The Journey Prize Stories 28 (6 page)

She logs in and the cursor flashes at her, asking her to fill in the box.
What's on your mind?
, the pale blue text taunts her, flashes, implores her.

She types in:
You are the only one pretending to be you
.

There are people and their ways of moving. There are the storks and the straight-necked and the sufferers, backs bent, ears blocked out by the steel orbiting rings. The men who strut the length of the floor. The men who supervise the shapes of their muscles in the mirrored wall, sleeves summoned upright. How could anyone who goes to a gym think that women are the vain sex? Late at night, rows of men's hands wrap the metal bars. One man, compact and anguished, paces to the water fountain after every set of repetitions.
Another guy guides his body through cycle after cycle on the leg press, extends and withdraws, pumping the bellows of a great machinery. Laura feels it occasionally as she lifts—a roughness in her blood. She has realized that her muscles have their own busy lives. Sometimes when she pulls on the weights, there is an absence there; sometimes, there is a humming, a throbbing, begun before she makes her demand. Laura ignores these quiet pulses, learns to pull with the same force every time.

When she tells Greg about the weightlifting, she makes sure to slip it in casually at the tail end of one of their phone calls, but he stops and his voice lowers on the other end of the line. “Whoa whoa whoa, what?”

“Weightlifting,” she says.

“That's awesome. How long? What?”

“Pretty much every day.”

A long pause. “Since Mallory left?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, that's great, Lo, that's great, that's really great, good for you. I mean, I'm really glad you found an outlet.” He pauses, waiting for her to say more, and pushes, “So, is it helping?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you've been having a hard time. Dad called me. He says you don't answer any of his emails or phone messages.”

“That's because all of his emails and phone messages are about kale.”

“Lo. Look. We all know what she did is pretty fucking terrible. I mean, who fucking—who just
leaves
like that? But, I mean, you two were always—”

“Always what?”

“Nothing, it's just—”

“Always what?”

His voice goes whiny, like it always does when he knows he's losing. But he can't stop. That's the thing about him; he just never knows when to stop. “Well, you know as well as anyone. You two were always so different. I mean, I guess, I always thought. She was just so much
louder
. You know?” Then he says the worst thing. “Maybe it's better this way.” He breathes and says, “Anyway, Dana says to come here for as long as you need, the kids want to see you and? They want to see you.” He waits. “I want to see you. Do you see anybody?”

By the time she makes a pot of Roiboos tea and checks her email he's already sent her links to articles cautioning against daily weightlifting for women.
You just never know when to stop do you, little brother?
She scans the cautionary paragraphs: not enough testosterone to build muscle as quickly as tissue breaks down, the websites inform her. She clicks on a link in a sidebar to an album of female bodybuilders; she scans for the dykes, scrolls through the stomach muscles and linebacker shoulders, sipping her cooled orange pekoe, the tears rivering down her cheeks. Everybody had known. Everybody had seen but her. And this is the part she cannot tell anyone, even Greg—she does not understand why Mallory left, cannot explain it to anybody, how Mallory raged at her that things had been off for a year and she'd had no idea, how could she have known nothing at all. She texts Greg: I feel so old.

She's among the last ones there at night. This small group, buff stragglers. A staffer flickers the lights; library manners.

Laura blasts her body with scalding water in the showers, the steam pressing cloud formations against the walls, her knuckles tense. She checks her shoulders. A faint string of burst blood vessels again. Is this how it starts, she wonders, people who get into pain? Backslide, wander, trip into it.
No, I'm not like that. I'm not one of those people
. When she pulls the towel around her body, her skin is red. The burst blood vessels stand out in dark purple, a kitchen tattoo. She checks her right shoulder and, yes, there's the string of erupted blood vessels. Tonight, the damage reassures her.

In the locker room, the last women are half-naked, benches draped with yoga pants and rain jackets. While she dresses, Laura cannot help but inspect the other women's marks and scars. The tattoos. Laura would never get a tattoo. Too permanent. In undergrad, her roommate got a tattoo after she got a call from home that her childhood dog had been run over by a car. The tattoo was her dog's licence number, printed across the back of her neck. “You look like you have a bar code,” Laura had told her, surprised when her roommate had burst into tears and rushed from the room, then for the rest of the term communicated with Laura only through Post-It notes. Mallory had leaned forward and whispered with a kind of awe, “Oh my god, I think that's the most insensitive thing I've actually ever heard. You're
amazing.”
Laura had never been able to tell whether Mallory was making fun of her or praising her.

Both and more.

Long-term rented lockers are decorated with family photographs. Mallory would have made Laura rent a locker, stock it with protein bars. Her thoughtfulness could be controlling. “I'm kind of insidious,” she had once told Laura proudly, and Laura had thought,
I want that
.

“Hey, Mallory.”

Laura looks up from unhooking her bra, shocked, to see George, her mild smile, and, startlingly, missing a tooth.

It's too late to correct her about the name. And, she realizes, she speaks to so few people these days that not being called by her own name isn't even really very surprising.

“Hello, Georgephine.”

“Smoke?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

Outside the building, they lean against the brick wall. “It's so
warm,”
she says and George laughs. “You never smoked before?”

“Just not for a long time.”

“Ah. I see.”

“I've smoked.”

“Sure you have.” George smokes evenly, perfectly. “Anyway, look at you, the dedicated gym bunny and I'm ruining your perfect health.” Laura smiles into the darkness. It's been a long time since anyone has flirted with her.

“Gym bunny. Ha.”

“Seems like you're here even more than I am.”

“It's just recent.”

“Is it? Lifting?”

“Yeah and even the gym. I'd actually never been in a gym before.”

“Really?” George's muscular body is a lean shadow in the dimness.

“What made you go from zero to sixty?”

Laura hesitates. “Just a stupid breakup.”

“Ah. Bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah.” George throws her cigarette at her foot, grinds it slowly. “Well, then, that makes a lot of sense, Mallory.”

“What?” Laura's neck snaps to the side. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“The way you lift. You know, like you've got something to prove.”

Laura stares at George's profile but sees no hint of satisfaction—just her mouth set and calm, as if she's just read out the price of an item for sale. After a few minutes of silence, Laura realizes that George isn't going to say anything more. She leans back into the wall and watches traffic. Rain begins to fall, hooks at her lip.