The Sea of Light (34 page)

My knees felt wobbly. I pulled off my foul robe, which smelled like a few weeks’ worth of sweat, got in the shower, turned it to warm, and had to sit immediately ass-down while the water rained over me. I lurched across the tub for soap and shampoo. Cleaned myself sitting on smudged porcelain enamel, trying weakly to pretend that I was out enjoying a tropical thundershower.

I brushed my teeth. The paste felt thick and unfamiliar, an acidic glue. My lips were cracked and I smeared them with Vaseline. I couldn’t see my own face in the mirror any more—too much steam—which was just as well.

Later, I put on a clean sweatshirt and pair of pants. The waistband sagged around my hips. It occurred to me, for the first time, that I’d lost a lot of weight. I felt my upper arms, and shoulders, and reached in past the loose waistband to feel my thighs. They shivered, barely supporting me. Flesh and bone. Not a muscle to my name.

I went downstairs, taking each step one at a time and pausing to breathe, sweaty palm sliding along the banister, holding me up. There were a bunch of gift-wrapped, ribboned boxes and packages on top of the armchair. I shoved them off and sat, sinking in very little. The force of my body felt extraordinarily different than it ever had before. So much lighter. Insubstantial. Like there was only a thin feathery mass holding me down to earth. The effort of dressing, of walking down those stairs, lowering myself into the chair, had taken everything out of me. I wiped a shining lather of perspiration from my forehead. I shut my eyes until the dizziness passed. And when I opened them, noticed the packages I’d knocked to the floor. Happy Birthday wrapping paper. There were envelopes taped to each, addressed to me. Birthday greetings showing through one envelope’s onion skin.

That’s when it hit me: my birthday. First week of November. How long ago? I didn’t know—didn’t yet know what date it was. But I’d missed it, missed my own birthday. I had turned twenty-one years old, finished the first twenty-one years of my life without realization, coughing through a bout of pneumonia. And I’d woken up later, changed. Was the world going to pull a Rip Van Winkle on me, too?

I reached for a crimson-wrapped box but the movement was sickening and I forgot about it, leaned back, felt my head rest on cushions and my eyes gently close.
You are alone, all alone,
I remembered.
And so am I.

“So I am,” I said.

I’d said it out loud. It echoed faintly in the room, the sound a kind of shock.

Then, quietly and suddenly, it was true but no longer terrifying.

I was basically about half the size I once had been. Pale, gaunt as a homeless dog; sweaty and faint and weak. But sitting there in the worn old armchair I felt like I was also, quietly and suddenly, my very own self; in some way that I had never been before, just me. Not part of Lottie and Zischa’s reconstructed family. Not Brenna Allen’s team captain. Not even a swimmer, necessarily. Nor even just a queer. But something more. And also, in a way, something less.

The me that I was, I realized, was much smaller than the me I’d wanted to be a few weeks ago. Much frailer. Required much less of herself, and of others, and of the world. Could not do all the strong and funny things she had been able to do before. Somehow, though, she was sufficient.

Alive and, even in her weakened state, enough.

*

Start back slow, Nan advised. Choose one thing to accomplish each day. Add a little more activity each week. Get plenty of rest. Drink pure spring water.

The last piece of advice, I figured, I’d do without. But the other stuff made sense.

You’d have thought I would rush off to see Coach first, or sit on the sidelines at swim team practice. Maybe, before being sick, that’s what I would have thought I’d do. But in fact, on my first day back into the cruel rotten light of the so-called healthy world, I chose to go to lit. class. I don’t know why. Later, though, I was glad—it was a good choice, eased me back into things.

They were all chattering away about some sort of comparative themes in
Moby Dick
and
Billy Budd,
I could barely keep up with the ideas. But Brown was pretty decent. He made a big deal about me being back, said to come see him during office hours that week and we’d figure something out about the work and exam and papers I’d missed, and he seemed really glad to see me.

I listened to what was going on that day, drifting mentally in and out. Sometimes, too, I’d stop listening and just focus on his forehead, or his earlobe, or chin. His skin was so dark, so soft looking, and warm. It had this quality of being burnished, mature—ripe in a way that white skin rarely was. I wondered what it was like to be black. Then wondered what it was like to be him, the person, surrounded by all these little white faces. But I gave up wondering. Realized I’d never know; there were these gaps between people, all people, that were basically pretty wide, that you never really spanned. Or, if you spanned them, it happened out of sheer luck, or incredibly hard work, or both. But the way it was to be in somebody else’s body, with all its happiness and sufferings and history, scars, aches, memories, colors—that, you never really knew. What you endured alone, in your body, you were always alone with. In a place and a way no one else could touch.

*

What I cared about, I confess, was losing my scholarship. There were plenty of reasons for them to take it away, if they’d wanted to; team captain or not, I was becoming pretty unnecessary. Especially when you compared me to Babe Delgado—not that there was even any comparison; I mean, compared to most of us she could just about wrap the pool under one arm and take it with her, if she wanted to. She could lap me in the 200, practically break me in half for the 100. Her 200 IM had, in the first meet of the year, set a division record; if worse came to worst, she could do a terrific 400 IM, for sure; and the medley relay was built around her breaststroke. Potalia, who had always been slower than me in the sprints, was at least healthy and certainly in much better shape than I. Anything I might have handled, she probably could too. So I approached my meeting with Brenna Allen with more than a little dread.

But she was cool—totally cool.

She said to be gentle with myself. Ease back into things. Sit out practice for a while, then start slow in the water, stop when I got tired, basically chill, just chill. Then, when I felt better, we would see about competing. In the meantime there was no rush. But my presence was important. People had missed me. She had, too. It would be good for me to come to every practice, whether or not I swam; it would set a good example. I walked out in a glow. Almost loving her again.

*

I saw Babe that afternoon, after my talk with Coach. I was sitting there in the Donut Hole, sipping a cup of tea and blowing my nose and flipping through a few massive tomes I’d missed out on completely during the weeks of fever. Once in a while it occurred to
me that the world had started to look different to me—at least during the past couple of days. I was noticing things like colors and sounds more. And this thought kept blowing through my mind: that the colors and sounds weren’t really
real.
I mean, they were
there,
for sure—and so was I—but the way I appeared day to day wasn’t the way I really
was,
it was just an appearance—and likewise for everything and for everybody else.

I watched lemon-scented steam rise from the Styrofoam rim of the teacup. It was there, sure—for a while; and it was real, sure—in a way; but then, like that, it was gone.

Where did it go?

And what was it, really? A thing that would exist in the same form, anywhere in space? Or something different—something that arose out of something else, changed from second to second, and, after a while, seemed absent? but wasn’t really? or had been absent, from the beginning?

And what in hell was its
beginning,
anyway?

“Hi.”

I glanced up. She’d lost more weight and gained more muscle and looked great—very fit, very tall and strong, almost slender. Everyone else was walking around with winter pallor. Not her. She had that burnished quality to her face. Or maybe it was just a ruddy exercise flush—I don’t know.

“Hi,” I said.

“How
are
you?”

“Okay.”

There was a definite pause between us, while all around the Donut Hole people put on coats or shook off scarves, trays clattered against tabletops, highlighters squeaked over textbook pages, and the smell of food frying and the color of slightly dim ceiling lights seemed like they existed somewhere else, outside this weird protective cone of silence that had suddenly come down around the two of us.

“Well, hey, look.” She shifted her bookbag awkwardly from shoulder to shoulder. “Can I join you?”

“Sure,” I said, “why not?”

She did, sitting on the other side of the booth, shrugging her down jacket off, folding scarf and gloves over it.

There was more deathlike silence then. Only it didn’t bother me the way it probably would have before. I felt it like a shield—felt calm and at home inside of it. She was fidgeting, edgy and ill at ease; but all that—all of her, and her concerns—seemed to take place out there, somewhere far away, in the world that could not touch me.

“So. How are you feeling?”

“About what?”

“I mean physically,” she said, looking confused.

Better, I told her, better than dead.

I’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way and it wasn’t very funny. Neither of us laughed.

I noticed that the veins were full, clearly defined along the backs of her hands, twisting over the wrist, up the forearm. A steady diet of weight lifting. The long, strong fingers knit together. I saw her throat move, swallowing. Nervous marks of strain creased her forehead, settled around her eyes.

“I missed you, Ellie. Everybody did.”

I changed the subject then, complimented her on putting our first meet of the year in the bag for us. “I heard you blew them all away.”

“Nah.” But she grinned, seemed relieved. “I mean, I was
slow
—it was pretty pathetic. My timing’s still way off. But I guess it went okay. Anyway, the knees don’t hurt too bad.”

Good, I said, that’s good.

“And my shoulders are holding up pretty well. I think the tendons must be getting stronger. Even the old right ankle—tape it up after workout and
voila!
no more hurt.”

I picked lemon rind out of the saucer, twisted it, dropped it into lukewarm tea. There was another nervous-making silence between us, and this time I wasn’t going to break it for her, or me. Finally a pained expression wrinkled her face. The fingers locked together harder; even the knuckles whitened with effort. She stared down at the table, spoke very quietly, almost humbly, without looking up.

“Um. Listen, Ellie, is there, like—anything wrong?”

“Wrong?” My eyes rolled before I could stop them.
“Wrong?
How could anything be
wrong,
Babe? I mean, what’s a little pneumonia—nothing, right? Or four midterms missed, and three papers, and about seven books—I mean, a mere drop in the bucket of the world’s misery, right? And the whole season shot! and for all I know, if it wasn’t for Coach’s charity and pity, my scholarship with it. Well, how selfish of me to even care, I mean, it’s like, how fucking
bourgeois,
right? Right?”

She glanced at me shyly. I thought, for a moment, that she smiled. Only it wasn’t a smile of pleasure, but a release of fear and tension that rippled across her face, then vanished.

“Wow. You sound really pissed off.”

“I
am
pissed off. Maybe I’m angry with the breaks. And I’m angry at you, Babe.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Because you hurt me. I mean, I have been pretty sick, you know. You could have come by—other people did—or called once in a while to see how I was doing. I mean, I know that I have been there for you when you were feeling bad, or freaked out, or upset. And to tell you the truth, I could have used a friend over the past few weeks. It would have made a difference. Okay? I mean, I thought we were friends.”

She stared at me suddenly, looking desperate. “We were! We
are
!
”

“Oh really? If that’s what you call being a friend, Babe, you can just go do it somewhere else. It’s not what I want any more.”

“Now just a minute!” Her palm slapped the table hard, making salt and pepper shakers rattle. “Maybe I’ve been going through some things too. The last few weeks haven’t exactly been easy for me, either, you know. I’ve got plenty of hurt inside—”

“You
always
have plenty of hurt inside, Babe. You’ve got so much hurt, how can anyone possibly compete?”

There was no more heat wafting out of the tea. I stood, feeling far away from myself—like I was really on the wall somewhere, invisible, looking over at all this happening, more or less outside of my conscious control, and I’d figure out what to make of it later. I pulled on my coat, jammed a wool hat on.

“Goddammit, Ellie!” She stood suddenly, leaned across the table so that our faces were close. Only she was so much taller, she was looking down at me. “Has it occurred to you that I was a little freaked out by all this stuff?”

“What stuff?” I yelled, noticing that all around us the scrape and clatter of dishes had quieted, and people were watching. “Like me being queer, for instance?”