving me a shot I do not feel.

June arrives in her brown polyester uniform, her face zooming in so close to mine it floods my vision.
Poor little Manny
, I say. She clasps my big hands in her little bony ones, squeezes hard, and is strong. I look at her hands, small and worn, look at her face, folded in worn creases, her name floating in plastic on her pocket.
Poor, poor Manny
. She’s murmuring things to me, her nails bitten down to nothing, surrounded by broken skin, jagged cuticles, edges stinging red with dried blood. I don’t listen, just clasp her hands, feeling their heat radiate out into mine. When I think of Manny’s fur, my mind recoils. When I think of Bron’s voice warbling up the laundry chute, my mind cringes. When I think of Leonard’s charred broken body, my mind bursts into flame. There is a whole new section of my self burning with magnetic repellent. I look June deep in the eyes; they’re green with greener swirls, a shiny black center watching steadily from the middle:
What should I do?
I ask. She squeezes harder, does not reply. I remember reading something somewhere that spoke of the flashes of lucidity in life. How they come. How they illuminate. How lucidity emerges then, plain cold lucidity, born old like a crystal baby and then you know, and once you know, parts of you are over.

Sedation rolls into my body in a warm wave. I lean back into the scratchy bark of the tree, let June push the hair out of my eyes, and it slowly dawns on me in a yellow-gold way that the present is just a portal leading to a future where things will be better; all I have to do is make it there.