Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  “Here,” I said. “Let me see.” I flipped through Lorna’s pictures until I saw a family photo, with a dozen people in matching white shirts and blue jeans. An elegant woman with fluffy ivory hair sat in a chair in front, Lorna’s hands on her shoulders.

  I pinched and spread my fingers across the screen to zoom in. “Is that . . . Woo Woo?” I asked, still awkward with the nickname.

  “That is her, isn’t it?” Nan took the phone from me, tipping the screen from side to side like it might give her a better view.

  “I’ll go dig up my old computer—”

  “Oh, this is silly. She has her own life. And it’s late anyway! Past our bedtime.” She waved the idea away with her hand, but I could see the wanting in her eyes.

  * * *

  Before we went to bed, I ran to the car to get the rest of my things.

  “You know,” Nan said, following me to help, even though I told her I didn’t need it, “liquor stores will usually give you boxes if you ask.” She grabbed several plastic Wegmans bags with each hand.

  “Bark is afraid of cardboard,” I told her as we walked back to the house. I slid all my bags to my left arm so I could lock the front door behind us. They weren’t heavy.

  “Bark is lucky to have you.” Nan handed me her bags when we got to my bedroom door. “I can’t say many other people would be so patient.”

  “I’m lucky to have Bark.”

  Nan put her arm around my shoulder and hugged me close, kissing my forehead. “Goodnight, sweetheart. I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Me too,” I said. “It was like a piece of me was missing.”

  “Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite grandkid?” Nan grinned. My dad was her only child, and I was his. A stale joke, but one of her favorites, and there was comfort in the familiarity.

  The powdery scent of her perfume stayed with me as she shuffled down the hall to her room.

  I shoved the bags in my closet and climbed into bed. Bark snuck under the covers, resting his head on my pillow. He sighed in my ear.

  When I was four or five, my dad took me to the Catskill Game Farm and I got to feed a goat pellets from a gumball machine. His warm breath and the whiskers on his chin tickled my hand. I felt it in my head, the same wonderful tingle across my scalp that I got when someone drew me a picture or braided my hair—a buzz of closeness and attention. I remember seeing a video my dad took that day. I was squealing with joy. “He’s eating the food! He’s eating the food, Dad!” The camera got closer and then shook when my dad dropped more pellets into my chubby palm, again and again, the smell of alfalfa sweeter each time as they warmed in his hand. I could hear him laugh, breath crackling against the camera’s microphone. “He’s eating the food, Dad!” And we were both so happy.

  Sometimes, I’d watch Bark do normal dog things and think, He’s playing with the toy! He’s drinking the water! He’s eating the food! It was the same magic, if I let myself slow down enough to notice it.

  Bark yawned and stretched, then he tucked his nose under my chin, and I felt the tightness at my temples dissolve.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At five thirty a.m., Bark jumped out of bed growling. Someone was knocking at the front door.

  “It’s fine. It’s fine, Barky,” I whispered, trying to calm myself too. Bark on the defense didn’t make for a pleasant wake-up call. I told myself it was just a neighbor and that Nan would get the door, but then the knocking turned to pounding, and the urgency of it sent my thoughts racing through a roll call of everyone we knew, and every emergency they could have.

  Bark followed as I stumbled to the foyer. When I looked out the window, there was Bitsie, standing on the front step, in a pink chenille bathrobe and yellow duck slippers, a full pot of coffee in hand. Smiling. Perfectly fine.

  “Well, aren’t you lovely,” she said as I let her in.

  Bark skittered back to my room. I could hear Nan’s shower running.

  “I just woke up.”

  “You don’t say.” Bitsie grinned. “Why’s the door locked?”

  “That’s what this latch is for.” I turned the deadbolt. “You’re supposed to use it.” Nan never locked the door, and it drove me crazy.

  “You know, for a young kid, you really are an old fuddy-duddy.” Bitsie kissed my cheek and padded to the kitchen.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked, following.

  “Walked,” Bitsie said. “Like always.”

  “Like that?” Bunny wouldn’t have let her leave the house in a robe.

  “Nothing they haven’t seen before.” Bitsie got three mugs from the cabinet and set them on the counter, pouring coffee in two.

  “We have coffee,” I said, pointing to the percolator. Nan always had the pot going by five.

  “Kiddo, that swill your grandmother makes is not coffee.” Bitsie handed me a mug. “Shade-grown Costa Rican.”

  I took a sip. She wasn’t wrong. Her coffee was always better than Nan’s.

  “Isn’t everyone supposed to be at your house?” I asked, worried the other ladies were on their way. The neighborhood migrated around food. Breakfast was usually at Bitsie’s. Marta could get a nice lunch spread going. Ruth made borscht on Sundays. Althea did Taco Night. Nan was the one everyone went to for drinks and finger food.

  “Trying to get rid of me?” Bitsie said with a wry smile.

  “Just wondering what I’m in for.”

  Bitsie laughed. “Only me. We have mermaid class at six thirty.”

  “You I don’t ever mind,” I said, nudging my shoulder against hers. “Even though it’s early.”

  We sat at the counter, sipping in silence. The curtains were still drawn, so we stared at the fabric. I wondered if Bitsie was counting magnolia blossoms too.

  Finally, she said, “Nan’s making me co-chair the community center fundraiser.”

  “Ah.” I tapped her slipper with my foot. “She can force you to meet with her, but she can’t make you put on real shoes.”

  “See. You get me.” She sighed. “I’m tired of bake sales. Bunny did that stuff, not me.”

  We heard the whine of the pipes as Nan shut off the shower.

  Bitsie dropped her voice to a murmur. “No one is going to want whatever kale-carrot-seaweed thing she decides to call a muffin.”

  I could tell by the sadness in her eyes, her real worry was that Nan would make her fill in for what was missing. It was a reasonable fear.

  She chugged her coffee, poured more. “I’m being such a bitch.”

  I squeezed her arm. “You’re just blowing off steam. I know how much you love her.”

  “I like you being an adult,” Bitsie said, refilling my mug like I’d earned more coffee. “You’re doing it well.”

  “Twenty-seven, divorced, living with my grandmother. I think that’s failing.”

  “You’re figuring it out. That’s the success. To know there’s something to figure.”

  “I feel defeated.” It was easy to talk to Bitsie. Maybe because she was blunt with me. Maybe because I used to tell Bunny everything.

  “I felt that way after my divorce,” Bitsie said. “You pictured your life one way. Now it’s going somewhere else. You have to recalibrate.”

  “How?” It wasn’t like I had a baseline of normal to get back to. My life had always felt like it was being pulled along by bent bicycle gears turning out of sync with their chain.

  “I went to nursing school,” Bitsie said.

  I laughed. “I don’t think I’d be good at nursing.”

  Bitsie laughed too. “I don’t think you would either. What I mean is, I found my purpose. You’ll find yours. You knew enough to get out. Celebrate that.”

  I thought about the hair clip in the couch; black plastic pocked with hair-spray residue. “I’m not sure I ever would have left him. If he hadn’t—” My face flushed. I didn’t know how much Nan had told her. “He cheated.”

  “So, he did you a favor,” Bitsie said, getting up, the heads of her duck slipp
ers bobbing as she walked to the cabinet.

  “I don’t want to pretend he did something altruistic,” I blurted out, remembering the crinkle of butcher paper beneath me as I sat on the exam table in my gynecologist’s office and had to ask for STI testing from the same doctor who’d seen me through both miscarriages. “I don’t want to give him that.”

  Bitsie looked over her shoulder, light in her eyes. “Good. Don’t.” She grabbed two glasses and walked her ducks to the fridge for water.

  “All that time I could have been figuring out what to do with myself.”

  She handed me a glass of water and sat down. “I know you feel like you already made the big choices, but you’re just starting, kiddo. What do you want?”

  I figured it was a rhetorical question, and I smiled politely, but she asked again, “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know.” I searched my mind for things normal people are supposed to want, but all I could come up with was one of those blenders that can even blend a cell phone.

  “Horseshit,” Bitsie said. “You know.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m old, but I’m not Obi-Wan. It’s your own damn job to figure it out.”

  “Who’s Obi-Wan?” Nan called from the hallway.

  “No one, Nannette,” Bitsie said. “It’s fine.”

  Nan bustled into the kitchen, wearing a sleeveless denim shirtdress belted at her now-tiny waist. I was shocked all over again by her muscular legs.

  She pointed to Bitsie’s pot. “I made coffee already. You didn’t have to—”

  “Mine’s better.” Bitsie poured Nan a cup.

  “So I was thinking bake sale,” Nan said, grabbing the carton of hemp milk.

  “I know you were thinking bake sale.” Bitsie winked at me. “I was thinking calendar.”

  “Calendar?” Nan shook the carton with vigor and poured some in her coffee.

  “Remember we watched that movie about those British ladies?”

  “Bits! I am not posing nude! Who wants a calendar of this?” Nan pushed at the teeny flap of skin under her arm.

  “Firstly, we’re gorgeous! People should see what real women look like.” Bitsie shook her head like a model, but her short spiky hair didn’t move.

  “What people?” Nan asked.

  “People,” Bitsie said. “Everyone. Secondly, I wasn’t talking about a nudie calendar. I’m thinking mermaids. All of us from class in tails and seashells. It’ll be so much better than muffins.”

  “Muffins are easier.” Nan dumped her pot of coffee into the sink.

  “Oh, what else are we doing with our time?” Bitsie said. “Let’s have some fun!” She shielded her mouth with her hand, loud-whispering to Nan, “I think we know someone who could make costumes.”

  I looked into my coffee cup, unsure of what to say.

  “I don’t know, Bits,” Nan said. “Katie just got back. That’s a lot to ask of her.”

  “We can even shoot underwater!” Bitsie shouted.

  Nan stared at me. My stomach wobbled. I used my thumb to smudge away a coffee stain on the counter. Nan didn’t usually leave me space to say no. I wondered if she thought I’d let everyone down.

  “Material is expensive,” Nan said, sipping her coffee. “We’re raising money, not spending it.”

  “Come on. If the ladies don’t have to bake and they get a mermaid costume out of the deal, they’ll be happy to chip in . . .”

  “A lot of us are on fixed incomes.”

  “. . . plus, this lady gets portfolio pictures. Two birds!” Bitsie said, pitching an imaginary stone at me.

  “I won’t even make you bake,” Nan said, pouring more hemp milk in her coffee. “But it’s just easier.”

  They kept arguing. I lost focus. My mind spun through the ways I could fail, like a film sequence in my head, playing behind what was real. Seams splitting. Silver crepe from Nan’s unraveling tail caught in the pool filter, holding her below the surface. Chlorine and blue tiles. Sunlight hitting her too-still body. I went back to counting the magnolias on the curtains. Twenty-seven on one panel. Twenty-five on the other. It always drove me crazy. I started my count again and included the slivers of flowers cut off at the edges, to see if I could find a false sense of even.

  “What do you think, kid?” Bitsie said, nudging my arm.

  I shook my head, like the motion might make the bad thoughts disappear. Bitsie looked disappointed, so I switched to a nod. “Whatever you want to do,” I said, trying to smile. I chugged the rest of my coffee and stood up. “I have to take Bark out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After Bark did his business, I snuck to the garage. I knew that in all likelihood Nan would talk Bitsie into a bake sale, and they’d forget about the calendar, but the divorce and the packing and the drive had frayed my nerves. I couldn’t stop the swirling thoughts in my head. Sometimes, I could wear out my fight-or-flight feelings by actually fleeing. Even fake escape could dull the itch.

  My old bike hung from a hook in the rafters. I dragged a step stool over and lifted it down. Arms straining, knees shaking. It never used to seem so hard.

  I found the red plastic fuel tank from the lawn mower and strapped it to my bike basket.

  Nan poked her head in the garage. “Breakfast,” she said.

  “I’m going to ride to the gas station.”

  “I can take you after mermaid class.”

  I could tell by the careful, even tone of her voice she didn’t want me to leave.

  “It’s okay,” I said, a little too loudly. I used the corner of my Chorus Line t-shirt to wipe dust off the handlebars so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact. I couldn’t bear the thought of Nan poking at my anxiety, trying to fix it for me.

  Nan remedies usually made things worse. When I was a kid, she sent me to school with an extra lunch bag to breathe into if I started feeling that choking panic in my chest, as if pulling a paper bag out in the middle of class wouldn’t be humiliating. She prescribed a shot of sherry for a cold, and served me strong black coffee for asthma attacks, even though it kept me up all night, grinding my teeth. She told me to toughen up, like it was a helpful mantra. She always meant well, but she expected her remedies to solve everything, and it was hard to disappoint her when I wasn’t magically better. The best way to manage any sort of ailment around Nan was to avoid her until I could act normal again.

  “I could use the bike ride,” I said, as calmly as possible.

  “Alright.” Nan hit the garage door opener like she was releasing me. “Bike safely.”

  My brakes were way too soft to be safe, and the rusty chain slipped off the gears twice before I even got out of the neighborhood. By the time I made it to the QwickStop, I was covered in bicycle grease and sweat. I clamped my arms at my sides, hoping no one would notice the pit stains, and lugged the gas can in with me to prepay. Powerball was up to eighty million, so the line at the register was epic. I grabbed a cup of coffee and waited.

  Every time I started to get nervous about Bark and how long I’d been gone, the line moved up and it seemed silly to abandon my post. Plus, I’d been drinking my coffee. I had to pay for it.

  I was three people from the register when I heard: “Katie? Holy crap!”

  I turned and came face-to-shoulder with Mo, my best friend from grade school. She hugged me, knocking the gas can into my knees and her collarbone into my chin. I didn’t have hands free to hug her back. I tried my best to keep my coffee cup level. She finally pulled away, crinkling her tanned nose. “I’m so sorry I missed your welcome home party! I had to work.” Her hair was past her shoulders now, streaked white by the sun.

  “Yeah, it was a good party!” I said quietly, turning to assert my place in line.

  Of course, she was still around. She’d inherited her grandparents’ house after they died. And, of course, Nan invited her. Nan and Mo were their own mutual admiration society.

  When I moved in with Nan, Maureen Jacobs was the only friend I had who was a
ctually my age. She lived with her grandparents too.

  Wherever Mo’s dad ended up was a big secret, and Nan and I were the only people in the neighborhood who knew that her mom was in jail. Everyone else thought Mo’s mom was doing outreach work overseas, but in reality, she’d been nabbed at a bus station with a brick of cocaine in her purse. Sometimes, Mo’s uncle sent coconut husk key chains and cowrie shell bracelets when he went on fancy vacations, and Mo took them to show-and-tell saying they were from the village where her mom was vaccinating sick babies. I wasn’t going to rat her out. She didn’t tell people I saw my dad die. But what the other kids did know was that we lived with old people, we didn’t have real parents, and we were both kind of weird.

  “It’s nice to see you,” I said, because it really was. Even though I was feeling like I wanted to hide from the world, maybe I didn’t need to hide from Mo. Maybe we could still be weird together. “Did you get taller?”

  “Hysterical!” Mo said, still at top volume. The other people in line stared. Everything about Mo was a little more intense than everyone else’s everything. She was wearing dangerously threadbare cutoffs, and a short-sleeve button-up shirt peppered with tiny blue sailboats. She bought all her clothes at yard sales and consignment shops, and since she was so tall, she mostly wore men’s clothes. We used to joke that her style could be described as “dead guy chic.”

  “So how long are you staying?” she asked.

  “Not sure yet.”

  “Is Eric with you?”

  “No Eric. Just me.” I was surprised she remembered Eric’s name. Mo wasn’t a phone person. She didn’t write letters. I’m not sure she even owned a computer. So when I was gone, I was gone. I stopped being part of her life and vice versa. It wasn’t angry or awkward or mean. It simply was. I kept to myself during my marriage anyway. Even Nan had a hard time getting me on the phone. I think deep down I knew marrying Eric was the wrong choice, and if I talked too long with the people I loved, they’d figure it out.

  “Have you encountered the cookie situation yet?” Mo whispered.

  “What the hell is up with that?” I asked.