Drowning
Lauren Struble
My body felt heavy. It felt as if my bones had swelled up inside of me, ballooning up to the size of tree trunks. The weight of my limbs pushed down against the mattress, with the thick, firm pad pushing back. Isn’t there a rule in physics that says, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? That’s how it felt lying there, my body pressing down as hard as it could, the bed giving all of its force to sustain me. I was motionless and could barely move my pupils. I let my eyes unfocus as the room around me became blurry. A room that, despite me living there for a few months after the incident, felt so unfamiliar to me it might as well have been a train car in a foreign country filled with strangers.
I heard a voice calling my name. I ignored it. Hoping it would go away was the only thought I could muster. But, of course, it didn’t. Because things don’t get better like this, do they? Not when you choke them down, push them below the surface. Because, the thing is, your problems know how to float, and you will get exhausted trying to keep them below the water. You will start to drown before they do.
“Beth,” the voice repeated, the white wooden door swinging open with such velocity it made my head involuntarily snap towards the door frame, my eyes slowly focusing on the silhouette standing there. The silhouette belonged to my sister, Claire. She had a cup of coffee in her hand and a disapproving look on her face that made me wish the mattress wasn’t pushing back at me, so that I could sink into its pillowy white insides, cocooned by its safety and foam.
“It’s already 11,” Claire scolded me. “You can’t continue living here if you’re just going to sleep all day. Check your email. I sent you a few job listings that you’re qualified for.” She put the cup down on my nightstand and looked at me for a few long seconds. Her lips were pursed, and I knew that she was trying to play bad cop today. I knew better than to pick a fight. She was wearing a nice cream blouse and a black blazer, with fuzzy pajama pants on the bottom. Her typical work-from-home attire. I managed to lean up on my elbows and look her in the eyes.
“Okay,” I reluctantly responded with my groggy morning voice. I retrieved the cup of coffee and slowly sipped it as Claire slipped out of the room, forcefully shutting the door behind her.
I rolled out of bed and sauntered over to my desk, opening my laptop, blinded by its bright white light. I logged into my email and glazed over the four new emails I had from my sister. I knew she was angry with me for butchering the interview she had gotten me at the county clerk’s office last week. The woman, Margaret, who was interviewing me had a deep smoker’s voice that made me feel uneasy. She was in her 60’s, and I couldn’t stop staring at her snaggletooth as she spoke. With every question she asked, I noticed another one of her flaws. “Tell me about yourself.” The grotesque mole on her left cheek. “What are your strengths?” Her unevenly applied lipstick. “What are your weaknesses?” Her sloppy mascara that made her eyelashes look like spider legs. “Why did you leave your last job?” Her foundation shade was the wrong color. It was easy to pick out all of the things wrong about her. Noticing others’ flaws was certainly a strength of mine. I left the interview feeling as empty as I did going into it. Despite Margaret and Claire being good friends and neighbors, meaning I was practically a shoe-in for the job, Margaret informed us that she was “deeply sorry, but the position has already been filled.”
I opened one of the links, leading to a job listing for a data entry clerk at some bullshit enterprise. I started filling out an application, but my mind went blank halfway through. I opened a new tab and started browsing through gossipy tabloid sites. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about which celebrity power couple was going through a divorce, or which former model had been unflatteringly photographed on the beach, looking visibly heavier than in her heyday. But I ate those articles up like an exquisite five–course meal, rereading each sentence just to savor it in my mouth a bit longer. I closed out and switched to Facebook, seeing photos of old college friends getting married and having babies. I lethargically typed in “Rob Everhart” in the search bar, his In Memoriam page popping right up. Family members and friends all posted tributes to his page, sharing photos and funny anecdotes about him. I scrolled back far enough to find his own posts, ones that contained pictures of birthdays, vacations, our wedding pictures. Shutting the laptop screen, I retired back to bed, feeling defeated and heavy, closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.
“Can I buy you a drink?” The first words I ever heard Rob say. They now ring like sirens in my ear. I was at a bar alone in a college town after visiting my friend from high school, already tipsy off a Long Island Iced Tea that made the world fuzzy and warm.
“Sure,” I smiled. “But nothing as strong as this one.”
“Oh come on,” he teased lightly. “Go hard or go home, right?” He bought us a few whiskey sours and made me laugh the entire night. He really did have a great sense of humor, and was spectacular at making you feel at ease. I can’t say I felt entirely safe, though. There was something behind his amber eyes that I questioned. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t exciting.
“Let me take you out for real sometime,” Rob demanded towards the end of the night. “What dorm are you in?”
“Oh, I don’t go to school here. I was visiting my friend. I live about an hour south of here.” I saw his smile deflate.
“That’s a damn shame. Here,” he grabbed my phone off of the counter and plugged his digits in. “Just in case you’re ever in town again.” He gave me a smirk and waltzed off into the night, staggering towards his dorm room under the moonlight.
The next time I was in town, conveniently only a few weeks later, I decided to give Rob a call. We went out to a casual restaurant, opening up over shared appetizers and more whiskey sours. It seemed as though we really clicked; he was charming. I liked the feeling he gave me when I was around him. We started to see each other more frequently, driving back and forth, sometimes meeting in the middle. He bought me flowers and books and other little knick-knacks he thought I’d enjoy. That version of Rob was sweet, kind, thoughtful. A 21–year–old with his whole life and heaps of hope in front of him. Somewhere along the way, that Rob got lost. But I kept trying to find him. I wanted someone to hold me at night. I wanted someone to call when my father was in the hospital, again. And so, an on-again–off-again relationship was born. We mostly explained to friends and family it was due to distance. Back then, an hour seemed so far away. But there was something far more sinister bubbling beneath the surface, something neither of us wanted to confront.
We stayed together after graduation, and I spontaneously decided to move across the country with him, to fulfill his dream of living in the Pacific Northwest, and to fulfill my dream of getting away from my overbearing family. Things were good for a while. Great, actually. We both found jobs and an affordable, but still nice, townhouse. Our biggest arguments during this time were about which art print to buy and where to hang it. Dreams of this life danced around me like a ballerina. The good times were pure, perfect, preserved. Untouched like a time capsule.
A commotion in the house woke me up with a start. Loud, enthusiastic voices echoed through the halls. I tapped my phone screen. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. That meant Claire’s daughter must be home from middle school. Claire would soon be back up to check on me, so I shuffled back over to my computer and finished the job application, sending it out into the void. At least I would have something to show for my day, something to appease her. I told Claire about the completed job application over dinner, and she looked pleased. Afterwards, I parked myself in front of the TV in the family room, watching old reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show into the dark of the night, soon passing out on the cold brown leather couch.
The next Monday I received an email in response to the job application I sent out. They wanted me to come in for an interview sometime that week. Once I told Claire about this, she was beaming with pride. I couldn’t help but think she was just proud of herself for feeling like she was helping me.
“You can borrow one of my nice pantsuits!” She promised me. I mustered up some kind of appreciation to fool her into thinking I was heading in the “right direction.” I picked at the eggs she made for breakfast as I thought about how I could possibly get out of this interview, unsure if I really wanted to go. Then, the doorbell rang.
“Can you get it? I’m about to go on a call,” Claire yelled from her office. I begrudgingly walked over to the front door, unlocked the latch, and swung it open.
“Bethany. We need to talk.” There, in front of me, was the man I cheated on my husband with. His name was Adam, we had been friends since I started my old job. He always made me feel seen. If anyone spoke over me at meetings, he would interrupt to announce that I had something to say. Our affair started casually, getting lunch together as friends, then escalated to us taking afternoons off to be with each other. The vision of him took me right back to the day it happened. We were unclothed in the bedroom with the door shut during one of our Friday afternoon rendezvous. I heard Rob come home early. Adam stared at me with a questioning face, waiting for me to confirm what we were both hearing. I nodded once and he started to pick up his clothes, just as Rob opened the door.
“Beth? I saw your car in the drive-” he paused, taking in what he was seeing. A cacophony then came out of Rob’s lips. Yelling at me, yelling at Adam. For a second, I was afraid of what he was going to do. He raised his fist near Adam’s face before deciding to punch the wall instead. He then collapsed in silence and blood–covered knuckles. Adam quickly shuffled out of the house, and I remained motionless, naked, feeling my limbs get heavier and heavier against the king-sized mattress. Rob whispered, “Get out” and I packed a suitcase and got into my car.
“Claire,” I sobbed into the phone, barely getting my words out, “I fucked up. I fucked up bad.” I filled her in on what happened, and Claire immediately washed the bed sheets for the spare bedroom and started preparing for my arrival.
I had only seen Rob two times since it happened, once to collect more of my belongings from our house, the second when he was in his coffin. I wasn’t happy with Rob. Things started going downhill after he lost his job. We were suddenly living paycheck to paycheck on one income, constantly fighting. He refused to get another job in his field, each week declaring a new pipe dream he felt “destined to follow.” He wanted to go back to school and take classes at the community center. He even bought an expensive camera with my money during his infamous “I’m going to be a world–renowned photographer” stint. I tried to be supportive, but when that support started to wane, he noticed. He accused me of wanting him to be unhappy. I was “just like everybody else in this capitalistic hellhole.” I was good at shutting my mouth. I learned that as a child every time my father came home drunk and eager to start a fight.
My father liked Rob a lot. I should have taken that as my first red flag. He reassured me he was a good man and that I would be lucky to marry someone like him. I remember my body feeling heavy on our wedding day, each fiber of my being telling me not to go through with it. I ignored those thoughts and let my father’s mean grip lead me down the aisle. A few years went by, and each of his imperfections bothered me more each day. The way he chewed, his erratic behavior, his recycled jokes that I didn’t find funny, his need to correct every little thing I did. He made me feel as useless as leftover crumbs from a mediocre dinner, waiting to be swept up and disposed of. I used to hate cheaters. Still do, I guess. I had even been cheated on once before. My first boyfriend in college slept with some Alpha Gamma Bitch who always told me that we were “so cute together!” I felt disgusted, violated, heartbroken. There was no excuse for cheating on someone. It was unforgivable. But still, I did it. I didn’t know how to deal with the emotional turmoil I’d caused, so I didn’t try to repair things with Rob. I don’t think I ever even apologized.
When I saw Adam standing there, I desperately wanted to claw my way out of the doorframe and scramble out of suburbia, to catapult myself up onto a cloud and be whisked away, far out of sight of those who knew me. The fervor I felt within my body scared me; it trembled and exploded somewhere behind my rib cage like a wartime bomb. I felt the same way the day Rob’s body was discovered, hanging from the ceiling fan in our old bedroom. And again, the day of his funeral, I was too numb to talk or cry or eat or drink or process what had happened.
I hadn’t seen Adam since Rob walked in on that fateful day, and seeing him after all this time made the heaviness in my bones bubble up to the surface so violently that I thought I was going to be sick, purge up all of the dead weight that had been living inside of me for the past year. Maybe it had been living inside of me for far longer than that, growing musty and moldy in my intestines, curdling with each meal I swallowed. Repress, repress, repress, my instincts reminded me. Keep those feelings at bay. My insides grew exhausted from carrying it all, much like they were drowning. I started to hyperventilate, my lungs working double time, trying to allow air into them. Adam spoke again, but all I could hear were muffled, murky sounds. I huffed and puffed any last air out of me, any last lightness. It was all replaced with heavy water, my lungs filling with liquid as if I was at the bottom of the sea. I let myself sink. The last thing I remember was the sound of my body hitting the floor like a cold, wet sponge.
Lauren Struble is a Junior from Bridgewater, NJ. She is an English major and a Theater Arts minor. She is passionate about film and television and hopes to pursue a career in screenwriting after graduation.
Lauren wrote this piece in Lindsay Haber’s Creative Writing class. Professor Haber selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.