The Swimming Pool

by Holly LeCraw

  Jed felt a wave of nausea. He heard Marcella say, “Are you all right?”

  The sick feeling passed but still he felt only disgust for himself, for the sweat and sunscreen dried on his body, the salt in his hair. “I’m taking a shower,” he said to Marcella’s stricken face, and marched down the hall.

  In the bathroom all Marcella’s things, like in the living room, seemed preternaturally familiar. In the shower he took the first bottle of shampoo he saw and squeezed some out, and a flowery scent rose up to him. Something else also, maybe citrus. The scent was cloying and he knew without hesitation that this was not her usual brand. The store had been out, she had bought this instead, she found the fragrance overpowering too. He rubbed some into his hair anyway, just as she did. His mind skimmed blindly over the surface of a deep black ocean. He wanted to stay there forever, the water wearing him down into nothing, a boulder reduced to sand.

  But when he was finished he dried off, wrapped the towel around himself, and walked back to his room. He did not see Marcella. He put on the same old shorts again and combed his wet hair with his fingers. He had left his bathing suit hanging in the shower; he would have to get it. There were only his shirt and his flip-flops left. He had never traveled so light. He stood in the center of the room, paralyzed, until exhaustion overtook him and he lay down on the unmade twin bed, on Toni’s pink sheets.

  And somehow the house and the room reversed itself and became the strangest place he had ever been, and lying there feeling utterly lost he thought of his father and Marcella. He had sat next to her at the picnic table with the hot wind blowing and watched her mouth forming words, and gradually had realized that out of all the other feelings he could not identify there was one he could, a feeling of being bested. His own father. Jesus.

  It was a middle-age thing, this affair, a male thing, Marcella had said. Someday you will understand—

  I will never do that, he had said.

  No, Marcella had said. I hope not.

  He knew that here, finally, was his father’s alibi. He could never have hoped for such incontrovertible proof of his innocence. There had been no midnight drive to Atlanta and back, his father cold and calculating at the wheel. That picture came easily, and Jed realized it had been there, fully formed but hidden, all along. But it was pure fantasy. He was not the son of a murderer. The prison door was open. He could leave.

  But it was odd: he had grown used to it.

  He wanted only to go back years before that false vision, to throw himself into his father’s arms, to be lifted high, to be whirled above green grass at twilight, with the lit windows of his own house glowing across the lawn. He wanted only not to despise him. Jed buried his head in the pink pillow, wet already from his hair so his tears made no difference, and cried himself to sleep.

  HE WOKE AGAIN to the smell of food. Outside it was still light, but by the angle of the sun he judged it to be past seven o’clock. Lying in bed, his mind still fuzzy, he thought: It’s a sign we’re given that we’re alive, that in spite of everything we can be hungry. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had a headache, like a child’s after a tantrum, but once he was upright it began to fade.

  He put on his shirt and went to the bathroom, where he drank cup after cup of water, clearing the thickness from his throat. Then he walked down the hall to the kitchen and stood, as he had that morning, in the doorway, watching Marcella, her back to him again, her right arm sliding up and down, this time with a knife. He sensed that she knew he was there, but she did not turn around. The knife thunked against the cutting board. He went in and sat at the table. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Making dinner. Garbage pasta. That means I throw everything in.” Her elbow moved steadily. “Peppers and zucchini. Basil from the garden.”

  He said nothing. Chopchopchop. She picked up the cutting board and slid a mound of peppers into the skillet on the stove beside her. They sizzled as they went in. He watched her go to work on a yellow crookneck squash. “I used to cook all the time for Anthony,” she said. “I tried everything from the magazines. At first he thought it was wonderful but eventually we fought about that too.” Her knife flashed up and down. “I spent too much money, it took too much time, why did I have to get so fancy. He just wanted a regular meal, damnit.” She brushed quickly at her eyes with her other hand. “Dio mio. I am not trying for sympathy. I was just thinking about—oh, shut up. Shut up,” she said, not talking anymore to him.

  He got up and went over to the counter. Her eyes were red and swollen. She had taken a shower too, at some point; he smelled the too-sweet shampoo, and the twist of her hair was still wet. “Don’t worry,” he said, and finally she looked at him.

  “Don’t worry!” she said, and laughed. “Jed, go home. Ah!” she cried, in frustration, and wiped angrily at her eyes again.

  Jed handed her a kitchen towel. She hid her face for a moment, and sighed harshly. Then she folded the towel and placed it on the other side of the stove. Jed watched her hands. When she finally looked up at him he held her eyes steadily, gently. It seemed the kindest, the only, thing he could do. After a moment she looked away, but her face was calmer. “Do you have another knife?” he said, and she opened a drawer and handed him one.

  They chopped side by side, pushing the vegetables into piles. When he was done he took the big pot sitting on the counter and began filling it with water for the pasta. “Jed,” Marcella said again, “go home.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Worry again! Worry is not the word!”

  “Marcella,” he said. He set the pot in the sink, stepped closer, and took her shoulders in his hands. “Please.” He wanted desperately to calm her. It seemed the only task that mattered.

  “Jed, what do you think you need to do for me? Nothing! Nothing! Less than nothing!”

  “I’m not thinking. I’m too tired to think,” he said. She opened her mouth again and he said, “Please.”

  He was still holding her shoulders. He realized it was the first time he had touched her. After a moment he slid his hands down her arms and held her hands in front of her. He shook his head slowly, slowly, and said again, “I’m not thinking.”

  She whispered, “This is wrong.”

  “Everything is wrong,” he said, and bent down to her, and she did not turn away.

  I

  The party was over, the guests had left, Betsy had gone to bed early, and the kids had escaped somewhere with their friends. Drinking on the beach somewhere probably. This thought didn’t worry Cecil McClatchey, but instead made him feel content. His children out being kids, having a carefree summer—it made him feel he had succeeded as a father, that he had given them the setting and the means to not worry about anything, at least for now. It was what his own adolescence had been like, he didn’t remember any particular angst like people sometimes talked about—he had always been popular and happy and things had always worked out. As they were working out now.

  He was sitting in the living room with not enough lights on and he didn’t know why. He got up and poured himself another scotch, neat, at the little table they laughingly called the bar, and then walked through the dark kitchen and the attached screen porch down the flagstone path to the pool.

  Now that it was fully dark, the bugs weren’t as bad as they had been when the party was breaking up, at dusk. The surface of the pool shimmered a little with the reflection of a distant streetlight, but he couldn’t see the moon. Betsy had cleared everything away and there was no evidence that a party had taken place, not even a crumpled napkin on the ground; the empty lounge chairs and the table with the big open umbrella felt like a stage set to him, waiting for the actors to arrive.

  Marcella Atkinson had sat in that chair, over there. God, she was a good-looking woman, but he wasn’t the only one who thought that, surely, it was an ordinary fact by now that Marcella Atkinson was extraordinarily attractive. That is, he had seen her for years now. He was used to it. Wondered also for year
s how she could be married to Anthony. A handsome guy, sure, but utterly—what? Correct. Never broke a rule. Cecil would like to get him drunk, if that were possible. He was a type that couldn’t exist in Atlanta, where people didn’t take themselves so goddamn seriously.

  It was a fluke that Cecil was here, that he had the Mashantum house at all. He had come up to Massachusetts one summer in college, maybe after freshman year?—had to have been, he hadn’t met Betsy yet. He’d had a friend from some town outside Boston, unusual at Vanderbilt. Jim Morris, he remembered old Jim, and Cecil had taken a notion to visit. He’d been restless, back at home after that first year of freedom. He’d wanted something exotic, and Boston had seemed that way to him.

  His Uncle Talbot was his mother’s brother. He’d showed up infrequently in Atlanta; he had an apartment there but it seemed like he’d been up here most of the time. Went to Harvard. Uncle Talbot was exotic himself—everyone always said he was artistic, although it was unclear what he actually did for a living. Queer probably, but as Cecil remembered he seemed mostly to want to be alone. Although if you went to see him—if, say, you and your college pal showed up at his doorstep—he was kind and courtly and even seemed glad you were there. He had been Cecil’s mother’s favorite brother.

  And then Cecil and Betsy had met and gotten married and they had gone to Nantucket for their honeymoon—Betsy had said, sensible as always, Why go to the Caribbean in May? America is pretty in May—and the North had seemed exotic to both of them. That word again. Up north was still America, but it was a more serious place. New England, they felt, knew itself more thoroughly, it was where history had started, and he appreciated history, tradition, as much as the next person. So they had gone to Nantucket, and then after the ferry ride back to Hyannis they had come over here, to Mashantum, self-conscious and proud because they were married, adults now, going to visit another adult, the quintessential adult, Uncle Talbot. Betsy had charmed him. She had loved the house, loved the arbor, the one right over there, covered in purple wisteria—the only time they’d ever seen the damn thing bloom. She’d exclaimed over it all, because she was in love with the Cape, in love with Cecil and he with her; they were both in love with these little cottages covered with old roses, the kind of places they had thought couldn’t really exist, that existed now only for them, two twenty-two-year-olds finally no longer virgins who fancied themselves adults—and damned if a year later when Uncle Talbot dropped dead he hadn’t left them the place. And money to take care of it, but the tricky bastard had set it up so the money went with the house; they couldn’t sell it and take all the money and buy something at, say, Hilton Head or Pawleys or St. Simons, or even a house to live in in Atlanta; the money would have gone to Harvard then. And Betsy had wanted to keep the place. Let’s try it, she had said.

  So here they were. His children loved it, he could see that, and Betsy too—she was glad to get away from Atlanta for a while each year, she said it was interesting to be where there were different perspectives (that meant more liberals) and where everyone didn’t know all your cousins and go to church with your grandmother. Betsy had actually said that, she could be funny that way, surprising him, she was old Atlanta herself but also adventurous—more adventurous in a way than Cecil, although he was the one who had these longings surface periodically, desires that had no name and that would gradually disappear when he reminded himself about the prudence and success and happiness of his life. He had been trained to be grateful. Been trained to pray, and even if he didn’t do it that much he knew damn well that God was there, that not appreciating what you had was an affront to the Man Himself.

  No, they all loved it here, in this funny little house with the chopped-up rooms. He mentioned renovation now and again, but Betsy and the kids wouldn’t let him change anything. It was far too late for any kind of change.

  He drained the last of his scotch and watched the water. His own private ocean. A normal beach house, you’d be able to see the water, or at least hear it—here, though, it was a mile away, it was like you were just in the country, maybe that was what old Talbot had been thinking when he put in the pool, that a person needed a piece of water to contemplate. Marcella Atkinson had been staring at the water. Stretched out in that chair over there.

  He wondered how she would answer all these thoughts of his. She had ended up in a foreign place too; had she planned it? Not that the Cape, for him, was really like another country, like Marcella Atkinson leaving Italy and coming here. Hell, maybe he just wished he were someplace more foreign. Maybe he just wanted Marcella Atkinson to tell him what it was like to start a new life in a new place, to leave all that was familiar behind. If that was what she had done. He didn’t know her story at all. Most likely never would.

  He stood to go inside and as he did a breeze rustled through the trees and a lone leaf came fluttering down from the maples and landed on the surface of the pool. The water had been eerily smooth, so still it was almost invisible, but now the ripples went out in rings and the water was suddenly solid and alive.

  II

  It was late Sunday afternoon when Jed got back to Mashantum. Callie was in the kitchen with Grace. Jed thought she looked a little better rested. He needed to focus on that. On Callie. On Grace, on the kitchen, on the sun streaming through the window. He had to shut off his confusion, his memory, the raw desire he could barely manage to swallow. “Back so soon?” Callie said.

  He told himself there was no edge to her voice. “Where is everybody?”

  “Well, half of us are right here. The men are at the beach. Grace and I just got up from a nap, right, Gracie?” She looked into the baby’s little face, nestled in the crook of her arm, and smiled brightly. But the brightness was an artificial glare, and it seemed to Jed that her gaze was not going out to Grace but inward.

  “Was it a good night?” he said.

  “Decent. She was up—well, I don’t remember. Three times? That was so long ago. And we just had a nap so we won’t worry about it, hmmm?” Grace yawned adorably, and Callie said, “You want her?”

  As soon as Jed took her, the baby’s face brightened. “How’s my girl?” he crooned. Tiny little Grace, little cub—she would help him not to think. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re trying, aren’t you? Look. It’s a proto-smile.”

  Even though Grace had been in the world for ten weeks she could not be expected to act like a regular two-month-old, and she had not yet begun to smile. Jed didn’t care, but he knew Callie wanted it, she needed a reward. Now she glanced at Jed and the baby skeptically.

  “Oh, honey,” Jed said, “easy there.” Grace had got an arm loose from her blanket and had flung it out and startled, flailing to catch herself. He held her up on his shoulder. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he murmured. He looked up at Callie. “She was doing that falling thing,” he said.

  Callie said, “It’s a reflex.”

  Jed held the baby tightly and walked her up and down the sunny kitchen. The light wasn’t kind to the scarred linoleum and chipped Formica, but he was grateful for the reality of it, the dinged white table and the old gray counters, the green glass pitcher with the tags of tea bags hanging over, clipped with a clothespin the way his mother used to do, the ancient kettle singing with the water.

  “So, how was it?” Callie said, her back to him.

  “Fine.” Grace was beginning to wiggle on his shoulder. He brought her in closer to his face and suddenly he could smell his own hand, cradling her head: Marcella. She was on his fingers. He stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen floor and the desire he had been fighting broke through and hit him like a gale. Automatically he clutched Grace tighter, so much that she began to whimper. He loosened his grip. Yes, yes, you’re right, I will infect you if I’m not careful, infect you with this sickness or badness or insanity or whatever it is … “I think she’s hungry,” he said.

  “Not again. Not possible.” Callie took the baby and held her out in front of her, one hand cradling the baby’s head, th
e other holding her tiny body. “What-am-I-going-to-do-with-you-I-just-fed-you—”

  “Plug her in, Cal. The girl’s got to grow.”

  “You think it’s so easy,” Callie said, but she gave him an oddly grateful look, and sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. Jed looked away while she arranged herself. It was strange to boss her around and have her listen. He recited aloud the lie he had rehearsed in his mind: his friend sick with a twenty-four-hour bug, possibly forty-eight, he hadn’t hung around to find out, he’d just left and wandered around—

  “I hate being alone in Manhattan,” Callie said.

  “Well. I sort of met someone.”

  “Where? At a bar or something?” Jed shrugged. “Oh, God, Jeddy, not again.”

  “It was …” He couldn’t help it, a smile was spreading across his face. “It was pretty good.”

  “Jesus. Does she have a name?”

  He hesitated, all creativity leaving him. “Marcie.”

  “Marcie? Please. Is she from New Jersey?”

  “Connecticut.”

  “Are you going to see her again?”

  He felt the smile fading. “I don’t know.”

  “Look at the long face!” Callie detached Grace and put her up on her shoulder, pat-pat-pat.

  By the time Billy and Jamie came back from the beach Callie seemed almost jovial.

  “Marcie?” Billy hooted. “Is she a blue-eyeshadow chick? A mall rat? How old is this girl, anyway?”

  “Old enough.”

  “Marcie. Not a good Waspy girl. Not a Southern belle!” And he patted Callie’s rear end. She was standing at the sink now, peeling carrots. As soon as Billy’s hand dropped, Jed saw her take one small step away from him, not looking up, her hand with the peeler not stopping. Billy did not seem to notice.