We Should Not Be Friends, page 23
“Hey, Maxey, are you going to do something about that ugly gash on your leg?” I asked him. “It looks horrific.”
“Nah, it’ll be okay. It’s healing nicely.”
“Thanks for trying, Will,” Pam shouted from the kitchen. “But good luck convincing him. He’ll let it get gangrenous before he’ll agree to see a doctor or take a pill.”
* * *
—
That afternoon we headed over to the school to join the end-of-day ritual. All the students were in a circle around the flagpole, mostly boys on one side and girls on the other, but with some overlap. This was the moment the kids often gave kudos to one another. One girl said of a schoolmate, “She wasn’t feeling well but still helped everyone out today.”
I’d been worried we were going to have to all hold hands—another thing I don’t like—but that wasn’t part of the program.
Back at the house, Pam was making coffee. I grabbed a mug and settled into the rattan sofa as the Maxey family life swirled around me.
Tyler needed to get some lionfish for a science demonstration at the school. These spiny, venomous creatures weren’t native to the Bahamas and were posing a threat to the local marine life. The question was how to halt the spread of this invasive fish; one popular approach sought to introduce them onto menus. Humans were capable of overfishing every kind of popular seafood to the point of extinction; why not lionfish in this particular locale? Ironically, Tyler hadn’t been able to find any that day. Tegan was in between calls back to her Brooklyn start-up; she had some ideas for locating lionfish that Tyler took to be criticisms. Soon they were in a full-fledged quarrel, shouting barbs and obscenities at maximum volume. Pam tried to calm the waters, which caused both Tyler and Tegan to lash out at their mother.
During all of his, Maxey stood silently, leaning against a wall for balance. He’d told me that day he was still almost constantly dizzy—on land. But he was smiling. I wondered how long I could live in such a boisterous house, but it was a pleasant change from the winter quiet of my New York refuge.
“Any regrets about not having children, Schwalbs?” Maxey asked me. I laughed but said nothing. “I didn’t think so,” he added.
After a family dinner of pasta and spiny lobster, Maxey and I wound up sitting on the dock. Pam had admissions work to do for the school.
From my spot near the door I could hear the sisters in the kitchen.
Tegan: “You can’t stay mad at me, can you, Tyler?”
Tyler: “No, I really can’t.”
Tegan: “And do you know the reason why?”
Tyler: “I don’t.”
Tegan: “Because I’m the best little sister ever!”
They came out, arms around each other’s shoulders, and announced they were heading over to the school to hang out with some of the young faculty.
“Seriously, Maxey,” I said when they were out of earshot, “don’t you worry about them all the time?” One of the reasons David and I didn’t regret not having children was because we couldn’t imagine having to be responsible for other humans for life.
“Of course, all the time. Never not. I worry about all of my kids.”
“And you’re also in charge of other people’s kids. And the young faculty.”
“Yeah, in loco parentis. You want to treat them like your own children but go even one step further. Still, kids need a little constructive risk to help them become resilient and teach them to judge danger for themselves.
“Like the forty-eight-hour solos we have the students do during the sea kayak expeditions. One of the highlights of the school term for these students is the solo.” Maxey had explained the solos in his long letter about Andy, the gay student who had initially hated him, but I let him tell me again; I didn’t remember exactly how they worked. “We leave each student alone on a patch of beach all by themselves. They have to create their own shelter and entertainment, and just deal with being alone for two whole days. The amazing thing is they all learn they have resources they never thought they had. Of course, we’ve got a system for checking to make sure they are okay and some strong emergency procedures in place. But most of the time they truly are alone. For many of them, the solo is the first time in their entire lives they’ve ever been totally by themselves for more than a few hours.
“And it’s not just the solos. The rule we have about phones helps make them more resilient, too. The rule is simple: We take their phones the minute they get here and they don’t get them back until they leave, one hundred days later. We do let them call home once a week, from a landline in the office. Separating them from their smartphones also helps them be present with all the other students—and with themselves.”
I thought of my own smartphone and how much I relied on it. I was good about putting it away when with others and being present with those around me, sure. But was I spending too much time on it when I was alone? Without a doubt.
“That’s also why querencia is key. It’s not just training for the solo. Though it is that. And it’s not just a life skill. Though it’s that, too. It’s one of the most important things they discover. Young people come here thinking the most important thing they are going to learn will be diving, or studying marine biology, or doing research. None of those are. The whole Island School is about learning to be present where you are, and to appreciate not just this special place but every place—the whole planet.”
I was going to tease Maxey or tune out, as I’d often done when he started to wax philosophical, but decided not to this time. Maybe that was because I was finally ready to listen. After he finished, we sat for a while in quiet. There was a huge moon that night casting shadows from the boats moored around the dock onto the water. In the distance ahead, at the mouth of the cove, was the Harbour Pointe Restaurant, whose lights seemed to dim as they were outshone from above before they were turned off for good.
“So, remind me about this querencia thing,” I asked Maxey.
“I’ve explained it before,” Maxey said.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t listening.”
“You sure you want to hear this, Schwalbs?”
“I’m sure.”
“I told you that all the students, before they arrive, read The Rediscovery of North America by Barry Lopez. It’s a book about the way Columbus and the Spanish conquistadores slaughtered the Indigenous people and destroyed everything they touched in their hunt for gold. It was actually a talk Lopez gave. A call to arms. It’s about how we’re doing the same thing to our planet right now. It’s a short read and great for students because it’s honest and painful, but it’s hopeful. It’s written out of the belief that we really can turn this around. Near the end of the book, Lopez introduces the idea of querencia, a physical place. The word is derived from the Spanish verb querer, to desire. Lopez wants to instill in his readers the idea of loving a physical place—not superficially but with a deep and emotional attachment, as well as a concentrated sense of anger. I first found the word in a book by Hemingway, who defined the querencia the way Lopez does: as the place where a bull in a bullring goes to make a final stand. It’s a place of courage and comfort and resolve.
“We begin the first morning of each new term lying on the beach in a circle, close together so that our shoulders are touching. We just lie there for a while, on the sand, looking up at the sky. We want the students to wonder about this place, the kind of wonder that was totally natural to them when they were all five years old. There’s a quote I love from a marine biologist named Edie Widder; I can’t remember it exactly, but she says that we’re all born scientists with innate curiosity to touch, smell, and even eat the new substrate that comes into view.” I made a mental note to ask Maxey what substrate was but didn’t want to interrupt. “It’s amazing to see teenagers who have lost contact with their five-year-old selves let down their guard and be curious again. We want to bring them back to that magic age of exploration.
“And on that first morning we tell them to pour sand over their faces, to smell and even taste this new land. That’s what Lopez asks to us do. To rediscover this land, to become intimate with it, to fall in love. We then tell them that while they are at the school, we want them to spend time alone, and explore the seascape around the campus. And that’s why we challenge each of them to find a place to be alone, to find their own querencia, a special place all their own where they can go and gain comfort, find solitude, and explore in real time the intimate beauty of this place and find their best selves.
“While they’re here, they live twelve students to a dorm, sharing one big room, so querencia is also a chance to get away from the others for a bit. That’s why every week includes three hours of querencia time. We give them some assignments for that time over the course of the term, but very few. Mostly it’s just time for them to be there with their own thoughts.”
All of the Maxeys have the same tattoo. Two numbers. The longitude and latitude of the island of Eleuthera. Their family home. Their querencia. I started to wonder if I had a querencia. I’d always found solace and strength in books. Books were a querencia of sorts. But books also took me out of the physical place I happened to be and brought me somewhere else. If that night I’d gone to bed early with a book, I wouldn’t now be sitting on the dock with Maxey, and I’d never have seen this night’s moon, water, boats, and lights. I wouldn’t have heard what my friend had to say. It wasn’t a choice: books or life. Still, I started to wonder: Had I too often retreated into the former instead of engaging with the latter?
I thought about how Maxey and I had started on such different paths. His talents were physical, and he loved to compete. His whole life had steered him toward other people: only around them could he be peak Maxey. He’d also lost a third of his family as a child, only later finding the clan he craved. I was a kid who’d lived largely inside my head, scared of spending too much time with others in case they got to know the part of me I felt I couldn’t reveal. So I hid in plain sight, spending endless hours with others but only comfortable in my room, alone, or with one or two carefully chosen friends. Then, just a few years after I came out, being with people took on a whole new cast when sex began to equal death. Nothing was safer than a book.
One of the best things about books is that they are always there for you; they will forgive you endless amounts of neglect and still be ready to greet you, unchanged. I will always love books, but, in that moment, I thought that maybe, sometimes, I could keep them waiting for me a bit longer. That’s the thing about a true querencia, I realized: the knowledge that it’s always there if you need it allows you to go out bravely into the world.
Maxey had managed to control his coughing for a while but then it started up again. At that moment, a toddler from one of the nearby houses, up way past his bedtime, shot past us on the dock, with his mother laughing and running after him. I thought of the dog Jag and his close call with the sharks but the small hellion was quickly scooped up and brought laughing back to his home.
It had been a long day, and my feet were burning from the neuropathy. I was starting to think it was time for a fistful of gabapentin to literally calm my nerves.
Maxey had his eyes closed.
“Tired or dizzy?” I asked him.
“Dizzy, I guess,” he said. “I’ve been dizzy pretty constantly since the operation. It’s not getting better but I’m getting better at living with it.” He’d said that before. It was almost like a mantra, I realized. The more he said it, the more it would be true.
“Do you think your dizziness might also have something to do with the enormous, festering gash on your leg?” I asked him. “Or the fact that you sound like you belong in a tubercular ward?”
“Don’t you get on my case, too, Schwalbs.” And then, “I wonder if it would help if I poured some rum on it?”
At that moment, Pam came out to join us. “Please don’t waste the good rum,” she said.
When Maxey went in to take a leak, I asked Pam if Maxey could be convinced to see a doctor for that leg. “Not a chance,” she said.
“One thing I’ve always wondered,” I asked her. “Is Maxey different with his SEAL friends? I mean, I’ve never met any of them. I’ve always kind of wondered if the Maxey I know is the same as the Maxey other people know.”
Pam paused for a second before answering. “You know, I think for better or worse he’s pretty much the same around everyone. He might be a little more thoughtful around you.” Then she had a question for me: “Are you the same around Maxey as you are around your other friends?”
I thought about that for a moment. “I didn’t used to be, but I think more and more I am. But maybe I’m a bit more butch around Maxey. Just a bit.” Pam laughed.
Soon, Maxey was back.
“Hey, I left a book for you by your bed,” Maxey told me. “Some bedtime reading. But don’t read too long. Tomorrow I teach you to free dive.”
When I got back to my room, I saw perched on the top of my suitcase a well-worn copy of The Rediscovery of North America by Barry Lopez. I started reading and didn’t stop.
“We cannot, with Huck Finn and Mark Twain, light out for the territory anymore, to a place where we might continue to live without parental restraint. We need to find our home. We need to find a place where we take on the responsibilities of adults to the human community. Having seen what is going on around us, we need to find, each person, his or her querencia, and to believe it is not a matador in a bullring we face, a rigged game, but an assailable beast, another in our history like Tamerlane or the Black Death.”
This, I realized, wasn’t just a book Maxey had students read before they arrived to introduce them to the school’s values; it was a text that had given Maxey the language and the insight he needed to settle in this place, to find stillness here, and to face whatever demons were challenging him from outside and from within. Pages later, I came to a passage in the book that connected our querencias: “If we feel wisdom is lost, we need only enter a library. We will find there the records of hundreds of men and women who believed in a world larger than the one defined by each generation by human failing. We will find literature, which teaches us again and again how to imagine.”
In a sense, this book didn’t just help Maxey find his querencia; it was an essential part of it. Our paths weren’t so different, after all. If he could find himself in my element, books, then maybe I could find myself in his: the water.
Before drifting off to sleep, I also wondered whether Maxey was using the book to introduce me to his much larger quest: to not only find his place in the world but do his part to save it.
DIVING
Maybe it was the humidity, maybe the change in temperature, maybe the flying, but for no reason I could entirely decipher, my neuropathy was particularly intense and my feet felt like they were on fire that whole night. Which made it almost impossible to sleep.
I also felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety and doom, and each time I did nod off, it was only to wake up soon afterwards from nightmare after nightmare—none that I had ever had before but more garden-variety ones that involved monsters and the like. I couldn’t figure out the source of my terror—unless it was that I really didn’t want to learn how to free dive.
Maxey had suggested I watch some videos about free diving before I visited, which I had eventually done. Before that, I had thought free diving was just holding your breath, hanging out underwater for a while, and then coming up for air. But no. There was a whole complicated breathing procedure and you had to learn to clear your ears and sinuses. Then you had to try to trigger your “mammalian diving reflex,” whatever that was—something about slowing your heartbeat way down. Then there was a series of complex instructions about resurfacing and what you did right after. Get any of it wrong and you could black out and die.
The last time I looked at the clock that night, it was five thirty in the morning. The next thing I remember was hearing a crash in the kitchen right outside the door to my bedroom. I looked at the clock again. Unbearably, it was only ninety minutes later. I threw on some jeans and headed out to see what had caused the commotion.
Maxey was making coffee. Nothing seemed broken. Nothing even seemed like it had been dropped. I sympathized with Pam. How could anyone make that much noise making coffee?
Maxey poured me a cup. It had a strong cinnamon flavor. Not bad. He then took a seat at the kitchen table, which looked out over the dock, the boats, the marina, and the neighbors. I started talking to him but he ignored me, which is when I remembered that I was on his deaf side. I came around and sat next to his good ear.
“Doesn’t it bug you to live in a fishbowl?” I asked him.
“It’s not a fishbowl,” he replied. Just then, one of his neighbors walked by and waved at both of us. Maxey motioned him in and they chatted for a bit before the neighbor went on his way. Maxey laughed. “Well, maybe it is kind of a fishbowl.”
“I mean, not just your home,” I clarified, picking up a theme from our discussion the night before. “You’re always surrounded: family, friends, students, teachers, scientists, neighbors. I couldn’t do it. I need quiet time. Lots of quiet time. Otherwise, I turn feral.”
“I don’t believe you turn feral. I’ve never seen you turn feral.”
“You haven’t seen me when I didn’t get time to myself.”
