by Swan Huntley
The sound of waves crashing, of birds chirping, of cars going by. The annoying sound of a fly buzzing near my ear and I wanted to flinch, but didn’t.
“Taste the salt air. Feel the weight of your seat. Ground. Groundedness. Your mind is a wandering child. When your mind wanders, invite it back. Shush the child. Quiet your mind. Your mind is a quiet place. Your mind is the deserted stacks in a library. Your mind is the wild desert, where there are no footprints in the sand. Your mind is as quiet as a planet we’ve never been to. Inhale deeply, and then three oms.”
•
That morning Ana helped me do a jump back for the first time. I didn’t do it perfectly, but still I did it. I, Nancy Murphy, did a jump back. I felt strong and pretty and powerful and in a flush of sweaty optimism, I unzipped my jacket all the way and let it fall in a heap on the grass.
Afterwards I made sure I was last in line so we would have a chance to talk. Patty’s cat was still alive, but doing worse. “I know we’re born alone and we die alone, Ana, but—well,” Patty tugged at her earring, “I just don’t like that.” While Patty was talking, Ana accidentally dropped her Red Vine in the grass. “Don’t want that to go to waste,” Patty said, and picked it up and ate the rest.
Sara Beth’s nails were blue this week, and she thought she was potentially maybe possibly falling in love, but she was scared that if it didn’t work out she’d fall on her face instead. Ana told her to embrace the uncertainty and grab life by the balls, which riled Sara Beth up. Her whole demeanor changed after that.
Kurt told Ana his knee was aching, and she suggested Tiger Balming it three times a day. He admitted he was a little embarrassed he hadn’t thought of this himself, to which Ana said, “Embarrassment is a worthless emotion. Don’t waste your brain cells.”
As I watched them all and listened to their conversations, I felt proud to call Ana a friend. She was so loving and inspiring. I think we all wanted a piece of her. When Patty ate Ana’s Red Vine from the grass, I thought: Any piece at all, even if only a small one.
After Kurt had left, Ana said, “Hey, partner,” and gave me a huge hug. Coconut oil and her wig against my face.
“I loved your quote today,” I said. “About how your truth is the only truth. That is so…true.”
“Right?”
“Who said it?”
She cocked her head. “Ana Gersh.” Her eyes sparkled. She bit her Red Vine.
“Another Ana, just like you. How funny.” Was I supposed to know who Ana Gersh was? Was she famous like Pema? I decided to be bold and ask. “Who’s Ana Gersh?”
“She’s a philosopher.” Ana tugged the hem of my shirt. She seemed to be inspecting the way it was sewn, maybe. “Here, I’ll write it down for you.” She grabbed her little notebook off the rock wall, wrote the quote, and ripped out the page for me when she was done. “You can put it on your fridge.”
I imagined my family seeing this quote on the fridge. “I’ll probably keep it in my wallet.”
“Even better,” Ana said. “What are you up to today? Do you want to Jacuzzi?”
The truth was that I had wanted her to ask, and I had brought my suit in case she did. “That would be lovely,” I said, and we walked to the parking lot, where Ana said, “Follow me?” and I replied, “In my van.” I may have stuck out my tongue when I said “van.”
Instead of continuing on to her car, Ana paused right there. She looked at the van. She looked at me. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Sounds like you despise your van. Do you despise your van, Nancy?”
I forced a laugh. “I completely despise my van. I’m hoping it will die soon, but Hondas never die.”
“Why don’t you trade it in today?”
“Today?” I laughed.
“Yeah, today. Right now. I’ll go with you.”
My first thought? Chuck would be pissed. Which I couldn’t say out loud. It sounded codependent. And then I started waffling. How pissed could Chuck possibly be? It was only a car.
“Let me ask you a question.” She blew air up into her bangs. The sun was shining brighter now and poor Ana was probably so hot under there. “When you think about this van, okay, when you really think about it, do you see a long future or do you know you’re going to say good-bye to it soon and you’re just holding on until you get the okay from your husband?”
“Oh,” I said, “I hate that you just said that.”
“Because it’s true?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
“So you and this van are going to part ways soon?”
“I hope so.”
“Then why not part ways with it today? Let it go. Set that giant car free. You’re probably spending way too much on gas in that whale anyway. You need a little shark car. It’ll save you a ton of money in the long run.”
I looked at my van. The EAT, SLEEP, PLAY WATER POLO sticker had faded badly on the bumper. And the bumper itself had faded. Did it used to be black? Because it definitely wasn’t anymore.
“We’ll go to the Honda place,” Ana said. “I’m a great negotiator.”
My heart started beating fast. I was buzzing like I might explode. Was this how it felt to truly be living?
•
In the Jacuzzi, I said it again. “I got a new car.”
Ana sank deeper into the water and then popped back up. “You got a new car.”
“I got a BMW.”
“You got a beamer.”
“I got a white convertible beamer.”
“No more hood to hide under. Exposed to the world.”
“No more hiding.”
“Ex-posed.”
I checked to make sure my breasts were still in my swimsuit. They were.
“You should name it,” Ana said, dipping again so the water was at her chin.
“My little shark car.”
“Sharkeeeeeeee.” Ana kept going until she ran out of breath.
“Sharkie,” I repeated. I rested my head on the Jacuzzi’s plastic side. “Chuck says we got a good price,” I said. I’d called Chuck right afterwards. “And it will save us a ton of gas money in the long run,” I’d told him. Chuck was a little disappointed he hadn’t been there with me to pick it out, but he’d quickly regrouped. “I’m happy for you, Nance,” he said, and I was relieved.
“I told you I’m a great negotiator,” Ana said.
“You were amazing. I can’t believe how you talked to that guy. How do you know so much about cars?”
“I’ve lived many lives.” Ana tilted her head back so all I could see was her creamy white neck. Then she looked at me. “You’re indebted to me now,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. I had already planned on making her the healthy blueberry buckwheat muffins my blogger said were “to die for times twelve” (or, as she literally expressed this equation, “2 die 4 x 12”) as a thank-you, but now I was thinking: Oh, should my thank-you be bigger than that? Maybe muffins and flowers. And a card, obviously a card.
Ana stood up in the water, walked the length of the small plastic bench, which was only two steps, and then walked back the other way. “I do have a favor to ask,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Will you hand out sandwiches with me again?”
“Ana,” I said, “I would be honored.”
•
We stood at Ana’s kitchen counter making sandwiches. I was on one side and she was on the other. Our fingers were prunes from sitting for so long in the Jacuzzi. Incense was burning from a tiny hole on top of one of the Buddha’s heads. The sound of the waves crashing outside was a little louder than Ana’s relaxing yoga music. There was no rhythm to that music, but we were working rhythmically anyway. Our own little factory of two. We were quiet for a little while, spreading the peanut butter and adding the top piece of bread and opening the Ziploc, which was the hardest part, and putting the sandwich in and zipping the Ziploc, and I could feel Ana across from me, her movements like a mirror. We tossed our sandwiches into the pile at the exa
ct same time.
I started a new sandwich, but Ana had stopped.
I noted the obvious. “You stopped.”
“I just realized something.” She looked outside, at the clouds maybe, and then back at me. We were the same height so our eyes were level. “I felt this before, but I wasn’t absolutely sure until just now.”
“What?”
Her glimmering eyes. “We are kindred spirits.”
I hid my joy with a little skepticism. “We are?”
She cocked her head. “How old are you?”
“Forty-eight.”
“What!” A look of disbelief. “I just got the chills.” She held up her forearm to show me. “I am forty-eight.”
“So?”
“Don’t you see? We are twins, like your boys. We’re both forty-eight. Everyone thinks we look alike. And we even have the same freckle on our wrist.”
I may have liked that she had noticed this. I had noticed, too, but I never would have told her.
“I’m going to call you Nan from now on. No more Nancy. And don’t you see why? Don’t you see how the letters of our names match up perfectly? Nan and Ana! Yin and yang!”
She took my sticky hands and drew herself toward me until our foreheads were touching. On the counter: my two pieces of bread, waiting to come together.
Her forehead was hot and maybe pulsing, and she said, “We were meant to find each other for a reason, Nan, and I have a feeling it’s a big reason.”
At the time, I was sure this reason was as simple as sisterhood. With our foreheads touching like that, I felt so close to her. I felt warm and fuzzy—the same feeling I got sitting in her Jacuzzi. Weeks later, she would say, “If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. If you turn the water up slowly, it will boil.” And even then, I didn’t think: Jump. I thought the same thing I thought whenever she spoke, which was: Oh, how interesting.
Water
11
My boys in the pool. There was nothing like watching them. Their young bodies, full of life, never got tired of swimming. When either of them got the ball, I stopped breathing. My heart swelled. A mother’s pride.
The ref blew the whistle. The teams sprinted toward each other. A Waverider won the ball. Number 11. Cam stayed back. Defense. Jed sprinted up the side. Number 11 threw the ball to Jed. Yes! Jed caught it. He took a few fast strokes toward the goal. I stood. Chuck stood with me. Jed’s arm arced back. He threw the ball hard. It went, went, went—I stopped breathing—and the goalie jumped up—no!—and then—gasp!—it grazed the goalie’s fingertips and went in. The ref blew the whistle. Goal! Chuck and I shrieked cheers and bounced with excitement. Together, we held the sign I had laminated last year. GO MURPHY BOYS! In this moment we were a family again.
When the commotion was over, we took our seats in the bleachers with the other Waverider fans. The entire high school had been rebuilt recently, so the bleachers were new and the pool was new and the goals were fresh and white. The blue awning with the WR logo repeating itself along the edges was taut and clean, and the numbers on the scoreboard were crisply visible, even in the glaring sun.
As Brad had said, “Everything is better here.” I had clung to this line because I wanted it to be true, and because I wanted it to be true, I was constantly finding evidence to support it, which wasn’t hard to do at this pool. It was so much nicer than Clairemont’s.
I thought of the water polo moms in San Diego—of how we had a whole system for watching games. It would be four or five of us in the fifth row with three or four of our husbands—Sheila had gotten divorced after her husband cheated—right in front of us in the fourth row. Someone (Dorothy or B) would get there early to stake our claim. Dorothy did it with beach blankets, B did it with cones. Someone else (usually me) brought a cooler full of bottled water and soda and parked it between the husbands and the wives as a centerpiece. I usually brought orange slices, too, which I had a special system for preparing. I would carve the meat of the orange from the rind halfway up each slice so it would be easier for people to eat. This was very time-consuming and, I thought now, such a waste of time.
Today I was perfectly happy sitting in row seven with Chuck. We’d brought one bottled water apiece—this was all we needed. It was also nice to be anonymous. I knew nothing about these parents, and they knew nothing about me. There was so much freedom in that. I could choose to be any type of person, and they would think I had been this type of person all along. So no, I didn’t miss my old friends. I was content just observing the barefoot family two rows down eating their KFC from the bucket, and I was content every time I remembered I wouldn’t have to strain my back emptying the ice from my huge cooler after this.
“I wish my mom could have been here to see this,” Chuck said, touching the brim of his hat.
Chuck’s mother, Martha, had come to every one of his games in college. I used to get there late on purpose so I didn’t have to sit with her. I liked Martha, but she talked the whole time and asked me too many questions, some of which really weren’t appropriate. She always wanted to know if I was experiencing side effects from my birth control, for example.
“What about your mom?” Chuck put his arm around me, kissed my cheek. “Did she watch sports?”
It was a question he may have never asked before, which was rare this far into a marriage. I thought of my mother in her smelly chair. Of how The Young and the Restless had been on when she died. If she’d lived long enough to see my boys get to high school, would she have come to a game? She would have wanted to, maybe, but coming to a game would have meant leaving the house, which was very hard for my mother to do, especially near the end. She left only to go to the liquor store or to get her prescriptions refilled. And even those things—near the end, I was doing those things.
“No,” I told Chuck, “my mom didn’t watch sports. It was always soap operas.”
•
After the game we waited for the boys in the parking lot. We leaned on the trunk of their blue Honda and talked about Cam’s stellar assists and Jed’s powerful arm. He had scored the last goal for a win of 3–2. Jed always scored more than Cam. He was the bold one. He was the star. But Cam had more stamina. He made all the assists. Or not all of them, but many of them. Cam saw the game as a whole, and Jed had a winner’s tunnel vision: all he cared about was the goal. That’s what Chuck liked to say. He said both ways were good, just different. Now in the parking lot, arms crossed over his chest, looking very pleased, he said it again, with the same enthusiasm as all the other times: “Cam is more analytical than Jed. And Jed is more aggressive than Cam. Both ways are good, just different.”
We watched the other Waverider fans filter out to their cars. The KFC family had put their flip-flops on. Coach Iona yelled across the lot, “Hey, Murphy parents! We love your boys!” We waved and yelled, “Thank you! So do we!”
The boys appeared. Their lanky bodies, their loping strides. They walked like such teenagers. Two other boys walked with them. Next to Jed: a smaller Hawaiian boy. I recognized him as number 5. Next to Cam: number 10—he was easy to pick out because he had the palest skin on the team.
“Amazing game,” I told them.
“Phenomenal,” Chuck said, and gave them high fives.
Number 5 extended a hand to Chuck. “What’s up. I’m Liko.” He gave a firm shake. “Hi, Mrs. Murphy,” he said to me, in an almost provocative tone, as though he may have found me attractive. But no one else seemed to notice, so maybe I was imagining things. Liko smiled—a huge joker smile that took up half his face. His eyes turned into little slits.
“Nice to meet you, Liko,” I said pleasantly.
Our eyes turned to number 10. “Hi, I’m Tom,” Tom said. His voice was deep and he looked older than a high school kid. He was very attractive and sort of Swedish looking, with fine yellow-white hair and blue-white eyes like glaciers. He shook our hands. His grip was loose and clammy.
“Jed rocked it. He’s the king!” Liko jokingly b
owed unto Jed.
“Dude, shut up,” Jed said bashfully, though I could tell he was loving the attention.
“And Cam, you did a wonderful job,” I said. I heard myself and thought: You sound like such a middle-aged mom talking about sports. But fine. Because what else was I supposed to be?
Cam was authentically bashful and looked at his feet. Tom patted the back of his neck. For such a strapping guy, he was kind of gentle. And quiet, because he didn’t say anything.
“Wonderful, both of you.” Chuck tore off his hat, smacked it against his thigh. “Jed, two goals! Damn. And Cam. Oh man, Cam. So many assists! And what solid defense. You fended those guys off you.”
“Fen-ded,” Liko repeated, like it was a sexual word. What was wrong with this kid?
“Dude, Liko, shut up,” Jed said, and I thought: Yes, please do.
“Can we take you boys out to lunch?” Chuck said. “Anywhere you want.” Chuck was trying to be Cool Dad, which was slightly sad and very sweet.
Liko was swinging his arms back and forth and rocking his head a little. Was he dancing?
“Nah, Dad, we’re going out with the team,” Cam said.
“We normally go to Denny’s,” Tom offered.
“Okay.” Chuck sounded a little deflated, so he tried again. “Have a great time.”
•
Chuck and I bought chicken wraps at Safeway and took them to the park at the Old Airport. Picnicking was something we had done a lot in the beginning of our relationship. We sat at a green picnic table under a tree. I faced the ocean. Chuck faced the mountain. “I can’t tell if those are clouds or if it’s vog,” he said, and took a bite.
“Do you remember how we used to have picnics?” I asked him.
“Of course.” Chuck smiled. The lines on his face. The age spots forming at his hairline. He looked so much older now. We both looked so much older now.