Swimming for Sunlight

by Allie Larkin

  “We’re going to make the top together,” I said. “Sewing lessons.”

  “Thank you!” She hugged me. “I get to be a mermaid!”

  “Now,” Nan said to her, “you’ll have to come to class.”

  “I think you need to add a class for people who sleep until normal hours,” Althea said.

  Mo arrived, covered in soot, Luca’s friend Danny in tow. Danny was wearing Mo’s favorite sailboat shirt. He wasn’t as dirty as she was, but not exactly clean. He’d never gotten around to leaving after the mermaid show, and Mo seemed pretty happy about it. I don’t think Danny knew anything bad had happened between me and Luca. Whenever I saw him, he’d bring up things we could all do the next time Luca came to visit.

  “Where have you guys been?” I asked.

  “A chimney?” Nan asked.

  Danny laughed. “Something like that.”

  “I’ve got a new project,” Mo said. “I’ll show you later.”

  She handed me a wadded handkerchief. Inside was my father’s watch. Ticking.

  “I can’t believe you did this!” I said, strapping it to my wrist. She’d even polished the leather and sanded the corrosion off the buckle.

  “I told you I would,” she said, shrugging, like she was determined to keep the moment from getting sappy.

  We sat around the kitchen table and drank and talked, and ate terrible cookies, and I felt like I belonged on my own merits. Bark worked the room, trying to con food from our guests, succeeding a little too often.

  * * *

  Once the housewarming committee had filed out, I was thankful that my version of alone included Bark. The quiet was staggering.

  I didn’t have a bathing suit. I changed into running shorts and a t-shirt and walked out to the pool, Althea’s touchstone in hand. I rubbed the letters over and over again.

  “We’re doing this,” I said to Bark, standing at the edge of the pool, breathing deep to keep the anxiety from taking over my body. I dipped my toes in the water. Bark jumped in, swimming circles in front of me.

  I made it in up to my knees, and then went inside to dry Bark with the hair dryer and watch Golden Girls reruns.

  The next day I made it waist deep.

  The next, after work, I turned the pool lights on, and lay back in the water, floating, straining my eyes to see the stars.

  “I did it,” I said to the sky, tears running down the sides of my face into the water.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  “Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes,” Mo said as she drove. “Don’t look until I tell you.” The car swerved. I worried I might vomit.

  “Okay,” she said when she finally stopped the car.

  I opened my eyes. She clapped her hand over my face. “Don’t open yet!”

  “You said, ‘Okay!’ ”

  “I meant, ‘Okay, we’re here.’ Not ‘Okay, open your eyes.’ ”

  “Well, I didn’t know.”

  “Keep ’em closed. Stay put. I’ll come get you.”

  She helped me out of the car and put her hands on my shoulders to steer me. “Okay, step up.”

  I lifted my leg.

  “Not that high,” she said, laughing. “Like the normal height that anyone would ever step.”

  A few more steps and then the ground went from pavement to grass. “Can I open my eyes yet?”

  “No.”

  “Come on!”

  “Stand still.” She let go of me and I heard something scraping. Then her hands were back on my shoulders. We walked a few more feet.

  “Okay, step up.”

  I did, lifting a little less high than before. My foot caught on something and sent me hurtling forward, but Mo steadied me.

  “Higher,” she said, laughing. “Hysterical!”

  We took a few more steps.

  “Okay, sit down.”

  I reached behind me for a chair.

  “On the ground!” Mo said.

  “In movies this kind of thing is much quicker, and way more romantic.”

  “Yeah, well, I only like you as a friend,” she said, helping me find the ground.

  I stumbled.

  “Can you even move like a normal person?” She laughed. “Alright, lie down.”

  “Really?” Around me I felt dirt and pokey pieces of grass.

  “Lie down.”

  So I did. And she did. Her arm against mine.

  “Okay,” she said. “Look!”

  I opened my eyes. All I saw was blue sky, the sun streaming down.

  “We’re under the sea!” she shouted.

  “What?” I sat up.

  There was a huge metal circle surrounding us, and a construction fence beyond that. We were at the marine park, where Morty lived.

  “Ready to work?” she asked, pulling a pair of gloves from the pocket of her overalls and tossing them in my lap.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “A mermaid tank,” she said, standing up.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Jen Gonzalez from the park board came to the mermaid show. She’s madly in love with Morty. So I had lunch with her and pitched this.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “The only thing—I hope Nan isn’t mad . . . I told her Nan and Bitsie would teach two mermaid classes a week,” she said, picking at a scab on her elbow. “I want to surprise them with the tank, so I didn’t clear it with them first. It’s an adult class and then one with kids. And then some shows.” Mo wrinkled her forehead. “Do you think they’ll do it?”

  “Absolutely, they will,” I said. A few nights earlier, Nan, Bitsie, and I had a martooni-fueled brainstorming session about starting a business called The Mermaid Experience, where clients could have a costume custom-made and learn some moves from the pros. By the end of the evening, Bitsie and Nan had all but planned an empire.

  “I’m making a rock formation in the shop,” Mo said, drawing a picture of it in the dirt with a twig. “Kind of like the tunnel you’d see in an aquarium. So it’s going to look like a great big fish tank, and we’re all so small.”

  “What will you do for the glass?” I asked, taking the twig from her. I drew a mermaid swimming through the tunnel.

  “Danny has a friend who does plexiglass art. Like thick installation pieces. So he’ll get co-credit, and half the grant. Totally worth it. I don’t know shit about plexiglass.”

  I could picture all of it. I drew air bubbles rising from the mermaid’s mouth.

  Mo drew a face in one of my bubbles with her finger. “Luca helped me.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to keep my feelings off my face.

  “He sent me footage of the documentary so I could show it to Jen. She thinks when his film comes out it will be fantastic for tourism.” Mo shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand.

  I drew another mermaid.

  “You’ll help me?” she asked. “Because I’ve totally overpromised on this.”

  “Yeah,” I said, leaning against her. “I’ll help you.”

  I knew she was already sure I would help when she asked. I hoped when we were seventy-five, we would still have crazy projects to work on together. Our own mermaid show, in whatever form it might take.

  I studied her sun-bleached hair and peeling, sunburned nose, the way her eyes squinted in the late afternoon light. I wanted to cup her face in my hands and tell her I was going to love her forever, the way Nan loved Bitsie. I was going to be the person who showed up for her, because friendship is a love story too. There were so many things I couldn’t figure out how to commit to yet, but I could commit to Mo. I could show up for Mo for the rest of my life. I could have faith in myself about that.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” Mo said, crossing her eyes at me.

  “Because I think you’re amazing.”

  “Good,” she said, blushing. “Can you help me bring that beam over to lock into this one?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I�
�d managed to smuggle the quilt from Bunny’s room to the cottage. A week after the move, in the wee hours of the morning, Bark asleep on the floor next to me, I finished sewing the last bit of double-fold binding around the edge.

  When the orange glow from the coming sunrise started to show at the horizon, I folded up the quilt and tied it with a ribbon of extra binding.

  “Hey, Barky,” I whispered, and watched his ears twitch. His eyes opened and drifted shut again. “Do you want to go for a walk?” His eyes snapped open. He jumped to his feet, tail wagging. Then he sat to say yes.

  We walked to Bitsie’s, the quilt under my right arm, Bark’s leash tight in my left hand. I used my key to open the door and left the quilt in the foyer without even setting foot inside so our footsteps wouldn’t wake her up.

  As soon as we made it back to the sidewalk, I heard the door open.

  “Are you kidding me?” Bitsie called. “Get in here!”

  Bark and I jogged up the path to her house.

  Bitsie hugged me, kissed both my cheeks, and then my forehead. “You can’t leave me something like this and walk away. It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten! I want to look at it with you.”

  She spread the quilt out on the living room floor. “It’s like our whole life together,” she said, crying, but smiling too.

  I’d alternated rows of large blocks with strips of smaller ones so I could get pieces of all the important fabrics in, even when I only had tiny scraps. It was colorful and chaotic. A piece of the red-flowered clown costume Bitsie wore to the NICU on Halloween, right next to a swatch of Bunny’s favorite yellow tablecloth. Green plaid salvaged from the Christmas tree skirt Bitsie accidentally set on fire when she knocked over Bunny’s Swedish candle chimes. There was a square of leftover fabric from the curtains Bunny was making when she died, and one from the white skirt she wore to the courthouse when she and Bitsie made their marriage legal. There was fabric from the kaftan she always wore that Bitsie hated, and from the kaftan she made Bitsie for her birthday as a joke.

  “I don’t even know how to thank you, kid,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I’ve got coffee. You want coffee?”

  * * *

  We brought our mugs out to the front step to watch the sun rise. Bitsie had already watered the roses, droplets still falling from the leaves. Bark rolled around on the lawn. Everything felt quiet and clean, like we were above the day, not in it yet.

  “I was rooting for Luca,” Bitsie said out of nowhere. “Not that it’s any of my business. But you two seem to find nourishment in being near each other. That’s how I felt around Bunny.” She shook her head. “Maybe I’m projecting.”

  “I think it might be better to start fresh,” I said, willing myself to believe it.

  “What are you scared of?”

  Bark rubbed his chin into the grass, butt high in the air. We laughed.

  I hoped Bitsie would move on to a new topic, but she said, “Huh? What is it?”

  “Losing the people I love,” I said. The sky was broadly orange now. Bunny’s roses looked like they were glowing.

  “The secret isn’t to love them less,” Bitsie said. “You’re going to lose most of us. Eventually. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it. That’s what happens. But wouldn’t you rather spend that time together?”

  Her honesty slowed the frantic feeling in my chest.

  “Love is always a brave act, kiddo.” She cupped her hands around her mug.

  “I don’t want to make Luca’s life harder—”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I think so.”

  “So love him.”

  “It’s more complicated than—”

  “You’re trying to make permanent decisions when nothing is permanent. Once you start to see the years on someone you love, the thing you fear most is not loving them hard enough. If love goes well, we don’t decide when we say goodbye, it’s something that happens to us. So the best you can do is love the crap out of the people you love.” Bitsie squeezed my arm with her freckled hand. “You’re an old soul anyway. Love like an old person.”

  She raised her mug and blew into it. “Right now, we have coffee. I can smell Bunny’s roses, and I get to share my thoughts with you, and hear your thoughts. I love you, and I know you love me. Simple, right? That is all this moment has to be.”

  I felt my heartbeat quicken. “I have a hard time with good moments,” I said. “I catch myself changing songs on the radio when I’m listening to one I like. What is that? ‘Oh, I like this, let me get rid of it.’ I do it with everything.” I tapped my feet on the ground. “I feel like that now, that I should flee. Like I’m not supposed to enjoy things or let people be nice to me.”

  “Your signals got crossed, Kay,” she said, as if it was something she’d known for a long time. “That day when you were swimming with your dad . . . That was a good day, right?”

  I remembered raspberry jam and butter on whole wheat toast for breakfast, the jam dripping on my fingers in globs. I loved my blue bathing suit, and we had new red and purple beach towels that were soft like velour. I’d read three chapters of my Babysitters Club book before I’d even gotten out of bed. And when I started racing my dad in the water, I thought I was winning. My heart was full. Maybe it did make me nervous about having good things. Maybe I wanted to stop them before the bad came.

  “The day Bunny died, we’d had the best . . . relations,” Bitsie said, smiling. “Bunny made French toast and good coffee. Before I went out, she read me a Mary Oliver poem she’d read the night before and couldn’t stop thinking about. There’s no foreshadowing in real life. We had thousands of mornings like that.”

  Bark flopped over in the grass again, belly to the sky, head back, legs flailing, like it was pure ecstasy.

  “You can’t stop enjoying the good stuff because life is random,” Bitsie said. “I’m seventy-five years old. I am going to die. Hopefully, very long before you. You’ll lose me, and it’ll be sad, because I’m a lovely human being. But don’t you love this moment? We don’t get this moment if all we think about is how I’m going to die. We have to live in it to keep it good.”

  “But how do I do that?” I said, because in my head, I was already trying to save Bitsie from every scenario that could be her end.

  “Maybe we need to see the bad things as a passage, not a failure. I couldn’t have saved Bunny even if I had been there when it happened. But I loved her well. She had a wonderful morning. That’s the comfort we get in our losses. It’s the only part we can plan for.” Bitsie took a sip of her coffee. “I know being okay is work, and there’s chemical parts and physical parts and it might be a long fight. But it’s a fight for something worth it, right? Look at that big colorful life Bunny and I had!”

  She pointed toward the house, and I had a flashing image of the quilt I could make myself one day, with snippets of chambray from the dresses I’d sewed, the pink sheets Nan bought for my room when I moved in, a panel of sparkling paillettes, a Hawaiian shirt I’d steal from Mo, swatches of Bark’s blanket, and maybe, maybe some squares from Luca’s faded blue jeans and his favorite flannel shirt.

  Bitsie’s eyes gleamed and she pushed a little further. “Don’t you want Luca to know how loved he is? What else are you doing with your time?”

  I smiled. “So I’m supposed to call him and be like, ‘Hey, in case you die today, I want you to know I love you?’ ”

  “It’s as romantic as anything else, if you think about it,” she said, laughing.

  “That’s terrible advice.” I grinned and reached out to squeeze her hand.

  “Sometimes I hit. Sometimes I miss.”

  I laughed.

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  She squeezed my hand back. “You always were a smart-ass.”

  * * *

  When Bark and I left Bitsie’s, we walked to Nan’s. She was outside watering the crown of thorns.

  “Did y
ou come over for breakfast?” she asked, and her voice was hopeful.

  “Sure,” I said, walking up the driveway.

  She leaned over to scratch behind Bark’s ear, and then put her arm around my shoulder. “I’m making omelets. But with chickpea flour instead of eggs.”

  I groaned.

  “Oh, hush. It’s better than you having to cook, right?”

  “It’s not better than cereal,” I said, laughing.

  Nan laughed too. “Try it at least. Two bites.”

  Inside, Isaac whistled as he scooped coffee into the percolator. He smiled when he saw me and whistled a little louder. I think it was a riff from a Frank Ocean song.

  The sun was over the horizon now. Pink-bellied clouds taking over the sky. The patio doors were open. Bark ran outside to pee on his favorite canistropsis.

  * * *

  When I got home, I went on Facebook.

  Luca’s profile picture was one I’d taken. He was wearing a gray flannel shirt that was threadbare at the elbows, holding the boom mic over his head, laughing so hard at one of Bitsie’s jokes that he was blurry with movement.

  His cover photo was a picture Mo took two days before the mermaid show. Me, Nan, Luca, and Bitsie in a row, arms linked, walking like The Monkees across Bitsie’s lawn.

  I sent him a message: There’s more to shoot. Come back.

  EPILOGUE

  Isaac cut his hours so he could spend more time with Nan. He was training me to take over. He came in mornings, while Nan had swim class, and left to spend afternoons with her. We’d been working out the details. My ideas were bigger than my fears.

  Marta hired me to create her granddaughter’s wedding dress from scratch, and I was at the shop early on Sunday to put in time on the beadwork.

  The doorbell rang. Bark ran to the front of the shop, growling. “Hey, bud,” I said, following behind him. “That’s not good for business!” I pointed to the CLOSED sign, but then I looked up. It was Luca.

  I opened the door.

  Bark wagged his tail.

  “Hey,” I said, moving aside to let Luca in. He’d cut his hair. It was wispy around his face.