Swimming (30 page)

The Wonders of the World Are Many,
But None So Much as Man

The rainy season starts; one night the sky opens and lets fall. I ignore it, not bothering to stand under the eaves as people run by with plastic bags protecting their hair, not bothering to move when they stab me with umbrellas the size of the parasols that surround the pool at the Glenwood Country Club. I keep on walking.

The point of flânning is to get lost but not care. All you have to do is keep flânning until you’re found again or look up, and you’ll see something famous: a tower, a church, a steeple, a bridge, a golden horseman, a golden angel, a dead poet, a boat howling by on the river, a great big store. I don’t care, remain lost, watch Glenwood spring from Parisian streets neatly like an important image in a pop-up book. Glenwood is smattered with single-story homes, a vast nun compound fashioned in dark red rock, a driveway lined by coniferous trees emitting the tangy smell of real live pine.
Day? Tuesday. Year? One of them
.

The most staggering thing about Paris, other than the fact that it still exists, is how the buildings have been sewn together; old stone seamed to new stone, seamed to prewar brick, seamed to sheets of concrete, seamed to shards of metal, seamed to plates of glass. There are no visible spaces between the seams and no wood except for the doors and the trees standing around outside with their branches crossed. I pass them, staring.

I know that sugar is not a nourishing food, that it is pure chemical, extracted from beet, from cane, strangled from the leaves of exotic sugar trees. I know that it speeds up cellular death, that it contains no fiber, no minerals, no protein, no fat, no enzymes, that it is sticky, that when combined with fat it kills twice as fast, but life is moving toward death anyway and sugar tastes good so I order
chouquettes
, eating them one by one until the statues I pass look like propped-up dead people, night folds, and there is Fredrinka and I know she will never have a child.

A church appears in my line of vision, pulls me toward its heavy wooden door with strong, melancholic fingers. French churches sit in cool stony splendor with stained-glass eyes leaking in shattered blasts of jeweled light. They are filled with almost dead people and variations of the modern international nun. I find an empty pew and sit down. Most of the almost dead people are so old they have to hang on tight to the pew to prevent a bad fall. Jesus is hanging on his cross doing sad Jesus things. Mary is studying the tips of her own bare feet with sweet disinterest, random angels holding up the vaulted arches with vast muscular wings, the demons and the monsters seated below, on their haunches, narrow-eyed, shoulders to ears, hearts set in stone. I light a candle, watch the flame flick shadows across the beige and gray wall, kneel in deep genuflection.

I close my eyes; a variety of cakes are spinning on a fast-moving cakewalk, nuns quickly building a cupcake tower made entirely of coconut bugaloos. There is need and with the need there is yearning. Bron’s got her eye on the Black Forest because she’s always liked the mixture of chocolate and cherry. Her hair is long and thick and lustrous and wavy, her eyes shining like expensive buttons held up to the light. I watch her turn, watch cakes tremble.

Leonard says:
Observing bats, like observing all natural phenomena, demands as much luck as skill and as much skill as patience. Many species hide away so successfully by day as to elude all order of pursuit. Night after night, I have taken stand at the edge of an open space, the dark shore of a pond, the edge of a clearing in little-known forest, and I wait, facing the fading glow in the western sky. Most species start flying when it is not quite dark, but others do not appear until night has already fallen, and the only way to see them is to imagine
.

I open my eyes, heart pounding in an uncomfortable way, humid church air whacking me swiftly in the jaw. I do not flâne. I flee.

First to the Wall

I kick my shoes under the table, throw my coat on the floor, find a felt-tipped pen, draw a thin line from one wall to the other. I need to see the facts that memory has whipped up into thick gluey foam. One arrow flowing forward. One arrow flowing back. I start to fill in time. The uneven. The irregular. The vague. The exact. The past in black. The future, unknown.

Press Stop

I work all night, my pen gliding backwardly until I can’t stand it anymore, put an emergency call in to the personal phone of psychologist to the troubled stars and their troubled children Dr. Sunny Lewis, who answers on the second ring with a qualified
Yes?

I need to talk to you on a private, professional basis
. I’m using my serious voice.

Okay
. She is always serious.

I’ve got a problem … or maybe …

I’m here. What’s up?

I’ve been visiting churches … and churches depress me
, I say.

There’s nothing wrong with visiting churches, Pip
, she says.

I stare down statues. I stare down churchgoers. It’s not even their fault. I think I won’t do it again, but there’s a church every fifty feet pulling me in like a magnet. I light a candle, stare down Mary until she turns into Barbie…. It’s awful … and it’s been raining practically every day since I got here. I asked my landlady about it and she said, “Oh that’s not rain.” But she’s lying. It
is
rain. When I go outside, I get wet. I’m living the same day every day, Sunny, worse than heavy training. I walk around the place, get pulled into a church, stare at Jesus until he turns into the Grinch, then I go home and hypnotize myself backward so that the things I’ve forgotten aren’t … And now that’s backfired. I’ve gone into fucking automatic hypnosis mode … things float upward. It doesn’t feel good, Sunny. I don’t feel well
.

Okay. Okay. Calm down. Don’t worry. Let me think a minute … I’m going to see if I can get you a name. There’s … I’ll find someone in Paris. I’ll call you right back. You’ll be okay. It’s nothing to worry about … everyone goes through a period of … doing things … they don’t really …

I lower my voice into dim whisper.
I’ve been eating sugar again
.

This takes her aback.
A lot?

Enough to make me … very, very ill
, I say.

You’ll pull through. I know you will
, she says.
Remember Barcelona. They said it couldn’t be done
.

Sunny calls back while I’m standing by my window cursing the nebulous future, the sky shooting a delightful array of gray bullets down randomly upon the world.

I found someone
, she says.
She’s supposed to be good
.

I crawl down my stilts, walk through sheets of sizzling gray drops until I find the door. I buzz from the street and my buzz is answered with a click. I walk up two flights of stairs and buzz again, and my buzz is answered with the door opening automatically to an empty waiting room. I hear murmuring behind a door and underneath it the sound of the street rumbling below. I sit down and make a list, as Sunny suggested, of the things I need to know.
What if your brain thinks up awful things and your body believes it? What if it makes you feel like you’re sick, nuts, dying even though you’re just fine? How come I’m only noticing things now? And if I accidentally hypnotize myself all day long, does that mean I’m crazy?

When Esther sticks her head out the door, smiles, and says:
I’m Esther
, I immediately forget my list, leaving it crumpled up on the couch. A short man with a hook nose slumps out and away, avoiding me carefully with all of his senses. A bad sign. I follow her voice into the room and sit in the chair she indicates with her eyes. I open my mouth and words come out.

Hi. Recently I’ve taken to wearing blankets … well, not only, of course … I’ll wear a blanket over clothes or … anyway I do feel better when I have a blanket … I wish I had a blanket now
.

Are you cold?
she asks, neutral.

Yes
, I say, getting control of myself.

Good! Have a blanket!
She seems genuinely pleased as she drapes it across my shoulders. It smells exactly like blanket. I relax.

Tell me about yourself
, she says, settling back into her chair.

Which one?
Wrong question.
I mean before or after?
Wrong question.

How about you tell me what brings you here?
she asks, making things simple.

Where? To Paris?
I ask, pointing out the window.

No, here. To me
, she says, keeping her hands still in her lap.

Chopped Up, Universal, Strictly Personal

I don’t know Esther’s kindness is a screen so as not to frighten sad people away with her searing mind, so I tell the tales of these backward things and more. I gather my blanket about me and reveal how the space between my ears hurts, that sad nun melody vibrates along my spine, that art sucks on my essence like an invisible leech. I tell her that love is illiterate, incompatible with the heavy burden of life. I gather my blanket about me, give her my theories: that in-love people hammer new shapes into their objects, that life is a monster ache some people ride while others lie under it to be pressed dry like flowers. I tell her that the nuns knew this from the very beginning, that nuns have always known the impossibleness of everything, that this information has been catapulted into their minds by all the other lost nuns like a metaphysical boomerang, that every heart they’d ever shown us was crowned in thorns, bleeding a special blood that was darker than human blood, that every heart they’d ever shown us was whizzing downly, a stake driven through its epicenter. I gather my blanket tight about my shoulders, lower my voice, tell her that my mind keeps drawing me back to places I do not yearn to go, that nature’s floating upstream in an unnatural way, that I am uncomfortable in the dark, that I do not want anyone or anything to erode, change, transform, or die. I tell her that everything is jumbled up in my head, that to get it straight, I have started writing it down on the wall underneath my bed, filing it backwardly year before year. I tell her that I know this to be crazy. I tell her I don’t like it, the craziness.

She listens to the tales of the backward things and more, clears her throat and says:
I’m so sorry, but it really is time to go
. I look out the window and she’s right. So much time has passed that night is here where there once was day.

Slippery When Wet

I fling myself through a fine city-mist; gray emissions from the gray cars make the mist taste like tin. People under orange umbrellas are orange-faced. People under red umbrellas are bloody. People under blue umbrellas are dead. People under no umbrellas are soggy. I hail them. They ignore me. I hail them again.

This is how I occupy my mind:
Left, right, left, right, left, right;
everything falls away, buildings dissolve, cars drive into gray rubble, people blur into one solid color—navy blue—and all that exists are my reliable feet until June appears, says:
Remember that awful sandwich I made out of pickles and Spam?

I twirl down the up stairs, until I’m slouching outside by Father Tim.

Priests have to wait until they die to retire. Father Tim’s soft brown hair is smattered with gray, sweet baby wrinkles crinkling his eyes, a small, nun-created cake-and-potato paunch sitting in the middle of his button-down like an extra pillow. He’s leaning against his car, an ivory sedan with a brown pleather interior. He’s come to see me now that my jaw has been freed.

His voice turns grave.
I’m going to have to tell you something you won’t like to hear
.

I look at him.
Please don’t
.

He ignores me.
There’s not enough interest in swimming this year … The girls want soccer
.

So that’s it, then
. I sigh.

Yes, that’s it
.

The world’s a wart
, I say.

You might want to consider reconciling with God one of these days
, he says.

I don’t talk to God for real, Father Tim
, I say.

The opposite of doubt is trust
, he says.

Some of the meanest people I know are Catholic
, I say.

The opposite of worry is faith
, he says.

God works in a fear-inspiring way
, I say.

That’s the trouble with a human interpretation of the Holy Scripture
, he says.

I’m an English major, Father Tim. I know metaphor
.

I go inside, open the refrigerator, look in. There’s a gallon of milk, three pots of jam, mole butter with mold on top, mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pesto, a barrel of potatoes, butter, sliced turkey, the chubby sheriff’s cold Budweiser. I look at the jar of mustard and say:
I am retired
. Nothing bad happens. Nothing good happens. Nothing happens at all.

I rummage around boxes, forage in closets, open drawers in desks that are not my own. I find things. A list of gifts from the famous Christmas raffle circa 1983:
One half ham, One half ham, Hand knit Santa set, Hand knit tea cozy, Embroidered Holy Pillow, Selected lots: Rum Fudge!
I find a small suede pouch containing Lilly Cocoplat’s baby teeth, a blind and tattered Sweet Bonny, a copy of
Bats! Bats! Bats!
, pictures of me with bat ears drawn on in indelible ink, one of Bron’s lists. She wrote:

No to Mary
.

No to Joseph
.

No to Jesus
.

No to Pontius Pilate
.

No to the Sacraments
.

No to the Trinity
.

No to absolution
.

Death will be fine. Death will be fine. Death will be fine
.

She died in the middle of the night, alone, December twenty-third. It was snowing. I didn’t sleep, watched the snow falling, watched her bed pretending it did not look like a coffin. A good person would have done something else. I write it down on the wall:

A good person would have done something else
.