August 26, 1997
Alone by the lake the summer is ending. I go down to the water in sweatshirt, shorts, racing suit underneath. Take off the flip-flops. Dip my toes in- it was supposed to be too cold now. Why don't I feel the cold? Take off the shirt, shorts, line up the flip-flops neatly for my return, in case. Anyhow. My legs go in and then my hips touch and the sand turns to mulch beneath my toes. Fit the professional goggles on my eyes- how well they go with my paunch, stretch marks, what a joke. Breathe deep, hyperventilate, this is my last chance and I know it, stick my eyes in their frames beneath the surface. Too gross!! Come up nearly screaming. God knows what's in there, snakes, giant fish, weeds, snapping fiendish turtles like the one my dad's friend always catches here when we're not around. Have to go in though. I just won't stick my eyes under. I've gone this long without, so what that I finally know how to swim properly; crawl, come up only once every six strokes? I quit smoking and now I can do anything. I throw the rest of me in, except the eyes. I crawl without my head leading- awkward, but look how far I'm getting. Why isn't it cold?
Why am I so afraid? There are people across the way, or is that a droplet on the goggles I'm not really using? I go out further, past the rock that limited me when mom and I went playing and I was a kid. She cut her leg on it and blood came and I was so afraid she'd die. I towed her all the way back home then, and I didn't know she let me. I thought she needed me, blood diffusing through the water what if a shark comes? I want to put my head beneath, so I can stroke right. I'm too afraid. Something will grab me by the neck and I'll be gone. No one will know till Friday. Today is Tuesday. Oh god.
Why am I afraid? Nothing is wrong. I haven't eaten in the last hour- or I have, but I vomited it up. I can't get a cramp. I'm halfway across the lake now, slowing. The five o'clock sun strikes me finally because I've cleared the trees to the west. I roll over. God how I float on the surface! All the fat, perhaps, or deniability. My arms fling out in a cross; my legs straight before, toes pointed, left in front, right a little tucked beneath. There's probably still some pearl pink polish left on. "Oh God, please help me!" I hear my mind screaming sudden and even unexpected at the vehemence. The goggles filter light and cloud through and I can only see sky, there's nothing but me and sky floating on my nightmares of years and I don't know what to do because I am alone and I know that's why I'm crying out to god because my condition is so always alone.
I'm afraid and I roll over again, stroke back for home just one of many summer places not belonging to me but to married couples. I get angry, turn my face outward a few strokes, get brave and plunge forward. I get worried about my strength. I might be able to make it. But what if I get all the way across? There's a beach but the air is cold and I can't walk back in my suit with my fat hanging out and bare feet it's a mile and a half on gravel. I stop and turn for home again.
Suddenly I start stroking hard. This is no exercise, barely one lap afraid to put my head down I'm getting nothing out of this so why is it so hard? I start going like gangbusters and I can feel the sun leave me back behind the trees in seconds my heart is racing but not from effort I think I'm sobbing I'm definitely having a nervous breakdown I can't write a novel and nothing on earth will get me below the surface! Arm over arm again and more and the dock is coming up on me when is it safe to put my feet down without muck and horror? I'm two feet from the stone steps where I came in, breathing like a bellows and furious and it's not cold and nothing happened to me and I put my feet to the sand. No weeds. No snakes. I didn't die and I'm not freezing and no one will find my body on Friday when they come.
I know I should do this every day, do it with my head down and use the damn equipment, the goggles and the suit I bought to look like a swimmer, but isn't it supposed to rain tomorrow? I can't do this again. The fear of death is too much and no one cares enough about courage.
* * *
The towels are hung to dry, I'm back upstairs. I keep hearing noises like someone walking round the house, maybe inside the house. I keep typing. No one is here. I type and type so fast my fingers feel leftover and I've no idea what comes out. To my left a giant window facing the road. No shutter or shade. To my right the glass doors to the porch and downstairs the lake. No shade, no curtain. I'll have to wait for night to sit here and know no one can see me. But my suit is wet; I'm sitting in my father's favorite leather chair, it'll get a stain, I'll get in trouble when he comes.
I move to the back of the house to change, flipping lights to undull the interior, to make sure no one is hiding here. I'm tempted to check the closets, but decline. I really couldn't handle that just now. I'm in the bedroom now where I hung the paper as a child; blue/gray paper peeling and grim. Why didn't I choose the adult room while the place is mine?
Before I remove the suit I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, hoping my stomach grew flat during the panicked flight across the waters- a full five minute journey. The belly's still round. I take off the suit and see the climbing purple vine like an inexpert tattoo across my belly, right where Megan got hers and I held the skin tight for her. It's not fading and I'm not pregnant. No excuse.
Suddenly I realize I never pissed in the lake like I meant to. I was too afraid then to piss. Everything down there has frozen. I sit on the toilet, naked, leave the door open because there's really no intruder in the house. I start to cry, very loudly. Helplessly. Cry in a way I wasn't expecting. And I realize it's all been about fear.
I'm sitting on the toilet trying to piss and all the water's coming out my eyes except for a few drips from my hair where it's still wet. I know that everything is about fear. This pain in my chest I've been having. The fact that I can't even masturbate and the few occasions when it wasn't necessary, when there was a man around, I felt cold to the bone. I couldn't be touched. The fact that I haven't felt hope since I was nineteen and I crashed my car and I knew all the work of banishing fear, every bit of effort of the last five years, was wrong. Fear was my friend and I cultivated it.
Fear keeps me alive still and makes life a piece of shit I wouldn't feed my worst enemy. I stop to wonder if I have PMS. I have PMS. Can't have a strong sentiment without PMS. I know that's part of what makes me unable to tolerate myself. I wish my womb would just open up the floodgates and pour in glops and flows and let go all that's been inside since that day I saw my insides on the outside, the day when at fourteen a saw cut through my fingers and left me in limb-oh. I could not be a teenager or a child or grownup either because my blood was on the floor, my bone was sticking out and I never wanted it to happen again and where could I hide? I had to be away from everyone and from myself because it's my fault for being stupid and expecting the world not to hurt me.
So I'm still here on the toilet and I can't stop crying and I'm twenty-three and I'm wondering if maybe this is a good thing, to let this out finally, wondering if this is what I came here for. But my chest still hurts, I don't feel purged I just keep running because the world doesn't stop hurting you, and Chris is dead. I don't want to think about that now. There's always just that little bit more- when you piss, when you shit, whenever- you get up, pull your clothes back on, and you know you didn't get it all out. But there's always a next time, isn't there? So I'm up from the toilet now and considering going through the whole routine again. Cook, eat, clean, vomit, watch t.v. and eat again until it's dark and late enough to duck into bed. I haven't decided yet.
* * *
August 27, 1997
When I got back tonight I went again through the house, flipping on lights, peeking into every room. The front door was open- had I left it that way? But the laptop was still on sleep, the car and its keys still in their places. I could still escape. I didn't check the closets on this reconnaisance mission, of course. If anything was in there I didn't want to know. Let it get me unawares.
I know I'm certifiable now, and it's a comfort. I left the house at six, when The Simpsons released me from their grip. I donned jogging bra, sweatpants, tee-shirt, special sneakers. I walked up the driveway, not knowing what to expect. There was still about an hour or so of sun. I started off to my right, on the road that circles the lake. God, there was space here; space and flowers and oh, damn: people.
How can I go jogging now? Too much flab jiggling. I'll start with a walk. I walk around the first bend. Encounter attractive man with dog. Ferocious dog. I smile, say hello. He waves, we walk past one another. What must he think? I haven't showered in two days or combed my hair. The sweats are two sizes too tight. Eyes down, keep walking. Out of sight. Thank god. I want to break into a run, I want to dive bomb the asphalt and take flight. That feeling builds, the guilt builds, I see the fat. I take one step, two, I'm running and my chin hits my neck clang clang again and my arms pump and I'm watching my shadow to see my ha! style but I'm going, aren't I? And I'm getting a bit further than I did the last time I tried this, two years ago when I smoked. I've run maybe a whole block and now it's a downhill stretch and I'm flying and getting afraid I'll outdistance my feet or get a cramp or die and my chin slaps me into submission so I stop and walk again.
How far am I going? I left the door open and the valuables out in plain sight of the window, not really expecting to get past the mailbox in spite of the gear. I don't want to stop yet. I come to a place in the road where to my right I can see the sun shining over the lake, so I go down there and plant my sneakers at the muddy edge. Pretty. Is this private property? I should leave. I'm a quarter way round the lake from my parents' property and I don't know what I'll do. I get back to the road, there's attractive man and dog. Hi again. Damn it, he'll know how fat I am if I turn back now. I keep going, soon he turns off to his property. I keep going. Now I know that I'll keep on 'til I get to the beach that's directly across from my place, halfway round. What then, I don't know. I should jog again, not walk, but now I'm afraid of exhausting myself and after all, I'm alone here. What if I can't get back? I've got my period and I've got cramps, I might get stuck. I'm walking while I think this. Where's the entrance to that beach? This may be it.
I'm walking now down a road and I think it leads to the beach. Yes, there's the sign. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to take off my sweatpants, take off the special sneakers, the tee-shirt too. I'm going to swim back, though it's six-thirty and the sun is setting and I didn't make it last time and I don't have the goggles and I have cramps already from my period and I have to take off all these clothes in public and dive beneath the surface. But it's easier, you know, than walking all the way around again, maybe getting seen by attractive man with dog, maybe getting caught out alone in the dark. I'm going to do it.
I pace the tiny peninsular beach, debating with the sweatpants pulled up to my knees, now and then dipping my legs in the water. It's not cold like they say. I can't feel cold. There's a father with three young daughters out there on the lake, shit. Three young girls with piping voices, giant life-vests, fishing rods, back and forth across my path. "Daddy," this and "Daddy," that and get out of my way you little fucks. I need to strip down, now don't I? Daddy sees me, he must think I'm a lunatic, pacing the beach in my jogging bra, fat belly, sweatpants at the knee. Go around behind that island, why don't you? They won't leave. Does daddy know or think I'm committing suicide? Is that why he won't leave the area? Doesn't want his girls to see it, knows I won't do it in their plain sight.
The sun is going down, my chances are getting slimmer. Maybe I can go in with the pants on, maybe they won't drag. I push the hem down, water eats them up to the knee. They drag. Oh boy do they drag. There's no way I'd survive wearing these. But by now it's totally impossible to walk back either. There's just no way I can make it, doesn't matter that the way over only took me twenty minutes, no sweat. The pants, now wet, will chafe, pull me down, give me a rash slopping down the road. Gotta swim across.
The sun is sinking. I'll drive around to pick up the shoes and the clothes if I make it back, just get in the water, why don't you people leave so I can get in my underwear and dive beneath the surface? God, yes, finally they've gone behind that island and the girls can't see me commit suicide, their father can save me if I start to drown and yell across the water. The pants are down and off and I'm standing in public in a jogging bra, fat rolls, string bikini flower undies that show every damn flaw and pubic hair and all and my tampon string is probably out and I step one foot into the water and another and again and I'm almost there and I've done it, dived into the water and stroke. Keep the head above the surface and go it's really not too cold at all but the sun is going down and I have no idea if I'm going to make it, but here I am, in the water in my underwear alone and alone and I'm getting there; halfway, goddamn, no problem, I can see the canoe with father and daughters, how like my nightmares how strange but so far so good nothing's touching me from below and the stroke is strong. Two thirds, my god, maybe I'm not going to die I'll actually have to get in the car and come get my clothes. I hope I left the back door open 'cause the air's a lot colder than the water. I am seeing the future and I'm not too tired it's amazing I haven't died. I'm going to make it.
And then I do make it; three feet from the stone steps and I put my feet down- I have to scrunch up because it's so shallow. I'm out of the water, up the stairs, walking in my underwear in public like the nightmares and I just don't give a damn. I've made it to the back door, open it, a giant daddy-long-legs is on the banister, fuck you I go right on by and I'm in I've got a towel and that's all there is to it.
THE END
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