The Mountains: a short story

You only take baths during the fall, winter, and spring. The bath in your dad’s downtown New York apartment is from Restoration Hardware and has stupid little legs that are supposed to look Victorian, but they actually make the brand new tub look like it is trying to be something it is not. 

You sink into the tub slowly until even the crown of your head is submerged under the water. You have no particular interest in dying so you come up occasionally for air. You don’t enjoy this part, though, because a sudden rush of cold air hits your face sharply, and that makes your nose run. You like the space below the surface of the water because your primal instincts come out. The absence of a steady breath shocks your system so badly that the most essential absence to you is evoked. The absence of your thoughts matters most.

You only started taking these baths once you realized that being a woman is a rather difficult thing. The scalding hot water touches every part of your body, even the parts that you hate. The water hugs the pieces of yourself that you’d never hug, even if you could. Those moments in the bath allow your brain to take a break from constantly moving and even if it’s just for a nanosecond, that makes the minutes after the bath a bit more bearable. 

You stand up to shave your every inch of your skin and then you dry off, staring at your reflection for a long time. You think of the Victoria’s Secret billboard that you pass every day on your walk to school – the one of Gisele Bündchen in black lingerie – and pinch your stomach so hard that your skin turns whiter than you’ve ever seen it. 

You hate yourself for eating that bread yesterday, so you poke and pry at the cellulite on your upper thigh. It isn’t going to disappear by doing that, you realize. 

You pull yourself away from the mirror, repeating to yourself that you did nothing to deserve this cruel and unusual punishment. That you’re doing a good job, actually, because the creepy old man on the corner of Mulberry and Canal assures you every day that you could be a model, baby. At least to other people, you have nice skinny legs. 

You walk over to your vanity, which was also designed to look like an old Victorian thing. Your eyes tear up a little when you make eye contact with the Polaroid of your mother taped to the mirror. Never one to waste time, you move on and dip your three middle fingers into the large vat of airy, buttery, and grapefruity lotion sitting on the countertop. 

You slather yourself silly to make your skin as soft as a baby’s bottom even though you’re now seventeen. You secrete oils and sweat, but you can’t look like you do that. People have always said you’re such a beautiful girl and if your skin starts to get scaly then maybe they will stop saying that. Then you will hate your legs even more. 

You slip one leg at a time into your red lace underwear from H&M. You wonder if you will grow up to be a woman who wears La Perla, but for now, you wear these uncomfortable and itchy fabrics from H&M because you have been told before that you are so sexy. You are so sexy and that lace underwear is so sexy. You are so sexy that you pretend to not even care that your underwear rubs against your skin like it’s a cheese grater in some industrial kitchen. 

You never take baths in the summer. You don’t have the option but even if you did, you wouldn’t. Your summers are spent in The Mountains with your mother and her boyfriend Russ. That’s the only thing you’ve ever called it: The Mountains. In The Mountains, you are you and not that girl who needs to take baths to function. 

Also the fact that the people in The Mountains never leave helps. You don’t feel like they’re part of your real life (the life in which you are obsessive and compulsive and miserable). They’re just part of your magnificent summers. 

Most days you just tan and read. You sit on a white vinyl chair – the cheap type that folds out – on the front lawn. Your bare and stubbly legs stick to the woven plastic beneath you. Your ill-smelling sweat is like an adhesive that’s less potent than superglue, but stronger than school glue. 

Sometimes your shoulders are so uncomfortably emblazoned by the mid-July sun that after you take a swig of Minute Maid from a red Solo Cup you pour the sugary liquid right down your chest. The yellow stream moves quickly between your boobs because they are small. You’re extremely aware of this fact because the boy you lost your virginity to last winter told you that he would never be satisfied with the size of them. The Minute Maid runs underneath your yellow bikini top and the lemonade begins to pool in your belly button. You don’t care that your skin soon becomes sticky like sap or that your body is now attracting buzzing gnats. 

Your mom saved all of your now dumpy childhood clothes and you either wear those or an oversized shirt from Russ’s drawer when you’re not lounging in the yellow bikini. The only thing you’ve ever bought for yourself here with the pocket change Russ gives you is a pair of men's jeans from the Goodwill twelve minutes up Route Eight. You turned them into cut-offs and you wear them every day. Their once-white frayed hems have begun to yellow. 

You like the summer because it isn’t a secret to The Mountain People that you aren’t the beautiful bimbo that you so covet your peers in the city to believe that you are. You finally are not too exhausted to read and you tear through Sylvia Plath and Søren Kierkegaard. These books are treasures from the used bookstore – the pages are yellow and smell like they’ve lived 600 more lives than you ever will. You don’t care that the softened covers have ripping corners and fading words because you appreciate your mom buying you books.

You get good grades during the school year but you only tell your mom and Russ about them in the summer. Usually, the three of you talk about this at the breakfast nook in the kitchen. 

You don’t even realize that the light coming in from the screen door that spills onto the table is making you look beautiful, despite your imperfect skin and ratty hair, but your mom does. What’s really beautiful to her, though, is your mind. 

You tell them that you cried at the Kazimir Malevich show at the Guggenheim last November because the Soviets stopped him from continuing his great work. You sometimes wonder what it would be like if you had someone to share these things with during the fall, winter, or spring; maybe you’d strive for academic validation instead of whatever the baths serve as a band-aid for.  

You walk your mom’s dog, Charley, every morning because she works two jobs and Russ sleeps during the days because he gets home from work at half past three in the morning. Teddy, who does handy work in town, drives by you most mornings. He always says something positive about the weather and negative about needing to bust his ass another day. 

The Mountains are populated by full-time residents who take care of The Summer People and The Ski People’s complaints. You can’t lie to yourself and pretend that The Mountain People aren’t a little bit prejudiced to those who do not come from there, but they’re not prejudiced enough to turn anybody away. Even though you don’t come from there, you are accepted as a pseudo-Mountain Person. 

Everyone in town knows that you are the by-product of a blip in your mother’s life where she ran off with a handsome Ski Man. They wish they could make you their own all of the time, but they also recognize the strength of your father’s lawyer. You have always been surprised that he even got a custody lawyer for a daughter he has never cared much for, but you are also understanding of his addiction to winning, no matter the prize. 

This morning when you walk Charley, Teddy offers you a ride into town. You accept by pretending to need soap from the general store and ask if you guys could ride in silence to make the most of Pink Floyd. You actually just want to leave your head and observe the world outside of yourself, though. You crack open the window that looks like it has not been washed in a decade and look out of it. You realize that the colors of The Mountains are the most luxurious parts of them. 

The tangerine trees whizz past the car and as you admire the various shades of yellows and oranges and the vibrant green of the leaves attached to them, you wonder how many people in this town have been hit in the head by one of the small fruits, just by chance. You see blurry mounds of people and realize that the overwhelming number of pairs of jeans in the town are balanced out by their underwhelming hues of blue, thanks to their years of repetitive service. 

Teddy screeches the truck to a halt in front of the store and tells you that you’re a good one, kid. You’re a smart one too. It’s a wonder Melinda doesn’t brag about you more than she already does! Ha ha. You thank him for the ride but have trouble making eye contact. As you stare at your chipping, magenta-painted toes in your disintegrating flip-flops, you begin to weep the hardest you have since childhood.