by Gin Phillips
“As a collection of stories,” he said after a few seconds, leaving a pause between each word. “Powerful stories that might be based on real people and real events. Stories you can interpret as you like. You can find wisdom in them, but I don’t believe they actually happened.”
I had no frame of reference for what he was saying. This was not a debate about wine versus grape juice. This was unfathomable. “You don’t believe it happened like it’s written?”
His voice stayed obnoxiously gentle. “I don’t.”
It was an absurd conversation to be having standing in the front yard, cars rumbling past. My hands were stuffed with mail and his hands were stuffed with lights, and we both had things to do.
“I’ve never once seen you in your pool,” I said. “Can you even swim?”
His eyebrows jerked. “Can I swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, I can swim. Of course I can swim. I’m a grown man.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
“I’m definitely grown. And a man.”
“My mother is grown, and she can’t swim,” I said. “Adults do not all know how to swim.”
“Well, this one does.”
“I still don’t believe you,” I said, picking up steam. “No one is ever in that pool.”
He looked at me and I could see his gears turning. He was in a patch of sun, and I’d never noticed that his eyes were blue.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s fix that. The weather’s getting warm enough—come over and swim tonight. Bring your mom.”
“My mom doesn’t like the water,” I said.
He snaked his wrist through the tangle of lights until they were looped over his elbow. With his free hand he picked at one strand, loosening the knots slightly.
“Then come over by yourself,” he said.
“Tonight?”
He nodded. “I’ll prove that I know how to swim.”
Eventually—very soon, actually—I would look back at this moment and try to decipher myself. While I wasn’t deaf to the voice that whispered Be careful, I thought it was my mother’s voice. I was still flush with the confidence of earrings, and that voice did not make the idea less appealing.
He was my neighbor. I had once spent three consecutive Thursdays—at Mom’s insistence—trying to learn knitting from Mrs. Hightower down the street, and I had carried casseroles to plenty of other neighbors and navigated the hallways of their houses by myself. I would be swimming right next to my own backyard, even though this was technically a man inviting me to spend time with him alone. No, it was not even that. He had invited my mother, too.
He was my neighbor.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, jarring loose one loop of lights so that it fell to his knees. “Come over after dinner. I’ll be here. And now I have some lights to hang.”
He nodded at me, squinting in the sun so that the blue of his eyes completely vanished. In two fast steps, he’d disappeared back inside his house, and I wondered why he’d come outside in the first place when the pool was in the backyard.
I made my way back up the driveway, picking a handful of spider lilies on my way. By the time Mom came home, I’d put them in a plastic Hamburglar cup in the middle of the kitchen table, and I was labeling a map of World War II battle sites for U.S. History class.
“I like the lilies,” Mom said, shrugging out of her sweater and untucking her tank top. “We have a vase somewhere.”
“We do? Where?”
“Well, that’s a good question. Maybe in the garage.”
She reached for my ice water and took a long swallow. The neck of her blouse was damp.
“I think I’ll just leave them in the cup,” I said. “I ran into Mr. Cleary when I was getting the mail—it’s in the rocking chair—and he told me we could use his pool. Which would be cool.”
“Really? When?”
“Tonight,” I said. “He’s got his son for the night, and they’re going out to ShowBiz or somewhere for dinner, and they won’t be back until later. He said you and I could come enjoy the pool—weird, huh, that it finally occurred to him to offer after all this time?”
Once I had been surprised by how easy it was to lie. Now I knew it was nothing but acting. You caught hold of the rhythm, and after a sentence or two it didn’t even feel untrue.
Mom opened the refrigerator, stared inside, and then closed it again. I got a glimpse of a dish of baked beans, uncovered, rippled like old asphalt.
“You know I’m not going in that pool,” she said.
“I figured.”
“You’re sure he won’t be home? He definitely doesn’t mind?”
“Yep.”
She opened the freezer now, contemplating its innards. She hadn’t even looked at me since I’d mentioned the pool, and it occurred to me that all these recent nights with me tucked away safely in my bedroom had probably left her feeling very secure.
“You should stay out of the deep end,” she said, lifting a box of broccoli. “You could get a cramp, and no one would be around. But if you’re sure you’re all right by yourself, then I suppose for just an hour or so—”
“Thanks,” I said.
II.
That night I left Mom napping on the sofa, and I hopped across the cobblestones and let myself through our gate. I looked into Mr. Cleary’s yard, and he’d done what he said. The Christmas lights were hung along the brick wall of his house—duct tape?—right above the row of flower pots that had nothing but dirt in them. The lights looped from his back door to the last set of shutters, and they flashed blue, red, and green across the surface of the pool.
The two deck chairs on the patio were empty. The door by the patio was dark. I stood there in my spaghetti-strap sundress, which completely covered me from my chest to my ankles, and it wasn’t the right outfit for climbing over a fence. Aside from that, it seemed rude to start swimming without saying hello, so I didn’t have much choice other than to go around to the front door.
The driveway was dark enough that I couldn’t see where my flip-flops were landing. I passed through a square of light under our kitchen window, and a moth brushed against my face. When I reached Mr. Cleary’s door, I took a breath and knocked.
“It’s unlocked,” he called.
I barely gave the door a push, and it swung open. I caught it before it slammed against the wall, and then I was standing in a room that might have been a dining room or a living room. It had a sofa, a long table with chairs, and a bookshelf. Next to me, a floor lamp cast a weak kind of glow.
“I’m in the den,” Mr. Cleary called.
I followed his voice, passing down a hallway and through a kitchen, and all of it was dark, too. A half wall separated the kitchen from the den, where the only light was one lamp, pleated like a fan, that spotlighted Mr. Cleary. He sat at one end of a plaid couch, and he had stacks of paper around him and a notepad in his lap. He held a pen in one hand and a juice glass in the other hand. His feet were propped on a coffee table that was empty except for an ashtray with two ceramic alligators biting each other’s tails.
The house smelled like smoke, but only a little.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
It seemed strange to call him Grant, and yet he’d told me not to call him Mr. Cleary. So I didn’t call him anything. I only stood there as he sipped his drink. It was gold when it caught the light, pretty and alcoholic.
“You want something to drink?” he asked, and he crossed one leg over the other. He was in shorts, and his shirt was unbuttoned—only two buttons, nothing immodest, but the bit of chest hair bothered me. The darkness bothered me and the way his thighs were stretched apart bothered me, and the offer of a drink bothered me more. I took a step backward, my foot nearly catching in my long dress.
“I hav
e some iced tea,” he said. “It might be kind of old. I have orange juice. My son loves orange juice, but no pulp. He hates pulp. Do you have any strong feelings about pulp, pro or con?”
He set his drink on the rounded arm of the couch, then he grabbed for it as it nearly toppled. He grinned, sheepish, and he looked again like a man who didn’t know how to work a garden hose. I almost laughed. I was an idiot, imagining I was in the middle of some HBO show.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know I was here. I thought maybe I’d try the pool now?”
“Your mom was a definite no?”
“She’s asleep on the couch already,” I said.
“Then go ahead,” he said, giving his pen a twirl. “I’m going to finish up a few notes first. The water’s a little chilly, but you’ll get used to it.”
“How chilly?” I asked, half turning, scoping out the pool through the glass of the kitchen door.
“Bracing,” he said.
The water looked tropical with the sparkle of lights and the shadows of the trees. When I tugged at the door, it didn’t open.
“Pull harder,” Mr. Cleary said.
I did. The door scraped my toes when I jerked it open. As I closed it behind me, Mr. Cleary was drawing lines on his notepad, either underlining or crossing something out.
I kicked off my sandals and set them in one of the patio chairs. The concrete was rough against my feet, and I thought I smelled magnolia. It only lasted as long as one stroke of the breeze. I glanced back through the windows, where I could see Mr. Cleary still on the couch, and it was not a bad thing to be alone. There was something about the light and the darkness. The sky was star speckled, and the moon was thin and sharp, like a Russian weapon. The Christmas bulbs and the reflections on the pool lit up the space around me, but beyond that everything was dark shapes and flutterings. I could see the outline of my house, the kitchen window still lit up—but it was only another shadow.
I could be anywhere.
I walked around the edge of the pool, prolonging. I dipped one foot in and, yes, bracing was one word for it. It was like ice. I looked up at the stars again, and I liked the image of me swimming under them, kicking from one end of the pool to the other, Christmas blinking on my skin.
The temperature didn’t matter. I’d get used to it.
I reached for the bottom of my sundress, hiking it up, and as my elbows caught in fabric, the porch light came on. I pulled free of my dress just as Mr. Cleary stepped through the door.
He stood there under the eave of the house, the glow of the porch light brightening his feet and legs but not his face. I folded my dress, and I could tell he was watching. We were separated by the pool, and my bathing suit was a one-piece—all my bathing suits were one-pieces—but still here I was half naked with a grown man who was clothed, even though he’d said he was going to swim, and I wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than having him in his bathing suit.
He kept watching, only watching, and I still couldn’t see his face. I didn’t want to walk over to the patio chairs, which would take me close to him, so I dropped my dress onto the concrete. I dropped myself to the concrete, too, scooting to the edge of the deep end and folding my legs up to my chest.
“Did you finish your work?” I asked.
“I did.”
“Are you going to swim?”
“I need to get my suit,” he said, but he didn’t move.
You knew I was coming, I thought. You had plenty of time to put on your suit.
“It’s nice to have someone use the pool,” he said, standing there, faceless and unmoving.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“I should have invited you over before now.”
I’d only have to scream, I told myself. My mother is about fifty steps away, and she could at least call the police.
Mr. Cleary took a step toward the pool, and he looked more human in motion. He lowered himself into one of the patio chairs, legs stretched out in front of him. I could see him better.
“Is it too cold for you?” he asked.
“No,” I said, as I eased my legs into the pool. My feet went slightly numb. My arms broke out in chill bumps.
“I wanted to finish up work before you got here,” he said, flexing his feet. “And swim trunks are not comfortable in terms of sitting for long periods of time. Now, honestly, I’m so damn tired that the thought of changing into my suit is exhausting. Maybe I’ll just jump in like this, huh? That would wake me up.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you sure it’s not too cold?” he asked. “You don’t have to swim, you know. It’s fine if you want to go home and come back some other time.”
He yawned, stretched, and let his arms drop, hands skimming the concrete.
I felt tired, too, from ricocheting back and forth between fear and comfort. Or, no, between fear and embarrassment. Because just as I decided that I shouldn’t trust this man—just as I decided that I shouldn’t jump in the pool because he could trap me there more easily than if I had space to run—just as I was planning escape routes, I’d look at his face and feel sure that I was imagining things.
“I’m fine,” I said. “But if you want to go to sleep, I can leave you—”
“No,” he said. “Although I’ll admit that I’m not sure I’ll join you. Even though you’ll accuse me of not knowing how to swim. You may have to take my word for it.”
“That sounds like what someone would say who doesn’t know how to swim,” I said.
“Hasn’t your mother ever taught you that you should flatter men’s egos?”
“Yes,” I said.
He did not want me to flatter his ego. I knew that much. If I hadn’t been rude to him that first time in the driveway, he would never have invited me to swim in his pool.
The water was feeling warmer. My chill bumps had settled down, and I slid a little farther until the water came to the middle of my thighs. He stood up and moved to the opposite side of the deep end, sitting on the concrete and dangling his feet in the water.
“Shit,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me it was too cold?”
He didn’t apologize for cursing. He didn’t move his feet, either. We sat across from each other, twenty feet of water and chlorine between us, and the stars stretched everywhere.
“It’s tricky going against your parents,” he said. “I wanted a pool, and when I told my dad I was thinking about putting one in, he said, ‘You’ll regret it. You won’t use it. It’s a lot of trouble.’ And, of course, that made me get the pool. Even though I was going in the opposite direction, he was still the point of departure.”
“The point of departure,” I said.
Grant shrugged. “My parents took us all to Mexico when I was ten—Acapulco—and we stayed in this place with a pool shaped like a big bean. It had all these huge flowers around it, maybe canna lilies, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So maybe that’s why I wanted a pool.”
“You traveled to other countries when you were a kid?” I asked.
“Just that once.”
“Have you ever gone to the airport and just bought a ticket somewhere? Like, spur of the moment?”
He leaned back, resting on his hands. His shirt pulled up, showing a strip of his stomach. It didn’t bulge over his waistband.
“Never done it,” he said. “I like the idea, though.”
“Me too,” I said.
I leaned back on my hands, matching his pose. I made circles in the water with my feet. I could hear the bass rumble of a car as it drove past, and I thought of my mother sleeping on the couch. She might wake up and decide to check on me, and she’d find me sitting here in the dark, dress discarded, with this divorced man who was not so much older than I was, and I thought of the excuses I could make. He got home earlier than expected, I’d say.
He was checking to make sure the filters were working, I’d say.
“You know what you said about the Bible?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Since God wrote it,” I said, “doesn’t it all have to be true? He would get it right.”
“Men wrote it.”
“Right. But God told them what to write.”
He kicked back and forth, splashing. “I see. All right, I believe men wrote it, and maybe there was inspiration at work, but they were only men. They did the best they could. The finished product is—messy.”
I let the words eddy, and I watched the blues and blacks of the water.
“You were writing something when I got here,” I said.
“Not really. More like thinking on paper. Just work.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer, I think.”
“You think?”
“Let’s just say that it’s not all that I hoped it would be.”
“I have friend who’s a lawyer,” I said, because I wanted to say her name. “Lucia Gilbert.”
He leaned forward, and the colored lights freckled his face. “Lucia Gilbert?”
“You know her?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “In passing. I could be listening to her right now.”
“What?”
“You know that award she was getting tonight?”
“No.”
The breeze blew, barely, but it was enough to make me shiver. The leaves rustled behind me, and I crossed my arms.
“It’s a banquet downtown,” Grant said. “A Woman-of-the-Year thing. My firm bought a table at it, and I thought about going. What time is it now? I bet she’s right in the middle of her thank-you speech. How do you know her?”
I watched a small frog, belly up, float past my feet. It was as small as a toenail.
“My mom talked to her about the divorce,” I said. “Mom didn’t hire her, but I just, sort of, showed up at her house and she let me in.”
“Huh,” he said. “Okay then.”
“I haven’t seen her in a while,” I said. “Mom is not a big fan.”
“No,” he said. “I’d imagine she’s not. Who is your mother a fan of, by the way?”