Drowning Instinct

Mitch. I gasped. My heart lurched into my throat. Mitch, no.



―Holy shit,‖ someone on the bus said.



Mitch staggered. He would‘ve fallen if he hadn‘t grabbed onto the car door and then Mr. Connolly was right there, in his face, screaming, jabbing his stubby fingers into Mitch‘s chest, bunching a fist just inches from Mitch‘s nose. Mitch was tall, but Mr.



Connolly was a very big man and I didn‘t know if Mitch could take him.



No one tried to help. Danielle‘s brother stood to one side, wiping his mouth over and over again with the back of his hand, like there was a taste that wouldn‘t go away. I saw a bunch of other parents pop out of their cars like jack-in-the-boxes, but no one made a move, not even Mitch. He stood there and let Mr. Connolly scream. Call me crazy, Bob, but for just a second, I thought that, maybe, Mitch wanted him to take that swing. Like Mitch somehow thought better him than someone else, like Danielle or David.



The only time Mitch made any move at all was when David finally tried get in the middle. Mr. Connolly pivoted, elbow cocked, ready to let go with a backhanded swat, but Mitch got his hands up, fast, and snagged Mr. Connolly‘s wrist. Mr. Connolly‘s bull-face twisted; for a second, I thought he‘d take that swing.



That was when Danielle leaned out of the car and screamed at her father. Whatever she said made all the fight drain from Mr. Connolly. He seemed to deflate, like a spent balloon, and then he jerked free of Mitch before whirling on his heel and shouting something at Danielle‘s brother, who followed Mr. Connolly to their car. And then they just drove away.



Mitch and David watched them go. Mitch‘s face was a stone. David looked like he wanted to cry. After a couple seconds, Mitch put an arm around David‘s shoulders the way a coach does to comfort a kid who‘s dropped the winning touchdown. Or as a dad might for the son whose suffering he can‘t bear.



b



Of course, my parents hadn‘t bothered to come for me. Actually, that‘s not fair; that‘s a lie. I‘m sure they would have, considering I was banged up and all. But since I couldn‘t drive with the concussion, Mitch told them my car would be safe in the school lot and he‘d drive me home, which was the best news I‘d gotten all day. We could keep driving to Canada, as far as I was concerned. We could drive forever.



The snow was really coming down now, slanted ribbons slashing through Mitch‘s headlights. He took it slow, his eyes fixed on the road. I found a Louis Armstrong CD and slipped it into the player. After a couple minutes, Mitch said, roughly, ―How you doing?‖



―I‘m okay. My head hurts a little.‖



―You should sleep.‖



―No. Mitch . . . I‘m so sorry.‖ Maybe it was the concussion, but I got all weepy. I bit my lip. ―I really wanted to win for you.‖



―Hey, hey, it‘s okay. There‘ll be other races. No big deal. We‘ve got the spring track season and then two whole years after that. We‘ll make it.‖



He meant to make me feel better, but I went cold inside. This was the first time he‘d ever mentioned that our time together was limited. The only future I had imagined was amorphous and fuzzy, something out there and so far away it was forever. Two years is a long time and no time at all. Matt had been gone for longer. But, in two years, high school would end. I would go to college somewhere and become . . . something. Mitch already had a life. In two years, I would be sleeping in a strange bed and Mitch would be delivering the same lectures on saponification and free radicals. There would be new faces on the track team, but he would run the same route from his house to the park. When he wanted peace, he could tend his fire and drink tea and listen to Mozart and find shelter in his cabin. I would duck from my dorm to class, with my collar turned up and shoulders hunched around my ears as a chill rain needled my face.



Mitch sensed the change. ―What?‖



―I was just thinking how I wish nothing had to end. I wish we could live in a little cabin in the woods, and I‘d make soup and you‘d chop wood and we could be together. I would never have to leave for college and no one would—‖ I clamped down on the rest. I‘d said too much. I didn‘t want to become a shrew, a nag, a person with morning breath. This was the way it went down in books and movies. The lovers were always Romeo and Juliet: happy to spin out idyllic futures for about two seconds before the real world shattered their glass bubble and killed them. Or one of them—usually the girl, stupid, stupid, stupid—got demanding or went all hysterical and whiny, and the guy did something equally dumb.



For a long time—God, it felt like forever—I listened to the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the wipers. The snow came in billowing curtains and spun into whirling funnel clouds in the truck‘s headlights. The night beyond was complete and dense and black.



Finally, I said, ―I shouldn‘t have said that.‖



―Why not?‖ He never took his eyes from the road. ―I feel the same way. I think about you all the time. I sit down to do a lesson plan, and then an hour‘s gone by and I‘ve been daydreaming about you. I think about how I don‘t have to work. I have enough money to go anywhere, do anything I want— but the next day comes and I‘m teaching about the chemical rearrangement of disordered solids. Jenna, being older doesn‘t mean I have all the answers. The world has rules. We aren‘t powerful enough to make our own.‖



―But we‘ve broken some. Who‘s to stop us from breaking them all?‖



―You‘re young,‖ he said. ―I know you don‘t want to hear that, but I‘ve been around a lot longer. There‘s no way we can break every single rule, not yet. You have to be patient.



You‘ll be eighteen in two years and then—‖



―And then I‘ll be gone. I‘ll go to college and then maybe grad school. Even if I went to Madison, we wouldn‘t be together. You won‘t quit your job and follow me wherever I go.‖ I didn‘t make it a question because I knew the answer. ―So we‘ll be apart. You‘ll still be married.‖ This was as close as I‘d come to asking about his wife. She was out there, a blur, a potentiality that might, at any second, press her face against the glass of our little bubble. Or shatter it altogether.



―But maybe not,‖ he said.



―No? Then why are you still married now?‖ I tried to keep the desperation, the despair out of my voice, and failed. ―She‘s been gone for months. She doesn‘t visit, does she?‖ I was on a roll now, unable to keep the questions from tumbling out—and honestly, not wanting to. ―Do you even talk to her? Do you still love her?‖



―Jenna, it‘s not as simple as that.‖



―Then tell me what it is, and I‘ll try to understand. I‘m not a child. I‘m sixteen. I‘m old enough to . . .‖



―Drive,‖ he said. ―You are old enough to drive. You are old enough to see a doctor in private, but your parents still have to sign a consent for any procedure. You are old enough to hold a job. You are old enough to get an abortion in Illinois without parental consent or notification, but not in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan. You are just old enough—‖



―To sleep with you,‖ I said.



39: a



Silence.



I wasn‘t angry. I was mainly afraid that I‘d blown it. And, yeah, okay, maybe I was a little bitter. But I figured we‘d come to my dark moment, the real turning point where either Mitch dumped me or we went on to live happily ever after.



Because wasn‘t that the way these stories went? Meryl said they teach this kind of thing to romance writer-wannabes: the setup, the meet, the dark moment, blah, blah, blah.



Like, at school, Dewerman said Jane Eyre was a romance, but I always thought it was kind of tragic. The disaster isn‘t driven by external events but something living inside Rochester and Jane—the dark hand of some old disappointment or pain that makes things go from bad to worse. Think of it as always being darkest at the dawn before it goes pitch-black, Bob.



That‘s why Romeo and Juliet isn‘t a romance, even though it‘s all about love and obsession and family rivalries, but a tragedy. Despite what Shakespeare says at the beginning—I mean, he tells you right off the bat the end‘s not going to be pretty—you keep waiting for those two crazy, desperate kids to realize that there are alternatives, that they‘ll grow up eventually.



I would grow up. I would have to leave, eventually, and that would kill us because Mitch and I would grow apart. For me, there was an end point, something real and tangible, far enough away to ignore but so close I could taste the end.



b



So what could I control? I couldn‘t stop time. The difference in our ages wouldn‘t go away, and neither would his marriage. Those were out of my control. I could keep after him, of course. Nag, complain, moan, bitch, whine. Turn into someone like Danielle, actually. Looking back, maybe I should‘ve. We‘d have ended in that truck, right there and then, and I wouldn‘t have met you again, Bob. I wouldn‘t be sitting here, half-frozen and filling the memory of a digital recorder with my sorry-ass story, and you could be at home with the missus and your faithful dog, Shep, and your kids.



Anyway. It was like that instant before I‘d followed Mitch into that old darkroom, my personal Rubicon Point where I was poised over the abyss. There were choices only I could make, questions that were mine to pose.



So I said, not meekly, trying to be as grown-up about it as I could: ―Can I ask you a question?‖



―Always.‖ Was there relief in his voice? Had he been afraid to say anything more?



I took a deep breath. My lips were dry and my tongue didn‘t want to unknot, but I had to know. ―Did you sleep with Danielle?‖



c



Okay, I got a news flash for you, Bob. I am not brain-dead and never have been.



Did it occur to me that Danielle‘s, well, jealousy wasn‘t only because I‘d gotten the TA position and she hadn‘t? Duh.



But there were things I kept coming back to, David Melman being the primary reason why I didn‘t think Mitch and Danielle had ever been together. Danielle and David had been a couple for over a year, since David was a sophomore and Danielle was a freshman.



Now, was it true that Mitch was friendly to everyone? Yes. Were people always coming to him with their problems? Ditto. Could Danielle have a huge problem she might‘ve spilled, hoping Mitch could help? Well, maybe so. After a psych ward, not only can one crazy pick out another in a crowd, but the broken ones can, too. Honestly, Mitch and I were so careful, there was no way anyone knew. But Danielle had sensed something, and I thought that could only happen if she was a lot closer to Mitch than I knew.