Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  “Is it so wrong that I want the place to look nice?” Seth says. “Is that so wrong?”

  “Thank God you’re here, Heather,” Cecilia says.

  Really? I think.

  Later

  We go for a swim at Crystal Lake. Mark Ruffalo is just leaving with his son when we arrive. I love Mark Ruffalo.

  The lake is in a valley surrounded on all sides by hills covered in fir trees. A friend of Cecilia’s meets us there; I’m intimidated because he was one of the founders of ACT UP, but I try to act nonchalant. When he asks me if I want to swim around the lake I say, “Yes!?” and then, “Actually, I’m kind of scared of dark water.” Around the lake is more than a mile. He says his boyfriend was scared too but that he got over it. I decide I will too. I will not have my life be dictated by irrational fears, I think.

  The water is freezing at first, and here’s the thing, I truly have a terror about dark water. And in Crystal Lake, you can’t even see your toes when you step in. I’ve scuba dived down as far as 140 feet—I’ve seen manta rays and sharks, eels and parrot fish, and swam right through a school of ferociously grinning silver barracudas. But that was in clear blue ocean water. It’s the dark that scares me. I’ve never done anything at Crystal Lake but putter around the edges. The sky is overcast, so the water is not just murky today but nearly black. Glassy without a ripple on it.

  “Maybe I’ll hold off, actually,” I say.

  My brother rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up,” he says. And then to their friend, “She can swim around this whole thing twice if she wants.” It reminds me of Mac’s comment at the badminton game in Park Slope. What do these people know about me that I don’t know?

  The first time I put my face into the water, I have the sensation that I am going to lose control of my bowels. It’s not a pleasant feeling. I make myself do three lengths, but then the fear causes me to start to sputter and flail my arms and legs. I think about everything I’ve ever learned about breathing—how yoga is all about the breath, how in scuba diving your lungs will literally explode if you don’t keep breathing—but I can’t find my breath at all. Neither, though, will I let myself take my head up out of the water. You will do this, I say to myself. As I keep swimming, I get a feeling like I’ve lost all sense of where up or down is. I feel like I might vomit into the water. Finally I can’t stand it anymore and I break through the surface, gasping for air. I hear the fir trees that rise up from the lake rustling in the breeze.

  The first half mile is the worst. I’m thinking, oh, I guess this is what panic attacks are like. But then something shifts. Eventually the vertigo gives way to a state of incredible relaxation, like my body is an aquatic thing, a perfectly calculated machine for doing exactly what it’s doing right at this moment. It’s effortless, and the ongoing rhythm of my stroke feels like someone comforting me.

  As we’re heading back to Seth and Cecilia, watching us from their towels, I even put my face in the water and open my eyes without thinking I’m going to be sick.

  Seth calls out, “You didn’t make any bets with her, did you?”

  Later

  We go hear Ray Price and Willie Nelson play at Bethel Woods. Seth was on tour recently with a band that opened for Willie Nelson so Cecilia and he head backstage to say hi. I stay in my seat. Josh and I had our first dance to a Ray Price song. I watch the people around me. Lots of older people, the ladies with bouffant hair, the men in cowboy hats. I wonder if any of them had Ray Price as their first dance too. I wonder if they all hate each other now.

  Friday, August 31, 2007

  Seth is at the grill. Alex Green is leaning on Ben’s knee, drinking from a sippy cup. Alex is not only walking but also talking. In my heart I want Alex to run to me like his long-lost mother. But I also don’t want him to even recognize me, because I don’t want Marie to be reminded of those months when she wasn’t there.

  I’m amazed at how easy they all seem. I know that the worst thing I could do is only think of their tragedy when I see them, but I can’t help it. I find it harder to meet Ben’s eye now than when he was on his knees weeping.

  After dinner they tell us. Marie is pregnant. Just a few weeks so we can’t tell anyone else.

  How could they have enough faith in the world to have another child after what happened to them?

  Saturday, September 1, 2007

  Back in Brooklyn.

  Is it getting dark already?

  Sunday, September 2, 2007

  Reminder to self: do not agree to be on any more panels about stupid shit you don’t care about.

  I spent the whole day in Goldman Sachs next to the president of UCLA, a pop-culture academic from MIT, and this video-artist buddy of mine, while they tried to raise money for some new digital media program. It was hours of blathering on about emerging art forms of the future. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah.

  Then, as if that weren’t enough, we were whisked uptown in black SUVs with leather seats and tinted windows to a little fete at the Goldman Sachs guy’s gazillion-dollar apartment. Private elevator and horrible modern art everywhere. I mean, there was an eyeball as big as my torso blinking at me from the fireplace. And the banker’s wife was wearing a gray wool dress with leather cutouts lined with grommets and shoes covered with more grommets. How could her stylist have let her out with so many grommets, I think.

  My artist buddy is a big fat man with a trim black beard, one eye that runs off on its own, and some kind of foreign accent. He was psyched because if this program gets approved, he’ll be the director. So that’s what he was doing there, but what was I doing there? The pop-culture academic, in Tevas, jeans, and red suspenders, was clearly there for the free food—he packed it away like nobody’s business, shoving little piles of tuna tartar into the hole behind his beard with a rapidity of motion I’ve rarely seen from the academic community.

  Then I got placed at a table with the editor of Artforum and some guy in a cravat with enormous, round, black-rimmed glasses that made me want to laugh out loud in his face. And I know I should have schmoozed and made nice and acted like the fancy, impressive person they’d carted me up here to be, but I was so busy trying not to drive a fork into my hand under the table that I couldn’t. Instead I got incredibly drunk, and I must confess I snorted when the president of UCLA congratulated the grommet-covered woman on her art collection.

  The last thing I remember is a plate of artisanal cheese and apple slices placed in front of me and a vivid fantasy of smashing my champagne flute into the smooth, oval face of the poor, unsuspecting Artforum editor to my left.

  In the SUV designated to drive me home, the world spun, and I closed my eyes and tried not to vomit and thought, what a fool you are. What a mess.

  Monday, September 3, 2007

  It’s definitely getting darker earlier. I’ve decided to go to Hawaii with Daphne and her husband.

  Tuesday, September 4, 2007

  It’s past two in the morning. I should be asleep but I’m not.

  Kieran, why did you call me? Should I have called you back? Do you think about me the way I think about you? I still compose love letters to you in my head, you know.

  With my bench it was easier not to think about you. Did you know I had such a strong bench? They’re all gone now. It doesn’t matter anyway, because none of them made me feel the way you did. I only had sex with one of them and only once. It was totally gross. What a disgusting business sex is. Not with you, though. Not with you. I wish you were here, Kieran. I wish you loved me.

  Saturday, September 8, 2007

  4:32 a.m.—just home.

  Faith comes up to visit, and we go to a house party in Prospect Heights where my friend is DJing. The air is thick with marijuana smoke. The host is a tiny Korean guy with a wispy goatee. Highly mellow. We thank him for letting us come. He puts his hand over his heart and thanks us for coming.

  Around 2 a.m. we leave to go meet a friend of mine who’s in an anarchist marching band, which is hosting an all-night revelry at Grand A
rmy Plaza.

  At the circle, we dance with the anarchists and with each other, swinging arm to arm. I grab Faith in an enormous hug.

  “Thank you for bringing me here!” she cries. “I needed this.”

  “I love you,” I say. I am determined to bring a little fun into Faith’s life. “We’ll get through. I promise.”

  And then, as we whirl around, and the dark sky above us spins: “Oh God, please don’t let summer end!”

  Faith pulls slightly away. “Heath, summer is already over.”

  But I don’t want to hear it. I swing her around harder until we both fall on the grass.

  Tuesday, September 18, 2007

  I’m in Prospect Park, and I am sobbing. Right there by the swan pond, in full view of about fifteen Hasidim and a dozen joggers.

  Eleanor is saying, “Heather, Heather, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

  But I am not able to stop.

  “I can’t explain,” I gasp. “I can feel it. Something very bad is going to happen. There are storm clouds on the horizon. I see them coming.”

  Thursday, October 11, 2007

  Hawaii

  1. I love scuba diving. No one else wanted to go so I went by myself. I swam next to turtles that must have been five hundred years old. Hovered right beside one, watching him watching me and thinking the world is a wonderful and beautiful place.

  2. I do not like being around famous writers. All the people here are like 500 million times more successful than me, and they all tell amazing stories around the dinner table. I feel tiny and insignificant. I don’t even try to get a word in edgewise. I focus on not scowling too ferociously.

  3. I do not like insomnia. We’re staying in a house atop a cliff overlooking an immense white sand beach—whiter than I knew a beach was capable of being. There’s a riptide on this beach, which means it’s completely deserted. Just miles of white sand and turquoise water. Every morning before anyone else is up, I walk this beach, my legs sinking knee-deep into the sand. I’m pouring sweat when I get back. Since I got here it’s been one nonstop attempt to exhaust myself with swimming, walking, surfing, running, and yoga. But nothing helps. I’m awake. I’m awake. I’m awake.

  4. I do not like couples. There are four of them. I hear little snippets all day long. I watch them help each other in little ways—Honey, you want me to pack you a sandwich? Hey, babe, I grabbed a towel for you. It makes me think, really? It could be like that? And then it’s a sharp pain in my chest.

  5. I do not like Eleanor. Her cousin got married and she didn’t invite me. This is the first time I haven’t been invited to a Stein event in as long as I can remember. I wasn’t part of the family? I was just her stand-in until she found a husband?

  6. I do not, it turns out, like the good life. Every evening we all climb into the hot tub, which is off the back deck set right on the cliff edge over that extraordinary expanse of white beach. We bring in cocktails and glasses of champagne and watch the sun set in the most extraordinary displays of rippling pink light. I have a little voice in my head, taunting me, saying, How you enjoying the good life? Fuck you, I think back. This is the good life. But I can’t help it. I seem to be permanently irritated, as if irritation were a living thing, a festering of bugs on my skin.

  7. I do not like Kieran. He emailed me yesterday asking when I was going to come visit. This time, I couldn’t resist. I wrote him right back, call me please. And to my amazement, and horror, he did. And I wanted to hate him, but the sound of his voice was like butterflies fluttering in the sunlight. I tried to keep it light, but then I couldn’t help it and I said, “Why are you inviting me to visit now?” Longing for him to say, I can’t stop thinking about you, girl. I must have you again. But he said, “Jesus, girl, I don’t know. It popped into my head.” And I nearly doubled over in pain.

  8. I do not like my mother. She is moving to Florida. She hasn’t said she’ll miss us or that she’s sorry to be moving so far away. This feels like a pincer in my chest. I go around acting like I hate her, but whom do I think I’m kidding? What have I ever wanted but to feel loved by her and be capable of loving her back? I’ll admit it: I still fantasize about being held by her. And now that Faith is a single mom, I find myself kind of in awe of how she managed when we were little, which pisses me off because it really damages my case against her. Am I actually supposed to admit that she might have done the best she could—and that, considering the circumstances, her best wasn’t so bad? Not today I’m not.

  9. I do not like myself. All summer, I’ve felt so enormous—not diffuse and full of love like those blissful days of Dublin, but big, like a helium balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Picture me, or picture yourself if you prefer, blown up to the size of a New York City building. Held in check, but barely, by a team of people, and just cruising down the street, over the heads of all the little folk below. I felt like I imagined kings must have felt in medieval times—anointed superior by God himself. I gotta say, it felt great. But now I feel like the parade is over and I’m being deflated, and somehow it was actually kind of monstrous being that big. And maybe I’m not as cool and awesome as I thought.

  Saturday, October 13, 2007

  Everyone else is asleep. But I’m awake. I feel haunted by Josh. I find myself in bed at night longing for him to be here so I could curl my feet around his ankles, wrap my arms around his waist, and lay my cheek against his back. I think about him on our wedding day. I think how I wept as he read his vows, not expecting to find myself crying but suddenly completely undone by the realization that this man loved me. Loved me. And I could hear everyone in their seats bawling too, because even though that very morning I’d still been nagging him to write them, he’d come up with words so astonishingly eloquent and unusual that what could anyone do but weep?

  Even as I long for him, I can’t bring his face up clearly before me.

  Maybe I will go to Dublin. I’ve been working on a pitch about Colm McCullough and Dublin’s newfound prosperity. It would be a research trip. And if I happened to see Kieran, I’d happen to see Kieran.

  Monday, October 15, 2007

  Email:

  Dear Kieran,

  Greetings from Hawaii!! More beautiful than you could possibly imagine! I’m having the best time! Cocktails in the hot tub every night! I’m so lucky that I can work anywhere. In fact, I just may come and visit you as I don’t think I’ll be able to make myself stay home! Do you know Colm McCullough? I’m doing a story on him and Dublin’s newfound prosperity—isn’t that funny! Talk soon! Xoxo

  He writes back right away. (!!!!)

  Email:

  Hiya girl, now that sounds utterly fab. You are a lucky girl indeed to live that kind of life. Def come over for a visit if you can, as we would spoil you. It would be so nice to have someone to hold, someone I can trust and relax with, talk as well as make love to—maybe you should definitely come over and quick. Yours, in anticipation, Kieran.

  Someone. He means me, doesn’t he?

  Tuesday, October 16, 2007

  Email:

  Good morning, girl. Thought I’d give you a wake-up note. Slightly worse for wear this morning myself due to a great night out. Brilliant stuff. Loads going on. Get that lovely ass of yours over here. Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

  That’s two in a row from him. Two. In. A. Row. From him.

  Wednesday, October 17, 2007

  I’ve started cutting my meds in half. I have not had an orgasm with anyone else in the room since my early twenties, and I know it’s the Paxil. If I decide to go to Dublin, and I’m not saying I have, I at least want the possibility of having an orgasm.

  I’ve also started cutting my food intake in half. If I decide to go to Dublin, and I’m not saying I have, I will be as thin as last year.

  Later

  “This is what I get,” I say to Eleanor. “I lost in the husband-and-children lottery, so instead, I get to have adventures. Just to stay home would be a waste of how much freedom I have, don’t you think?”
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  “I do, I get it,” Eleanor says. “I really do. And I’m in constant awe of how you live, I really am. It’s extraordinary.”

  “But . . .” I say.

  “Look, here’s what I’m afraid of,” Eleanor says. “You go. You have this amazing time. You get up really, really high, and then, when it’s over, you crash back down to earth and are really miserable. I mean, you’re already doing so much traveling. I mean, honestly, if I’m completely honest, what I’d like is to see you build a life for yourself where you actually live.”

  “I don’t think you should make decisions based on fear of what might happen afterward,” I say.

  “I just don’t want to see you suffer,” Eleanor says.

  “Suffering is part of life,” I say.

  Saturday, November 3, 2007

  Montreal

  In the lobby of the W Montréal, I can’t stop shivering. I’m here doing a story for All Things Considered. I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning. All Things Considered doesn’t pay expenses so I’m saving money by not eating.

  Peter comes out of the elevator with this guy Billy Santiago, a former Microsoft programmer turned experimental video-game designer with a shaved head, heavily muscled torso, dirty glasses, and a tiny little cupid’s bow of a mouth. He’s thought to be a genius. A genius and an enormous asshole. Peter is gaga for him. I got Peter a gig covering this conference for Wired.com so he’s here with me, sharing a hotel room. His face is glowing, which I take to mean his interview with Billy went well.

  Peter takes one look at me and says, “Dude, are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay,” I say. “It’s just so cold.”

  “Cold?” Peter says.