Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  “Bottoms up,” Mo said, licking her hand.

  I gave the back of mine a quick lick, trying not to think about the doorknob I’d touched on the way in and all the other people who’d touched it.

  Mo grabbed the shaker on the bar and sprinkled salt on our hands.

  We clinked glasses, licked salt, downed the shots, and stuck lime wedges in our mouths. Mo smiled at me, green rind covering her teeth.

  The sparkle in her eyes reminded me of the grade school cafeteria. “Oh, man! Look!” she’d shout, like something urgent was happening, and then she’d open her mouth to show me chewed sandwich. I was mortified when we got to high school and she was still playing see-food. I wanted the cool girls to invite me to sleepover parties. I was desperate to get some guy named Dave from my algebra class to notice me. And there was Mo, with a mouth full of egg salad. Now I couldn’t remember Dave’s last name, and those girls share one bland, expressionless face in my memory, but Mo was still trying to make me laugh. I smiled wide, showing her my lime.

  The bartender came back with our margaritas. “Nice,” he said, pointing to my mouth. “These are on me. Happy freedom.”

  I spit my rind into a napkin. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you!” Mo said, grinning green, her words muffled.

  The bartender winked at us before turning his attention to a guy at the end of the bar drinking beer from a glass cowboy boot.

  “How old do you think he is?” I asked Mo, gesturing to the bartender. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was older or younger than me.

  Mo spit her lime into her hand. “Oooh. Do you like him?”

  “I’m just curious. I feel like I was stuck in a bomb shelter for the past five years. Everything’s a little off, you know?”

  “I totally know,” Mo said. “When Gran died, I had to keep Pops going. Getting him to appointments. Every med had a different schedule. He was always confused. And the whole time I’m fighting to keep him alive, he’s saying he wishes he’d gone when Gran did. It was so sad and consuming, and when it was over I was like, ‘Wait! What year is it?’ I honestly didn’t know.”

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t come back for—”

  “I get it, Kay. I know death is a loaded thing for you.”

  My cheeks burned, but Mo put her hand on my arm.

  “I didn’t even want to talk to anybody at his funeral. I didn’t want to spend one more second taking care of another person.” She took a huge gulp of margarita. “I got the flowers you sent.”

  Nan must have sent them for me. Pops died three weeks after my first miscarriage. I wasn’t even human then. It was strange to realize during that time, other life was happening. Other sadness. My pain wasn’t special or separate. There was odd comfort in that.

  “Being a grown-up fucking sucks,” Mo said, downing the rest of her margarita. She winced, like it gave her brain freeze.

  “Let’s be kids again,” I said, even though being a kid hadn’t been all that great for either of us.

  Mo tapped her hand on the bar to call the bartender over. “We’re switching to Jäger.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “That’s what kids do, right?” Mo grinned.

  We switched right back to margaritas after that shot. And then Mo had a beer. We talked and laughed and stopped caring that the bartender was cute. Mo told me about her job as a lifeguard, and I felt better about my underachievement, until she told me about the project she was working on for the Port St. Lucie Arts Council.

  “They commissioned five huge metal animals,” she said. “I made an ant that’s about yea high.” She held her hand to shoulder height. “Then there’s a shark, and a jellyfish, a sea turtle. I’m working on a manatee now.”

  “That’s amazing!” I hoped none of my jealousy was leaking out. I was so proud of her.

  “I didn’t do any art until after Pops died,” Mo said, like she knew what I needed to hear. “I had to get to the end of that, and then I could start.”

  She laughed. “Actually, not true. I had to get to the end of that and then wallow for six months before I could even think about taking over Pop’s garage for my own work. Then I cried for a week. Then I started so small. I made a bunch of arachnid paperweights out of Pop’s old nails and bolts. I sold them at the flea market and felt like a hack, and did it anyway.”

  She looked at me. “The wallowing was important. I can see that from here. I needed the time I needed. But when I was in it, I felt awful about myself every single day.”

  “Did Nan tell you to give me a pep talk?”

  “Yeah.” Mo flashed a toothy, sheepish smile.

  “Thank you.”

  “She’s worried about you.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Mo rolled the edges of the soggy label on her beer bottle. “She said you seem kind of jumpy again.”

  “Not again,” I said, staring at the marlin behind the bar so I didn’t have to look at her. The blue stripes across his body were too perfectly spaced for him to be real. “More like still.”

  “Really? I mean, you’ve had times—”

  “When I was better at hiding it.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry, Kay,” Mo said. “I can’t imagine that feels good.”

  “Yeah, not so much.”

  “Pops went on Zoloft after Gran died.”

  “I did that,” I said. “I went off it when we were trying. And then . . . it didn’t help enough. It made everything feel . . . thick.”

  “Maybe Nan has some weird tea that will fix it,” Mo said. “Like wind nettle tincture, or sunburned newt juice.”

  “I don’t think anything is ever going to fix it,” I said, leaning against the bar, resting my forehead in my hand.

  “So,” Mo said, “we’ll live around it.” She got up and grabbed my wrist. “Come on.”

  There was a jukebox in the corner, the kind that looks old-fashioned but isn’t. She dug a couple of quarters from her pocket and picked out songs. It wasn’t a dancing kind of place, but Mo didn’t care.

  Her first song was “Brown Eyed Girl.” Mo sang loud, her voice raspy and off-key. “Come on, Kay!” she shouted, and held her hand out to me. I let her spin me around. When she was satisfied that I would keep dancing, she let go and grabbed the boot beer guy off his stool. “Dance with me!”

  His girlfriend seemed annoyed at being abandoned, so I offered her my hand. She was light on her feet, and I copied her moves, stepping right then left. We swung our hands. And I wasn’t faking it, I was having fun.

  She started singing, and I did too, like it was a love song to myself. Pretty soon, the whole bar was singing the sha las. Mo had her hands in the air and she was spinning and spinning, and to be honest, everything else was spinning too. The bartender cut in, his hand at my waist. He could really dance. I stepped out of my flip-flops so I could keep up. He dipped me, and I laughed so hard.

  “I’m John,” he said when the song was over. But I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t about him. I wasn’t ready for that. But I was ready for me, and my friend, and living around the bad stuff, so I said, “Hey, John, we’ll have another round,” and went to sing “Sweet Caroline” with Mo.

  * * *

  Neither of us were in any condition to drive when John announced last call. Mo ordered a cab. We sat at the bar while we waited.

  “I can drive you to pick up your car tomorrow,” I said.

  Mo waved the offer away. “I’ll take my jog in this direction.”

  “It’s far.”

  “It’s about 10K total.” Mo shrugged. “I’ve done it before. I come here with the kids from work sometimes.”

  John was wiping down the bar. His face went pale. “Please tell me they aren’t actual kids,” he said.

  “No,” Mo said with mock earnestness. “They are all adults and upstanding citizens.”

  I watched out the window for our cab. The sky flashed yellow in the distance. I felt the static in my bloodstream.

  “Oh, man,” J
ohn said. “They can’t come back here.”

  Mo shrugged. “They all have convincing IDs at least.”

  A rumble. Fat drops of rain slapped the window hard, then harder. I wanted to be home with Bark, breathing his doggy breath, huddled together under the blankets.

  “You alright, Kay?” Mo asked, grabbing my arm.

  “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” I forced a smile.

  John and Mo chatted. Mo’s hand stayed on my arm. She meant it to be comforting, but I felt trapped. I didn’t want anyone to touch me. I couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying. Everything was slow, heavy, until the cab lights shone in the window and it was time to go. Mo took my hand and we made a run for it.

  “Southeast Dolphin Road,” Mo told the cabdriver.

  “No,” I said, “your house is on the way to Nan’s. We’ll drop you off first.” I gave the driver Mo’s address. The air was thick with the bleachy smell of ozone. I shut my eyes, nausea growing.

  “Are you alright, Kay?” Mo asked again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, making a tent over the bridge of my nose with my hands, trying to rebreathe the air.

  “You look like you’re going to hurl.”

  “Hey!” the driver yelled, slowing the car. “No puking in my cab!”

  “I’m fine,” I said, eyes tearing. I wanted to be alone so badly.

  “She didn’t even have that much to drink,” Mo said, waving her hand to tell him to speed up again. “She doesn’t like storms.”

  I was surprised Mo knew. I thought I’d always done a good job covering on that count.

  Mo put her arm around me. “A car is the safest place to be in lightning. Rubber tires.”

  I nodded, but it wasn’t the storm I was scared of, it was all the things the sound of thunder churned up in my brain.

  “I can go home with you,” Mo said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve crashed on the pullout in Nan’s spare room.”

  “I’m fine.” I didn’t want Mo to come home with me. There was only so much longer I could hold it together, and I wanted to be far away from everyone when I fell apart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Bark raced down the hall to greet me when I got home, stepping on my flip-flops as I stepped out of them. His ThunderShirt was on upside down. Nan had tried at least.

  The light over the stove was still on. She’d left a plate of awful cookies on the counter. I wouldn’t have wanted good cookies either.

  I pulled the curtains to the patio closed slowly so they wouldn’t squeak, trying not to look outside. But then I did. Hard rain splashed the pool water, flashing silver with every lightning strike. I flexed my hands, trying to get the charged feeling in my fingers to stop. Deep breaths couldn’t slow my heartbeat.

  Bark whined, tail curling between his legs.

  I sat on the floor and leaned over to press my cheek against the cold tile, running my finger along the grout line, trying to cling to the details of my surroundings. Cold floor. Magnolias on the curtains. The hum of the refrigerator. The light over the stove. A stray Cheerio under one of the kitchen stools. I am here. I am here. I’m here. I couldn’t keep my throat from tightening. I couldn’t hold the present in my mind. Cold flesh. Dark water. Wet wood. Formaldehyde. Lightning. Thunder. Lightning. The stinging in my nose. A puddle of tears.

  Bark lay down with a thud, pressing his side to my side, shaking. Another flash of lightning leaked through the space under the curtain, a clap of thunder shook the house. The storm was right over us.

  * * *

  My father loved to swim in the calm moments right before a storm. Eyes bright and reckless, he’d dare me to race him, and we’d try to get in as many laps from shore to dock as we could before the first rumble.

  “You’ll get electrocuted!” my mother would say, scolding him.

  “We’re fine, Jan. Faster than lightning.” He’d wink at me, and it would make her fume. She never stopped us. She was as enchanted by him as I was.

  It was the second time we’d been swimming that spring. We put the dock out the weekend before. Exactly two hundred feet from shore, like always. Beginning of May, and the water was still too cold for the neighbors. We’d had snow on Easter. But that day was balmy and humid. The air felt close, and both of us were itchy in the way only swimming could fix. My father and I craved movement. My mother didn’t understand. She spent summers on the deck reading Agatha Christie in the shade of a floppy black sun hat.

  She’d gone to the grocery store, so she wasn’t there to complain. The weather report said thunderstorms in early evening. The clouds were rolling in.

  “Race ya!” I shouted, and ran across the sand into the water.

  He ran after me. Slower than usual. In my nine-year-old mind I had become superhero fast. I’d grown two inches over winter. The world had different parameters. Maybe I could win.

  I cupped my hands, pulling with my arms, kicking with strength, breathing hard when I tipped my head from side to side, heartbeat loud in my ears. I remember that I was happy. The water churned around us, my father right behind me. We made our own waves.

  A few feet from the dock, I heard his voice. A shout. I thought he was playing. Trying to get me to stop so he could win. I swam even faster and scurried up the ladder to the dock. “I beat you,” I yelled, and looked into the water. He wasn’t swimming. Head back, face bobbing barely at the surface.

  I wanted to shout, but my brain couldn’t remember how to make sound. He cried out. Not words, only noise. Staccato. Horrible. I leapt back in. The surface of the water stung my belly.

  Pulling him to the dock was difficult. They always talk about weightlessness in water, but with my arm hooked in his armpit, all my kicking and paddling barely made a difference. I could feel his limbs moving. Trying to help. He was still with me. Still fighting. I couldn’t have pushed him up on the dock myself, so I know he must have been conscious, but I can’t remember seeing life in his eyes ever again.

  Sometimes, I think about that moment, when his body collapsed on the dock, and the water dripped from us, raining through the wooden slats. I play it over and over in my mind, hoping I’ll remember his expression. A spark of life. Like maybe there’s a hidden answer. Maybe in his last moments he looked at me with so much love and adoration that remembering will bring me peace, the way those discoveries fix everything in movies.

  He didn’t have final words. Whatever he said last happened on the beach. Too common to remember. He was reading the paper when I called out my challenge. I don’t know what he said right before. Sports scores? The punch line to a Peanuts cartoon?

  Entire days, probably months of my life, if I added up the time, have been spent trying to figure out what he said before I shouted, “Race ya!”

  I knew CPR. An EMT came to our school and taught us on limbless dummies. I could barely catch my own breath, but I tried to breathe for my father, choking between puffs. I pushed at his chest as hard as I could, but it barely moved. I threw my whole body against his.

  I expected him to cough up water and come back to life, the way people did on TV. Any minute he would sit up. Any minute. I had to keep going.

  But he didn’t. The thunder rumbled. “We have to swim back,” I told him. Of course, he didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if I had the right spot on his wrist to check his pulse. I checked mine and then tried to find the same place on him, but there was nothing to tell me if I was right or wrong.

  “Come in!” I heard my mother and looked to the shore. She was standing on the beach. “Come in!” she yelled again, swooping her arm, looking at the sky. “Quick!”

  I stared at her. My limbs heavy. Mouth dry.

  She kept screaming. I stared. She screamed louder.

  I finally found the air to shout, “He’s dead,” and I realized he must have been gone the whole time I’d been doing CPR. His skin was cold. I tried again anyway.

  By the time the police boat got to us, I could see lightning above the tree line, way in the distance. My mother didn’t
ride out in the boat to get me. A big cop with a stern voice pulled me from my father and handed me to an officer in the boat, the way you pass off a baby. Their hands scratched my wet skin. The officer wrapped me in a silver blanket. I remember the crinkle of it against my bare shoulders, the way it didn’t absorb water. The officer wouldn’t let me cover my face with it. “It’s like a plastic bag,” he said gently. “You’ll suffocate.” He had red hair and acne scars. His eyes were bloodshot.

  I screamed when he took me away, leaving my father and the big officer on the dock. They had to wait for the coroner, he said, as if it would make it easier for me to leave. I knew what a coroner was. I could tell the officer was sorry to say it.

  At the shore, Mrs. Cowell, from next door, was trying to get my mother to drink a glass of water.

  I sat in the sand and watched the dock as the sky got darker, and the rain started. The rumbles grew. I used the foil blanket like a poncho. Fat raindrops made crinkling sounds.

  The boat went back for the other officer, to take him to shore until the storm stopped, but they couldn’t move my father without the coroner. No one made me come in from the lightning. I watched it light up the lake. My father would have loved his view.

  An ambulance came for my mother. She wouldn’t stop screaming, and then she passed out. I didn’t try to help. I felt like I should, but the neighbors were fussing over her, and I couldn’t get my legs to move. After the lightning stopped, the police boat took the coroner to the dock. Floodlights and photograph flashes, and I watched them push my father to one side to get the body bag underneath. His body didn’t move like a body. He was a thing now, not a person. The black plastic blocked the light for a moment as they laid it down. Dark and then bright again. The officers and the coroner were solemn silhouettes. The dock dipped low in the water under their weight.

  I stayed at the Cowells’ that night. My mother stayed at the hospital. “Sometimes, grown-ups need medicine when they get a shock like that,” Mr. Cowell told me. Mrs. Cowell made me a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches I couldn’t eat. We didn’t know them well. I’d never even been in their kitchen before. There was a shiny green frog figurine on the table, with a hole at the top of his head to hold toothpicks.