In Deep

by Terra Elan McVoy

  “What’s going on?” I pull myself up to a sitting position. Seeing her showered makes me realize I should probably take one too.

  Before I can even lean forward to get up though, there’s a knock at the door, and Louis goes to get it. Van’s standing there, holding flowers and wearing pressed khakis, when I’ve never seen him in anything but shorts, even in winter.

  “You guys plan some kind of intervention or something?” I try to make it sound like a joke, but Mom’s guilty smile cuts me off mid-laugh.

  “Van just wanted to come over and talk with you, honey,” she says, blinking at him then Louis. She hustles away quickly to put the flowers in a vase.

  “How you feeling?” Van asks, sitting on the other end of the couch.

  “Fine.” The way he’s looking at me, the way Mom and Louis are being, sharpens my defensiveness. “I told you, I don’t know what happened. But I guess it didn’t matter did it, right? I mean, I won.”

  Van looks at Louis, who’s sitting bolt-straight in the recliner across from me.

  “You definitely did,” Van says, “though I can say what happened also matters quite a lot. Dehydration and exhaustion are serious things, Brynn. They take time to recover from. We need to make sure it’s not going to happen again.”

  “I did nothing but sleep at the hospital. I’m so full of fluids, my eyeballs are floating.”

  Van nods, not really listening. “Yes, they got you normalized, but you still need more time.” He glances at Mom, who’s come back into the room. “It’s why I wanted to come over this afternoon. I talked to your parents, and I think it’s best to put you on medical leave for the next week, at least. Or until I think you’re ready.”

  A rush of outrage spirals up straight from the pit of my stomach, pushing everything else aside.

  “You can’t do that.”

  Van pats the air in front of me like I’m a horse that needs soothing, which makes me want to spit at him. He can’t sit there and say he’s keeping me out of the pool and then expect me to be fucking calm.

  “Brynn, you’ve been pushing your own limits for the last month, and I’m ashamed it took something like yesterday to make me see I’ve been letting you. It’s no secret that you’re one of the best swimmers I’ve trained, and working with you is an honor. You’re strong, you’re responsive, and you get your brain in the swim. Not a lot of people can do that, as you well know.”

  I’m blinking away tears, which is maddening. “So why keep me from doing it?”

  “Because you obviously need some time off. And if I don’t give it to you now, we’ll both be sorry.”

  This isn’t happening. I stand up, knees trembling and fists tight.

  “I don’t need anything except more training, obviously. If I’d been better prepared, yesterday wouldn’t have happened at all. You think you’ve been pushing me, but it looks like you’re wrong. I haven’t been working hard enough. If you’d been paying attention to that instead of worrying so much about Grier and her bullshit, then maybe you would’ve been able to see it.”

  Van winces a little, but his voice stays steady. “I should’ve been paying a lot more attention to what was going on with Grier, actually. And you, for that matter. So maybe that means I need a bit of a break myself, too. The club owners might be right.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He shifts and clears his throat. “Let’s just say that after yesterday—well, it’s more than a reality check for me.”

  “What the main issue is, honey,” Mom jumps in, “is that the way you’ve been doing things is obviously not working. We need to take some time, think about—”

  “Did you see my time, Mom?” I shriek at her. “I think the way I’ve been doing things has been working pretty fucking dandy.”

  “Watch how you talk to your mother,” Louis snaps. “And you ending up in the hospital is where you lose any kind of say in the matter, I’m afraid.”

  “You can’t do this.” I turn to Van. “I won’t let you do this. You can’t make me stop going to practice, and you can’t keep me out of the pool. What about my scholarships? How’m I supposed to get those without State? This isn’t about pushing myself, Van, this is about my life.”

  “You’ll be fine at State,” Van says, infuriatingly calm, “as long as you really rest. One week of that isn’t going to kill you. Even in taper you’ve been pushing too hard, no matter what I’ve told you. You don’t have to be first at State anyway in order to get everything you want.”

  “What I want,” I growl, though it sounds more like a whine, “is to swim. I don’t know why any of you can’t get that.”

  Because I really am truly crying now, I rush away from them, flying up the stairs and slamming the door. I crash onto my bed and shove my face into my pillows, deep, so they won’t hear the sobs that come out so hard and fierce, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make them stop.

  44

  I LIE THERE, LISTENING TO their voices downstairs for a little while longer, until the door shuts and I hear Van’s car drive away. I roll over on my back, staring at the ceiling, feeling the tears dry into crusty little rivers between my eyelashes and my ears. It doesn’t matter what Van or Mom or Louis think. I’m not going to stop swimming. I’ve worked too hard. I need this too much.

  I get up and go downstairs. I’ve gotten control of myself again. I know what I need to say.

  “Mom, Louis.” I stay on the stairwell, looking over the banister at them. “I know you’re worried. It scared me, too, okay? I won’t let it happen again. Things got out of hand, but now I know my limits. I know how to handle this, and I promise I won’t overdo it. But you have to understand, I need this win.”

  Inexplicably, this makes Mom start to cry. I open my mouth to apologize, but she holds out her hand to stop me.

  “Brynn, I’m sorry, but I need a minute before we discuss this any further.”

  My calm, sweet little act drops immediately away. “How much more is there to discuss, Mom? I don’t understand what the big deal is. It’s not like I’m vomiting blood or anything. I’m not—”

  Louis looks up. “Just give your mom some space for a second, okay? The last twenty-four hours have been pretty intense.”

  I jut the inside of my elbows forward, showing him the taped-down cotton pads still covering my needle marks. “You think?”

  “We know they have been for you, too,” he says, rubbing Mom’s back. “It’s why we all need a minute to calm down.”

  This is infuriating. “Whatever. Fine. Let me know when you’re done crying over one of the worst days in my life.”

  I head back to my room, because apparently Mom needs to take over the whole downstairs with how difficult this all is for her. For a minute I think about taking off down the street to Charlie’s, but then I remember there’ll be no going down the street to Charlie’s ever again.

  So I head to the bathroom instead, turning the shower on hard and hot.

  • • •

  As soon as I’m out of the shower, Mom calls up the stairs for me, saying she has something to say. I’ve had about as much of her as I can stand for a while, but it’s not like there’s anything else for me to do right now. Might as well let her say her piece so I can explain how she’s wrong and then go back to doing what I want.

  In the living room, Mom and Louis are next to each other on the couch. On the ottoman in front of them is a beat-up looking shoe box that Mom pushes toward me.

  “What is this?” I scoff, the box giving me a strange feeling. “Some kind of stupid movie you saw on Oxygen?”

  “Brynn, I asked you earlier about your tone.”

  “This isn’t about you, Louis.”

  “Honey,” Mom says, “it is about Louis because Louis loves you very much. And otherwise I don’t think I would show you any of this.”

  There’s a tingly feeling in my chest—a warning—but I snort and pick at the itchy edge of tape on my left arm. “What? Is there some brother out there I
never knew about?”

  Mom’s quiet. When I look back up at her, the sad, apologetic expression on her face makes me know there’s no long lost sibling or any other hokey crap from TV. Still, whatever she’s about to say, I don’t want to hear it.

  “I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to preserve all your good memories of your dad without sharing the rest with you, Brynn. Maybe that’s been a mistake; I don’t know. But I feel like you’re not giving me much of a choice right now. Louis and I knew you wouldn’t listen much to either of us, but that you won’t even listen to Van . . . I don’t know how else to get through to you.”

  “Get through to me about what?”

  She gestures toward the shoe box. “Take a look.”

  The level of how badly I do not want to open that box is completely irrational, so I make myself grab it and pull off the lid. But there’s no mummified internal organs, or photos of Dad with another woman, or anything else like that in there. It’s just a thin stack of the narrow little notebooks Dad carried in his back pocket.

  “So?” I lift one to her. “What’s so hard about showing me this?”

  “Just look at what’s in them, please.”

  I flip through the first one. Each page has a row of numbers—sometimes written in black pencil, sometimes in blue. Next to the numbers there are names and dates. Some of the names I recognize as belonging to guys from the station. A lot of them I don’t know. At the bottom of each page there’s a total, always circled. Sometimes with a lot of zeros.

  I’m still confused.

  “Your dad started keeping those books when he was sixteen years old. I didn’t have any idea about the extent of them until well after you were born.”

  “So? What is this?”

  “You know we weren’t able to give you a lot when you were growing up, and things were much worse for us after the accident. This is why.”

  I toss the notebook back into the box with the others. “Sorry. Still don’t get it.” But a creepy feeling has started to climb up my neck and around the back of my head. I’m remembering fights they had about money, Mom screaming, “You have to stop.”

  She takes in a breath and holds it, then lets it out slow. It’s weird to see her do exactly what I do.

  “When your dad died, he left you with an insurance policy, yes, but he also left you with this. His debts. Debts he owed to people because of his gambling problem. Some of them, thanks to the guys at the station, went away after he died. But there were a bunch of others that we couldn’t get out of.”

  I can’t help it. I laugh, nervous and thin.

  She doesn’t even blink. “He thought it was funny when I insisted he get help for it too, but I can tell you it was absolutely serious. Some nights, before he went into the program, I’d pace the kitchen, wondering if he wasn’t betting away our house.”

  “Dad wasn’t in any kind of program.”

  She nods once. “It was the summer you were nine. Remember he was taking all those extra shifts? When he missed your birthday because of it?”

  I remember Mom and Dad both explaining that he couldn’t be there because of work, but then Mom took me to get my ears pierced and I had a sleepover with all my friends, so I hadn’t much cared. It was the last good birthday I had before Dad died.

  “You’re saying Dad wasn’t there because he was in some kind of rehab?”

  “It was out-patient therapy, but yes. It’s why he was gone so many evenings. Not that it did him much good, I’m afraid.”

  The part about Dad being gone so much doesn’t really stick in my mind—I was used to him being away for several days at a time when he was on shift—but I do remember that summer: Dad stopped watching any sports on TV, and the guys didn’t come over to grill and play cards. Dad also started lifting weights again in the garage and went on long runs. It was because he said he needed to be healthy.

  The creepy feeling turns into a hot burn all over. Maybe he meant more than one thing by that.

  “So, what you’re telling me is that this whole time Dad had some . . . addiction, and that’s why we never had any money? Why we had to move into that crappy apartment? Why I need a scholarship so bad for college?”

  “What your mother’s trying to say, Brynn—” Louis starts, but there’s no way I can hear anything from him about my dad right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupt, voice full of contempt, “but I just don’t see what this has to do with me and swimming. I don’t know why you feel, on today of all days, like you suddenly need to dump this shit on me that you’ve been lying about for my entire life.”

  Mom’s face fills with disappointment. And worse, pity.

  “I understand you’re angry,” she says, calm and slow. “I was angry too. So angry, sometimes, I couldn’t even look at you.” She leans forward, rests her elbows on her knees, and holds my eyes with hers. “Brynn, you are an exceptionally gifted swimmer, and we are extremely proud of you. Your level of discipline and drive astounds me. Sometimes I don’t know where you came from. But other times, like today, and how you aren’t listening to any of us . . .”

  She stops a second to swallow. I think she’s going to start crying again, but she doesn’t.

  “Honey, we’re not trying to take away your swimming or destroy your chances for the future. I’m not telling you about your dad’s problem because I want to ruin any of the ways you think about him. He saved those two people—he saved more than those people. He was a hero. But he was also obsessed. Even when he’d dug himself so deep, he couldn’t get out, when it was putting us all in jeopardy . . . ”

  She isn’t looking at me anymore but searches the air with her eyes, seeing maybe the same things I see: beans and franks in a can for dinner. Dad hunched over that lawn mower that never worked, instead of paying to get it fixed. Going to garage sales for my back-to-school clothes. Chief Ramirez and all the guys from Dad’s squad playing cards with him in the living room, laughing and cussing. Dad’s portrait on his casket, surrounded by flowers.

  “I’m telling you this now, because I think you need to hear that gambling was the main thing that mattered to your father. He was willing to let you, and me, and our whole life suffer for the sake of it. And I don’t want you to suffer—not your social life or your education, and especially not your health—because of your own competitive fixation.”

  The room swirls then, and everything becomes unreal. It’s enough. Too much. I stand up, disgust and disappointment blocking anything else I might feel.

  “You just can’t stand it that I’m the strong one, can you?” I shout at her. “That I was the one who made something of myself after he died, when all you did was dissolve into a pool of self-pity and resentment, shacking up with Louis so you wouldn’t have to do anything anymore. You’re a pathetic, jealous, weak little person, Mom, or else you wouldn’t be doing this. People think I could get a gold medal with the right amount of work, and you want me to stop? You’re gonna sit there and try to paint Dad into some kind of monster so I’ll stay home and sit there on the couch like you? Fuck all that. I don’t care about Dad, or you, or anyone else. I care about winning at State, and getting into a good college, and actually finishing, like you never could! I care about getting the hell away from you is what I care about. Swimming is what I’m good at, Mom, and now you want to lay all this shit on me, saying I need to slow down? To take a break? Well, I’m not going to let you do that. Dad may not have had any discipline, but I do! I’ve got more strength than him, and certainly you, put together, and you just can’t stand to watch it, can you? That’s what this is about, nothing else.”

  I turn then and run back upstairs where I slam my bedroom door even louder than before. And though I hate her, and Dad, and Van, and Louis, and everyone for bringing me to this point, for the second time in not even twenty-four hours, I cry so hard, I think my lungs will explode.

  45

  AN HOUR LATER, MAYBE TWO, I’m still curled up in my bed, staring at the wall. Though my vision i
s blurred from exhaustion and tears, in my mind I see all kinds of things swirling together like bubbles underwater.

  I see Dad standing waist-deep in a lake we used to go to for firehouse picnics, me stretched out in front of him with his hands propping up my narrow back just under the surface. Teaching me how to float.

  I see Mom bringing in the mail, tired from work, her eyes pouched underneath in a grayish purple. A glass of wine, and the TV, and me bringing in frozen dinners bought with coupons.

  I see myself on the block, poised and ready. My shelves and bulletin board full of trophies and ribbons.

  I see my girlfriends dropping away one by one.

  I see Van leaning down over my lane, telling me what to do next.

  I see Charlie wiping his eyes.

  Kate telling me I’m an asshole.

  Gavin whispering hotly what a bitch I am.

  And I see Grier, too, standing there, shocked in the hallway light.

  All these sacrifices, this discipline—they’ve been so nothing would get in the way of becoming the best at what I was built to do. So it isn’t fair—it doesn’t seem real—for Mom to step in and make me question it now.

  • • •

  Later—much later, though maybe not as late as it feels—Louis comes upstairs and knocks on my door.

  “What is it?”

  He opens it and leans in, carrying one of the dinner trays. On it is a plate with leftovers from our Italian feast Friday night.

  “We didn’t know if you were hungry,” he apologizes.

  “It’s fine. You can just put it on my desk.”

  He picks his way around my laundry piles and my discarded gear bag leaking suits and towels, and puts the tray down.

  “Hey, Louis?” I say, still prone on my bed, my arm tossed over my eyes.

  I hear him pause between my desk and the door.