Surfacing

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  And in her bed, alone at night, it is what draws him to her, until deep, restful sleep finally takes over.

  The chance fire drill that brought Maggie and Matthew together probably would have been too contrived for lucid dreaming, but not for real life.

  “You’re Maggie.”

  Everyone — teachers, students, administrators — stood somewhere on the grass and behind the faculty parking lot. The signal to return to school hadn’t been sounded, and it was long past the normal six minutes, so teachers had given up trying to corral students into lines and keep them quiet. The firefighters and police had already run into the building and were filing out leisurely, so there was clearly no emergency, but no one had yet been allowed back inside.

  “You’re my little sister’s friend, right? I saw you at the house the other day.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie answered.

  “You’re on the girls’ swim team, aren’t you?”

  “That would be me.” Maggie had isolated herself on the grass by the far end of the parking lot. Julie was probably all the way on the other side of the school. She had gym this period, which let out by the main parking lot and the tennis courts.

  “It keeps you in nice shape,” Matthew said.

  His hair was dark, but his eyes were light. He was so close that Maggie could see his eyelashes. And his freckles. The size and shape of his teeth when he spoke. She suddenly became so aware of her own face, every blemish, dot, and asymmetrical arrangement of her features. But he had told her she had a nice shape. What exactly was he looking at? Her waist? Her shoulders? Her ass?

  In her lucid sleep state, she would answer coyly.

  “If you say so,” Maggie said. She licked her lips (they felt dry), untucked her hair from behind her ears (it was uncomfortable), and a second later tucked it back again (it was more uncomfortable).

  “So what are you doing this weekend?” Matthew asked her. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  It was Friday and her parents were going out early, taking the twins to dinner and a kiddie show in the city. Maggie had known about it for weeks, and Julie was supposed to come over, but just this morning she had told Maggie that her mom needed her home. I’m sorry Maggie, Julie texted during first period. I can’t come over tonight.

  So Maggie would be alone in an empty house.

  That was a sign, wasn’t it? Like a symbol in a dream?

  “I’m home by myself tonight,” Maggie told Matthew quickly, too quickly, thinking but not thinking, knowing she was presenting a possibility without really having to decide if she wanted to or not. “My parents are going out.”

  “So maybe I’ll stop by,” Matthew told her.

  Maggie neglected to mention any of this to Julie after everyone trucked back inside for the remaining half an hour of the school day, during which no one, neither teachers nor students, felt motivated to do any schoolwork. Matthew’s maybe-visit seemed to slip Maggie’s mind during swim practice as well, and so, by the time evening approached, the window of opportunity to blow the whole thing by her best friend had long since passed.

  He probably wouldn’t show up anyway, so what was the point?

  When she heard wheels pulling over her gravel driveway, an engine cutting off, Maggie darted to the window to look. It was him. He had come. Her parents had been gone for an hour and a half, leaving Maggie nearly the entire time to look at herself in the mirror and imagine what Matthew would see if he looked this closely at her. Or this closely. Or this closely. She moved back and forth from the glass, trying to approximate average human face-to-face distance, intimate distance, kissing distance even — supposing that was what was going to happen.

  She wondered what he would want to see and how she might create that for him.

  Matthew walked into the house, leaving his friend Dino to wait outside, wait inside a white van (the one with the red and white and green stripes and the logo of shiny tomatoes and fresh parsley) that belonged to Dino’s family business. Maggie didn’t question why or how long Dino was prepared to wait. Or what he thought was going on inside.

  The strong smell of beer preceded Matthew like an announcement and lingered like perfume. Without saying another word after “Hey, are your parents gone?” he pulled Maggie against his body and attached his mouth to hers. Beer. And cheese of some kind? Feta? And somehow it was only a few moments later that they were in Maggie’s room, on top of the covers of her bed.

  “I really like you, Maggie,” Matthew said, lifting his face away from hers.

  Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  Maggie began to sense that the weight of his body was holding her down. Not that she couldn’t have squirmed away or wriggled out (or screamed, for that matter), but then she would appear unhappy, discontent, uncomfortable, and if he got that message, he might leave.

  “I like you, too,” Maggie answered. She let his tongue probe her mouth.

  He was directly on top of her, but he wasn’t there at all. He was out the door, back in the van, driving away with his friend Dino. He was laughing. He was heading back to Friendly’s, where his girlfriend, Sarah, was about to get off from her shift.

  Maggie let him force his hand under her clothes, under the waist of her pants, then pull them open — yank off one pants leg but leave the other one on — and somehow during that struggle of zipper and fabric, Matthew had his own jeans down to his ankles. She didn’t partake, but she didn’t object exactly.

  She knew it was what he wanted. She had asked for it, invited him over, expected nothing in return. And she knew it would connect him to her, if only for that brief moment. If her body would only comply with what they were trying to do, then she would have succeeded in a special kind of oblivion.

  But it wouldn’t.

  Matthew rocked and pushed and tried for a while longer, and then his whole body shook and it was over. It wasn’t until the white van was gone that Maggie felt her shirt sticking to her stomach and realized what had happened.

  Stay inside.

  That’s all Leah and Maggie had to do, because the condo complex where they lived then was safe.

  You needed a code just to drive your car through the electronic gate, and the code was changed every two weeks, all residents informed by e-mail or phone call. And besides, there were kids everywhere, a few older couples, but mostly young families with young children. Everyone knew everyone. If there was a new face along the sidewalk or in the play area, someone was sure to ask who it was, where they were from, what they were doing here. The families got along for the most part, but of course, there was some hierarchy within the development itself.

  Condos closer to the entrance, and therefore the highway, were less desirable and cheaper, more often starter homes for young couples before they had kids or had a second kid and moved away. There was more coming and going on that block and less tending to the private landscaping. If a kid lived over by the wall and the highway, they had a harder time breaking in. They might have to be “it” for TV tag or hide-and-go-seek for longer than was fair. Even the maintenance committee seemed part of the conspiracy and repairs for that first row of apartments took longer.

  “I’m hot,” Maggie whined.

  “Well, so? I am too,” her older sister told her. “That’s what happens when the air-conditioning breaks.”

  It was hot, probably hotter, at this point, indoors than out. When their mother left, she made them shut and lock the front door and shut all the first-floor windows. A low ceiling fan turned in slow motion.

  “I have an idea.”

  And now, ten years later, Maggie couldn’t remember which one of them actually said that.

  “Sorry again about Friday night,” Julie was saying. She stood in her bathing suit, her two bathing suits — the top one sagging off the other — waiting while Maggie threw her stuff into an empty locker and banged it shut.

  “It was fine,” Maggie said.

  “You could have come to my house,
you know.”

  “I know.”

  Today Matthew was back with his arm around Sarah, making out with her every few steps they took down the hall.

  Wanting something very badly doesn’t make it come true, at least not while you are awake. Julie might be sympathetic, if Maggie told her, but it wasn’t worth the embarrassment.

  “Short course today, remember?” Julie had the bottom of her outer suit, her drag suit, tied into two little bunny ears on each side of her rear end. Only Julie would call attention to that part of her body. She was by far the fullest, roundest girl on the team, and by far the most comfortable with herself.

  “Oh, no. I hate short course. I suck at flip turns.” Maggie untwisted her shoulder straps and flip-flopped toward the pool entrance.

  “You’re better than I am,” Julie said. “And it doesn’t matter; Coach loves you.”

  “Well, good thing someone does.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Julie looked like she wanted to say something, ask something. It was her style to bullet Maggie with rapid-fire questions before her friend could close down completely, a verbal blitzkrieg, if you will. But she also knew when it was no use, when prying into whatever secret Maggie was keeping would only drive her further away, and Julie kept quiet.

  They both pushed through and out the revolving doors onto the pool deck. Everything was gray — the wet concrete pavement, the massive inflatable cover that extended up twenty-five feet or so, the dim lights — but mostly the water, murky, fifty meters long, ten lanes across, bobbing with lane markers, waiting.

  Coach Mac began shouting commands as soon as all the girls were present. The fastest swimmers — he pointed — were assigned lanes 1 and 2, and so on down the line. Six girls per lane. The warm-up was scribbled on the whiteboard in purple marker. One by one the girls had to stop talking to one another and line up. The chatter echoing across the pool diminished in increments. The assistant coach blew the whistle five seconds apart, followed by the sound of someone plunging into the water, until it was quiet but for the rhythmic splashes, the flutter-kicking, and the steady roar of the warm air being blown into the dome, holding it all up.

  As soon as she was underwater, Maggie heard the quiet, though every sound was amplified in her ears and in her brain, the speed rushing past, the impact of her own hand, the sucking in of air and water, mixed, the faraway sound of her feet breaking the surface. She was aware of the glide and of the pull, the power of her body working, arms and legs and head, mouth open, elbow bent. Pull and glide. Pull and glide. Sound, like shame, travels four times faster under the water.

  Maggie’s mother heard the sirens before she pulled up, and out her car window she saw all the people gathered around the pool. Her first thought was thank goodness the sound wasn’t coming from her block, from her condo, overlooking the highway, where her two daughters were inside waiting for her.

  Whatever is happening, it’s none of my business. I need to get back to the house, to the girls. Unload these groceries and start some lunch.

  Mrs. Paris turned her head away from the fencing, the pool, and started to turn the car around the next corner, heading home. And then something made her look again toward the noise, toward the chaos, the clamor of people, the energy of panic that seeped right in through her closed windows and blast of air-conditioning. She hated herself for looking, for being silently satisfied that the tragedy was someone else’s and not her own.

  The crowd was gathering around a little body that lay on the grass, the body of a girl in a green-and-yellow bathing suit. Mrs. Paris saw the ambulance and the EMS people working at a frantic, desperate pace. She drew in one last breath of relief, knowing that her two little girls, Maggie and Leah, were back in the house safe. If she could rewind time and live again in the moment before her heart allowed her mind to recognize the long, wet brown hair, the long skinny legs, she would, of course — she did — again and again and again.

  Third period, Algebra I, was the only class Julie and Maggie had together. As she did in every class, Maggie took the seat closest to the back of the room. Julie had tried to sit next to her, but about a week into September, Mrs. Michelangelo caught on and moved them apart.

  “Something happened, Mags. You don’t even have to tell me. I know something’s wrong.”

  Mrs. Michelangelo had left the room. No one really wondered why; it was more like the effect of a sudden wind on dried leaves. All at once, everyone started moving, and a few kids left altogether. Now Julie was sitting on top of Maggie’s desk. Maggie stayed in her seat. They created a small universe of two.

  “Nothing,” Maggie said.

  “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “I know it is. And I bet I know who,” Julie went on. “It’s that shithead Matthew James and you’re major crushing on him.”

  “He’s not that bad.”

  “Seriously?”

  But Maggie didn’t have time to respond. Mrs. Michelangelo still hadn’t returned. Mr. Goss, the vice principal, entered instead.

  “There’s fifteen more minutes of class,” he said. “I trust you can all find something productive to do.”

  He sat down at the teacher’s desk and offered no further explanation about Mrs. Michelangelo’s disappearance. He looked stoically out at the class, like a captain in rough seas.

  The boy in front of Maggie turned around in his chair. “I bet I know what happened.”

  He had the local area code shaved into the very short hair on the side of his head and a diamond earring, too big to be real. Maggie remembered he was in her seventh-grade English, but other than that she didn’t know much about him, except his name, Tommy. Maggie tried to give Julie that please-don’t-encourage-him look, but it was too late.

  “Yeah, how’s that?” Julie asked. She had slid off the desk and into the seat next to Maggie.

  “My mother and Mrs. Michelangelo went to college together. Or high school — I don’t remember.”

  Which seemed kind of interesting, so Maggie said, “Really?”

  “You think I’d make that up?” Tommy snapped back.

  “No, I mean, Really. Like, Really, that’s pretty cool,” Maggie said.

  “Oh, yeah, it is,” Tommy continued. “So, they’re friends, and I happen to know that Mrs. Michelangelo’s husband is in big trouble. He’s going to lose his business and maybe their house.”

  “So what does that have to do with Mrs. Michelangelo leaving the room?” Julie asked.

  “It just probably does. They owe tons of taxes and they can’t pay their mortgage. Which is funny, since my family doesn’t even have our own house.”

  The girls exchanged looks. Maggie had often shared the strange confessional experiences she had with Julie.

  “We rent above Smitty’s Garage, you know. My dad does leaves and mows lawns. He probably mows your lawn.”

  “My dad cuts his own grass,” Julie said.

  “Yeah, well,” Tommy said. “He’s the only one in town, then.”

  Over the years, Maggie noticed that truths came in categories. Mostly they were things someone was embarrassed about, a physical thing or an emotional issue, or a social problem, real or imagined. Home life, personal life. The only common denominator was that everyone seemed to think everyone else had it all together.

  “It really sucks being the poorest kid in town,” Tommy said. “It’s all bullshit. Dirt is dirt, especially if you move it to make a living. I die every time my dad comes to one of my soccer games and I am sure he has spread fertilizer for one of the other dads sitting there. Sometimes I pretend I don’t see him.”

  “See who?” Julie asked.

  “My dad.”

  Judging from the way he was beginning to tear up, Maggie knew there was more.

  “But last year was the worst, when my dad wanted to coach the JV baseball team. He played, you know. My dad. He had one season in the majors. He’s really good. He’s a great dad. He taught me h
ow to throw, catch grounders, stay in front of the ball. He taught me everything, never put me down, always encouraged me. He wouldn’t even have cared if I sucked at baseball. He just wanted to coach. And I lied to him.”

  Now Tommy’s voice took on a shaky, higher pitch and a couple of other students were turning around to see what was going on. Lucky for him, more than half the class had left.

  “I came home and told him not to bother applying ’cause they already had someone in mind. ‘But I was in the pros,’ he told me. ‘Who could they have possibly gotten?’

  “ ‘I guess they got someone better,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say. And my dad never bothered to call the athletic office and find out if it was true. He just took my word for it.”

  Maggie could feel the burn behind her eyes, but she blinked it away. Everyone, it seems, wants absolution for something.

  Matthew came over to see Maggie precisely two more times that school year. During the first of those two evenings, he tried again to make himself one with the girl who seemed accommodating, if not entirely willing. No one was waiting in the driveway outside, and this time they didn’t make it to the bedroom. Matthew kissed her hard, holding her up against the kitchen wall after accepting Maggie’s offer of a drink of water. He put down his glass and pulled Maggie to the floor with him. He landed with a thud, and she, only slightly more gracefully, on top of him.

  Again, there didn’t seem to be time to wonder if this was what she wanted — whether it was wise or safe. Maggie tried to ignore the sharp pain in her back as the bones of her spine were pressed against the tile-hard floor, her underpants pulled to the side, bunched up and wedged uncomfortably into her bottom. Once again, it didn’t work, but once again, Matthew seemed to achieve some kind of success even if she had failed again.

  The second time was two months later, when Maggie’s parents and brothers went out for the afternoon. He made his feeble attempts to enter but quickly resorted to rubbing himself up against Maggie’s bare thigh without bothering to take off his pants.

  By June, Matthew had left town, working in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the summer, and then heading off for his freshman year of college at SUNY Albany.