Dive!
“. . . we all learn about death somehow. I want you to try to remember. How did you learn?”
I had to restrain myself. It doesn’t look good if your therapist asks you how you learned about death and you practically jump off the couch in excitement because that’s pretty much your favorite story ever. But as it happens, I have a really good “learning about death” story.
I wasted about a full minute, grinding away the airtime, tilting my head back and forth. It’s hard to pretend to think. Thinking doesn’t have an action stance. And I suspected that my “thinking” face looked a lot like my “I’m dizzy and may throw up” face.
“I was ten, I guess. We went to Mrs. Haverty’s house. She lived in Magnolia Hall. Magnolia Hall is this big heritage site, proper antebellum South, Gone with the Wind, look-at-how-things-were-before-the-War-of-Northern-Aggression sort of place. It has columns and shutters and about a hundred magnolia trees. Have you ever seen Gone with the Wind ?”
“A long time ago.”
“Well, it looks like that. It’s where tourists go. It’s on a lot of brochures. Everything about it looks like it’s from 1860 or something. And no one ever sees Mrs. Haverty, because she’s crazy old. Like, maybe she was born in 1860.”
“So an elderly woman in a historical house,” she said.
“Right. I was in Girl Scouts. I was a really bad Girl Scout. I never got any badges, and I forgot my troop number. But once a year there was this amazing picnic thing at Magnolia Hall. Mrs. Haverty let the Girl Scouts use the grounds, because apparently she had been a Girl Scout back when the rocks were young and the atmosphere was forming . . .”
Julia eyed me curiously. I shouldn’t have thrown in that little flourish. I’d told this story so many times that I’d refined it, given it nice little touches. My family loves it. I pull it out every year at our awkward get-together dinners at Big Jim’s or at my grandmother’s house. It’s my go-to story.
“So,” I said, slowing down, “she’d have barbecues set up, and huge coolers of soda, and ice cream. There was a massive Slip ’N Slide, and a bouncy castle. Basically, it was the best day of the year. I pretty much only did Girl Scouts so I could come to this. So this one summer, when I was ten, I guess . . . oh, I said that . . .”
“It’s all right.”
“Okay. Well, it was hot. Like, real hot. Louisiana hot. Like, over a hundred hot.”
“Hot,” Julia summarized.
“Right. Thing was, Mrs. Haverty never came out, and no one was allowed inside. She was kind of legendary. We always wondered if she was looking at us from the window or something. She was like our own personal Boo Radley. Afterward, we would always make her a huge banner where we’d write our names and thank her and draw pictures, and one of the troop leaders would drive it over. I don’t know if Mrs. Haverty let her in or if she just had to throw it out of the car window at the porch. Anyway, usually the Girl Scouts got Porta Potties for the picnic. But this year there was some kind of strike at the Porta Potti place and they couldn’t rent any, and for a week or so, they thought there was going to be no picnic, but then Mrs. Haverty said it was okay for us to use the downstairs bathroom, which was a really big deal. On the bus ride over, they gave us all a lecture on how to behave. One person at a time. No running. No yelling. Right to the bathroom and back out again. We were all excited and sort of freaked out that we could actually go inside. I made up my mind I was going to be the first person in. I was going to pee first if it killed me. So I drank an entire bottle of water on the ride—a big one. I made sure our troop leader, Mrs. Fletcher, saw me. I even made sure she said something to me about not wasting my water. But I was determined.”
I don’t know if this happens to you, but when I get talking about a place, all the details come back to me at once. I remember our bus going up the long drive, under the canopy of trees. I remember Jenny Savile sitting next to me, stinking of peanut butter for some reason and making an annoying clicking noise with her tongue. I remember my friend Erin just staring out the window and listening to something on her headphones, not paying any attention. Everyone else was looking at the crew that was inflating the bouncy castle. But I was on high alert, watching the house get closer, getting that first view of the columns and the grand porch. I was on a mission. I was going to be the first to pee in Magnolia Hall.
“My Scout leader was probably on to me,” I continued, “because I had a reputation for being that girl—not the leader or the baddest or the prettiest, or whatever that girl is. I was that girl who always had some little idea, some bone to pick or personal quest, and I would not be stopped until I had settled the matter. And if I was gulping water and bouncing in my seat, claiming extreme need of the bathroom, she knew I was not going to shut up until I was taken inside of Magnolia Hall.”
Julia couldn’t conceal the whisper of a smile that stole across her lips. Clearly, she had picked up on this aspect of my personality.
“When we pulled up,” I went on, “she said, ‘Come on, Rory.’ There was a real bite in how she said my name. I remember it scared me.”
“Scared you?”
“Because the Scout leaders never really got mad at us,” I explained. “It wasn’t part of their jobs. Your parents got mad at you, and maybe your teachers. But it was weird to have another adult be mad at me.”
“Did it stop you?”
“No,” I said. “I’d had a lot of water.”
“Let me ask you this,” Julia said. “Why do you think you behaved that way? Why did it matter so much to you to be the first one to use the toilet?”
This was something so obvious to me that I had no mechanism to explain it. I had to be first to that bathroom for the same reason that people climb mountains or go to the bottom of the sea. Because it was new and uncharted territory. Because being first meant . . . being first.
“No one had ever seen the inside of her house,” I said.
“But it was just a toilet. And you said this was a behavior you were aware of in yourself. That you come up with plans, ideas.”
“They’re usually bad plans,” I clarified.
Julia nodded slightly and wrote a note in her pad. I’d given her a clue about my personality. I hated when that happened. I refocused on the story. I remembered the heat. Heat—real heat—was something I hadn’t felt in England since I’d arrived. Louisiana summer heat has a personality, a weight to it. It wraps you entirely in its sweaty embrace. It goes inside of you. Magnolia Hall had never known an air conditioner. It was like an oven that had been on for a hundred years, and it felt entirely possible that some of the air trapped in there had been there since the Civil War, blown in during a battle and locked away for safekeeping.
I can always remember my first step through that doorway, that slap of dust-stinking heat. The stillness. The entrance hall with the genuine family portraits, the marble-topped table with a bowl of parched and drooping azaleas, the hoarded stacks of old newspapers in the corner. The bathroom was in an alcove under the stairs. Mrs. Fletcher had to supervise the unloading of the bus and make sure Melissa Murphy had her EpiPen in case she was stung by a bee, so she told me to come right out when I was done and not to touch anything. Just go to the bathroom and leave.
“I was in there by myself,” I said. “The
