FINCH
The night of the day my life changed
My mother stares at me over her plate. Decca, as usual, is eating like a small,
ravenous horse, and for once I’m doing my share of shoveling it in.
Mom says, “Decca, tell me what you learned today.”
Before she can answer, I say, “Actually, I’d like to go first.”
Dec stops eating
long enough to gape at me, her mouth full of partially
chewed casserole. Mom smiles nervously and holds on to her glass and plate,
as if I might get up and start throwing things.
“Of course, Theodore. Tell me what you learned.”
“I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I
learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot
bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you’re standing next to
the right person.”
Mom waits politely, and when I don’t say anything else, she starts nodding.
“This is great. That’s really good, Theodore. Isn’t that interesting, Decca?”
As we clear the plates, my mother looks as dazed and disconcerted as she
always does, only more so because she doesn’t have the first clue what to do
with my sisters and me.
Since I feel happy about my day and also bad for her because my father not
only broke her heart, he pretty much shat all over her pride and self-worth, I
tell her, “Mum, why don’t you let me do the dishes tonight? You should put
your feet up.” When my dad left us this last and final time, my mom earned
her Realtor’s license, but because the housing market is less than booming,
she part-times at a bookstore. She is always tired.
Her face crumples, and for one awful moment I’m afraid she’s going to cry,
but then she kisses me on the cheek and says, “Thank you,” in such a world-
weary way that I almost want to cry myself, except that I’m feeling much too
good for that.
Then she says, “Did you just call me ‘Mum’?”
I’m putting on my shoes at the very moment the sky opens up and it starts to
pour. By the looks of it we’re talking cold, blinding sleet, so instead of going
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out
for a run, I take a bath. I strip, climb in, water splashing onto the floor,
leaving little pools that shake like beached fish. The whole operation doesn’t
work well at first because I am twice as long as the bathtub, but the tub is full
of water and I’ve come this far, and I have to see it through.
My feet rest
halfway up the tile of the wall as I go under, eyes open,
staring up at the
showerhead and the black curtain and plastic liner and the ceiling, and then I
close my eyes and pretend I’m in a lake.
Water is peaceful. I am at rest. In the water, I am safe and pulled in where I
can’t get out. Everything slows down—the noise and the racing of my
thoughts. I wonder if I could sleep like this, here on the bottom of the bathtub,
if I wanted to sleep, which I don’t. I let my mind drift. I hear words forming
as if I’m sitting at the computer already.
In March of 1941, after three serious breakdowns, Virginia Woolf wrote a
note to her husband and walked to a nearby river. She shoved heavy stones
into her pocket and dove into the water.
“Dearest,”
the
note began,
“I feel
certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those
terrible times.… So I am doing what seems the best thing to do.”
How long has it been? Four minutes? Five? Longer? My lungs are starting
to burn.
Stay calm
, I tell myself.
Stay relaxed. The worst thing you can do is
panic
.
Six minutes? Seven? The longest I’ve held my breath is six and a half
minutes. The world record is twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds,
and this belongs to a German competitive breath holder. He says it’s all about
control
and endurance, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that his
lung capacity is 20 percent larger than the average person’s. I wonder if
there’s something to this competitive breath holding, if there’s really a living
to be made at it.
“You have been in every way all that anyone could be.… If anybody could
have saved me it would have been you.”
I open my eyes and sit straight up, gasping, filling my lungs. I’m happy no
one’s here to see me, because I’m sputtering and splashing and coughing up
water. There’s
no rush of having survived, only emptiness, and lungs that
need air, and wet hair sticking to my face.
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