Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  His back hitting the water made a splash like a large bird makes in rising. The sting of cold was deadly, but he stayed, his abdomen bobbing up, his skull half-frozen. He counted to one hundred. When he sat up he rubbed his limbs, his neck and face. Out of the creek and up the bank, he dried himself with his undershirt, rubbing his skin again with his sweater. His body felt as keen as birth. He dried his feet with his socks and put on his shoes without them.

  “Don’t fight,” he said aloud, poised in a squat, suddenly starving, laughing out loud, delirious. There was nothing but the night, and what light there was in it issued from the trees themselves and the grass, mirroring the stars.

  * * *

  • • •

  “YEAH, I WENT,” Tacker said to his father.

  “What for, son?”

  “To see what’s going on in my hometown.”

  “I don’t like it much.”

  “You don’t dislike it that much,” Tacker said. “Gaines and I were gone less than an hour. We didn’t get arrested. We’re talking about getting a sandwich at a lunch counter. That’s a nice store, by the way. New swivel chairs. I guess I hadn’t been in there since coming home.”

  Tacker eyed his father, trying to gauge his response. But in his plaid, button-up oxford, he was hard to read. “The woman behind the counter said she couldn’t serve me if I was with coloreds,” Tacker said. “Imagine if you were hungry and tired and couldn’t sit down.”

  His father rubbed his chin. “We have a long tradition of being separate. It’s how we’ve managed to stay civil. You might think about this store I’ve entrusted to your care.”

  “Every month since I’ve been here we’ve outpaced last year. But we haven’t stayed civil, Dad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean a Negro can get spit on for sitting at a lunch counter; he can be beaten up for walking down the street in front of your store, killed for speaking to a white woman.”

  His father lifted his hat and scratched around in his graying hair.

  “You’re the one who said small changes. A sandwich is pretty small when you figure it,” Tacker said.

  “I don’t know whether to blame your mother or me for this streak in you,” his father said, his brow knotted.

  “Both of you,” Tacker said. “Let your conscience be your guide. You said that.”

  His father put his hat back on.

  * * *

  • • •

  FOUR DAYS AFTER Woolworth’s, Kate came into Hart’s wearing a pink fitted coat buttoned up the front. Tacker thought about everything that was under it. But he was still angry with her about James and a useful irritation came into the back of his neck and warmed him and he did not move to greet her. He was even annoyed with her for not knowing what had been going on with him even though he’d made no effort to communicate. He focused on checking out customers and hoped to make his lack of interest as clear as a pistol shot. Kate’s hand placed a single Forelle pear on the counter, yellow-green with a cloud of pink on its upper side.

  “Is that all?” he said before looking up.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry about Brian’s dinner party. I didn’t know James was coming.”

  “That’s your business.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For making you feel bad.”

  Tacker gazed at her. “Who said I felt bad? Look, I can’t talk right now.” He was about to crack his knuckles when he thought better of it and placed both hands down on the counter.

  “I didn’t have time to tell you.”

  No time for a phone call? Tacker imagined the resident with his precious necktie. He looked beyond Kate as if something else had fetched his eye.

  “Call me later, okay?” she said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. But he did not call her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  KATE HAD NOT heard from James or Tacker in a week. She didn’t want to hear from James, except perhaps to hear how sorry he was. Her considerations of Tacker were more complicated. Any thought of him necessarily brought to mind his hands resting at his lean hips and his well-formed chest and the compelling column of his neck.

  She had a call from the photography store that her last set of pictures was ready for pickup and she left the house to fetch them. The man behind the counter looked wan and his collar was loose at the neck. She hoped photography would not have a wasting effect on her. At home, she selected six of her best photographs to send to the Winston-Salem Journal. A large envelope came back several days later. We’re using your photograph of Modern Chevrolet in Sunday’s paper. Enclosed find your remaining photographs and a check for $10.00. Please consider us when you have other pictures that might be of interest to our readers.

  She turned a circle on her porch. Inside, she called Mr. Fitzgerald and Mrs. McCall to tell them her news. She wanted to call Tacker and she dialed the first numbers before she put the handset back into the cradle. She did the same a few minutes later before heading out with her camera. It lay solid upon her chest like a heavy locket, though its effect was not to cause heart weariness but rather to speed her step.

  The very next day, Mrs. McCall phoned, asking Kate to take some shots of the library for the upcoming campaign. “We want pictures of our patrons,” she said.

  “I’ll be there in the morning,” Kate said.

  The media room of Main Library was full of elderly gentlemen reading the newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Journal. She walked upstairs to locate Mrs. McCall, who had said to call her Nancy, though the transition was proving difficult for Kate. Nancy seemed too familiar a name for such a formidable presence as Mrs. McCall. When she couldn’t find her, she asked a librarian at the card catalog.

  “Oh yes. She had to go to a meeting. She said to tell you to go ahead. Just ask before you take anyone’s picture.” She smiled briefly before looking back to the drawer into which she was entering cards for new books. Each card made a little snap as it fastened in place.

  Kate felt relief and trepidation. It could be awkward to work with someone like Nancy McCall standing by waiting for her to finish, and yet now she had to approach all of these strangers. She should go back to the gentlemen with the dailies before they shuttled home for lunch. The room was still full, but now she must decide whether to approach each one individually or claim their attention all at once. The room was quiet save the rustling of papers. Kate made her way to one side. “Excuse me,” she said to a silver-haired man in tortoiseshell glasses whose diminutive comeliness made him seem the most approachable. “The library has asked me to snap some pictures. Do you mind?”

  He looked up at the camera and then at Kate.

  “Why, not at all.” He straightened his eyeglasses.

  “Do you think you could . . .”

  “Ask the others? Yes. Of course.”

  He stood and she saw he was a little stoop shouldered. He rolled his paper and slapped it against his hand. “See here,” he said, his voice precise and authoritative. Most of the men looked in their direction. A few poked at others who had not heard. “See here, this young lady has been asked to take our picture. What’s your name?”

  “Kate Monroe.”

  “Miss Monroe,” he repeated.

  One man rose slowly, returned his paper to the wooden rack, and ambled out of the room. The rest of them looked at Kate.

  “Please just keep reading,” she said. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  It took them a moment to settle back to reading. Kate slipped her shoes off and walked in stocking feet. Occasionally one of the men would look up to see if she was still in the room. They seemed a gentle agglomeration of elders who in bygone times would have gathered at the general store, eating chunks of cheese and surrounded by the odor of tobacco, while the most erudite among them
read aloud from a single paper. The image in her head of that earlier era seemed truer than the present moment she was about to capture on film. There was no smell here save a faint whiff of open books. The shutter button made a sweet light sound each time she pressed it. Kate took at least twenty shots, some close-up, others angled to capture the magazine racks, some over a reader’s shoulder to capture a headline. She slipped her loafers back on.

  “Thank you,” she said to the silver-haired gentleman.

  He took his eyeglasses off. “You’re welcome, Miss Monroe. I knew your father, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was dean at Salem College for many years. I believe I remember you playing hopscotch in front of the main building. I wasn’t sure until you said your name. Well, he would be proud of you now.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’m here most every day. Drop by again,” he said and shook out his paper.

  “I will.” Her chest swelled with pleasure until she was halfway across the room, when she realized she’d forgotten to ask his name. The cool lozenge in her heart was still there. Quickened by conscience, she made a point to ask the names of the mothers in the children’s book section and helped finger-comb their offspring’s hair. She and Brian spent time in the library when their mother was running errands. Brian wasn’t good at sitting still so Kate would sneak in a bag of Sugar Babies and find a hidden nook where she could feed him one after another. “Suck on it. That one has to last five minutes.” He would sit with his book open, his mouth tight in concentration, and she would read as much of Wuthering Heights as she could before she had to give him another candy. He was like a little bird and she was the mother. Kate finished her second roll of film.

  In special collections she found two women poring over an old copy of the Woman’s Club Year Book of 1930–31. They wore their hair in nets and looked like sisters with their well-corseted midsections and aged-to-transparency skin.

  “Yes, yes, dear, go ahead,” the shorter one said, waving a handkerchief.

  Kate took several shots before the same woman looked up and said, “We want to take your picture.”

  “Oh, thank you. That’s not necessary.”

  “No. We want to, don’t we, Annie?”

  The other nodded. Apparently the shorter one spoke for both of them on a regular basis, the royal we.

  “Only one person can take a picture at a time,” Kate said, as if speaking to a child.

  They stood before her unfazed.

  “I’ll have to show you,” Kate said, reluctant. “Who wants to go first?”

  “Annie does. She’ll do it for both of us,” said the taller woman, finally finding her voice.

  The women smelled slightly of mothballs.

  “Let’s slip the shoulder strap over your neck,” Katie said. Annie was so short, the camera landed well below her belly. But her hands were dexterous and steady, her fingers long.

  “Turn this knob until your subject is in focus,” Kate said. “This is the shutter button. Just push it when you’re ready.”

  “Go stand over in front of those books,” Annie said. “No, don’t look at me. Study the books.”

  Kate heard the slight click of the camera.

  “Now pick out a book,” Annie said. Again the soft click.

  “Now turn around and pretend you’re reading it. Now look at me.”

  Kate heard the click and blinked. “That must be enough, don’t you think?”

  “One more.”

  Kate complied.

  “Oh yes. You’re going to like those. Now sister and I have to get back to our work,” she said, as if Kate had requested her portrait be made, not the other way around.

  “Thank you,” Kate said, relieving Annie of the Brick.

  * * *

  • • •

  KATE DEVELOPED THE film herself at the photography shop, where she’d arranged for the privilege in exchange for assisting, on occasion, with in-studio photography sessions with brides-to-be. The girls fidgeted and moaned about their hair and cried and giggled, and their mothers were worse.

  Methodically Kate worked through the long streamers of film. It was always miraculous to watch an image come up on a shiny white piece of paper. Some of the pictures of the media room were overexposed; in several the composition was ruined by shadow. But she had at least three that would make a worthy offering to Nancy McCall, along with four good ones of the children. The pictures of Annie and her sister were disappointing. The women looked washed-out in their pale dresses against the busy background of wall maps.

  She almost threw away the five frames of herself without developing them, but then she thought she might be humored to see what Annie had wrought. Three images were so ill focused she hardly recognized herself. But in the last, she was faced with an image of herself moving forward, rows of books behind her creating the illusion of a tunnel, her face bent forward in a strobe of light, one shoulder in front of the other, a flicker of recognition on her face as if she were moving toward something she had been looking for, for a long time. Gazing upon the image was like looking at herself in a dream in which she knew where she was headed and who waited for her, and she wondered what the photograph would reveal to someone who didn’t know her.

  She felt dizzy and dug into her purse for a package of Nabs. Her camera seemed to know more than she did. It was a little frightening to consider what it might reveal next.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TACKER GAVE IN and called Kate. She made him feel alive and he wanted her. It was as simple as that. “Wonder if I could drop over tonight?”

  He knocked rather than ringing the bell. In a moment, he could see Kate come into the hallway.

  “Tacker?”

  “Yes.”

  She wore a man’s flannel shirt over slacks. Tacker had never thought about Kate wearing makeup but she must because her face was scrubbed clean and he saw the difference. She was still pretty but younger-looking, her face rounder than he had thought.

  “I was reading,” she said.

  He followed her into the library. A book was turned over to keep the place. It looked like one of her mother’s tourist books, but he didn’t ask. He took a seat in one of the chairs and looked again at Kate’s mother’s portrait. Kate sat on the green sofa next to him. She looked small. Neither of them spoke.

  “What about James?” he said when it was clear she was waiting on him.

  “James is going to Sweden for some fellowship,” she said.

  “Some fellowship? I expect you know the name of it.”

  “Really I don’t. It’s a post-residency fellowship.”

  “How long?”

  “A year.”

  “He asked you to go with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “No.”

  Tacker liked her having to answer him. “Have you been writing to him?”

  She looked at her hands. “I sent him a Christmas card.”

  Tacker thought about their drive up Pilot Mountain on the Indian. He would like to undress her. He would also like to walk out on her.

  “You’re mad at me,” she said. “I knew you were.”

  “I don’t like being jerked around.”

  Tacker stood and went to the mantel, his back to Kate. He was so close to the mother’s portrait that the red skirt now appeared like a burning range of hills. He had a wild urge to touch the painted surface. Kate cleared her throat. Tacker turned around. She was tossing her hair up with her hand and the sleeve of the shirt fell open, exposing the pale underside of her arm. He wondered if she would wear an ankle bracelet. It was a nice thought. “What do you want from me?”

  “That’s an odd question,” she said.

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “We’ve been spending time together. You i
nvite me over for your brother’s birthday. An old boyfriend shows up. What do you want, Kate?”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  Tacker looked into the hallway. “Yeah. Well, I’ve missed you too. And I don’t want to keep missing you. Are you coming or going? Which is it?”

  “I like being with you,” she said.

  “Tonight? Longer than tonight? I don’t know, Kate. You’re all over the place. With your parents and your dad and all that, I get it. I’m just not interested in being on call when you need me and dropped off when you don’t.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” he said. Why was he saying these things? He should be kissing her.

  Kate started crying. He felt unjustly persecuted. “Hey,” he said finally, moving toward her, sitting back on his haunches in front of her. He ran his index finger down the pale flesh of her arm. Then he pulled her arm forward so her wrist was exposed and he made circles where her veins ran. “I guess your aunt Mildred wonders about the men you attract.”

  “She said James was arrogant,” Kate said.

  Tacker let that comment enjoy some room.

  She wore a necklace at her throat and as he ran his hand over her arm, she held and twisted the small jewel. Tacker thought of all her hinged places. She was beautiful in the pale light and he had to keep his anger kindled to talk to her rather than pull her with him onto the rug. “I don’t like being the last man available,” he said.

  “I’m just afraid. After learning about my dad,” she said.

  Her face suddenly looked very young, like tenth grade. She had secrets he didn’t know. And the other way around. Tacker stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his arms. He was aware that his feeling for the girl in front of him was intensified by James’s prior claim. It wasn’t something to be proud of.