Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

“I owe it to this fellow.” She patted the bicep. “Billy, this is my granddaughter, Katie.”

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” Billy said, grinning.

  I tucked the vase in my armpit so I could shake his hand.

  “Nice to—I’m sorry, I thought—I thought that . . .”

  “Katie, we were stretching,” Nan said flatly. She jumped up from the floor with a surprising amount of vigor, took the vase from me, returning it to its place, and gave me a bear hug.

  “It was like a piece of me was missing,” she said, kissing my cheek. She picked a dried strawflower from my hair and pointed to my leg. “Let’s get that cleaned up before you make a mess of everything.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you, Billy!” Nan said. “Same Bat-time?”

  “Same Bat-channel,” Billy said, smiling as he let himself out.

  Nan led me to the bathroom. I sat on the lid of the toilet and she cleaned my leg with a cotton ball soaked in witch hazel, blowing on it to dull the sting.

  Now that I knew she was okay, my heartbeat steadied, and my eyes filled with tears. Every bad thing that could have happened cycled through my brain in vivid detail. Billy the Intruder, with a sneer on his lips, gun in hand. Nan crying in a heap on the floor, her face battered and bruised. Worse. It could have been worse than that. Even though I knew there had never been any danger, I couldn’t stop the movie in my head.

  “Still such a baby,” Nan said, smiling. “You always cried over cuts and scrapes.”

  I tried to focus on Nan’s not-broken nose, her bruise-free cheeks. “I thought he was hurting you,” I said, stifling a sob.

  “I know, sweetie.” Nan brushed hair from my face and kissed my forehead, saying the words she’d said to me a million times when I was a child: “It’s not always the worst-case scenario.”

  It could be, was my constant reply, but now I kept it to myself. I didn’t want her to know that I wasn’t any better. That maybe I was worse.

  Nan returned the witch hazel back to the medicine cabinet and threw the band-aid papers in the trash. Her arms were strong and sinewy. No signs of bursitis.

  “Did you have a good drive?” she asked.

  “Crap! My car is running! I have to get Bark!”

  Nan followed me outside.

  As we approached the car, I couldn’t see Bark through the window. “Maybe I should do this myself?”

  “Well, let me help you with your bags, at least,” Nan said.

  “We can get them later,” I whispered, hoping Nan would bring her volume down.

  “Nonsense. I’ll help you now.”

  “With Bark, things need to be a certain way.”

  “He’s a dog. You tell him how things are. He’ll deal with it.” Nan reached for the door handle. Bark sprung from his hiding place, growling and gnashing his teeth.

  “Holy crow!” Nan said, stepping back. “Pop the trunk, I’ll grab your suitcase.” She tried to act like she wasn’t rattled, but as I climbed in the car to calm Bark, I saw her press her hand to her heart and take a deep breath.

  Bark wouldn’t ever bite her. At least I didn’t think he would. He wasn’t mean, just scared. I scratched his chest until he settled to a grumbling growl. Then I climbed into the driver’s seat to grab the butter knife from the door pocket.

  My ancient Honda Civic had served me nobly for a hundred and seventy thousand miles, but these days, it needed sweet-talking.

  “Right back, Barky. Promise.” I hit the trunk release and ran around to jimmy the latch with the knife. Nan watched silently. In the trunk there were two laundry baskets of clothes and an array of odds and ends shoved in plastic grocery bags from Wegmans.

  “Eric got the suitcases,” I said, slipping the butter knife into my back pocket.

  “Goodness,” Nan said. “When will the rest of your stuff get here?”

  “You’re looking at it.” I could have taken more from the house when I left. I should have. But Eric hovered as I packed, ready to argue over what was his and what was mine. The resolve I’d mustered to get through our divorce proceedings was crumbling, and I needed out before I broke in front of him. He couldn’t argue over my ratty old sweaters, or the endless collection of t-shirts from shows at the Rochester Regional Theatre, where I’d been assistant costume designer. He had no claim on the small stack of my father’s books, or the lap quilt Nan’s friend Bunny made me when I left for college. Almost everything else felt like set dressing for a life that didn’t belong to me.

  I knew it was rash to leave so much. Stupid. Heartbreaking, when I realized my sewing machine was in the mix of what I left behind. Bark and I were already in Pennsylvania when that loss dawned on me. Too late to turn around.

  Nan stared, mouth slack.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said, wiping sweat from my upper lip. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you at least getting a nice fat alimony check?” Nan asked, reaching for one of my green plastic laundry baskets.

  “It’s not like that.”

  Nan rested the basket on the bumper. The plastic was cracked at the handle. “Kaitlyn, what the hell? Eric was the one cheating, but he gets the house? His fancy car? Everything?”

  “Allegedly cheating. He never admitted to it. I never caught him in any act,” I said. And it was true. I hadn’t seen anything other than circumstantial evidence. I found the infamous hair clip in the cushions of our couch. He came home smelling like perfume I didn’t wear. It was cliché. Embarrassing. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  The car sputtered and stalled.

  “I’m out of gas,” I said. “Can you go inside so I can get Bark out of the car before it gets hot? I’ll grab the rest later.”

  “Kaitlyn.” Nan lifted the laundry basket again. It wasn’t even full. “How did Eric get everything? What did you get?”

  “Bark,” I said, blinking to keep tears at bay.

  Nan nodded solemnly and carried the basket to the house, but I knew she’d insist on having a talk about it later.

  I climbed in the car with Bark.

  “Okay, baby,” I whispered. “I need you to do something for me.”

  He licked my chin.

  “We’re going to leave the car now.”

  I wrapped his ThunderShirt around his belly to help him feel safe, and reached, slowly, to the front seat to grab his leash, letting him smell it before clipping it to his collar. When I opened the door and got out of the car, Bark inched to the edge of the seat, legs shaking, fighting to be brave.

  “Come on, Barky,” I said, crouching. “You can do this!” I wished I had someone coaxing me into the world the way I did for Bark. Sometimes, I wished I had a ThunderShirt.

  Bark stepped out of the car, and we made the trek to the house, a few steps at a time, so he could sniff things and gather courage. When we got inside, Nan walked into the foyer a little too fast and said, “What is he wearing?” a little too loud.

  Bark flashed me a pained look and darted away, yanking his leash from my hand. He ran down the hallway, feet skittering on the tile like a cartoon dog.

  “It’s a compression garment!” I called, running after Bark.

  Nan followed. I wished she wouldn’t, but she was kind enough to take us in. I couldn’t tell her what to do.

  Bark ran to my old room and hid under the bed, his feathery tail and fluffy butt sticking out from under the ruffled bed skirt. Maybe it still smelled like me on that microscopic level only dogs can detect.

  When Nan drove me to college freshman year, she promised my room would be waiting for me whenever I needed to come home. She said the same thing when Eric and I got married, which was possibly a heavy-handed hint, but I was five years younger and thought she was merely trying extra hard to say parental things because no one else would.

  She’d made good on her promise. All my childhood belongings were right where I’d left them: unicorn bookends on the old pine desk, petal pink comforter smoothed across the whitewashed wicker bed, a Li
sa Frank poster of a panda wearing overalls tacked to the wall above the headboard.

  “Compression garment?” Nan said. “Does he think he’s fat?”

  “He’s not fat,” I said. “It puts pressure on certain points to make him feel secure.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Nan raised an eyebrow, trying and failing to hide her amusement. “He’s beautiful, Kay. At least the bit of him I can see.”

  “He’s a good boy. He’s just had a rough time of it.” I knelt on the floor and stuck my head under the bed skirt. Bark pressed his nose to my nose. His caramel-colored eye looked sad and soulful. The blue one looked scared. I scratched behind his ear. “You’ll be fine,” I said, breathing his warm doggy breath, feeling the clench in my chest let go.

  “This is a sight,” Nan said, laughing. “Two butts. Where’s the camera? It’s a Christmas card picture!”

  “No pictures, please.” I wriggled out from under the bed and dialed the purple clock radio to NPR. “He’ll be okay. We should let him get acclimated.”

  “And how about you?” Nan asked, putting her arm around me while we walked to the kitchen. “How can we get you acclimated? A stroll to stretch your legs? A shower? I made cookies.” She pulled the head off the blue pelican cookie jar we painted together when I was nine, offering me his hollow belly filled with her famous double chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

  They were still warm. I grabbed two. I hadn’t eaten much more than potato chips and peanut M&M’s since Bark and I left Rochester. Bark was afraid of drive-thru windows and I didn’t want to leave him in the car a second longer than necessary.

  I shoved a cookie in my mouth. It had the texture of shredded cardboard, and something tasted off, like maybe the butter had spoiled. I avoided chewing while I inspected the other one. It looked normal: chocolaty brown, flecked with macadamia nuts.

  “What is this?” I asked, with my mouth full, trying to decide if I should spit it out.

  “Double carob macadamia nut,” Nan said. “I used soy flour instead of wheat, and applesauce instead of butter. High protein, low fat, and you can barely taste the difference!”

  My saliva was turning the cookie to paste. I gagged.

  “Are you alright, Kay?”

  “Milk?” I said. “Please.”

  Nan poured me a glass. I took a gulp to wash the cookie down. It tasted like pureed grass clippings.

  “It’s hemp milk,” Nan said.

  “Sure is.” I tried to smile.

  “Well, you enjoy. I need to shower.” She did a move that was half jog, half cha-cha as she made her way across the kitchen. “Billy and I really worked it today.”

  As soon as I heard the shower running, I threw the extra cookie down the garbage disposal, dumped the hemp milk, and tipped my head under the faucet to wash the remnants of horror from my mouth.

  The fridge was no better. The old white Pyrex container that was always a reliable source of lasagna or mashed potatoes held grilled tofu and steamed asparagus. Even the blue roosters on the front looked disappointed. There was no Cool Whip, no peppermint patties hidden in the door rack, no rocky road ice cream in the freezer. I wanted fried chicken and real cookies and a squishy hug from Nan. I wanted things to be the way they’d always been, so I could forget I’d ever left. I settled on a tiny tub of chocolate soy yogurt and sat on the kitchen floor to mourn my failed marriage and the death of comfort food.

  Staring at Nan’s fridge magnets, I spooned yogurt into my mouth. It wasn’t good, but at least it was chocolate.

  One of the magnets had a picture of Betty Boop in pink leg warmers saying, “Nothing tastes as good as fit feels!”

  “You lie,” I yelled, pointing my spoon at her. “Lasagna is better.” Betty stared back at me with fishbowl eyes. I chased the yogurt with half a dozen martini olives and hoped their presence in the fridge meant Nan hadn’t nixed real drinks in favor of wheat grass shooters.

  “Helloooo,” a squeaky soprano voice called from the foyer. It was Ruth, Nan’s next-door neighbor.

  There hadn’t been a knock. No ring of the doorbell. There never was. “Anybody hooooome?” Ruth called.

  I raced toward my room.

  “Helloooo,” Nan sang back, rushing down the hallway to dump her soggy towel in the laundry room. “Make yourself comfortable. Be right theeerrre.” Her hair was still wet, dripping on the collar of her neon pink t-shirt, but she’d applied a fresh coat of Persian Melon lipstick and given her cheeks a good pinch.

  “What did you do?” I whispered.

  “Everyone wants to see you,” she said, winking.

  “I just got here!”

  “That’s how welcome home parties work, Kay.”

  “I’m not even settled,” I hissed, panic tightening my throat. I loved Nan’s friends. It was like having an enclave of grandparents in the most wonderful way, but also in the awkward-personal-question, not-so-gentle-nagging kinds of ways. No one in their right mind wants to walk into a room full of Grammys and Pop Pops heavy with the news that since the last visit she’s struggled with infertility, gotten divorced, moved back home, and isn’t game for being set up with that nice young doctor they see for their trick knee.

  “Settle!” Nan said, giving me a gentle shove toward my room. “We’re not stopping you. Everyone will be here for hours.”

  I tried to keep the groan inside my head, but I think Nan heard it anyway, and when I marched down the hall, it felt like teenager déjà vu.

  * * *

  Bark was curled up on the bed next to my old teddy bear. He raised his eyebrows when I walked in the room, guilty.

  “It’s alright, buddy. You can have Mr. Waffles.” I sat on the bed and picked up the bear. It was already soaking wet.

  Bark licked things when he got nervous. It drove Eric crazy. Admittedly, it was gross to sit on a cold damp spot on the couch or step on a patch of rug Bark had carefully groomed, but I understood the impulse. I’d been a thumbsucker and a nailbiter as a kid. When anyone shamed me about my self-soothing behaviors, it made me need them more, so I didn’t see the point in scolding Bark.

  I moved the bear to the foot of the bed, away from my pillows.

  Bark gave me a longing look.

  “You can have it,” I said. “Just down here, okay?”

  Bark inched toward the end of the bed, but I was sure soggy Mr. Waffles would be back on my pillow as soon as I looked away.

  I flopped next to him and stared at the smiley face sticker Nan stuck to the ceiling to cheer me up on my first day in this room.

  Two years after my dad died, when my mom was bored of being my mom and wanted to move both of us to Costa Rica to live with a man she met on a wine tasting tour, Nan flew up from Florida to make an issue of it. “You can do whatever you want with yourself, but you’ll have to fight me for the kid,” she said, making tight fists with her hands. I wasn’t sure if she was proposing a legal battle or a brawl. I don’t know about court, but Nan would have beaten my mom to a pulp if they took it to the backyard.

  In the end they let me choose. I was terrified picking Nan would crush my mother, but I only knew the Spanish I’d learned from Sesame Street, and I felt better around Nan. My mother made me nervous before my dad died. After, it was worse. She either paid me too much attention, or looked past me, like I didn’t exist. I never knew what to steel myself for. Nan was the same all the time, and she always tried to be nice, even when she didn’t understand me.

  So I moved to Florida, to the bright little bedroom Nan decorated with flowers and ruffles. I drank Shirley Temples while Nan and her neighbors had “martoonis.” I learned to play canasta, macramé plant hangers from nylon rope, and identify popular songs in Muzak form.

  I shouldn’t have worried about my mother. She seemed relieved to walk away from the constant reminder she’d picked the almost expired fruit at the market. She’d tell me I had my father’s eyes, and it was an accusation, not a compliment. After Nan took on the burden of me, my mother was finally free to be with the musta
chioed wine tour man, and then to follow her next great love to an ecovillage in Nicaragua, then move to Morocco with some guy she met at a beach volleyball tournament. At first, she called every Sunday. All she wanted to hear was that I was happy, healthy, and doing well in school. I tried to be the girl she wanted me to be, but then Nan would get on the phone, spilling beans about the bronchitis I couldn’t shake, or my problems with long division. She’d beg my mom to plan visits that never happened. Eventually, the phone calls stopped coming, letters turned to postcards, and then the postcards stopped too. For the most part, it was easier. One less person I had to pretend for.

  To be fair, it must have been really hard to lose your husband at the ripe old age of thirty-one, left with a nine-year-old kid to raise by yourself, without the luxury of being able to blame some trashy friend in a courtroom hallway for the whole mess.

  * * *

  I lay on the bed next to Bark while he sucked on Mr. Waffles’s ear. Someone fired up the stereo in the living room and the shouts of helloooo grew louder as more neighbors arrived. Bark hadn’t peed since we’d trekked into the woods behind a gas station in Midway, Georgia, to find him adequate privacy. I knew if I didn’t take him out immediately, there wouldn’t be another chance until well after midnight.

  My room had a sliding glass door to the screened-in patio. I peeked from behind the curtain to make sure no one was there. The sun had set, and the pool lights were on, casting creepy webs of light across the water. The plan was to go from my room to the nearby screen door and out into the darkness of the backyard before anyone saw us. But as soon as we got to the patio, I smelled cigar smoke and knew Nan’s friend Lester Sam was already wandering around the yard, like he always did at her parties. There was no way Bark would do his business with an audience.

  The patio had another screen door, leading to a small patch of grass on the other side, but we’d have to go past the pool to get there. I grabbed Bark’s collar and tried to walk toward the other door, but looking at the water gave me the same kind of wobbly-kneed feeling I got at the top of a Ferris wheel. I started thinking about Bark falling in. Bark sinking below the surface. Tendrils of dappled fur at the bottom of the pool, waving like seagrass. I wanted to hug the ground to make sure it wasn’t moving, like it could tilt at any moment and send us careening into the water. I told myself if I took one step, the next would be easier, but I couldn’t move my legs at all. My toes felt numb, like the blood in my veins had stopped flowing and my nerves were no longer connected to my brain.