“‘I cannot do this,’ I thought. I was terrified of insanity,” she wrote. “Then I realized that I was the Assistant Secretary’s wife. This was my job. I had to do it whether I could do it or not.” Fear was my job now. It was a place I had to go to every day, so why bother whining and resisting it?
“We’re at five thousand feet now,” Timothy shouted over the engine. “Shouldn’t be long.”
The day was windy, and the aircraft pitched boozily as the pilot struggled to keep us level. With the exception of the Shaggin’ Wagon, the plane seemed like the least safe part of this operation. During one especially lively dip, I involuntarily grabbed Sebastian’s knee. When we careened sharply to the right a minute later, I wrapped my arm around his entire leg.
“I bloody love this girl!” Sebastian crowed and everyone laughed.
I was actually eager to skydive now. Just get me off this plane. I reminded myself that in ten minutes this would all be over and I’d be back on the ground with Chris and Jessica.
“We’re at eight thousand feet,” Timothy updated me.
This was my cue to turn around on my knees so he could position himself behind me and clip us together. Timothy pulled the straps tight. In the front, Bill was making his way onto all fours, trying desperately not to disturb any of the instruments on the dashboard in front of him. As Sebastian leaned over Bill to clip the two of them together, he pretended to vigorously sodomize him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Sebastian shouted with each mock thrust. “You like that, mate?!”
“About thirty seconds now,” Timothy said. He’d crouched behind me on the balls of his feet.
Just breathe, I told myself, remembering what Dr. Bob had once told me about safety behaviors. “When people are afraid, they hold their breath,” he’d said. “They’re trying to close themselves off from the fear, but trying to rid oneself of fear never works. I want you to breathe into the fear. Immerse yourself in it. As you inhale, imagine yourself taking all of that fear in.”
“We’re at ten thousand feet!” Timothy chirped. “It’s about that time!”
Bill and Sebastian would go first because they were closer to the hatch. Sebastian kicked open the door. Freezing wind rushed into the plane. The two of them positioned themselves in front of the gaping hole where the door had been. Clumps of my hair enthusiastically leaped into the air, as if waving farewell. Should I watch them jump? I didn’t know if it was a good idea. I turned away, but watched out of the corner of my eye. Unable to resist, I turned back just in time to see Bill and Sebastian lean over and get sucked out of the plane at an alarming speed.
“Now it’s us! Go! Go! Go!” Timothy urged. I inched toward the open door on my knees, pulling him along.
“Okay, Noelle, put your foot on the step!” he yelled.
I placed my foot on the metal board, staring hard at my shoe, blocking out everything else. There was something very soothing about seeing this sneaker, which was so familiar to me, while ten thousand feet above the ground.
“Good!” Timothy shouted. “Now stick your head out! I’m going to count to three!”
Still looking at the sneaker, I plunged my head into the ninety-mile-per-hour wind. During ground training, Timothy explained that during the countdown we were going to rock back and forth twice, then roll out of the plane on the number three.
“One!” We leaned out.
“Two!” We leaned back toward the plane.
“Three!” Timothy rolled us into the sky and then we were dropping headfirst at two hundred feet per second.
In the first few moments out of the plane, I had two thoughts. Every skydiver I’d talked to had told me, “There’s no stomach drop like on a roller coaster. You feel like you’re floating, not falling.” So my first thought was They lied. There was a stomach drop feeling. It was only for a second or two, but still. It was worth mentioning. I felt a flash of irritation at Chris and Jessica for not warning me. And while I didn’t feel like I was dropping two hundred feet per second, “floating” was something of an understatement. I was very aware my body was hurtling toward the earth. My second thought was, My God, this is high. I can’t believe that I’m going to be twice this high at the peak of Kilimanjaro.
Then there was no thought. All of my senses were overstimulated. The sky and ground were twisting before me. I had no idea where Bill was. The sound was almost deafening. I was ripping through the heavens. The wind was pushing my cheeks and lips into an idiotic grin, which was pretty much how I felt. Timothy rotated us around to give me the 360-degree view. It had been overcast before, but now the sky was clear and the sun flashed between the clouds. I could see Fire Island and the bay twinkling in the distance. The horizon was a glowing circle around me that cast a pale, almost ethereal light over the earth. There was none of the harsh forest greens and deep ocean blue I was used to seeing from airplane windows. There was no geometric patchwork dividing the ground into sections. It was as if the world had been repainted using pastels. Everything blended together harmoniously.
“Wow,” I gasped over and over. My windblown lips could barely form the words. “It’s. So. Beau. Ti. Ful.”
When Timothy tapped me to signal he was about to pull the chute, I couldn’t believe forty-five seconds had already gone by, it had felt like five. Timothy pulled the cord. I’d been worried it would open with a painful jerk, but it was more of a gentle upward tug. For a few seconds, the roaring wind disappeared and I was surrounded by the most absolute silence I had ever known. The quiet was profound. Once again I was gasping in awe. Then the sounds of the parachute flapping in the breeze kicked back in and the moment was gone.
“What do you think of the view now?” Timothy asked. I’d almost forgotten about him back there.
I looked down. The ground still had that dreamy quality. It looked unrealistic. Yet my dangling legs looked too real. My black spandex pants, the Nikes—they were too much in focus, the colors too vibrant. They seemed ridiculously out of place against the soft-hued earth. I was reminded of the “outdoor” scenes in 1960s movies where they shot actors in front of prefilmed background footage, then turned on a fan to simulate wind.
“I did it!” I squealed.
“Here, hold these,” Timothy said, giving me the steering handles attached to the ends of the parachute. “I’m going to unclip your waist harness, which should loosen up your wedgie.”
Before I could respond, Timothy had unlatched my waist and I dropped about six inches. For a few startling moments, I thought I’d been cut loose. Then the shoulder straps caught me under the armpits. I looked up at the handles, which I was gripping with all my strength. Everyone had told me that the parachute ride was the nice part, but now I looked up at the handles and wondered, What happens if I accidentally let go of them? Will we go plummeting to the ground?
“Now pull down with your left hand and steer us to the left,” Timothy instructed.
“To be perfectly honest, I’d rather you drive.”
He took hold of the toggles. “You can let go.”
“Do you have them?” I asked.
“Got ’em.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Still, I looked up to double-check that he had them before taking my hands off. A few hundred yards away, Bill and his parachute were completely horizontal as Sebastian took them on some wild corkscrew turns. They were dropping fast, too fast.
“Oh no!” I cried. “Are they in trouble?”
Timothy chuckled. “No, that’s just Sebastian being a daredevil.”
I sighed with relief. “Okay, well, please don’t do that to me.” Instead, we simply hung for the next four blissful minutes.
The airstrip appeared below us. I could see Chris, Jessica, and Bill, who had only jumped twenty seconds ahead of me, but who had reached the ground a full five minutes before me because of those cor
kscrew turns, bobbing up and down in celebration.
“Because it’s a windy day we’re going to come in pretty fast,” Timothy said. “Depending on how we’re positioned as we land, at the last second I’m either going to tell you to sit or stand.”
Dude, we were coming in fast. Like, really fast. I felt as though I was about to jump from a moving car. When we were level with the trees, I asked nervously, “Sit or stand?” No answer.
“Sit or stand?!” I shrieked. The ground was a few feet away.
“Sit!” Timothy commanded. I held up my legs while Timothy’s sneakers scrambled for purchase and eventually clomped to a halt.
“You did it!” Jessica squealed running over with Chris.
I was too bewildered to say anything. What came out of my mouth was a cross between a laugh and a horse whinny.
Bill was already deharnessed and drinking a soda. “Nice to have you back, Hancock,” he said, giving me a significant look so I knew he was referring not to our skydive but to our heated exchange at the end of the shark cage dive when he told me that I’d changed.
“Your corkscrew turns were amazing!” I told him.
“I was completely terrified,” he admitted, but quietly enough so only I could hear. “But I was afraid that if I said something, he’d just go faster.”
They gave us our “diplomas,” and we took a group picture in front of the skydiving sign. Afterward Bill clapped his hands together and said, “You guys want to do a nude one really quick?”
A half hour later we were at the train station. It was an outdoor platform, but we were sitting on a bench inside a covered waiting area. A giddy energy hung in the air, as if held in by the Plexiglas walls. Bill looked us over approvingly. “From where I’m sitting, I’m looking at three totally radical individuals right now. Look, we’re so radical that lady won’t even come in here,” he said, pointing to a woman talking on her cell on the platform outside. I pulled out my skydiving certificate. It read:
LONG ISLAND SKYDIVING CENTER
HEREBY AWARDS THIS CERTIFICATE OF TANDEM FREEFALL SKYDIVE TO
Noelle Hancock
WHO, ON THE 9TH OF MAY IN THE YEAR 2009, DID EMBARK ON A MOST FANTASTIC JOURNEY. EXITING HIGH ABOVE THE GROUND FROM AN AIRPLANE IN FLIGHT, CASTING FATE TO THE WIND AND FALLING FREE. MAY YOU ALWAYS ENJOY BLUE SKIES ABOVE, AND MAY YOUR LANDINGS BE FOREVER SOFT.
“It sounds like it was written by an extra from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” Bill grumbled, “which isn’t that surprising considering the strain of dude we had instructing us.” He still looked slightly shaken from his wild descent with Sebastian.
“The instructors definitely wrote that while smoking weed in that trailer with the pirate flag,” Chris agreed.
“I actually think it’s kind of sweet,” Jessica said.
We turned to her in surprise and she blushed. “I mean, when I was floating down I was thinking all of these hippy-dippy ‘I love the universe and everyone in it’ thoughts. And it was a totally freeing experience.” She added, with a defiant little nod, “So, yeah, I get whatever the hell they’re talking about.”
“I brought a surprise,” Chris said. Grinning slyly, he pulled a bottle of rum from his backpack. “Shall we celebrate?” We passed it down the line, each us taking a long pull straight from the bottle. Then we did it again.
I was so utterly content that I was slightly wistful. It was the feeling I got when I was about to finish a really great book. I was nostalgic for this moment even as I was still in it. Soon the train would come and whisk us back to the city. I wished I could sit there forever in this train station in the middle of nowhere with the three people in the world who would jump out of a plane for me.
Chapter Twelve
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life.
—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
“It was the weirdest thing,” I told Dr. Bob when he asked how skydiving went. “When I was about to jump out of the plane, I wasn’t afraid at all.” I brushed a clump of my hair off my forehead, remembering the loose strands had danced in the air when they flung open the door and the wind rushed in; yet somehow I’d stayed utterly composed. I told myself, ‘You don’t have to get through this long scary ordeal, you just have to get through the present moment.’ When I thought of skydiving as just a collection of moments, I realized there were maybe three seconds of scariness—the part where I was stepping across thin air to put my foot on a ledge outside the plane. And when that started to feel scary, I brought it down to an even more micro level by concentrating on my shoe. I was in this mental place that was supercontrolled, yet free.”
I noticed Dr. Bob was smiling at me knowingly. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“You were practicing mindfulness.”
“I was?” I said wondrously. “I was!” I’d tried to practice mindful meditation for months, but up in the air it just clicked.
Now that I’d figured out how to conquer physical fears, it was time to start facing more emotional ones, like my fears about my relationship with Matt, which I’d shoved into the basement of my mind since the Nantucket trip. So much of the time in relationships we’re peering into the future, trying to predict what may lie ahead. Maybe the real answers were in the past. And if I wanted to avoid screwing up my relationship with him, I needed to examine the mistakes I made in past relationships.
“It is easy for us to be quite misled about ourselves, about our bad qualities as well as our good,” Eleanor once wrote. “And it is impossible to proceed with the right motives instead of the wrong ones as long as we have any serious misconceptions about ourselves.”
There were two types of people in this world: people who stayed friends with their exes and people who didn’t. I fell squarely into the latter category. I hadn’t spoken to my exes in years, which made them a pure, untapped resource. Ask your friends or family members to talk about your flaws and they’ll soft-pedal it. But your exes will give it to you straight. You’re no longer friends so they don’t worry as much about protecting your feelings. Also, significant others are privy to your dark side in a way that family and friends rarely are. It’s an unvarnished opinion. As Dr. Bob pointed out, perfectionists organize their lives around avoiding mistakes. The thought of revisiting my past failures and rejections made me feel more vulnerable than any physical challenge I’d undertaken. But it would be worth it if it would help me avoid making the same mistakes with Matt.
Frankly, I was shocked that my two college boyfriends, Isaiah and Ben, agreed to meet with me. There was no upside to the interview for them, after all. Both relationships had ended badly.
Isaiah and I had met during my senior year of college. He was the captain of the basketball team and we dated for ten months. In the beginning he was affectionate and caring; then over the course of the year he grew distant. I asked him what was wrong and he wouldn’t tell me. Toward the end of our relationship he positively shut down. He rarely wanted to hook up with me. The more distant he became, the harder I clung. My presence seemed to make him irritable. I no longer made him laugh. He’d been really taken with me in the beginning, so I knew it must have been something I’d done. Trying to get us back to the place we’d been before, I threw myself deeper into the relationship, which only made him retreat further. One night while sitting on a beach together, I said: “I love you.” When he said nothing back, it was a symbolic moment: I’d been having a one-sided relationship with myself. A few months later he dumped me—horrendously—on my birthday, via cell phone, from another girl’s party. It was one of the more distressing periods of my life, so it was difficult to reach out to him. Yet he sounded happy to hear from me and, to my surprise, had incre
dibly positive memories of our relationship.
“But you grew to resent me,” I said. “Why? Was it something I did?”
“It had nothing to do with you or us. I was in a depressive state. I was nearing the end of college, I’d been playing poorly all season, and I realized that basketball, the thing I’d lived for my entire life, was over for me. That was the most difficult year of my life, but it would’ve been much more difficult without you. You were the happier part of my day. I felt safe when I was with you.”
I was dumbfounded. “Seriously?” For so many years I’d wondered how I’d screwed things up and it turned out that it hadn’t been me at all.
With Ben I’d had the opposite problem: I hadn’t loved him enough, yet I hadn’t been willing to let him go either. After a year and a half together, I semi-broke up with him; then we sort of got back together while seeing other people at the same time (note: this always works out well). Our neither-here-nor-there relationship carried on for another year, but it had curdled. What was once sweet turned sour, chunks of bitterness clogging all of our interactions.
“What mistakes did I make in our relationship?” I asked him. We were having lunch in New Haven, where he now worked as a building manager for the Yale Divinity School.
“I wish you’d be more firm with me and hadn’t allowed us to keep hooking up,” he said. “I wish I’d had enough self-respect to stop trying to get you back.”
“Why do you think it got so bad?”
“For that last year and a half we didn’t have the security of a relationship, so we were jealous and insecure. And we were immature.”
Immature. That was one word for it. We behaved in ways we never had before and haven’t since with anyone else. Ben left drunk messages at five in the morning about how much he loved me and hated me. Once, after he copped to fooling around with one of my friends, I stormed into his closet and pulled from the hangers every nice shirt and sweater I’d ever bought him.
My Year with Eleanor Page 19