Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER HAD HAD malaria once. First it was a cool sensation in his chest. Then there was heat in his throat and he carried a stone on his back. He had left Samuel in the cafeteria and gone to the dormitory because by then he only went up to the faculty house to pick up his laundry. He lay down and pulled a sheet up and fell asleep and he was dead until he woke burning just as the sun tilted red through the window. He flapped his hand, trying to move the sheet. “Lazarus,” someone said from a mile away. “He has come back from the dead. Go fetch Samuel.” Tacker felt the cover lift off like a sheet of steel. Someone palmed his forehead. Samuel was there holding a glass and a pill. “Take it,” he said. Tacker took the pill and closed his eyes and everything was long yellow stripes. He felt a wave break and he slept. When he woke, he was in an ice chest and his teeth rattled until he believed they would crack. I need my fingers, he thought, and someone moved his hair out of his eyes. When he opened his eyes next it was dark and he could make out the shape of the window and hear a drum and the drip of water somewhere. Tacker’s mother walked into the room. “I’ll take over from here,” she said. Her nylon dress waved in the gray light but her face shone. She sat next to Tacker and read the story of Wee Willie Winkie. His groin tightened and collapsed. “That’s not nice, Tacker,” she said.

  O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light.

  When Tacker was well, he counted the paces to the dining hall. Thirty-five. To the classroom, seventy. To the street. One hundred two. He ate bananas and mangos. Then fried okra. Plantain.

  I’m alive, he thought. Nothing can ever go wrong again. Look how alive I am.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  KATE LEFT THURSDAY morning for Janet’s wedding. Tacker was tied up at the store with the transition and so they made a date for Saturday night when she was back. She took off early, in time to eat lunch with Janet and her mother, a repast of cantaloupe and egg salad sandwiches and Fritos. Because the wedding party was small, one groomsman and one bridesmaid, there was not going to be a rehearsal, but there would be a dinner at the house that evening, so Kate and Janet got busy setting up extra tables, ironing table linens, and polishing the silver. Janet’s wedding gifts were on display in the sunroom, gobs of china and crystal and her sixteen-place setting of silver, still virginal though the bride was not. Janet had told Kate after lunch that she was pregnant. “Oh my God,” Kate had said. “Oh, sweetie. Are you okay? Is it—? Who’s the father?” “Bo, of course,” Janet had said. “You’re sure?” Katie had said. “Of course I’m sure,” Janet had said, before sashaying out the back door in her housecoat and rollers, where she lit up a cigarette. Kate went to her. “I’m so sorry, honey.” “It’s okay,” Janet said. “We’re going to be just fine.” But her face looked bloated in the afternoon sun. The ring on her finger—white gold with an opal rather than a diamond—already looked tight.

  Guests began to arrive at six thirty. Bo was among the last to show up. Kate was aghast at his appearance. He was the size of a refrigerator, burr haircut, paws for hands, a cigar dangling from his mouth even when he talked. He looked thirty-five at least, maybe forty. He kissed the top of Janet’s head and pulled her to him like a stuffed animal he might win at the fair. Then he dragged her around as he made the rounds of the room. When they got to Kate, he let go of Janet for a moment, took Kate’s hand, and kissed it, and she could smell alcohol on his breath. Janet’s lovely upswept hair was beginning to fall. Kate sat at the table with Janet and Bo and his groomsman, whose head looked as if it had been pressed between heavy metal bookends so it was narrow and pointed at the top. Bo dominated the conversation as Janet smiled weakly. What was she thinking? They were as well fitted as an egg and a boulder. He was going to crush her. Anything would be better than this: having the baby, giving up the baby, even that other option no one spoke of but many girls did.

  The next morning, Janet appeared to sleepwalk through the ceremony at the small Methodist church. There were only about twenty people and the minister, a young man so young Kate wondered if he’d been to college. Kate insisted that Janet give her her California address and promised to write every week. Early afternoon she started home and was back on Glade at four. When she opened the door to her house, she felt she was walking into a sanctuary. Light fell through the library window and into the hallway. The rooms were quiet and perfect as new candles, lit once and snuffed and waiting.

  She wasn’t sleepy but her bones felt tired from holding herself stiff for three days. She opened the windows and lay down on her bed. The breeze was refreshing, but she couldn’t sleep. She and Tacker were going to dinner at the Robert E. Lee Hotel, to celebrate his new job with Tom Driskell. She wished they were going for a walk in the park and hot dogs at Howard Johnson’s instead. Around four the phone rang. It was Mrs. McCall wanting to know if Kate could help with a fund-raiser in July and if so, could she come to a meeting Tuesday afternoon at the library. “Yes,” Kate said, feeling wearied even by that bit of responsibility. She’d taken the Brick to South Carolina and snapped not a single picture of the wedding party. How could she, with Bo and his friend’s pointy head and Janet’s bloated face? She took the camera now and walked out her back door and down the alley. A beauteous canopy of green gave shade to the entire length of it, extending Kate’s sense of the sacred that she had encountered walking through her front doorway two hours ago. A chipmunk sprinted across her path and a red cardinal swooped. The air was fresh and light. Ferns unfurled from the base of a rock wall in her neighbor’s yard and she recalled what she had said to Tacker about flowers and sex organs. She lowered herself to sitting, remembering the time in the car with James. How cheap and pathetic. It made her sick to think about it.

  She was heading down Forsyth when a door opened and a woman came out, waving her hands and calling. Maybe her curtains were on fire. Why wasn’t she calling the fire department?

  “Oh, you’re just what I need,” the woman said. “Your camera.”

  “What can I do for you?” Kate said.

  “My lilacs are blooming and my son ran off with the camera. My husband is dead, you may know.”

  “No, but I’m so sorry.” Kate was awestruck by the woman’s glibness. “I’m shooting black-and-white film,” she said.

  “Well, just pop in some color film,” the woman said.

  “I can’t. It’ll ruin the pictures I’ve already taken if I open the back of the camera now.”

  “Well, I’ll swan,” the woman said. “That doesn’t do me a bit of good. Who wants black-and-white pictures of a lilac bush?”

  “I’m sorry you’re disappointed. I could come back another day.”

  “My dear girl. The lilacs are at their peak, their very peak. Later won’t do.” She let out a sound as if she had just been punched before turning to walk back up her walkway.

  “Well, goodness me,” Kate whispered, and then she laughed. After a while, she came to the park. Near a bridge, she saw Tacker off to the left, kneeling in the grass not far from the new but still empty pool. What in the world was he doing? She didn’t think Tacker prayed, unless it was some African ritual he had learned. He touched the grass and then moved from kneeling to a squat. She nearly called out but instead she made her way across the bridge, finding a break in the hedge. She zoomed in and focused her camera. Through the lens he looked perplexed and alert. Maybe he had dropped something, but he didn’t wear a watch or a ring and he wouldn’t work this hard to recover a quarter if he had dropped one; maybe a silver dollar. He stood and ran his fingers through his hair and turned in a circle, looking in every direction. She thought for sure he was going to spot her, but he didn’t. She snapped several pictures, lowered her camera, punched it back into the case, and snapped it shut.

  Back in her kitchen Kate examined Tacker’s photograph from Nigeria, the one with Samuel that she kept in her kitchen window. Maybe the thing to do was wait several years t
o marry, even a decade. In college, Janet had told her that men’s sex drive peaked in their early twenties but women’s in their mid-thirties. She could have a dependable man and experience immense sexual satisfaction with no regrets.

  If she was honest with herself, she had loved Tacker from her perch in the tree watching him at football practice. She had loved him when they passed in the hallway at Reynolds High. She had loved him at Hart’s when she was twelve buying Sugar Babies. She could call and suggest they do something informal, or she had to put on a dress and fix her hair.

  She chose the most becoming dress she owned, a pink seersucker with a gathered skirt that came to her knees, a V-neck, sleeveless bodice that effected a double-breasted look, rickrack from the bodice descending into the skirt. The whole affair showed off her slender waist, which she planned to keep that way. She wore a white bangle bracelet and when Tacker rang the doorbell, she picked up a broad white hat that had belonged to her mother. To confuse everyone, including Tacker, she slung the Brick in its lovely brown case over her shoulder.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  DAYS PASSED AND the schism in Tacker lessened. He told himself that the bathhouse was just another municipal building. He just wouldn’t talk about it. Who would know? Later, if Gaines and his crowd wanted to integrate the pool, he’d stand with them. He invited Kate to go with him to the celebration Tom had mentioned.

  They crossed Glade and followed a path that led them to a spot affording a view of the new pool not far from the tennis courts. Kate carried her camera, as usual. A canvas tent was up but it appeared to open in the opposite direction and they didn’t see anyone. They cut down the hill and Tacker spotted the yellow stakes driven into the ground to show the general position of the bathhouse. He grabbed Kate’s hand and they ran, she holding on to her summer hat. He stopped them five feet from his imagined courtyard. Holding his hand palm forward, he made a motion as if encountering a pane of glass. “This is where the decorative wall begins,” he said. “It’s going to skirt a path and be bordered by flower gardens. What do you think?”

  “I love it,” she said.

  He caught her at the waist and kissed her. “Come this way,” he said, and they walked the yet-to-be-laid path. He stopped again. “The double-door entrance,” he said. “In the summer it’s open all day.” He made a motion to open the door for her. They entered the imagined bathhouse. “We’re in a circular lobby, with a jukebox, of course. Over there’s the ladies’ dressing room. And on the left is the men’s.”

  They heard voices.

  Tacker held Kate’s hand. “Tom?”

  A man stepped out from the canvas tent. “Over here,” he said.

  Tom introduced Tacker to his new partners, Fred Hammond (tall, white-haired, cigar) and Randy Smith (forties, round face, pleasant). Tacker introduced Kate.

  “You’re a photographer?” Tom said to Kate, pointing to her camera.

  “Kate’s had some of her photographs in the Journal. You may have seen them. She’s got a great eye,” Tacker said.

  “I admire a man who praises a woman,” Tom said. “Let’s have her take our picture.”

  So Tacker and Tom posed and Kate seemed immensely pleased and blushed and got flustered and recovered and Tacker thought, This is how she would be at her wedding. She took several shots.

  “That should do,” she said, and snapped the camera shut.

  “My wife, Kathy, couldn’t make it,” Tom said to both of them. “Down with a summer cold.”

  “How miserable,” Kate said.

  There were others present—inside the tent—and Tom introduced everyone around. When the second glass of champagne was poured, the group of eight—Tacker and Kate included—sauntered to the edge of the pool. The blue tile shone like square frames of fallen sky. Kate sat at the pool’s edge, took off her pumps, and pretended to dangle her feet in the water.

  “You okay?” Tacker said.

  “Oh yes, perfectly fine,” she said.

  He turned back to the men and a woman who was latched onto Fred Hammond, though neither wore a ring. The evening deepened and he imagined Gaines in the trees watching him right this minute, even Valentine with binoculars, somehow hoisted high in the crook of tree limbs, narrating his every move and Gaines writing it down to report in a Negro newspaper.

  * * *

  • • •

  ANOTHER LETTER ARRIVED from Samuel. He asked Tacker about his family before reporting that even before opening its doors, their high school was full to capacity and needed an additional block of classrooms. Samuel had discovered that a university in Ghana offered a degree in architecture and might apply. All of Nigeria was readying for Independence Day. He hoped to go to Lagos for the ceremonies. Tacker had been too overwhelmed with Tom and the transition at Hart’s and Valentine in the evenings and Kate on the weekends to keep up with the Nigerian news. He didn’t feel the pull like he had even as recently as the beach trip.

  Glad to hear you might be able to study in Ghana, he wrote back. I’m doing pretty well here, getting on with a firm in my hometown.

  Meanwhile, Carl Matthews, who had started the protest at Kress, wanted to integrate bathrooms in the downtown shops.

  “You know the Anchor?” Gaines said one afternoon near closing at Hart’s. “You’re not going to believe this. They’ve got a slop jar behind a curtain in the back of the store for Negro women. It’s all the same,” he went on. “White folks think black people carry diseases. Remember how that waitress threw away that plate after I ate a bite of pie?” He chuckled.

  Tacker thought of the new swimming pool with the blue tiles like mirrors of heaven that would not be open to Valentine or Gaines because of the same idiotic idea: black people were dirty. Guilt shuttered through him.

  “You okay?” Gaines said.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Sure.”

  “Stay cool,” Gaines said, taking off his apron, heading out.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN HIS UTTER confusion, Tacker asked his mother over for dinner on a night his father worked. “I’ve cleaned up the old grill in the backyard,” he said. “I’ll fix steaks.”

  “That’s awfully sweet of you, but why don’t you just come over here?” she said.

  “It’s my invitation. I’m asking you over here,” he said.

  She arrived in slacks and a geometric-looking blouse.

  “You’ve been shopping,” Tacker said.

  “Do you think it’s too mod?” she said.

  “Where’d you learn that word?”

  “The young people have taken over the women’s magazines, Tacker. All the fashions are for eighteen-year-olds. I do my best.”

  She followed him into the kitchen.

  “You were always mod,” he said. “Dad’s the old fogey.”

  “Don’t try to charm me. I’m your mother. Want me to shuck this corn?”

  “That’d be great.”

  He opened a cabinet and stared at his odd assortment of glasses. Suddenly he wanted Kate, his own house, his own life.

  “Tacker?” his mother said.

  “I think I want to marry Kate,” he said.

  “Oh, that makes me so happy. I knew it. I just knew it.”

  “I didn’t know it,” he said, still focused on the glasses. “I didn’t know for sure until just this second.” And now what? Was he going to depend on Kate to drive her Nash Metropolitan on their honeymoon? Move into her house?

  His mother picked at the strands of corn silk. “I’m so happy,” she said again.

  “I know I’ve worried you.”

  “Don’t make me cry.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “BE CAREFUL COMING down the steps,” Tacker said when they started out back.

  “I’m not a grandmother yet,” his mother said.

  Tacker had already st
arted the fire and now the coals glowed. He laid the steaks on the center of the grate, the corn on the perimeter. His mother held her arms crossed at her waist.

  “When are you going to ask her?”

  “Kate? I need to save up for a ring. I probably need to save up for a car.”

  “I have your grandmother’s engagement ring. I’ll show it to you Sunday. It’s white gold. That used to be popular. It’s yours if you want it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  DA VINCI WASN’T in the bedroom. Tacker searched the upstairs. No cat. Something felt wrong. Eleven o’clock, he grabbed his flashlight and peered beneath the back porch. Could he have gotten into the garage? No sign of him. Tacker rode the Indian around the block, down Jarvis to Sunset to First and up, hooking a left on West End, calling for da Vinci, stopping to listen, looking under bushes, sweeping his flashlight across the street, the most frightening possibility. Even more frightening: someone might have taken him. Billy the banker, taken the cat. Whoever broke the door at Hart’s. Someone who would deliver da Vinci dead to his doorstep in the morning. At two o’clock Tacker gave up and went into the house and fell into bed. He dreamed of himself in Nigeria trying to piss into a Coca-Cola bottle.

  Late to work and worried about da Vinci, Tacker forgot what he had said the evening before about Kate until his mother walked into Hart’s midafternoon.

  “You never know when you might want to pop the question,” she said, slipping a slender box into his shirt pocket. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  In the lounge, Tacker pulled out the box. A single round diamond in a square setting, lapped by scrolling white gold that tapered to a slender band. He only vaguely remembered his grandmother. She had died when he was five. But a picture of her in a calf-length skirt and jacket, wearing a jaunty hat and standing in front of a little clapboard house, had claimed a place in his parents’ living room all of his life. Only now looking at her ring did he consider how he had imagined a story about her as a daring woman with a bright mind and a sunny disposition who had perhaps not really died but only slipped away, driven out to California, escaped the rigors of rural North Carolina and a life of shelling peas.