Swimming Sweet Arrow (19 page)

“You all right, Vangie?”

He waited there in the half-light for me to answer, but I didn’t say anything. When he leaned down to kiss me, I didn’t move.

“I gotta go,” he said.

After I heard his car pull away, I still stayed in bed. I heard the cardinal call, and I lay listening to that. My vagina felt swollen from all the fucking, and there was a little raw place just inside my lips, right by the opening. After we made it upstairs to the bedroom, Del shoved the dildo and his cock into my vagina at the same time, and I figured that’s what made the raw place. He’d fucked me in the cunt and ass and mouth and back again, and I had the smell of everything on me and in me. I brushed my teeth in the middle of the night, but I let everything else sit until morning.

So I made myself get up, and I made myself take a bath. I washed inside myself with watery fingers. After I got out of the tub, I put hydrogen peroxide on my breasts. Pieces of me burned, but that was better. At least I felt clean.

BY THE
time Del came home from work, I had myself packed and my bags loaded in the truck. I didn’t leave when he was working. I wasn’t a coward.

When he saw me standing beside my truck with all my shit piled in it, he looked as surprised as anyone who didn’t know a thing was wrong. He said, “What the hell, Vangie, what the hell?”

“I can’t do it anymore.”

“What are you talking about? What can’t you do?”

“This,” I said, and motioned to the house. “Us.”

“You can pour the vodka down the drain. I’ll get back on track.”

“That’s not it.”

“What is it? Is it the pills?”

“It’s not just the pills.”

“Then what the hell?”

I didn’t feel like saying the word
dildo
in the daylight, and I didn’t feel like saying,
I don’t like the taste of my own shit.
He’d put his cock in my mouth after fucking me in the ass last night, but he probably didn’t even remember doing it. So I told Del the one thing I knew to say, that I remembered from the day my mom left my dad.

I said, “It is never just one thing.”

I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled my bra over to show him the new black places on my breasts, the ones he bit into me when we were on the sofa. He’d broken the skin twice, and those places were the sorest. I had little bandages on them over the breaks in the skin, but there was still plenty of black blood showing through my skin.

“I don’t need such beautiful bruises,” I said.

“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”

“I know,” I said. “Intentionally you love me.”

It went on a while longer, but there’s no point in repeating the words. Just as I was getting into the truck, though, Del said one thing that, while it did not change what was happening at that moment, changed everything that had happened before —all of our time together.

“I knew you fucked him, Vangie,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. It never did.”

For a second I thought he was talking about Kevin Keel, and then I realized it was not the latest lie he was talking about but the old one.

“Frank told me that night,” Del said. “He couldn’t wait to tell me.”

I let his words sink in. They wrapped themselves in my hair and fell tingling and burning on my skin.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?”

“What was there to say? It was done.”

“Didn’t it bother you?”

“Sure it bothered me. Then I didn’t care.”

“You didn’t care at all?”

“I didn’t know why you did it,” Del said. “But I knew I didn’t want it to matter. It didn’t change anything between you and me.”

By the way he said it, I could tell he believed it. And maybe it hadn’t mattered. Maybe he loved me exactly the way he would have loved me even if I hadn’t fucked Frank. Maybe Frank wasn’t the reason Del bit black bruises into my skin. Maybe Del really didn’t care that I was the biggest liar that walked the earth. And maybe Del was just trying to give me what he thought I wanted when he shoved his cock and
dildo up inside me at the same time: two cocks. I didn’t know.

“It happened one time, Vangie. It wasn’t like June and Ray.”

“No, it wasn’t like June and Ray,” I said, but all I had to do was look at Del’s face to see the truth. That was my piece of the devastation.

“If I could, I would take it all back, Del. I would never hurt you like that.”

“Right,” he said, and looked away. Then he shook his head and looked back at me.

“I thought,” he said, “that we were really working on something here.”

“I thought, too. I just don’t know what.”

I was crying by then, and so was he.

“And you don’t think a kid would change that,” he said.

“I don’t think a baby would change that.”

I didn’t know anymore why I was leaving, but I couldn’t make myself want to stay. There was a huge difference between those two things, though, and I knew it. I had to know. My life depended on it.

29

O
F
course there was no phone hooked up in the kitchenette anymore, so I drove into town to use the pay phone at the gas station. I could have gone to my dad’s to make a call, but this was one I had to make from the privacy of the street. I had a fistful of change, and my hand was shaking as I dumped in the coins. I didn’t call collect.

“It’s me, Vangie,” I said when my mom picked up. Besides my dad, she was the one other person I was bound to. No one else was left.

“It’s your long-lost daughter,” I said.

“Your long-lost mother is more like it. I haven’t been very good about keeping in touch. How are you, honey?”

“I’m doing all right,” I said. “I can’t talk long. I just wanted to call and say I’m single again. Del and I broke up.”

“Oh Evangeline,” my mom said then. But I give her credit. She didn’t try to sound wise or make me feel better.

“I’m sorry, honey. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly. I just wanted to let you know where I was. I’ll be at the apartment for a while.”

“Well, I appreciate the phone call. I like to hear from you.”

“It goes both ways,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m always fine,” my mom said. Then she went, “Be careful, Vangie. You don’t want to have a life like mine.”

I said, “I don’t know whose life I want to have.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me more about what happened, honey?”

“It wasn’t just one thing, Ma. I can’t talk about it.”

“I understand.”

That was all. There were other things I could have told her—about Del, about Kevin Keel. Even some things about June. But it wasn’t really my mom I wanted to tell those things to.

It took three weeks for that set of bruises to disappear. Like any scar, they told a story. They embarrassed me, but I was sorry to see them fade.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to:

Nicole and Sarah, for taking a chance; David, for the photograph; Mary, for always picking up; Loyda, for the cabin; Jim, for taking time at Iowa and years after; Tom, for all the sword-fish dinners on the terrace; Lynn, for chai and proofing; Richard, for being an early, enthusiastic reader; Melodee, for introducing me to Blue (and the dump); Jeff, for enduring.

Swimming Sweet Arrow

by Maureen Gibbon

A READING GROUP GUIDE

“Here is what they never tell you about being a girl.”

A Conversation with Maureen Gibbon

An obvious component of
Swimming Sweet Arrow
is the explicit sexuality. What did you hope to achieve through this explicitness?

I think many women have the sexual feelings and experiences that my protagonist Vangie has, but those things aren’t always discussed openly. That’s part of what the sentence “Here is what they never tell you about being a girl” is about. I didn’t want things to stay polite in this story, so I pushed myself to let Vangie say things that were hard to say. I wanted her to be able to speak bluntly and specifically about the things that compel her. The result is sometimes raw. Sex isn’t the only thing Vangie is explicit about, though. She’s also explicit in the ways she describes her jobs—carrying chickens, waiting tables, and picking pears. All of her jobs are very physical, and I hope those descriptions are no less vivid or detailed.

Your book invites the reader into the bedroom (or backseat) of the main character, and it almost demands a kind of intimacy on the part of the reader. What kinds of reactions have you gotten?

That the book is daring. That the sex is enthusiastic, and that there is a joyousness in the frankness of it all. A couple people have read it all at one sitting. All kinds of things.

Did you feel that you had crossed over some kind of line in writing so explicitly?

Sure, I often felt I crossed the line. A few places in the book are still hard for me to look at. But once I started being that direct and specific, it was hard to be anything but that. Vangie’s voice became the standard.

You commented earlier on Vangie’s jobs, all of which you write about very knowledgeably. Have you worked as a waitress, pear picker, or chicken carrier?

I did all those jobs as I was growing up. They all made a very strong impression on me, and I’ve never been able to forget them. It makes sense to me, because when you learn a job, you take in a lot of information that you need to know, and if the job involves any manual work, you take in information with your body, too. My body remembers picking pears, carrying chickens, waitressing. It also remembers the very visceral details of those workplaces. I like to write about work because I like to describe the actions and processes of it, and how the person moves through the work. There’s a lot of beauty in it to me, even if it’s a bad or taxing job. I’ve also worked as a church secretary and as a change girl in a casino, but I haven’t written about those jobs yet.

Of Vangie’s jobs, which was your personal favorite?

Picking pears was the hardest but the most beautiful because of the green fruit and trees. Carrying chickens was not
as bad as you’d assume it to be, in spite of the chicken shit. Waitressing produced the greatest number of nightmares and feelings of dread, but I remember that job best of all and feel some strange sort of love for its details. I still have one of my old green “Guest Check” pads.

Do you believe it enriches a writer’s work to have those kinds of jobs?

Many American writers have thought that for a long time, and I respect and embrace the tradition. Yet I say that from a position of luxury, because I don’t have to do those jobs now to earn a living. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t gone on to college and moved into the wider world. I don’t know if I would be calling those jobs enriching then.

There are tremendously deep friendships in
Swimming Sweet Arrow—
and tremendous betrayals. Can you talk about those themes of friendship and fidelity?

I didn’t think about themes as I was writing, but you’re right, there are certainly deep betrayals between different characters. The question makes me think of a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva where she writes about how sometimes, when we are being utterly faithless to others, we are being true to ourselves. I believe that. At the same time, you don’t want just to go around damaging people, or acting wholly out of self-interest. That’s no life either. I’d say that Vangie
has awareness of that distinction. And she knows herself, or is trying to know herself and the behavior of which she’s capable.

Any plans for a second book?

Absolutely. I’m in the gathering stage right now, letting voices and images come and go. I can’t say more than that. It’s good to be at this place. I don’t want to jinx it.

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. What are the forces that, in the absence of parental or other adult guidance, help Vangie determine the kind of person she wants to be? What fuels her frustration when, at the end of the novel, she tells her mother, “I don’t know whose life I want to have”?
   
2. None of Vangie’s jobs is very enviable, but she derives a strong sense of self and purpose from them. Why? What do Vangie’s jobs teach her about the world? About herself? Why is the most physically demanding job—picking pears—described in almost poetic terms?
   
3. Maureen Gibbon’s writing has been likened to that of Kate Chopin, Anaïs Nin, and Colette because of its frank exploration of female sexuality. What do Vangie and June have in common with the characters created by Chopin, Colette, and Nin? Why do you think sexually forthright women characters in fiction continue to cause such a stir?
   
4. At the beginning of
   Chapter 2
   , Vangie states that there is a great deal “they never tell you about being a girl.” How does this lack of information affect Vangie? Can Vangie gain the knowledge she seeks through means other than hard experience? Do girls today confront a comparable lack of access to information?
   
5. When Vangie reflects on June’s involvement with two brothers, she states that “none of us did anything for long unless we wanted to.” What is Vangie saying here about choice? About self-knowledge? Are there other instances in the novel where Vangie seems to struggle to understand herself or her own role in an event?
   
6. What is the significance of Vangie’s dream of the owl at the end of chapter 17? How does her experience of this dream contrast with Del’s interpretation of the dream in chapter 24? Why does Vangie reject the religious devotion that seems to bring Del such comfort?
   
7. Del makes a valiant effort to rehabilitate himself after his overdose and seems to cleave to the principles of a twelve-step program. What undermines his efforts to change?
   
8. How would you characterize the relationship between Vangie and June? Why does Vangie turn away from June at the end of the book, at a moment when her friendship would have probably been particularly important to June? What does Vangie mean in chapter 25 when she says, “I could not keep letting [June] touch me”?
   
9. After tremendous intimacy and friendship, Del and June are still “strangers” to Vangie, “all the more strange because I loved them,” she says. What is Vangie saying here about the nature of love?
   
10. Although Vangie makes numerous missteps over the course of the novel, she also takes certain steps to expand her world and to increase the number of choices she has. Identify some of those steps. Is Vangie a character who is bound to be determined by her environment, or are there hints that she will go beyond the limited world of Mahanaqua?
    
11. The characters in
    Swimming Sweet Arrow
    seem to talk more easily about explicit sexual acts than about virtually anything else. While the physicality of the sex in the novel cannot be denied, how does sex also serve as a metaphor in
    Swimming Sweet Arrow?
    
12. What is the role of the water imagery in the novel? Besides the title, where else does it occur?
    
13. Why is it important to Vangie to tell this story? Why does she struggle until she can say, “There. Now it is all written down”?