Excerpt: Walking in the Deep End
Whenever I let myself remember that Sunday before my eleventh birthday, I see my father’s hands. They fidgeted with his tie, then his hat. He was about to run; I could feel it. The churchgoers at St. Timothy’s had probably never seen anyone bolt for the door during Mass, though many probably wanted to do just that. Dad and I stood in the back of the auditorium that served as a weekend church. Mom sat in the third row with my six-year-old sister, Ann. They had found the last of the folding chairs, while I’d stayed with Dad as he parked the car. I didn’t envy them being so close to the front—it was too hard to daydream up there.
Squirmy in the uncomfortable dress Mom insisted I wear, I tried hard to focus on the Lord-Be-With-You part. Concentrating was difficult not only because this was the weekend before my eleventh birthday and I was dreaming of presents and celebrating with my visiting grandmother, but I also had to keep my eye on my father, home from the hospital on one of the visits they allowed every other weekend. The Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute. A mental hospital. No one told me exactly what he’d done three months ago to be taken there in such a rush, but even as an almost eleven-year-old, I’d known he wasn’t acting right and that something needed to be done. I did know about some things. In the months leading up to his stay in the hospital I’d watched and listened.
The fact that the grown-ups were NOT talking about the way my dad had grown increasingly distant had made me pause in the hall, alert whenever Mom talked on the phone or tried to reason with Dad. I wanted to understand how this new version of my father had replaced the one who told corny jokes and offered me pocket change for baseball cards and candy. His vacant eyes left me wondering whether he still cared about his family—or about me.
That Sunday, I turned the thin, wrinkled pages of my Misselette, but I watched him. His right leg was shaking to a rhythm faster than my heartbeat. Father Joe hurried through the Mass, but it was still too long for Dad. He made huffing noises and cleared his throat constantly as he rocked back and forth, glancing at the exit, his watch, and then the exit again. People glared at us. I looked away, embarrassed, only to see an older kid in sixth grade snickering at me, a bully named Harold. I begged God to keep Dad from doing something really weird.
“Do you want to sit in the car with me and wait?” I whispered to him.
He didn’t reply, but turned and then followed me, sighing as though walking was so very hard to do. As we slipped past our fellow parishioners, Harold tried to trip me, but I swerved aside in time, and then continued on out the door of the drab brick building that tomorrow would go back to being London Towne Elementary School. It fit right in with the houses that sat like boxes on identical square lots in our new neighborhood in the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C., which I still couldn’t think of as home.
Home to me was a two-story, wood and brick house in a tree-lined Cleveland neighborhood where playing ball with the gang was no big deal even though I was a girl. Mom had said Dad would be so much happier at his job in Washington D.C., however, so I didn’t kick and scream about the move. I would have agreed to just about anything that could make Dad turn back into his old self, but he hadn’t improved at all in his new surroundings. He was much worse, and I felt lied to. It was a sickening feeling, as if the earth beneath our house were turning to mud.
Discovering what was really true about my Dad would be entirely up to me, and I became hyper-vigilant. I took my “daddy duty” seriously. What if he did the same thing his sister did, my Aunt Mary Ellen? At almost eleven, I seemed to be the only one considering this horrifying thought.
After exiting the auditorium, I stepped over crumbling pavement in the parking lot, trying to avoid the puddles from a rain that wouldn’t let up. I watched Dad more than where I was stepping, and my shoes got wet. Darn it. He seemed stiff when he walked, arms hanging straight at his sides. When we finally reached our four-year-old, aqua blue boat of a car, a ’68 Chevy Biscayne my jacket was soaked. I opened the passenger door and slid along the blue, vinyl front bench seat while Dad folded his tall frame into the car behind the wheel. We both shut our doors and sat in silence, staring at the rainy windshield. The cold seat still smelled of my mother’s sweet perfume.
We waited. Not just for Mom and Ann to return to the car. We both knew something bad was going to happen.
It was hard to think about him at that place where they kept the people no one knew what to do with, the crazy people. Sometimes I pretended he was traveling on business, so his home visits seemed more normal.
We sat there. I fidgeted almost as much as he did. I looked down at my fingernails edged with a thin line of dirt from yesterday’s ballgame, a game in which the neighborhood boys only grudgingly allowed me to play. Dad’s hands kept up a constant motion, fiddling with his glasses, scratching his head, smoothing down his pants for the second and third times. I tapped idly on the aqua blue dashboard and stared at a raindrop that traveled in a squiggly line down the side of the window. Dad stared straight ahead. I squinted at the clock. That red second hand silently ticked the moments away in tiny increments. I thought about my birthday again, hoping I’d get money to buy some new collectible cards from the latest catalog.
“Boy, I sure hope the Indians get some pitching this year, don’t you?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, ’cuz Gaylord Perry can’t be expected to carry the whole staff, ya know?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
As we sat there, I remained passionate in my loyalty to the Cleveland Indians—Washington didn’t even have a team at the time—and chattered on about them and my card collection. Baseball cards were better than Kennedy half-dollars. I thought about the shiny pictures of Buddy Bell and Charlie Spikes and recited from memory the statistics found on the rough, cardboard flipside. Dad’s eyes told me my jabbering barely registered. His body followed his muddled mind to a location that might as well be underwater. He just stared straight ahead at nothing I could see. I knew where he was: down in the deep end—the one grown-ups always said people had gone off of.
Quotes from the book:
Zorro (Page 35-37)
Holly Adams, the skinny girl with braids who had sat next to me in my fourth grade CCD class at St. Clare’s—the church we attended at the time of Mary Ellen’s death—had an opinion about everything, including what happened to people who committed suicide. People who kill themselves go straight to hell. Yes, that was right, based on what Holly said, both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were now singing in hell. So … was Aunt Mary Ellen in heaven or not? Holly had stated her belief about suicide and damnation with absolute certainty.
After such a pronouncement, I had stared at her like she was nuts. All I cared about that day was being able to escape St. Clare’s and play some football.
I remember Holly flitting from suicide and eternal damnation to something far more important as we sat in our CCD class. “Hey, you goin’ to Judi Newmark’s costume party?” she whispered, risking a swat with the ruler from Sister Edna. “I’m going to be a princess, or maybe wear a blonde wig and go as a life-size Barbie doll.”
I stared at my notepad, hoping Sister Edna’s hearing aid battery was on the fritz. I hated princesses that needed to be rescued and Barbie’s boring life. I wanted adventure and fun and the competition that allowed me to know where I stood in the world. My mind wandered to an episode that happened earlier that morning.
A boy named Michael Ruth grabbed my basketball and laughed while he and another kid drew me in to an involuntary game of keep-away. I pushed the first boy and then pinned Michael to the ground as a ring of students circled round. Miss Miller shouted out the window of our classroom.
“Susan! You stop it right this instant!”
I hesitated. “Hit him, hit him, hit him!” shouted the crowd. I looked straight at my teacher and then punched Michael three times.
“Don’t ever take my basketball again.”
Holly interrupted my mental movie with her curiosity about my Halloween costume.
“So what ya gonna be?””
“Not sure—maybe Batman. Maybe Zorro.”
Long pause. “Oh.” She didn’t have anything else to say after that.
Holly had succeeded in making me wonder if my aunt was there listening to the sounds of Janis and Jimi. Even then, I knew that Holly’s version of God and the afterlife was just that—her version, because how could a loving God send people to burn for eternity just because they were too miserable or scared to go on living in a place that was sometimes miserable and scary?
Back then, I thought Holly was stupid and uncaring for thinking my Aunt Mary Ellen was perpetually charred. I now think a better description is brainwashed. It was the same kind of brainwashing that would intensify in my life. Just like Holly didn’t acknowledge that Mary Ellen’s sadness killed her, adults in my world often pretended that the bad things in life weren’t happening. Increasingly, they put Bible band-aids on issues and problems that even a child could see were not going to go away until everyone faced the truth.
King of Mountain (page 39-40)
The following morning, a six-inch-thick layer of snow had fallen like a white cloak over the sludge of my worry. The move was a long way off. The snow was here today. Excitedly, I stepped into my snowsuit and hurried to school as fast as a kid can in boots, snowsuit, scarf, and mittens. I was hoping to arrive before anyone else. The snowplow always formed a huge mountain of snow in our schoolyard. I knew that other students brave enough to play King of the Mountain would be hurrying to school too.
I didn’t even wait for Jimmy Dittoe to join me on the mile walk to school. I needed to get there, and I wasn’t about to wait for anyone, not even my best friend. I rounded the final corner and made a short skip with glee. No one’s there! I did my best SnowSuitWaddleGallop and arrived, heaving with exhaustion, at the glistening heap of snow.
I took one last look around to see if anyone else was coming. Nope. I threw off my mittens, knowing it was a trade-off I’d have to make. I needed my fingers free to dig into the icy snow. I bent toward the hill and started the climb. Two steps up with my hands, two up with my feet. I stopped and grabbed some snow and rolled a snowball in case someone came. I looked to my left and took one step closer to the summit when I felt a pull on the hem of my snowsuit, followed by the primal scream of Mark Ewing. I knew it was him because of his high-pitched voice. I kicked my leg and tried to shake him, but he held on as my left hand dug into the side of the hill. I readied the snowball in my right hand, and I saw in his face the misplaced joy of someone who actually thought they were going to beat me to the top.
I threw a side arm shot and hit him square in the forehead. He screamed and let go. I knew his outcry was less from pain than from knowing I had him beat. Mark rolled down the hill, and I climbed one level higher. I was nearly there. I looked out and saw Michael Ruth and Pat Dittoe, Jimmy’s younger brother, heading my way. There was no time to make more ammunition—I needed to get to the top of the hill. I made a final lunge and pulled myself up onto the peak just as they reached the bottom.
I was standing now, my hands stretched out, ready and waiting. My enemies would charge, one at a time, like the rules say. My fingers were numb from the cold, but I didn’t care. I’d made it. I could do anything. I was King of the Mountain. My empire might be difficult to maintain, but I relished the challenge.
Pat came at me. He dodged and weaved like he was running up a steep football field. His fancy moves only caused him to slip and fall, and he slid to the bottom, cursing his plastic boots and dumb luck.
Next up was Michael. I readied myself, and he charged like a polar bear. I let him place a paw at the summit, then I shoved him hard. He tumbled down the hill and knocked over a new kid I didn’t recognize. Mark made a second attempt, and I handled him easily with a short shove that sent him flying down the snowy mountain like a green plastic miniature army man. By this time, the schoolyard had filled up with kids. The girls watched, and the boys kicked at the snow, pondering a charge. Soon, they started coming, and I tossed them aside, one by one, until the bell rang. Thankfully, Big Mike Verek was late that day and never showed up to challenge me.
Friends saving me (Page 139-142)
I made the girls’ junior varsity basketball team in my sophomore year and my success on the court gave me some much-needed social confidence. I couldn’t believe it when some of my teammates and their friends asked me if I wanted to hang out.
Me? The Born-Again geek with acne? Yeah, I think I can fit you in.
Jodi was the central force of our group and one of the most popular people in our high school. She wasn’t popular in the way that cheerleaders and homecoming queens were, but she was popular. Freaks, Jocks, Nerds all flocked to her. One day I noticed two beefy football players making fun of little Lenny Carzen. They towered over him, sneering and jeering, making fun of his too-short pants and K-Mart striped shirt. As I stood there feeling helpless, Jodi swooped in with her usual good humor.
“Guys, guys, what’s goin’ on? Have a good summer? Did I tell you about the party I’m having soon?” She gave the biggest guy a giant hug as Lenny silently slinked away. It was like distracting a guerilla with meat on a stick. With Jodi around, all of us—the football knuckleheads, Lenny, and I could see that the world wasn’t such a bad and boring place after all.
Apparently, my mom was also impressed by Jodi’s social skills. Her reaction to one of Jodi’s calls to our house sounded something like, “Oh yes, okay, yes, thank you for calling, I’ll go get her. Thank you, thank you so much.” The first time Jodi and the others came to pick me up for a night on the town, Mom continued to want to please.
“Are you thirsty? Can I get you girls something to drink? Eat? How ’bout an apple?”
An apple? Oh God, we need to get out of here. “Thanks, Mom, but we’ve gotta run …” I pushed them toward the door, and we climbed into Jodi’s lime green Nova. She backed down my driveway and started driving to the movie theatre where we would anxiously await the start of Saturday Night Fever. Laura offered me a beer, but I declined.
“Suit yourself,” said Laura with the same kind of wickedly amused tone I would get from Jodi. She cracked open a Bud and passed one first to Molly and then to Julie and MJ.
“Here ya go, Jod, let me get that for you,” Julie said as she a beer for the driver of our vehicle.
No one seemed phased by the little thing called drinking-and-driving. Jodi sipped her beer and rounded the corner. I wasn’t sure how long it took someone to get drunk, but I was hopeful we’d be okay since I lived blessedly close to the movie theatre. Jodi parked the car, and everyone else chugged their cans dry while Jodi hid hers in her purse. MJ reapplied her lipstick, and Molly started telling a long, drawn out story about the last time they went out drinking. No one seemed to listen. As we exited the car, they all lit cigarettes for the walk to the building. After a few long drags, they flipped their cigarettes into the parking lot, and we walked inside to buy our tickets, popcorn, and soda.
After we sat down, Laura dropped her popcorn all over a cute guy in front of us, and she turned bright red. Molly poked me in the ribs and I laughed my cola through my nose the way my sister, Ann, used to when I did something funny at the dinner table. Julie did an impersonation of one of the residents of the old-age home where she and her sisters, Jackie and Jeanne, worked—a place that had turned out to be a candy box of good stories.
“Hey, Susan,” Jodi said, giving me a sideways glance, “tell your mother she doesn’t need to thank me anymore for coming by.”
“What’s that?”
Molly guffawed.
“You heard me.” Jodi chuckled.
I felt my face go red as my brain stuttered for something to say. Then, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I laughed at myself and my family.
It felt good.
On the way home, we sang “Night Fever” and discussed how sexy John Travolta looked. Jodi drank and drove for another half hour while everyone worked on the twelve-pack and smoked a few more cigarettes. We picked up Laura’s sister, Carol, from work and they drank some more, laughing about everything and nothing. It felt real and unforced. I thought, This is good—illegal, but good. It was the year of Saturday Night Fever. I had caught it, and there was no going back.
Thus began my teenage dilemmas around the “right” that felt disastrously inadequate and insincere and the “wrong” that often felt sincere and satisfying to the spirit.
With my new group of friends—Julie, Jodi, Molly, MJ, Laura and her sister Carol—I felt accepted for all of the right reasons. They seemed to really want to know me, and once they did, they liked me, laughed with me, and made me see the humor in nearly everything. At first, I didn’t drink their Millers or Budweisers—after all, this was an opportunity to “witness” to nonbelievers—but the more time I spent with them, the more I realized that they weren’t nearly as “lost,” and I wasn’t nearly as “found” as I had though
Church activities that amounted to beauty contests at camp, biases favoring wealthier church congregants, and fake smiles with canned phrases made Evangelicals seem off the mark and inauthentic to me. Could it be it was because they were hiding the same sort of buried feelings that I had? Didn’t Jesus want us to be real? Honest? Accepting? I thought that He did. But from what I could tell, for the most part, my friends on the team were more authentic and loving than people at church.
We laughed about our fears, our families, and our feelings about boys and the pressures of it all. Sometimes we talked about God. I told them that Jesus was my Savior, although I didn’t explain all that He’d saved me from. I knew that Carol understood the basics of what I was talking about, because I had first met her at the youth group at Christ the King. My salvation message was well received at times, and other times they just shrugged like they were glad that worked for me, but didn’t really want to hear much more about it.
Despite my new social life, home was still a sanctuary where I basked in the knowledge that our family was back to normal—not normal to the point where we didn’t have a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker plastered on the family car, but normal in a post-Jesus kind of way… |
