Learning to Swim

by Cheryl Klam

  “The whole apartment reeks of Polo Sport,” I announced. Barbie started tidying up the pillows on the couch and ignored me. So I got right in her face. “I hope he didn't hurry off on my account. Was his wife expecting him home? Did he need to go back and tuck his kids into bed?”

  “Don't start, Steffie,” she said quietly.

  Just go to bed, I commanded myself. After all, did I really want to get into a big fight with her tonight? “In the future,” I said, “I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring your men around here.”

  “My men?” Barbie said.

  Normally I would've had enough common sense to abort. But again, I was in a terrible mood. Maybe a big blowout fight was just what I needed.

  “It makes me sick to think about them, never mind meet them,” I said through gritted teeth.

  My mother glared at me and crossed her arms. “Well, I would think you, of all people, would be willing to cut me some slack. Especially considering your present situation.”

  I stopped still. “What present situation?”

  “Oh, please, Steffie. Everyone at the club knows you have the hots for Mora Cooper's boyfriend.”

  “That's ridiculous!” I forced a laugh (which came out sounding like a crazy cackle).

  Barbie stared me down. “Then why did Mora throw a drink at you?”

  I was speechless. How had this confrontation ended up being about me and my love life? “Mora happened to spill her drink while I was there. I cleaned it up. It's what I'm hired to do. End of subject.”

  “You're not interested in Keith McKnight?” she asked, peering at me suspiciously.

  At times like these, I really wished I was a better liar. I just stood there, trying to shake my head.

  My mother exhaled long and slow. “All these years, when you kept asking me why I dated married men and I kept telling you that you can't control who you love…”

  “This isn't like that,” I said quickly.

  “Of course not. Because now it's happening to you.”

  “I don't have to put up with this,” I said. And then, just to make it crystal clear, I spun around and headed for the door. “I'm leaving.”

  “Don't you dare walk out on me, young lady!” Barbie yelled.

  I slammed the door behind me and jumped on my bike. I pedaled to Alice's house as fast as I could, tears stinging my eyes block after block. How could my mother act as if she had done nothing wrong? How could she be so blasé about screwing with my life? How could she accuse me of making the same mistake she had made over and over again? I pulled into Alice's front yard and jumped off my bike.

  “Alice!” I called out as I banged on the door.

  Just then, headlights filled the driveway as a car pulled in front of me. I squinted against the glare as Keith stepped out of his Lexus in all his button-down-shirt and relaxed-jeans glory. His sudden arrival caught me by surprise and was enough to make me momentarily forget all my problems with Barbie. (It was, quite frankly, enough to make me forget about everything.) “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I just took Alice to Thelma's,” he said. “She was worried that she had forgotten to lock the back door, so I told her I'd come back and check it.”

  “Alice called you and asked you to take her to Thelma's?” I said, surprised.

  “I stopped by to ask her if she wanted me to trim her hedges this week, and she said she needed to go to Thelma's and she couldn't drive her car. Maybe there's something wrong with it.” He shrugged and took a step closer. “Are you okay? You look upset.”

  “Yeah, I'm fine,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  He paused for a moment and then said, “Want to walk around back with me? I have to check that door.”

  I nodded and followed him around the side of the house. The full moon reflected off the creek, cloaking everything in a soft, surreal glow.

  “How was bingo?” he asked.

  Bingo? It seemed like a million years ago. “Good,” I said as he tugged on the door.

  “Locked.” He motioned toward the white patio chairs on the back porch. “Want to sit down for a minute?” he asked.

  I shrugged and plopped down on the hard, cool plastic.

  He took a seat beside me. “Are you sure you're okay?”

  I sighed and said, “I just met my mother's boyfriend.”

  Keith winced. “Yikes. Not good, huh?”

  I was so anxious I couldn't stop my teeth from chattering. “I just… I don't understand how my mother can do this. He has a wife.”

  “Maybe things with his wife aren't great.”

  I looked at him, surprised. Was he defending my mother's affair? “So what? It doesn't make it right. The woman is a professional home wrecker.”

  Keith sighed. “I don't know, Stef. I think it's more complicated than that. Maybe this guy hasn't been happy for a long time and when he met your mother, she made him realize just how unhappy he was.”

  “So why doesn't he divorce his wife?”

  “Who knows? Perhaps he will.”

  I bowed my head in submission. “Great, then I'll have a cheater for a stepfather.”

  “That's pretty harsh. He could be a good guy. Maybe he didn't plan on any of this. Sometimes life just takes you by surprise, you know? You have everything all planned out, and then you meet someone and then crap happens.”

  The weird thing was that by the sound of Keith's voice, he didn't seem to be talking about my mother anymore. It felt as though he was talking about us.

  “You don't understand,” I said, looking up and returning his gaze. “She does this all the time. And she always gets hurt. I can't watch her do this to herself again.”

  He folded his hands behind his head. “Stef, from what little I know, your mom seems to take care of herself. Fresh starts aren't the worst thing in the world, right? She's just trying to find out what makes her happy.”

  “But she's not happy,” I said. “It's like she has no impulse control or something. And you should see her when these affairs are over. She's a basket case. There have been times when I've been worried that she might actually hurt herself.” I rubbed my eyes. I didn't want him to see me cry. “I can't stand by and watch her do this to herself again. I won't.”

  “So how do you plan on stopping her?”

  “I don't know,” I croaked.

  “You can't save her, Stef,” he said quietly.

  “I have to at least try.” I thought about my grandparents, and tears started cascading down my cheeks.

  “Look, Stef, no matter what you do, it's just not going to make any difference in the long run. I know what I'm talking about. I tried to save my mother over and over again, and no matter what I did…” His voice faded. “You heard she died in a car accident, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that's not the truth. My dad told people that for my sake, I guess. And for the insurance money too.” He blinked a few times, as if he was trying to hold in all his emotions. “My mom killed herself.”

  I felt my breath catch in my throat. It was as if he had changed right in front of my eyes, morphing from a cliché hot lifeguard fantasy into a real person, a person who had been to hell and back and had lived to talk about it. And here he was, sharing it with me.

  “It was… awful,” he said after a long pause. He seemed to be remembering just how terrible it had been. It was obvious from the hoarse tone of his voice that this was difficult for him to talk about. “I knew she was depressed but I didn't think it was that bad. One morning I left for school, and that afternoon, instead of my mom picking me up, my dad was there. He told me she had driven down to the Potomac that morning and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Her note said she wanted to die looking at the water. When she collapsed, the car shifted into neutral and slammed into a tree. So I guess he didn't tell a total lie. The actual cause of death was head injury.”

  I felt the urge to take him in my arms and hold him and tell him that everything would be all right. “That sucks,” I said.<
br />
  Pretty close.

  “Yeah,” he said, closing his eyes briefly as if trying to delete the memory. “It does.” He glanced at me. “No one else knows that on the island. Besides Alice, of course. I don't think anyone can keep any secrets from her, do you?” He smiled.

  Alice knew this? And she hadn't told me? That was so unlike her. These days she wasn't living up to her flawless status.

  “So why did you tell me the truth?” I asked.

  He smiled widely. “I had a feeling you would understand. Because your life hasn't been easy either.”

  In essence, Keith was saying that we were alike, but still, I felt as though he was much stronger than me. “I think losing someone you love is worse than anything I've had to endure. I mean, my dad died, but that happened before I was born.”

  “Any grandparents?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea who my dad's parents are, and my mom's died when she was in high school. They drowned in a freak catamaran accident. That's why I never learned how to swim. Barbie's been terrified of the water ever since.”

  “Yeah, well, losing one parent was enough to make me a little crazy. Losing both at the same time has to be tough.”

  I thought about my mom and wondered how much of her love lunacy was due to waking up one morning and realizing that the two people she loved most in life were gone forever. “Barbie said that the one thing she learned when her parents died was that you have to live each day like it's your last,” I said.

  “So your mom has good advice sometimes,” he said.

  “I guess,” I said with a shrug.

  And then he reached out and took my hand in his. Keith had touched me many times before, but it had always been in the water, where he'd been acting more like an instructor. This felt completely different. I stared at his fingers, which were entwined with mine, and realized that this meant something big. And as terrified as I was of being eaten alive by love lunacy, I didn't want to let go.

  So I didn't. Instead I squeezed his hand tightly and sat there with him, looking at the creek, imagining the grin that would have appeared on Alice's face if she had come home right then and seen us.

  13

  I woke up on Monday morning determined to cut Barbie some slack. All the sentimental dead mother stuff had made me realize how lucky I was to at least have a mother. And my love for Keith was proof that he was right, that sometimes “crap happens.” So I was feeling extremely generous and forgiving, until I noticed that my whole Funniest Animals video collection had gone AWOL.

  This was enough to make me forget about every nice thing that I had ever said or thought about my mother. I stormed out of my room, anxious for a confrontation. How dare she? She brought some strange guy home, paraded him in front of me, and then she actually had the gall to punish me? What had I done? (Besides the whole starting an argument and walking out on her thing.)

  Unfortunately, Barbie wasn't there to scream at, so I walk into her room, intent on revenge. I went through all her drawers, searching for something to hold hostage. I finally got a big plastic bag and threw all her lingerie into it. Then I stuffed the bag into my backpack and went to work.

  When I got there, I had another surprise. Alice was cleaning the toilets in the ladies’ locker room as if nothing weird had transpired the previous evening. She seemed perfectly fine too, not tired in the least.

  “What happened to you last night?” I asked. “Why did you go Thelma's house?”

  Alice continued to scrub the bowl with a long brush. “Thelma… wasn't feeling all that well. Must have been a bad wonton. Anyway, she asked me if I wouldn't mind coming over for a while.”

  “But why did you have Keith drive you?” This story sounded pretty suspicious.

  “My car was acting up. How do you know I went to Thelma's?” She sounded as irritated as Barbie did when I gave her the third degree.

  “Because I went over to your house last night and I ran into Keith when he came to check on the door.”

  Alice stopped scrubbing and gave me her full attention. “You came over last night?”

  I nodded. “Barbie's boyfriend was at the apartment when I got home.”

  “Oh, Stef,” Alice said sympathetically. And I could tell from the look in her eyes that she knew without my saying anything else just how terrible it had been. “I'm sorry I wasn't there for you.”

  “That's all right,” I said. A smirk crept across my face. “Keith was there.” And then while Alice took a seat on a sparkling clean toilet, I told her everything.

  When I was finished, Alice was grinning. “He's really special, Steffie.”

  “I know,” I replied. And then I told her what I was pretty sure she already knew. “I think I love him.”

  Of course, this was all before I saw Keith making out with Mora.

  Until 5:30 p.m. things had really been looking up. I had a backpack full of my mother's lingerie, I'd had a nice heart-to-heart with Alice, and I had gone palm to palm with the greatest guy in all of Maryland.

  I had left work feeling like I was on top of the world, humming at the top of my lungs. I couldn't help noticing that the world actually seemed brighter, as if it had gotten happier right along with me. The grass was greener, the birds more colorful. Even the stone Adonis in the fountain looked fulfilled. It was as if the entire world was rejoicing at my and Keith's progress.

  I walked to my bike and paused. That was my big mistake. Instead of just moving the kickstand and riding away, I glanced toward the pool to see if I could spot Keith. And I saw him all right, except not at the pool. He was with Mora, off to the side of the pool in a secluded area so thick with shrubbery that the golfers referred to it as the woods. They were smashed against each other, chest to chest and cheek to cheek. Keith was running his fingers through her hair and appeared to be whispering into her ear.

  It was enough to send me spiraling back to this dismal place people referred to as Earth. I felt as if I might actually lose the baloney sandwich Alice had made me for lunch. The ride home was a blur of self-recrimination. After all, I had been through this a million times with Barbie. I should've known better than to pin my hopes on a guy who belonged to someone else.

  When I stormed into the apartment, I prayed that my mom would be off with Ludwig somewhere so I could go to my room and sob in peace. But there she was, sprawled out on the couch in her bathrobe and blowing her nose as if she had the flu or something. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her mascara was smeared and running down her face.

  Oh no.

  “Tom is such a jackass!” she exclaimed, waving a tissue around in the air.

  Apparently, this was replacing “hello” in the Rogers household.

  Barbie choked up some phlegm. “He said he needed time to think. Can you believe it? He said seeing you last night made him realize that there were other people's lives at stake here, not just him and me.”

  “Are you pinning this on me?” I began to bawl. My overwhelming dismay was enough to make Barbie stop crying. Not that I was dense enough to expect my mom to be there for me in my time of need, but I really couldn't handle being blamed for the end of her relationship when in reality I had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Of course not,” she said. “He's just a jackass.” She got up and kissed my forehead. “I'm sorry, Steffie. I'm so sorry for everything. You were right. He was a jerk and I had no right to bring him into our home.”

  “That's not why I'm so upset!” I was panting more heavily than a greyhound on a racetrack. “I just saw Keith and Mora making out.”

  “Oh no!” my mom shrieked. After all, if anyone could understand how terrible it was to see the man I was planning on making my soul mate in the arms of his betrothed, it was my mother. “What happened?” She handed me her box of tissues.

  “They were kissing in the woods by Tippecanoe.” I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't just been with him last night.”

&nb
sp; Barbie looked confused. “Last night? I thought you were at bingo.”

  “After I saw you with, well, the jackass, I went over to Alice's house, but she wasn't home. Keith showed up and we started talking, and, well, one thing led to another and…” I hesitated.

  My mother's eyes grew as big as saucers and she dropped her tissue. “You did it?” she whispered. And then she screeched: “Please tell me you had enough common sense to use protection!”

  “No!” I shouted, horrified that Barbie was even thinking what she was thinking.

  My mother held a hand to her chest and fell backward on the couch. “I'm so not ready to be a grandmother,” she said.

  “For God's sake, Barbie. I haven't even kissed him. We held hands.”

  “Held hands?” she asked. “That's all you did?” Was it my imagination, or did she sound disappointed?

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, he told me stuff that no one else knows. I thought it meant something. Something big.”

  “Jackass!” my mom exclaimed.

  “But he's not.” I flopped down next to her. “At least, I didn't think so. He seemed so sweet, you know? So sincere.”

  Barbie sighed and shook her head. “They're all the same.”

  But were they? Or was it just my mother and I who were the same?

  “How could I have been so stupid?” I asked out loud.

  “Honey,” my mom said, “I've been asking myself that very question all day.”

  “But it really seemed like he cared about me.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I never want to talk to him again,” I announced.