Happy People Live Here

by C. Sean McGee

9A

  “Hi Linda, how are you doin?” asked The Teacher.

  “I’m good, thank you. How are you?” was Linda’s response.

  “I’m fantastic,” said The Teacher.

  It almost looked like he was. It definitely sounded it. But he wasn’t though. You could tell. His eyes were a dead giveaway. It was like throwing a match in the air and calling it sunlight. And as quickly as he jumped into his exclamation, he coiled back into trepidity, watching Linda’s expression like an obeisant mongrel, picking the farthest corner of the yard to astutely and fearfully gauge the look in its master’s eye and whether or not there would be a lashing, for no good reason at all.

  “So,” he said, hesitant. “How are you?”

  “You already asked me that,” Linda said.

  The Teacher looked on edge like he wanted to say the right thing, knowing how delicate that was and knowing that saying the wrong thing, like asking her how she was, twice, could make the next hour fee like a week.

  It was the first minute of each class that The Teacher dreaded the most. It was in not knowing what kind of mood she was going to be in. It was in not knowing if he would be spending an hour laughing hysterically and being inspired and wowed by her childish posture, or whether, as she endlessly berated him, the hate he had for himself inside for letting her talk to him how she did, if it would eventually grow into cancer.

  “Are you ready to start?” he asked.

  “Of course. I’m here. It’s my class. Are the others here too?” asked Linda, a hint of venom in her tone, not enough to kill, just enough to cause an itch in one’s throat, one that a nudging cough couldn’t clear.

  “Yes,” said The Teacher. “They’re in the pool now doing laps.”

  “Why aren’t you with them? They could drown. You should be in the pool. Are you crazy?”

  It was going to be a difficult hour.

  “Go away,” Linda said. “I have to get changed.”

  The Teacher held his breath. He clenched every muscle in his body. He felt the same way, when he was a boy, before having a root canal. It was (the fact that he was) eating too much sugar and not brushing properly. That’s what did it. It was always some thoughtless and indulgent action that led him to feel this way. So what didn’t he do right, to end up with Linda as his student?

  Linda exited the change rooms with her towel wrapped around her body. She shouted at everyone, including the children, to turn around and to not look before she slipped into the water. None of the kids liked her, but she was a grown up, so they had to do what she said. If they didn’t, she’d tell their mums and then they would get embarrassed and when they got embarrassed they got angry, and if their parents got angry, then the kids wouldn’t be able to stay up past ten.

  So they turned around.

  The Teacher turned around too. He patted his hands on the skin of the water, trying to fool himself into feeling light and whimsical. He heard a proverb once that said that one should be careful of their thoughts for they define one’s words and one should be wary of one’s words, for the become one’s actions and one should be wary of one’s actions because they become one’s behavior and one should be wary of one’s behavior because it becomes one’s fate. He tried to think happy thoughts, that everything was super and fantastic and if he thought this loud enough in his mind if he acted out the way super and fantastic looked, then maybe he could feel it too. And if he felt it, then maybe he could make Linda feel it and then it wouldn’t be so painful, having to be around her.

  When everyone had turned, Linda dropped her towel and with her hands bashfully covering her curves, she stepped slowly into the water on the baby steps, each foot hovering above the rippling water, just as the woman’s hand did, she hunched over shoulders.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “Just dive in. It’s great when you’re under.”

  “It’s supposed to be heated. It’s cold.”

  “It is heated, trust me,” said The Teacher.

  As he spoke, his thoughts wondered aloud, “Should I be provoking her?”

  Linda closed her eyes and held her breath and then ducked her body down really fast so that water splashed up her body and wet her swimming cap and splashed drops onto her goggles. She was in the infant section where for an adult, or even an averaged sized teenager, the water lapped, somewhere above one’s knees, but nowhere near one’s waist.

  Still, ducking into the water, Linda had this overwhelming fear that she was about to drown. She had the same sensation whenever she put her head under the shower nozzle. Normally she let the water run down her back and her shoulders only. It was the only safe way to have a shower.

  She didn’t like the feeling of facing the nozzle and water rushing against her chest. It didn’t at all feel safe. What if she stepped under and the water went in her eyes and up her nose and she couldn’t see and she couldn’t breathe properly and then she panicked and then she slipped because the ground was all soapy and she landed on her back and she was knocked unconscious and then the water, it filled her mouth and her lungs and she drowned? What if that happened?

  It wasn’t worth the risk, putting her head under the water. And she couldn’t hold her breath that long anyway, not the time she needed to wash the conditioner and shampoo out of her hair. She used little cups instead. And she would tilt her head all the way back so she was looking at the spinning fan on the roof and she would shut her eyes real tight and hold her breath and then she would pour the little cup over her hair with one hand and wipe away the suds with the other.

  It took a while, but at least she never got hurt.

  The other children were sniggering and sneering. They always did; the insolent little brats. If Linda was their mother then she would educate them better, so they weren’t like that. That was the problem with kids these days. Mothers and fathers didn’t know how to educate their children anymore. They just let them run wild and do whatever they wanted and give them whatever they wanted and they were never around to see, when they were doing things like sniggering at her and probably laughing because she had never been in the deep end.

  “Alright kids,” said The Teacher. “Ten laps, back and forth. Two freestyle, two breaststroke and six backstroke, ok?”

  The children dove into the water and swam as instructed, one following the other in neat procession. There were four children. All four were around seven or eight years old. That was usually when children developed their mean spirit. That’s how Linda felt anyway.

  They all swam like they had been doing it since birth. Everything was easy for children. They didn’t have to think or to even try. They just did whatever The Teacher said and then he’d say “Well done” because probably they were doing it well, just like in the instructions.

  But they didn’t have to work all day long. And they didn’t have to spend two hours in traffic just to get home from work. And they didn’t have to worry about paying bills and having to remember to pump air into the tires and whether or not their hair was going grey, and whether other people thought they were getting old and if it was true that the supplements she took would make her sick or not and if one day someone would come into her office and ask for money and whether they would throw alcohol on her, and set her on fire. And if she did die, what song would they play at her funeral? Because she hadn’t told anyone that. And what if they picked something she didn’t like?

  “You ready Linda?” asked The Teacher, wading towards her tentatively.

  Linda sat in the shallows, where the infants swam and splashed about. Sitting on her knees, with the water almost past her waist, Linda swished her own hands back and forth, focusing on keeping her balance. She had heard many stories on television and from her friends at work too, about people that had died in swimming pools, in water much more shallow than this.

  Once, someone died in water that was just an inch deep.

  So this was like an ocean.

  “Ok, so today we’re gonna practice being under the wate
r, ok? We’re gonna go slowly so if you want to stop at any point, you just tap my hand ok? But we’re gonna do it this time” he said, thinking he was assuring her, hoping he was assuring her, just praying to all hell that this wouldn’t be a repeat of last week.

  Linda looked fraught. She was tense and ready to lash out. Her hands were clenched and every muscle in her body was stretching out in long veiny strands.

  “Ok. Remember, the water is not going to hurt you. It’s a natural thing. You’re not going to die and you’re not going to drown. I’m with you, ok?”

  If sound had an appearance, his voice would look like Linda’s trembling body. He hoped she wouldn’t make a scene, not like last week. It was so hard to gain the children’s trust and respect and even harder still, after some of the things that she said. And every now and then, The Teacher wondered if the children only offered their respect out of pity for what she made him say and what she made him do, just so he could make some money.

  Last week, during the class, The Teacher thought to himself several times about taking Linda by the scruff of her neck and like a rabid dog or a cancered guinea pig, holding her head under the water until her waspy hands stopped pattering at the water’s surface. He didn’t like thinking that way, having those kinds of thoughts. It wasn’t nice. But he didn’t all feel guilty about thinking it. Perhaps, in his own musing, one day, someone else might do it, that god might intervene and put an end to her miserable demeanor.

  It was just a thought.

  “I’m not ready,” Linda said, anxious.

  “It’s ok. You’re ready. We’re just going to duck your head under the water for two seconds. That’s all.”

  “But how do I know how long that is? I can’t hear you counting.”

  “Ok, I’m gonna tap on your hand like this,” he said, tapping on her hand two times. “Then you come up and you can take another breath. Do you want to practice first, outside of the water?”

  “Yes,” Linda said, desperate.

  “Ok,” said The Teacher, holding her hand. “Now close your eyes.”

  She closed them.

  “Now hold your breath.”

  She held it.

  “Now one elephant.”

  He tapped her one time.

  “And two elephants.”

  He tapped her two times.

  Linda opened her eyes and took a breath. There was nothing frightening about the experience. She didn’t die. It was only two seconds. She could hold her breath much longer than that if she wanted to, maybe even ten times longer, if she had a run up or a song to sing in her head.

  “Ok,” said The Teacher, lying down so his head was just above the water and his hands were holding onto the infant’s edge of the pool.

  Linda followed his direction and slowly pushed her legs out behind her and lowered her body down. Her heart was beating so fast. If it was a runner, it would have won the race by now. She imagined her foot slipping and her head hitting the floor and dying immediately and then, as a ghost, standing outside the pool while the ambulance carried her body away in a black bag and all the children were fidgety, as if they really had to do a pee or they really wanted to run home and tell everyone what they saw.

  “I can’t do it,” Linda said, worried.

  “It’s easy. Watch me” said The Teacher, ducking his head under the water and counting out two seconds in his mind before calmly lifting his head back out and smiling at Linda, to show her that it wasn’t so difficult and that he wouldn’t be dying to take a breath, not like she thought he would. “Do you want to give it another try?”

  Linda took a deep breath but every time she did, she got overwhelmed by a nervous jitter and then exhaled quickly; getting scared into thinking that she wouldn’t be able to take another breath. And then she started to panic and she looked at the children and saw that they were all laughing and pointing at her and then she got mad and she wanted to take The Teacher and hold his head under the water and see how long he could last before the bubbles stopped popping up. She wished he’d just die and stop making her feel so dumb and stupid in front of everyone else, especially the stupid kids.

  It was easy for him, he could already swim.

  “Don’t worry about them. Hey,” he shouted out to the children, “ten more laps. Janey, you point and laugh again and you’ll be showing your butterfly skills to the rest of the class. Learning is fun, not funny” he said.

  Linda wished he’d drown Janey.

  The stupid bitch.

  The Teacher could feel her nerve. He was feeling it himself and he wondered why she was in this group. He wondered why he let her stay. He wondered why she even asked in the first place. She shouldn’t be around other people. She’s horrible. She’s evil. She’s mean spirited.

  Then she did it.

  She dived under the water. And her fingers clutched at the edge of the pool. And she was clutching so hard that her knuckles went completely white and the tips of her fingers went red and there were grooves in the blue rubber where her nails dug in.

  She had been under for maybe two or three seconds before The Teacher actually realized what she had done. He started counting, tapping on her arm, once and then twice. And Linda didn’t get up. She stayed under the water. Then he tapped more times. Three, four, five, six and then seven.

  He tapped seven times.

  Linda popped her head out of the water and she gulped massively as if she had risen from the bottom of the ocean, desperate for her first breath. Her eyes were wide and white. Terrified and elated.

  She hugged him.

  She kissed his cheek.

  “I did it,” she said, astonished.

  “You did,” said The Teacher, proud. “You did it.”

  Immediately he forgot about all the bad things he thought when he was always around her. He forgot about hoping that god or gravity would hold her under the water and do something just. He didn’t think that her being hurt was fair anymore. He was more elated than she was. His eyes were just as wide and they were just as white.

  He hugged her back.

  And he shivered, when she kissed his cheek.

  “I met someone,” she said.

  “Really?” said The Teacher smiling.

  Normally she would talk about some man she had met online and she could talk for hours about what he was like and how he was different from her boyfriend and then about how her boyfriend said that he didn’t love her and how she didn’t love him, but how every day she would send him messages and he would send one back. And normally, all The Teacher would have to do would be to feign interest, to stare in her direction and to remember to blink every now and then. And she would talk, for the entire of the lesson. And he would get shivers in his spine as she rambled in circles and jumped from tangent to tangent in broken stride.

  But there were two minutes left in her lesson.

  “Hey, awesome. Maybe next week you can tell me how that went” he said; already out of the pool and dressing himself.

  The Teacher and the children all left, rushing out of the building.

  Linda stayed in the shallow end, thinking about that time that she put her head under the water. And she wanted to do it again, but there was nobody around and it was dangerous to do it alone. How would she know it had been two seconds or not?

  And nobody noticed her new swimsuit.

  And nobody said happy birthday.

  Stupid donkeys.

  She didn’t expect any of the children to know, but they were too smart-alecky so the bad word was for them too; they and the idiot teacher who should have remembered it was her birthday. He was supposed to be her friend.

  “We’ll see,” she thought to herself, “When it’s your birthday, I’ll remember and then I’ll forget on purpose.”

  It was typical, though; typical of people. Everyone was a friend to everyone when it mattered and when it was convenient, but when you needed them, like when it was your birthday or when your favorite fish died, they were never there. The
y didn’t call, they didn’t pick up their phones and they didn’t listen to their messages.

  Linda scrunched her hands and her face real tight as she got out of the pool, with cold shivers dotting all over her skin. Her teeth made a scratching sound as she dried herself off in her new woolen towel, also that nobody noticed, and then she made a sound like an owl hooting when she wrapped herself in her new thick robe.

  She thought about the stupid kids laughing at her when she first entered the water, thinking they were so smart and so good and then she thought about her idiot teacher, driving through a red light on his way home and being hit by a truck. He would have deserved it, for not remembering her birthday. And then she thought about how she held her breath under the water, just like the Olympic swimmers did, and she didn’t feel so bitter.

  Still, those kids were mean.

  Linda shuffled back to her apartment, unable to lift her feet in case they should fall out of her new soft slippers. They were white and woolen like her robe and they were really warm and cozy. They were a bit big though so she had to shuffle and try not to lift her feet so that she didn’t kick them off like she always did with her flip flops.

  As cozy as she was, though, she did feel a bit guilty and a bit wrong, warming herself this way. It was so soft, but she worried herself into a panic, thinking that maybe one or two sheep would have been killed so that she could have this fluffy robe and these fluffy slippers. It made her want to give them back or to do something good for someone, so that it was ok to wear them but promise, to never wear them again.

  In her apartment, Linda sat on the sofa, sitting in front of the television, with the control in her hand. She might have been there for a couple of minutes or she might have been there for an hour or so. She hadn’t flicked the switch, not yet. She was waiting, with her notebook open on the coffee table before her, for her mother or her sister to call her and wish her a happy birthday.

  It was getting late now, almost nine. There was still bustling traffic, buzzing and beeping outside her window and there was still the sound of sex coming from the apartment next door. There was no way her mother was going to be up past nine and it was almost nine now. Still she waited, expecting the computer to start ringing at any moment, imaging her mother there with her smiling and wrinkly face, just like it was the last time they spoke, blowing kisses and telling her, even though her sister would be standing right beside her, that she was her favorite daughter in the whole wide world, and she wasn’t mad at her anymore, for that thing that happened and that she could come home if she wanted to.

  And then she would talk to her sister and her sister would say happy birthday and it would be quick and meaningless but she’d be sure to smile and say thank you because their mother was right there watching. And then, she would get to talk to her nieces and she’d hear them shouting her name, before her mum got to even speak, and even though she’d be dying to speak to her mother and hear her calling her the best daughter in the world, what Linda was really be pining for, was to see her nieces.

  They would dance around in front of the camera and they would sing songs for her and they would tell her how beautiful she was. And then they would ask her when she was coming to see them and if they could come and stay with her. They’d always cross their fingers and look at their mum and they’d say, “Can we? Please, please mummy?” And her sister would always dip her head condescendingly and say “We’ll see,” on account of her being such a stupid bitch and not wanting to travel to the city, or to let her see her nieces.

  There were so many things that Linda loved about her nieces, but the thing she loved the most was when they said her name. They would always say it wrong. It didn’t matter, though. Not in the slightest. She loved them so much, even if they said her name wrong and even if they didn’t come to visit. They were her family and her nieces when they said “Aunty Linda, we love you,” she stopped feeling sad.

  Linda switched the button on the remote by accident. Instantly, the living room lit up with bright flashing red and blue lights, and fiery oranges, and the sound was blasting so loud with reporters shouting to the studio over the sound of fire engines and police cars with their sirens squealing and helicopters, buzzing and flying about overhead.

  It was so loud.

  And so bright.

  It was hard to look away.

  It was the news.

  Then as she was about to turn down the volume, the host of the show came on and he had this urgent look on his face, as if someone really important had been in an accident and he looked like he was about to say something really sad or really tragic, you could just see it in his eyes. And Linda dropped the control on the sofa and she leaned forwards on her seat until her bum was right on the edge of the cushion and she waited, like a baited fish, to be reeled in and told what had happened.

  And it was important to know the news. Intelligent people watched the news. Smart people watched the news. And rich people too, they watched the news. For Linda, it was important to know about the violence and about the corruption. She didn’t much like hearing it, but it was important to know. It was all anyone at work talked about, what happened on the news. That and what happened on the soap opera too.

  But Linda didn’t like soap operas.

  They were for monkeys and donkeys.

  Linda watched the notebook and she watched the television and she watched the reporter and she watched the host and she looked at the letter addressed to her on the table, the one with the red stamp, and she watched the notebook again, staring at a still image of her mother hugging her nieces and it was by chance, by freakish coincidence, that she noticed it; a tiny, almost invisible smudge, right there on the glass.

  And it would have been tiny to you.

  And it would have been invisible to me.

  But to Linda, it was so much more.

  And her blood started to boil. She clenched her fists and ground her teeth once more, thinking now about Patty; her poor cleaner. And she thought about Patty doing something stupid like pressing her thumb on the glass after she had cleaned it and then walking off and not noticing at all. And what else hadn’t she noticed? What else did she put her big stupid thumb on and not see? Did she break things and hide them? And what did she break? And where did she hide them? And she was probably stealing too, thinking Linda was rich and that she wouldn’t notice her things going missing.

  The smudge was hardly tiny and nowhere near invisible. It was stupid and ignorant and not intelligent and Linda stared at it, imaging really bad things as bright lights flashed on the television with the reporter interviewing the injured motorcyclist who was lying face down on the ground while police fired at the poor criminals in the slums behind them. And the firemen, they waited beside their red trucks for the fire to burn a bit more before they tried to put it out.

  And the smudge was right there and there was no way in hell that she couldn’t have seen it and the host, well he was shouting out the names of people who were shot and the cameraman was showing pictures too and the still image of Linda’s mother was flashing and it was making a sound too, but it wasn’t as loud as the fire engines and the police sirens and the popping gun fire and the sex, coming from the apartment next door.

  “Stupid donkey,” Linda said, staring at the smudge