Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  I decided to nix tails for the women from the mermaid class, since they didn’t have experience swimming in them and I didn’t have enough time. They would be performing at the surface like synchronized swimmers anyway, so I decided on black 1920s bathing costumes with swim caps covered in multicolored plastic flowers.

  I spent an afternoon taking apart fake leis from the party store. I stuffed the caps with newspaper and lined them up on the driveway to work them like an assembly line, gluing on the flowers with bathroom caulk. Toward the end, when my hair was a ball of frizz, and my arms were covered in drying caulk that looked like peeling skin, Luca snuck up on me with the camera to capture it all. I was still wearing the Man of La Mancha t-shirt I’d slept in.

  “Hey!” I covered my face with my hand when I saw him, pretending to be playfully shy instead of horrified. When I stood up, I noticed that my legs were covered in bruises from working at Mo’s.

  He kept filming, smiling at me from behind the camera.

  I was mostly done, but I walked to the far side of the row of bathing caps and pretended they needed extra preening. I fluffed flowers and hoped that in action I’d look better than I did just standing there.

  Eventually, Luca put the camera down. “These are great.”

  “You don’t have to film me,” I said.

  “But I do. You’re part of the story.”

  “What if I don’t sign a release?” I tried hard to smile, keep it light.

  “I’ll sic Nan on you,” he said. His smile was actually light, oblivious to the fact that I was uncomfortable.

  * * *

  “You have to see the footage I got at the pool,” Luca said in the house later, when I was done gluing flowers. He hooked his camera up to the television, and then there was water covering half the screen.

  The camera pans up. Mo is poolside, connecting hoses to the scuba tanks she borrowed from a friend. She drops a hose on either side of the deep end of the pool so Nan and Bitsie can sip air and swim free. Everything shakes. Splashing sounds. The waterline waves across the camera.

  The work of keeping my bad thoughts away made it hard to focus on the television. I fought the urge to reach for Luca’s hand, like his camera self could be in danger. I wanted to call Nan and Bitsie. Hear their voices while I watched and know for certain they were alive. Breathing. Dry ground under their feet.

  “Wow,” I said, fake smile on my face, as I watched Bitsie and Nan holding hands underwater, descending to the bottom of the pool, bodies arching toward each other, tails fluttering. “They’re so graceful!”

  “Yeah,” Luca said. “And their tails work so well. Look! Look at this!” He pointed at the screen.

  Nan takes a breath from the hose and swims away quickly, the fin propelling her, while Bitsie does somersault spins for the camera. Three in a row before she rights herself, blows a stream of bubbles from her mouth, and uses her hands to shape them into a heart that perfectly frames her smiling elfin face. As soon as the bubbles dissipate, she is swimming away, faster than seems possible. Nan swims toward the camera with an old-fashioned bottle of Coca-Cola and a bottle opener. Another hit from the air hose as Nan displays the bottle like a sommelier. With the bottle opener, she pries off the cap. And then she drinks the soda underwater.

  Luca laughed and nudged my arm. “Soda is not on her diet. She replaced it with iced coffee,” he said. “Mo helped her reseal the cap.”

  “Amazing.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts. “Shoot.” I stood up. “Bark needs a pee break.”

  Bark was snoring on the floor.

  “It’s two hours past his usual,” I said, lying. “Hey, Bark! Barky!”

  Bark jumped to attention, the fur on his face in disarray. “Come on, bud! Pee time!”

  He stumbled toward me, gaining spring in his step as we ran for the yard.

  While he sniffed around, trying to find the exact right spot to go, I sent Mo a text. “They’re out of the water now, right?”

  The white bubble with gray dots showed up on my screen. Disappeared. Came back. Disappeared. Came back. Then a photo: Mo’s dive watch showing the current time. In the background Nan and Bitsie lounge on chairs by the pool, gabbing away, iced teas in hand, tails carefully hung over neighboring chairs. They r fine k. Promise.

  Thank you, I wrote back.

  She sent me an eggplant emoji.

  “Do you want to watch more?” Luca called when Bark and I came back inside. He met us in the kitchen.

  “I have to work,” I said, which wasn’t untrue.

  He looked disappointed. “Those tails you made are amazing,” he said.

  “But they’re still the color of baby diarrhea,” I said. “I’ve got to clear out some other work so I’ll have time to airbrush when Mo’s friend drops off the machine.”

  “Can I shoot some of your work?”

  I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I didn’t want to be around him with so much stress piling up when I was a sweaty, swearing mess.

  “Have you interviewed Isaac yet?” I asked. “Nothing I have to do right now is interesting, but he’s at the shop. I could call over for you.”

  Luca took the bait. Once I got him on his way to Isaac’s, I went back outside to check on the caulked bathing caps. They’d have to cure overnight, but they were dry enough to move to the workbench in the garage. I needed to get them to safety before Nan got home and accidentally ran them over, or a bird pooped on them, or someone from the neighborhood decided to try one on and got it stuck to their head. I didn’t have enough time to do everything once. I was in abject fear of having to redo something I’d already checked off the list.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Luca left early the next morning to fly to Atlanta to film Woo Woo in her own home. He’d go to Hannah’s two days later, and be back in time to capture their arrivals on Nan and Bitsie’s side of the story.

  Nan did laundry for him, but he’d only taken what he needed. The rest of his clothes were stacked in a pile on top of the dryer. They smelled like our detergent, not like Luca. I brought them to the guest room and placed them at the end of the pullout couch bed. The blankets were rumpled. I lay on the bed, imagining that the sagging mattress still held the imprint of his body.

  When I woke up, it was starting to get dark outside. Bark was snoring next to me. We’d both drooled on Luca’s pillow.

  * * *

  Late that night, when I was in the garage testing the airbrush machine Mo’s friend dropped off, my phone chimed in my pocket, but my hands were too messy to dig it out.

  Mastering the trigger pressure was harder than I’d expected. I kept ending up with lines of paint that were thinner or thicker than what I wanted. Bark, banished from the garage for getting underfoot, whined on the other side of the door. I wanted to quit so badly, but the only way the tails would get done was if I did them. I sprayed a base coat on each one and hung them from the rafters to dry. Turquoise for Bitsie, fuchsia for Nan, gold for Woo Woo, and orange for Hannah. The garage looked like a cartoon fish market.

  After I’d scrubbed the paint from my arms, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed, I remembered to check my phone. I had a text from Luca.

  Super late, but wanted to let you know I got in safe. Sleep well.

  I wrote back: You too.

  I watched my screen, hoping he was wired from traveling and still awake, but no response came through.

  * * *

  Nan and Bitsie went on a whirlwind tour, charming local media and peppering the town with fliers. The affiliate morning shows loved them. The first time Bark heard Nan’s voice coming from the television, he stopped in his tracks, staring at the screen.

  “My granddaughter, Kaitlyn Ellis, is our costume designer,” Nan said.

  They flashed my Facebook profile picture on the monitor behind Nan and Bitsie’s heads. Me and Nan with our wine glasses, my eyes closed, Bark licking my chin.

  The anchor gave a chuckle. “Well, it looks like you’re having a ton of fun
!”

  “Oh, we most certainly are,” Nan said.

  Bark ran to look behind the television.

  “I don’t think she’s hiding there, buddy,” I said.

  He ran around and looked from the other side. Just in case.

  * * *

  That night, when Luca texted—Hannah’s house tomorrow—I responded right away.

  How’s it going?

  Good. Then: Looking forward to getting back.

  Me too, I typed, and waited. Letting him know I wanted to see him felt like walking out to the very end of a wobbly diving board.

  But then he wrote: I can’t wait to see you.

  I felt wobbly in a different way. Me too.

  My brain was too flooded to sleep, so I stayed up to disassemble thrift store costume jewelry. When the manager at the church store near Isaac’s found out I’d take broken pieces, she sent me home with two grocery bags full for five dollars. I was planning to make Nan’s mermaid top a gem-encrusted affair.

  I rounded up pliers, an old toothbrush, and a bottle of Windex, spread everything on newspaper on the coffee table, and switched on the TV. Pickings were slim, but I found a 1960s flick called The Girls on the Beach. I wasn’t keen on the idea of a beach movie, but I was only half paying attention anyway. The Beach Boys performed in a restaurant hangout. Fish nets and buoys and seashells galore, and I realized we needed to decorate the space around the pool. Mrs. Cohen could lend us her remaining flamingos. Marta had her husband’s rattan tiki bar shoved in the back of her garage, and Ruth had some old crab traps I might be able to work with. I’d jogged past a pile of palm fronds stacked at the curb in front of Lester’s house that morning. If I nabbed them before garbage pickup, I’d be golden.

  I stayed up well into the infomercials, prying apart jump rings and unscrewing eye hooks.

  Next morning, first thing, I put Nan to work calling neighbors to see what they would lend us, and went over to Lester’s to haul the palm fronds to his backyard.

  * * *

  The night before Mo’s unveiling ceremony, Luca got in past midnight.

  He hugged me when I opened the door, slumping into my shoulder like he needed the hug. “Epic delay. The stuck-on-the-plane kind,” he said, his arms still around me. “Hey, why is Bark blue?”

  “Airbrush accident,” I said as we pulled away. I scruffed up Bark’s fur so the stripe was a little less obvious. At the time, painting my dog felt like one more thing spinning out of control, but Luca laughed like he was laughing with me, not at me, and I could finally see the humor.

  Nan was already in bed. I heated up leftover vegan lasagna for Luca and we sat at the kitchen table, Bark snoozing on the floor. I sipped mint tea while he shoveled lasagna in his mouth, heaping forkfuls at a time. We watched each other, knees touching under the table. It was like a preview of what our lives could be.

  “I could stay up all night with you,” Luca said.

  I blushed.

  He set his fork on the plate after his last bite. “But I have to get the equipment set up early in the morning.” He was going to film Mo’s ceremony. He wasn’t sure where it fit in the story, but it seemed like something to capture.

  We brushed our teeth together again. He walked me to my room, like he was dropping me off after a date.

  “Goodnight,” he said. And then he leaned in and kissed me. It was somewhere between love and lust. Tentative. I wasn’t sure if it was going somewhere. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to. Then he said, “Sleep well,” and walked down the hall to the guest room. Door open a crack.

  I left my door ajar too.

  In the morning, I woke up alone. While I was sleeping, Bark had snuck down the hall and crawled into bed with Luca.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “You’re wearing that?” Nan said, walking into my room in a cute navy trellis-print tunic and orange leather sandals.

  I was in jeans and a plain black t-shirt and thought I looked fine. My jeans actually fit, thanks to Nan’s veggie fanaticism.

  “It’s an art unveiling,” Nan said. “This is a big deal for Maureen. We should act like it.”

  All the clothes I’d made for myself were in a dirty heap on the floor. I hadn’t had time to do laundry.

  “I guarantee Mo doesn’t care what I’m wearing.”

  “I do,” Nan said.

  I felt like I was sixteen again and Nan was telling me I should wear a dress to the school dance, when all the other kids would be in jeans and I’d just be hugging the wall with Mo anyway.

  “I have something you can borrow,” Nan said, scurrying back to her room.

  As she walked away, I saw the outline of a microphone pack. She was already wired. I wanted to scream, but saying anything would only compound the situation. Luca didn’t need to hear more of this.

  Nan came back with a tunic almost exactly like the one she was wearing, but purple, with a floral print.

  I gave her a look, trying to express what I didn’t want Luca to hear.

  “Wear it for me,” Nan said in a tone so firm it couldn’t be countered with an expression. I took the dress.

  “You look nice,” Luca said when I walked into the kitchen after I’d changed. He had a smirk that told me he’d heard Nan’s side of the conversation. I gave him my best don’t start look. He laughed, handing me the mic kit. I went into the bathroom to strap the battery pack to my leg.

  And that’s how I ended up at Mo’s manatee unveiling looking like twinsies with my grandmother, recorded on film for posterity.

  * * *

  “Oh, you guys look so cute!” Mo said when we got to the park, giving both of us a kiss on the cheek. She gave Luca a huge hug. “So great to see you, buddy! Thanks for filming!”

  “I can’t wait to see the sculpture,” he said, hugging her back. “And even if we don’t use the footage in the doc, I’ll put a clip together for your website.”

  Mo laughed. “I’ll have to get a website.”

  “Get on that!” Luca said. “Katie showed me your postcards. Your work is awesome.”

  Luca went off to film the gathering crowd. Mo and I ducked into the park restroom to get her wired up. I switched my mic off just in time, because Mo said, “I like the way he looks at you.”

  “I do too,” I said, clipping the receiver box to the back of her pants, inside the waistband. “You ready for this?”

  Mo grinned. “I think I am.”

  “I think you are too,” I said.

  She was dressed in a pair of crisp high-waisted black slacks, a white collared shirt, and a chunky turquoise necklace. I’m pretty sure the pants were her grandfather’s, and I knew the necklace was her grandmother’s. She was rocking the whole thing.

  Once I got the wire threaded through her shirt and clipped to her collar, I said, “Okay, I’m turning our mics on now. We’ll be on record when I do.”

  As soon as I flicked the switch she said, “That Luca guy is kinda weird. But he has a cute butt.” And then, laughing, she shouted, “Hi, Luca!”

  I laughed too.

  After setting Mo free to do her thing, I hung back to watch her navigate the crowd. Big smiles and gracious gestures. I could still picture her little kid self so clearly, and it felt like an honor to watch her flourishing as an adult, to be in it for the duration.

  I’d expected a small ceremony with a few people, but this was a big deal. They’d wrapped Morty in blue fabric and a huge red ribbon. Local news trucks flanked the area, and a group of kids from the middle school chorus were lined up on bleachers, ready to sing the national anthem. There were at least a hundred people already, more trickling in, filling the massive span of folding chairs.

  I found Nan in the front row. Bitsie chatted with Luca toward the back.

  “Meggie and Ennis would be so proud,” Nan said, welling up. She kissed her fingers and wiggled them toward the sky like she was sending a blessing to Mo’s grandparents. Nan wasn’t religious, but they had been.

  The head of Parks and R
ecreation introduced Mo by saying she was one of the talented people who makes Port St. Lucie special. Then Mo stood in front of the microphone. Poised and loud.

  “I want to thank you all for being here today and the Port St. Lucie Arts Council and Parks and Recreation for supporting my work and the addition of art to our parks. I’m proud for this piece to become part of our community. I’d also like to thank my dear friend Katie Ellis for her contribution to this project. She’s a brilliant artist. Her camaraderie and perspective, and also her help lifting things, mean so much to me.”

  My nose stung and my heart thudded. Nan nudged my arm with her elbow.

  “We get where we’re going when we have great people to cheer us on,” Mo said. “So thank you, all of you, for cheering this on.”

  The president of the parks board handed Mo a giant pair of scissors.

  “I probably shouldn’t run with these,” Mo quipped, crossing her eyes and giving a goofy grin to the chorus kids on the bleachers. They erupted into giggles.

  When she cut the ribbon, the fabric fell, making a puddle of blue below Morty. I was awed by the way he fit in the installation space. Too perfect to be anything other than Mo’s vision in action. The arc of his body played with the horizon behind him like it was the surface line he swam below.

  * * *

  After, of course, there was a party at Bitsie’s. Everyone was extra-animated in the presence of Luca’s camera. I held a boom mic over the chaos, and even though my arms ached from the weight of it, I loved how the microphone kept me slightly to the side of the activity so I could officially be an observer.

  * * *

  Luca and I were the last to leave. Bitsie sent us off with a plate of cornbread and lipstick stains on our cheeks.

  Luca slipped his hand into mine as we walked back to Nan’s. The air was humid, with a breeze that gave the slightest hint that darkness might chase away some of the heat from the day. We didn’t make eye contact. I couldn’t. But I gave his hand a squeeze. I was glad to be holding it. His palm was warm, and rough from camera calluses.