Learning to Swim

by Sara J. Henry

  I had the feeling that was about to change. And maybe it already had.

  ONCE OUT OF LAKE PLACID, IT’S ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES to Baker’s house.

  Baker is just this side of plump, sort of a heavier, freckled, younger Maura Tierney, with a round friendly face that spells Mom, apple pie, and meat loaf. The corners of her mouth twisted at the sight of Paul’s odd outfit, but she just led us to the stack of clothes she had set aside. Paul shyly picked out a Batman T-shirt and jeans, and I helped him change. The clothes were slightly big, but he seemed to like them, and gave Baker his wistful half smile. She popped a construction-paper headdress on him and pointed him toward the backyard where the kids were playing. He looked at me with a mixture of eagerness and nervousness, and I gave him an encouraging nod. “I’ll just be inside,” I called out as he took a step toward the play set. “Je serai juste là, à l’intérieur … dans la maison de Baker.”

  Baker gave me a look.

  “Uh, he doesn’t speak English—did I forget to mention that?” I asked as I followed her back into the house.

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Kids all speak the same language.” Through the kitchen window I could see Paul being coaxed up a slide by a pigtailed, overall-clad kid with a dirty smear on her cheek, one of the neighbor’s daughters. “He’ll be fine,” Baker said. “What, are you adopting a French-Canadian kid?”

  I shrugged. “I found him. Literally. In Lake Champlain.”

  She stared at me for a long second, reading more in my face than I wanted her to. “Okay, you’re staying for lunch. We’ll eat first and then I’ll feed the horde.” As she made sandwiches I watched Paul through the window, going down the slide and then marching around and climbing back up to do it again.

  “So tell me,” Baker said as she plopped tuna sandwiches and carrot sticks on the table, with a Coke for her and iced tea for me.

  “Mmm. I honest-to-God found him in Lake Champlain. I was on my way to see Thomas yesterday, and I saw him, well, fall in from the other ferry.”

  She stared at me. I took a sip of iced tea and made a face. Too strong, as usual. Nobody in the North Country knows how to make iced tea. Most of them think it comes from a jar of powder from the grocery store. I was lucky Baker brewed it for me. I pushed my chair back, the skittering sound loud in the sudden stillness, ran tap water into the glass, and swirled the ice around.

  “You just happened to have a portable raft with you, or what?” Baker asked. Sarcasm does not become her.

  “No, I swam and got him and then swam to shore.”

  More staring. “Troy, you can’t swim worth a damn.”

  “I’m not that bad,” I protested as I sat back down. “I don’t like swimming in groups and I sort of veer to one side. But if I concentrate, I do okay.”

  She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. “Okay, he fell in the lake. You got him out. So why do you still have him?”

  Dead silence. It was difficult to say aloud, and it took a moment to get the words out. “I’m pretty sure someone threw him in.”

  Another friend might have exclaimed, but Baker wasn’t made that way, and she knows how tough I like to pretend to be. We chewed our sandwiches.

  “Did he say so?” Baker asked.

  “No. He won’t talk about it. But no one was at the dock looking for him, and he had … there was …” I cleared my throat. “He had an adult’s sweatshirt tied around him, the sleeves knotted around his arms.”

  Baker thought about this. “Did you call the police?”

  I nodded. “Etown and Burlington. I didn’t give my name. But Paul wasn’t talking, so he wouldn’t have told them anything. And I’d pulled the sweatshirt off him, so it was at the bottom of the lake.” I clinked my ice around in my glass and took a long drink. “I think he’ll calm down soon and tell me who he is and what happened and where he’s from, and then I can decide what to do. He’s just starting to talk.”

  She stared at me a moment longer. North Country people are known for their reticence and staying out of other people’s business, but even Baker couldn’t let this go. When she spoke, her voice was mild.

  “Troy, you can’t just keep a child. He has parents somewhere, parents who are bound to be looking for him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they’re the ones who threw him in the lake.” My voice almost cracked. “And I don’t want him being sent back to them.”

  She watched as I drank more tea, and then I spoke again. “When he tells me what happened, then I’ll know what to do.”

  For a moment I thought she was going to pull maternal rank and say, “Are you out of your mind?” But I could see her working it out, considering the possibilities and the risks: parents who don’t get their kid back immediately versus child may be sent back to people who tried to kill him. At last she nodded. Paul’s safety was most important.

  And I think we both knew that a kid who had simply been scooped up and dumped overboard would have been screaming for his mom and dad. And this kid wasn’t.

  “So is he Canadian?” she asked.

  “Probably—but he hasn’t spoken enough for me to tell.” To me Canadian French sounds more slurred, but probably that’s the street version. Québécois say theirs is the purer form of French, because after the Revolution everyone in France switched to a more common form of the language. Which makes sense, considering that all the aristocrats had been beheaded.

  The back door opened and the herd came thundering in. They were thirsty, they announced, and needed Kool-Aid. Paul separated himself from the group and came to my side. I felt his forehead, damp with sweat. Baker calmly handed out Kool-Aid, and Paul drank deeply, leaving a purple stain around his lips. She set out a stack of cut-up sandwiches and carrot sticks and dumped potato chips into a bowl, and the kids fell on the food. Paul looked at me for permission, and stood next to me as he ate, slowly and with great precision. I put some potato chips on a napkin for him, and he ate them delicately.

  “I think I’d better get this guy home. He may need an n-a-p.” I was suddenly worried I’d let him overexert himself.

  “Kids are tough,” Baker said, reading my mind. “Listen, be careful, and keep me posted. And if you need me, just shout.”

  “Okay.” I stood, picking up the bag with my clothes and some extras Baker was lending us. “Paul, say goodbye and thank you. Dis ‘goodbye and thank you.’ ”

  “Goodbye t’ank you,” he said, to my surprise. He glanced longingly at the plate of sandwiches, and when I nodded he took two more pieces, one for each hand.

  Baker had reminded me that small children aren’t supposed to ride in the front seat, so I buckled Paul into the back, doing my best to explain why. It felt odd to have him back there, as if I were a chauffeur, and I didn’t like not being able to see him beside me. We drove through town, and just after we turned right onto 86, heading toward Placid, a rattly, rusty station wagon passed, going the opposite direction. What a piece of junk, I thought idly. I noticed its out-of-state plates, and wondered if someone had driven down from Québec just to take that ferry, just to dump a child. If Paul had been living in Vermont, surely he’d be able to speak English.

  I looked in the rearview mirror at Paul, his head slumped against the side of the car. He had fallen asleep as soon as we were out of town. Suddenly I had a new worry. He’d had a long dunking, swallowed God knows how much lake water, and walked in wet clothes after an exhausting swim. I hadn’t the vaguest idea how that could affect a child who seemed none too robust to begin with. Water in the lungs? A bacterial infection from the lake water?

  I glanced at the clock. My friend Kate is an ER nurse, and soon would be heading to her shift at the Saranac Lake Hospital. I gave her a call. No answer, but I left a message asking if she could stop by. We had scarcely gotten into the house when I heard her lilting tones in the front hallway. “Anybody home?”

  Why I end up with friends who look like models, I don’t know. Kate is tall and slender, with flowing auburn hair and
a wholesome wide-eyed look that tends to drive men nuts. She’s had more than one stalker, which can be awkward in a small town where everyone knows both stalker and stalkee. Last summer a tuba player from Albuquerque who was here to play in the summer symphony had fallen madly in love with her from across the room. It was quite a nuisance and rather annoying to me, who has yet to be fallen in love with from across the room.

  Kate’s also a by-the-book kind of girl who follows regulations, dots every i, and crosses every t. She would have no doubt that a stray boy should be reported to the authorities, and although I might be able to dissuade her, she wouldn’t be happy about it.

  So I told her Paul was the son of a Canadian friend and had taken an unexpected fall into the lake. I let her think it was a fall from a canoe into Mirror Lake, two blocks away, and that I would rather avoid the expense of dragging him to an emergency room that wouldn’t honor a Canadian health insurance card. Although I never said any of that, just hinted at it.

  She believed it all, so readily that I felt guilty. But while she may be a trifle gullible, Kate is a competent and caring nurse. She put Paul at ease, while peppering me with questions: How long had he been in the water? What had I done for him? Had he been eating and sleeping?

  She popped an old-fashioned thermometer into his mouth, thumbed his eyelids back to look at his pupils, peered into his ears, and pulled up his shirt to listen to his heartbeat.

  “He seems fine,” she announced. “He’s probably tired. And maybe he hasn’t been eating enough; he’s a little thin.”

  Paul, who had sat quietly during the examination, looked at me. “She says you need to eat more,” I said, deadpan. “Il faut que tu manges beaucoup de bonbons et de gâteau.”

  He looked confused for a moment and then let loose a short high trill of laughter. A wave of happiness bubbled up in me, so intense it startled me.

  As I showed Kate out, I remembered what Baker had murmured as I’d left: “Don’t get too attached to this kid, Troy.” She thinks my boarding house scenario results from sublimated maternal urges, that I love acting as house mom to a brood of roommates, although they’re only a few years younger than me. I tell her, tongue-in-cheek, that I just enjoy having so many hunky guys around. But it’s true that I’m the only one of my sisters unwed and childless, and true, I thought, that I had fallen hard for this kid.

  I looked over at the boy, perched on the bottom of the staircase, watching me with those long-lashed dark eyes that had seen things no child should ever see—like maybe the face of the person who had toppled him into the lake. I felt a surge of a fierce emotion I couldn’t put a name to.

  “Well, let’s get started on the medical treatment,” I said. “Aimes-tu la glace? You like ice cream?”

  His eyes lit up. “Let’s go,” I said, opening the front door. “They’ve got your name on an ice cream cone up at Stewart’s.”

  THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO HAVING a Stewart’s only 144 steps from your front door. It’s handy to dash up for milk or eggs, but too easy to indulge in ice cream, especially when it’s on sale.

  After careful deliberation, Paul pointed at the container of strawberry, and I took my usual, chocolate peanut butter cup. He licked his cone tidily, while Tiger looked at us imploringly. But even I draw the line at sharing ice cream with a dog, although I’m pretty sure one of my friends buys Tiger her own cone when I’m not around.

  “It’s good, yes?” I said to Paul. “C’est bon, la glace?” He nodded, his tongue chasing melting droplets. In the afternoon sun outside Stewart’s with our cones, it seemed a perfectly normal day with a small boy who just happened to be visiting me.

  But if I was going to feed him ice cream, I thought, I should get him a toothbrush.

  “Tu veux venir au magasin avec moi?” I asked, gesturing up the street. He nodded again, and we walked the few blocks up to the drugstore on Main Street. Tiger waited outside patiently, earning ooohs and ahhhs from tourists who apparently don’t have dogs where they live. At least not fancy shepherd-retriever mixes.

  I bought a toothbrush and a comb for Paul, and then we walked on to Bookstore Plus. There we poked around before selecting a copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon and a pack of Uno cards, which would work even if you didn’t know any English. On the way back to the house I nodded at people I knew. Suddenly the small grip on my hand tightened, and I looked down. Paul’s face had turned white. Belatedly I realized that the group of people we’d just passed was chattering in French—so many tourists from Montreal come here that I hadn’t noticed.

  I whisked Paul into a little alcove in front of a collection of tiny stores, Lake Placid’s version of a mall. I knelt and pulled him toward me. “Paul, est-ce que tu connais ces personnes?” I asked.

  He was trembling, but shook his head. No, he didn’t know those people.

  “What’s wrong? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Qu’est-ce c’est le problème?” I asked.

  He mumbled something I couldn’t make out. I looked at the people walking away from us. Everything about them spelled tourist: clothes, gait, how they were talking and laughing.

  I looked down at Paul. Instinct said to get him back to the house. I held his hand firmly as we marched past the post office, high school, town hall, through the kitchen and up my stairs. Paul climbed up on the sofa and curled in a tiny knot in the corner. I sat across from him in my captain’s chair.

  “Paul,” I said, “c’est important que tu me dises si tu connais ces personnes.” You must tell me if you know those people.

  He looked up and shook his head again, eyes glistening. “Non, non, je ne les connais pas, pas du tout.”

  He didn’t know them. Okay. Maybe he’d just recognized the Québec French. “Est-ce que tu habites au Québec?”

  Silence. A tiny shrug that could mean yes, could mean no. And then he burst into tears. I took him in my arms and held him as he cried.

  “Paul,” I whispered, “Paul, où sont tes parents?”

  He burrowed deeper into me. After a long pause, he answered.

  “Ma mère est décédée,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Et mon père veux rien savoir de moi.”

  His mother was dead, and his father did not want him. In the next instant he was crying, deep wrenching sobs I didn’t know could come from someone so small. I didn’t ask if it had been his father on the ferry with him. I didn’t want to know, at least not yet.

  In a moment he lifted his tear-streaked face and began to babble, torrents of French so fast and slurred I could pick out only a few words. I was crying myself by that time, and held him and rocked him. Some tiny presence of mind led me to reach across to my desk and flick on the little tape recorder I use for interviews.

  As he calmed, he began to speak more slowly. Gradually the story came out. He had lived in Montreal with his maman and papa, he said, until one day some men had taken him and his maman.

  When, he wasn’t sure, because it had gotten fuzzy in his mind. It was before Christmas, because he had been promised a new vélo, a red one, and had never gotten it. He’d woken up in a big car, no, a van, and had been sick, and when he’d awakened again he was in a small room with no windows. He’d heard men in the next room and heard the voice of his maman and a bang, like the gunfire he’d heard on television sometimes. Then the men had told him his mother was dead, and if he didn’t do as they said, they’d kill him, too, and he had cried and cried.

  Sometimes he’d sleep very hard, and when he woke up he’d be sick again. Once he woke up in a different room, a smaller one. He had a soft ball and some comic books, and one of the men gave him a bag of little plastic toy figures. If he was quiet and lay near the door, he could hear the television, usually in English but sometimes French. They’d leave food in his room, boxes of cereal or doughnuts, cracker packets and apples, and at night one of those meals on a plastic plate from the freezer or sometimes a box of McDonald’s food with a toy. Most nights he’d get a little carton of milk. If he cried or tried to
get out of the room, they would smack him. He had started to dig a hole in the wall beside his bed with one of the little plastic figurines, hiding the hole with his pillow.

  Then he had slept hard and remembered being very sleepy, under a blanket, and then being picked up, something wrapped tightly around him, and then falling, falling, falling, unable to move his arms.

  “Et puis vous êtes revenue pour moi,” he said, his face brightening. My eyes filled with tears and my chest tightened until it hurt. Yes, I had come for him, and pulled him from the water, and saved him. I hugged him, probably too tightly.

  Could he write his name? I asked. Of course, he nodded proudly, of course he could. He was, after all, six years old. I handed him a pad of paper and a pencil and he laboriously wrote, Paul Dumond.

  “Et ton papa et ta maman?” I held my breath.

  He thought a moment, and then wrote Philipe and, after a few tries, Madline.

  Philippe and Madeline Dumond. Montreal.

  So I had names, and a place.

  I THINK I’D EXPECTED PAUL’S STORY TO TRICKLE OUT IN BITS and pieces, gradually revealing a bit more of the puzzle until it became a neat tidy package and I could calmly decide what to do. I suppose I had hoped he was simply a child no one wanted.

  In my wildest imagination I wouldn’t have come up with anything like this.

  I was itching to start researching, but Paul needed to be calmed. So I moved to the computer and slid in a simple two-player game I’d found in the five-dollar bin at Staples, one with funny little characters that scurry down halls and up and down stairs, grabbing prizes and avoiding traps. Paul snuffled and blew his nose with the tissue I handed him, then climbed onto my lap. He began to tap at the keys, and we chased down bad guys as if our lives depended on it. After his tears dried I got out a coloring book and crayons, plus markers and old computer paper, the kind with the punched-out sides made for a tractor feed.