Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  “She ordered them from a store on the internet,” Isaac said in disbelief.

  “At least none of those girls are going to want to wear them again,” I said. “I can’t think they’ll last much past the day.”

  “I hate working on bad work.”

  “Me too,” I said, thinking of all the time I spent in the costume shop at the theatre, fixing Edith’s mistakes after she went home.

  “Well,” Isaac said, “we’ll do the best we can do. As always.”

  It shocked me how hard I fell for the belonging in those words. He studied my face while I tried not to cry.

  “Good, good,” he said, zipping up the last garment bag. “We’ll do what we can.” There was a bend in his voice. Like maybe it meant something to him too.

  * * *

  After I left Isaac’s, I stopped home to change and went to Bitsie’s house to sew. I needed presentable clothes for work.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bark ran to greet me at the door when I got home from sewing at Bitsie’s, Murray clutched in his teeth, tail wagging so hard his whole back end swayed. His body language was different from the way he greeted me in Rochester. I felt different about coming home too. Even though Nan could drive me crazy, I didn’t have to steel myself to see her, the way I did with Eric.

  “Bark!” I said. “Are you a happy boy?” He pushed his head against my leg and then ran back to the kitchen, looking over his shoulder like he wanted me to follow. The air smelled of roasted garlic.

  Nan was in the kitchen mashing potatoes. Something in the oven had a rich, meaty smell.

  “Did you make meat loaf?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s lentil loaf,” Nan said, and paused like she was waiting for me to complain.

  “It smells amazing.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You didn’t have to do that!”

  “I thought it would be nice for us to have a good meal together.”

  “I don’t want to make work for you,” I said.

  “Nonsense.” Nan dumped heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes on two plates.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it. And Bark looks happy.”

  “We danced in the living room. I hope that’s okay.”

  I thought of them jumping around together and felt a twinge behind my nose. “Of course!” I said. Maybe this was all we needed.

  Nan sliced the lentil loaf and ladled salad dressing over a plate of asparagus. I set the table. Chet Baker played on the stereo. Nan had the windows open and the night breeze smelled like gardenias and fresh cut grass.

  After we sat down to eat, Nan said, “Last night, when I found you on the floor . . . Does that happen a lot, Kay?”

  My heart clenched and released with too much force, leaving me woozy. Was that what this dinner was? A chance to make me a captive audience so she could poke? I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry,” Nan said firmly. “I think we have to discuss this.” It was the same voice she used when I was a kid and needed a shot at the doctor’s office.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, throat tight.

  Nan reached across the table and patted my arm. “I’m here to help,” she said, and I know she believed it. She would listen with the best intentions, but then she’d tell me why I shouldn’t worry about the things I worried about, as if that was the solution. I’d be stuck holding my worries closer so she could feel like she’d fixed me. Later, when the exhaustion of trying so hard got the best of me, I’d fall apart again, and feel that much worse for letting her down.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, wishing I believed it. “There’s been a lot of change. I’ll settle in.”

  Nan kept her hand on my arm and ate her dinner without talking. My stomach felt twisty and fragile. I pushed food around my plate, trying to make it look like I’d eaten a respectable amount.

  When we cleared the table, Nan had a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Maybe Woo Woo’s daughter wrote back,” I said, wrapping up the rest of the lentil loaf. “We should check.”

  “You go,” Nan said. “I’ll finish up here.”

  “I can help you. You made dinner, you shouldn’t have to clean up too.”

  “Oh, sweetie. It’s fine,” she said with a sigh.

  * * *

  I logged in to Facebook. The first thing in my feed was a post saying Eric’s relationship status had changed to divorced. Sixteen people liked it.

  He had a new profile picture, taken on the pier at Ontario Beach Park. Sun about to set. Windburned cheeks. Eyes bright. He looked like the person he’d been when we first started dating senior year of college. He looked hopeful.

  I had a flash of memory: A few months after my first miscarriage, Eric came home to find me crumpled in a heap on the kitchen floor. Shirt soaked. My tears had formed an actual puddle. He picked me up, helped me into a chair, snapping into full-efficiency mode. “Drink this, hon,” he said, handing me a glass of cool water. He wiped my face with the back of his hand and brushed my hair out of the way to plant a kiss on my forehead. “It’s okay.” His voice was solid and kind. “We’ll try again. This one wasn’t meant to be.” But when he mopped my tears from the floor, he worked his jaw hard, pain flashing in his eyes, and I knew he was thinking about how much a person had to cry to soak a dish towel.

  The imaginings that undid me that day were stuck in my mind. Ready to surface if I wasn’t careful. Our tiny baby floating on her back in the lake, water lapping against her chubby cheeks, clouds gathering above.

  Eric left to throw the dish towel in the laundry room. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, using the pain to snap me from my haze. When I took a sip of water, blood seeped into the glass. I gulped the water down so he wouldn’t see—so hard and fast I thought my throat would split.

  “Feeling better,” Eric said when he came back. Not a question. What he needed from me.

  I burped and nodded, fighting like hell to smile, lips closed to hide the blood. Eric ordered pizza and I fell asleep on the couch with my head in his lap while he watched SportsCenter. It was the first time I’d slept in days.

  That wasn’t the last time he had to pick me up. Not even close. Sometimes, my brain would get stuck on the memory of the green ceramic frog on the Cowells’ kitchen table. I couldn’t stop thinking about the toothpicks in his head, the way the glaze pooled at the indents on his webbed feet, and that would be enough to ruin me. The stale toast scent of the Cowells’ kitchen would flood my brain. Then it would all come back. Blue-black water. The crinkle of a silver blanket. My mother’s screams. The patterned red carpet at the funeral home. Waxy makeup on my lips. Later, the memory of the new crying jag would become a thought I couldn’t get unstuck from—fear attaching to fear—like an ever-growing net.

  I didn’t know how to explain why I was falling apart to Eric. Why I couldn’t make dinner, or ask how his day was, or be his lover, or his wife, or even a friend. I thought about a frog and then I thought about everything. It didn’t make sense to me either. I held hope that Eric would suddenly understand and he’d forgive me, or I’d understand well enough to tell him what was wrong, or even that I’d just get better.

  Did I kill his hope? Did his friend bring it back? I hovered over the likes on his status to see who was cheering Eric’s freedom: twelve guys I recognized from his team at work, two friends he’d known since high school, someone named Nikki Rogers, and his mother. These people were dinging and donging over the witch being dead, and I was the witch. It hurt my feelings in a sharp, strange way, and then the fact that it hurt my feelings hurt my feelings even more. My hand shook on the mouse pad.

  I clicked on Nikki Rogers. She was the friend from the hallway. The girl with the fake nails. I’d avoided learning her name, and she didn’t volunteer it when we met. In her profile picture, she wore aviator sunglasses and red lipstick, her too-white smile wide and charming. Her arms wrapped around someone’s neck, riding piggyback, his head bowed toward the camera so all that could be seen of him was an ear a
nd short brown hair. I knew who he was. I didn’t even have to look closely for the small swath of silver at his temple.

  I clicked the picture. It was two years old. I heard Nan’s footsteps in the hall and prayed she’d walk away. A rush of adrenaline left me clammy. I dropped my head between my knees.

  “Are you okay?” she called from the doorway.

  “Two years,” I said, bursting into tears. I didn’t want to tell her, but I couldn’t keep it in. “That’s him. With her. Two years ago.”

  “What a . . . dickhead!” Nan shouted.

  “I am so stupid.” Two years. I was pregnant the first time. After so much work, so many hormones. That was before hope felt dangerous. It was summer in that picture. Fall when I lost her. Did he tell himself he would stop when the baby came? I didn’t even think we were unhappy back then.

  “Oh, Kay!” Nan wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “He’s a snake. How were you supposed to know? He hid it well.”

  “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe I didn’t see.”

  “You were in pain.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention. I drove him away.” Nan’s hug pressed my shoulders into the wooden knobs on the chair back. It hurt.

  “He wasn’t worth keeping,” she said. “He’s proven that. Does it matter when he proved it? You’re no more or less divorced than you were before.”

  Nan let go of my shoulders and sat on the edge of the bed next to Bark. “I lost a baby once. Before your father. Sometimes the whole day would pass, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how. Your grandfather would come home from work and I’d be in the living room, staring at a book. I hadn’t turned a single page the whole time he’d been gone.”

  Bark shoved his head under Nan’s hand. She scratched behind his ears. “Your grandfather had his flaws, but he didn’t take advantage of the fact that I wasn’t paying attention. At least as far as I knew.”

  I was only five when Gramps died, but I remembered that he was always after me about elbows on the table, and minding my p’s and q’s. I couldn’t picture Gramps having a “friend.” He seemed like someone who’d have found the very thought unseemly.

  “I didn’t know you had a miscarriage,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” When she’d caught me on the phone in tears, she’d said, “Time heals all wounds,” as if she had nothing of substance to offer. I’d spent days staring too. I didn’t know other people lost time in grief that way. I’d seen it as my personal failing.

  “I didn’t want to trouble you with my sadness,” Nan said, leaning over to wipe tears from my cheek with her sleeve. “And I didn’t know what to say. The only thing that made it better was having your father.” She closed her eyes for a moment, the pause she always took when she wanted to keep her emotions under control. “I think I leaned too hard because of it. He was my band-aid, instead of just a child. But I don’t know how you’re supposed to reconcile that loss without someone new to fill it. It has to be excruciating.”

  “I don’t think he felt like a band-aid. He loved you so much,” I said, smiling through my tears. “He worshipped you. It drove my mom crazy.”

  Nan smiled and squeezed my knee. “When we lost your father,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been okay without you.”

  I smiled back, even though I didn’t see how it could be true. I knew how much stress I brought with me when I moved in, and I knew I was doing it all over again.

  “You have me,” Nan said, “and Bark.” She took a quick breath, held it for a moment. “Don’t you forget that.” It didn’t feel like a platitude. It felt like a promise.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, and ran my finger over my dad’s smiley face carving on the desk.

  “Alright,” Nan said, slapping her hand on her thigh. “Let’s Facebook-stalk—is that the right term?”

  I laughed. “Yes.” I wondered where she’d heard it.

  “Let’s Facebook-stalk this Nikki person and get it out of our systems.”

  I felt weird about the idea of doing this with Nan. This wasn’t the way our relationship worked. “That’s okay. I shouldn’t—”

  “I know you’re going to do it anyway. Anyone would. Let’s make a pity party out of it.” Nan went to the kitchen and came back with two wine glasses and a bottle of Pinot Grigio. She poured for us. “Cheers.” She tipped her glass in the direction of Eric’s head on my computer screen. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “Cheers,” I said, even though it wasn’t so simple. I wished I knew how to separate Eric’s moments of kindness from the lies. He wasn’t all bad rubbish.

  “Okay,” Nan said, taking a gulp of wine. “Let’s go.”

  I went back to Nikki’s page. At the top was a photo album dated yesterday. There she was, in front of my house, her perfect blond ponytail sticking out the back of a Rochester Red Wings cap. She held a cardboard box, posing like it was a catalog shoot. The caption read: Moving Innnnn!

  “Why does it surprise me?” I asked, my voice wobbling. “Of course, she was going to move in with him!”

  “It’s okay that this hurts,” Nan said, rubbing her hand in circles between my shoulder blades. “Anyone would be hurt by this. It’s hurtful.”

  There was a photo of Nikki in ripped jeans painting my kitchen cabinets with chalkboard paint. In the next, she’d written Love Lives Here in swooping chalk letters on the pantry door.

  “She’s trying too hard,” Nan said. “Insecurity on display.”

  I chugged wine.

  A photo of every throw pillow I’d ever sewed piled in the middle of the living room, even the vintage Liberty of London prints I’d scavenged from my favorite antique store. Bonfire at my place?

  Nikki draped over my favorite reading chair, pointing to the standing pendant lamp I’d always loved. Does anyone want this ugly?

  I had taken pride in the way I’d decorated our home. The major choices were mostly Eric’s. Eggshell walls. The notorious couch. Beige tile in the kitchen. All concessions on my part. But the warmth of our home came from my effort. I could justify spending money that way because I was thrifty and clever, and Eric, if he noticed the pillows or the yard sale chair I’d slipcovered, seemed impressed I’d created something. It made me feel like I was contributing. And there she was, mocking my work. Did Eric feel that way too? Had he been humoring me because he felt guilty? Look at this woman with her ugly pillows! So stupid that she actually believes I had to work late. Shame bubbled beneath my skin.

  “They deserve each other,” Nan said. “How can you ever be secure in a relationship you started with a married man?”

  I knew there was truth in her words, but the result was the same to me. “I can’t tell if this is making it better or worse,” I said, forcing a laugh. It sounded hollow. “She’s horrible. And now I miss my lamp.”

  “It’s a beautiful lamp,” Nan said, and I could tell she felt awkward too. She didn’t know what to say, or how we were supposed to feel. There was no greeting card sentiment for this moment, but she was trying anyway.

  I clicked to the next picture: Eric, fast asleep in our bed, under a comforter I didn’t recognize.

  “He has a very strange nose,” Nan said, pouring more wine in my glass. “Like it belongs to someone else’s face.”

  I laughed so hard I snorted.

  We went through every single picture of Nikki. She was a cheerleader in high school. A sorority girl in college. She fell hard for skinny jeans and tall boots. Had a shag haircut three years ago and pulled it off. A face full of makeup and a pageant girl smile in every single photo. I did not want to be her. She was wired so differently from me that her existence looked exhausting. And I didn’t want to be with someone who would choose her over me, but it felt strange to let go of my home and my husband and everything I’d thought my life was going to be.

  “I want to see your page,” Nan said when we’d finally reached the end of Nikki’s.

  I clicked over to my profile. Thankfully, I’d kept my name when I married Eric, so
I was still an Ellis, like my father and Nan.

  “You need a new picture!” Nan said, pointing to the photo of me and Eric at Niagara Falls last year. “Here!” She handed me her phone. “Take a selfie of us.” It was funny to hear her say “selfie.” It hadn’t even been a word when I moved to Rochester.

  She leaned toward Bark. I knelt in front of them and snapped the picture just as Bark licked my face. It was a little blurry. My eyes were closed, nose scrunched up. Our wine glasses caught glare from the overhead light. But I was smiling, and Nan was smiling. Even Bark looked happy.

  I handed the phone to Nan. “We’re so pretty!” she said, and scratched Bark’s ears. “Yes, you’re so pretty too, Barky.” Bark licked her cheek. He’d warmed up to Nan more in a couple of days than he had to Eric in a whole year.

  “So”—Nan pointed to my laptop—“how do we get this picture there?”

  I was still signed in to Facebook on her phone, so I uploaded it directly, and then refreshed the page on my laptop so she could see us on the bigger screen.

  “Amazing,” Nan said in a hushed voice. “This is a lovely program.” She clinked her wine glass to mine. “To new beginnings.”

  “New beginnings,” I said.

  “Nothing from Woo?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  The disappointment on her face was clear.

  “Her daughter might not check Facebook every day,” I said.

  Nan drank the rest of her wine in one gulp. “Maybe she doesn’t remember me. It was a long time ago.”

  “I’m sure she remembers,” I said, making a little wish in my head for a nice answer soon. “It’s almost eleven. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Way past my bedtime!” Nan stood up. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “You come get me if you’re not.” She kissed the top of my head.

  “This helped, Nan,” I said. “Really.” And I did feel more steady. I wasn’t only saying it to make her feel better.

  Bark followed Nan down the hall to her room, and then came running back, tail wagging, like he was proud he’d led her to her destination safely.