Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  * * *

  Before I went to bed, I clicked on Luca’s page. Three hours before, he’d posted a photo of a live oak tree draped with Spanish moss and ivy, blue sky in the space between the crooked branches. The silver moss, glowing in streaks of sunlight, had a sway like long hair caught in a breeze. No description. No location tag. But I could imagine Luca stopping in his tracks at the sight of that tree, standing for a moment in silence to absorb its beauty before he took the picture.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Luca slept in my bed a lot in college. It started the night we met. I saw him at a theatre party, leaning against the wall. He looked as overwhelmed as I felt. I leaned next to him. “Do you want pretzels?” I asked, holding out a red Solo cup I’d filled in the kitchen. It was a brave act for me. I wasn’t usually so bold, but something about him felt safe.

  “Sure,” he said quietly, color coming to his cheeks as he grabbed a pretzel from the cup. Just one. Quick smile. The shy thing was surprising coming from someone like him. He was pretty. Heart-shaped face, even brow, a deep bow to his pink lips. The sparkle in his dark brown eyes was warm, pleading. A look that said, Be careful with me. I couldn’t believe I was the only one swooning. I think maybe there’s a bell curve to beautiful and people can’t handle beauty too far past the arch.

  We ate pretzels together, backs pressed to the wall, watching people. Some girl in a cape started dancing, and Luca nudged me gently, so we’d both be watching the same action. It reminded me of being a little kid at the playground, how another kid could show up and use your shovel in the sandbox, and suddenly you were playing together. I shared my snack, and now we were friends.

  When we finished the pretzels, he took the cup from me and went into the kitchen. “Someone spilled beer in the pretzel bag,” he said when he came back with potato chips.

  “Thanks,” I said, flashing a smile. The top button of his gray Henley was loose, hanging on the thread. I wanted to fix it for him.

  We resumed our leaning and watching, not talking, but not necessarily avoiding talking. It was more connection than I’d had through half a semester of chitchat and icebreakers. I worried it was an illusion of the night—the Brigadoon of feeling—and the next time I saw him, he’d ask me what my major was, and it would feel like every other human interaction.

  As the party was winding down, he said, “Can I walk you home?” I said yes, and hoped he was asking because he didn’t want the connection to end either.

  When we got back to my dorm, after a long walk of shuffling feet and “Look at the moon!” and breathing hard into the cold air to see whose breath made more fog, I said, “Do you want to watch a movie?” Because my roommate was never home anyway. It was so late that most of the lights were off on my floor. I hated that feeling of being the last person awake. In my sleepy head, it always translated to being the last person alive, like the rapture happened and I was the only one left. By morning, it felt silly, but at night, the hollow dark left me panicked. It happened often. I fought sleep, then I was up too late and I couldn’t keep the panic away. In comparison, inviting this boy I just met up to my room seemed sane. Smart, even. In case of the rapture, or any other disaster my mind could conjure, there’d be two of us.

  We sat very still on the floor of my room and watched Roman Holiday. One of my favorites, and he’d never seen it. I stifled yawns. I didn’t want to give him an excuse to leave. And then it was so late it was almost morning, and I was certain we were the last people awake in my dorm.

  “You could stay,” I said, which didn’t feel bold. It felt comfortable to suggest to this boy I’d just met and had barely talked to. He was already important to me.

  We cuddled in my bed. He rested his head in the crook of my neck, and I almost cried. It felt like breathing after holding my breath for too long. I slept soundly for the first time since my father died.

  After that, lying in bed, holding each other, was just a thing we did. Night after night, until he felt like another limb.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next afternoon, Nan was out with Bitsie, and I was lying on the couch with Bark watching HGTV when Mo walked in unannounced and flopped down next to us. She was so blasé about it that Bark didn’t even bother to howl. He watched her intently across my lap.

  “I like this show,” Mo said, and that was it for two episodes. We watched people hunt for houses the way we used to be cartoon zombies after school, and the normalcy of having her in my space felt like a craving fulfilled. I’d forgotten that Mo cracked her ankles compulsively, but my elbow headed to her ribs every time she did it. And like well-rehearsed choreography, Mo elbowed back, shooting me a narrowed glance that made me think of her at eleven years old, with a Ramona Quimby haircut and scraped-up knees.

  The couple on the second episode chose the wrong house. The one they should have picked was cosmetically challenged but had a nicer yard. Mo clapped her hand to her forehead. “That’s not the way I’d go,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief as the closing credits rolled. “Does Nan have beer?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She got up and went into the kitchen, coming back with two bottles. We sat on the front step to drink them. Bark stayed inside. I could hear him whining behind the door for a moment, but then the scratch of his nails on the tile faded away. He probably went to find Murray and take a nap on the bed.

  “I think we need a thing,” I said, because I wanted to hold myself accountable to spending time with her. I didn’t want our friendship to wither again if she got too busy or I got too sad.

  “A thing?” Mo picked at the label on her beer, curling the corner away from the bottle.

  “I don’t know. Like something we do together on a regular basis. A tradition.”

  “Like happy hour?”

  I knew making a habit of drinking with Mo wouldn’t do good things for me. “More like a craft. Or class. Karate, maybe?”

  Mo laughed, and I was certain she was picturing me attempting a side kick. “Marta teaches stained glass on Tuesday nights at the senior center,” she said.

  “We’re not seniors.”

  “Marta doesn’t care! I’ve gone a few times, it’s kind of cool, but I’m so used to working with metal. I broke a lot of glass.” She gulped her beer. “You could come over. I could teach you how to weld.”

  “Welding?” I picked at the label on my beer bottle.

  “Sure, why not?” Mo burped and then shook her head like she was trying to escape it. “I could use help. And you’re careful. Careful is good.” She set her empty bottle next to the step and stood, wiping her hand on her jeans.

  “Now?” I asked. I’d mostly been talking in hypothetical terms. I wanted to feel like I was searching for purpose—in small installments—and then go back to lying on the couch.

  “Bring Bark.”

  “I don’t know. It’s noisy, right?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Mo said. “We won’t do anything too crazy.”

  I picked up Mo’s bottle and went inside to leave a note for Nan. Bark ran to me, tail wagging. I hoped he’d magically act like a normal dog and we’d go to Mo’s house and have a good night and everything would be fine. But when I tried to clip his leash to his collar, he sprinted back to my room to hide under the bed.

  “Hey, Barky,” I called, following. “Come here!”

  He backed out, tail curled to his belly, ears flat.

  “Oh, buddy! It’ll be okay.”

  He let me clip the leash on this time, but he lagged behind as we walked down the hall.

  I opened the front door. He took one look at Mo and froze.

  “You just saw her,” I said. But to Bark, outside-the-house Mo was a totally different person from inside-the-house Mo. I kept walking, but he stood perfectly still, staring. I gave his leash a tug. He let out a frustrated whine that almost sounded like I can’t!

  “Hey, Bark,” Mo said in a soft, high voice. His ears perked. “We’re buddies, remember?” She leaned forward to pet
him, but he cowered. “Okay. I get it. I know. It’s hard.” She sat on the step with her back to Bark and put one hand as far behind her as it would reach. Bark stretched his neck to smell the air and then inched slowly toward her.

  “Good boy,” I whispered.

  He gave her hand a quick sniff, then recoiled like she might attack.

  Mo sat perfectly still, back straight.

  Bark sniffed her arm again and then licked it.

  Mo shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly. “Aw, did I get a kiss?”

  Bark stepped away, then tried again. This time, he sat next to Mo, staring at her. Mo turned her head toward him slowly. When she looked at Bark, he looked away. When she looked away, he turned to watch her. But then a motorcycle roared down the street, exhaust popping as it passed. Bark skittered into the house, pulling the leash from my hand, running down the hall and out of sight.

  “Poor pup!” Mo said. “Should we make sure he’s alright and go on our own?”

  I nodded, relieved she understood.

  “Baby steps,” she said. “We’ll keep trying.”

  “Something always happens, right when he’s making progress. And he’s so—I know you can’t tell, but he’s sweet. It’s sad when he can’t show it.”

  “I can tell,” Mo said. “He wears his heart on his face.”

  We brought Bark some treats. He even took one from Mo, gingerly, with his teeth instead of his tongue. He backed away and jumped on the bed to eat it, watching her, like maybe there’d been a mistake and she might want it back.

  “Okay, Barky,” I said, scratching behind his ears. “We won’t be gone long.” He looked up, mid-chew, eyes sad. I kissed his forehead and we left before I could decide I didn’t want to leave the house either.

  * * *

  We walked to Mo’s. Her grandfather’s wood-sided Roadmaster wagon was parked in the driveway, next to her grandmother’s beige Cutlass, and it felt like Gran and Pops could be in the house, doing a crossword together at the kitchen table. I wondered if Mo ever drove those cars, or if she didn’t even notice them anymore, the same way it’s easy to stop seeing a Christmas tree in the living room once you’ve made it to mid-January. Things ignored become part of the landscape so quickly.

  Mo’s white 1976 Beetle was at the curb. In high school, she taught herself to rebuild the engine from a library book.

  Mo punched the code into the garage keypad. “It’s F-U-C-K,” she said as we waited for the door to rise. “If you ever need to get in.”

  I laughed.

  “I kept forgetting the last code. But you don’t forget ‘fuck.’ ”

  “True.”

  Wedged diagonally across the two-car garage was the puzzle-piece vertebrae of a creature waiting to come to life. Two pieces of rebar attached it to a pedestal surrounded by strips of metal stretched and twisted like kelp.

  “He’s going to be a manatee,” Mo said, running her hand along the arching spine. “I’ll wrap strands of metal around him so it will look like he’s made from a huge wad of twine.”

  I nodded, even though I couldn’t quite picture it. “Like this one,” she said, shoving a postcard in my hand. It was a shark, formed from bands of metal swirled around a frame. Abstract and alive. Mo’s car was in the picture, for scale. It looked like a windup toy.

  “You can keep that,” she said, pointing to the postcard. “I had a ton printed up.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “The manatee won’t be as big. I wanted to make the foundation at home. It’s hard to work in another space. By the time I’m done lifeguarding, it’s dark, and all the warehouses are in crappy parts of town. I’m a wuss about that.”

  It surprised me. I’d always seen Mo as fearless.

  “Are you going to run out of room?” I asked.

  “I should have made him a little smaller. But I might be able to work in the driveway if the neighbors don’t complain. I have to be careful I don’t sacrifice the form because my shop is too small. It’s easy to make choices that make things convenient.”

  “So, how can I help?” I asked, avoiding a greater philosophical discussion. Seeing Mo’s work made me even more embarrassed by how little I had to show for myself.

  “How dirty do you want to get?”

  I looked at my worn jeans and a t-shirt from a nightmare production of Dames at Sea. “As dirty as necessary.”

  Mo got us beers from Pop’s mini fridge, prying the tops off with a nail half-hammered in the wall. “Here,” she said, handing me one.

  She showed me pictures of manatees in motion and several angles of skeletons. “See how their ribs are shaped? Like, they get wider and then thinner, there’s almost a twist here,” she said, pointing. She gave me a sheepish smile. “I know most people won’t look between the cracks to see inside, but it matters to me.”

  “I get it,” I said. It’s the way I used to feel about my own work. Even the details that couldn’t be easily seen added up to something greater. It’s why, back in school, I stitched silver stars into Ophelia’s dress for Hamlet, and learned to tat lace to make Queen Elizabeth’s collar for Mary Stuart more authentic.

  Mo reached toward the back of her workbench, threw me a pair of yellow suede gloves, and pointed to her grandfather’s old work boots on the floor. “Those will be big, but you can’t wear flip-flops. You’ll lose a toe.”

  I stepped into them, barefoot, trying not to think about it too much.

  “I want to keep the patina on the ribs.” She pointed to a stack of rusty rebar, cut to size, numbered with grease pencil. “If you can lay them out in order, I’ll get the gear together.”

  I organized rebar while Mo pushed a large piece of curved steel to the driveway on a dolly. She set up shop lamps, and then wheeled an oxyacetylene torch outside.

  We worked well into the night, listening to Pop’s Johnny Cash records crackling on the old Philco player. Mo used the torch to heat rebar and we bent each piece around the mold. Then she heated the ends and we pounded the metal with mallets to form the strange paddle shape of manatee ribs. The rebar was heavy. Rust streaked my arms, sweat dripped in my eyes, but there was satisfaction in changing the shape of steel. We got through twelve ribs before we took a break for dinner.

  Mo mixed Easy Mac in mismatched bowls of questionable cleanliness, cooking them in an ancient microwave at the end of Pop’s workbench. While we waited for the beep, I stepped back to peek under the bench.

  “It’s still there,” Mo said, grinning. “Go ahead.”

  I got down on my hands and knees, crawled under the bench, and pushed the wood pallet door out of the way. The opening through the cinder block was smaller than I remembered and made me feel a little claustrophobic, but I climbed through anyway. Felt around for the switch. The lone bare bulb still worked. I wondered if Mo had replaced it.

  During the Cold War, Pop built a false wall in the garage to make a bomb shelter behind it. He never got around to making an actual door, and it wasn’t underground. I think he built it more because he could than because he thought it would save his family from a Cuban missile, but when we were kids, Mo and I honestly believed it was the safest place in the world. Inside there were two army-issue cots and a few rolled-up sleeping mats. Expired cans of corn and peaches older than me and Mo were lined up neatly on the shelves, covered in dust. Crank radio. Bucket latrine. Two steel drums labeled DRINKING WATER that Mo and I would sit on, pretending they were bar stools at a saloon when we played Wild West.

  The air was stale and damp, and the smell of it made me think of my Powerpuff sleeping bag, and the times Mo and I camped out in our secret fortress.

  “Want to eat in there?” Mo called from the outside.

  “Yeah.” I pushed on the cot to hear the canvas squeak against the frame, like it had when Mo tossed and turned in her sleep. I loved that sound because it meant she was right there, arm’s length away, if I needed her.

  Mo passed the bowls of mac and cheese to me through the door before she crawled in. “Man, I h
aven’t been in here in ages,” she said when she stood, taking up so much more space than she used to.

  We sat on the water drums to eat. Our feet touched the ground now. I was hungry enough to convince myself the microwave heat killed anything gross on the dishes. We ate fast, without talking. When we’d finished our food, Mo pulled one of the manatee skeleton pictures from her pocket to show me how much we’d done.

  “Most of the ribs have a similar angle, but we’ll need to bend the last few by hand. Maybe adjust these. Then we can attach them all.” She yawned and blinked. “Maybe we should stop here, before we get overtired.”

  I yawned too.

  “I hope you didn’t hate this,” Mo said, eyebrows raised, like she was worried.

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. Her face fell. “No! I mean are you kidding in the good way. I had so much fun.”

  “Really?” Mo said. “Because it was great to have your help. And just . . . you.”

  She put her arm around my shoulder and gave me a sideways hug.

  “Whooo!” She fanned her hand in front of her face as she pulled away. “Is that you or me?”

  We both sniffed our pits. “Me,” I said at the same time as she said, “Totally me.”

  I laughed.

  “Hysterical!”

  When we crawled back into the garage, Mo helped me up and slapped me on the back. “Hit the showers, Ellis!”

  I stepped out of Pop’s boots and back into my flip-flops. “You too, Jacobs,” I said.

  Mo wrinkled her nose. “You can’t pull that off. The sports thing? No.”

  “Shut up,” I said, laughing as I walked away. “I know it.”

  “Careful walking home.”

  “Don’t trip walking up the driveway.”

  “Shut up,” she said, pretending to trip.

  “Love you, Mo,” I called over my shoulder, like we used to when we were kids.

  “Love you, Kay!” she shouted back.