Turn 195 of 228

Ask Claire how the race ended and if she wants to climb again. She replies damn right I do! Its the most fun she's had in 20 years

Lena waits at the base of the climbing wall. Claire is coming down — not climbing down, not rappelling, just releasing her grip and sliding, her belly scraping the concrete, the friction leaving a faint pink line on the skin that disappears in seconds. She drops the last six feet and lands on the mat with a sound that shakes the bay floor. Eliza is already on the ground, bouncing on her heels, the four-year-old energy that has nowhere to go because the body is 180 pounds of it.

"So who won?" Lena asks.

Claire is breathing hard. Her hands are on her knees. The belly hangs between her arms and the stretch marks are bright and the skin is flushed and she is grinning — the grin that has been on her face since the race started, the grin that has not left.

"She won," Claire says. "Of course she won. She's four. She's been climbing since she could walk. I've been climbing since —" She looks at the wall. Looks at her hands. The hands that found holds in concrete that she didn't know existed. The hands that held her daughter's foot and hung on.

"Since today."

"Do you want to go again?"

Claire stands up straight. The belly pushes forward. The breasts are heavier than they were this morning — the body still working, still growing, still responding to the gradient that she stopped fighting three hours ago. She rolls her shoulders. She flexes her fingers. The grin widens.

"Damn right I do," Claire says. "It's the most fun I've had in twenty years."

The words land in the climbing bay like a frequency. Not hyperbole. Not the exaggeration of someone performing enthusiasm. The plain statement of a woman who has spent two decades managing systems and monitoring outputs and treating her body like infrastructure and has just discovered that the infrastructure can climb a wall and race a four-year-old and laugh until the laughing is the only thing left. Twenty years. Since before Eliza. Since before the career. Since before the management of everything. Since the last time she was a body that did things for the joy of doing them.

Eliza is already at the wall. The four-year-old's hands are on the first hold and she is looking back over her shoulder at her mother with the expression that children have when they know the game is about to start again. Claire walks to the wall. The walk is different from the walk she made this morning — the walk through the corridor in clothes that didn't fit, the walk of a woman arriving at a place she wasn't sure about. This walk is bare and naked and the belly leads and the feet are flat on the warm concrete and the body is not being managed. The body is going to climb.

"Same rules," Eliza says. "Whoever touches the ceiling wins."

"Same rules," Claire says.

They place their hands on the wall. Lena watches from below — the 2,100 pounds of her settled on the bay floor, the thirteen feet of her close enough to the ceiling that she could touch it without climbing, close enough to the wall that she can feel the vibration of two bodies moving upward through the concrete. Claire reaches for the first hold. Eliza is already three holds higher. The race is starting. The laughter is starting. The joy is starting again.