Drowning Instinct

Page 32

But he was on the surface, I said. How could he not breathe? Why didn‘t he scream if he was in trouble?
Because you‘re thinking of the movies, and that‘s not what happens in real life, he said. They call it the drowning instinct. It‘s when drowning doesn‘t look like drowning. In real life, if the water‘s very cold, a person can‘t help but gasp. It‘s reflex. The thing is as soon as water hits your lungs, your throat closes off, even if the water‘s warm. Your body‘s trying to protect itself, and the reality is that a lot more people suffocate than truly drown.
Regardless, to people on land, especially when you‘re really close to the end, you don‘t look like you‘re in trouble. You don‘t scream, but that‘s because you can‘t, and you don‘t wave your arms either or expend a lot of energy flailing. You‘re just there. So people don‘t notice that you‘re dying. He was silent for a moment. That‘s me. I think I‘ve been drowning all this time and doing it so quietly, even I didn‘t know it.
That sadness was there again. For some reason, I thought back to those pictures of Mrs. Anderson: happy and beautiful as a princess on her wedding day; then pregnant but scarred. I wondered what had happened in the middle; if maybe she‘d been drowning and Mitch hadn‘t known that either. Maybe they both had.
Despite how Mitch made me feel, I never quite forgot what Danielle said about him and broken people. You can‘t spend a million hours in therapy and not have it rub off a little. So was Mitch always trying to help because he hadn‘t been able to do the same first for himself and then for his wife? I could see where the shock of what happened to her—the pain and guilt— would . . . well, rip and then scar a person on the inside. Look at my parents. Look at Matt.
My therapist once said that everything I did was a repetition: a way of trying to make what was wrong with our whole family come out differently and right. So why should Mitch be any different? Maybe he couldn‘t help himself. He might not understand what he was repeating, or that he was even doing it. Adults don‘t know everything, Bob.
I only understand this now, of course: sitting here, still freezing cold, in this awful emergency room. Listening to the quiet.
Back then and at that moment, warm and safe in his arms, all I wanted was to help.
But I didn‘t know what to say. I had this urge to tell Mitch that I would save him—that he could grab on to me—but that felt dumb. Mitch had so much already. What could I do or give that he couldn‘t find somewhere else?
But I‘m here and now you do know that you‘ve been drowning. I sat up and when I turned to face him, the blanket slid from my shoulders and down my back. The scars were still there, on my stomach and thighs. They would never go away. I wouldn‘t be me if they did. So you don‘t have to do that anymore, Mitch. You don‘t have to drown.
For once, I did the right thing. Something unclenched in him; I could see the strain and tension drain from his body. His eyes drifted over my face and then to my breasts, my belly, those scars, and then he was reaching for me—and then there was no need to say anything.
Except for the moment when he guided my hand to where he wanted: when I gasped and he sighed and said my name, and then we were drowning in each other.
f
It was all so shockingly easy, as long as we were careful. I know you don‘t want to hear that, Bob. You want to hear that we felt guilty or lived in constant fear of discovery.
You want to know about our near-misses and how awful we felt, how criminal.
But I‘ve got news for you, Bobby-o. I felt fine, fine, better than I had in months and months and months. Who would suspect a good, quiet kid like me and a nice, open, friendly guy like Mr. Anderson? I had straight As; I wasn‘t a troublemaker. The Tank decided I‘d adjusted just fine, especially after I joined the team. My parents were careful not to think too hard about anything. Hell, they were glad I was on the team. I was looking good, they said. I seemed so happy, they said. My dad told my mom to admit it, going to Turing was the right move, and what could my mom say? Personally, I think they were so getting into each other again and with Mom gearing up for the holidays—they were thrilled not to have to worry about one more thing.
I was happy and Mitch made me beautiful, Bob. He made me believe that we would keep each other afloat forever.
And no one asked questions, Bob. No one gave us a second thought. Everyone looked, and no one really saw. We looked fine, and none of you knew the difference.
g
So, the meet.
I trotted into the silent girls‘ locker room but didn‘t see anyone. Hello? Danielle?
A pause. Then a rustle, followed by a grunt. What?
Her voice had come from the bathrooms. I went past the showers, my spikes clicking on the tile floor, rounded the corner, and saw shoes under one stall. Are you okay?
Like you care. Her tone hardened as she recognized my voice. I could practically see her chin jut out. I‘m fine. I‘ll be out in a second. I just . . . I‘ve got cramps.
Oh. Well, Coach wants you outside. We‘re starting in like five, ten minutes.
Yeah, yeah, I‘m coming, okay? When I didn‘t move away, she growled, You going to stand there until I come out?
Coach said I should wait for you. Technically, I could leave and let Mitch lay into her when she finally dragged her sorry ass out of the stall. She would deserve it, too. This was someone who‘d been nothing but mean to me. I didn‘t owe her a thing. But, I reminded myself, I didn‘t need to be that way. This may sound stupid to you, Bob, but in a weird way, I felt like I‘d already won. I was Mitch‘s go-to girl on the team. Danielle might think she‘d had something special with Mitch, but he‘d already told me that she had a lot of problems and didn‘t want to listen to what he had to say. (What problems? I didn‘t know.
Mitch was good that way. He never let on about anyone else. It was private.) Besides, Danielle had David. She had a brother. Her father was some high-power attorney. She had plenty.
The toilet flushed. The stall door opened and Danielle emerged on a cloud of vomit and sour peach. She elbowed her way to the sink. Under the fluorescents, her skin was yellow. The smudges beneath her eyes were black as runny mascara and her warm-up clothes hung like burlap. She‘d shed a lot of weight since the beginning of the year—to keep her speed up, she‘d said. The other girls on the team whispered that she was starting to look like one of those bobblehead dolls: all head on a spindly frame, like a runway model.
A real sickly looking kind of skinny.
You don‘t look so good, I said.
Takes one to know one. She sucked water from the faucet, swished, then spit.
Are you sure you should run?
Just shut up. She rinsed out, spat again, then dragged her arm across her chin to catch the drips. Don‘t even pretend you care.
I shrugged, but didn‘t say anything more. If she wanted to keel over from a heart attack, what could I do? Besides, Mitch had to see the same thing we did. He was the coach. If he let her run, he must think she could take it.
At the exit, she turned. Let me tell you something. The more broken you are, the better he likes you.
You know, I‘ve heard that somewhere before. I guess that explains you.
Fuck you. Turning aside, she mumbled something under her breath.
What?
I said your time‘s coming. Her eyes, laser-bright, probed mine and then her face set. Just remember that when the next loser comes along.
I‘m not a loser, I said to her back, but she only flipped me off.
Mitch was giving last-minute instructions when we got back. His eyes flicked to me and then to Danielle, and I saw him wrestling with the decision.
I can run, Danielle said, her tone flat. I‘m fine. If we don‘t make regionals, this is the last race anyway.
Mitch closed his mouth, looked at both of us in turn and then nodded. All right.
Danielle, you set the pace. Jenna, you follow her lead. The rest of you, cover their backs and then when you‘ve got your wedge, you go for it, understand?
We did the whole hand-pump-team-chant thing, but when Danielle put her hand on mine, she grabbed my eyes and then her nails bit, hard enough for the pain to needle and my flesh to tear. But I didn‘t flinch or pull away. She was an amateur. There was nothing Danielle could do to me that I hadn‘t done better—and worse—to myself.
h
The starter pistol cracked and we took off in a jostling pack, thirty-one girls spread across three teams. Danielle and I were the best runners on ours so we stayed in front while the rest of the team ran interference to our rear. The race was a tortuous five miles of rolling, uneven pasture with obstacles: two streams that were two and a half miles apart and a narrow rocky ridge up a ten-percent grade a quarter mile before the finish. No roads.
The first half was against a brutal wind, a steady gale so strong it was like running in place. The ground was hard and as unforgiving as concrete. Every step sent shock waves shivering up my legs. After five minutes, I felt the pounding in my teeth, and my head rang as my spikes shattered glassy ice rimming frozen puddles left from sleet and rain two days before.
Danielle‘s ponytail bounced back and forth in front of me. She was doing her pogo-stick routine again, and going too slow, already in trouble. Her right arm was tight against her side and her left was moving too much to compensate. But she wouldn‘t pick up the pace and—stupid me—I stuck to the plan.
Four runners passed us. Five. Seven. We hit the first stream in a herd. I eyed the five girls dead ahead. They were bunched way too close together, a disaster waiting to happen—and then it did when one girl stumbled on a submerged rock. Yelping, she pitched forward, dragging down another girl only a step behind. That slowed down the others, and everyone broke ranks, splashing around the girls still wallowing in the stream. The water was very cold, so icy it burned, but then I was through and running up the other side.
Nearly two miles gone, about three to go, another mile to the turn where the wind would be with me. Now was the time to start breaking away in a sudden burst of speed, when the others least expected it. But Danielle was still lumbering. If anything, she was slower than before.