by Paloma Meir
Lacrosse was three days a week with the games on the weekends. It was the bright spot of my week. I didn’t manipulate that part of my schedule. In my mind I changed my run time to before school. I would have to wake up around 5:15, making my day longer but I knew it would be worth it for my body and mind.
My brain that had always served me so well before raced through the day going through the motions and spitting out trivia to anyone who spoke to me. I embarrassed myself by answering questions posed to the teachers of my classes and going on in far more detail than necessary.
I purposely made it to Lacrosse with only enough time to suit up and get on to the field. Talking to another person, even Brendan was more than I felt capable of doing. Forget about dealing with whatever weirdness Danny and I had going on from his party. That seemed a lifetime ago.
I played hard whacking my stick with full force into anyone who came into my zone, not playing by any rules. The coach called me out and had me run around the field. I ran with the stick over my head. The burn in my arms and lungs reinvigorated me.
When practice was over I ran to the lockers to change and get home as quickly as possible. It didn’t work because that’s the kind of week I was having.
“Hey Serge,” Danny sat beside me on the bench where I was taking off my suit. “Are we good?”
“Yes,” I was surprised that he used a variant of one of Zelda’s favorite sayings.
“You were a manly man out on the field. What was that about?” Brendan laughed as he threw himself down on the other side of the bench beside me.
“Too much sun in my eyes.” I stripped of my uniform and let the cool air dry the sweat off my body.
“Right. How did it go with your “friend” Celena?”
I felt so tight inside, so tired from Celena, my mother, my sister. I opened my mouth to tell them both the whole story of everything, even my mother who I had never talked about with anyone other than Celena. Two of the newer players on our team interrupted me.
“Hey Danny. Did you fuck her? She wanted your Danny meat. Am I right? Fucking hottest girl I’ve ever seen.” He laughed and held up his hand for a high five.
“That chick was on you. I’ll take her when you’re done or her friends. Where did they come from? Best party ever,” his friend said with the same lewd laugh and an exaggerated thrust of the hips.
I stood up in my boxers. The new players who were obviously trying to impress Danny with their coolness were still suited up, lacrosse sticks in hand. I would take both of them on anyway. I knew I would be expelled and probably end up arrested, ruining my chances of ever getting into college. I didn’t care. I looked forward to it in fact because like everyone else around me, I had lost my mind.
Brendan yanked me back down to the bench forcefully and motioned his head for me to look over at Danny.
“Her name is Zelda, and she’s my girlfriend. Got it?” His face was rigid with a slight forced smile and rage in his eyes. I even got a little scared looking him.
“It’s cool, it’s cool.” They both said as they cowered walking backwards, almost as if they were bowing to him, to the far end of the locker room.
“Thanks for saving me jail time,” I laughed releasing the tension of the day. “You’re a monster Danny. I wish I could tell Zelda, but she doesn’t need to know that this ever happened. “Am I right?”“ I mocked the idiots who I didn’t see lasting on our team much longer.
“No problem, Serge,” he laughed. “They have a lot to learn about broing down... Forgotten never to be retold.” He nodded his head, reached into his gym bag and pulled out his phone, “She’s home. Let’s go. You coming with us, Serge?”
“Yes.” Brendan was the only one of us to have a car, and what a car it was, a brand new top of the line BMW 3 series. The differences in our economic circumstances started to show that year.
…
I spent the next three months chasing the tail ends of destruction. I would go to Celena’s after school. Some days she would have energy but no spark, and other days a spark but no energy. All her states frustrated her. She was aware of her diminished capacity. When her frustration level got too high, her mother would feed her a sedative knocking her out cold.
She would speak of her dissatisfaction while searching for phrases that were no longer simple for her. She spoke of wanting to not take the pills or hiding some of her dosages. I didn’t offer any suggestions. Part of me wanted her to follow through on her plan of moderating her medicine.
She never followed through because her parents and doctors had let her know that any deviation from their regime would lead to hospitalization. The fact that she able to exercise restraint proved to me she was of sounder mind than her caretakers realized. I would bring this up to her mother and was told the pills were giving her clarity. She promised the therapeutic level would be reached soon without the disastrous side effects we had all watched her go through over the previous months.
The side effects were torture for her. She gained twenty pounds. The weight didn't look real. I had the urge to poke her with a pin to drain it out of her. Twenty pounds of bloat is what it looked like. Here wide set almond eyes became peepholes through which she could see the world.
She had always been thin the way Zelda was so the extra weight wasn’t too much. It was more the way it hung off her body as if she never moved. She wasn’t as active as she had been before, but she wasn’t as sedentary as she appeared either.
Celena wasn’t narcissistic in the way Zelda was, but she was aware enough of her physical presence that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She stayed in her pajamas most of the day, and in the afternoon when her tutor left she would change into sweats. No more of the pretty little dresses she had found when we shopped the thrift stores.
She would have periods of insomnia, followed by lethargy. Rashes would cover her body and be gone the next day. She was always thirsty. Searching for the “perfect cocktail” as her mother called it seemed an exercise in cruelty. My hoped for flatness from the first few days became a nightmare when achieved. She wasn’t Celena on the inside or outside.
I would go home to find my mother in the kitchen drunkenly making a mess while cooking a dinner that would only be eaten by my father most nights. Like Celena, she had given up any attempts at dressing, instead staying in her bathrobe all day singing and dancing around the house like a lost Rockette looking for her stage at the Radio City Music Hall. Her voice was always slurred, and she was sickeningly affectionate.
My father said she would wake at noon in pain from her hangover and resume her drinking around 2:00. I would take her up to her room around 9:00, and she would stay there using her phone to call her long lost friends. I hoped one of them would call someone to help her because my father’s plan ended up being to take her to AA meetings in Beverly Hills twice a week. She would go with him because her new drunken state turned her into the docile woman we had always hoped she would become.
Nothing came of the meetings because from my understanding they were meant to be an everyday event not twice weekly. I would ask him to take her daily. He would tell me the weekends were a good start. I gave up on him and began to hope she would fall down and break her legs during one of her dance routines, and the hospital would put her where she belonged.
Carolina had always been involved in the drama department at school as an assistant director. She liked ordering people around while holding a clipboard. She threw herself into the program in a way she had never done before. She stayed after the rehearsals to help build the sets and work on the costumes coming home after 8:00 most nights.
I hoped she would spend her weekends at Zelda’s house, but Zelda spent most of her time with Danny. Instead she grew closer to her drama friends and spent her weekends with them. She knew I didn’t want her around the house until our mother’s problem was resolved.
Carolina and Zelda missed each other and decided ditching school once every other week would be how they would see each o
ther. I normally wouldn’t have approved of them skipping school but my guilt which was a huge part of my life at that point overruled my logic. She told me that they would spend their days in Santa Monica which to Carolina encompassed Venice. If I had known that, everything would have been different because I wouldn’t have let them go.
My worries did not include the exquisite Zelda. She was involved in what I was sure in her mind was the greatest love story ever told. Danny behaved as all the romantic heroes in her books did, instinctively without having ever read her reference material for life.
I would only see her and Danny at Lacrosse. She would go to the games on the weekends with her books and sit high up in the stadium sometimes watching him but mostly reading. After the game he would be out of the locker room and have her wrapped around him before most of us had even unsuited. Wrapped around him would be an understatement. She was glued to him not even bothering to look away from him as they walked around together with her always playing with his hands. He would kick rocks and other obstacles out of her way as they traveled up and down our canyon road so she wouldn’t trip.
Occasionally on my morning runs, I would see him crawling out of her window. I would look away and pretend not to notice him. Sometimes he would stand against the tree or the wall checking his phone as if he just happened to be standing outside her house at 5:30 in the morning.
Anyone else would have thought that they were having sex, but I didn’t. Something in the way they moved together suggested chasteness, almost as if he didn’t want to defile her that way. His wait was a long one. I didn’t imagine him to be in a rush. Something in the way he would look at her, as if still not believing that she was with him.
My tense schedule began to crumble around me in early December. All of my running around trying to save people who couldn’t or wouldn’t be saved hit me hard as I left Celena’s house after dinner with her family. The fact I had grown to accept her as a zombie is what did me in that night.
I ran home from Celena’s to find my mother on the sofa wearing her familiar floral bathrobe in the middle of a crying jag. Her hand was clutched tightly to the phone. She spoke in a slur to whoever was unfortunate enough to have answered her call. I didn’t want to put her to bed. I didn’t want to be in my house.
I ran out the door and down the street not knowing where I was going until I stood in front of Zelda’s house. I knocked lightly on her door, the hour being late for a school night. I hoped Danny wasn’t there, and that nobody other than Zelda was at home. I needed the sweetness, the mental health as I said to Carolina of Zelda.
The universe worked in my favor for the first time in months. She opened the door wearing a colorful short woolen dress, no jeans and t-shirt for her that night. Her face lit up into a big smile upon seeing me. I took her in my arms for a hug, breathing in the rose scent of her hair. I held onto to her longer than I should have feeling stronger with every moment.
She must have sensed something was wrong with me because she didn’t pull away. I separated myself from her not wanting to scare her with my intensity. She tilted her head and looked at me as if trying to figure out my state of mind.
“Hey Zelda, I was out for a run and got hungry. Did Saul send you any pizza tonight?”
“No, but Maria made enchiladas. I could reheat some if you like. I am so happy you’re here. I’m working on a physics project, and I don’t know what I’m doing. Will you help me?” She looked down at my outfit of jeans and heavy black sweater that were definitely not running clothes.
“Enchiladas would be good. What unit are you on?” I followed her into the kitchen and noticed she didn’t take my hand as she usually did when she would lead me through her house.
“Water. Do you boil water all the time, Serge? I’ve made a mess. I don’t know what I’m doing. I was so bored waiting for it to bubble that I stopped paying attention. I was supposed to time it.”
“No, Zelda. I don’t boil a lot of water.” I didn't know what she was talking about, and I laughed, “Do you mean fluid dynamics?” I looked over at the stove. It was covered in pots of, yes, boiling water. She seemed to have put salt in some, and spices in others creating a pleasant earthy aroma. “What is it you’re trying to do?” I didn’t understand how anyone could have instructed her to do this.
“I don’t know... The teacher asked us to create our own project... something to do with vapor and pressure. I thought the different boiling points of water with random properties... (that’s what you call it in physics right? properties?) would be good, but they all boil at the same time, except the salt...I think.”
In spite of the serious flaw in her observation skills, I imagined her hair in a bun, wearing glasses and lab coat, following me around MIT, taking notes.
“How were you able to get all the pots on the burners at the same exact moment? Never mind, do you have an empty bottle with a secure lid? I have a better “water” experiment for you. Does your school have a microwave or burner you could use? You can get ice from your cafeteria right?”
“Yes, thank you so much.” She handed me a glass carafe with a rubber stopper.
“We’re going to need an oven mitt and ice too.” I took the pot of what looked like plain boiling water, poured it into the bottle and placed the stopper firmly on as she handed me the other supplies. “We need to wait for about ten seconds... all right Zelda watch this.” I turned the bottle upside down and placed the ice on top, and the water came back to a bubbling boil again.
“I love that, thank you,” She jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “I needed the extra credit. I was on the verge of a B.”
“I’m sure your teacher will ask you to explain the science behind it. Tell me how it works.”
“The ice lowers the air temperature inside the bottle... and that lowers the pressure and boiling point... and then it bubbles.” She clapped her hands again.
“Yes, that’s right,” I must have sounded surprised because she looked down at the ground.
“Serge, do you think I’m stupid?” She raised her head back up but did not look at me.
“Look at me, Zelda," I put my hands on her shoulders. “I think you’re perfect. You know that.” Her eyes met mine, “I was surprised because you didn’t seem interested in it. Okay?” She smiled, “I know you’re very smart. I’ve said that to you before.”
“It is boring, Serge. Water boils. Balls bounce. Who cares? Why does everything have so many decimal points? I thought I would love it because you do, but I don’t. I’m sorry.”
She hugged me as if she had let me down in some irreversible way. I could not have been more charmed by her.
“You’re learning the basics, that’s all. It is interesting. Come outside with me, and I’ll show you.”
I didn’t take her hand as we walked out the backdoor into her yard. Carolina had been right. I behaved as if I were courting her. It was time to let that go.
“I study theoretical physics. The universe... It’s infinite and expanding... How can it be both Zelda? The gravity pulling the stars away from each other...” I had only ever spoken to Celena about my theories before, and she had the background to understand what I was saying. We always spoke of it in aspects, never the whole universe at once anyway. I thought of a starting point for Zelda.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire...” Popped out of my mouth. I wasn’t going to finish that quote. “Aristotle...”
“Was that from Hamlet?”
“I confused it with a quote from Julius Caesar. It’s not important... As I was saying Aristotle... Never mind. Help me find a large pebble and a small pebble.”
“Here Serge,” She picked two stones up from the pea gravel path that wrapped around her swimming pool.
“Perfect.” I checked to make sure the size disparity was large enough to make my point. “Watch as I drop them.” I held the rocks between my thumb and forefinger and released them at the same time. We watched as they simultaneously hit the ground.
�
��Did you see? One large and one small, dropped at the same time. For 2,000 years we thought the large stone would hit the ground first. Aristotle to Galileo, and all the great minds in between. Nobody thought to pick up the stones. What else are we missing, Zelda?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but I was too worked to let her talk.
“Gravity... the foundation of the Universe...the Big Bang onto relativity. Relativity... A classically beautiful theory... Quantum Mechanics eats into it, and we adjust trying to make them bind, but they don’t Zelda. Always extending the String Theory... now the M Theory...” I knew I wasn’t making any sense to her or even myself at that point.
“Are you okay, Serge?”
