Tracy O'Neill - The Hopeful

YOU aren’t the first, but could be the last; I can only hope. My first was older and a man. He said it was all in my head, when he was the one always suggesting fantastical things. But now one year older, I’m the one starting over, and though I’d like to think his words drove me wrong, it was all my doing. Which is more than I can say of coming here. My mother signed the dotted line because they don’t need my consent. But, Doctor, my signature will matter in three weeks. You’ve read my file. Doyle comma Alivopro: an abbreviated Alis volat propiis in honor of my father’s alma mater. Alis volat propiis : in Latin, she flies with her own wings. Alis volat propiis : what a judge said of Oregon when still independent of Britain and the United States. No, Alivopro Doyle did not consent to be treated.

Can you pronounce that for me again? the doctor asks.

Ah as in apple. Leave, as in of absence. O like owe. Pro like the prefix before life.

And Miss Doyle, I’m sure you’re aware that though you may not have given your consent, our success here is mostly contingent upon your cooperation? And that though you may not be legally responsible for yourself, you are de facto ?

Excellent use of dead language, Doctor, I say.

Now that I’ve stabilized —medical parlance for not much worse than normal— I’m required to answer for myself, my own argot for interrogation.

The doctor continues through the formalities, blocking off liabilities, begging the question. It wasn’t your choice, what we’re doing here, she says, and yet there must be reasons.

It’s better than college. But you’re referring, of course, to the threat I pose.

And that your signature will only matter to the law if you prove yourself capable of normative cognition? And that I will only be able to effectively evaluate your cognition if you cooperate?

Leverage: from the Latin levis, meaning light.

Do you understand, Miss Doyle?

I do. Just look at us, I think, the nervous couple, in our medical matrimony — because let’s not forget the brain is an organ — do you take this doctor to be your lawfully mandated psychologist? I do, I do, I must. And anyway, I’m no novice when it comes to this. Figure skating is the only mode irrational enough for a novice to be more advanced than an intermediate. Juvenile, Intermediate, Novice, Junior Senior, such is its progression of levels. So since the doctor is my second, perhaps I’m an intermediate. Between what, I don’t know.

You said that what you thought was all your doing. Can you give me an example of what you meant?

Another doctor wanting me to make an example of myself.

In the non-punitive sense, I assure you.

If I know anything at all, it’s that nothing can be assured.

Then shall we take a calculated risk? says the doctor. Shall we try? You have mentioned the threat you pose. Why don’t we start with what exactly it is you believe you pose? Why are you here, Miss Doyle?

And because I’m out of choices, except for one, I must begin.

I had a bus to catch in ten minutes and the only way I’d make it was with a pair of scissors. Before the accident, the first psychologist prescribed this and other visualization exercises for my success. There was one in which I imagined a red windmill turning blue with positivity and blowing away fear. In another a lung expanded to inhale confidence and contracted to exhale doubt. This one involved a hairy monster, which I was to confront with scissors and trim into a small, manageable form. It’s wonders what a new ‘do can do for a girl.

Catching the bus was never a problem until getting out of bed was, but you can’t make excuses. “Get out of bed. Get out of bed!” I told myself.

“Use the imperative!” is what Dr. Ogden had advised. “Affirmative statements only. If you say, ‘Don’t do this’ or ‘Don’t do that,’ you’re thinking about what you don’t want to do, not what you do.” Except when I listened to him, I mostly thought about the things I didn’t want that would happen if I said, “Don’t do this.” The problem with sports psychologists is that they have limited imaginations. It’s all if-then statements. If you practice, then you will be perfect. If you believe, then you will achieve! But if you accidentally think wrongly, then what?

This had been my problem with the triple Salchow. I kept watching myself fall. Or collide with the barrier of the rink. Or chicken out. Imagining got to be like death; I knew it would happen but not how. By the time Dr. Ogden got to if-then statements, I wouldn’t trust someone like me with my own wellbeing. And here’s another if-then statement: if I was still skating, then I would not have needed to try to get out of bed.

“How do you feel?” my father asked me the first time I skated.

“Greedy,” I said. It was true I could never get enough.

But now in bed I could hear the thin clock arm marking seconds populous and bland as rabbits— tick tock tick tock tick— and knew the difference between the rhythm of a metronome and a song. I tried to materialize scissors for the exercise but instead saw only a four-post bed. Sit! Roll over! Fetch! I commanded, but the mind is like most teenagers.

“If all the other kids were jumping off of bridges with underpants on their heads, should I too?” I used to ask my mother when she suggested that maybe I would rather go to school like other kids, see movies, eat cookies. This would be before most businesses were open and she’d be driving me to the rink. I would have woken her, scrambled egg whites, brushed my teeth. But that’s what days became: teeth brushing, tiny back and forths, up and downs, just to do it again. There are no decisive victories with dental hygiene — there is only not losing until a waitress forgets to hold the onions. And when I thought of not losing for the rest of my life, bed was just as good a place as any other.

That was no thought to get me up, of course. So for just a moment, I let my foot forget it was part of Middle America. I let myself lapse pastward, my foot pointing as it used to when my entire body pivoted around the axis of one toe, and I felt as I did when my life consisted of perfect circles, when it was all figure eights and laps around the rink. I closed my eyes and was back again, spinning on that slippery plane, and everything streaked together into ribbons of color so that I could not discern separate forms. But I knew where I was, where I was going. The ice, flatter and more perfect than the kind that forms in nature, revealed the path cut by my blades beneath me. I was flying without wings, contorting through the cold. My coach Lauren called out, “Arms! Arms!” and a Prince song about how he loved someone more than when she belonged to him played.

The music wasn’t my warm-up tape but Ryan’s, and we didn’t evaluate his choices because he was an Olympic shoo-in. A shoo-in is a mundane expression for someone whose victory seems predetermined. I wasn’t a shoo-in, but a hopeful, an eloquent expression for someone whose victory is yet to be determined.

Puberty could end my life, I knew. There were girls from the rink who were shoo-ins until bodily curves flattened their ability to jump faster than you can say circumference. I would not even look at bras in department stores, for the mind’s eye determines the future, as Dr. Ogden once said. I didn’t know how it happened. I was sixteen, and I was maybe getting too old. I made calculations: for the 2010 Olympics I’d be eighteen. In 2014 I’d be twenty-two, and no one skates in the Olympics at twenty-six. My year was only worth six minutes. Really only two and a half if I screwed up badly enough. I was training for the New England Regional Championships, the qualifying competition for the Eastern Sectional Champions, which was the qualifying competition for the National Championships. If I did well enough during the technical program portion of the competition, I would be allowed to skate my long program. But if not, then I wouldn’t even be permitted six minutes to not blow my year.