SWIM X NATATORIUM
The popular arthouse thriller Natatorium (2024) is a hybrid adaptation that combines my short story “Swim” with director Helena Stefansdottir’s narrative for the script. Elliot’s obsession with discovering death through near-drownings in the story plays an insidious role in the film’s subplot and subtext as a family drama.
When I got the call that Elliot was on his deathbed, I was on the floor with my back heavy against the splintered wood. Three empty bottles of rum framed my head.
I caught a flight from Austin to Pittsburgh, and then sped south in a rented car to Langford, the industrial town Elliot called home. I thought it was too dark for him. It was surrounded by long-impotent mines, and the people there looked tired and ragged about something they could never talk about. For a man who wrote about living out of his car and disowning his social security number, I always wished he’d end up somewhere softer, maybe wilder, further into the woods.
Dr. Darya explained that he declined in the days prior, and they found him wandering the hall the night before. Apparently, he’d tried to call me from an empty room, then started walking around and collapsed.
I knew he was looking for me, thinking I was down the hall from his room like when we were kids.
Blindsided by the greedy chaos of my life for the last two years, I was now out of time with my only brother. Dr. Darya and I were in the hall when it happened. I turned around to ask her if I could sit with him for a few hours even though he was sleeping. She said that would be fine. I was in the room for maybe five seconds and then the machines around him began to scream.
I rushed to the bed and stared at all the tubes and screens that crowded him, appearing to have sucked the life out of him. Several nurses and his doctor ran in and told me I needed to wait in the hall. From there, I watched as they tried to revive him.
An exotic blue fish paced in a bowl on the bedside table.
I felt cheated when he died. Where had he gone? His death had been completely invisible. I found myself wishing I could have seen it, so that he wouldn’t have died alone. I wondered if he had woken up before he died, just briefly and I didn’t see it; if he felt every limb slowly vanish from the sight of his nerves, the way limbs seem to when they fall asleep. I wondered if he ever dreamed about me.
I should have responded to his letters and told him what my life had been like. I had all the pictures he sent me of his hikes in the woods and painting near lakes.
I could have even just sent him a note on email that said, Elliot, your big sister’s a big fuck up. Like everyone else in my life, he had no idea how weak I had become. I loved bottles, and bottles loved me. They loved me enough to make me delay phone calls and payments and mailing Christmas presents. They made a wall two years wide between me and my brother.
I was drunk at the wake, of course. Chewing wads of strong mint gum and crying most of the time didn’t tip anyone off to the fact that I couldn’t really sit up straight. But then on remembering I was disrespecting Elliot, I went to the bathroom a number of times to throw up and force myself sober.
When I came back to join our family, I saw a stranger walk toward Elliot’s coffin. He was approaching it as if it were a bomb.