“Take some for your daughters. They don’t fit me.” I had broader shoulders, more height than Mother’s petite frame. She wore narrower shoes.
Dora kept folding, ignoring my suggestion. “My girls are all set. Go look through your mother’s jewels; they don’t have a size for fitting. Bring them to your room. Look through them.”
In Mother’s dressing room, I opened the drawers of her built-in dresser. She kept items in separate boxes: golden tops, blue velvet boxes clamped tight. I opened and closed each box, one at a time, gently lifting a long, familiar string of pearls like cooked pasta from a boiling pot. She wore these pearls to all her club parties. The necklace linked twice around her collarbone. Day and night. Father said they looked like a dog’s collar. But she wore them anyway as if to dare him to hook her up with a leash, take her to that better place she was seeking.
I guess he never did.
I went to sit on the floor but the soreness stopped me. I mounted the boxes in my arms and lay them out on my quilt. The sapphire ring, another string of pearls with matching earrings. A tennis bracelet of linked diamonds that she wore in the garden. She didn’t worry about losing her jewels. Many came from her family inheritance. Grandma’s ruby ring — it looked dull. I rubbed it on my nightgown and peered into it as I used to when I was a child. I loved to see the world break into facets and angles, the rooms turning upside down in the reflection, tacking into a direction that I didn’t expect.
I put the ring to my eye again and saw the world reverse itself. I found this comforting as if the stone knew all along that I would come back to this moment ten years later, again, to see that not much had changed really, that the world did this. It spun and twisted and flipped and shifted in a silent, glittering slice of light.
Maybe Mother was in there somewhere. Possible. Possible to find her. But not in a way that I hoped or thought.
Long ago I had a secret place in the backyard woods. I had a place in summer when it stayed light long after dinner and Mother let me play in the woods while she smoked and talked on the phone. I hummed, watching the sky turn a deeper blue, spilling across the clouds, becoming a flood of colors until Mother called me. I waited for her to call me. I leaned on this.
I am calling for you now, Mummy. Please come home. Come. Be here.
~~~~~
On my walk back to school, I scuffed through a cascade of fallen leaves on the street curb. Back to the usual, full schedule, including chorus at the end of the day. At school, I passed the wall and cordially said hello to Anthony’s sister. We had reached a truce.
“He’s gone to ‘Nam,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and I was going to say something more, but then, that would be like reaching for a plane that has already taken off. I nodded. Everything about it was sad.
Her boyfriend, a thick-muscled football player, squeezed her into his side while she smoked a morning cigarette. She didn’t smile. Life was not a smiling endeavor for her or for me. It made me like her because of that. She darkened her eyes with black eyeliner, drawing thin lines across the top and bottom lids, drawing a map on her face as if to define its territories: eyes were off limits. Look from a distance but don’t come in.
As I went through the day, walking with Sophie to classes, sitting with her during lunch hour, I had the feeling of watching myself, of being a witness to the present, as if I were already ahead in a future place waiting for myself to catch up. I had one more year in this place and if I planned it right, studied hard, I would graduate and get a jump-start on a musical life. Move to California, get hooked up with a studio producer, sing in coffeehouses with Peter. He had a small following now.
Mr. Edwards told me to feed my talent.
I could leave, go away from here, away from no longer having our house, away from a track of losses and pain if that were possible. Away from living in this semi-dark state, this tunnel that kept going and going. I had to choose to find my way out.
At choir practice, Mr. Edwards looked up from his music stand and smiled at me.
“Glad to have you back, Sarah.”
Coda
I stood on the platform with the rest of the sopranos and Sophie; and when it came time to sing my solo, I let my insides pour out into the empty auditorium. And now, as I step onto this pseudo stage, a photo of an elephant shining as my backdrop, my head fills with musical notes, this crowded ballroom abuzz with concerned adults; everyone here for a good cause, martinis in hand, the odors of perfume and aftershave creating a jungle of smells. I adjust the mike and strum my guitar into tune, hushing this hip, California crowd. The overhead light is centered on me and in bright focused light, calls her forth. I begin. My throat releases. It happens when the amplifier and the lights and the shush in the room blends, and I am stronger than the shadow that I live inside. Alan is on his way, he has called.
I sing about a mountainside, and blue skies, and further up the scale, high notes vibrate in my skull as I go beyond places to where Mother sits, her flawless face enraptured with melody, urging me on. I sing, glancing at Mr. Edwards, who waves his arms gently to encourage me, tapping quarter notes, dipping his head in approval, a reverential smile lighting the corner of his lips. I sing until walls disappear, for my brothers across the country to hear me, for Dora long gone, and Father in Florida with Sherry who went with him, for Anthony Parelli who never came home from Vietnam; for Mickey and others who flicker online from my past, for all the people I have not yet met but who are out there — I knew they would be — even with this ineluc-table hole in my heart, a motherless child, I knew they were out there to heal and embrace me. To listen and applaud.
O yes, I will sing.
Acknowledgments
There are so many individuals whose support I have valued and appreciated over these many years, and in moments like these — when thanks are more than due — it’s tempting to list everyone I’ve ever met in my life. Where Night Swim is concerned, these people emerge most distinctly. There’s Bill Emerson whose booming voice on the lakeshore of Tate Mountain, Georgia, I miss, who read a first draft of Night Swim and loved it. Cis Corman of Barwood Films, thank you for championing all my work, including Night Swim, and never wavering for decades. More recently, thanks to Karen Dionne and Chris Graham, founders of Backspace, for introducing me to a terrific community of writers. To my Cape and Boots brigade, Susan Henderson, Robin Slick and Tish Cohen, I cherish daily your insights, honesty, occasional kicks in the butt, and exceptional literary gifts. Thank you, Caroline Leavitt, for your fierce enthusiasm, brilliance and heart. Patry Francis, your grace, talent and friendship are a blessing. Risa Miller: our connection goes beyond words. You have been invaluable to me in every way. Thank you, Suzanne Beecher, for helping me unplug emotionally. To walking and writing buddies: Daphne Kalotay, Deb Riemer and Randy Susan Meyers for wise and generous counsel. Deep thanks to Eve Bridburg, Executive Director of Grub Street, for working with me through multiple drafts and embracing this story early on. To Lauren Baratz-Logsted, your sharp eyes and speed are a writer’s delight — thank you. To Joyce Walsh, grateful thanks for your sensitivity and support. Thanks to Barb Aronica-Buck, veteran designer, and veteran readers: Leora Skolkin-Smith, Billie Hinton, Linda K. Wertheimer and Elissa Yanover. MJ Rose, a million thanks for stepping in when I felt most lost, for your friendship, and for leading me to Lou Aronica’s door and this joyous, new phase in my writing life. To Lou, at Fiction Studio Books, thank you for sharing your vast experience, and for extending your calm and steady hand to help me realize this dream. Thanks to Carrie Howland at Donadio & Olson, Inc. for taking things forward.
To Anne Fischell: for your strength and inspiration.
Thank you, Dad, for taking my writing seriously from my first poem to all that’s followed. Your love and appreciation lives on in these words. To Mom, Anne, Lynne, Wanda, Frank and Lolly — finally, at last!
To my small and unique family: Sam, your artistic soul teaches me every day; and Barr, husband and best
friend in life and love: Thank you for believing, for staying with me and riding the waves. You embody faith.
About the Author
Jessica Keener has been listed in The Pushcart Prize under “Outstanding Writers.” Her fiction has appeared in many literary magazines, most recently: Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Night Train, Eclectica, Wilderness House Literary Review and MiPOesias. Writing awards include: a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant Program, a Joan Jakobson Scholarship from Wesleyan Writers Conference; a Chekhov Prize for Excellence in Fiction by the editors of Wilderness House Literary Review; and second prize in Redbook magazine’s fiction contest. For more than a dozen years she has been a features writer for The Boston Globe, Design New England, O, the Oprah magazine and other national magazines.
Please visit her website: www.jessicakeener.com. Night Swim is her first novel.
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