Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  We watched a mom and her toddler leaving the store. When the toddler got to the edge of the curb, she jumped, throwing her arms up in triumph as she stuck the landing. Her mom threw her arms in the air too, and they both cheered.

  Bitsie patted the dashboard. “Whoo, it’s hot in here! Let’s go bring that boy his condoms.”

  “I’m giving you that job,” I said, starting the car.

  Bitsie took the box out of the bag and read the back as we drove home. “In my day, a woman buying these . . .” She shook her head, grinning. “It was considered untoward.”

  “I think it’s still your day,” I said.

  “Huh.” She looked at me like she was thrown by the thought. Then she nodded. “Well, I am a mermaid.” Her phone chimed. “Ooh! Nannette says we should just go to the pool. They’re all there.”

  “I have to go get the costumes.”

  “She says they have them.”

  Everything was starting and I hadn’t had a moment to collect myself. I’m not sure what I would have gathered up in that moment, but the absence of it made me dizzy.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I dropped Bitsie at the front door to the community center.

  I parked the car. I sat there. Hands still on the steering wheel, willing myself to take the key from the ignition. Move my legs. I tried to think about what I needed to do. Get the ladies dressed. Check the seams. Make sure no one was losing any sequins. But I kept thinking of underwater. Of Nan and Bitsie underwater. I tried to remind myself this was a happy thing for them. I was proud of what they’d done. I was proud of the work I’d done. This was good. It was good. It was good. But I didn’t feel good. All I could think about was underwater and it hit my heart with a jolt. My stomach twisted. Sweat beaded on my upper lip. I took a deep breath. Another. Again.

  “You can do this,” I said out loud. “You can. Do this.” I pried myself from the car with a bargain. I’d go straight to the clubhouse. I wouldn’t even look at the water. I’d stay in our makeshift dressing room for emergency repairs. After the show, once I knew everyone was safe, I’d watch the footage, so I’d still get to see the performance.

  I kept my head down as I passed the gate to the pool, trying not to look at the water, but then I heard a scream.

  Over by the deep end, Mo chased Luca, pushing him in the pool. There were two huge projection screens set up at the far side. One feed came from a camera at the surface, the other from Danny filming underwater in a dive suit. On the screens, I saw Luca hit the water and go under. Bubbles. Arms paddling to bring himself back up. It felt so close. I saw him reach the surface and gasp for air. Nan was sitting next to Althea in a lounge chair at the shallow side, laughing.

  I tried to breathe harder, deeper, to calm myself, but I couldn’t get the air in. Each breath was more shallow. I felt the panic rise.

  “Ha,” Mo shouted. “That’s what you get!”

  Luca threw a beach ball at her head. “Bam! Got you!”

  She dove in and dunked him under. I held my breath until they both came up safely. And then I noticed Bark running along the far edge of the pool, watching them, leash trailing. He could so easily trip. I pictured his body, floating, limp, dappled fur waving in the water.

  “Why is he here?” I yelled to Nan. I called to Bark, but he was too fixated on Mo and Luca.

  “Oh, he’s fine, Kay,” Nan said. “He likes all the ladies.”

  “He could drown!”

  Mo climbed the ladder. As she got to the top, Luca pulled her back in. They were like kids, wound up in play, existing only in that moment. Bark howled.

  If I called to him again, he might jump into the pool instead of walking around. If I didn’t, he might anyway. My knees were wobbly. I worried I wouldn’t make it over to grab him. I gasped, out of air. Dread filled my body like a current.

  “Bark!” I yelled as my head swirled.

  “Oh, hey, Kay!” Luca called, waving.

  I didn’t want Luca to see me. Bark was too close to the edge. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I couldn’t stop thinking of the two gray hairs on my father’s chest. The dull thud when I heaved myself on his body. The silence that followed. Cold skin. Blue lips.

  It was eighty degrees. I was covered in goose bumps. I got closer to Bark. Almost there.

  “Kay!” Mo shouted once she’d climbed out again.

  I felt her hand on my back, and I thought it was there to steady me, but then the pressure grew and I realized what was happening. “No!” I screamed. “No!” and my voice sounded faraway, like it was someone else, somewhere else, so when I hit the water, it was a shock to feel the slap against my body, the sting in my nose. My leg scraped the side of the pool as I slipped below the surface.

  There was a splash. Loud. A churning current. Mo’s arm hooked under mine.

  I coughed as we resurfaced. Trying to rid myself of water.

  “Shit! I’m sorry! I forgot! I’m so sorry!” she yelled, dragging me toward the ladder.

  “I know how to swim!” I shouted, trying to shake her off me. “I know how to swim!”

  Bark jumped in the pool. I screamed, and twisted away from Mo, elbowing her in the chin as I freed myself from her grasp. I swam toward Bark, lungs still burning from the chlorine, arms aching. I threw him over my shoulder and tried to climb the ladder, but he wriggled around and his weight out of water was too much to carry that way. I kept falling back in the pool, trying again and again. Cold skin. Thunder rumbling. Dark water. Cold skin. That dull, dull thud. This time, I’d be fast enough. I’d be strong enough.

  “Bark knows how to swim,” Nan called to me. “I taught him. He’s fine, Kay.” Her words sounded muffled, like I was still underwater.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. “He’s not fine,” I screamed when I finally had enough air. “It’s not fine!” I inhaled water, again, coughing to get it up, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. I had to save Bark. I couldn’t let him go. He writhed in my arms.

  Finally, I boosted him high enough and he scrambled out of the pool on his own. He cried until I climbed out too. Collapsing at the edge, I couldn’t catch my breath. My head throbbed. Bark licked my face. I wrapped my arms around him, sobbing. Feeling his body against mine—breathing and alive—didn’t stop the feeling that everything was going wrong. My heart raced like I would still fail. Like I couldn’t save him.

  I heard Mo’s wet feet slap against the concrete, louder and louder. I wanted to run away. My father’s watch was still on my wrist. Water pooled under the glass. The second hand had stopped moving. “No,” I sobbed, trying to shake the water out.

  “I’m so sorry, Kay,” Mo said, resting her hand on my back. “I forgot. For a second. I forgot.”

  “It’s not okay,” I yelled, standing up to get away from her. “It’s not okay!”

  Bark cowered. His legs shook, water dripping on the concrete. I was making him worse. He was fine and I scared him. When he was with other people, he was okay. I was the one making him nervous. I looked around, searching for Althea, and saw myself. All of it—every last moment—had been broadcast on the big screens, for all the people at the community center to see. Everyone around the pool was staring. Beyond them, people on the golf course were standing at the fence, watching me lose it, larger than life.

  I grabbed Bark’s leash and trudged toward Althea with him in tow. “Oh, honey,” she said, “why don’t you sit down?”

  “I can’t.” I was crying so hard my words were only small squeaks. I handed Bark’s leash over to her, and walked away.

  Luca followed me to the parking lot. “Katie,” he said, reaching for me. I twisted from his grasp.

  “Don’t!” I yelled. “Don’t! It’s too hard. I can’t love you like that.”

  “Kay!” he called.

  “Don’t follow me,” I yelled without even looking back.

  I kept walking, past the parking lot, away from the community center. Down the street. Further and further from all of them. />
  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I needed to be alone. I couldn’t trust myself with the people I loved. In my head, with each step, I heard my words: “I can’t love you like that.” By the time I walked all the way to Mo’s house, I’d worn off the worst of the adrenaline, and it left me shaky and weak. I typed F-U-C-K into the keypad to let myself in. The garage looked empty without Morty. The workbench was cluttered with sketches of a giant squid that looked like a play structure, slides built into the tentacles.

  There was a six-pack of PBR in the fridge. I grabbed it and crawled under the workbench into the bomb shelter, pulling the pallet door shut behind me. The air felt dusty and scarce. I opened the first beer, drank it in gulps, pacing the tiny stretch of floor between the two cots. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t stand my own skin. I wanted the pulsing thump in my veins to stop. It felt like my life could only run on that rhythm, and it was offbeat from everyone else.

  My phone had been in my pocket when I fell in the pool, and the screen was hopelessly black. I sat on a cot and dropped my head in my hands, covering my eyes. Trying to breathe. I’d forgotten how normal people take in air, worried I might never remember. I couldn’t even cry. My shorts were still soggy, and even though it wasn’t cold in Mo’s garage, I kept shivering. I wrapped one of the army blankets around my shoulders, but it smelled like mildew, and the wool scratched my skin. I threw the blanket on the other cot and drank another beer. And then another. I drank until my fingers felt numb and my breathing became less of an effort. The details of what had happened at the pool were starting to feel far away, like they were at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I couldn’t remember what I’d said, if everything I’d thought had come out of my mouth, if words came out without any thought. What was still clear was the memory of the weight of my wet dog on my shoulder and handing his leash to Althea. I’d failed Bark most of all.

  Lying on the cot, staring at the ceiling, I noticed a box on the top shelf. Plain cardboard, because we thought that would draw less attention. Held shut with a collection of rubber bands running in both directions. We’d believed the effort of removing them would deter any adult from trying to open our treasure chest. As if anyone besides me and Mo even went in the bomb shelter anyway.

  I got up. The cot had a damp imprint of my butt, back, and hair, like I was made from disconnected parts. I climbed on one of the water drums, my brain struggling to find equilibrium. The drum wobbled under my feet. I stood on my tiptoes. As an adult, I was the same height as Mo at twelve; I could finally reach the box on my own.

  I wanted the box to be full of the kind of mementos that would push me toward being a whole new person. I’d open it and something in there would suddenly twist my mind into the right shape and the world would make sense. I climbed down with the box and rested it on the cot. The rubber bands were disintegrating and broke when I stretched them.

  It was just a box of junk. Some seashells, smooth stones, little green army men with plastic bag parachutes, the Barbie who’d suffered a buzz cut at our hands, a bunch of Atomic Fireballs, a pack of playing cards, some SpongeBob stickers, and a stack of Mo’s uncle’s old Spider-Man comics. No magic answer to be found.

  I sat on the cot, opened another beer, and tore the wrapper off an Atomic Fireball with my teeth. I couldn’t trust myself with the people I loved. All I did was fail them, and it was probably better if I stayed away. So instead of going back to the pool to apologize, I read Spider-Man comics and tried to dissolve the fireball in a mouthful of beer.

  * * *

  Two fireballs and three Spider-Mans later, I finished my last beer just as I heard Mo’s car in the driveway. Maybe she wouldn’t even find me. She probably came home for a snack or goggles or aspirin or sunscreen. I lay very still on the cot and wished I could turn the light off with my mind. I closed my eyes like maybe that would help me stay undiscovered. But she opened the garage door and went directly to the bomb shelter. I heard her moving the pallet door away. And then I felt her standing over me. I kept my eyes closed.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” Mo said. “The show’s about to start. We can still get there in time.”

  “I can’t.” I rolled on my side toward the wall. My bladder was full and my stomach felt empty.

  “Kay. I’m so sorry. I was wound-up like a puppy dog. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Yeah.” I opened my eyes and stared at the cinder block. I knew she hadn’t pushed me on purpose. She would have done the same thing to any of her lifeguard friends with no consequence. But I couldn’t find the warmth in my heart that belonged to her. I couldn’t feel much of anything, like I’d overspent my emotions.

  “Nan, Bitsie, they’re about to do something amazing, and you’re going to miss it?”

  “I can’t,” I said, my throat constricting. I picked at a glob of grout between the cinder blocks with my fingernail, trying to break it and leave a smooth edge. It wouldn’t budge. “Are their costumes okay?”

  “They’re perfect, Kay. They look incredible. I checked the hoses. All of them. Four times.”

  I nodded. All of me hurt. There was still water sloshing under the glass of my father’s watch.

  “Let me take you home at least. Before I go back.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said a little too loudly. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” Mo said, sighing. “At least go in my room and put on some dry clothes, okay?”

  After she left, I crawled out of the bomb shelter, ran inside to the bathroom, and peed for what seemed like an hour. In Mo’s bedroom, I found a wad of clothes that smelled pretty clean in a laundry basket at the foot of her bed. Her room hadn’t changed since we were kids either, but she’d been living in it this whole time. She still had a Bart Simpson poster hanging on the ceiling over her bed, and a giant stuffed snake wrapped around her headboard. I changed into a pair of powder blue Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt covered in a print of hibiscus flowers and vinyl records. It smelled like Tide and had been washed so many times it was soft as silk.

  Pops wasn’t a drinker, but I found a dusty old bottle of Drambuie in the living room hutch. I poured it in a coffee mug. It was sickly sweet and smelled like licorice, but it burned my throat enough to make me think it would do a good job of keeping me from sobering up. That was all I wanted, to not feel anything.

  I ate an entire box of Cheez-Its and watched a million episodes of Law & Order. I thought maybe Mo would come back after the mermaid show. That she’d check on me before going to the cocktail party at Nan’s house. But she didn’t.

  When the eleven o’clock news played on the TV, there was a clip from the show. The four mermaids, underwater, smiles on their faces, arms around each other, the sequins on their tails shimmering in the water. Nan and Bitsie’s students in their matching bathing caps, kicking their legs in unison behind them. A brilliant spectacle. When the segment was over, I turned off the TV and sat in the dark in Mo’s living room, wearing her enormous old man clothes. Finally, finally, the tears came, and all I wanted to do was find Bark.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I cut through yards to get to Althea’s house. My legs were not up for collaborating with my brain, and I tripped running through Lester’s lawn, sliding on my knees. I could smell the grass, the way I’d bruised it, and knew my legs would be stained with green.

  I knocked on Althea’s door and then remembered the doorbell and rang that too. I realized all the lights were out. Maybe she was still at Nan’s. Had she left Bark inside? Was there a way I could get to him?

  I had my hands cupped around my face at the entryway window, trying to see in, when Althea came to the door.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, tying the belt of her bathrobe in a bow.

  I nodded, feeling terrible for waking her up. I hadn’t even thought about how late it was. I didn’t know how long it had been from the end of the news until I actually got off the couch.

  “Don’t worry,”
she said. “Bark’s fine. We went for a walk, split a hamburger. I dropped him at Nannette’s. He’s been a happy boy.”

  “I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have—”

  “One of the things I learned with my girls is that sometimes you need to hit pause. Do you know how many times I dumped them at Marta’s? I’d call her from the end of my rope. And then I’d take myself out for ice cream, like I wasn’t a grown woman.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m so sorry. For everything. Before.” The haze of Drambuie was starting to wear off. I could feel the tears and the headache coming.

  “I know, honey. I never thought you weren’t.” Althea yawned. “I’ve got to get to bed.”

  I think she read the panic on my face. “Do you want to stay in Cara’s room? Nan’s probably got a crowd over there,” she said. “And maybe you need to sleep it off?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. My eyes welled up and I felt my drunkenness again, like a pendulum swinging back. Bark was safe and happy with Nan, and it was probably better if he didn’t see me this way, or maybe I was still being a coward because I didn’t want Nan to see me this way. I didn’t want to face her. Or Luca.

  “Sometimes,” Althea said, “it’s nice to have other people breathing in this house at night.”

  She made me drink a glass of water and take two aspirin before I went to bed. She even had an extra toothbrush. She said, “Sleep tight.”

  I soaked it up. Althea was the kind of mom I’d always wished I had. She knew how to set rules. How to cheer her kids on. How to stay.

  I climbed into Cara’s four-poster bed, under sheets covered in pink cabbage roses, and wished everything about me was different.

  * * *

  I woke to chatter in the kitchen. Nan’s company voice. The pillowcase smelled like lavender, a scent Nan hated because she said it smelled like “old ladies.” I sat up, my brain lurched in my head. Cabbage roses. Cara’s room. Althea’s house. I remembered. I remembered all of it. My eyes teared until the inner workings of my head settled into place again. The headache was manageable as long as I didn’t move.