Drowning Lessons

by Peter Selgin

  Lloyd is telling me the story of some woman he met in Paris, when he was on a Fulbright there, with whom he had a fling, about how comparatively natural Parisian women’s attitudes toward casual sex are. “There it’s considered a common courtesy,” he says, “you know, like offering a glass of water to someone who’s thirsty.” He has just made this pronouncement when I notice him looking with horror toward the far end of the restaurant and turn to look that way myself. At the entrance a woman has just hung her coat on the rack. A well-built woman with an oval face and long, red hair.

  “That’s her,” says Lloyd, and I know who it is: the assistant professor with whom my brother allegedly misconducted himself. She came to his office in tears, overwhelmed. My brother assured her too demonstratively — a hug, so he describes it. The next day she filed charges of sexual harassment. The campus newspaper got hold of the story and published their two photographs, his with a one-word caption, “Accused.” The local Herald picked up and ran its own significantly different version, which Lisa read and gave credence to, prompting her to move into the neighbor’s house. Days later my brother swallowed a dozen diazepam tablets with his favorite table wine.

  She takes a seat at the bar.

  “Why did she have to come here?” says Lloyd. “She knows I like to eat here. She’s doing it on purpose. I know she is.” His face is red.

  “Relax,” I say.

  “I’m not supposed to be anywhere near her. I’m not supposed to look at her. She’ll say I’m harassing her. It’ll cost me my job. Which is just what she wants. Bitch.”

  “You were here first,” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter. The burden is all on me. She can do whatever the hell she wants. I had to sign a gag order. I can’t even defend myself. That’s how the system’s designed, for her ‘protection.’ It means she can smear my name across the face of the moon, and I can’t say a thing since that would be ‘retaliation.’ Nice, huh?”

  “It’s a tough spot to be in,” I say, thinking maybe now we’ll talk. But Lloyd just sits there simmering, his face as ruddy as his wine. “Come on,” I say pointing to his entrée. “Don’t let it ruin everything. Ignore her.”

  “My dinner’s already ruined,” says Lloyd tossing his napkin on his plate. “I can’t eat with her here. Let’s go.”

  We hurry past the bar and out the door. The woman doesn’t see us.

  I go to sleep drunk and hungry.

  In sixth grade my brother and I pulled the ol’ switcheroo. Mr. Barnes, my regular teacher, was sick that day, and we had a new substitute. Due to overcrowding, class was held in a so-called portable unit, one of a dozen one-room buildings erected in the parking lot. As the substitute took roll, Lloyd sat at my desk. When my name was called, he got up, went to the window, opened it, and jumped out. The substitute was still recovering from this act of gross impertinence when she heard a knocking coming from the supply closet. She opened the door and I calmly stepped out. She ran off to get Mr. Cleary, the vice principal. We never saw her again.

  This story represents one of the few moments when, instead of fighting each other, Lloyd and I pooled our resources to triumph over the outside world. Otherwise we were by no means the Doublemint twins. We did not walk around in matching sweaters with matching tennis rackets slung blithely over our shoulders. As far back as I can remember, we were adversaries, even in our mother’s womb, where we fought for the oxygen and other nutrients in our briefly shared blood — a fight I lost, born second and anemic, the runt of the litter. From there my memories grow bleaker, like that of wrestling each other in Coach O’Leary’s gym class, with everyone gathered around the mat to watch us go at it like trained cocks. I still have nightmares — terrible ones — with me looking up from the ground where I sit covered in blood and dirt at a ring of faces looking down, laughing and nodding, having just witnessed one of our Spartacus-like spectacles. My brother is nowhere in the dream; I’m alone under all those faces. The person I’ve beaten up is myself.

  I smell bacon frying. Lloyd has cooked breakfast for us. Wearing a pair of his pajamas, I descend the spiral staircase woozily. He hands me a bowl of oatmeal: hand-ground, organic, the best oatmeal in the world, cooked in the microwave and served with a splash of milk and maple syrup. I hate oatmeal but force myself to eat it anyway. While I do, Lloyd adjusts the seat on one of his two bicycles. The kitchen table is strewn with bike parts: gears, seats, seat poles, derailleurs, spread out like surgical or torture implements, those gears especially, with their shiny, sharp teeth. That table is the one messy area of my brother’s tidy home, the one area given over to a passion stronger than his obsession with domestic pomp and order.

  Today we are to go riding together. I am not looking forward to it, am dreading it, in fact. He bangs at a lug nut. I ask him what he’s doing.

  “I’m adjusting this seat for you.”

  “We’re the same height,” I remind him.

  He shakes his head. “Cycling stretches your legs. Since I’ve been cycling and you haven’t, I’m probably a half inch taller than you.”

  “We’re the same height,” I repeat.

  “Trust me,” says Lloyd.

  After breakfast I walk through some brambles into the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor: Polly, who makes costume jewelry and runs a little store in town. It is with her that Lisa, my brother’s wife, has taken refuge. Unlike Lloyd’s yard, Polly’s is weed and dandelion strewn. My guess is she hasn’t done a thing to it in years. The house fares no better. A Gothic Victorian similar to Lloyd’s, it looks more like the house on Green Acres, with missing shutters, a sagging porch, rusting tin roof, and paint that looks like it’s been blowtorched. Bird feeders everywhere. A motorcycle leans against the back porch. I am to speak to Lisa, convince her that my brother is a good egg, to come back home. Another unpleasant task my mother has put me up to. Wind chimes dangle limply by the door. There’s no bell. I knock.

  Polly, tattooed and smoking, answers.

  “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  “You’re mistaken,” I say.

  “I’m not mistaken. She doesn’t want to see you, Lloyd. You know that.”

  “I’m not Lloyd, I’m his brother.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Would you please tell Lisa that Edward is here?”

  “It’s not working, Lloyd. I’m not falling for it.”

  “Just tell her, okay?”

  She gives me a “whatever” look, mashes the cigarette under a slipper. “Wait,” she says and goes back inside. A minute later Lisa, wearing a robe and a blank expression, takes her place. She has classically Waspy features: fair hair, freckles, a small nose with microscopic nostrils. She is usually soft-spoken and agreeable, meaning that she can’t stand to argue and would just as soon tell you what you want to hear.

  “Hi, Edward,” she says.

  “May I come in?”

  We sit in the breakfast nook having coffee while Polly bangs things around. The table is scattered with Lisa’s vitae and job applications. She’s got her degree in political science and has been trying to get a job with the state government. Her small eyes are thick with mascara. Sunlight swims in through the window, highlighting Lisa’s already highlighted hair. The highlights flash around her head like a school of minnows. The robe parts delicately, revealing a splash of freckles between her breasts. She sits with both hands wrapped round her coffee mug, waiting.

  “I’ll give you three chances to guess why I’m here,” I say.

  “I’m not going back,” she says.

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s not as simple as it seems,” she says.

  “What is?”

  “He’s in love with her.”

  “Who?”

  “Clarisse Dorfman.” The woman who has brought charges against him. “He denies it, but I know.”

  “Anyone can have a crush,” I say, stupidly.

  “Lloyd can’t take no for an answer. You know that.” The way she says it
implies that I can indeed take no for an answer. Lisa assumes I’m not like my brother, and she’s right. I like to think that she would have preferred to marry me, except for my income. For the record, she’s not my type.

  “It seems more like he hates her,” I say. Lisa says nothing. “Think about it, Lisa. My brother’s made a mistake, and I’m sure he knows it. You both love each other. And you’ve got a lovely home.”

  “It’s his home,” she says with a sigh. “He picked out every last piece of furniture, every vase and pillow. He doesn’t even let me put my books on the shelves. My paperbacks. He says they don’t fit in. I have to keep them on my own shelf in the guest bedroom.”

  To which I can only shrug.

  “He’s not like you,” says Lisa. “You’re much more … gentle.” A word chosen with utmost care in place of “wimpy.” I have always let others push me around, always. “Anyway,” she goes on, “I don’t think our marriage would have worked even if that woman hadn’t come into the picture. Lloyd and I haven’t —” She is about to say that she and my brother have not had sex in (fill in the blank) months. She needn’t; I can see it in her eyes. She does not love him, that much is clear. I doubt she ever really loved my brother. She married him because he is dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and because they both love antiques. But what do I know about love? My last girlfriend said I need to see a shrink, that I have a “commitment disorder.” I’m not even sure that there is such a thing and yet am prepared to believe it. But for me a psychologist is out of the question, and has been ever since two of them threatened me with my own suicide. The first said I wouldn’t see thirty-five; the second said forty. I am now forty-two and believe that I owe my survival to spiting the nasty fuckers.

  “It was nice of you to come down here,” she says. “You’re a good brother, Edward. I’m sorry he did what he did.”

  “I’ll survive, somehow,” I say, and realize too late that she probably meant that she was sorry for Lloyd, not for me. Whatever, I have stood up; I am leaving. I have fulfilled my brotherly obligations, more or less. Lloyd is a selfish bully, and Lisa is a poster child for passive-aggression. They’re better off without each other. I kiss her on both freckled cheeks and let myself out into the scorching day to find Lloyd in his gravel driveway, mounting the two bicycles on the back of his Jeep Cherokee.

  The last time I rode a bicycle was eight years ago, my last visit here, and then I swore I’d never, ever do it again. Lloyd fixes me up with a bright-colored jersey, cleated riding shoes, cap, fingerless gloves with Velcro straps. He gives me a special lineament to rub in the crotch padding of my riding breeches, says it helps prevent chafing. He pumps air into all four tires, then mounts his bike, four thousand bucks worth of brakes, gears, and other components made by Italian companies with three-syllable names ending in the letter i. In the parking lot of a Baptist church, as recorded bells spill their notes into the sky, he has me practice my dismount. “Twist your heel out, like this!” he shouts, showing me. “And always be pedaling when you change gears.”

  He hands me my helmet and sunglasses. “You look good. Just try to keep your arms bent and your elbows down. And don’t hold the handlebars like this,” he says demonstrating. “If you hold them like that, I’ll have to ditch you out of embarrassment.”

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “I’m kidding.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Jesus, Edward, when did you become so humorless?”

  “Just don’t ditch me,” I say.

  We ride out of the parking lot. While leaving I note the name of the church, just in case. Lloyd rides behind me to check my form and see when I shift gears. “Great,” he says. “That was a perfect gear change you made just then. You’re a natural cyclist.”

  “Twenty miles, you said.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You said twenty.”

  “It’s about twenty, give or take.”

  The last twenty-mile ride we took turned out to be forty miles, after twenty of which he ditched me, leaving me to find the very longest way home. I was sore for a week. I couldn’t sit and could barely walk.

  “Just stay with me, okay?” I tell him.

  Lloyd shakes his head. “Jesus, Edward, you want me to put it in writing? You want me to swear an oath?”

  We’ve gone four miles when my ass starts to hurt. I can never get used to bicycle seats. As far as I’m concerned they are designed to cause maximum pain. The saddle grinds into my anus, mashing my prostate. I wave for Lloyd to pull alongside me. When he does, I tell him my butt is already sore and say I doubt I’ll make ten miles, let alone twenty.

  “Try,” he says.

  “I am trying,” I say. “This is the result.” I point to my ass.

  “It’ll pass. Keep going.”

  With that he pulls ahead of me. Under his black tights Lloyd’s calf muscles are enormous, like a pair of boxing gloves, I think. Under his lime green jersey his distended belly hangs like a hammock. I watch him shift into high gear and pull far ahead. “Hey!” I yell. For the next three miles or so I manage to keep him in sight despite my asshole feeling as if it’s going to burst into flames at any moment. My shoulders and back are sore, too, as are my arms and hands from gripping the handlebars. I keep shifting positions, trying different configurations, standing off the seat when I coast downhill, sitting sidesaddle, or something like it, though this saddle is so slim it doesn’t have any sides. Hot air whistles in and out of the helmet, while high overhead white clouds float uselessly in the sky. I pass a trailer park where a lady hangs wash. I want to pull into her yard, invite myself over for lunch, romance and marry her, sire her children, anything to get off this fucking bicycle. Another long hill, this one shooting straight up like a tsunami. Halfway up I’ve got to pedal standing, which I don’t mind since it gives my crotch a rest. But soon my legs start to give out, and I’m wobbling all over the place until all forward motion ceases and I forget I’m wearing cleats and the bike goes down and me with it, crying out as the side of my leg and my elbow break the fall.

  “Goddammit!” I shout.

  My leg is all scraped and filigreed with blood. My elbow is a mess, too. My body holds so many pains I can’t distinguish one from the other; they all blend together along with a massive dose of adrenaline. Lloyd is nowhere in sight. To my left a man-made pond with a dock and an aluminum rowboat, to my right a stand of sickly, scruffy trees. I have no idea where on earth I am. Oh, right. Alabama. A trailer truck passes, swirling grit into my eyes. I finish the climb by foot, then hop back on the bike and start pedaling again when I realize that the liquid drooling from my eyes is not sweat but tears. My brother has ditched me again, but that is not why I’m crying. I’m crying because he almost ditched me for good this last time. How could he do it? How could he go to sleep in that bed with his stomach full of wine and pills, knowing he might never wake up? Did he not think of me, his brother? Did he not see that it was my stomach, too, that he filled with poison? That his eternal darkness would be every bit as much mine, forever? Then to act as though nothing had happened. That’s the worst part of it: that he can pretend it was nothing, that it means so little to him; that I mean so little. Jesus Christ, Lloyd, I want to scream, shout up at the useless clouds. You’ve killed me; you’ve killed me; you’ve always killed me. You’re killing me now. You’ve been killing me for years. Since I was born, you’ve been killing me. Stop killing me, Lloyd. Please. Stop killing me. Stop killing me. Stop killing me.

  A black man with a pickup truck gives me a lift into town. He drops me off near the Baptist church, and from there I pedal slowly to my brother’s house. It is dusk. I’ve never known such exhaustion. There is something exquisite about it. I walk the last dozen yards up my brother’s driveway. His Cherokee is there; a cognaccolored light burns in the snifter of his study. I walk around and let myself in through the back door. “Edward?” I hear him say. He appears then, greeting me in a sky blue kimono, his head slicke
d back from the shower, grinning. “What happened?”

  I walk straight past him and up the spiral staircase, steadying myself.

  “Edward?” he says. “Hey, come on!” His voice climbs the stairs. “I thought you were behind me.”

  In the upstairs bathroom I swallow two Advil. It occurs to me as I do so that in my medicine kit I myself have a prescription for diazepam. Among other things, Lloyd and I share insomnia, and we’ve both found that no other drug works as well. There are, it turns out, exactly twelve pills left in the vial. I take one, and then another. To take all twelve at once suddenly seems like not such a bad idea.

  Then I think of those two psychiatrists, and of my mother, and even of Lloyd, and finally, somewhere down the line, of myself. I put the pills away.

  Monday. My plane leaves at noon. Lloyd has to go to work. He asks me to come with him. He wants to show me his office. All morning I’ve been girding myself. I’ve had enough of Lloyd’s bullying. At last I am going to tell him off. I’ll tell him, in no uncertain terms, what a selfish bastard he’s been, that I’ve made this visit only at our mother’s request and under great duress and that I never want to see him again, ever. Kill yourself as many times as you like. Unless you look in the mirror, you won’t see my face again.

  We walk to campus. I am wearing Lloyd’s raw-silk shirt and linen trousers: he wants me to keep them. He knows I’m angry with him; that’s why he’s so quiet. For once, he feels himself in the wrong, but it’s too late. I’ve made up my mind; I am determined. As we cross the quadrangle (still mostly deserted at this hour of morning), I’m reminded of another campus and another visit with my brother, twenty-five years ago, when he was a graduate student and I had already quit school to become a full-time bohemian. It was summer, and I had decided to hitchhike crosscountry. The campus was in Illinois, but it looked just like this one. Without asking I borrowed a pen, one of a dozen old fountain pens my brother kept in his desk drawer, my nineteen-cent Bic having sprung a leak. When he found out, Lloyd called me a “moocher” and a “libertine.” I called him a “greedy capitalist pig.” He told me to hit the road. It was near midnight. I crossed the dark and empty campus, headed for the highway with tears blurring my eyes, not sure which of us I hated or pitied more.