Swimming by Nicola Keegan

Author:Nicola Keegan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Irish Novel And Short Story, Fiction - General, House & Home, Teenage girls, Bildungsromans, Family Life, General, Literary, Outdoor & Recreational Areas, Coming of Age, Swimmers, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307269973
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-07-14T08:30:44.817000+00:00

California Catholics

Wear Dark Shades

The Complicated Coast

There were things I did not know about Sunny Lewis when we decided to room together at Stanford. I did not know she was going to be a psych major, that she played sad songs on a sad steel-string acoustic guitar, that she hummed along as she strummed her sad guitar with wrinkly swimmer fingers, that she hummed and strummed other objects that were not a guitar when her guitar wasn’t around to calm herself down from all of the human behavior classes she was taking that were secretly making her crazy. I already knew that she liked to give free psychological counseling, but I didn’t know that I would be her guinea pig for the human emotional experience, that I would look up from my position on my recliner when the sad strumming suddenly stopped and she would be staring at me, analyzing.

Swimmers fall into two camps: those who want a balanced life and those who don’t care. Sunny cares. I don’t. I fall asleep every time I sit in a chair. I fall asleep in the middle of lunch. I fall asleep in the car with my key in the ignition. I fall asleep reclining in my recliner as Sunny strums a tale about what kind of horse a good cowboy rides in heaven. I fall asleep on the phone in the middle of a boring conversation with my mom twice in a row and she calls Napoleon Mankovitz the next day demanding action. They take my blood and analyze it for horrible things, but the verdict is plain and simple: Just tired.

I call my mother back and tell her to quit it, that swimming is an anchor, that it holds me steady, that I have to give it everything, then let it give back, that I have to do this or lose.

Full scholarship, Mom. It’s my life.

It is not a life, she says.

It is a life, I say.

It is not a life, she says.

Shall we have discussions about life? I say.

Your fath—

I’m hanging up now.

Did you just hang up on your mother? asks Sunny, staring.

No, I say, reaching for the family-size pack of malted milk balls that I stash in the cubbyhole behind the phone.

Stanford University is easier than Holy Name. Nowhere, not under the cafeteria tables, not lurking in the wide corridors, not directing classes with long wooden rods that they point and jab, are there any stone eyes boring into my secrets, pulling every sin I have yet to commit to the surface and punishing me for it just in case they are not around when it happens. Neutral professors stand, clear their throats, and talk to those who listen. To those who listen not, they take no notice. Nun-inspired stenography skills turn out to be essential. I almost weep with pleasure as my hand slides across the page, every word down verbatim as other kids struggle, stuck in the middle of an unfinished thought.

My academic adviser is the handsomest man on campus and has the unfortunate name of Robert Boggs.

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