Swimming (23 page)

You never knew her. She was so funny; she made me laugh
, she says, wiping her bleeding mascara with the corner of a scrunched-up paper towel. When Roxanne was still talking to me, she told me that she thinks Dot has been so secretive about her life because she dreads coming off as human.

We go to court and Roxanne’s life is read out loud like troubled news. A tall judge with a brown leather face tells her that she has to continue regaining her health in rehab and then she shall pay her debt to society through community service. The judge also tells Roxanne that if he catches her driving under the influence of a controlled substance again, she will do hard time.

Mother weeps into the phone, begging me to thank the lawyers, the judge, the stenographer, and other untitled court patrons, and we waltz her back to rehab to do her time.

All the windows in rehab are covered in bars so desperate people won’t fall out by accident or design. I stand in the rec room watching rectangular slashes of sky through the bars.
Just get me a joint, Mena. It’s better for me than alcohol or drugs. You don’t even have to think of it as a drug because it’s natural, like lavender
.

I cross my arms.
No way
.

She leans in, wheedling.
Come on. A little joint. A couple of hits in a one-hitter. No one will suspect you. We’ll walk outside, la-di-da, one little puff puff. None the wiser
.

I lean in, not wheedling.
You heard the judge, didn’t you? Did you hear the judge? Are you out of your mind? Read my lips: no way
.

She changes tactics.
Fuck you, shithead
.

I’m not a shithead because I won’t bring you drugs in rehab, Roxanne. Maybe I should have a chat with the chubby sheriff—-see what he says about it
.

She flings herself into a ratty tweed armchair, starts talking like Scarlett O’Hara when she’s the belle of the ball.
Oh, June! Is that mashed potatoes and beans? Oh, please tell me that it isssssss
.

I almost whack her. Some poor skinny kid is making a piñata, engrossed in soaking strips of newspaper in a small bowl filled with liquidy glue and smoothing them out with both hands. He’s too skinny to be real, his veins bright blue and raised. I look closer; he’s fifty. I look closer again; he’s in his eighties. I don’t feel well; the cigarettes, wax, medication, and glue are waltzing with the chlorine in my head, no one’s inner faces match their outer, June keeps being disappeared and I keep never searching for her, this poor old guy is stuck living with a little-kid vibe, and the will to whack Roxanne remains strong, so strong I almost do.

My eyes tell her that she is a scarecrow, that she is straw-colored, mismatched, and heartless, that her funny makeup is designed to frighten birds.

Drugs have immunized her to anything my stare can do; she just looks back, mashing the sugar out of a thin strip of green gum like the documentaries you see of GIs during combat.
Fucking cog in fucking wheel
.

I brace myself:
Don’t start, Roxanne
.

What’s not cog about you, Phenomena darling? You’re a fucking ruler, with little straight lines, a straight-edged cog, a metal compass; you’re a calculator, plus, minus, plus, minus. And P. fucking S., boo hoo, no more spuds and beans for you, my dear. No more June. Disappeared. Into thin air. Where oh where could she be? … You’re so fucked up
.

I’m fucked up?
I say, pointing to the bars.

Yeah
. She ignores the bars.

The addict in rehab begging for pot …
I point to the bars again.

I’m not the only human being in the world who needs a crutch
, she says, hunting around in her jeans for a smoke.

You barely made it, Roxanne. That tree almost got you
.

She lights a cigarette, blowing smoke in my face.
My psychologist says everyone in our family is fucked up, even the ones who think they …

I wave the smoke away.
They’re saying I’m the most accomplished swimmer of my generation
.

She blows more my way, laughs a mean laugh.
They don’t know a goddamn thing about you
.

Rehab takes time whether it works or not. Some people rehab over and over again like wheels rolling down hills. Mom flies Roxanne back to Glenwood to the local twelve-step inpatient program, run by psychiatrists who believe in the curing power of strong medication and manned by nursing nuns, a dire mistake. Then she goes to a tough-love rehab program in Minnesota that she describes as having some fat trucker with a crew cut trying to break her down to what he calls her
nitty-gritty
, which makes her want drugs bad enough to jump out a window and run away into the night with a fractured tibia. Then she goes to a rehab spa where she meets rich people to do drugs with and has international junkie love affairs that end badly in one of the New York boroughs. She eventually winds up in Montreal at a family-run, non-subsidized, one-on-one, real-life rehab. It’s the one that clicks. She stops doing heavy drugs and becomes a highly functional recreational alcoholic /pot-smoking landscape artist as everyone sighs the sweet sigh of relief.

And I’m Hungry Like a Wolf

Sunny and I are sitting on a diving board massaging our calves with an oily organic concoction Babe’s mom still sends the team on a regular basis. We’re checking out some master swimmers at the end of the pool.

What about that one?
I ask Sunny.

She shakes her head.
Married
.

I punch her in the arm.
You’ve got to be kidding me
.

She rubs her arm.
I’m serious. He’s married
.

What kind of retard gets married young?

He’s not
that
young … We’re not that young either, for that matter
.

I ignore her.
What about that cute guy?

Come on! That’s the Russian guy
.

He doesn’t look Russian; he looks Oklahoman
.

Oh … him … I thought you were talking about the Russian guy
.

I shift my eyes from a tall, skinny swimmer with the shoulder span of a tyrannosaurus to the other one: tall, dark, universally handsome, with one of those proud nasty faces. I’d seen him around. He’s leaning over his gym bag, pulling out some goggles, his suit as low at it can go on his hip without revealing hair. Squint material. Not my type.

Not my type
, I say.

The Russian guy notices me watching, stands up, puts on his goggles, salutes. I look behind me, no one. I stare at him with my mouth half open and before I have time to close it, he disappears under the water.

This is new.
What an A-hole
, I say.
He’s Russian?

Sort of. His parents are lawyers or scientists or doctors or something from Russia or Borealus or Boreaus, Borlulus. He was born there but moved here before he was two or five or something
.

He’s sprinting to the wall.
What’s he like?

He keeps to himself … On the arrogant side would be my guess
.

And an ass. What was that salute about?

Sunny looks at me with her psych-major face.

What?

Every time I see him, he salutes or bows. I ignore him, but the energy it takes to avert my eyes makes them sting and the idea of him starts to infiltrate my swims anyway. He appears in my mind, dark and shifty, nodding or saluting, and I start to experience a tiredness felt only from a virus before it breaks out into something bad. Hot and heavy love scenes invade my mind; he’s distant, interesting.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz has a series of succinct one-sided discussions with me.
We’ve got Pan Pacs in one month … that’s four weeks from now. I’ll be right over here if you need me
.

I flip him off in my head, plunge into the pool, but I run my fingers through my hair when I take my cap off, wear pink lip gloss instead of Carmex just in case. Once, I end up walking behind him, close enough to get details. I stare hard: his shoes are clean with clean laces, the bottom of his jeans
tatty
, his legs
long
, his canary yellow T-shirt
ironed
, his wide shoulders
set
, his neck
straight
, his head
shapely
, until he vanishes into the locker room and the air around me goes flat.

I make discoveries. The only thing that separates him from world-class times is that he doesn’t care about anything; the only reason he swims is to compete in a triathlon in Hawaii in the spring, and apparently he’s out to win. He’s getting a master’s in business, is smart. He wears a navy blue knit cap even though California is not cold, shaves both arms and legs. He makes no attempt to be liked so no one likes him. He quits, starts up, quits again. He has hissy fits where he throws his gym bag on the ground, kicks it, quits, slamming the gym doors behind him. He hates lifting weights, is apparently allergic to egg. Russia orders him to compete for them in the Olympics and legend has him saying
No way
. Women like him, but he is known as someone who dates then discards, thus the reputation of having a hard little heart, which he must have known is like dangling a dripping steak in front of a pack of ferocious animals.

I see him driving a car with different sorts of girls inside with long auburn, dark brown, or strawberry-flavored hair. He salutes if he sees me before I duck, adds a half marine salute with a queen of England twist to his repertoire.

We get close enough to talk.

I feel sick, hide it behind a neutral face and a new lip gloss I’m glad I’m wearing.
Quit saluting, will you. It’s annoying
.

You love it
, he says without breaking stride.

People don’t treat you normally when you have gold medals, have broken world records, have a family of sponsors who star you in commercials where you have a new face painted on top of the other one, an agent who calls you up to inform you of your schedule, messengering your first-class tickets to your condo. They usually want a life like yours, but without the swimming. When people start treating me normally, I bring up a gold medal moment or the
Sports Illustrated
thing so they stop.

I steel myself with arguments: (1) I am more successful than he is; (2) I was born in America; (3) a lot of people I don’t know know me; (4) nice swimmers can’t get enough of me. But my head fills up with painful questions that repeat themselves over and over again.
How am I supposed to act? This isn’t normal. What should I do with my face when he is around; should I arrange it to avoid him? How am I supposed to act? …
I start arranging my face all the time just in case he may be looking, even though the pool area is empty of Russian.

Sunny notices.
Is something troubling you?

I’m fine
.

What would a normal person do? I start dating a nice swimmer who could have been from Ohio. We go to barbecues and movies together, agree on most things.

After an impossible week sleepwalking through my swims like a lazy robot, Supercoach E. Mankovitz pulls his eyebrows up into his baseball cap and frowns:
Have you been eating sugar? You can tell me
.

Nothing but yams and I’m fine
, I snap.

He takes off his cap and scratches the dent it leaves in his hair.
Perhaps … but you’re taking your turns too late—rookie stuff
.

I look out into the water.
I’m fine. I’ll watch it
.

After practice one day, the Russian guy is waiting for me. I see him, instantly prepare my body and face to walk by as though I am not pretending he’s invisible, when he touches my arm and says:
I’ve been waiting for you
.

I immediately stop breathing and suffer the facial coloring consequences. He ignores it, says:
We should have dinner
.

I have to think quickly, don’t, say:
I have a nice boyfriend
.

He studies me.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that before
.

This is bad.
A boyfriend, I meant to say
.

He’s still studying me.
I have difficulty believing that
.

I have to think quickly, don’t.
What do you mean?

This is a source of amusement.
You know what I mean
.

I don’t, am unprepared; all symptoms of nervousness reveal themselves as I scramble to disguise them. Something funny has happened to my blink.
I meant I have a boyfriend and he is a … What do you mean?

A nice one? Well, maybe it’s time you had a man friend
.

It is such a stupid thing to say, I accidentally look at him and he laughs. His eyes are orchidy green, filled with swamp and an ocean of squint.

How Each and Every Thing Will Unfold

Peggy is bench-pressing her body weight, her face the color of a healthy Alaskan salmon.
We’re being very quiet about Mr. Nasty, aren’t we?

He’s not that nasty
. I’m gripping the bar in an upright row.

For the last four months, all we’ve heard is how nasty this guy is, how emotionally disturbed and now … nothing
.

He’s not as bad as he seems
, I say, suspending the motion.

At first everything seems practically normal, like scenes in a play with very good Method actors interpreting regular people with such enthusiasm it appears to be real. We eat sandwiches with avocado and watch the sea churn, have long talks to see who is smarter and in what way, eventually doing things in bed with an intensity I’ve never experienced before, which we never openly discuss. I pretend that it is as normal for me as it seems to be for him, a tactical error. I stop knowing exactly what I’m doing, suffer from unbearable surges of feeling, wanting to touch him when he is not around, conscious that self-obliteration is happening, that I risk danger, that this is dangerous.

I let him drive, look at him when he says things and keep on looking when he stops. There are his ears. My mind says things like
Well, he does have regular ears
. Everything feels so thundersome—my body, my arms, my sexual places—but I keep it to myself, even though the team is intrigued.

Bron and Leonard fly through my mind in a Model T Ford. Bron’s driving, wearing a brown leather cap and thick aviator goggles. Leo nard’s wearing the same, but at an awkward angle as though he let her accessorize him like an obedient baby. He’s studying the dashboard with no real interest, not a bat in sight. I need counseling, do not seek it, start showing a true kindness to some of the new swimmers I cannot stand, am all
toodle doo, that’s okay
.

On the rare occasions he doesn’t stay the night, I sleep as lightly as a nun on Christmas Eve. I stop going to the swimming BBQs because he thinks most swimmers are A-holes. He refuses to go to the costume parties even though I beg:
It’ll be fun
. My condo becomes a cave on a tropical island.

Peggy says:
You’re no fun
.

Slowness creeps up on swimmers slowly like panther until one day it is upon them. I watch it creep up on Sunny, watch her struggle, watch her plunge, watch pain no longer translate into speed, her times winding down a vortex of drain. She starts playing perky Dolly Parton tunes on her guitar, has embroiled therapy sessions with a man she calls Chuck.

She retires one month before Worlds, says:
It’s time I move on
.

I beg her:
Don’t go
.

She laughs.
I’m not going anywhere
.

I beg her again:
Please don’t go, Sunny. Don’t do this
.

I’m just moving on, Pip. I’m not dying
.

I go to the Worlds in Peru and spectacularly beat my younger self with two new world records. People are amazed. On the plane home I don’t sleep, but am not tired. I look out the porthole, am exuberant, exhilarated, inexhaustible, but quiet, as if the loud me has died and another me I am vaguely familiar with has been excavated. I say:
Burn, fucker, burn
at takeoff and landing, but my heart is not in it. At the airport, my eyes rip through hordes of people until they find him, then they rest.

At first he remains the slightly nasty guy who confuses me with his past-life foreignness, then he changes. I wonder if the not-nasty is a plot to throw me off, but at the end of the day, I can get him to do almost anything I want. I test him, casually say:
Would you mind picking up those things and putting them over there?
and he says:
Okay
.

I meet his parents, a very jolly father and a mother who studies me over her fork as we eat plates of cold things soaked in vinegar. Their accents are sweet, with the slight slowness of the mentally disabled. I’m made to understand that the Russian guy is their only son and as their only son is destined to succeed in a very large and extraordinary way. They had a daughter, Alena, who died mysteriously when she was eight months old. Many other bad things concerning cabbage and straw happened. They are a people who have suffered in a way that I, born in the center of the United States of Similar, could not understand. His mother leans over and whispers one hideous story after another that involve bloody vaginas into my ear as the Russian guy and his dad play some board game I’ve never seen before that looks really easy but which they assure me is not. I discover that masculine men leave the women to the women in order to recharge their maleness amongst males. Sometimes, the mother looks over my head and says something to her husband like
Eeky muzzle ga ga on her
. And the father responds without looking up:
Eeky muzzle on her dah dah
.

His mother is one of those women who pull at your arm when she talks because she wants you to remain looking at her. I realize later that she does this because once she starts to speak, your eyes automatically start searching for an exit. I wonder if they went through interrogations back in Russia.

On the way home, I say:
Don’t leave me alone with your mom
.

He drives with one hand on the wheel, one arm stretching out the open window.
You weren’t alone
.

You and your dad were doing other stuff
.

In the same room …

She kept grabbing my arm and wouldn’t let me look away, not even for a second. She was telling me horrible stuff about some crazy Ivor guy that couldn’t possibly be …

I know what Ivor did
. He sighs….
She trusts you …

Trusts me? She just kept talking and talking and talking. She thought I was from Chicago, she doesn’t even know what I swim …

Why do you care?
He stops at a red light.

Why do I care?
I repeat, looking out the window to buy time. The small car next to us is stuffed with a lady with a big goiter under her chin smoking a golden cigarette. I watch her inhale, then let it go.

Yes. Does it really matter?
he says.

Is this a test?
No
, I lie.

There we go, then
.

Well, don’t leave me alone with her
.

You weren’t alone
.

His first name is Alexandre, but I like the middle one—
Stepanovich—
better. I like to say it;
Okay, Stepanovich, or Just a sec, Stepanovich
. But behind his back I call him the Russian guy and after a while so does everyone else.

He’s a profoundly tricky person, sets traps I get caught in, as surprised as an animal hanging upside down from a tree.

Where did you get those?
he says, watching me from the bed as I dress for practice.

In a store
. I’m wary when he gets that look on his face.

What kind of store?

A big one
.

Kansas or California?

California
.

Did you pick them out yourself?

Of course! What’s wrong with you?

Mmmmm
.

What mmmmm?
I’m sliding my hair into a ponytail.

Nothing
.

What? Do you think they’re ugly?

Yes … yes, I do. I think that most sane people over the age of nine would
.

Are you serious?

Look at them
.

I look at them.
They’re just regular. White. Simple
, I say, adjusting the waistband with a finger.
Lots of women wear them
.

He crosses his arms behind his head, watching me.
That’s their problem. They came in a package, didn’t they?

Of three
. I’m not looking at him.

Exactly alike
. He’s still looking at me.

Yeah …

So you have many
, he says, still watching me.

Yes
. I’m putting on socks.

All the same color?
He sounds like a lawyer in one of those shows.

No
, I say. A shaft of sun is cutting through the curtains and landing on his legs.
I have some pink ones, some light blue ones. What don’t you like about them?

I don’t like anything about them
, he says.
They’re for girls … You’re not a girl
.

I change topics.
What’s eeky muzzle on her dah dah mean?

Where did you hear that?

Your mother always says it
, I say, pulling some sweats on.
That and eensy snoodenia
.

He sits up, swinging his legs to the ground.
You misunderstood
.

I’d always thought of underwear as breathable hygienic basically white cotton muff protectors. On a larger, more meaningful scale, I’d also always thought I was a feminine woman because I had a nice healthy vagina and two good boobs, but the Russian guy gives the strong subliminal message that having a nice healthy vagina and two good boobs is not enough, exactly, to make a woman. I start to feel the wave of air and the thump as doors hit walls when I open them in a hurry. I start to feel the separation in my rib cage when I laugh out loud and the way heads turn in restaurants when I walk by with gigantic strides. The air flinches when I shout and I accidentally hurt people when I punch them in the arm; they wince. The Russian guy tells me that my favorite shoes have the heels of garden implements, that my hair does the same thing every day, that I should train it to do something other than sit quietly in ponytails. I think eyeliner makes me mud-eyed, that mascara gives a fake spider effect, that lipstick turns my lips into mini-vaginas, but the Russian guy deeply admires these things. It is when I am naked and not talking and not doing anything, lounging on my bed after practice in a hypnotic trance, that I find myself to be a most feminine woman, but I can’t tell people this after I’ve accidentally bruised their eardrums. I put eyeliner on Cleopatra style, lie down on the bed when I know he’s coming over, naked with special hair I comb the shapes out of, but my sexy hypnotic trance usually transforms itself into a drooly sleep that ruins the effect.

Dot flies in on a three-day furlough from saving the sad children of Portland, finalizing a divorce that is doing its best to destroy her. We go shopping, she pushing the hangers on the racks so violently they screech like a field of bats, me watching the clothes whiz by in a whirl. My eyes are naturally drawn to polka dots, the small white ones on navy blue, the thick cream ones on black. I halt some of the hangers mid-screech.

What’s wrong with you?
says Dot.
That’s for old ladies and that’s just ugly
.

We go to the lingerie section, where I am fitted for a real bra by a short muscular lady with color red hands who says:
Are you a gymnast or something?

I’m six-two
.

Oh. That’s big
.

Too big to be a gymnast. You could have been a gymnast
.

I had my first child at seventeen
, she says, smiling a creaky yellow and gray smile.

The smile causes my soul to confide.
I got my first period at seventeen
.

That happens
, she says, standing on a chair and fitting me for a bra that takes my breasts and turns them into oranges that sit under my chin. She takes my breasts in her hands and puts them where she thinks they should go.

I am surprised before, during, and after, say:
It looks like I have oranges under my chin
.

She studies me, eyes serious under spikes of purple mascara, cocks her head, says:
No. It does not; they look nice
.

I turn myself over to her. She comes back with arms full of underwear made out of strips of ripped veil and bras with their own balconies as Dot sits on a peach velvet settee drinking a bottle of purified water, lost in her own thoughts.

Sometimes I stop listening to him when he says things and wonder
Why?
He has a slight space between his two front teeth. I look at the space and think
Why?
There he is holding his fork in his left hand and commenting on something I have not been following. There he is asking me if I am listening to him. There I am nodding
Of course
, but not. There he is putting down his fork;
I’m not going to talk if you’re not going to listen
.

Masculine men are easily hurt, way worse than girls. And they need drastic doses of attention. The masculine man needs the feminine woman to run around him light as wind covered in transparent fabric like a naughty angel. He explains to me in one of his unguarded moments that he has Russian blood, which means he has strong thoughts about everything that happens in the world, and that he feels it necessary, essential, to yell at people who do their jobs badly. Yet I am unprepared. He yells at waiters who serve lukewarm food, oysters that aren’t perfectly fresh, undercooked bacon in soggy BLTs, opening the sandwich as I squirm in my seat. He says:
May I speak with the manager, please?
or
I’d like to have a word with your supervisor
. Sometimes the supervising manager is the person he is already talking to and he raises one eyebrow, suddenly becoming very quiet as if this new revelation were too stupid to be true. He speaks down to funny-looking girls with funny-looking hair if they add things up the wrong way. I say:
Leave the poor girl alone
. He says:
A job is a job
. He speaks down to really ugly people who are lousy at their horrible jobs. I say:
Stop it! It’s not that guy’s fault
. And he says:
That guy doesn’t give a shit about you, baby, and he just fucked up our order
. He is indiscriminate with his critique; no one is safe. He sends back bottles of wine, saying,
It’s corked, It’s vinegar, It’s way too warm
as the wine guy looks back with cool wine guy eyes. He breaks away from long lines at the movies if the stupid people are saying their stupid things too loudly and we end up doing something else, even though I wanted to see the film. The worst is when we run into someone of his own species and the air gets hot as the violence brews. This happens with a mechanic, a locksmith, an unscrupulous computer programmer, and an obese florist who tries to sell him something that had been dead for a very long time. She wrapped it up and tied it with a pretty bow, obviously inept at judging a potential situation.