Surfacing

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “Oh, it’s just stuff from my old house.”

  “Let’s open it,” Julie said. She was on the floor, already pulling at the clear tape that held the top closed.

  “No!” Maggie shouted. “Don’t!”

  She hadn’t meant to yell like that, but Julie’s eyes immediately welled up with tears.

  Maggie got off the bed and joined her new friend on the floor. “I’m sorry.” She put her hand on Julie’s back and rubbed it the way her mother used to when either of the girls was sad or tired or didn’t feel well.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Julie said, blinking furiously.

  “Wanna watch some TV?”

  Julie smiled, and Maggie smiled back. There would be lots of time for more understanding, just not now. Maggie couldn’t say for sure when she first told Julie about her sister, or even what she said, exactly, but when she did, she told her only what she had to, only what she told herself.

  “The coach is such an ass,” Julie said.

  She kept her arms tightly around Maggie’s shoulder. Coach Mac had given them two minutes to get back inside his office and finish the Red Cross video.

  “It’s OK, Jules. We can go back.”

  “No, we don’t have to.” They stayed crouched on the floor in the hall. “He should know better.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t. Why should he?”

  Julie was quiet. No one really knew about Leah. When Maggie had arrived, there had been some talk about something that happened to the new girl in her old town, maybe, bad or not so bad, but Maggie herself never talked about it. And after a while, without any more information, rumors faded and disappeared.

  Julie, of course, knew. She knew Maggie had had an older sister, Leah, and that Leah had drowned in a pool in the condo park where they lived. That Leah had left her house when she wasn’t supposed to and tried to swim alone. There was no lifeguard. There were a few people around but no one heard, or no one saw. No one was watching her, until it was too late. It was a long time ago. Leah was very young. Maggie was younger.

  Julie knew that Maggie’s parents had two more kids but their family was never the same.

  She knew people now told Maggie things that they didn’t tell anyone else, for reasons no one could really explain.

  Beyond that, she was Maggie’s best friend, nothing less.

  “I’ll stay out here with you, if you want,” Julie offered.

  “Nah, c’mon. I don’t even know why the movie bothers me. I don’t even remember much anymore.”

  “And it’s probably over by now.”

  The girls walked back into the darkened room.

  It was years before Maggie would even go near any substantial body of water. Until she agreed to step into a shower, her mother had to bathe her in only a few inches of tub water. Taking swim lessons for the first time when she was twelve years old was her father’s idea.

  By that time, Maggie had discovered her unusual “gift,” and she had experienced how uncomfortable it made people, how lonely it made her feel. It was about this same time that her parents’ silent anger, blame, love, and hate for each other became audible and unavoidable.

  “She’s terrified. What the hell purpose would it serve now?” Mrs. Paris’s voice lifted high into the air that carried up the stairs, reverberated off the bedroom walls.

  “So she can learn to swim. So she can live her life, Gail. Move on.”

  “What do swimming and living have to do with each other?” she shot back.

  “It’s about not being afraid.”

  “There are healthy fears, Don.”

  “Well, yours are not healthy.”

  Ultimately, Maggie’s decision had more to do with hoping to heal her parents, and therefore herself, than with overcoming her fear of water, although in the end she achieved neither.

  She began taking swim lessons at the Y. She was too young for adults-who-never-learned-to-swim class and too old for the Guppy or Minnow groups. Maggie ended up taking private swim lessons. Her teacher was a young woman named Ma’ayan.

  “My name means water in Hebrew. Well, literally it means fountain or underground spring,” she told Maggie. “Ma’ayan.”

  The water of the YMCA indoor pool was dank and dark, which suited Maggie just fine. It was exactly the unbeautifulness of it all that allowed Maggie to sit on the edge and dip her toes. There was no clear, sparkling blue, no sunshine and sparkle about it.

  “I’m afraid of the water,” Ma’ayan said. She wore a tight UV shirt over her bathing suit. She had curly brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She couldn’t have been ten years older than Maggie.

  Maggie braced herself for another confession.

  “I didn’t learn to swim until I went to college,” Ma’ayan went on. “So I really understand how to teach it. None of it came naturally to me or too early for me to remember how to do it.”

  Maggie listened, waiting for the ridiculous, the pathetic, the miserable. People felt compelled to tell her the truth, and she felt oh-so-compelled to care, because she did.

  “And I am a really good swimmer now. Every stroke perfect, but I am still scared.”

  “Scared of what?” Maggie asked. She let the water touch her ankles.

  “Of drowning,” Ma’ayan said.

  No one said that around Maggie. No one used that word; no one ever connected Maggie’s fear of swimming to drowning. Not out loud. Not to her face. Not in so many perfect words.

  “I am too,” Maggie said. “I am afraid if I go in the water, I might die.”

  “You would,” Ma’ayan said, “if it were deep, or moving, or if you couldn’t swim. That’s why I’m going to teach you to swim.”

  And she did. It took five months, the first month of which they never got in the water past their ankles, never lifted their bottoms from the side of the pool. The second month Maggie felt the weight of the water slightly push against her thighs, then tighten the skin of her belly and shoulders with its cold. She let the water show its power, all its power and all its will. At the end of the third month, she held her breath, dunked under, and let the water take control of her life, so she could know what it was she was taking back. And in the fourth month, Maggie lifted her feet from the bottom and began to swim.

  “Bend your elbow and let it pierce the surface, like a knife coming out of the water, taking the path of least resistance.”

  Swimming seemed to be all about the path of least resistance. Maggie kept her mind on that focus. It was about letting go.

  “Now stretch your arm and let your hand slice the water. Don’t fight it. Be part of it. You are entering into a temporary agreement with the forces of the water, a mutual respect.”

  Maggie pointed her fingers, used her feet like fins, and rocked her body from side to side, allowing the water to rush on each side. She felt the speed of movement like nothing she could feel on dry earth. It was like flying.

  Learning to breathe was the hardest.

  “Turn your head as little as possible, just to the point where the air meets the surface of the water. Trust that you are in control, that you can take in the oxygen and force out the water. Open your mouth just under your armpit.”

  They practiced for weeks, standing in the shallow end, holding on to the side and bending at the waist, dipping their faces into the water. Maggie felt the water come into her mouth. She felt it rush back out. The smoother she could make that transference, the faster she moved through the water. The more she could fool the water into believing she had gills for respiration, the smoother her stroke.

  At the end of five months, Maggie tried out for the middle-school swim team but her parents didn’t stop fighting. Instead, two years ago, they had spent a small fortune on fertility doctors, had another baby that turned out to be two babies, and for a while it looked like things might be better.

  As predicted, and as was necessary for her plan, neither her mother nor father asked Maggie how she was getting back from the PSATs that morning. It had been an u
nderstanding since getting to high school that being responsible for your own transportation was part of the whole experience. If she needed a ride, she would ask. If she didn’t ask, they wouldn’t.

  “Got your ID?”

  Maggie nodded to her mother while downing her coffee.

  “Calculator?”

  Maggie nodded again. She didn’t care about the PSATs. You weren’t supposed to study for them, but of course, some kids did. Some kids had gotten tutors and taken an obscene number of practice PSATs, even though the P in PSAT stood for practice.

  What Maggie cared about was getting there and being done when Nathan came to pick her up at noon. She cared that her parents were still planning on visiting Mrs. Paris’s mother in Frenchtown, New Jersey, and were not expected back until evening, “at the earliest.”

  “Did you get a good night’s sleep?” Her mother’s final question.

  “Yeah, Ma. Thanks,” Maggie said, making sure not to catch her mother’s eyes. It was better that way, not to directly look at each other, and it had been that way for a while.

  Since Leah drowned? Just after?

  When Maggie was in fifth grade, the school nurse sent her home with a raging red, goopy case of conjunctivitis. She wore two pairs of gloves as she pulled down on the skin just above Maggie’s cheek. “How on earth did your mother let you come to school this morning?” the nurse said, shaking her head. She pulled the latex inside out, all five fingers at once. “You don’t have to be a doctor. Just one look in your eyes and anyone would know.”

  Maggie finished all three sections of the PSAT before anyone else in the room did, walked to the front, and turned in her test packet. The proctor, who had been flipping through Elle magazine, looked up and offered Maggie the chance to recheck any answers or fill in the blank ones.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Have a nice day, then,” she said.

  “You too,” Maggie said, and she pulled open the heavy door. Nathan was waiting for her in the hall.

  My sister, Maggie, and I like to play games, like clay face, and slapping faces, and motorcar. Our bodies are one. Our faces are one. I put my hands on my sister’s face. Her skin is clay now, and whatever position I squeeze her into, she must try to keep it frozen that way, like hardened clay. We make funny faces, squinting our eyes and twisting our mouths, sucking in our cheeks or blowing them out. If we lie on opposite ends of the bed and press our feet together, one of us is the car, motor and all, making appropriate sounds of speeding up and braking, and the other is the driver, taking control of our lives, negotiating our way down the road.

  Slapping faces is for when we are really bored — in the backseat of the car during a long trip, for instance. I let her slap me first, since she is younger and probably won’t come right out and wallop me right off the bat. First of all, she’s not that type, and second, if she does, then the rules of the game state that she must sit perfectly still and let me slap her back just as hard. We trade a few tiny pats for a while before one of us, usually me, ups the ante a little. It’s a stupid game, and if our mother hears us from the front seat, she’ll make us stop, so we have to be extra quiet.

  “You go,” I tell Maggie. She’s not even five yet and does whatever I tell her. I close my eyes and feel the lightest tap on my cheek, almost a kiss.

  But I am really bored today. I was bored the whole ride over to Grandma Ruth’s in Frenchtown, even though I think it’s funny because our name is Paris. I was bored the whole time we were there, and I got in big trouble for knocking over the orange juice in her fridge, where I apparently had no business being in the first place. In front of all my cousins, I was given a time-out and not allowed to watch TV. And so I am extra bored on the long, long, long ride home, so I do it.

  I haul off and whack Maggie right across the face.

  I watch as her eyes fly open and the imprint of my hand shows white against her red cheek. We look at each other. I can’t forget her eyes.

  I know I am going to get in big trouble now. Big trouble, like I always do, because they will always take Maggie’s side and it won’t matter what I say. No one will listen to me. My mom has been big on repercussions lately. She says I don’t get any. Whatever they are I don’t want them, but I bet hitting my little sister ranks right up there.

  “What is going on back there?” First our mom asks, and then our dad, louder and more demanding, adding “the hell” as a modifier.

  “Nothing,” Maggie answers, and I know it is hard for her to talk because her throat is closing up with the tears that have sprung into her eyes, which only I can see. But she doesn’t tell on me. My sister would never do that.

  She doesn’t say a thing.

  Maggie watched Nathan closely as he drove, wondering what he would open up and tell her one day, maybe shortly, maybe later, but right now he wasn’t talking, and she was grateful for that. She was oddly calm — considering what she was planning.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked him. They pulled around the circular driveway and Nathan threw the car into park.

  “OK.” He cut the engine.

  “I can make us lunch. Are you hungry?”

  Nathan smiled. “I can always eat.”

  “Yeah, my little brothers are like that.”

  “You have brothers. More than one?”

  “Twins.”

  “Oh, right, you told me. Dylan and Lucas.”

  He remembered their names.

  The door was unlocked, and the house was empty when they walked in. Maybe if it hadn’t been such a beautiful day, but the sun was shining, clear and gentle, warm for late autumn. Maybe if the soft breeze hadn’t been moving constantly above, keeping the air perfectly comfortable. Leaves still clinging, magnificent in their colors, red and gold, with no awareness that their end was so close. Maybe then Maggie would have been more apprehensive about what she hoped was about to happen, but it all seemed so perfect and right, as if the universe were confirming not only her plan but her motivation as well.

  “Do you like turkey?” Maggie said with her head still in the fridge.

  “Whatever’s easy,” Nathan answered.

  Maggie really didn’t watch enough music videos or beer commercials to know how to arch her back and stick out her rear end effectively anyway. Actually making lunch would take up precious time, so Maggie shut the fridge, turned around empty-handed, leaned back with her hands behind her back, and tipped her head up slightly.

  “You can kiss me, you know.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, coy, and unreal, but she said it and it sounded pretty good, and Nathan looked startled but he stepped toward her.

  “OK, then,” he said.

  It was a no-handed kiss. Maggie kept her arms pinned against the fridge behind her, and Nathan kept his at his side. They kissed for longer than was comfortable in that position, until Maggie took Nathan’s hand and started to pull him toward her room. He was quiet and not leading, but certainly not refusing.

  “Maggie,” he said, “what are you doing?”

  She really didn’t want to have to spell it out. That wasn’t part of her plan. She just figured it would happen if she let it, if she made it happen. Didn’t all boys want this?

  Besides, she didn’t have a plan B, so this was going to have to work.

  What am I doing?

  I am taking a boy into my room so he can have sex with me, so I won’t be a virgin anymore and when the boy I really like comes home from college I can have sex with him.

  Seriously?

  The odd thing was that not only did this truth not occur to Maggie; it just didn’t seem true anymore. Instead, it felt more like she was traveling into a new world that would belong only to her, where important decisions, even small decisions, would be her own. A world in which she would be alone, and she alone could choose whom to invite inside.

  “Get out of the pool. Get back on the stair,” Leah demanded of her little sister. She put her hands on her hips like their mother did, which look
ed silly to Maggie, little-girl fingers covering big yellow daisies. Leah was not the mother.

  Maggie didn’t move. The water felt good. It cooled her whole body; the smell of chlorine was inviting. The rays of sun bouncing off the surface looked like sparkles at a birthday party, glitter on a ballet costume.

  “You’re going to get in big trouble.” Leah pulled out her final threat, and Maggie retreated.

  Maggie walked back, sat down on the top step, and let the pool water wet the bottom of her suit. The cool water rushed between her legs and sent a shiver along her entire body. Maggie wouldn’t be bad today. She never wanted to get into trouble. She wasn’t that kind of kid sister, and she would never tattle or get her sister in trouble. Leah was counting on all those things.

  “Anyway, I can too,” Leah said.

  “Can too, what?”

  “Swim, dummy. I can too swim. I passed the deep-water test, and you know it,” Leah said a little too loudly.

  When Maggie looked over the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool, she knew exactly why. Just past the fence, and the grass, on the other side of the pavement, Meghan Liggett had come out of her house and was bending down, fiddling with something on her lawn, doing a worse job of pretending not to see Leah than Leah was doing pretending not to see her.

  Maggie didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew the basic mechanics and figured that would be enough to get her through. Every idiot in the world has sex at some point or another, and if you didn’t count her now-probable PSAT scores, Maggie was certainly no idiot. Besides, her experience with Matthew had given her some idea of what to do.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nathan said, his voice faltering between shallow breaths, between kisses, and his body pressing against hers, hers pressing back.

  “It’s fine,” Maggie assured him. “It’s a safe time.”

  Nathan pulled away. “A safe time?”

  “Well, that didn’t come out right.”

  It was about two o’clock, the hour when, at this particular time of the year, the sun broke at the surface, bent, and spread yellow across Maggie’s room. Everything looked golden, and it suddenly felt very bright, all too illuminated. They both sat up on top of the bed, the covers rumpled but still tucked tight.