The First Time She Drowned (26 page)

I RUMMAGE AROUND
in my suitcase until I find the candle James bought me. It’s still wrapped in the hospital toilet paper that I packed it in so it wouldn’t get ruined. I unwrap it and put it on my windowsill and light it with his lighter. The little flame shoots up like a life. I turn off the overhead light and sit before the small glow. The flame flickers and moves without wind and I imagine that James is making it happen, that he is here with me, has come back once again because he couldn’t leave without saying good-bye.

There is so much I want to say, so much I want him to know. I tell him how sorry I am that he felt so hopeless, and how I wish I had known, had been able to help. I thank him for being my friend and for saving me, both in the hospital and now. I tell him that I love him and that I will miss him. I sit with him for a long, long time, and then I blow out the candle and tell him good-bye.

• • •

In the morning, the October sun is sitting at the window, waking me with its warm light. The day seems nearly bursting with it, everything made vivid. I sit up on the bare mattress and put my hands on the glass, and then I push open the window to smell the air and feel the cold. The world is strange, or I feel strange in it—full of hope and sorrow, both at once.

I go across the hall and stand in front of Zoey’s door. I think of how we met at the beginning of the school year and, for a moment, I consider knocking, dropping to the floor like I’m sick and green with pneumonia, whispering a hoarse “hospital” when she opens it. In different circumstances, it would probably make her laugh. It seems like something James would do, and the fact that I’ve thought of it myself comforts me, reminds me of how we keep people with us even when they are gone. It makes me think, too, that maybe the fact that I’m standing here, that I’m working toward being okay, means we can excavate and remove others who don’t feel gone enough. It’s a leap of faith, to do it differently. To learn a new way.

I knock softly, daring to believe that the world can be different if I am different in it. I hear Zoey moving inside, see the knob turn. I step back and brace. She appears in pajamas and a ponytail. There is surprise in her eyes and then her face becomes unreadable.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she says uncertainly.

I am too ashamed to look at her. I stare at a small patch of sand still glued to my leg and will myself to speak. The words are right there to say, but my mouth rejects them like poison, too threatening, too dangerous. I try to push myself out of the way, but my body fights back, clamps down.

Zoey waits. The uncomfortable silence goes on so long that she opens her mouth to say something herself.

“No,” I say, “please let me talk first. I’ll get there.” I press my hands together as if I can squeeze my voice out. I glance quickly at Zoey’s face, which softens when she sees me struggle. “I’m sorry,”
I blurt out finally, and the tears immediately follow, all sorry-ness and sadness and terror at once. My breath rattles as if just to say those words without the sky falling has discharged some long-held fear.

Through my tears I continue. “I don’t know how to explain exactly, or if an explanation even matters. But . . . um . . . a lot of things have happened to me that I haven’t really dealt with and . . . I obviously have some issues . . . trust issues, clearly . . . but I’m trying to work on them now. I don’t know if it’s too late or if you can ever . . .”

“I shouldn’t have left you,” she rushes in. “I promised I wouldn’t and then I did. It’s my fault.”

“No, I’m just messed up, kinda, and . . . and well, you probably know that by now, but there are a lot of other things about me that you don’t know . . .”

“I know you’re my best friend. What else is there?”

“So, you don’t hate me?” I peek out from under myself as if from beneath the covers.

“Seriously? I could never hate you!”

“Do you think I’m nuts?”

“Oh, I think you’re totally freaking nuts,” she says. “Absolutely bat-shit crazy.” She grins that broad, toothy Zoey grin. “How fast can you move back in?”

• • •

I go back across the hall to get my suitcase, and by the time I return two minutes later, Zoey is already back in bed asleep. She wakes and sees me and smiles, then drifts off again. On the windowsill beside her bed, the broken cactus is beginning to bloom.

I want so much to stay here and listen to her snoring. But I can’t right now. I unpack and take a shower. My bare face in the mirror is an account of the last few days, my nose bright red, my eyes almost swollen shut from crying. I pull out my makeup bag, then decide there’s no use trying to fix it. It may not be pretty right now, but it’s real and I’m tired of trying to hide myself, of believing that I need to.

I borrow Zoey’s biggest pair of sunglasses, take one last look at her sleeping body for courage, and head out onto campus.

I walk quickly, my nerves driving me as I rehearse my speech the whole way there. Only when I reach Chris’s building do I wish I had taken more time, put this off a little longer. I need a cigarette or a pep talk from Liz, or better yet, a time machine to go back and undo everything. But as much as I’d love to turn around and go to my room and stick my head under the covers, there is no real thought to doing so.

A bored-looking girl with pink streaks in her hair sits at a desk in the entrance of Chris’s dorm, checking student IDs. I flash her mine and tell her I’ve just come to borrow a book from this guy in my English class whose room number escapes me. “I think he’s in 402,” I lie, because I have no idea. She checks her list.

“Actually it’s 203.”

I smile behind my sunglasses even though I sort of wish she wouldn’t let me in. My footsteps echo in the stairwell and the sound of myself climbing heightens my anxiety, forces me to be present.

The second-floor hallway smells like gym socks and metal and Irish Spring soap, and loud music blasts from one of the rooms.
Chris’s door is the second on the right. I knock quickly because I feel out of place and exposed, like I’m in a men’s locker room. There is no answer, so I knock again, louder this time, and then lean in closer to listen for footsteps or voices.

A few moments pass, and I imagine that he is eyeing me through the peephole, shushing his friends as he waits for me to leave. I turn and go flying down the stairs, past the pink-haired girl and out the door, relieved to be in the sun again, to be on my way back to the safety of my room.

Halfway to my dorm, I spot Chris in the parking lot. He is with Murph, and the two of them are throwing surfboards into the back of his old, beat-up convertible. The surprise of coming upon him in this way sends my carefully planned speech right out of my head, and just as I’m thinking that maybe I’ll do this another time—when I’m better prepared—he looks up.

Shit.

I brace myself, start walking over. Even from a distance I can see his body tense as I approach.

“Hi,” I say when I get nearer to him.

He does not respond.

I turn to Murph. “Do you mind if I talk to Chris for a second?”

“Sure,” Murph says, and then stands there for another few beats until he realizes that I mean alone. He and Chris exchange glances and then Chris watches Murph walk away as if he wishes he could join him.

My heart sinks, but I know I can’t expect anything different.
I wrap my arms around myself. Stare down at the curb. Try to remember the speech. No luck.

“Um, I’m not sure what to say.” The sun is glaring, highlighting the awkwardness.

Chris looks toward the street, eyes squinted, making me unimportant with his profile.

This is so much harder than I thought. “I was such a jerk the other night.”

He looks at me. No argument there.

“I’m sorry I freaked out on you.”

He puts his hands in his pockets, his shoulders still tense, armed against me. “Yeah . . . I don’t know what you thought I was trying to do.”

I take off my sunglasses, because even though I don’t want him to see how awful I look, I want him to see in my face how much I mean what I am saying. “You didn’t do anything, Chris. I know you did nothing wrong.”

“So what the hell was that then? I mean, you were acting like I was trying to—”

“No, I know. I was a total freak. I completely know that. I’m just really messed up right now.” My voice breaks. I will myself not to cry. “I’m sorry.”

He nods to himself. “It’s fine. I’m over it.”

“Okay,” I say, hearing the double meaning. “I don’t blame you.”

Our eyes meet. His face softens a little.

“So . . . I mean . . . are you okay?” he says.

“I am,” I say quickly. “Or, I will be.”

He gives a small smile as if he’s glad. “Well . . . thanks for the apology.”

I nod and stand there dumbly. In the distance, I see Murph impatiently shifting his weight.

“I’ll go,” I say finally, blinking back tears.

I want to say more, to tell Chris that I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate him in general, that I was just scared. I want to say that I really did like him and that I shouldn’t have acted like I did. More than anything, I want to ask for another chance.

“Thanks for being nice to me,” I say. “Because you were and it mattered.”

His eyes register several emotions at once, and he pauses as if picking which one to express. “Good,” he says finally. “That’s good.”

The lump in my throat swells. “Well, see you around, I guess.”

I start to walk away. Try to remember to breathe, to see that the sun is out, that the picture is bigger than this moment, that life moves, changes constantly, like the ocean.

“Hey,” I say, turning. “Can I ask you where you buy one of those?” I point to the surfboards in his car.

“Why? You thinking about becoming a surfer chick?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I mean, I’d like to try when the weather gets warm again.”

He smiles. “Surf shop down on Bean Street. You need directions?”

“I can find it.”

He laughs. “This from the girl who can’t find the library when she’s standing in front of it.”

I laugh too and our eyes meet and that electric energy passes between us once again.

“So . . . maybe I’ll see you in the water one of these days,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I hope so.”

I give him a small wave and turn quickly in the direction of my dorm so he won’t see me cry.

WINTER MOVES IN,
white and raw. Snow tumbles into a contagious silence. The retreat is welcome, the need to shutter myself, turn inward. An emptiness has inhabited me, born out of the slightly delayed and disorienting realization that my life is not what I thought it was, that there were chapters missing. Days pass in an out-of-body state as I absorb the shock of all that has happened, as this new, deeper understanding of my history settles in, brings answers to some questions and raises others.

It is a strange thing to discover the mind’s capacity to keep secrets from itself. It is stranger still for me to grasp that my identity was formed in the fun-house mirror of a mother who I now realize was mentally ill. Everything I thought I knew about myself needs to be reexamined in light of this new information. Even my perceptions of Matthew shift as I come to realize how much I saw him through the eyes of my mother. It turns out the older brother I both worshipped and felt abandoned by was neither potential savior nor heartless traitor, but rather just a boy as under the influence of his mother as I was. And there is grief in that too, in the realization that we both lost the opportunity to know and see each other as we really were.

The unlovable person I saw myself to be all these years has been replaced with a question mark. Liz says this is a normal part of the process and that I will replace the void with new things, truer things. Which is nice to imagine, and which maybe means I’m on my way to becoming someone who can forgive myself for existing, who can accept that I was not to blame. I’ve been screaming this my whole life, and yet only now do I feel like I’ve got any sort of hold on it, that someday it might be something other people can’t rip from my grasp.

I spend a lot of time crying in Liz’s office about things both remembered and forgotten. All the while, some part of me watches myself with the awareness of how miraculous these tears are, how much lighter I feel for releasing them. A lot of time I cry without having any understanding of why, only that I walk in and the tears start as if they have always been there, waiting for a safe place to land.

I think about Chris often. I tell myself there is still hope, but there are days when I have my doubts, when I wonder if all this work on myself will ever be enough to allow love in, if I’ll always be stuck where I am. Liz says that’s the thing about life: we only have what’s directly in front of us and it’s easy to convince ourselves that’s all there is. Maybe it’s Chris or maybe it’s someone else, but I have to allow myself to believe there will be someone someday.

Besides, there is still Zoey, who makes me laugh and points out other cute guys in the cafeteria, tells me all the wonderful things about myself that I can’t see. She has her share of heartbreaks too, which don’t last more than a night but still, on my better days, make me think that Liz is right: that this is all just a part
of things, that maybe we’ll look back and remember when we ate too much pizza at two in the morning and played angsty music and worried that we would never, could never, be loved.

In the meantime, there is work to be done, not just in my own head but outside, in the real world. After I barely squeak by first semester, I spend the second hunkered down in my studies, finding that I actually enjoy the work, the sense of efficacy and accomplishment it gives me, the way it grounds me in the present. Each time I turn in an assignment or do well on a test, I am reminded of the fact that I am changing, growing up, recovering enough from my past not only to see a future but to actively move toward one.

• • •

Spring brings the end of hibernation, not just for me but for the entire campus. There are Frisbee games and keg parties on the lawn, and the air is charged with youth and hope and infectious happiness.

Zoey and I sign up for an improv group, where she gets to be funny and I get better at letting down my guard, allowing myself to be spontaneous and silly. We drive to Florida for spring break with some of Zoey’s other friends who are slowly becoming mine too, and stay at a cheap, disgusting motel and laugh until our stomachs hurt and sometimes have drunken cries upon each other’s shoulders about things that are completely ridiculous in the light of morning.

Every once in a while, in the midst of all this bonding and fun, I think of my mother, of that hopeful young girl she was when she went to Dunton, and I feel pity. Sometimes I’m tempted to call her, but inevitably she does something to remind me that
she is not safe, whether it’s a threatening phone call or an angry, blaming e-mail.

I am learning through my work with Liz that part of being healthy is being able to hold and remember who people actually are instead of who we wish they were. It’s a daily struggle against a brain that tends to want to cling to fairy-tale hope, but it’s also the only way to guarantee a life surrounded by those who build rather than destroy. In the end, the loss is about letting go of what I never had in the first place.

• • •

As soon as the first hints of summer appear, I go to the surf shop to get a wetsuit and board. I end up buying the used pink board Chris once rented for me with its symbol of two fish swimming in opposite directions. The guy behind the counter points to the emblem. “Sign of the water child,” he says.

I stay at school for the summer and get a job as—of all things—a lifeguard. On my days off, I paddle out into the waves, usually falling off of them but occasionally managing to catch one and ride it to shore.

To my surprise, the other surfers cheer “nice try!” when I fall, and “good job!” when I don’t, and when I paddle back out, they take turns offering me pointers, welcoming me, without reservation, into the tribe.

The world continues to be friendlier than I expect. And each day as the sun sets pink and lovely, I am acutely aware of feeling connected to the surrounding beauty, to the people I’ve just met, and most of all, to the new piece I have added to the picture of myself: water child.