Phantom Limbs

by Paula Garner

  Yeah, that was a huge consolation.

  I informed her in no uncertain terms that I would not be going. She informed me in no uncertain terms that I would be going and to suck it up, buttercup.

  I lay there half the night, trying to figure out a way to get out of it. Finally, somewhere around three a.m., I had to face the reality that I was not the master of my universe, not the captain of my ship. I was going to have to go on this stupid vacation. And it was going to suck harder than a Hoover.

  “So, who are you here for?”

  I startled at the raspy voice. A powdery old woman with apricot-colored hair had been sitting kitty-corner from me in the waiting area all morning. She wore pink running shoes and baggy sky-blue pants, and her head wobbled just slightly.

  “A friend,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t reciprocate the question, which I felt bad about. Maybe her husband was lying on the brink of death and she was lonely. Scared.

  I sucked.

  Dara’s dad was in her room — I knew, because the nurse had told me Dara already had a visitor and, at one point, he came out to get some coffee. I had raised a hand to greet him, but he didn’t even look my way.

  My phone vibrated and I jumped about a mile, startling the woman. I smiled sheepishly at her and opened the message. I was hoping for Meg, but it was Abby.

  Hey, any idea what’s up with Dara? She stood me up last night and she hasn’t answered any of my messages.

  Stood her up? As in, they had a date? Would Dara not tell me something like that?

  I hesitated, thinking I should call her rather than text the news, but I was uncomfortable talking in front of the old woman, who kept smiling at me anytime my eyes caught hers, and I didn’t want to leave. So I texted back and told her about the accident. After asking me a long string of alarmed questions, she said she’d been worrying that Dara was mad at her. We had such a good time the other night, she wrote.

  The other night? Dara went out with Abby?

  She continued. I couldn’t figure out what happened! What’s her room number? I’ll come when I get back from the city.

  I gave her the information, wanting to ask about what had happened between them, but if Dara didn’t want me to know, it was probably none of my business. But my head was kind of reeling. Yet another thing Dara hadn’t told me.

  I shifted in the uncomfortable plastic seat. My back hurt and my stomach was starting to growl — nurses were delivering lunch on wheeled carts and it smelled good. Just as I was thinking about going to find some food, Dara’s dad came out and told me in his gruff Russian accent that I could see her. I didn’t even know he realized I was there. He disappeared before I could say anything, and I edged into Dara’s room, nervous.

  I had tried to prepare myself for what Dara might look like, but it still stopped me in my tracks. White bandages covered her head, and her eyes were purple and swollen. She watched me watching her, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge my presence.

  The room looked just like hospital rooms on TV — lots of white and tubes and screens that made beeping noises. It smelled like disinfectant but with something sickish underneath, all mingled with a TV-dinner smell. Dara’s lunch sat on a tray, unmolested. It didn’t look too bad — something in gravy with rice and a plastic cup of green Jell-O. I’d been waiting there for hours and I was starving.

  “Hey,” I said weakly, walking over to her bed. Apart from her bruises, she was almost the same dull white color as the hospital gown she wore. “So . . . what’s the damage?”

  “Concussion. Nine stitches. Fractured ribs. Contusions.” She shrugged. “I’ve been worse.”

  I sat in the chair by her bed. “What happens next?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “You gonna lose your license?” I envisioned myself having to drive her everywhere once I got my license. Oh, please, God, don’t let her lose her license.

  “I’m sure my dad’ll take care of it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said . . .” Her expression went hard and she ranted in Russian. She met my eyes and said, “Basically, I fuck up one more time, I’m dead to him.”

  That bastard. I wondered if being gay would count as “fucking up.” The thought made my stomach hurt. I scooted my chair closer. “You just need to hang on until August. Once you get to college, you’ll be okay. Your whole life will turn around.”

  Crickets. I mentally counted the beeps from one of the machines hooked up to her. Carts clattered by outside, and laughter emitted from the nurse’s station in the hall.

  “What happened last night?” I asked.

  She tapped her finger on the surface of her Jell-O, leaving dull fingerprints on the shine. “It was my ampiversary.”

  I stared at her in confusion. “Your . . . what?”

  “My ampiversary,” she said, still staring at the Jell-O. “The day I lost my arm. Yesterday was five years.”

  “Oh,” I said. I tried to process what she was saying.

  She looked up at me brightly. “Five years is wood. I looked it up.”

  “Wood?”

  “You know, traditional anniversary gifts? One year is paper; fifty years is gold . . . That stuff.”

  The possible connection between “wood” and “tree” nudged at my consciousness, but my mind was working much too slowly.

  “Anyway,” she said, leaning back in bed, “I have to have a psych evaluation. Bet you love that.”

  “Hey,” I said, getting up and going to sit on the edge of her bed. “I just want you to be okay.”

  “Well, apparently having a bipolar mother who killed herself doesn’t bode well for ‘okay.’”

  “Wait, what?” Her mother committed suicide?

  She started tapping on the Jell-O again. “I never told you this story? It’s a good one: Promising young dancer, rumored to be in the running for the rare title of prima ballerina assoluta, gives birth to an unwanted bundle of what turned out not to be joy, ending her career and ruining her life. So she hangs herself. The end.”

  My mind whirled. I hadn’t known any of this. I mean, I knew that Dara’s mom was a ballerina and died when Dara was little, but that’s about it. I certainly never had any idea it was suicide. Or that Dara thought she was the reason.

  She met my eyes, her expression intense. “If you really want me to be okay, then train. Train like it’s a matter of life and death.” She softened a little. “You really could do it — you’re just too dumb to know it. You still have so much room to grow. You’ve only been swimming for three years! You’re tall and you’re gonna get taller! You have wingspan, and big feet and hands! You’re tough and you’re disciplined. You could be epic if you applied yourself.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a good swimmer, but I’m no Dara Svetcova.”

  I wished I could call it back. It was such a stupid thing to say, which I realized just a moment too late.

  Her eyes flashed. “So what if I used to be good? What good does that do me now?” In one motion, she picked up the Jell-O and whipped it across the room at the wall. Jewel-like green blobs fell everywhere. She lowered her head, then turned to me. “I can’t compete with two-armed swimmers, and I don’t want to swim with the fucking freaks and idiots.” She collapsed back against the pillow and closed her eyes. “Don’t you get it? You’re all I have.”

  If that was true, then we were in trouble. Because one thing I knew for sure was that I was never going to be enough.

  The following week moved by in a lonely blur of water. I trained hard, wanting to do well at next Saturday’s meet for Dara’s sake. When I wasn’t swimming, I was teaching other people how to swim. I’d even gotten Amanda to paddle a few strokes and to float on her back. Two new kids signed up for lessons with me that my boss told me came from referrals. It was nice to not suck at something.

  I didn’t see Meg for a few days. She sent a brief message saying she had things to do in town, but that was pretty much it. I didn’t know if she was a
nnoyed with me and Dara, or if she wasn’t happy about having me hanging around while she and Football Guy had their romantic reunion — during my fucking vacation. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to me. It was probably just as well, because I was so mad about Football Guy coming with us to Michigan, I could hardly see straight.

  But then, in the midst of the silence, she started sending me pictures of places she was — weird places, like Dairy Queen or Chuck E. Cheese’s — with captions like, revisiting or a lot of memories here. Mostly those places reminded me of Mason. I couldn’t think of anything to say back, apart from Why the fuck are you going to those places? So I said nothing.

  Dara was released from the hospital with stitches, bruises, painkillers, antidepressants, and a standing date with a psychiatrist twice a week. Her psych evaluation basically concluded that she had depression complicated by chronic pain and unresolved trauma. I didn’t think it took a genius to diagnose that.

  She seemed to have skirted any legal repercussions; maybe they didn’t check her blood alcohol level. She probably had me to thank for that.

  Her dad bought her a new car. One with an automatic transmission. She dubbed it the Stupidmobile. And not just because automatic transmissions were stupid, but because what could be more stupid than giving a fuck-up like her a fancy new car that could pay for some poor kid’s college education? “I’m going to trade it in for something cool,” she’d said. “I loved my old car. This car is embarrassing.”

  Only Dara would think a shiny new BMW was embarrassing.

  With my dad’s help, I talked my mom down from her hysteria about my driving with Dara — but only until I got my license, which was probably a couple weeks at the most.

  Saturday morning Dara let me drive the Stupidmobile to the River Park meet, which was a nice long drive — close to an hour. I never knew a car could be so awesome. I was accustomed to the practical, energy-efficient, unsexy cars my parents drove — never quite new and minimally upgraded. This car had me fucking high from the smell of new leather, the comfort, the fast acceleration and tight handling.

  Dara sat in the passenger seat, legs folded under her, eating Cap’n Crunch from the box. Her head was a mess of bandages and zombie-like bruises.

  “Sucks I can’t swim since they’re doing relays today,” she said through a full mouth. “I would have been in the earliest heats for once.”

  I kept my eyes on the road. There was nothing to say to that.

  “So,” she said, turning toward me. “Guess who came to visit me in the hospital?”

  I played dumb. “Who?”

  “Abby.”

  I looked over at her. “Yeah?”

  “And,” she said, grinning, “guess who came to see me last night?”

  “Um . . . Abby?”

  She glanced at me and nodded, then shrugged like she didn’t know what to make of the whole thing. “She just started an internship at Children’s Memorial, did you know that? She wants to be a doctor.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t she be a great doctor? Better than these clowns I have to deal with. She’s, like, really nice.”

  I squinted at her. “She’s always been nice. This isn’t news.”

  “I know, but . . . this is a different kind of nice.” She closed the cereal box and tossed it on the floor. “We talked for a long time in the hospital. And then last night . . .”

  I turned my head to stare at her.

  “Eyes on the road!” She gestured out the windshield, laughing. “You need to get on two-ninety-four — get in the left lane.”

  I signaled and changed lanes. “Okay, tell me everything.”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

  I glanced over at her. She wiped some crumbs off her seat.

  “What?” I said. “Come on!”

  “Okay, okay. We had this amazing talk. I told her stuff . . . Stuff I don’t talk about.” I looked over at her, and she met my gaze. “I told her about my mom.”

  “Wow.” I had known Dara for years, and she’d only just told me about her mom. But she already told Abby?

  “Abby almost cried.”

  She said it like she couldn’t believe it. But I could envision that. Abby has this expression, a certain angling of her eyebrows, that makes her look sort of chronically concerned. She’s the kind of person who will reach out to touch your arm when you tell her something good or you tell her something bad. I was glad that if someone besides me was going to care about Dara, it might be Abby.

  “And then she took my hand.”

  Hand-holding? Wow. “I can’t believe you didn’t mind. You get so pissed off when people feel sorry for you.”

  “No, you don’t understand. This was different. It wasn’t about my arm. I felt like it really mattered to her, what had happened to me. Like she really cared. You know?”

  “She does. You can tell.”

  She ducked her head.

  I leaned forward a little to see her better. Her bandage obscured one of her eyes. I poked her in the shoulder and grinned. “This is awesome.”

  “It’s not all awesome,” she said, her smile fading. “I go back and forth between being excited every time I think about her and wishing I could just be normal and like guys.”

  “Hey. It’s okay to like Abby.” I slowed to get into the 294 turn lane.

  “You don’t know my dad.”

  “Fuck your dad.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “He’s an idiot. Lesbians are, like, the greatest idea ever. Ask any guy.”

  “I’m not a lesbian.” She sighed. “I’m not an anything.”

  “Okay, you’re not an anything.”

  “Hey,” she said softly, reaching over and tugging on my sleeve. “Thanks. For always being there for me.”

  I glanced at her bruised and bandaged head and thought, Not always.

  “How’s your stupid job?” she asked, putting her feet up on the dashboard. Her toenails were painted a teal green.

  “I like it, mostly.”

  “Kids. Blech. That’d drive me nuts.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You can’t keep missing doubles, you know. If you have to work in the afternoon, then swim in the evening. Senior Champs is coming up.”

  I didn’t respond.

  We arrived at the pool and got out of the car. It was clear that a brutally hot day was in store — not a cloud in the sky, and no shade to be found other than the umbrellas already claimed by swim teams. The sun was fierce, the thermometer already soaring. I felt sorry for Dara that she couldn’t swim. At least the rest of us could cool off.

  When I finished warming up and got out of the pool, I spotted Abby and Dara, sitting side by side on a towel, Abby in her suit and Dara in shorts and her team T-shirt. It was clear Abby liked her — I could see it on her face, in her smile, in the way she leaned close when they spoke. Like her back, Dara, dammit! I wanted her to be happy, no matter how mad she sometimes made me. If she were happier, maybe she wouldn’t be such a bitch. And if she and Abby were together, I would no longer be “all she had.”

  “So.” Shafer stood next to me, eating green grapes out of a plastic container. “What’s going on with Meg?”

  “What? Nothing. Do my arms.” I turned my back to him.

  “She hasn’t come around the pool this whole week,” he said, putting down the grapes and stretching my arms. “And you ditched her the night of Dara’s party. You fighting or something?”

  I gritted my teeth. I didn’t ditch her. It was more like she sent me home. But Shafer was the last person on Earth I’d confide in.

  “You guys were childhood sweethearts, huh? That’s what she said.”

  “Something like that,” I muttered, pulling away.

  He picked up his grapes and popped one in his mouth. “Well, I don’t know why you’re not trying to get her back. If I were you, I sure would be. I mean, yeah, she has a boyfriend. But how can you not have feelings for her?”


  I did not dignify that with a response. I certainly wasn’t about to discuss the breadth and depth of my feelings for Meg with Shafer.

  He and I were both swimming the fifty free, although he was in the last heat and I was a few heats before him. As I went to line up at the blocks, a girl’s voice yelled, “Go, Otis!” I turned. It was Kiera. She smiled and waved. It occurred to me that she was really nice. And pretty. And didn’t have a boyfriend. And was unambiguously into me. She wasn’t Meg, but only Meg was Meg — and Meg had a boyfriend. A boyfriend whose grandmother taught her how to cook. A boyfriend who was flying out to spend a long weekend with her, even though she was due to return home — to him, in California — the next fucking day.

  When I got up on the block, I was kind of psyched. My training had taken a bit of a hit lately, but that could be good — sort of a fake taper. I wasn’t as sore as usual. I meant to take full advantage of it. I swung my arms and adjusted my goggles, waiting for the start.

  At the buzzer I got off a solid dive, and I swam like it was a matter of life and death, like Dara said. I kept myself to two breaths for the whole race, and I hoped Dara was watching — I’d never done a fifty on two breaths. I always ended up taking a last breath too close to the end of the race, which made Dara nuts.

  I touched in and came up, turning to look at the clock. The first thing I processed was that I’d taken first in my heat — handily, too, which was exciting because my seed time had placed me fifth of eight. I pulled my goggles off and did a double take at the clock. Personal best by two-tenths.

  When I climbed out, Kiera was cheering for me from the sidelines — I recognized her “Woo-HOOOO!” Coach Brian came up to me, throwing his arms up in a what the hell was THAT look. Behind him, Dara was hurrying toward me. I probably had seen more smiles from her in that single morning than in the three years I’d known her combined.

  She took a running leap and jumped on me, almost knocking me over. “Fuckin’ A, Mueller!”

  She was embarrassing me, but I couldn’t help smiling.

  “Ow, fuck,” she said, wincing. “I think I just refractured my ribs.” And then she leaned back and grinned at me. “Two breaths? You see? See what you can do?”