Free American Purgatorio by John Haskell

into the water, and then, feet first, arms flailing, he jumped into the water. He splashed and hooted from the middle of the pond, and although the water was obviously cold, he seemed to be enjoying it.
    I stayed rooted where I was, dressed and warm, and when he climbed out of the water with a huge smile on his face I made a point of looking away. Birds may have been singing peacefully in the trees but I wasn’t listening.
    â€œIt’s not that bad,” he said.
    I made some disparaging face.
    â€œIt’s only cold in comparison to out here,” he said.
    â€œWhich is where I am,” I said. “Out here.” I told him I was perfectly fine.
    â€œIf that’s what you think you need,” he said, and he walked again to the edge of the bank and again he jumped into the water. I watched him breaststroking his way across the pond.
    I’d been fairly successful at protecting myself, and the reason I decided at that moment to step out of the skin of that protection was … I don’t know what it was, but I took my clothes off. I stood naked on the grassy bank. Alex yelled to me to jump, and I was trying to get ready to do that. “Jump,” he said, but there was the thought of the freezing water and the warmth I’d be giving up. That was on one side. On the other was something in me, something I needed to cleanse myself of, and I thought … or rather, for a moment I didn’t think. I just jumped.
    Actually I dove. He’d said it was deep enough so I dove in, head first. And it was freezing. He said it wasn’t that bad, but it was that bad. I also started hooting. We were both kicking furiously to adjust to the cold or to counteract the cold, but I think the fact that it was freezing, the fact that the cold itself cleared away all other thoughts and sensations, made us happy. I say we were happy because both of us were smiling.
    I stayed in only a few seconds, and then we were both on the bank, running in place and flapping our arms to keep warm. We were two naked hyperventilating apes, laughing at the exhilaration of pure sensation. When our thoughts, slowly, started coming back we put on our pants. I was drying myself with my T-shirt when Alex, apropos of nothing apparent, turned to me. He was shivering and he looked at me, and he waited until I looked directly at him. We stopped running in place.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said.
    I could see the goose bumps covering his body. I nodded.
    We were face-to-face in a way we hadn’t been able to be in the car, and why at that moment I don’t know, but that’s when it hit me. Anne. The fear of losing her. I don’t know if Alex saw the fear, but I know that I was feeling it. That I would never see Anne again. That my life, and everything I’d based my life on, had gone. That I’d never get it back. And at this point, something in me started welling up—and it didn’t matter about Alex. I was staring into his face but I wasn’t seeing him or thinking about him.
    The thing I’d been successfully holding in me, or keeping out of me, was gathering in my chest or belly. And when I let my attention go there, when I let myself experience what it was, it came up from down in my body, through my chest, and the sobs just came, in waves, the tears flowing from the corners of my eyes, mixing with the pond water dripping down my face. And once they started coming they kept coming, and I stood there, unworried about the strange face I was probably making, feeling the peristaltic convulsions come, not making them come, just feeling the empty space from where they seemed to originate.
    And when they finally subsided, when whatever spasm it was died down, I stood, staring into the pond and shivering. We both were shivering. And then, without speaking, we got dressed. Slightly damp and still shivering, we got in the car, and with the heat turned up, we drove out of the hill country and on