The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  Ellen calls again, to see if I am feeling O.K., which I am until she calls. I tell her that I’m swimming a lot these days. She says, “I didn’t know you could swim. How much do you do?”

  People will go so far to make each other feel bad. But I don’t feel bad. After all, I do go swimming.

  The Y is a secret that everybody knows! I see people there that I know from all sorts of other places, and I see people from the Y all over the neighborhood. Sometimes in a store I will see that a person behind the counter or one shopping in the next aisle is really a pleasant seal from the pool.

  In the locker room today I run into Jennifer, a woman I know a bit from somewhere else. She tells me that swimming is the best exercise there is! What a nice person.

  The pool is so cold today I can’t even do my half a length to get warm. I stand there and stand there in the shallow end, but I just can’t do it.

  Downstairs I tell Bess, “Just couldn’t swim today. Just too cold.”

  “Ummmm hmmmm,” she says equably.

  I get to the Y again today, but I just can’t face the idea of getting into, or failing to get into, the pool. I can’t face going back home, though, either, so I settle on the Mini-Gym, which is very soothing. It has the ghostly atmosphere of a schoolroom during vacation.

  Today a man does sit-ups facing the windows. A woman, also facing the windows, bends in half exactly as the man’s fingers reach his toes. Another woman opposite the first stretches her arms in an arc above her head. I choose a central latitude, perpendicular to the others. I lie on my side and begin to raise a leg to the silent count.

  I have just realized something really terrifying—I don’t swim! I feel sick. What did I think I was doing, going swimming? I wasn’t going swimming! I can’t swim! I can’t even put my head in the water!

  This can’t go on, my just coming to the Y to do exercises. It is a known fact that no one can do exercises regularly. Every single magazine article about it says they’re just too boring to do regularly. Also, it only takes half an hour. One change of clothes, one shower, and then I have to go home.

  Late at night I think of the terrible things I’ve put my friends through in the past months. I begin to think of the things I’ve always put my parents through, and I know this means big trouble. I get out of bed in a sweat of fear and call my friends, crying stormily, and cry more because I’ve awakened them.

  Thursday

  At the Y today, chunks of a conversation that had been going on around me in the shower suddenly reassemble—feet, minutes, miles, and pacing—to reveal, whole in my auditory memory, a conversation about running.

  Also Thursday

  That I cannot Swim does not Necessarily mean I cannot run. This thought breaks over me with repeating fresh force, like peals of hallucinatorily echoing thunder.

  Friday

  Now that I have been sensitized, I realize that for months I have been surrounded by a continuous susurrus about running.

  Saturday

  Not only is running not cold, but I won’t drown if I should stop suddenly. I think on Monday I’ll just give it a whirl.

  Monday

  I can’t get out of the apartment. The hours stretch and telescope. I find myself standing over the kitchen table, which I had approached for some reason earlier. I break out of position only to find that some minutes have elapsed during which I have been staring into the mirror. At what, I wonder. I remember that I had meant to get something from the table, but I seem to be sitting in the other room, where a dull awareness of things to be done impinges on me. Outside the window, the day, in nervous jumps, dies.

  Tuesday

  This morning I am propelled to the Y. I don’t know exactly how I am going to pitch into my goal of running once I get there, but it can’t be all that impossible. I clearly remember the track that Kathy showed me the first day she brought me, and what it was was a track, is all, with people running around it.

  Besides, I could always sound out the friendly guard, whose name, I have learned, is Surf—or Serf, it could be. Oh—it could be Cerf, come to think of it. I change into my gym clothes and a pair of socks borrowed from a sock-wearing friend and my old but unloved blue sneakers and wander out into the hall, where I do in fact find Surf.

  Am I going to grab him by the shoulders, cover his hands with kisses, and implore him to tell me what I should do? No. I casually mention that I am going to do some running today.

  “Have you ever run before?” he asks. I look at him closely, but the face that looks back is a neutral one. I tell him that I haven’t. “Well, don’t do too much,” he says. “About four laps today. You’ve got to go easy at first.”

  Good. Without having aroused his suspicion (what do I mean? suspicion of what?) I have gotten the information I need, which is that, despite the supercharged atmosphere of conversations about it, there is no particular trick to running, unless, of course, there is something so obvious that Surf wouldn’t have thought to tell me, or so embarrassing that he couldn’t bring himself to tell me, or so ineffable that he wasn’t able to tell me.

  I take the elevator to the eighth floor, which is where the track is, I know, even though I haven’t seen it since my first day.

  The Track

  Now that I am about to set foot on it, I find the track a great deal more interesting than I did when I last saw it. There is a tiny, enticing stairway on the far side of the track. A sign pointing down to it says, TO THE PHYSICAL OFFICE. What sort of office could that be?

  On the track are some people I have seen in the locker room, the pool, or the Mini-Gym, and some entirely new people, including a few leathery men who look too old even to walk. All of these people are running slowly around the track, and I study them to see if there’s anything I can pick up about what they’re doing, but the basic move seems to be just what one would think—one foot down, then the other in front of it, the first again in front, and so on.

  Then suddenly I myself step out onto the track, easing myself into the light traffic. It becomes almost instantly clear that the slowness with which the others had appeared to run is illusory. They are running fast, very fast indeed. My legs are moving as fast as I can move them, I lean out ahead of my feet, my mind empty of everything except the sounds of feet and breath, but everyone on the track is streaking by me. The track itself, which only minutes earlier appeared to be a tiny oval, now seems immense. It takes a long, long time to round the ends, and the straight goes on forever. I notice also that there is a bunchy, horizontal cast to my forward progress in comparison to that of my trackmates.

  It occurs to me that the four laps suggested by Surf are an unrealistic goal, and I downward revise to three.

  Downstairs Jennifer is at her locker, and while I’m working up the energy to open mine, I tell her that I’m running now, instead of swimming.

  “Terrific,” she says warmly. “How much do you do?”

  “Three laps,” I tell her. We look at each other in consternation. Then I think to add that today was my first day, and we are less embarrassed.

  Wednesday

  My legs hurt incredibly. I lie in bed while the hours parade by me, icy and knowing, like competitors in a beauty contest.

  Thursday

  At the Y I run three laps, I walk five laps, and then I run two more laps!

  On the way home, I treat myself, on impulse, to a pair of socks, all my own, and appropriate in appearance. I just go into a store and ask for tube socks.

  I have always wondered, up until this moment, whenever I have heard them mentioned, what tube socks are. Now I realize that not only do I, like everyone else, know exactly what tube socks are but also that they are exactly what I want. (How could I ever have pretended to myself that I don’t know what tube socks are?! Nobody can’t know what tube socks are! They’re SOCK TUBES, and they are the only sort of socks that make any sense, because you just stick your foot into one any old way and leave it there, and the sock, not your foot, has to adjust. The feeling
s of confusion produced by the term “tube sock” are not, I realize, due to the nature of the tube sock itself but rather to the term’s implication that all socks are not tube socks and the attendant question of why they are not.) The pair I pick out has elegant bands of navy and dark red near the tops.

  It seems that my commitment to my socks was warranted. It is now several weeks since I bought them, and I have still been going to the track. Not every day, of course, but what I would call several times a week. I only fear that my impulses to run are a mistake, like my impulses, for instance, to sew, which, upon examination, invariably turn out to be impulses of some other kind—impulses, perhaps, to own a certain garment, or impulses to be able to sew, or impulses to be the sort of person who likes to sew, or whatever, but not primary sewing impulses.

  In an attempt to eliminate possible hypocrisy from my approach, I have taken to testing myself as I stand at the edge of the track. I say to myself in a voice of profound compassion, a voice that it would be rude to ignore and one that it is difficult not to answer in the way it obviously hopes to be answered, “Well. That certainly does look difficult. If we don’t want to do it today, we truly needn’t. We can just come back tomorrow! We don’t always have to feel like running—sometimes we’re just too tired, or too busy, or too weak. It doesn’t mean we won’t run again ever; it just means we won’t run today.” But I recognize behind the seductive insinuations a familiar enemy who wishes to swindle me out of my little bit of fun.

  On the track my mind fills to the top with running.

  Fall

  Today I walk into the Y shivering. The guards at the elevator, who always greet me now, say, “What’sa matter? You cold?” I nod yes. They look at each other and giggle. “You need a man,” one of them ventures. “That’s right!” the other chimes in. “You need a man!” They roar with laughter and punch each other on the arm. “You need”—they lean on each other, weak with hilarity—“you need a man like us!” they shout as the elevator door closes, shutting me in with five men whose grim gazes never waver from the truncated scene.

  People have stopped giving me advice right on the track, so I must look more comfortable. People often ask me how long I’ve been running and how far I can run and tell me that the first two miles are the hardest, but that’s different. I can run fifteen laps now, sometimes, which is a far cry from three, and I can almost keep up with the slowest of the tiny, ancient men who scuttle along the inside railing of the track.

  What hasn’t stopped is something far more humiliating than unsolicited advice. When I finish my exercises, I walk, instead of taking the elevator, up the many flights to the track. This is seriously difficult, and I do it largely for the beneficial effect it must therefore have on my willpower. Almost every third time I make this journey (thus, about once a week) some huge bozo thunders by and says something like: “Think you’re going to make it? Haw, haw” or “What have you been up to? Haw, haw.” I used to just nod and smile weakly. “Haw, haw,” I would agree as each bozo would thud off, but now I feel that I have matured beyond this exchange.

  Today as I am clambering up the stairs an immense pink man in tiny white shorts careens up behind me. “You sure look beat!” he roars happily. I am ready to enter into a discussion of his looks, but he is gone. I feel the familiar sensation of burning rubber right below my follicles, indicating that quite soon I will be overwhelmed by fury or sorrow and the rest of my day will be spent in raging immobility. I sit down on the steps. I won’t be able to run now, but I don’t dare go home, either. This man has just happened by, and I am about to have been upset by him.

  Life’s blows are so swift. One is just living along (walking up some stairs, for example), and at just any moment one could contract a viral inflammation of the brain, or a loved one could be getting squashed by a car, or a carton of lead statuettes could fall on one’s foot. Had I done one more round of exercises, I never even would have encountered this man who has revealed, with one careless stroke, the ruin that is my life.

  A Strange Lack of Consequences

  It turns out that I was all right after I met that man yesterday. Something was his fault (at least, nothing was my fault). But it didn’t turn out to be his fault that I couldn’t run, because I could run. I ran, I saunaed, I showered, I got dressed, and I went home.

  One thing that’s quite nice about this running is that you just keep doing what you have just been doing, without having to stop to think about it.

  I Risk Conscious Feelings of Desire

  I can no longer deny myself awareness of the fact that while I wear plain navy-blue sneakers—carried over, probably, from my horrible camp days, which, like everything else, scarred me for life—everyone else has highly evolved, stripy, elegant sneakers in the colors of toys designed in Italy for rich kids.

  In the sauna today someone tells me that you begin to lose weight after you begin to run two miles a day. “Of course,” she adds, “you have to stop eating, too.”

  Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Not that I’m running every day, either.

  I Converse like Others

  I am beginning to have conversations about running, just as other people do. But I can’t quite get the hang of it. When people say to me, smiling, “You don’t mean you run,” I think it must be true that in some real sense I don’t. It angers me that I must be so assertive on such shaky grounds to make people believe that I run, and that then when they believe me, they don’t care.

  I am a Self-Reliant Person

  I develop a routine of stopping about halfway through my run and either walking around the track or shaking myself up on a shake-up machine I’ve watched other people use. I can run more this way, and the second stint is easier.

  Kathy says she would like to use the machine, too, but she thinks it may be embarrassing. I am immediately embarrassed, but then I remember that it cannot precisely be said to be myself who is embarrassed. I go and use the machine.

  Today I overhear a conversation between a man and a woman I know. “Oh, hey,” she says. “I got those Adidas you told me to.”

  “The green ones?” he asks. “Fantastic.”

  My God. For years I have understood Adidas to be an airline. I undergo a sudden perceptual intensification, as if I were a special instrument being trained onto its proper task by expert operators. I pull up a chair and sit down. My acquaintances smile and sparkle and toss their beautiful hair. The woman is saying, “You’re right about running outside. It’s a whole other thing, really fantastic.” Their eyes shine, their teeth flash.

  “I run too!” I say suddenly.

  “You?” They turn and gaze at me. “In those?” They point at my black boots with their high, spiky heels, and they laugh. I pull my feet under me and look at the floor.

  Something like a pain is accruing around my left heel. If it keeps up, I may go see if the physical office might pertain to it.

  My pain is still there. If it is there again the next time I run, I’ll go to the PHYSICAL OFFICE.

  Sure enough, my pain is there again. I’ll go to the PHYSICAL OFFICE the next time I run, if I still have it.

  Today my heel hurts so much that after a few laps I have to stop. After standing at the edge of the track for a bit, I bolster myself up and follow the arrow to the PHYSICAL OFFICE.

  Breakthrough

  The PHYSICAL OFFICE turns out to be a small greenish room. A grinning man welcomes me, and we nod to each other many times, and then I explain that I’ve done something to my heel. The man prods it. “I don’t know,” he ventures. “Seems like you’ve done something to your heel.”

  I agree this must be it. “What should I do?” I ask. “I really can’t run.”

  “It’s probably a good idea not to run for a few days,” the man tells me.

  “Do you think I should get running shoes?” I ask.

  The man looks reflectively off into the distance. “You know,” he says, “you could probably use a pair of running shoes.” />
  “Well, thanks a lot, then,” I tell him airily. We nod and smile and wave.

  Suddenly I know just what I want, what to do about it, and where to go to do it. I have sometimes passed a place, it suddenly occurs to me, called Runners World, which has in its window a line of glowing shoes.

  I Get Help

  I go looking for Runners World, and there it is, to my surprise, right where I expect it to be. Several people are in the store, all talking about running, and I sit and listen to them with interest for some time until a man leaning on the counter asks if I would like some help. He seems to be the ideal man, intelligent, handsome, and concerned, so I tell him yes, I would. I explain that I think I may need shoes. He asks me where I run and how much.

  “Then this is the shoe for you,” he says. “The SL 72.” He hands me a pair of boxy, royal-blue shoes with white stripes and deeply ridged soles. I had hoped for something more streamlined, with slanting, aerodynamic stripes rather than these neat, horizontal ones, in a less wholesome color; but if this is the shoe for me, this is the shoe for me.

  And when I put them on, my feet are more comfortable than they have ever been before. The man who has selected these shoes for me alone tells me that he is a running coach at the Y.

  “Do you run in the morning?” he asks. “Lots of girls run in the morning.”

  I feel that there is nothing I can’t say to this man. I lean up to him and ask softly, “What’s the difference between running inside and running outside?”

  “Colder outside,” he says, and hands me my shoes, all tucked up into their box.

  My shoes live in my locker along with my tank suit, goggles, and swimming cap (which, who knows, I might want to use sometime), my yoga pants, my T-shirt, my soap and shampoo and skin cream, and several pairs of tube socks.