Breathing Underwater

“Like your life’s a big act. Like you’re trying to be a man when you’re just a scared kid, trying to keep under control when you really want to scream, cry, maybe hit someone. Ever feel like you’re breathing underwater, and you have to stop because you’re gulping in too much fluid?”

Mario’s speech during Nick’s first family violence group session signals his penchant for speaking wisdom in the novel. While Nick is at first resistant to it, he eventually absorbs more of Mario’s guidance than he realizes. Mario’s voice becomes a steady presence in Nick’s life that drowns out his own doubts and fear. This passage also highlights the novel’s water symbolism.

“He didn’t finish, because my fist met his jaw. Then, I was on top of him, wailing on him, not seeing his face, just the paint-mottled walls and Caitlin. And Dirk’s hand touching her, hurting her. My breath in my ears drowned out the crowd sounds around me. Glass splinters ripped my skin. My fists flew, hitting and hitting him until finally his face was the colors of those walls, and I felt arms lifting me off him. Tom.” 

This is the first time we see Nick get violent, foreshadowing his violence toward Caitlin later in the novel. Nick’s emotions and beliefs are based on fiction that Nick creates in his mind. He sees Dirk hurting Caitlin, but in reality, Dirk has not touched Caitlin yet. Ironically, Nick blindly beats Dirk based only on the potential for danger that Nick made himself see.

“I was a junkie. Caitlin was my dealer and my drug of choice.” 

Here, Nick frames himself as a victim of Caitlin’s drug-like power over him. He believes himself to be at the mercy of Caitlin, when really, it is the other way around. This passage shows how the mind of an abuser like Nick works: He feels out of control, inferior, so weak, and he lashes out at Caitlin to regain power.

“He hit me hard in the face, and I stumbled back onto my bed. I lay not moving, not speaking. Arguing made his anger worse, and now I only wanted him to leave. He raged on about how hard he worked, what a lazy ingrate I was, but I stopped listening, my brain carrying me to an alternate reality, where I was watching someone else lying under my black bay window. Then, I went further. I don’t know if it was a minute or an hour. I stopped caring whether Rosa heard. I don’t even know if he hit me again. My mind took me to Caitlin.” 

This passage exemplifies Nick’s recurrent escapism: To cope with his father’s abuse, he must leave the reality of his own mind and escape to somewhere safe with Caitlin. Caitlin becomes his mental sanctuary, allowing him to separate himself from the victim being abused by his father.

“Cat yelled for me to wait. Then she was in the water, paddling toward me. I watched her slow progress from shore. When she reached me, she was gasping for breath. I embraced her, kissing her until we both sank beneath the surface. She struggled a moment. When she stopped, I held her there as long as my air held out. Then, seconds longer. Finally, I let go.” 

This moment is a microcosm of the entire novel and Nick’s relationship with Caitlin. She makes the effort to support and follow Nick, getting worn down in the process, and Nick takes advantage of this fatigue to bring her down with him. He cannot let her go until he is ready, even though she struggles to be free of him.

“Her forgetting is part of a bizarre world you create for yourself. And those other things—the car trouble, the dying grandmother—happen in a happier place. Let’s call it Marioland. It’s all fiction, and you’re the writer, so you may as well write something that calms you down as something that riles you up.” 

Here is more wisdom from Mario. He is trying to make the group members aware of how they create fictional scenarios in their mind to fuel their anger and violence, a tendency we have already seen in Nick. Not only does Mario point this out, but he also gives them a solution for change: Create fiction that calms you down. He believes they can change.

“‘With you…’ She gazed at me as I tried to put words together. ‘It’s like I’ve never done anything wrong.’” 

Again, we get a glimpse into Nick’s rationale as he continues to victimize himself in his relationship with Caitlin. Although at this point he has verbally and physically abused her, she forgives him, and he feels like he really is not capable of harm. He wants to believe that he is a good person. This moment also shows how he grapples with the difference between spoken words and words written on a page; written words come to him more easily.

“I watched the ocean filtering through her fingers, the trail of her yellow hair. Cat had courage stored for the winter. I loved and hated that, hated it because I wanted her to need me. She had to need me. Still, I followed in her wake. Though she’d said she wasn’t a strong swimmer, Caitlin pushed on. I only hoped she’d take me with her.” 

Here we see Nick recognize how strong Caitlin is and his fear of her budding independence. His love for her is outweighed by his need to diminish her spirit because he believes this is the only way to keep her. This moment also shows how Caitlin doubts herself, but she is stronger than she knows.

“It’s hard for me to admit this, even to a notebook. Even to myself. But at that point, I begged. Flat-out begged her to open it. It was my only chance. I sank to my knees, not caring how I looked. Nothing mattered. Nothing.” 

This moment is a clear break from the beginning of the novel, when Nick heavily values keeping up appearances and wearing a “mask” to show people he is fine. Here, he has officially taken off that mask and revealed how desperate he is to keep Caitlin. It also shows how much he is changing as he writes in his journal: Even though he does not wish to admit the heartbreaking details of his journey, he does so because he knows they are important to face.

“The first thing I do is pick up the journal. Funny, I didn’t want to write in it. Now, I’m way over the word count I needed. I could probably stop. But I have to see this through to the end. If I don’t I have the feeling I’ll drown.” 

This passage provides more clear evidence of Nick’s self-reflection and character growth. Using the recurring water imagery of the novel, he casts his journal as the thing that will save him from drowning further in his pain. He makes a commitment to follow through with this growth, not for Caitlin or his father or the judge, but for himself.

“I felt marble beneath my feet. My fingers relaxed. My father was proud. Of me. For years, I’d brought home perfect report cards, trying to make him happy. But now, he was proud. Is this the only thing that makes me a man in your eyes? I wanted to scream it. But that clinking ice brought reality back. My father was finally proud of me.”

Nick’s father’s misogyny becomes apparent in this moment, as he only feels proud of Nick when he finds the condom that indicates Nick is having sex. This, coupled with the various crude remarks Nick makes in the novel, makes it clear that along with the abuse, his father’s definition of masculinity is also generationally passed down. However, Nick proves he intends to break this pattern as he becomes more critical of his father’s and his own beliefs.

“On second reading, the phrases attack me, too saccharine and pointed to misinterpret. I realize Higgins and I have an agreement. She knows. She wants my father to know she knows, but she won’t get me in trouble. Why does she even care? After class I read it again, leaning against the white-tiled men’s room wall. How much of what she said about me is true?” 

When Nick reads Miss Higgins’s letter, he feels surprised because he is not accustomed to people defending him or accepting him. He has trouble believing the encouraging things she writes about him because no one has believed in him before. This experience pushes him to start believing in the good things about himself, like his writing ability. 

“I keep walking, but I’m picturing myself, dressed in black, reading poetry in a dimly lit coffeehouse.”

When Miss Higgins compliments his writing, he begins to create a new fantasy for himself. Before, his fantasies were of Caitlin, an escape from his father, and being more like Tom. When he starts to believe in himself, he reimagines his own image and works to live up to it.

“I couldn’t tell Tom. His problems were normal, the kind on Very Special Episodes of TV sitcoms. Mine were intense foreign films. What could I say: By the way, my father calls me a mistake, and I slapped Caitlin on the way back from Key West? What could Tom do besides think I was subhuman? Maybe he’d even be right.” 

This passage is both an example of Nick’s voice as a writer—he is a talented writer who makes creative comparisons—and an indication of Nick’s mentality as a victim. He has absorbed his father’s abuse for years, believing he is a mistake and that not even his best friend will understand. He is projecting onto Tom what he already thinks of himself: “subhuman.” He has effectively dehumanized himself by claiming others will dehumanize him.

“Mario smiles, patient, a botanist waiting for flowers to grow.”

Nick’s metaphor signals his evolving self-image. The dehumanization from the above quote is countered by the dehumanization in this scene. Here, rather than imagining himself as something less than human, he imagines himself as something nonhuman but beautiful and capable of growth. In calling Mario a botanist, Nick implicitly acknowledges that he is blooming like a flower thanks to Mario’s guidance.

“For some reason, my mind turns to Leo. I’ve avoided him since the carnival last week, not wanting to deal with what I now realize is his abusiveness. Who am I to say anything? But I’ve heard his voice, leaving frantic messages on my voice mail.” 

In this scene, before Nick discovers Leo’s fate, Nick becomes the person who is avoiding an abuser; he becomes like Caitlin. Just like Caitlin has dodged Nick’s calls, Nick has avoided Leo and now feels guilty. Nick needs this role switch to see himself as an abuser like Leo.

“The room is silent except for Mario’s voice and the ceiling fan’s hum. Funny how you can know something and yet not believe it’s possible. Whether it’s sheep cloning or space travel. Or the fact that Leo Sotolongo broke into his girlfriend’s bedroom and put a bullet through her skull. Then he turned the gun on himself. Mario’s words seep through my skin, but my brain is bargaining. I see only possibilities. What if I’d answered Leo’s calls? What if he’s come back to class? But it’s over…Could it have been me, me and Caitlin? No. I want to scream it. No! My brain tells me different. You and Leo were the same, it says. Lonely, obsessed. Angry and out of control too. I saw it in Leo, I see it in myself. All I did to Caitlin, everything I said. Of course she’s afraid of me. I’m no different from Leo. I wasn’t and I’m not. But can I be? Is there time?” 

In the next scene, Nick learns Leo has killed himself and his girlfriend. Suddenly, after identifying with Caitlin briefly above, Nick is now back to fully identifying with Leo and painfully reflecting on his own behavior. Unlike his father with whom he did not want to identify, Nick is learning to assume the responsibility of being violent like Leo. Nick begins to sincerely look toward the future for the first time and hopes for change.

“I hit her again. This time, my fist was clenched, my feet set. The earth shuddered to a stop, gained momentum with my fist. Knuckles meeting her jaw. Words streaming forward without even knowing. Her white hand, flying up, away from her face, no protection. Fingers floating against darkness. I was small, weak. Gaining power, though. Gaining power by taking it from her and the words coursing from my throat. I hit her again, not seeing her face, couldn’t make her real if I wanted. Only anger, red, violent, on me like a cloak. My hands closing around her neck, barely knowing who she was.” 

Nick forces himself to relive the final time he physically abused Caitlin. This scene calls back the earlier scene when Nick beats Dirk to defend Caitlin and she calls him her hero. Now, she is the victim, and just like before, his mind blocks out his victim’s face and all he can see is his own anger and fear. The juxtaposition of this moment with the moment Nick learns about Leo shows how Nick could have easily caused the same outcome.

“‘Me, Tiny. I’m a loser. That’s what my dad says anyway. Loser. Failure. I tried to prove him wrong, finding things I could control, like my grades. And Caitlin. When she said no, or I’d think there was someone else, there’d be this voice in my head, almost too soft to hear, whispering loser. You’re a loser, a mistake. And I had to drown it out, had to win, no matter the cost.’ I feel a bead of sweat on my forehead. ‘But, what it cost was Caitlin. Hurting her made me a loser.’” 

After hiding behind a mask all his life as the popular, wealthy boy, Nick finally admits aloud that that image is not the whole truth. In earlier group sessions, we see Nick reluctant to speak, but now he asserts himself to show what the class has taught him. This speech demonstrates that while the journal is an important part of Nick’s healing, verbal expression in a supportive environment is also imperative.

“‘It’s easy to believe what’s in books or even television commercials, but no one teaches us to believe in ourselves. Our parents slept on the job there, didn’t they?’ He looks at me and Kelly. ‘They let us cry one or one hundred times too many and said we were failures until we knew it like a religion. And once you join that Church of Fear, Jesus or Buddha or Cousin Kevin’s Cult of Wonders down the street may look good, but that Fear is what holds you until finally, when a woman says she loves you, you know she’s lying. Or it’s just a matter of time ’til she sees what you’re really like and finds someone better. And that adds up to a lot of fear.’” 

Mario’s final speech reveals that he knows exactly how each of the group members feels because he once was an abuser himself. This revelation allows the group members to identify with him and makes his shared wisdom even more powerful. In using “Fear” as part of a proper noun, Flinn personifies it until it becomes as powerful as it is felt to be.

“What I wanted was Caitlin back, not the knowledge I’d lost her forever. But I have. How will I learn to deal with it?” 

For Nick, part of remaking his self-image and rewriting his story means accepting that he cannot have Caitlin back. He cannot be Caitlin’s boyfriend anymore. The question here shows he is learning to let her go and starting to imagine a future in which he has grown. He does not ask “if” he will learn to deal but “how,” implying he already plans to get there.

“I don’t move. I feel my brain short-circuiting, trying to carry me to an alternative reality. I can’t go. I concentrate, instead, on Mario’s words. Respect yourself. Mario’s yelling louder than my father, and to shut him up, I look in my father’s eyes. For the first time, I don’t see myself…Memories fly spilling evil and hope like Pandora’s box, and my mind tries to avoid him, tries to run, hide even as my body won’t let it. I can’t go. I can’t go. Don’t go. Don’t. I stand.” 

This scene clearly proves that Nick has accepted that things can change. He acknowledges his past coping mechanism—mentally escaping a situation while letting it happen—and makes a conscious decision to replace that urge with Mario’s voice. He stands up to his father, breaking the abusive pattern and making himself no longer the victim.

“Not strong, not powerful, just a man. Why did I think he was so strong?” 

Not only is Nick changing himself, he is changing who his father is to him. Ironically, in re-humanizing his father—casting him as “just a man”—Nick takes away his father’s power. He is not the untouchable, abusive monster anymore. He is simply a broken human man.