Ecchymoses

I am creeping along the top of a Sicilian ridge in high summer. Technically, I am biking, but so slowly my crawling eleven-month-old could outpace me. My husband is up ahead, also biking so slowly he has to step off the pedals sometimes as he looks over his shoulder. He is looking for me.

When done right, biking really isn’t a “silent sport.” The tires thrum, the freewheel drones, the gear shifters click, low and satisfying, like a tongue against teeth. When done poorly, however, biking gets very, very quiet. The tires move too slowly to sing. There is no higher gear to shift into. The only sounds now are my own. Complaining blood thunders in my ears, bongos in my brain. The rasp of my gulping breath has been joined by a ragged little wheeze. That’s new! Flies are landing on me, drawn by torrential sweat, and then flitting on ahead, faster than I am able to go.

Sicily is beautiful: hot and golden, with tawny stone walls lining groves of olive and carob trees, fields of greenhouses teasing shaded tomatoes and grapes. Ripening oranges and almonds undulate like green knuckles on the trees. But I’m watching the cracked pavement inching by below me, the trash stuck in the stands of wild fennel and cactus on the roadside. A plastic bottle reflects the blistering sun in a thousand crinkled planes. The rising road is an endless, dusty line.

We are on vacation, celebrating a decade-old marriage, two children, parents spry and generous enough to take our kids for ten days. Yesterday was our first time on the bikes. It was tougher going than I expected, and much shorter than today’s ride. I have to remember, I panted, how to do this, how to use my own momentum to my advantage. My husband told me not to let pride get in my way.

Pride. Pshaw.

I finally catch up to where he’s waiting for me. When I gasp to a stop and stagger off the bike, pulling it down on top of myself in the process, he is right there to pick me up. I won’t count this as a crash, even the next day when a bruise the size of a silver dollar—or the snub end of a handlebar—blooms on my thigh like a smashed fig. I don’t even feel it, but my eyes are stinging, and I’m glad I’m wearing sunglasses so my husband can’t see I’m starting to cry.

I cannot do this bike ride.

What does it mean that I cannot do this bike ride, this “easy to moderate” terrain?

It means it’s hot. It means I’m out of shape and practice. (I have reasons: I just had a baby! I just turned forty!)

And maybe it means I’m overconfident in my own abilities.

I drink sun-warmed water and quiet my breath and brush gravel off my sticky skin and feel my self-assurance burst and broken, my confidence leaking into the stupid tears I refuse to let fall, into a spreading, silent crisis. If I can’t do this, what else can’t I do? What if I’m not as good as I think I am at…anything? Parenting, partnering, writing? What if overconfidence is the poison within all of my pursuits? It’s not imposter syndrome I’ve run into here on the top of this ridge, so much as a brick wall of terrible possibility. We’ve all heard that success comes to the authors who persist, who power through rejection after rejection, who allow a little self-delusion to propel them forward. The only way to get to the top of the hill is to keep going. Onward! But what if my self has become overly deluded? What if I’ve ignored an important instinct that I’m just not ready for the hill? With thickened voice, I concede that yes, yes, I need some help. With jellied legs and pounding heart, I admit defeat. I have failed.

The tour guides will rescue me. They will bring me an e-bike, which will be immediately curative, the force-multiplier of its little motor system providing the strength and stamina my body lacks, and I will ride it with quiet shame (ugh, pride) and immense enjoyment for the next eight days. The vacation will be saved. We will come home tan and happy. My children will be excited to see me, my parents proud of us for going, and relieved that we have returned. I will hit my daily word counts, query more agents, submit more stories and essays out into the world. I will bike, and cook, and make my husband a dentist appointment, and take two children, unassisted, to Ikea. I will not fail, I will not be defeated.

And yet, there is that bruise, dark and insistent. It lingers, it lingers, it lingers.