I expected that what had happened in the tent, the moment when Eva and I touched, when we kissed, would be like one of Frankie’s escapades. That in the bright light of morning, in the cold reality of day, it would simply disappear, and I’d be left questioning my sanity. Eva had been drinking; we both had been drinking. We were cold. We had pressed our bodies together for warmth, and there had been a kiss. It was as chaste as the kisses we gave our children at night.
But that did not explain the way my whole body thrummed and buzzed and
continued
to hum like an electric wire. As we raced around the tents in the rain, securing the stakes and ensuring that the girls were huddled deep inside their sleeping bags to stay dry. It didn’t explain the way the thunder and lightning outside seemed to echo whatever was going on inside my own body, my own mind.
I expected Eva to deny it, not with her words necessarily but with her eyes that wouldn’t meet mine. Or worse, that they would, but with no glimmer, no acknowledgment of what had transpired between us.
It is for this reason that in the morning, when the rain had finally stopped its insistent pounding against the world around us, and Eva sat up from her sleeping bag, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and patting her hair down, I was startled and a little scared when she reached for my hand.
We sat there, inside the tent, the little bit of sun that had appeared making everything light up inside our canvas cave, holding hands for nearly a minute before she brought my hand to her face and pressed the back of it to her cheek, closing her eyes.
We didn’t speak about it, but that simple gesture was enough. It was confirmation that I wasn’t crazy, and that I was not alone in my recollections. I was not
alone
. But while this silent acknowledgment of what had happened eased my mind, it also scared the hell out of me. Sometimes, it was easier to deny things: to pretend that everything was normal, that
I
was normal. She squeezed my hand before she let it go and opened the front flap of the tent to the new day.
The rain seemed to have come and gone, and the girls were all thrilled for the stories it left them with. They chattered endlessly, obliviously, as they packed their things and recounted the details of the storm. They were filthy and exhausted by the time their parents picked them up at the campground entrance. I distributed the Go Camping badges ceremoniously, and each of the girls beamed. And after they were all gone, Eva and I sat at a picnic table with our own girls, waiting for Frankie to show up. As we waited, I was terrified to steal even a glance at her, worried that someone might be able to read whatever it was that my expression revealed.
A half hour passed, an excruciating hour, and still no Frankie. It was Sunday, which meant Mass at ten o’clock, but it was already past noon. The campground was only five miles from our house. The girls were restless. I gave them the remaining food we had: some saltine crackers smeared with peanut butter. The bruised apples that had been picked over.
“I’m going to go call him,” I said, grateful for an excuse to leave. “Stay here with the girls?”
“Of course,” Eva said.
I went to the campground office and knocked on the door. The woman who had checked us in was working. “Excuse me, may I use your phone to call my husband? He was supposed to be here to pick us up an hour ago.”
“I wish I could help you,” she said. “Storm took the phone out. The electricity too.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re the one with the Scouts, right?” she said, nodding and reaching behind the counter. “Here’s a little something to keep them occupied while you wait,” she said, handing over some old coloring books and a coffee can of broken crayons.
“Thank you,” I said.
I hoped that by the time I got back to Eva and the girls, Frankie would be pulling up. But he wasn’t there. The prospect of sitting there with this secret, our secret, was too much. I knew that if I didn’t move, I might crawl out of my skin.
“Okay,” I said after another fifteen minutes, trying to muster some enthusiasm. “Looks like we’re walking home.”
I expected gripes from the girls, but instead they just heaved their rucksacks onto their tiny shoulders and followed. I was grateful for their easy compliance.
“You don’t suppose there’s a badge in the handbook for this?” Eva said, trying to make me laugh, probably sensing that my whole body was tied up in knots. “Walking home because your husband forgot to pick you up? What do you suppose the emblem would be?” She nudged me playfully with her shoulder.
I smiled, aware of the spot of skin on my arm that she had touched.
“Imagine if we earned badges for all the things
we
do?” she said, grabbing my arm now. I felt a surge of something rush through my entire torso.
The girls ran ahead, skipping and holding hands.
“Stay over to the left-hand side,” I hollered after them. “That way the cars can see you.”
“A badge for ten consecutive nights without sleep because your baby won’t stop crying,” she said, laughing. “A badge for cleaning up after a sick kid!”
“Or a sick husband,” I said, playing along now, the words a welcome, small release of the enormous pressure building up inside me.
“Badges for making the perfect martini!”
“The perfect lasagna!”
“The perfect blow job!” she whispered into my ear, and doubled over with laughter.
“God, can you imagine that emblem?” I asked.
Just then a car came zooming up to us, my heart leapt, and I screamed again for the girls to get over to the side of the road. It was Frankie, and suddenly all that anger and frustration I’d been feeling at the campground came bubbling back to the surface, merging with everything I was feeling about Eva, and I thought for a moment that I might just combust.
“Hop on in, kiddos!” he said.
Sticking out of the back windows were two pair of cross-country skis. “Oh, dear Jesus,” I said.
This was not the first time.
Of course, it wasn’t. I’d be a liar if I denied feeling this way before. That what was happening between me and Eva, the way I felt about her, was some sort of anomaly, some variance from the norm. Some
deviance
. Instead, it was a longing so old and familiar, so primitive and profound, when it surfaced this time it took only a moment to recognize it for what it was: this desire, this terrible ache. It lived inside me, was part of me, but I had learned to neglect it. It was the monster in my closet, the insane and infirm aunt in the attic. It was my shame. My heartache.
Swimming
. I had been swimming since my father threw me into the pond beyond our cow pastures and watched as I first sank and then surfaced, my legs and arms and lungs working hard to keep me afloat. To keep me from drowning. And soon, I was a stronger swimmer than my sister, than the neighbor boys we played with. Than my father himself. In the water, I was powerful. Certain. In the water, I knew who I was.
I used to blame the water for what happened the year I turned fifteen.
Miss Mars was fresh out of college, but she looked younger than we did, with a blond ponytail and bright blue, a
chlorinated aqueous
blue, eyes and a round baby face. She was hired to be the girls’ physical education teacher at our high school. She was also recruited to coach tennis, swimming, and cross-country skiing.
I joined the swim team my freshman year and quickly proved myself to be the best female swimmer in the school. Because most other local schools did not have their own swimming pools, our competitions were typically intramural. And so eventually, I ran out of competitors and was allowed to compete against the boys. Coach Norman, the athletic director, resisted, but Miss Mars, with her bright sky eyes, fought long and hard for my chance to compete for the school’s athletic records. My specialty was the butterfly, the hardest stroke but arguably the most beautiful.
Miss Mars spent extra time helping me train, subjecting me to an even more rigorous schedule than the boys. I was up with my father in the morning when he woke to milk the cows, furiously pedaling my bicycle into town to the school, where Miss Mars, who rented a room in a house near the school, would be waiting. I can still smell those chlorine mornings, feel the warm, humid air of the pool room. In the fall, my face would be raw and red from the windy bike ride. Stepping into the pool area was like stepping into the jungle. I swam for two hours before I showered and changed for school. And after school, I met Miss Mars right after the last bell and repeated the whole process again.
Miss Mars was soft spoken but tough. I wanted nothing but to please her. At that age, I found myself willfully disobeying most of my mother’s demands, but with Miss Mars, I wouldn’t have considered even the smallest rebellion. If she told me to do a thousand push-ups, I would drop to the cold concrete floor and do push-ups until I collapsed. If she told me to swim ten more laps, even as my legs were trembling with exhaustion, I would only nod and dive back into the pool. And while she was tough on me,
training
me as it were, I liked to think that our relationship transcended that of coach and athlete. She was closer to a contemporary of mine than any of my other teachers. She didn’t look much older than I did, and, besides her job, she didn’t have any of the trappings of an adult life. She was my mentor, but she was also my
friend
.
It was during those mornings that I began to appreciate my father’s work. There was something peaceful and magnificent about rising before the rest of the world, of engaging in backbreaking labor while everyone else slumbered. When I disappeared into the pool, and the only sound was the water resisting my body and the distant muffled sound of Miss Mars’s whistle, I understood how it was he could live his life alone, with only his labor, his breath, and the land. I would emerge after finishing my laps both more awake and more alive than I had ever felt. And Miss Mars’s smiling face would come into focus through the water in my eyes.
It was also during this time that Gussy met
her
Frank. I watched her fall in love with him with both fascination and trepidation. Her sudden vulnerability scared me. She swooned, and my heart pounded with fear. As with any kind of falling, I worried that when she finally landed, she might shatter into a thousand little pieces.
I hadn’t dated any boys yet. My father wouldn’t allow it. Not until we were sixteen, and then only reluctantly. Besides, boys didn’t swarm about me the way they did Gussy. Boys didn’t know what to do with me.
I’d always swum (in creeks and rivers, lakes and ponds) and I’d always played baseball. For four years, I was the only girl on the local baseball team, something unheard of, but they’d been so desperate for a good pitcher, the coach had finally relented and let me join. I pitched our team to a nearly perfect season that first year and every year afterward. And so the neighborhood boys saw me as a teammate. And I saw them as the brothers I didn’t have.
But Gussy had
suitors
. Boys were rendered stupid and doe-eyed around Gussy. While I’d inherited my father’s red hair and coarse features, Gussy looked like our mother. She was soft, with sunlight-colored hair and a fine nose and chin, kind blue eyes and an equally gentle disposition. There was a new boy trying to carry her books to school almost every single day. And I watched this, mesmerized by her obliviousness to their affections. She was friendly to those lovesick boys, but she was also aloof, which made them want her all the more. Until Frank.
When Frank came along, the old Gussy began to disappear. It was not in any way that anyone but her sister would notice, but I saw it, this strange and slow disassembling. She was suddenly concerned with her clothes, her hair, her face. She fussed in the mirror. She worried over the smallest things. I watched her face shadow with concern when Frank was late for a date, and the way she lit up when the doorbell rang. Her mood, while usually cheerful, was now dictated by something outside of her rather than that terrific inner light she’d always had. I couldn’t imagine ever giving myself over to someone like this, to surrendering myself in this way.
And then Miss Mars came along. And how was what I felt about Miss Mars different than what Gussy felt about Frank? I lived to please her. I swam harder so that she would smile and pat my back with her small, soft hands. I woke early each morning, not caring that my body still ached from the prior day’s session, that my eyes were still sealed shut with the debris of sleep. Wasn’t it her face I imagined on those long, cold rides from the farm to school?
I was so confused and consumed by thoughts of Miss Mars, juxtaposed against thoughts of Gussy and Frank, I stayed awake at night worrying, sleep eluding me completely on the worst nights and proving fitful on the best. Miss Mars noticed. She noticed when I wasn’t eating right, when my mother and I had squabbled. She could see it in my tired strokes and labored breaths in the pool. Of course she would notice if I wasn’t sleeping.
One morning after practice, she asked me into her office. I had changed into my school clothes, but my hair was still wet. I had a towel around my neck to keep my shirt dry. I sat in front of her battered desk in a metal folding chair, looking at the trophies on the shelves, the certificates, her diploma. There was one framed picture of her standing with two little boys on either side. They were her brothers; she’d told me about them.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, sitting down at the edge of her desk in front of me, her hands on her knees. “You know you can tell me if something is wrong. At school? Home?”
I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t have any words for what was happening inside my head, inside my heart. I shook my head, but tears were already springing to my eyes. I was mortified by my body’s betrayal of me.