Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  I watch her, with her head bent over Owen, giving him kisses on his eyes that make him gurgle with pleasure, and scrunching her face into funny positions to make him coo. Then I wonder if there’s a kind of freedom to having had the worst thing that can happen to you happen. Franz Joseph started World War I when he didn’t know what to make of the world anymore. But maybe the Greens have found another way to deal with the abyss.

  Monday, June 23, 2008

  I went out to water the garden this evening. It was so beautiful I dropped to my knees. The whole space was illuminated in a ghostly pale way by the Christmas lights that run along the fence. The bottom branches of the dogwood tree were drooping, languidly, almost all the way to the ground, borne down by the weight of their blossoms. I don’t know why it’s still blooming this late in the year, but it is. I lifted up my arms and took one of those branches and put my face into the petals of the pale yellow flower and thought, they are the texture and color of moonbeams.

  Tuesday, June 24, 2008

  The guy I met at the wedding in Sonoma wants me to work with him on a grant about the future of the Internet and universal broadband policy. He said, “What’s your day rate?” I said, “One thousand a day, but for you, I’ll make it seven hundred and fifty.” He said, “Deal.”

  I will be able to pay my mortgage. The relief is so great, I have to sit down.

  Thursday, June 26, 2008

  Summer rents a car and we drive to Jones Beach. In the ocean I feel better than I have in as long as I can remember. I lie on my back in the gray-blue waves and let the sun bake into my skin. I can feel the nutrients sink in. Oh God, I love the sun.

  When we get back, Summer is walking around in these little short shorts that are nothing more than underwear and a cut-up tee, and I can’t stop laughing because really the woman is an exhibitionist. Then she will only talk in a Baltimore accent, which has me doubled up laughing with tears rolling down my face. I don’t think I’ve ever had a visit with Summer that doesn’t involve me pissing myself I’m laughing so hard.

  And then I start to cry because suddenly I’m overcome with sadness. She lies in bed with me stroking my hair and telling me it will be all right in the end. She’s wrong of course. We all die in the end. But it’s very comforting nonetheless.

  Friday, June 27, 2006

  The day Summer leaves, I get an email from Eleanor. She is cutting off contact with me. She said she was waiting until I was “back on my feet.” She said all she does is give and all I do is take. That I’m a terrible friend. Only, she’s vicious about it. It’s the most vicious email I’ve ever received. As if anger has been eating her up for years and years and it just came spewing out. I didn’t know she could be so vicious.

  My best friend since I was five doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.

  How can I survive this? Did I let my venom and spite leak out? I’ve been so busy thinking I was nothing that it never even occurred to me I could have an effect on anyone else.

  Saturday, June 28, 2008

  “I feel like it will never end, Josh. This time he’s really got me.”

  “It’ll end, Heath. It always does. You always get back up. But this was inevitable. You couldn’t go your whole life pushing it away.”

  “Do you think it’s true? Do you think I’m making it up?”

  “Are you really asking me that? Remember, I know your father.”

  “Why me, Josh?”

  “Trust me, that line of thought is not going to get you anywhere.”

  “I’m really struggling, Josh.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Josh, are you happy?”

  “Happier,” he says. “I’m happier.”

  Tuesday, July 1, 2008

  Warning. I am about to tell you a story you may not believe. As you already know, strange things happen sometimes in my mind. This might seem like the strangest of all. The night before last, I fought an epic battle in my mind, and I lost. Yet somehow I seem to have won. I am just going to record it exactly as it happened, and you’ll have to trust me that these are the facts and judge as you will.

  I was lying on my bed with my feet dangling off the edge and my arms extended out by my sides, and I was letting my mind go where it would and just kind of watching. Do you ever get the feeling that you’re watching what’s happening in your mind—as if it were an enormous stage and you were in the audience, not controlling the action but just saying, oh my, look at that? That’s how it was last night.

  In my mind, I was dancing with my father. I watched us waltz across a vast open space with no ground beneath us. Every time we turned, his long hair blew across my face, taking away my vision. I could feel pressure against my chest. And though we were dancing, I felt as if I couldn’t move, as if I were being held in place. It was the same as in all those dreams I have where I’m straining every muscle to get away but no movement will come. I was trapped under a heavy beam of wood in a house that had caught fire. I could see the flames. I could feel the heat as if it were inside me. I was sick with fear.

  The demons were there. Like from Dublin. My father was pressed against me. I was holding myself so rigid, I imagined I might fracture into a million pieces. I was struggling to get away. There was such a great weight on me that no amount of thrashing brought even an inch of freedom. In my mind, I cried out, as I always do, No! No! No! I was struggling as hard as a human can struggle. And the voices were saying, You’re nothing, you’re nothing, you’re nothing.

  And then it was as if the edges of what I could see were expanding, and soon there were no edges at all. A little thought ran across the theater of my mind, so quiet it was barely audible, and it said, Okay. You win. I’m nothing.

  And then, for a second, there was total silence in my mind. Then the demons were doubly furious, and the screeching got louder, and their faces were right up against my face. But at the same time, my mind just kept expanding—expanding out beyond the demons, beyond where there was any end of anything at all. And I thought—or rather it wasn’t me thinking but instead simply a thought wafting through this great expanse—Go to town. Do your worst. I can’t fight you anymore. You win.

  Now, I don’t believe in revelations. I don’t believe in one-stop shopping, potions that cure all, or single grand theories that explain the meaning of life. Eating fat won’t make you fat, and cutting out carbs won’t make you thin. There is no single answer to everything. But I have to tell you, it was as if I’d pushed a magic button. In my mind, whiteness began to unfurl. And suddenly I had the most extraordinary clarity and a simple series of thoughts presented themselves. These are not my demons. Why should I have demons? I didn’t do anything wrong.

  It was like I’d made some terrible faux pas at a dinner party. The devils were frozen and silent. The whiteness was spreading—not a dazzling light you hear about in near-death experiences. Rather a steady, calm white, the white of a good piece of paper—it unfolded itself out of my chest, through my belly, down my legs, into my arms, and up through my head. I was completely in my body, yet the boundaries between my body and the vastness with no end were blurred because all was spread with this whiteness. And it was like I was breathing, only I wasn’t making myself breathe, and it was the most relaxed feeling I ever remember having in my life. The thoughts kept drifting through, so calm as if they were reciting what was for dinner: I’ve been walking around with someone else’s demons my whole life. These are my father’s demons. He has demons because he’s done terrible things and he hates himself for it. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I have demons?

  And then very simply, something that had never occurred to me before: It’s not my fault.

  And again, It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. IT’S NOT MY FAULT.

  Maybe you’re thinking, well, the meds obviously haven’t kicked in, or maybe you’re thinking they finally have. I don’t know. All I know is a battle ensued. The demons began to howl and shake and then they descended, but not on me—on my fath
er. And then they were gone, taking him with them. My mind was completely empty. And I was left with the sense of being suspended, weightless, in the vast white nothingness. It was as if all the buzzing of the universe had ceased. And laughter was bubbling up out of the whiteness, out between my lips, and into the world.

  Wednesday, July 2, 2008

  Today I left the seedlings out overnight.

  Thursday, July 3, 2008

  “Peter, do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Dude, I’d wish you’d stop asking me that. It’s a really hard question to answer.”

  I sigh. “I suppose.

  “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I have some lentils?”

  Friday, July 4, 2008

  The hydrangeas are blooming spectacularly. They’re enormous pink things, each flower made up of dozens of tiny blooms that in turn are made up of a multitude of little petals, each with their own networks of veins and creases. I stare into this flower, and no matter how long I stare, I always see more.

  Saturday, July 5, 2008

  Outside, the sun has just set and there’s a cool breeze.

  “It’s weird,” I say to Peter. “I’m sad. But it doesn’t hurt.”

  We sit in silence.

  “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you think all my flowers are lying down?”

  “I wouldn’t really say they’re lying down, dude.”

  “I hope my garden isn’t wrecked.”

  “I promise your garden isn’t wrecked.”

  “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you live here with me forever, just exactly like it is now?”

  Peter blows out a plume of smoke.

  “I kinda doubt it,” he says.

  I sigh. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But it’s good now, isn’t it?”

  “Totally,” he says.

  Sunday, July 6, 2008

  Today I sat in the sunshine of my garden talking to my friends and family. I have to say, there are a lot of them. It took me nearly all day. I called Katy and Mac, Summer, Faith, Ben and Marie. I spoke with my brother for a long time—just shooting the shit. Shooting the shit with my brother! I emailed Kieran and told him how glad I was that he was suffering less. I emailed Colin Landau and he wrote me right back. I even emailed my mother and asked how she was liking Florida. I didn’t talk to Eleanor. That is a black hole in my chest. But we will come back together. I don’t know when but I know we will.

  Tuesday, July 8, 2008

  It’s time to plant the seedlings. They’ve been out several times overnight now.

  I take the trays down the stairs into the garden. And suddenly I get nervous. Maybe I should just throw them all away, I think. Then, it’s total chaos out here. Nothing has gone according to plan. My flowers are not growing straight and tall like they’re supposed to. They’re all twisted and climbing wildly, in different directions. My mother’s lilies are growing on the diagonal. My pansies are long and stringy. I don’t know what’s going on with the delphiniums.

  I put the trays down in the center of the garden and go for a closer examination of those lilies. I get down on my knees. I look up and I see how much the dogwood has grown since I planted it last year. I notice that it’s growing slightly slanted, as if to get away from the trees next door, which have also grown. I look back at the lilies, and I realize that the dogwood, growing slanted, is casting a big swath of shade over them, and that they in turn are growing slanted as if to get out from under that shade. Something dawns on me. I take hold of one of these lilies from my mother, growing in that strange diagonal away, and bring it toward my face to see if it’s alive or not. The green stalk breaks away in three directions at the top, each with a bud that’s made of several tightly overlapping petals that just almost but not quite close together at the top. I think, this fucker is about to bloom.

  I turn around and scan the rest of the garden. I see that my redbud is also beginning to grow at a slant, out from under the branches of a tree growing in my neighbor’s garden. In turn, the rosebush beneath the redbud is growing out from under its shade, and so on across the whole garden. I think, how did I not see this before—me, with all my big talk? It’s not chaos. I’m sitting here, on my heels, in the midst of an infinitely complex system, in which the roses and lupines and cornflowers and alliums, the billy buttons, the blazing stars and the bluebells, the dahlias and delphiniums, gardenias and gladioli, grape hyacinths and sweet williams, and even the miniature English daisies at the border—they’re all doing exactly what they need in order to bloom. They and me, we’re all part of the same thing and we’re all doing the same thing. My flowers are stretching this way and that, and never in the way I intended, but all so that they can get themselves out of the shadows and into the sun. It’s very simple. My flowers are growing toward the light.

  EPILOGUE

  July 17, 2016

  I’d love to tell you everything was just fantastic after that moment in my garden, but I can’t. No, it took me another year to shake off what turned into a nice, long, low-level depression. It wasn’t a bad year—I started dating Colin. I became a professor at a university. But a sense of sorrow and futility clung to me.

  It was the next summer that I realized it had passed. I had a sensation I can only describe as an absence of suffering. Have you ever had a terrible migraine or toothache? And the doctor prescribes you a Percocet. And as you lie there, you feel the pain ease out of your body. There’s release, then a sense of near weightlessness. Or that’s how it felt to me. I realized over the summer that I was not in pain—and I realized there is no greater pleasure, nothing more blissful, than its absence.

  Over the next few years, incredible things happened. Colin and I fell in love. I became increasingly close to my brother and Cecilia and to their daughter when she was born. I founded a journalism program at my university. I started a new relationship with my mother, in which I forgave her, and (I hope) she has forgiven me. For the first time in my life, I stopped having insomnia.

  On more than one occasion I found myself marveling over the lack of pain—as if I’d washed up onshore after a shipwreck and, instead of being reduced to a heap of broken bones, found all my limbs intact and fully functioning. Can you imagine the leaping and running and shouting for joy along the coastline? That was me.

  I still travel. I go somewhere warm by myself every January—Spain, Greece, Sardinia, Costa Rica—and Colin and I go somewhere cool together every August. We write in the mornings and hike in the afternoons. We’ve been to Ireland together several times. Back in New York, we have two apartments down the street from each other.

  I take ballet at least three times a week—and modern and West African and hip-hop sometimes. I dance almost every day.

  The images are gone. Sometimes I get them when I’m very tired or stressed—I catch a shadow out of the corner of my eye. But that’s it, really. They came back when my father died two years ago. Then there was a screaming inside me again. Except it wasn’t the shrieking I told you about before. It was more of a roaring in my chest, as if there were a little lion trapped in there. I still have it sometimes. But it’s not shrieks of fear, and I don’t care if it sounds crazy. In my chest, there is a little lion who roars.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In rough chronological order, I want to acknowledge Paul Artz, who spent a frightening amount of time talking with me about how to organize and structure the book. My aunt Alison Chaplin was my first reader, and without her unflagging enthusiasm for the project I would have dropped it years ago. Her excellent editing on every single version kept me on my toes, and I probably never would have become a writer in the first place without her. Delia Ephron has been amazingly helpful in every way—from emotional support over countless lunches to incredible dramatic and structural advice. Delia’s late husband, Jerome Kass, showed me what good dialogue looks like. Lisa Dierback, Lila Cecil, Marian Fontana, and Corena Chase read e
arly bits and thought it was worth continuing. Jane Fransson served a crucial role as editor, champion, and friend.

  Thank you Autumn Lucas, Alix Spiegel, Connie Phelps, Catherine Crawford, Mac Montandon, Joanna Ebenstein, and Ardith Ibanez-Nishi for your generosity and years of friendship. And a special thank-you to my mother, June Chaplin, for always, no matter what, encouraging my creativity and telling me to follow my bliss. Also, for tolerating this book.

  My agent, Kimberly Witherspoon, and editor, Karyn Marcus, deserve a huge amount of credit, as does everyone at Inkwell and Simon & Schuster—Lena Yarbrough, Sydney Morris, Elisa Rivlin, Jessica Chin, Alison Forner, and Lewelin Polanco. I can’t thank you enough for your time and care. Also, thank you to Quinn Heraty of Heraty Law.

  And without Oliver Burkeman, who knows what would have happened.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © NINA SUBIN

  HEATHER CHAPLIN is a writer living in Brooklyn. She’s written about all kinds of things in her journalism career and is the founding director of the Journalism + Design program at The New School. In the evenings, she can be found taking ballet classes she has no business attending but does anyway. Reckless Years is her second book.