Day Four

Day Four

The line creates no bounds, has no perimeter, no area, no outside, no inside. It is without form and therefore infinite.

On the first note of reveille, I stretch and hope my bathing suit is dry. Swimming is right after cabin cleanup. I hope we’ll have orange juice with breakfast. I’m thirsty.

The others stir around me. I watch Margie rub her eyes with the back of her hand, Yvonne strap on her plastic leg, Denise and Peggy Jo head to the bathroom. Mary starts another day of eyebrow tapping. Across the room lies Dolly, possibly dreaming of Johnny Carson. And beside me is Sara, still sleeping, sleeping still, almost as still as death.

“Rise and shine!” Sue calls.

“Morning, everyone,” Carole says.

This is how my days start now. I’ve become subject to a routine that has made me part of this place, has merged me with the others, and now governs our collective movements. In an orderly flow, we circulate through paths; we pulse up and down hills with regular rhythms and with little thought of other places we might be. For me, there’s little thought of that oddly empty home in Crosstown, that family with one person missing, strangely encamped on the beach. Four days ago, that home and that family made up my world. But now this is my place.

It’s only the second time I’ve watched people drop body parts on the sand by the lake, but now there’s no need to gawk. A dwarf boy ambles into the water in electric blue swimming trunks. A thalidomide girl holds sunglasses in her right flipper while a counselor daubs suntan lotion on her nose. In the deep water, the floating quad is attached by a tube to a floating plastic bag half full of amber urine. Up on the dock, Sara sits. She’d rather fry in the sun than face the moment when the water lets go and gravity comes crushing down. All of this is mildly interesting.

I hand myself over to the cool, thick water and feel it lift me up. Holding me down is gravity. I float across the plane of the lake’s surface, comfortable in my own proper orbit. To me, gravity is a good old friend.

*   *   *

In a stuffy clearing in deep shade, Margie sings softly to herself. “Old Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black…” Sara starts a pastel sketch, and I think about what’s next.

Horseback riding is no problem for the walkie-talkies; they’re out now. Yvonne manages very well with her artificial leg. And Margie, singing her childish song:

She went upstairs, stairs, stairs

To make her bed, bed, bed

and bumped her head, head, head—