Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  A few hours later, I woke gasping, unsure of where I was.

  Luca woke up. “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t dream that.” He pulled me close and kissed the back of my neck.

  I turned to face him, kissed his chin, his cheek, his mouth. He kissed me back. I was so aware of the angles of him pressing against me. His body harder than before, mine softer. He held me with ferocity, running his hands over my hips. He whispered in my ear, “You are beautiful.” I bit his shoulder, hooked my legs around his. There was no division between us, only movement, skin, sweat. Everything made sense.

  * * *

  The night after I slept with Luca the first time, we were drinking at the quarry with friends. I had to be careful. Two drinks and I could forget things. Feel loose. Three drinks and I would spend the darkest hours listening to my heartbeat thumping in my ears, waiting for light. I observed my limit carefully, but everyone else was done for.

  We’d lit a bonfire by the water, but it wasn’t a healthy one. We kept it fed with twigs and damp leaves. The flame constantly threatened to die out and the smoke was terrible. I still hate the meaty smell of singed leaf mold.

  It wasn’t warm. But it was warmer. In Western New York, you celebrate the days that aren’t brutally cold. We’d had a week of tepid temps, and there was more winter on the way. People were walking around in shorts and flip-flops, even though it hadn’t broken sixty degrees. Forties of hard cider, the flickering fire, and the closeness of our huddled bodies made everyone think it was warmer than it was. Everyone swam naked in the quarry in actual warm weather, so the idea of skinny-dipping was already in the group subconscious.

  A bunch of people went in from the shore. The girls mostly, yelping as they shed their clothes. Screams when the cold water inched up to their armpits. I kept my clothes on. I stayed on shore. I hated the quarry. Terrified of the depth that went far beyond what was normal for a pond that size. I hated how everyone ignored the NO SWIMMING sign. There were rules, they were breaking them, and even though intellectually I understood that breaking rules was part of the point of being young, it wasn’t the reality I lived in.

  I leaned against a tree, sitting on my heels, trying hard to disappear into my black puffy coat.

  Anya, a theatre techie, called to me from the edge of the water. “Coming?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You only live once!” she shouted.

  I put my hand on my stomach. “Cramps,” I said.

  I’m not sure if she heard me. She ran into the water, screaming.

  I was so focused on her scream and the splashing and the moonlit figures in the water, I didn’t notice the group of guys making their way to the edge of the tall rocks on the other side.

  The first two jumped with wild yells. Big splashes.

  The next guy fell. Or tripped while he was jumping. He landed in the water with a huge sick slap. It hurt to hear. My stomach stung in sympathy.

  One of the guys on the rocks yelled, “Holy shit! Holy shit! Where did he go?” Another yelled, “Luca!” And then there was nothing. Whispers from the girls at the shore. Murmurs of “Oh my god!” “What should we do?”

  I was in the water immediately. I didn’t even take my coat off. The down weighted me and my limbs were stiff in the freezing water. Each stroke took monumental effort. Moonlight made everything bluish gray. I could only see shapes. I followed voices, grabbing at bodies. A guy shouted, “Hey!” when I reached for his arm. “Hey!”

  I don’t think anyone else was looking for Luca. They were panicked in that thick, drunk-minded way, when time seems slower than it is, like there’s ages to make decisions and anything important will wait for you to catch up.

  Finally, I grabbed a leg, and heard only gasping in return. In the moonlight, I could see Luca’s nose and chin above water. He was on the surface. He was still alive. I hooked my arm under his armpit and started swimming back to land, shouting, “Help me! Help!” but no one did.

  I wasn’t just hauling Luca’s body to shore, pushing him into the dirt when we got there. It wasn’t only his weight I carried.

  Luca was fine. The belly flop had merely stunned him. Knocked the wind out. He coughed a bit and sat up and laughed at me for my seriousness. My “heroic rescue,” he called it. He was still drunk. The other guys teased him about being a damsel in distress, and I could tell from the weakness of his laugh he was embarrassed. I tried to convince myself that later, sober, he would be thankful, realize his stupidity, convert to being a rule follower. But I still hated him, acutely, fiercely, because now I was thinking about blue lips and dead skin. I had to contend with a pounding heartbeat in my ears too intense to think and hear and feel anything that was actually happening.

  The people on the shore were laughing and chatting, they thought I was ridiculous for jumping into the quarry in my jacket. Everything had worked out. Everyone was fine. They were oblivious to the ways people drown. Without me, Luca might not have snapped out of his shock. The breaths he took to refill his lungs could have been waterlogged. He might not have found his way back to shore before his muscles fatigued. Because Luca was fine after I saved him, they believed he’d been fine all along and my intervention was superfluous, absurd. So I hated all of them too.

  I felt like I was hearing their idiotic banter from miles away, aware and unaware at the same time. “Fuck you,” I said to the dark. To Luca. To all of them. I don’t know if anyone heard me.

  Everyone else was putting on clothes warmed by the anemic fire, but even on shore, I was stuck in water. The weight of my sopping jacket made it hard to breathe, but my frozen fingers couldn’t get the zipper open. I stunk of winter rot and algae.

  Instead of asking for help, I started walking. Away from the chatter. Away from Luca and the depths of the quarry. I don’t know if they saw me leave, or noticed I was missing. If they stayed by the fire and kept drinking. I didn’t care if they went back in the water and sunk to the granite floor. I walked two miles, through the woods, then along the side of the road, stunned by headlights, in heavy wet clothes with cold dead skin that was mine and not mine. Stuck with my heartbeat, and I couldn’t tell if it was normal or not. Too fast. Too slow. Was my heart as weak as my father’s? Did I need to be careful? I wasn’t sure if I cared. And when I got back to my tiny damp studio apartment, it felt flooded by the unfailing hiss of Six Mile Creek rushing in the gulch just beyond the yard, swollen from snowmelt. I cut myself out of my jacket, even though it was the only one I had. I pulled my wet jeans from my bloated legs. Got in the shower, and tried to see my own skin. My own fingers and toes. But all I could think about was my father’s blue lips and the hollow thud of my body hitting his chest. The breath that didn’t come back. Cold, dense nothing.

  I sat on the floor of the shower until the water ran cold, and I couldn’t even cry. I sat there and tried not to choke from the pain in my throat, from the pain in my chest and the horrible feeling of how truly alone I was, and how truly alone I’d probably always be, because the world is not made of people who find comfort in rules. Because college is not populated with kids who watched their father die on a dock in a thunderstorm. Because no one would ever understand me.

  That night was the last time I talked to Luca. He talked to me. Tried to apologize. Followed me from class. Left messages on my voicemail. But I did not talk. I had already felt the loss of him, and the only way I knew to keep that pain from happening again was to keep Luca away.

  I barely talked to anyone after that. No chatter beyond the necessary: classroom, costume shop, procurement of food. Even then, I kept it brief. When Nan called, I mostly listened and hoped she wouldn’t ask much of me.

  Then Eric, who had been the TA for media literacy the semester before, found me eating alone in the snack bar and asked if he could join me. “I wanted to ask you out after the last class, but I couldn’t quite work up the nerve,” he said with a sweet, sweet smile.

  Even though I knew there was nothing about him that didn�
��t have enough nerve, I chose to believe him. He was someone who colored completely in the lines, happy to adhere to the way things should be. He felt wonderfully safe. We would never be entangled in ways that made me ache or fear. We would stay above the surface together.

  One night, Eric and I were leaving Simeon’s restaurant after dinner. Eric took my hand and his fingers were so warm that I felt like the heat was traveling through me. Then there was Luca, getting off the bus, and he saw us. I leaned toward Eric, pretending I hadn’t seen Luca, that he didn’t even exist. I had compressed all that pain, the same way I’d stuffed my puffy coat in a grocery bag and thrown it away, ignoring the feathers that escaped.

  I knew I should have given respect to the duration and intensity of our relationship by saying words back at Luca, telling him why I was hurt/sad/destroyed/done. But I couldn’t. One day I loved him, and the next he felt like my enemy. Maybe he thought it was sex that drove us apart. Maybe it would have otherwise.

  On Fountain Day, when all the seniors jumped in the fountain in front of the theatre building, I stayed home. I was officially done with water. Saving Luca was the last time I swam.

  * * *

  Sex with Eric was never anything more than what it was. Nothing was transcended. It was parts and the feelings from those parts. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes it was just friction. Once we started trying to conceive, it was a task, and then a painful reminder.

  Sex with Luca was joy joy joy, until I woke up terrified.

  Luca was still fast asleep. Bark had wedged himself between us, his wet doggy nose tucked under my chin. I moved slowly, deliberately, to sneak away from them. Bark woke and watched me go, but stayed with Luca, stretching to take up the spot I’d left.

  In my room, I closed the door and sat in front of it, my nervous rabbit heart beating faster and faster. The smell of burning leaf mold. The way the air feels right before lightning. Cold skin. My bright blue bathing suit. The weight of wet down.

  I lay on the floor, pressing my cheek against the metal air vent. This is real, I thought, trying to keep my focus on the cold metal, the scratchy texture of the rug. I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to treat Luca this way. I wanted to be more than my panic. I feared I never would be. The rattle of the air conditioner. The eggshell texture of the paint on the walls. The gap under the door. The worn wooden legs of my dresser. This is real.

  Then I saw it: my dad’s watch, all the way in the back, stuck behind one of the dresser legs, hiding in dust bunnies. Missing since a few weeks after I moved in with Nan the first time.

  I stood up and grabbed my yardstick to push it out. Black with gold numbers. A brand called Raketa. Tiny Russian letters at the bottom of the face. My father was considered to be one of the leading authorities on Wassily Kandinsky. He’d gotten the watch when he went to Moscow to do research on Kandinsky’s early life. No one in American art history had access to those archives before the dissolution of the USSR, so he had the chance to uncover details no other art historian had seen. He was so proud of that watch.

  There were cracks in the leather, a few green mold spots on the underside of the band. I could restore it. I’d seen worse pieces in the costume shop and brought them back to life.

  I wrapped the band around my wrist. The worn-out hole was two notches bigger than the one that fit me. I had cried every night, for weeks, over the loss of his watch. Nan and I tore the house apart looking. I wasn’t sure if I believed in signs, but it felt good to think that maybe my father was telling me to be brave.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  I heard Luca and Bark scramble down the hall. When their feet hit the kitchen floor, I snuck to the bathroom to take a shower before show day prep took over.

  By the time I was out and dressed, Luca was lining up sound equipment on the dining room table, next to sticky notes with each mermaid’s name. I watched him from the hallway, his back turned to me. I loved his careful movements.

  “Shit,” he said quietly to himself, and then reached into his backpack. He rifled around and came up empty.

  “Hey. Do you need help?” I hoped maybe if I acted like everything was fine, it would be.

  He smiled at me. “Hey, you,” he said, and started to get up, maybe to kiss me. We heard Nan rush through the front door, and I turned away ever so slightly.

  “I ran out of condoms,” Luca said matter-of-factly. When what he’d said dawned on him, he blushed.

  The condoms, I knew from my work in the costume shop, were to protect the mic box from sweat. It was such a common use that it was easy to forget there was anything odd about it.

  “I can run to the store for you,” I said, politely ignoring his fluster, even though I was not relishing the idea of buying condoms in a town full of retirees manning registers.

  “Who’s running to the store?” Nan called as she walked in to join us.

  “Nothing, Nan,” I shouted. “It’s fine.”

  “Do you need something, Luca?” she asked.

  “Thanks, Nan,” Luca said. “I think it’s okay.”

  “I’ll be back in ten,” I said. Luca nodded.

  “What do you need? What’s going on?” Nan could never let anything drop. She always needed to know.

  “I just—The protective covers for the mic boxes,” Luca said. “I need a few more, and Katie said she’d run to the store for me.”

  “Where do you even get something like that?” Nan asked.

  “I’ve got it, Nan,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  She surveyed the stacks of equipment and picked up a condom packet. “Is this what you’re using?” she asked.

  Luca nodded.

  “Oh, I have condoms,” she said, putting the packet back on the table. “We’re all adults here. Let’s not be silly.”

  She left the room. Luca and I stood in silence.

  “I’m not going to look at you,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I appreciate that.”

  Nan came back with the largest box of condoms I’ve ever seen. “Here you go. Take as many as you want. No need to run to the store.”

  “Thank you,” Luca said in a very metered tone.

  “Thanks, Nan,” I said, trying hard to be polite and mature. She’d been so worried about my acceptance of her relationship with Isaac and I most certainly didn’t want to shame her.

  “Oh,” Luca said quietly, turning to me. “These aren’t the right kind.”

  I nodded.

  “Because of the ribs?” Nan asked.

  “I’m going to run out for a sec, Nan,” I said a little too loudly. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

  Nan looked hurt. Like her condoms weren’t good enough.

  Luca took a deep breath. “The lubrication—”

  “Oh!” Nan said. “Of course! I didn’t even think of that. What good is protecting it from sweat if it’s going to be covered in—”

  “Helloooo!” Bitsie called from the front door. She joined us in the dining room.

  “Luca is using condoms to protect the mic boxes,” Nan told her earnestly. “But mine won’t work because of the lube.”

  “Well, you learn something new every day,” Bitsie said, smiling. She understood the awkwardness and it delighted her.

  “I’m going to run to the store,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Bitsie said.

  “Helloooo!” Ruth called.

  “Okay, let’s go now,” I said, instead of arguing with Bitsie. I couldn’t handle running through this whole conversation again with Ruth.

  I mouthed, I’m sorry, to Luca as we exited. He smiled. There was more to the smile than the awkwardness. There was brightness. Knowing. He expected last night to mean something. We were supposed to move forward. And I wanted to. I wanted to. I didn’t know how.

  * * *

  “Well, it’s good she’s practicing safe sex,” Bitsie said as soon as we were in the car.

  I nodded.

  Bitsie laughed. />
  “I’m happy she’s happy,” I said. “And I’m totally pro . . . whatever. And I love Isaac . . .”

  “But you don’t want the details.”

  “I don’t!”

  “I think she’s had a bit of an awakening,” Bitsie said with a devilish smile.

  I put my hand over my right ear and started singing, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.”

  Bitsie grabbed my wrist, laughing. “I promise! I’ll stop!”

  “Your grandmother had sex at some point too.”

  “Yeah, but she probably didn’t enjoy it. My grandfather was an asshole.”

  “Ooh, I think that’s worse.”

  “It’s all awkward,” Bitsie said. “Amazing, isn’t it? We get so embarrassed about the human things we do.” She patted my shoulder. “So when are you going to tell Luca you’re in love with him?”

  I forced a laugh like she was talking crazy. “What? Where are you getting this?”

  “You kids are breaking my heart. I’ve never seen such longing looks.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying my best to sound lighthearted and quippy. I parked the car as quickly as possible so I could escape the conversation.

  In the pharmacy, Bitsie loudly asked the greeter, “Where do you keep the condoms?” and delighted in the checker’s discomfort as we paid for them. When he said, “Have a good day!” she lifted the bag and said, “Oh, I plan to!”

  But as soon as we got back to the car, she was on me about Luca again. “That kind of love is terrifying, isn’t it?” she said, as if there’d been no break in our conversation. “Like the world opened up and showed you another layer.”

  “Yeah. It is.” I didn’t start the car, fumbling with my keys. “I walked away from him once.”

  “I would have too,” Bitsie said, “if I’d met Bunny when I was nineteen. I wasn’t ready for that. But you’re getting a second chance.”

  “It’s still too much to feel.”

  Bitsie sighed. “You were such a lionhearted kid, and now you’re walking around trying to pretend you need to protect yourself with three layers of bubble wrap? You don’t. You can handle it.”