Spinning

Walking across the parking lot of the strip mall after class at SpinDo, the combination cycling and taekwondo studio I frequented, it seemed the whole world was winter-colored, pale and fallow. Most cars in the lot were streaked with salt. Piles of dirty snow accumulated around the edges of the sidewalk, between the vehicles, atop the patches of soil where in warmer weather mulch and non-native plants were visible throughout the complex. I cut a path to my car, water bottle and keys jangling in my hand. The cold tingled my cheeks like tiny needles. I could navigate this world without thinking. Anyone could. That’s how it was built. Even the sounds seemed designed, like school bells, or buzzers for lab rats, to ferry a person from place to place. I could hear what my whole day would sound like before it happened, sped-up blips of snow crunching under boots, the slam of a car door, an engine lighting up, the click of the lock to my house, the chime of the home alarm, a symphony of cooking fizzes and dings, the din of the boys chasing each other around the playroom, percussive bedtime chores. I knew it the way a new hit song can sound like something you’ve heard your whole life. Even the fresh sounds clanged with the inevitability of moving along a track. I could predict each next note. Until Brianna called my name.

My hand froze on the handle of my car door, holding it ajar. I turned my face to the sound. She stood at the trunk of a still-running hatchback, one arm wrapped around a paper shopping bag from the grocery store, a lock of black hair curling into her left cheek bone. I had seen her and not recognized her. Though now, her her-ness broadcast across the lot to me: the defiant, straight-backed posture and a sideways tilt to her head, as if she strained to hear what we shorter people had to say.

“It’s me,” she said, tucking the loose strand back behind her ear with her free hand. “You look well.”

“I know–I mean, you too.” Bulky bib snow pants added volume to her hips. A snug half-zip fleece hugged her torso.

“Thanks,” she said. I stood there dumbly until she turned around. Then I sat in the driver's seat of my car until she pulled out of the space behind me. My adrenaline levels receded into a sinking feeling, as though I’d woken from a dream where I found myself giving a speech naked. I took a deep breath, the way the therapist suggested, holding full lungs for four seconds after each inhalation. I waited for the familiar sounds to calm me again, but everything was out of key.

Later that night, as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of her again, imagining the slope of her pale neck, hidden under the sweep of her bob and the collar of her fleece. Her features were sharper now in adulthood, as though her beauty was only now coming into focus. Something in her stance conveyed a new assurance. Maybe she was not so much defiant as unabashed. Beside me, Clint began to snore. I hit the power button on my white noise machine, and let the ambient whir lull me to sleep.

*

The next day, the four of us sat in our usual seats around the dining table for dinner, palms clasped together, heads tilted forward. Clint cleared his throat and led us in grace. “Heavenly father, thank you for blessing us with another strong quarter. I ask for your guidance on managing the Grover account. Thank you for blessing our family with health and good fortune. Please see fit to bless Trevor with the discipline to focus longer in his classroom. Thank you for the bounty of this meal–” Clint paused to open his eyes and scan at the table. “This macaroni casserole. In Jesus Christ’s name, amen.”

I washed up while the boys did their homework, sitting around the cleared table. Clint typed away at his laptop, sitting too upright in his chair at his desk. Shoulders back. His eyebrows pulled together to form an eleven while the glow of the screen gave his face a blue cast. If I was lucky, he’d work late. I returned my focus to the kitchen. After I scrubbed down the counters, I did the same to the fridge. The glass and granite achieved a purified gleam that could never last more than a few hours. I restocked snacks in the pantry from the bulk bins in the basement, making a few trips up and down the stairs. I poured juice from shelf stable packaging into glass pitchers. Seeing the clear plastic bins full and orderly gave me a sense of peace. Being Mormon is about living a life of faith, service and obedience to God’s commandments. I’ve always tried to do my part. While I admired the neatened pantry, Clint snuck up behind me.

“You know, it’s difficult for me to feel husbandly towards you when you get bony like this.”

“Really? I think I’m a good size,” I pinched the skin at my hip for emphasis. “Spare tire!”

“Hardly. You’ve been exercising a lot.”

“It’s a normal amount. I see all the same people–”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Doctors think it’s good to exercise.”

“You never have energy at bedtime.”

“There’s just so much to do.”

“Do you think you’re overdoing it with the organizing?”

“‘I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect…’”

“I know what the scripture teaches. And Joseph Smith: ‘The lawful association of the sexes is ordained of God.’”

“We ‘associated’ recently,” I ducked toward the dining room to see the boys still focused on their work.

“Really? When?”

The answer eluded me. Clint shook his head and stepped back.

“Tonight, Darcy. Tonight.”

These things can only be delayed for so long. To get in the mood, I took another Valium and scrolled CleanTok. The musicality of the videos, whooshing scrubs and chiming sparkles, calmed me. In real life, the picture never came together so neatly. When Clint reached for me later beneath the duvet, I tried to imagine my spin instructor Rainey instead, but I knew we would fit together, our bodies aligned in all the right places. Our union would feel like melting together into a puddle of ease. She wouldn’t have sandpaper for a jaw or the woodsy scent of men’s soap in her armpits. I would lap her up and never feel my thirst satisfied.

“Oh yeah,” Clint bucked from above.

At least when he was done, I’d bought myself some more time. I turned away to face the sliver of a window past my nightstand. In Millcreek, a light snow was falling. I saw the flakes illuminated under the yellow glow of a street light in our cul-de-sac, falling into place one by one.

*

I mapped my life around small pleasures then. In the mornings after Clint had left for work and the Tasmanian forces of both boys had been shipped off to school, I felt lightened—no more cacophonous cartoons and stink of boy socks. In the quiet, I could imagine I was anyone. After I dropped Trevor and Ryan off, I would point my car towards the mountains and pretend I was never coming back. Then at the last moment, I always pulled into Swig.

The building stood alone on its lot like a gas station, with eaves that jutted out over the walls of the building to shelter grabby hands and plastic cups of uniquely American proportions. Usually by the 7:30 a.m. open time, a parade of cars had already snaked around the building to form a dull crawl: moms after drop off mainly, a few husbands bound for work. I joined the queue. A sharp chill gusted in through the open windows in my car. I didn’t mind it. Cold, for all its impractical downsides, offered a jolt of feeling I didn’t get to experience very often. I liked the sensation of a flush in my face, daggers of ice poking up through the ends of my sleeves. It would be so easy to choose the simple path–warmth and ease. That’s the deadliest slippery slope: comfort.

I ordered my favorite dirty soda, Spring Fling. All the best were Dr. Pepper-based. This one featured a strawberry puree, vanilla and coconut cream. The carbonation prickled my throat and the creaminess soothed it. When the attendant passed my beverage through the service window, the rattling of the ice in the plastic cup set me in a Pavlovian state, salivating for the peppery sweet flavor. I allowed myself this daily indulgence. Then I would begin my rounds.

If I had special errands to run, I tried to do them right away. Difficult things first, when I had the counterbalancing effect of my treat, and then my smoother tasks. Today, I only had to pick up some hockey equipment for Ryan. Then Target. I never lingered too long. My mission was straightforward: achieve maximum organization and cleanliness for my family. All the right snacks, all the right tools. I wanted our home to be perfect for them, as perfect as it could be, I mean. I wore a hat and sunglasses to signal my focus to passersby. Still, they didn’t always interpret my image the way I’d like. On this day, I got accosted in the frozen dinner aisle.

“Darcy, is that you?” It was the mother of a girl in Trevor’s class. “I can still recognize you under those giant shades! You always look so chic.”

“Oh gosh, guilty.”

“Are you still doing that biking class?” She sized me up over her cartload of frozen chicken tenders and packages of caffeine-free cola. “I have to say, I tried one and I just don’t know how you do it!”

Obviously not, I agreed, taking in her apple-shaped outline. She possessed the body of one built for bake sales and community breakfasts. “That’s nice,” I said, to fill the space.

“Oh my, you’ll never believe what’s happened,” she leaned over her cart conspiratorially. “There’s a new family in Elk Lodge–they’ve put their child in my Lakelyn’s class. They live an–” she checked the aisle behind her and finding the coast clear, continued. “Alternative lifestyle. I don’t know how this happens. I mean obviously the HOA can’t stop it, but gosh, it’s not supposed to be like this.”

Mothers gave me this kind of information for one reason only. They wanted me to tell Clint, and for Clint to tell his father, an LDS elder, who might be able to do something about it. “The kid’s name is Sadie. S-A-D-I-E.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to talk to Clint,” I said. “Alternative lifestyle” described a range of choices, like mixed race marriages, nose piercings and being a Democrat. At the end of the frozen food aisle, a display beckoned with new fabric covered boxes, and baskets lined in the same material. Just what I needed for the mudroom.

“If you don’t mind,” I said, and pushed off toward the back of the store.

*

 The next morning, I made sandwiches for the boys to pack into their colorful lunch boxes, beside packets of fruit chips and juice boxes. They were like two alien beings to me, so removed from my own sense of self. I worried exposing too much of myself to them might risk contaminating their world with my flaws. Aloofness seemed the safer path. Normally, the routine of these morning tasks could ward off unwanted thoughts, but the shadow of Brianna haunted my morning like a specter, try as I might to waive it away.

I tried to reconcile the new version of her, relaxed and steady, with my earlier memories, in which she slumped and dropped her gaze and I was the one to walk away. We were freshmen then. Thinking about college sometimes brought me back to orientation at BYU. At the end of the first day, proctors handed out booklets printed with the honor code. Nothing in it was new to me but reading it in the air conditioned lecture hall, an old line gave me a nervous chill: living a chaste and virtuous life includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior. At the time, I didn’t know for certain what I felt in the presence of particular women, though yes, I could only deny for so long that humping a pillow while thinking of them might not be God-honoring behavior. It had been so easy to resist the desire of men that I hardly felt myself capable of such sins. For all my life, men and boys had been the threat to our virtue. I never considered a different risk. On that day, I thought of Brianna, my dark-haired roommate, with a jolt that frightened me. I realized something about myself.

I still think about that line often: living a chaste and virtuous life.

In exchange for my chaste and virtuous life, I would never be as close to anyone as I’d been to her. That spring, we would lie in one of our twin beds, touching nose to nose, as I inhaled the perfume of her skin, the scent of what spilled from our bodies onto the sheets. We had three months like that, still raw in our new love. We never knew for certain what gave it away, but when they brought us before the honor council, Brianna wouldn’t back down. She tried to tell me I could live with her family, they would understand. We could make a new plan, that sort of thing. In the end, only I did what the council wanted. And my family agreed to overlook the episode after I completed an education program.

“Mommy! The turn!” Ryan chirped in the back seat as I sped past the school.

“Sorry, my love,” I corrected our course. I could do the right thing, though it seemed to come at a cost, to split my focus in two.

*

“What would you say is driving the urge to clean and exercise so much?” My therapist asked me. She took our sessions sitting at a laptop in her home office, somewhere in Moab, the camera pointing up at her bespectacled face so that her jaw line distorted to appear much larger than it was. Behind her stood a bookshelf lined with decades of self-help and pop-psychology tomes from the best seller list.

“Probably dirtiness and need to exercise-i-ness,” I explained. “When I’m spent I can quiet my thoughts. I can soften the drone of the world around me, enough to focus, enough to be present for my children and my husband.”

“Would they say that you’re ‘present?’”

“I think they would.” My psychiatrist wouldn’t sign off on my script unless I attended these sessions. Participating also allowed me to bank brownie points with Clint. The lie of my answer hung between us like a thick fog, obvious and inscrutable, at the same time. The point of the whole dance was to secure my Valium refill and keep going.

“In the past you’ve mentioned these behaviors beginning in college. Have you thought more about what was going on at that time in your life?”

“My roommate got expelled,” I said.

“You haven’t mentioned that before,” she fidgeted with her glasses and looked down at her notes, which she wrote in long hand on a legal pad. “Were you two close?”

“Not really.”

“What did she do?”

“It was a morality violation–sexual deviance,” I studied her reaction, watching to see how much I could say before she might suspect the truth.

“That must’ve been upsetting,” she offered these declarations to stir something in me and paused for my reaction.

“It is upsetting to see people fail to live a virtuous life, to give into their lesser urges.”

“Is that what she did?”

“Aren’t we at time?” I noticed the minute hand winding past our usual stopping point. “I have an appointment…”

We confirmed a session for the next week and I exited the call.

An urge to know more about Bri’s life overwhelmed me. I opened a private browser on my laptop and searched for her. I tried an Instagram page with a hyphenated surname, and there she was again, as I’d seen her in the parking lot. I thought of how her stride fell with smooth confidence—how different this woman was from the shy teen I had known. I felt sad that I ever doubted her boldness, thinking that she would go out into the world searching and not discover something positive in it, find the family she deserved: a wife and a daughter. “Our Sadie–” one of the captions her posts began. I closed the laptop shut.

In a bin below the sink, I stored my cleaning supplies. Yellow gloves, brushes and sponges for various needs. The right sprays for each area in the house. I got to work, polishing each surface, until all the dust and blemishes had been wiped away. I ironed Clint’s shirts, folded and stored the boys' laundry. I replenished the pantry. I made the home so neat, it would be difficult for a guest to determine if anyone lived there at all.

*

There was a calming force to the sounds of my routine. The pattern formed a current, allowing me to stay on course. The next day I didn’t miss the turn. I dropped the boys at school, watched them clamber up the stairs to the front door. Then the car fell silent. On this day, I had no extra errands. The mountains beckoned ahead on the road, and before them I turned into Swig and ordered the usual. The carbonation stung the back of my throat. It was addicting and slightly painful all at once. Like so many things in life.