Chapter 10 #2
Your life is supposed to flash before your eyes at a time like that. I don’t know if I’d say my whole life, like a movie montage. Thoughts, but not in words or images—just memories of memories.
My mother, unpacking a picnic in the Alps somewhere. Baby on her hip. Her face full of love as she gazed toward some mountain and then took us all in—playing in the grass, some squabble about a sandwich.
The twins. Boys? Or girls? Or both?
Heaven. Would I see it? Was it there?
Laura. Tell Laura how beautiful she is, how she needs to feed her beauty instead of starve it.
Dad. Digging for treasure.
And from Dad my brain—leaping from thought to thought in nanosecond flashes of ideas—shaped this idea of a woman, covered in snow.
—
All of this and more formed and re-formed in my head over the course of a few seconds—all these thoughts occurring at the same time, yet each one whole and perfect, like I possessed infinite brains running simultaneously, like my brain was a roomful of screens, a trading floor or a television studio or a sports bar, and still I forced my arms to move, forced my legs to kick, forced my chin above the damn water, oh God, this could not be it, this could not be the end, where was the rock, where was my rock, the whole world turning black around the edges.
I felt the creature just before it touched me. Just before its tentacle snaked around my chest and its voice buzzed in my ear.
Got you.
Relax okay?
I’ve got you.
Catch your breath.
Can you breathe?
(I nod a couple of times.)
Somehow my head is above water. My arms and legs dangle. The wind roars in my ears. I am held across the chest by something made of iron, an arm, a thick arm.
Can you get on my back?
Hold my shoulders okay.
We got this.
I am lying on a warm wide plank, a back
like a dolphin
or a porpoise
through the water
muscles straining and flexing under my chest, my hands
legs tangled
butterfly stroke
woman covered in snow, a musket
blue eyes, extremely blue
thump
solid ground
arms around my legs
piggyback
Here we go
Sit right here
Shit Lucy?
(I nod a few more times.)
Hey open your eyes
Hey it’s Ben
Ben from last night
The sun shines on my eyes. I am shaking, shaking. Cold hard slippery rock under my butt.
“Are you okay, Lucy? Can you breathe?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I say.
“Just take a beat, okay? Holy shit. You’re doing great. Let me see your hands.”
I put my palms on his palms. His thumbs cross the backs of my fingers.
“I’m okay,” I say again.
—
“What the fuck were you doing out there, anyway?” he said, after we made it to the narrow beach and sat in the sand, a yard or so apart, while I consumed a protein bar and a bottle of water from Ben’s backpack.
“Swimming.” My voice was still a little raspy. I cleared my throat and drank down another slug of sweet fresh plastic water.
“I mean what were you doing out so early? Nobody’s even up.”
“Jet lag.”
“Oh, right. London.” He picked up a stick and drew a line in the sand.
He wore a pair of dark green nylon shorts that said Dar Mouth Footba l in peeling white letters on the bottom of the left leg.
That was it. Nothing else. A pair of black rubber flip-flops sat dangerously close to the rising tide, a few yards away.
“You were up, though,” I said.
“Morning workout.” He twisted his enormous trunk and gestured to the steep slope behind us that topped out at a large, billowing meadow. “Hill sprints.”
“Sorry I screwed up your routine.”
“No worries. Ocean rescue counts as a workout, for sure.” He stretched his infinite legs and reached for his toes. His quads bulged gracefully. Side by side, our legs were like the long and short of it.
“For sure,” I said.
“Are you good? Because I have a few more reps to finish up.”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“When I’m done, I’ll ride my bike back and borrow Sedge’s car and drive you home.”
“No! Oh my God. He’ll find out. Everyone will find out. My dad.”
“And that would suck?”
I thought about Laura’s face if I told her that Ben Ressler’s strong arms had pulled me out of the ocean. “That would totally suck,” I said.
“Why? Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Just. The drama.”
He knocked my knee with his. “Not a drama girl?”
“Totally allergic to drama.”
“Okay, then.” He zipped his lips. “Our secret.”
I put my head between my knees. The sand was hard and wet beneath me, the morning sun bright on my tangled hair, on my skin. “I’m such an idiot,” I said. “I forgot how the tide races in around here. If you hadn’t been there.”
“Hey. Take it easy on yourself, okay? Just put it behind you. It’s all good. You’ll be fine. Little scare, that’s all. Nothing we couldn’t handle.”
“Nothing you couldn’t handle.”
“My advice? Keep yourself busy today. Don’t fucking ruminate. That shit’ll drive you crazy.” He touched my back. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“A little blown, that’s all.”
Ben looked at his watch. “Look, I’ll be another half hour or so. Why don’t you rest up and we’ll head back together. You ride the bike, I’ll walk. Good?”
I nodded. “Good.”
He rose to his feet and strapped on his backpack. Picked up his weights, one in each hand, like you might pick up a bottle of water.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I said. “I’m not usually—I’m not the kind of girl who needs rescuing? I’m sorry I made you do that for me. You don’t even know me.”
Ben looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “Girl. Why the hell else does God put dudes like me on the planet?”
—
For half an hour I watched him sprint up the side of that bluff, carrying the backpack and the weights in each hand.
I assumed there was some kind of weight in the backpack too.
I told myself I watched because it was like appreciating a work of art, like the David statue; that it was instructive to witness the human body as a machine in its purest state of function.
You could tell it was hard work. His skin gleamed with sweat.
His chest pumped the air in and out of his lungs like a gigantic bellows.
His face was grim. He did not look at me at all.
I thought he had probably forgotten I was there, except that when he was done, after he had set his weights in the backpack and the backpack in the sand and dove briefly into the water to wash off the sweat, he came up to me and said, “You need a lift up the hill?”
“Oh. No. I’m good. Feeling much better.”
Ben hauled me to my feet. My legs wobbled underneath me.
He swung the backpack around to his front and turned his back to me. “Hop onboard, all right?”
I laid my palms over the ridges of his shoulders.
In the water these shoulders had belonged to a body; now they were Ben.
His hands found the backs of my legs. Up I soared.
His skin was smooth and damp and smelled of ocean.
There was so much of it. Since moving to France when I was five years old, I hadn’t gone to school with a single boy.
The size of this one amazed me. What was it like, to be so big?
To take up so much space? To have so much strength at your command, so that you moved through the world without fear of anything in it?
We trudged up the switchbacks. Every square inch of me seemed to be soldered onto him. Breasts squashed between his shoulder blades. Crotch squashed against the small of his back. What did you say to a person you barely knew, when your intimate skin was plastered against his?
Literally nothing. Not one word. Humiliation as utter as midnight.
At the top of the hill, he set me on my feet. “Easy does it,” he said.
“Says you.”
He looked at me and laughed, like he was surprised to hear me joke. The bike lay on its side in the grass. He grabbed the handlebars and walked it across the meadow while I wobbled along beside him. When we reached the road, he asked if I would rather ride or walk.
“Walk,” I said. “I can’t really vouch for my balance right now.”
“Fair enough.”
The sun struck the side of my head. The air was stuffed with warmth. Only six o’clock in the morning and I had already lived and died and lived again. I walked on the soft grass at the side of the road, because my feet were bare. Ben’s T-shirt hung from my shoulders, smelling of laundry.
“So how do you like Dartmouth?” I asked.
“Good,” he said. “Great.”
“That was not an answer.”
He made this noise that was like a snort. “It’s all right. No, really. It’s great. Beautiful campus, awesome mountains. Great education, obviously. I’m lucky to be there and all. It’s just…not my crowd?”
“There’s a crowd?”
“Come on,” he said. “You’re in it.”
“Bro, I literally live in another country.”
He stopped for a beat and looked at me. “Did you just bro me?”
“Sorry. My mom calls me her chameleon. I adapt to whatever crowd I’m in.”
“So this here is not the real deal?” He tapped my forehead. “There’s a whole other Lucy hiding in there somewhere? The real Lucy?”
“You make it sound like I’m a fake.”
“Luce, we’re all fakes. We’re all out there selling a package. Even to ourselves.”
We started forward again.
“So why did you go to Dartmouth if it wasn’t your crowd? You must have had options.”
“My mom,” he said. “She was kind of a smarty-pants growing up? Wanted to go to college and make something of herself and all that. Her dad was a steelworker, that whole deal. Then she met my dad and he got her pregnant and fucked up her dreams. Long story short.”
“Did she get remarried?”
“Nope. It was just us. Me and Mom.” He hitched his breath, like he meant to say something more and checked himself.
“What about her parents?”
“Pretty much disowned her. My dad’s mom helped out some. But yeah. She’s always telling me. Marry with your head, not your heart, she says.”
“She and my mother would get along great,” I said.
He made that snorting noise again. I couldn’t figure out if he thought I was funny or stupid.
“So I guess football was your thing? Your big ticket to the Ivy League?”
“My mom had her heart set on it. Made me come home and study after practice. Wasn’t going to let me fuck up like my dad.”
“Legend,” I said.