Swimming (28 page)

We Fall Because That’s What We Do

My body changes; veins recede, muscles sink back into flesh, shoulders place themselves where shoulders should be, feet shrink, hands lose their power, eyes darken, hair darkens, knees rust.

Time passes. I try to get through Bud Lancer’s
Destination Destiny
. Fail. Hank calls, encouraging. I try to get through Leonard Ash’s
Most Misunderstood Mammals
. Fail. Take to wearing hats and hoods, like a thug. Hank calls, encouraging. His encouragement finally wears me down and I say yes to motivating Omaha. I pack a small suitcase, set the alarm clock on the table next to the couch, climb into my purple solar flare extra-deluxe mummy sleeping bag with hood.

It feels like it’s going to rain in Omaha when I arrive. The moisture in the air creates an ache in my jaw, but the sky outside is blue and the ground remains dry. From the window of my cab, I watch clouds fraying the sky into strips of white cloth as I concentrate on my speech. The theme this morning is suffering. In the afternoon I’m going to focus on guts, stealing bits and pieces of Dr. S. Hammernose’s celebrated theories that I’ve reworked as my own. I know my hotel room will smell like plastic violets, know my bed will be tightly starched, know that people will smile and nod, that I will smile and nod back, that the smiles and the nods will mean absolutely nothing. I’ll stand behind my bodily surface like a holyghost, letting my outside explain outside things. They’ll sit behind their bodily surfaces like holyghosts, their outsides listening to my outside things; thus, only outsides meet, which means absolutely nothing. I’m neither ready nor in the mood, but Hank’s convinced I have to do something.

People don’t like it when you look them in the eye; it makes them shy.

When I motivate, I usually aim for the forehead. I’ll give the stronger-seeming ones an occasional flash of eye but follow it with a smile and a general forehead scan so they feel safe. My people like to be distracted. I move around, twirl my ankles, create movement my ponytail gets lost in. When I’m relaxed, they’re relaxed. When I grind my voice down, they sit up and take notice. Sometimes I shake things up, coming at them from behind, get the ones slumping in the back.

I stand in a charcoal gray boardroom with a wall of glass overlooking shards of Omaha. I look out at the flat blue sky bathed in light and the thought comes.
Hey! What’s wrong with you? What’s all this holyghost stuff?
I stutter, pull myself back into a field of forehead, grind my voice down.

When your toes are gripping the surface of a starting block and there are twenty million people watching, there is only one place to go. Would my sturdy feet pull me through? Was that another world record or did the East German Berliners just pull ahead? Did Fredrinka Kurds overfluff her hair to compensate for the fact that there were masculine things happening inside her body or to draw all eyes away from that beard?

I mention not how my deep sleeps have disintegrated into no sleeps, how I awake to find myself staring at a black ceiling, how I buy a violet-tinged night-light that is supposed to do something I know it can’t. Instead, I lower my voice, unleashing the East German Berliners, whom I paint using the dark palette of drama, giving them beards, moustaches, rubbery muscles, voices like tires on gravel, mean little hearts. I grind my voice down a notch:
I won’t give up. I don’t give up
.

A skinny man with gray and white hair raises one finger. He would like to know how to unleash his own not giving up, please.
That’s a very good question
, I say. Then I pause, and in the pause my holyghost says:
Are you really going to be this full of shit forever?
The silence is so thick it stretches out over the unmotivated people of Omaha, out beyond the window across the plains of Nebraska to the four corners of this glorious earth, which causes everyone to squirm in their seats, except for me, who squirms standing. I scan the room—empty but for forty pairs of eyes eyeing me. I look down at my veiny hands; they’re hanging off my solid wrists as usual, skin-colored.
Fine
. I look down at my feet sitting in my shoes.
Powerful
. I wiggle my toes, pressing them into the insides of my shoes, think,
Nothing’s wrong
, but my heart does a flip, tripping over something it doesn’t see, rumbling inside my chest like thunder. I use the rest of my energy conserving an aura of Olympic royalty; excuse myself for one moment by holding up one finger because my neck bones have collided into my collarbone, freezing my ability to form words. I go to the executive bathroom, fill up a sink with cold water, and stick my face in to instigate the dive response, slow my heart down. Either I’ve gone over the edge or these are the throes of dying.

The director of marketing, a curvy woman in navy blue patent leather stilettos, trots in like a quarter horse and stands next to the sink trying to fish me out. I speak to her feet.

I’m fine
.

You don’t seem so fine
, she says.
You stopped breathing and your face tur—

I’m really, really fine. All those doughnuts on the breakfast buffet this morning were … I couldn’t identify those things they sprinkled … must have been sugar-based or worse, sugar-substituted, sometimes swimmers are … I’ll be fine. I just can’t believe it … Retirement’s … Listen, I’ll be back out in just one minute. Time me; I’m fast
.

I look at the opposite of myself looking back in the mirror, say:
Remember the eight, cunt chip
, go back in to finish my speech.

When I walk into the room, I realize immediately that all my Olympic royalty has been replaced by common, eyes are drooping, mouth is drooping, the front of my shirt is drenched in water, revealing the black lace bra with the invisible straps the Russian guy gave me on my path to becoming real woman. My grindy voice lodges in my throat. I cough out words like a dog. I’m very annoyed at Russia, say:
We haven’t heard the last of them yet
. I’m annoyed at dead people, say:
They could have tried
. My pearls have my neck in a strangulation hold so I rip them off. They unjoin in unison, rolling all over the room. An unmotivatable account executive gets on his hands and knees and finds them one by one. The room turns into Kansas winter, Kansas snowflakes floating out of the air conditioner like sad confetti, Kansas frost etching its way across glass.

I get cold.
Does anyone here have a blanket?

This throws them off.
A blanket?
They look at each other. Silence struggles with discomfort. Discomfort wins. Some chick from development puts up a hand and politely inquires how to stay motivated. I sigh, my teeth chattering like teeth in a gag.
Do you know any dead people?
She sighs back.
Yes. Yes, I do
. I say:
And that doesn’t motivate you?
My mind starts telling me that it is
definitely
time to go, so I go. But one of my pearls lodges in one of my shoes, and although my mind screams
Forget the fucking pearl, just go
, I kneel on one powerful knee and fish it out carefully with my finger as they watch, consumed by a silence as powerful as gravity. My mind says:
It’s urgent you extract yourself from this situation
. I stand up, extract myself.

I call Hank later while I’m packing. I’m shaking and quivering as if someone had given me a specially designed pill.
I think I should stop the speeches for a while; I’m in no state to motiv—

You’re giving up a potentially easy situation
, he says.

You do it, then
, I say, stomach percolating.

He gets quiet, thinking.
I would—
he sighs—
believe me, but I don’t have twelve gold medals and all those world records…. I don’t know what to say to you exactly. Just … think. Think about it. Popularity ebbs. People stop caring. You have to work at it, stay out there
.

Out where? I
ask, my voice rising.

You did things. Now talk about them until you start doing other things. Nothing just isn’t a good idea for you right now. You’re in transition. Transition is delicate
.

We have to think of something else. People are starting … My speeches aren’t what … I had a big problem today, Hank … I didn’t … I don’t know
. I look into the mirror; things are bad.

Big problem?
he asks.

I freaked out. I lost it
.

Freaked out?

There’ll be calls
.

He’s thinking again; the phone is quiet for one month.
You’re tired, Mena. It’s been a stressful year. Give yourself a break
.

I’ve been lying on couches in Glenwood, Kansas, Hank. Do you know where Glenwood, Kansas, is? My mother won’t leave the house; did I ever tell you that? She’s afraid something bad is going to happen. But all that happens is life
.

No. No, you never mentioned it. That’s—
he’s thinking again—
Well, what do you want to do; that’s the issue here. What do you really want to do?

I don’t know.
I don’t know
, I say.
I’m toying with maybe a world swim, one of those challenges … maybe a UNICEF thing
.

Fill me in
, he says.

I could swim the English Channel for UNICEF or swim the Arctic Sea for UNICEF or maybe cross an ocean. There are people … I’ve been reading about these electric force field things that protect open-water swimmers from sharks or that one type of jellyfish or stingrays and … remember that guy everyone thought was crazy until he … well, he’s not a good example but … I could swim around the world for world freedom or I could swim for … I don’t know … or, or, on a smaller scale I could do free swim clinics in D.C. or I could swim for a cure or multiple cures for that matter or I could get a bunch of medaled athletes and we could go to Deception Island and hold a challenge that would—

Have we forgotten the shoulder.?
he says, his soft voice softer.
You’d end up dead. No one wants you dead. NBC’s still looking for that kids’ thing and …

I told you I didn’t want that kids’ thing, Hank. I can’t believe you’re still going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on …

Okay. Okay. We’ll find something. I won’t schedule any more speeches, but you’re scheduled to swim with those autistic kids on Tuesday and we can’t cancel now
.

Fine
.

Listen, we’ll think of something. Let’s just take our time to make sure the something’s right
.

When I get home, I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I lean over the sink.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry
.

Leonard appears, says:
We need to talk
. It is the beginning of the end of everything, a feeling so familiar, so pungent, I hold my breath.

Hank calls.
How’s it going?

My mother calls.
Glenwood will always be here waiting for you
.

Dot calls.
I’m sorry to say, but I think an I-told-you-so wouldn’t be out of order here
.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz calls from his Florida fishing compound.
I spoke with Kyd yesterday and she strongly recommends you reconsider that coaching position. You’d be great
.

I’m lying on the couch in sweats with a hood I’ve tied underneath my chin.
I’m not so sure, Ernie
.

I hear the faint clamor of faraway bells. He raises his voice a notch, says:
What’s your gut say?

Fart and poop.
My gut’s … It’s …

Take your time. There’s no whistle; just listen to your gut. Call me when you know
.

Roxanne calls and complains about her new boyfriend, the maestro. The maestro this and the maestro that. I say:
Leave the fucking maestro then
and she says:
What’s up your butt all of a sudden?

There is nothing up my butt; my butt is as empty as the sky when I look at it from my couch. When I accidentally run into the people I’ve been avoiding, they question me indirectly about my horrible face:
Bad flu going around … don’t you think? Did you hear the wind howling last night?
While others take the direct route, looking at me earnestly, imploring:
What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
until I snap:
Nothing! Fuck off and quit asking me what’s wrong
.

I watch old videos. Fredrinka Kurds twisting her fingers before a race, cracking each knuckle carefully like a dice-throwing card-sharp. She suffered from goggle paranoia, checking, fiddling, double-checking. I put the video on slo-mo; there she is making little circles finger by finger down to the thumb, there she is checking the lenses of her East Berliner goggles, holding them tightly to her eyes, hormones raging through her system, making her sick. Peggy growled, spit, shook, and huddled under her towel, flinging it off like Batman when they called her name. But she always dipped her left hand delicately into the water, christening the back of her neck like a priest. Babe had a series of little hops she did with a Mary Lou Retton/Princess Di wave, then she would shut her eyes with the same look on her face as Father Tim’s when he was in the middle of a serious pray. I call her up. It is high noon on the reservation. Dr. Babe is taking a well-deserved nap.

Hey, Babe
, I say in my tired voice.

Hey, Pip
, she whispers in hers.

I consult one of the foremost sports physicians in the Western Hemisphere. I describe the cartwheeling heart, the shakes, the frozen body temperature, the negative thoughts I can’t blast away with the positive thoughts, mentioning not the apparitions of the flying bearded skinny biodiversity scientist who happens to be my dead father. He listens intently, his old hands crossed on his lap, interrogates me for seven minutes. He slashes out a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication with a dash of antidepressant and hands it to me, his face as smooth as a Buddha.