#32: The Swim Team by Miranda July
Available: No One Belongs Here More Than You
Other stories (full text available): The Shared Patio, Birthmark
Miranda July came to me at a time when I was feeling especially fragile. It was a time when every noise was too loud and I kept finding myself behind people who seemed to have no idea where they were going. I wasn't sure of the antidote. I thought rather than honouring my desire to disconnect, I should connect more with people, feel their sadness, wonder what they were thinking about when they smiled on trains and in moments otherwise not noted in the great books of history.
And so, my decision made, I opened the door to reconnect...and along came Miranda July's The Swim Team to take me back to old emotions.
The Story
The narrator is a girl. She has broken up with her boyfriend. Their separation now complete, she tells him a story about what she used to do in Belvedere. Contrary to flights of fantasy, her life there was plain... except, that is, for her time heading up the swim team.
The swim team are three elderly people who visit her apartment to take swimming lessons. These are not normal swimming lessons, however. The narrator places bowls of water on the floor. The three elderly people (Elizabeth, Kelda, and Jack Jack) put their faces in the water. They kick and flail, and along the way they learn how to "swim" from the narrator, their coach.
Now, long after the event, she still finds meaning in these simple morning rituals. And somehow there is a relation between these lessons (or their current absence) and her running into her ex-boyfriend, arm in arm in a bookstore with a woman in a white coat.
Why it sticks
This is one of those weird stories. It reads like a dream that's frightening and comforting at the same time. Its dream logic means separation-anxiety melds effortlessly with the narrator's earlier feeling of belonging; of being needed.
The Swim Team works because it deals almost exclusively with the narrator's inner conflict. Were this a traditional kiss-off story, it would read like any one of a hundred stories about a break-up. July's genius lies in her ability to place a surreal image (in this case the elderly people "swimming" on the living room floor with their coach) within the context of longing, belonging, and the creeping feeling of death, be it literal or in an emotional context and thus create an original take on an often tackled subject.
