Underwater(40)

I know you will never see this, but I needed to write it. It needed to be said.

Morgan Grant

But now I see that, sometimes, bad things bring people together in ways we’d never imagine. I don’t leave my apartment, Aaron. I’m a shut-in. You made me afraid of the world. It’s May, and I haven’t left where I live in five and a half months. But after being alone in my apartment for so long, I think there’s a part of me that understands how alone you felt. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry you didn’t have any friends or someone you thought you could talk to. I’m sorry you thought you had only one solution to your problems. I wish you’d gotten help.

I wish things hadn’t happened the way they did.

I want to hate you, but hating you has gotten me nowhere. Forgiving you will start the healing. Forgiving you will allow me to forgive myself.

I know you will never see this, but I needed to write it. It needed to be said.

I forgive you.



Sincerely,

Morgan Grant

*

I run back home. I run because I want to endure the way my muscles protest. I want to feel the pounding of my heart in my chest. I want to hear the smack of my flip-flops on the sidewalk. I want to have the wind in my ears. I want to know the wind on my face.

When I get home again, I don’t want to stop moving. I need to get this energy out somehow. I miss exercise. I miss the way it makes me feel. I want to stretch. I want to reach. I want to go. I want my body to be strong again.

I want to swim.

I peer out the window and down at the pool.

I let the curtain fall back into place.

I run through the apartment.

After a couple of rounds, I’m panting. I’m definitely out of shape. And having all the windows closed doesn’t help. The stagnant inside air is stifling.

I head to the family room and open the window above the TV to let fresh air in. I flop down on the couch and flip through TV channels. I skip right past an exercise show from the eighties, then click back and watch, entranced. The workout host is wearing a shiny pink leotard and a yellow-and-white-striped terry cloth band around her forehead. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, but her bangs hang loose over the headband. She bounces from one foot to the other, pulling a knee toward her chest and touching it with her elbow. She looks like she’s having a great time, and she sounds like she really wants everyone at home to join in.

“Get off the couch!” she shouts, as if she’s talking right to me. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life!”

I bounce off the couch and start hopping around the room, mimicking her movements. I fear that I might look like a total oaf with no rhythm. Wearing jeans doesn’t help. But I don’t really care. Because moving is good. I can feel my heart working hard to keep up. I like that I’m winded and sucking in air. I love that I have sweat dripping down my back and collecting in the waistband of my underwear. My body is doing what it’s supposed to do.

I’m alive.

The workout show is an hour long. There’s a nice cooldown session at the end. I sit cross-legged on the floor and stretch. I can feel my muscles pull away from my rib cage as I reach my hand over my head and breathe out from my mouth. The cooldown part is kind of crunchy granola, and the host keeps telling all of us at home to stay centered.

“Be in the moment,” she says. “This is your moment. There is only one you.”





chapter twenty-nine

Ben comes busting through the door at six p.m. with my mom trailing behind him. I probably smell from my spontaneous eighties aerobics session a few hours ago, but nobody says anything. I press save on a persuasive essay about why cell phones should be allowed in school (uh, they’re good in an emergency) and shut down the computer so I can focus on my brother. He’s all excited because he got his costume for the play today. He yanks it out of his backpack with so much force that his lunch box and homework folder come toppling out, too. He waves his costume in front of my face. I pull it from his grasp so I can see it. It’s just a green hoodie with giant googly eyes glued to the top to make it look like a frog. Ben thinks it’s the greatest thing ever.

“It’s awesome,” I say, holding it up to him. “Try it on. I wanna see.”

Ben pulls the sweatshirt over his head and the googly eyes roll back and forth, landing cross-eyed. “Do you like it?”

“I think it’s pretty much the best costume I’ve ever seen. And you’re the best frog in the history of frogs.”

He grins up at me and the googly eyes roll back. I pull the sweatshirt off him even though he begs me to let him wear it through dinner.

“What if you get spaghetti sauce all over it? What frog eats spaghetti? That stain wouldn’t even make sense.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” he says, even though I can tell he’s not entirely convinced that a spaghetti-eating frog wouldn’t be totally cool.

When we sit down to eat, Ben launches into his usual play-by-play of his whole day at school. Today was library day, so he picked out a bunch of books he wants to read together before bed.

“I got one with a mermaid in it because she looks like you,” he says.

My mom smiles and points at the side of her mouth with her fork to let Ben know he has some stray sauce to wipe up. He grabs his napkin from his lap and swipes it across his messy face.