Swimming (22 page)

Roxanne

At first she looks like an old grainy person with a shiny wrinkled face, then she looks like an incompetent Roxanne impersonator, then she looks like parts of a Roxanne puzzle someone has given up on and left scattered on the bed.

Her eyes focus on me for a second, then they close.
Your hair … why … a flag … what’s …
, she whispers.

A nurse sticks her head in the door and shouts:
The doctor will be with you in just one minute
.

This startles her. She jumps, looks at me, whispers
I can’t take this
, then gives me a shoulder, some oily roots, and an ear to talk to, so I speak to them.

So … It’s been a while
.

…

Almost a year …

…

…

She turns.
I can’t talk right now
. Her face trembles, crumpling, her arm branches attached to pipes, her pipes attached to bags holding liquids she needs to recover. She covers her dry lips with a transparent hand.

I’m not prepared.
No one’s mad at you. Not one person in the … Not even … Mom’s going to try to … She’s being helped by some sheriff guy … and some version of Dot will be here in a couple of days
.

Okay, okay
, she says, swatting me away.
Quit yelling
.

I’m not yelling
, I say, pretty sure I wasn’t yelling.

Please stop … fucking … shouting
, she says, hands over ears.

Okay, okay, I’ll just sit here then … and sit
, I whisper.

I watch the side of her head pretend her face is sleeping, but the set of her shoulders tells me this is a lie. I swing my feet, grab my arms, twist them into the new millennium yoga moves I’ve just been taught, but am still invaded by antsiness. I knot the corner of her blanket into knots, belly-breathing the hospital energy out of my mind. Another nurse sticks her head in the door.
They’re coming! The doctors are coming
, she says, which causes me to run to the door faster than a tornado drill.

I watch them walk down the hall. One major doctor surrounded by three minor ones, clopping like horses. The major one skids to a halt in front of me and starts to speak, giving me a long list of probables starting with adrenal exhaustion and finishing with the hepatitis and AIDS tests that haven’t come in yet. He says:
Please, take a seat
even though there isn’t one, realizes there isn’t one, rubs his eyes, sighs, then speaks about addictions to drugs from a family of drugs that ends with
-ine
.

He says:
Your sister’s had quite the time of it; we almost lost her
.

I hate hospitals, but like the way some doctors talk, the ones with the measured words and the discreet pauses they leave between them so you can ingest the information before they continue with more, even awfuller stuff. He’s one of those. The minor doctors next to him squint with squinty med-school faces. I swipe them with Olympic vision.

My mother’s trying to come
, I say.
If she makes it, you’ll have to be careful with her; she’ll be nervous
.

I’ll keep that in mind
, he says.
As you know, the police are involved. There’ll be a hearing, rehab. It’s routine. You’ll also have to stop by administration before you leave and take care of the paperwork
.

I take an elevator full of depressed people down. We stand sinking in unison in groups of four. I end up in administration in front of a woman with a head full of tight curls holding up a no-nonsense face. She’s filed her nails into salmon pink fangs she uses as pointers.
Sign here … and here … and here
.

I take an elevator full of depressed people up, watching the doors slide open to reveal white halls, white walls, white tiles, white ceilings, beige chairs, pale people in colorful shoes, professional people in white smocks.

Heroin is as death-inducing as a well-planned suicide. You’d end up in the dirt turning black with all other decomposing peoples in the decomposing universe. Taking heroin is like standing on a ledge of a skyscraper when it is windy, naked, on the edge of your toes, a murderer in a bad mood with nothing to lose standing behind you. I walk into her room and stare at Roxanne’s sleeping face, not understanding. I sit beside her bed and stare at her sleeping face, wondering why. I am the national spokesperson for the Living Well, Living Safely program sponsored by the Red Cross. I wear a seat belt every time I get into a car. I have breathing techniques, nerve-taming behaviors. I study self-hypnosis with a clinical psychologist who’s trained some of the best athletic minds in the history of the universe. I take power yoga, Spinning classes, Pilates. I stand at the front of the class, stretch myself into infinity. My feet are so flexible I can touch the back of my calves with my big toes, something henceforth humanly impossible. I typed my B-average term papers
Oooo ye of yonder pudding
sitting on an exercise ball to work on dryland balance. Every night I sink into the black-velvet sleep of the physically exhausted, wake up naturally before the sun. My mind is bionic; if I visualize something long and hard enough, it comes to pass.

When Roxanne awakens, she doesn’t speak, gives me a birdy shoulder and some sad roots to look at. Then they give her a truth serum medication that makes her very nice. She hugs me, smiles, tells me everything. Her quest for the perfect bong.
Pot, herb, weed, grass, ganga, hash, spleef!
The first time she went shrooming to school
the nuns looked like shadows yearning to fly!
The money she stole from Mom
right there in her room while she was reading!

LSD was cool, but not good
, she says.
Remember the Thanksgiving I never showed up? John and I took a hit of acid. We watched bricks move
.

Acid?
I say, thinking
burn. Bricks in a building?
I say, thinking
crazy
.

Yeah. It was incredible
. She sighs for all lost memories ruefully earned.

How did the building stay up, then? I’m
rational.

It was like a contained set of dominoes
, she says carefully, as though she is explaining a sick science project.
But then I got scared that if the bricks were moving and I didn’t normally notice, what else was I not normally noticing? Things in the air, things in my eyes, things sinking into my skin. I freaked out. My first bad trip
.

I can’t stand the burning, the acid, nun shadows, her eyes.
I’m sorry, Rox; I’m a bit tired today
.

Roxanne’s rehab psychologist calls a meeting. She sits behind a clear plastic desk with a dull gold Buddha glowing internally upon it. She explains that Roxanne is suffering from an acute form of human loneliness that being smart doesn’t make any easier because she has a good argument for almost everything, especially bad behavior and near-fatal experience.

She has trouble accepting life’s limitations as a sober person
, she says.

I look at the Buddha.
Yes, that may be true, but running stolen cars into trees makes it worse
.

She has trouble envisioning a world in which she has a powerful role
.

I look at the Buddha again.
Yeah, but now she’s sick and itchy
.

Mom calls, weepingly worried.
Tell her I love her. Tell her she’ll be fine
. But they change her truth serum medication to one that makes her nervous and mean without informing me and she starts telling me to fuck off when I walk into the room, a new way of saying hello. Her eyes travel slowly from sneaker to ponytail. I am also informed that I am
an absent selfish sick fucking bitch. And the worst fucking nonexistent full of shit swimming asshole
. I almost call it quits, but her psychologist says that Roxanne needs me; that
fuck you
means
help
.

Roxanne’s new medication enjoys keeping me waiting in the hall, one of those wide institutional corridors bathed in fluorescence. I sit in an uncomfortable chair and study the ground. Everything is designed to repel—stainless steel, high-glazed plaster, cold concrete. Nothing here will stay, no memory, no taste, no thought. It will be wiped clean, the night terrors, the daymares, the people without the capacity to cope, the pitted silence of those who watch.

I feel like something two-dimensional, ready-made, commonplace, with icy bits that resist life’s heat. The upper echelon of the ward— doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists—are cool customers, as busy as bugs. They look at me and smile with a quick nod. If they know anything about swimming, they hide it. I watch the janitors clank down the halls; they have the hard looks, the large pores, the thick uniforms that don’t breathe. I watch the orderlies clink down the halls after them; they are younger, look like they could use a dose of rehab themselves, are often cute.

Roxanne makes friends with Cat, Susi, and the dying Manfred, who looks at me and says:
Save it, darling; I’m as good as dead
. It’s impossible to put an age on them, as though they’d drunk an elixir or were under some magic spell. I see them from afar, read their body language, think they are kids, until they get closer and the kid faces dry up into sunken walnut, hair into brittle wire, teeth into bruised banana.

They collapse in each other’s arms, weep long hard tears. They lock eyes and laugh at mean barbs directed at the other rehabbers. Their judgments are based on hard socio-physical criteria; they make fun of the ugly, the uneducated, the poor.
She’s a piece of crap
, they say about a hideous girl with acne marks pitting every inch of her face.

I smile at said hideous girl while waiting for Roxanne’s mean medication to wear off, include a casual Olympic wave.

Fuck off, ass wipe
, she says without removing her gaze from the horrible face in the mirror, and it seems obvious that the world says a lot of things, and if you listen without choosing, you become the one you hear the most.

When I pick Dot up at the airport, she’s secretly divorced, unbearably bossy, and I have to defend myself against her wild accusations of my appalling management of delicate familial situations.

Let’s take a look at erasing yourself with goodness
, I say finally. We’re driving directly to the hospital to see Roxanne.

She says:
Let’s take a look at changing the subject
.

I say:
Okay … let’s take a look at erasing yourself by fixing everyone else
.

She says:
Do you have to get nasty? Every time
.

That’s the pot calling the kettle nasty
, I think.
You could have opened an office with Benny Chap and charged us a fee
, I say.

Massive doses of therapy have made her intolerant of anyone else’s inner life.
So, that’s your answer
, she says.
One of your special Benny Chap commentaries
.

There is no goddamn answer
, I say,
and quit bugging me about everything. Quit telling me that every little goddamn thing we lived through mattered. Some things didn’t
.

Like what for instance?
She’s toying with me.

Like … let me … like Mom wanting chickens. You always go on and on
and on about it. The fucking veiny fucking chickens. I like chicken. It smells great when it’s roasted and I like the sauce they put on those potatoes, although potatoes should …

When Dot explodes, her voice gets hollow.
I was
a vegetarian.
There was nothing for me to eat. Those fucking potatoes were swimming in chicken grease. She didn’t nourish me. I was like a … like her fucking slave girl. She never wondered about me. She never thought about me. Do you remember my sixteenth birthday?

I try to calm her down, take one hand off the wheel in the inter national sign of universal peace, say:
Let’s not get into this
.

We’re into it. Do you remember?
She’s using the voice of no return.

Yes. No
. I say.

Which is it?
she says.

No
.

She made
hamburgers
and
chocolate peanut butter pie, she says, exploding again.

The significance escapes me. I say nothing.

I was a vegetarian and I have hated peanut butter since
the day I was born, she says, sobbing out words.
I always fucking hated peanut butter. Bron was the one who loved peanut butter, remember? She’d eat it with a spoon. Sister Augusta used to make me an angel food cake with strawberries … Remember Augusta’s angel food cake?

This is exactly what I want to avoid.
No. Yes. Fuck. Don’t cry…. This always happens, every time. Rehashing all this
.

They were good to me, those nuns. They were. I tell people, but they don’t believe me
. She is sad now with lost nun eyes.

You were almost one of them
, I say, turning into a parking lot filled with anxious dusty cars.

I was just a sweet kid. Dad … he … he … he … Dad when Bron … Jesus, Bron. Fuck. I can’t take this. I can’t take this
.

I change the subject, try to stick to present fact.
Look, Dot, things are okay now. I think Mom likes that chubby sheriff guy … who, lo and behold, is one of Glenwood’s most eligible bachelors. Roxanne’s new medication seems to be bringing her around to her old self and, you, you seem … annoyed … but …

You know what Augusta used to say?
She’s tired, her face empty.

What?

Shed say, “You just flute what anyone else thinks; take your life and run with it.”

That was the softball coach talking
, I say, pulling into an empty space next to an enormous white truck with a big rusty door hanging from warped hinges.