The Deep End
Zoe Raven
I am not at my therapy session because I am swimming. I see you standing at the water’s edge at the deep end. The droplets of water look like jewels sat on your skin; they catch all the light in the room. I imagine you wearing one of those Met Gala gowns, the kind that are sheer and constructed solely of diamonds. The overhead lights emphasise the straightness of your nose, the curl of your hair. You look like a Renaissance statue: impressive, immovable, steady. Steady. I take myself to the privacy of the underwater world and hold my breath, count to seven. I let gratitude fizz inside me until thank yous bubble from my mouth. My eyes don’t close and they feel spiky from the chlorine, but my vision is sharper than ever when I emerge.
You dive in, and I can feel the current of you in the pool. The water is full of tides only we can feel, every molecule creating poles – pulling us together. There is only one other person in here, a ruddy-cheeked blockade of a woman: bulbous, strange, sexless – like a geriatric sow about to spew an impossible litter. She makes me feel sick. I laugh a little. I watch her get in the pool, but she won’t feel a thing through her thick, pink skin – she will have no idea what is happening between us. She lowers herself further into the water, only her eyes above it now – a primitive creature embarrassed of its crudeness. I tip my head back, open my throat fully, what comes out doesn’t sound entirely my own, it sounds like a sitcom laugh track and it booms off the walls. I have your full attention.
I swim to the edge. I want you to see me lifting myself out of the water. I need you to see this story I am telling you with my body – the one about Aphrodite rising from the seafoam. Stood by the steps, I roll my neck until it clicks, unclip my hair. I control the pulse of this whole place with the rise and fall of my chest.
I make sure I stand within your field of vision in the unisex changing rooms. You say hi and I notice that your teeth are unnaturally white, the same colour as the Hollywood sign – which makes me think of phoniness, fakery. I become worried that the water got it wrong. I realise it is possible that this is a trick, that I may have been sent a diversion – a false prophet. I am concerned that you are the kind of guy who makes up nicknames for himself and tries to make them stick; the kind of man who wears loafers without socks and ostentatiously jangles the keys to his Tesla. But your voice is low and barely perceptible. You don’t make too many noises, metallic or otherwise. Your mouth is softly creased in an elastic smile, your teardrop eyes point downward apologetically – as if somehow both theatre masks are contained in one face. Your pupils are blown like wide open portals. I am not sure of the colour of your irises, but I hope you’ve looked closely at mine and decided on their exact likeness – something spectacular and endless – but nothing as clichéd as the ocean or the sky.
I take my phone from the locker. There are seven missed calls from my therapist. I dictate a text message that explains I am busy studying and press SEND. My therapist knows that my dissertation is due tomorrow. Ethical issues in Posthumous Publication: Plath’s Crossing the Water. The words are ready to come now, they are collecting like a swarm of bees. They are making my teeth chatter. Each letter is buzzing in my veins like Morse code travelling down a telegram wire.
You’re grinning at me now, but I know that a smile can sometimes be used as a brick wall. Even if there is resistance, I have found a way to get my words past your skin, past the bones within. I know you’re feeling what I am feeling; a sense of premonition and déjà vu all at once. You look like someone I once knew, someone I know, someone I should know. I like being in your energy field. I want to be alone
with you.
I ask you to drive me to the church – the one that is signposted ‘12th Century Church’. You drive me in your Tesla, but that doesn’t mean anything. Not a single fucking thing. Sometimes things are just coincidences, jokes, even. You tell me, when asked, your date of birth and I get carsick googling your astrological chart. You’re a Pisces sun, Cancer moon – water signs! My ear canals flood with my own laughter. The elements are speaking to me, confirming what I already know. I was meant to meet you today. I check your Mars sign – the planet that represents your masculine energy – because I know I am going to kiss you, and I want to know how you’ll kiss me back. You’re 12 years older than I am and you have Mars in Scorpio, so it is possible you’ll kiss me first. I might need to let you take charge. I’ll call you Daddy if you like that. I turn the radio right up and sing along. Singing is good for my vibrations – it raises them.
We walk through the churchyard not reading the headstones. You show reverence for no one but me. You don’t want to talk about anyone else, say anyone else’s name. There is a reward for that. I kiss you hard and you kiss me back. When we stop, you look up and I mimic you, following your line of vision, wanting to see exactly what it is you see. My eyes settle on the sun. It looks heavy, hazy, soporific – like a white pill in the sky. You focus my attention back down to earth by pointing out the crocuses, their purple heads that have zombied their way through the cracks in the graves. You tell me about flowers and nature, about the divine geometry of petals and spirals and honeycomb. You tell me about the sacred underpinnings of the universe. I want to match you energetically, mathematically. I want to present you with some kind of equation. I tell you about an idea I am channelling. I tell you that we – our bodies in this incarnation – are the Venn diagram of our souls. We are the intersection of the Venn diagram of our souls. It is not exactly what I mean, but my words are so quick, they are overlapping. You don’t flinch when I say soul. You just agree.
The church is cold, but I am warming it from my solar plexus, filling it with something golden. I am sure you are aware of what emanates from me; something auric and aortic – a life force. A force of life. I want you to say you are warmed by me, but if you speak now, we might miss more important things. I hurry you down the central aisle. We kiss at the altar. I feel every membrane of your tongue with every membrane of mine. We exchange a knowledge through our saliva, a wanting – but this is more than that. I remember you in a way that isn’t possible. I feel like I am learning something about myself from being near you, like I am regressed into a past life. I am on the brink of something. I feel like a sand timer that has been tipped, every atom of me is running one way, heading in a definite direction. When we part faces, you breathe into your upper chest, lift your chin. You look at me like you carved me from your rib yourself. I guide your palm to my sternum. I am asking you to teach me about the parameters of my body. The correct answer is that they do not exist. I need you to confirm that I am everywhere. I am everything. I get irritated at the idea you don’t understand. I squeeze your hand, dig my nails into your wrist. The stained-glass saints are throwing fragments of jewel-toned light across the floor. Orbs dance up the walls. Above the altar I notice a statue of me. It could be me: tender-faced, open-armed, haloed. I want you to see the resemblance: Me/Mary. I want you to see what I can do for you, what I can give to you. I want to absorb you into my being, make you feel this ancient wisdom. You zip up your coat, each connecting tooth makes a barrier, a resistance against what I am offering. The weather is changing within me, the pressure is dropping. My heart drops so low inside me I think that I could birth it. I ask if you love me, but I don’t let you answer. I put my own tongue in your mouth, put your hand inside my jeans. I turn away from you, press my palms against the cool stone wall, lower my pants. I close my eyes. I lose myself to the rhythmic pattern of it. My therapist told me that this is how I self-soothe, in the same way people rock themselves back and forth when distressed. But I am not at my therapy session today, so try not to think about that.
Outside again, I hold your hand, ask you to talk – to say something nice. But your voice is small and distant, like it’s lapping on a far-off shore. You have got away from me. I stand still for a moment. I close my eyes. I pray that something significant will happen, a little catastrophe, like a small meteor hitting the ground directly in front of us. Something that will bind us in a shared experience forever. But nothing falls. Nothing shatters. Nothing quakes.
In the car, you turn on the heater to warm the leather seats for the journey home. A family of foxes scuttle ahead of us, their eyes flickering in the hedgerow like roadside constellations. I think about Ted Hughes and his Thought Fox. I know this means something, and my synapses try to fire up an external connection with the universe again. I can feel something scratching in the corner of my own mind, something sly and vulpine. I think about my research, about what was written of Ted. About how his lover said he smelt like a butcher in bed. I can imagine it, the ferratin, the flesh, the animal within – but I also don’t understand it. I want to talk to you about it. I want you to drop the steering wheel, to hold my face in your hands, to tell me what that means. I want you to tell me what it means that I think about it every single day. I know these are questions for my therapist. But I am not in therapy today. I went swimming.
You tell me where the lever is so I can lay the seat back, relax. You reach over, run your fingers through my hair, comment on its golden colour. You say I’m really something. You tell me I am just your type, but the way you say it, the way you say ‘type’, all I can think is: blood group, Hitler Youth, breed of dog. I am struggling to stay awake. I let me eyes close and drift into a momentary half-dream where I see a pendulum. I am somehow witnessing it, above it, within it; part of the momentum, part of its physics. But I can’t make out what is either side of the swing. I wake with a jolt. I force my lids open and my eyeballs sting, they feel allergic to the air. I look at your sharp, stony profile. You turn your face to me. The way you say baby makes me sure I must already be crying. You put your hand on my thigh, squeeze lightly. I feel your fingertips against the pulse of my femoral vein. You squeeze again and say sleep.
