Learning to Swim

by Annie Cosby

  I made a noncommittal noise, trying to sound less interested than I was. But Ronan offered no further commentary.

  “What about you, dear?” Mrs. O’Leary said. She sniffed softly. “Cora. Cora.” She rolled the name around. “It is a strangely formal name for a young girl, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an old family name,” I explained a little defensively. When people would question my name (which was often) I instinctively felt they were criticizing it. And I was sure that presumptuous boy in the corner was using it to validate his assumptions about my family’s excessive pride. “It goes back several generations on my mom’s side.” I again waited in vain for him to offer some sarcastic comment.

  Nothing happened, but Mrs. O’Leary used the topic to springboard into a monologue on generations of faeries. I took the opportunity to sort out my complicated feelings about this difficult boy. He sure looked nice enough sitting there fixing rusty metal things. More than nice, actually. He was the definition of hot. In a way completely different than Owen Carlton. Owen knew he was hot. But Ronan acted like it was the last thing on his mind. He merely went about his work, occasionally looking up politely at Mrs. O’Leary to show the attention he was paying her.

  But I couldn’t get past the feeling that he looked at me with amusement, as if I was there solely to provide him with a few laughs.

  My mother’s dream kept coming true. Owen kept inviting me to spend time with him and his friends, and out of a lack of anything better to do, I always accepted. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, least of all myself, but I wasn’t so very against Owen’s presence anymore. Filthy rich and dressed to the nines or not, he was polite and sometimes even funny. I just wished it didn’t please my mother so much.

  He was always a gentleman, walking me home when it was late, and though he talked a bit too often of water polo, it was better conversation than anything Blondie or the bimbo could offer. All in all, he helped the weeks flutter away instead of dragging on like I’d expected them to.

  Having stopped going to the pier altogether in the mornings, I felt a pang of regret for losing my special spot. So it became custom for me to wander there at dusk. I’d stay until a little after dark, and wander back home when I was sure my mother would be asleep—passing out from the margaritas—and my father, if in town, would be in the process of passing out in front of the TV.

  One such night Princess came with me. I was sitting as far out on the pier as possible without sinking with the flimsy end and threw a tennis ball repeatedly onto the beach. Princess would run down the pier and find the ball in the sand before running back and dropping it at my feet. Then I’d throw it again and wait for her to come bounding back.

  Twenty minutes into the game, she found something in the sand that wasn’t her tennis ball. She dug at it for a minute before dislodging it and running to drop it at my feet. It was another recorder.

  I picked it up as Princess bounded back for the tennis ball. The recorder was wet and sandy, like the last one I’d found, and now covered in dog drool. This one was a dull bronze color. I wiped it on my t-shirt and, throwing caution to the wind, blew into it. It puffed sand and dirt out before making a loud off-pitch screech. Princess approached me hesitantly, her ears perked and dropped her ball at my feet.

  I wasn’t quick enough and the ball rolled straight off the wooden plank into the water. Princess and I both stared longingly at it, bobbing in the water, just over arm’s length away.

  “Sorry, girl,” I said. “It’s a goner.”

  Suddenly, a head popped out of the water.

  My lungs let loose. I screamed like I’d never screamed before.

  The head ducked back beneath the water.

  What are the odds one person can come across two dead bodies in the span of weeks? I calmed my lungs. What in the world was that? Princess was staring, her head slightly cocked, at the space where the head had disappeared.

  The shiny, brown head poked above water again, this time just the eyes. When it realized the loud noise had subsided, its nose appeared and nudged the tennis ball toward the pier. Then it ducked back beneath the water. It was a seal!

  I had never seen a seal outside the zoo before, but its round, brown head with the pointy nose and long whiskers were unmistakable.

  The seal once again poked its head hesitantly above the water—just its brown eyes visible. When it decided I was definitely done with the noise, its whole head appeared, and it nudged the ball again. It kept on until the ball was within my reach, then it looked right up at me.

  It had huge brown eyes, perfectly round. The moon was small yet tiny bits of light glinted in the seal’s eyes.

  I was too afraid to reach for the ball with the strange animal so close. As if in understanding, the seal slowly started to swim away. It stopped several times to turn around and look back, as though to check if I’d reached for the ball yet, before disappearing in the dark.

  I hesitated. I was sure it was still out there, watching us. I finally leaned over and, stretching as far as I could, snatched the ball as quickly as possible.

  Ball safely in hand, I looked all around us out at the dark water. How many were out there, just out of my sight?

  Seacht Deora

  Seven Tears

  One night Owen invited me to a party at the Ritz house. The Mr. and Mrs. were to be at the family’s year-round home in Virginia seeing an ill relative, and the youngest Ritz boy, a flighty, skinny thing of sixteen, was trying his very best to impress the older kids.

  I walked there with Owen, hand-in-hand, which was beginning to happen with more frequency, and Blondie and the bimbo met us on the way. I’d long since ceased feeling insecure when I saw them on the way to a social event. Blondie was in tight jeans and a tube top to show off her impeccable tan, and the bimbo was in a strapless dress tighter and shorter than any I’d seen before. Meanwhile I was in jeans and my one and only “nice” top—a frilly little pink number my mother had picked out when I was fifteen. But it was my hand Owen was holding. My confidence that couldn’t be shaken.

  Ritz Manor was absolutely glowing, the front door thrown open with giggling teenagers in various states of inebriation stumbling out. I had never known there to be so many teenagers in the area. But many were familiar. Those that were usually difficult to stomach were even more so after a few shots of Grey Goose.

  On the whole, I was doing fairly well dealing with the despised. Blondie disappeared in the arms of a redheaded boy and the bimbo trailed Benjamin Huston relentlessly as he obviously tried to lose her among the masses. Owen was quick to offer me anything I wanted, but I declined most, enjoying his attentions, but hoping to be able to escape the rowdy, headache-inducing mess fairly soon.

  I had wandered into the sitting room where there were huge bay windows looking down to the back of the house. The backyard sloped down gently, and from this vantage point, you could see all the way down to the sea. The in-ground pool took up a good half of the yard, huge islands with giant palm trees sprinkled throughout it. But it was the little shed just barely visible behind the pool house that I was looking for. There was no other structure so tiny or shabby on the premises—this had to be where Seamus O’Leary had kept shop all those years ago.

  When a boy I knew only as Sean walked by holding hands with a tan girl and declared that he was “going upstairs to get some,” I made my disgusted exit. Owen followed me outside to the front yard where someone was attempting to climb to the top of the largest of the Ritz statues.

  “Don’t go,” Owen pleaded with me, as we walked down the front walk.

  “I’m really tired,” I said. I smiled at him, wanting him to know it wasn’t him I couldn’t stand—just his friends.

  “I swear it’ll get better,” he promised. “Once they start passing out, it quiets down.”

  I laughed, a smart retort on my tongue, but before I knew it, my tongue was otherwise employed. It wasn’t the most romantic of scenes, and the guy on top of the bronze Napoleon made lewd
, albeit slurred, comments, but I was too shocked to care.

  He kissed me softly at first, waiting for my approval, and when he found it, he slid his arms around my waist and I was too turned around to know exactly what to do with my hands, which lay limply on his arms.

  He finally pulled away (to my disappointment, I will admit) and looked at me beseechingly. “Come back inside.” He smiled, and I smiled. Then he took my hand, and I was quite at a loss to do any thinking for myself.

  The fun continued on the couch in Mr. Ritz’s library—for how long, I don’t know—until the bimbo interrupted.

  “Cora!” she shrieked. “C’mere, I need you!”

  “What is it?” I asked, wrenching my mouth away from Owen’s quite against my own will. Her hair and clothes were disheveled and she looked positively terrified, not to mention she was slurring something awful.

  “Josie’s barfing, and I d-d-dunno whata do!”

  I groaned and made to get up, but Owen held me tight. “She’ll be fine,” he said.

  “No-no-no, Marshall Ritz said she’s gotta go outside ‘cause ‘cause the bathroom’s clean,” the bimbo said.

  I stood up, but Owen held onto my arm. “Stay,” he said.

  “I’m just going to make sure she’s okay,” I insisted.

  “Cora—”

  “She could be really sick.” And as I followed the bimbo upstairs, I thought I saw a passing look of anger on Owen’s face. We went to the master bathroom where Blondie was curled on the floor, quite unconscious. Luckily she woke up when we came in and I did my best to clean the bathroom—and her—to Marshall Ritz’s satisfaction, all the while soothing the bimbo’s worries that she would lose her dinner, too.

  When Blondie and the bimbo were cleaned up, mentally and physically, they both crawled into the master bed where they were quite on the way to falling asleep as I set a small waste can from the bathroom by the bed and went downstairs. The library looked just as I had left it—double doors flung open with various couples strewn about couches and on the floor. But one thing was amiss. Owen wasn’t alone and he sure as hell wasn’t talking to the girl he had pinned between him and the baby grand piano.

  I left the house as fast as I could without bringing attention to myself and willing the tears not to come. Even as I ran home down the boardwalk, I felt foolish as my eyes watered. It wasn’t as though he was my boyfriend, and it wasn’t as though he’d ever even declared feelings for me. But God, it hurt all the same.

  He’d held my hand. He’d kissed me! It wasn’t my first kiss, but it was definitely the first that hadn’t included Spin the Bottle.

  Princess bounded down the back steps to meet me, but I stopped short. The Pink Palace’s dining room lights were on and I could hear laughter inside. Of course Oyster Beach’s finest adults would be wining and dining while its finest youth poisoned themselves just down the way.

  Apparently these people never grew up!

  I turned on my heel and ran to the only place I could guarantee would be empty—my pier. Princess trotted loyally at my heels.

  As expected, the pier was quite deserted. The waves were extremely choppy, a storm in the forecast, and the end of the pier wobbled a little more than usual. I plopped down, but couldn’t bring myself to let the tears fall freely. What a pathetic thing to cry about. I laid on my stomach and hung my head over the edge of the splintery wood, my hands under my neck, the uncomfortable tears falling warm down my cheeks and dripping into the cold waves below as I tried desperately to stifle them.

  One. Two. The tears made tiny circles before being swallowed by a wave. The warm tears and cold, salty spray mixed to make my face feel clammy. My dad always said crying was a waste of energy. Three. I felt like crying just to spite him! But as a consequence of being raised by such a father, crying made me feel vulnerable and childish, two things both my parents fervently discouraged. Four. Sniffing and sobbing I cursed everything that came to mind. The Ritzes, my parents, Rosie, Western University, St. Bernard’s damned bribable board members. But my thoughts stayed carefully far from Owen Carlton. To let him cross my mind while I cried would be to admit that a boy, a boy my mind had warned me against while my hormones ran wild, had gotten the better of me. Five. But he had gotten the better of me. I had been convinced—I who had always considered myself above any dependence on boys—I had been easily convinced that he liked me. He had never wanted me—any girl would do. I knew that. And somehow he had wheedled his way through my defenses. The teardrops made fat, temporary circles before being devoured by the growing unrest of the ocean. Six. Right then, on the pier, all I could feel was alone. I didn’t ever feel alone—I was independent—independent girls didn’t feel alone. That’s what I told myself. But somewhere along the way Owen Carlton had managed to create in me a small hole where I wanted to be wanted. Seven.

  A sudden splash ripped me out of my reverie and the series of inhuman squeals and barks that followed sent my heart thumping. If a dog could cry for help it would sound like that—

  “Princess!”

  I ran to the end of the pier, frantically reaching, grabbing at the terrified face of my sweet, sweet, innocent dog. I reached and reached, as far out as I could. Just a few feet farther Princess flailed and bobbed, piercing the night with her short, moaning howls.

  Before I could form a rational thought or feel anything other than pure terror, there was a loud thumping on the pier behind me and another, more deliberate splash that produced a figure next to Princess. I fell to my knees and watched breathlessly as he scooped Princess up into his arms and dispatched her on the pier next to me.

  Princess got up and commenced a furious shaking of her wet fur, as I hugged and kissed her, surprised to be crying for reasons quite unrelated to Owen Carlton now.

  Ronan pulled himself out of the angry water onto the edge of the pier, where he sat breathing heavily and completely soaked. The wobbly pier shook beneath us in the excitement. It was probably the most weight it had held in decades.

  “What’s a dog doing on the goddamn jetty?” Ronan was fully dressed, but his t-shirt was soaked and plastered to his chest now, his khakis dark and dripping. All he’d deposited before jumping in were his tennis shoes, which sat tauntingly dry beside him.

  “What did you do?” I said softly to Princess. “You know you can’t swim! What were you thinking?” She rubbed her head against my dry shirt. She hated when her ears got wet! I held her close to me and hazarded glances at Ronan, knowing that thanks were in order but not knowing quite how to go about it.

  “Thank you,” I finally said, quietly, slowly. It was sincere, but thanks so frequently have the tendency to sound flippant. So I said it one more time for good measure.

  He was silent and didn’t even acknowledge I’d spoken. After a few more moments of staring out at the ocean in a Mrs. O’Leary fashion, he finally said, “Why didn’t you save her?”

  When I didn’t answer, he looked at me. His hair was messed up, dripping over his forehead but his brown eyes were oddly piercing. “Are you so used to everyone doing everything for you that you wouldn’t even save your own dog?”

  My mouth was empty, but I was crying for too many reasons now. I wanted to appear calm and proud and look him square in the eyes. Instead my shoulders crumpled, and I looked down at Princess.

  He grabbed his shoes and walked away.

  Ainm Ronan

  Ronan’s Name

  I didn’t tell my parents about the incident at the pier. It would lead to questions that would lead to the incident at the Ritzes’ which would lead to prodding about Owen.

  I dried Princess with a towel when we got home, and muttered a few acceptable noncommittal answers to my mother’s insufferable question about the party. (“No, all the other girls weren’t wearing dresses.”)

  “How did the baby get all wet?” I heard my dad ask as I climbed the stairs two at a time.

  Luckily, when I got up the next morning, he had already left for the airport.

 
I avoided Owen carefully in the days following, and I was confused to find I didn’t see Ronan around Mrs. O’Leary’s. I felt that thanks and further explanation were necessary, but I struggled to form the words in my head.

  I still went to Mrs. O’Leary’s daily, even more eagerly now that Owen was gone and she was my only source of entertainment. But Ronan was usually busy elsewhere, as she would tell me.

  One day near the end of June, I outlasted Mrs. O’Leary on the porch. It was the first time I’d stayed until sunset, and she declared her intention to go inside. After she locked up, I lingered on the porch, taking advantage of the view of the sunset the little porch afforded. It faced north, giving a split view of the ocean and the endless row of mansions, the sun settling quietly behind the big houses and throwing an orange glow over their impeccable white paint.

  Well, all but ours. The Pink Palace sat in a soft pinky-orange glow, taunting me.

  I was so absorbed in it, I didn’t hear Ronan come out of the garage. When I noticed him, he was standing in the grass, wiping his hands on a towel and watching me. Startled, I blushed.

  “Has Mrs. O’Leary already gone inside?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “She had a rough day today,” he said. “She asked me to get her jacket three times.”

  I nodded, debating whether it was okay to start a conversation with him given our past. I wanted to explain that embarrassing night on the pier, or as he called it, the jetty, but I couldn’t. So if he stayed away from that topic, then I could be civil.

  “What’s that about?” I asked. “She does that to me a lot.”

  He looked at me with squinted eyes, as if assessing whether or not I was trustworthy. But he finally looked resigned and said, “I don’t really know. She’s had a rough time since Mr. O’Leary died.”

  I nodded sympathetically, as if I could possibly know how that felt.