“Oh come on...” he began, but stopped after looking at my face.
“I’ve been thinking about another book, maybe. About this...” I waved my bottle of root beer out at the fading light. “But I don’t know. I’m not sure I know how to talk about it all yet.”
“It’ll come,” he said and I smiled. Faith in me was such an easy thing for everyone else.
“Probably,” I said. “Or I could just start writing romance novels and retire to a big pink mock-castle in New Hampshire.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Not that I’d know much about that, either.”
“Pink castles?” he said, grinning.
“Romance,” I answered, knowing he knew what I was going to say.
“Well, don’t they always say to write about what you know?”
I had heard this advice so damn many times, and that night, sitting in the backyard of Ben’s house, I was acutely aware of the many, many things I did not know. My words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Hell, I guess I could write novels where people have lots of meaningless sex.”
Nearly choking on his drink, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. What the hell did that mean, he was clearly thinking, and he had no idea how to react. That was all right, neither did I. We were quiet for a moment, and he decided to let it go. Just as he turned to me to say something, and I could tell it would be chipper, I sat up. I had no more nerve for that, not tonight. Maybe not on this trip, though I knew I would never come back, not there.
“I’d better get back. I’ve got a ton of stuff to go over with Lee.”
When I started talking about meaningless sex, it was probably time to go home.
“I’m glad you came by,” he said, standing next to me in the soft purple dusk. “It was great to see you again.”
“Yeah,” I said without looking at him. “Yeah, it was.”
He walked me to the car, and I found myself wondering briefly if I had left anything around he might have to bring over later, but then I could see my purse lying on the front seat. We paused as I opened the car door and he smiled at me, probably wishing he knew what I wanted him to say.
“Ben...” My voice seemed very, very quiet. The cicadas had paused, as if on cue, and when I slipped one hand over his they started up again.
“Mmm,” he murmured. A very noncommittal sound.
“Thanks,” I said at last, tightening my fingers around his.
“Don’t leave without stopping by again,” he said, though we both knew I probably wouldn’t do it. I was tired of lying, so I avoided promising anything.
“I’ll see you at the funeral,” I said. “Right?”
“Right,” he said, and I was relieved beyond measure, and at the same time deeply ashamed by it. “Right.”
Treading Water
1998
The water in Lee’s pool was as warm as night air, as warm as a puddle, as the downy comforter on the guest bed. I moved through it easily, at first, lying on my back and watching the bright white disk of the sun pass back and forth overhead. I didn’t like putting my face in the water, I never have. There was some stupid fear there, something hazy about choking, smothering, like a fear of spiders or big dogs. Lazily, I backstroked.
This was the obligatory pool of the wealthy South. The blue line of watery demarcation stretched from Los Angeles all the way across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, finally settling here, in Florida’s basking North. Even if you lived by the water, as Lee did, just a brief drive to the sea itself, somehow you had to have an Olympic-standard pool with bright turquoise tiles and bright turquoise water. No one, except visitors from the cold Northern states and kids, actually swam in these pools. Expensive and useless, they served as deadly magnets for children and small animals, as watering holes for migratory birds, as rubbish sieves for every dead bug and fallen leaf in the neighborhood. Lee’s pool had just been serviced and sparkled like the giant aquamarine ring on her right hand. My arms tired from the constant lifting up and over so instead I lifted them out from my sides and brought them back in. Eventually, even that became too much effort and I kicked my way across the opalescent surface with only a slight fluttering of my hands: a giant, small-finned fish.
Lee’s pool was very chic and modern. No kidney-bean curves there; this pool could be used to train Olympians. Greg Louganis would have felt right at home on the diving platform high above my head, casting its soothingly dense shadow across one corner of the water. Heavy Adirondack chairs painted blinding white ringed the tiled edges. I was in a David Hockney painting. Lee was lounging on one of those chairs, wearing a sleek black two-piece that would not be out of place on an extra at Cannes. To top it off, she wore pointy black sunglasses, which gave her eyes the liquid coal stare of an alien. If aliens were invited to Cannes, that is, and perhaps they were. They would be indistinguishable from the other actors. My thoughts melded together underwater, where the only sound was the deep huff of my own breathing. I wondered if Lee’s suit was black for mourning, if normally she stretched out across her blue-and-white striped beach towel in pastel pink, for instance. It seemed unlikely. I decided that people who wore black all the time only ended up negating its funereal power. You couldn’t be that depressed every moment of the day, could you?
Perhaps Lee was in some sort of perpetual mourning, for her entire existence. Perhaps that way she was able to remain aloof and unsurprised when something else fell apart. But I couldn’t see exactly what she was mourning for, unless it was all that debt. She had a lovely home, a handsome and reasonably loving husband, she didn’t have to work or even raise her two lovable boys, one of whom had just cannonballed into the deep end of the pool. Todd and Alex were eight and ten years-old, respectively. They couldn’t have been more different if they were Lee and I. This seemed to be a theme in our family – like snowflakes, no two siblings were alike.
I was ambivalent toward my nephews, just as they were toward me. They rarely ever saw me, after all, and I didn’t shower them with gifts the way distant aunts were supposed to do. Mostly they ignored me, as I did them. Alex looked a bit like Lee, with her dark coloring, but he was tall and strong, like his father. He had Lee’s chilly personality and had already perfected a tolerable lip-curling sneer. Todd was shorter, small for his age, but stocky, like a small bull-dog. He looked, really, like my father. But he was truly Jake’s son, friendly and easy-going, selfish and slightly proud. They wrestled now at the edge of the pool by the hot tub (a hot tub, I ask you, in Florida), their cries and shouts submarine-hollow to my submerged ears. Finally I settled onto the concrete steps at their end of the pool to rest, the rough surface scratching at my skin right through my suit. I perched there like a water bird, keeping as much of my flesh off the steps as possible, wobbling uncomfortably. The boys splashed a few feet away, screaming over a set of Styrofoam rings. One of the pastel shapes flew past Todd’s grip and landed, a life preserver at my side. Todd looked at it in horror, like a baseball gone into the evil old neighbor lady’s yard, never to be seen again.
“Um, Aunt Casey?” he said tentatively, no longer a water warrior, but a sweet eight year-old boy. “Could you throw that ring over here please?”
“Sure,” I said, and tossed it to him, ringing him like a fairground prize. “Do I win a goldfish?” I asked and they both stared at me as if I was from Mars.
Bored with the cool breeze that dried my shoulders, I slipped back into the water and drifted past them again. The boys appeared in my peripheral vision as a jumble of arms and legs, and pink and yellow Styrofoam, spouting water from their mouths like fountain cherubs. Lee ignored them, content to read some sleazy romance novel, its title in raised blood-red ink, and sip iced tea. She was very cosmopolitan. I treaded water in the deep end.
We were such a strange family. Tomorrow I would be dressed in black as well, a true mourner at my father’s funeral. It seemed surreal, as I pushed off from the far wall an
d torpedoed toward the middle of the pool. The sky was a very pale blue, washed out by a high, thin layer of moisture from the sea, but the air was still sticky-hot on my sunscreen-coated nose. Last night, lying in the unnaturally cool interior of the guest bedroom, I burrowed deep beneath the covers like some arctic animal beneath the snow. Guiltily I thought of my father, dead somewhere, cold in a morgue, with no warm blanket and soft goose down pillow. How ridiculous it was to miss someone so much when they died. For the last seventeen years I could have, at any time, boarded a plane and flown out there to visit. Hell, I did, nearly once a year. And what a chore it was. “I have to go see my family,” I would say and roll my eyes as if it were either that or they ripped out all my fingernails. “Oh God, poor you,” was the inevitable response.
But here I was, moping and sniffly, trying to remember every single thing he’d ever said to me in my lifetime, as if that were possible. If only we could miss people while they’re still alive, it would make things so much easier. Even as my mother lay dying in our own home, I didn’t want to spend every second with her. I mean, there she was, just a few doors down the hall and it was such a bother to my fifteen year-old self to drag my reluctant body over to her bed and sit with her for an hour. When she was gone, of course, we lamented the time we would never have. But hell, had we taken full advantage of the time we were given in the first place... It made no difference now, of course. I was still miserable.
At last I grew tired of the same routine, back and forth across the pool. The boys looked at me strangely. Clearly no one had ever done that in their pool before. Why, for heaven’s sake, when there was a twisting plastic slide at the deep end and if you hooked up a hose to the top, it was a water slide. Alex wrestled with the hose until he had created just the right cascade and the two boys shot out of the end like slick missiles. I figured I was done.
Lee looked up briefly as I settled next to her, my suit drying almost instantly in the sudden heat.
“How was your swim?” she asked, with the voice of someone who really could care less.
“Fine,” I said. What the hell else would it have been? Certainly had it been terrible, I would have gotten out.
“Do you need a book?” she asked. I shook my head. I was not there to disturb her.
For at least half an hour, we were peaceful, listening to the triumphant shouts of her children as they managed to nearly drown each other in turns. “No running!” Lee said at one point, as if that were really the issue. Todd leapt onto his brother from the edge of the pool and they both slid under in a flurry of bubbles and squeaks.
“So how was it, yesterday?” she said at last and I was so near catatonia I actually had to struggle to recall the events of the day before.
“Fine,” I managed at last.
“Did you tie things up?”
Did I? I had a vague suspicion that if I were to examine things closely, I would find I had loosened and frayed the knotted ends.
“I suppose so,” I said.
Lee pursed her lips, a sure sign of advice to come, and lowered the Ray Bans far enough to look disdainfully over them at me. “You really have no clue,” she said. “Do you?”
“About what?” The list was endless, she might as well narrow it down.
“Men,” she said significantly.
“No,” I agreed. “No clue.”
She shook her head and went back to reading. Perhaps those books served as some sort of bible. I should start reading them as well. Then I too could have lived like this, always anticipating disaster.
We both looked up as Jake appeared in the doorway, a living example of what I didn’t get. He looked vibrant and alive compared to the two of us, dead fish flopping at the edge of the water.
“Boys!” he shouted and they looked up from whatever strategic victory they were engineering.
“Dad!” they shouted in unison. It was rather sweet, I thought with no small amount of longing.
For a moment, all three of the family males paused, as if they were communicating telepathically. Maybe they were, because suddenly Jake stripped off his shoes and before Lee could so much as holler “stop!” in horror, he launched himself at his sons.
“Cannonball!” he shouted and hit the water fully-clothed, leaving the two of us landlubbers to sputter on the sidelines, drenched. There was now more water beneath us on the blue and white tiles then there was in the pool, or so it seemed. The boys squealed like piglets and attacked his rising figure, throwing themselves on him as he grinned at us from above their heads.
“Come on in, ladies!” he cried, heedless of Lee’s ruined romance.
“Men,” Lee said, gesturing at the writhing mass in the deep end of the pool as if that should explain it all to me. “Just look at them.”
So we did. I didn’t feel any wiser. Instead, I decided to get up and go inside, where I knew a thick white towel awaited me. Lee followed me in, shutting the French doors less, I suspected, to keep the cool air in than to keep the noise of her husband and children out.
I picked up the towel from the chair by the door and wrapped it around my waist, pareo-style. I’d become so Floridian already, resurrecting rituals from my past with an ease that astonished me. Tucking my damp hair behind my ears, I made my way to the cool leather seat of the stools in front of the counter. The bright sunlight, instead of highlighting the sterility of Lee’s kitchen, brought out the little blue tiles above the counter, the bright red ceramic bowl she kept fruit in: an old Dutch still life.
Lee crossed to the kitchen and poured us two tall glasses of orange juice, spiking them with a bit of vodka from a cupboard over the stove.
“You must think I’m an alcoholic,” she said suddenly as I sipped my drink. In fact I wasn’t thinking of her at all.
“I understand this isn’t exactly your normal routine,” I told her. I had decided not to judge my sister. Not because I wanted her to be free but because it was simply too difficult. I was too busy judging myself, my father, even Ben.
“No,” she agreed. “Normally I’m much more shallow.”
For a moment I thought she was serious and then they appeared: laugh lines. Something I wouldn’t have thought she even had, but there they were. Her pale skin was tinged pink by the sun and I was surprised by the tawny freckles that traced the bridge of her nose.
“You look like Mom,” I said.
“Really?” she asked, patting her dark hair. “I always thought she was prettier.”
“No,” I assured her. “She just smiled more.”
That truth left us both silent in the cool vault of her house. There was too much space there. It was somehow intensely confining, like being left alone in the wilderness. Where could you go when there was no comforting destination?
“You should stay here,” she said at last, voice soft. “You could come out and live at Dad’s.”
This was an extraordinary proposal. I stared at her.
“And do what?”
She didn’t answer, just took her now-empty glass to the sink, rinsing it slowly clean and setting it on the counter upside-down. I downed the last of my own drink and offered her the glass. I was thinking, not terribly comfortably, of a similar conversation the day before. Why did my happiness always seem to depend on someone leaving?
“I like my job,” I said at last, surprised to find that this was actually true.
“I understand,” she said. The offer had been rescinded. I wondered how long it would have stood, had I accepted it in the first place?
“I can come out and see you and the kids anytime,” I pointed out. “And you can come and see me.”
“That’s not all that’s here,” she said, focused on me again.
“Why does it matter to you what I might do?” I demanded, defensive for reasons I didn’t want to look closely at, not just then.
“Because...” she began, but it faded away as she realized that if it was necessary to tell me, then it wasn’t true.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Of course it matters. I’m just not used to someone caring.”
She shook her head. “I’m not thinking about you alone, you know.”
This puzzled me. I raised a quizzical eyebrow and waited for her to expand.
“It bothered Dad,” she said vaguely.
“What did?”
“That Ben was pining away, waiting for you to come back.”
“What? How would Dad have even known that…” I paused. She looked briefly guilty. “You told him? When?”
“Oh come on,” she said, “when I drove you to college, it was all you talked about. You didn’t honestly expect me never to tell Dad that you made out with the man who was his assistant coach.”
The fact that this was exactly what I did expect seemed irrelevant now.
“I like Ben,” she said, ignoring the look I shot her. “I do. He’s a good man. He worked hard for Dad and those boys. I’m not saying I think he should be head coach, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be happy. And so should you. You’ve been dating Ben substitutes ever since.”
“Frankly,” I told her, “I always thought they were Dad substitutes.”
She snorted. “You’re a fool, Casey. At least about that.”
“Look…” I spread my hands out on the counter, its cool surface heating under my palms. “I don’t believe in this sort of fated, meant-to-be-together thing.”
“Neither do I,” she replied.
“Right, you who reads romance novels.”
“Just because I enjoy the fantasy, doesn’t mean I don’t understand the reality.”
“Uh huh.”
She tapped her fingers against the counter. Her nail polish was chipped and I could see that she was wearing nail extensions, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I just assumed Lee’s nails would have lived up to her expectations somehow.
“This isn’t a fantasy, Casey. Ben is a nice guy and you love him for good reason. You have your whole life. That’s not fate. That’s just what you’ve both chosen. And you’ve been pining ever since you left for college because you both refuse to accept that reality is reality.”
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