Swimming Lessons

by Mary Alice Monroe

  The one thing she couldn’t tolerate about her brother, however, was his penchant for running his house with a firm hand, and especially the women in it. He liked being the king in the castle, a trait he’d inherited from their father.

  “What time did your daddy say he’d pick you up?”

  Linnea looked at her Swiss Army watch. “In about an hour.”

  Cara pulled out her cell phone. “No worries. I’ll call him and let him know where we are. He can just as easily pick you up here. Okay?”

  Linnea brightened. “Okay,” she said as she set aside her magazine and unbuckled her seatbelt.

  The back porch of the funky Tex-Mex restaurant was packed with folks getting a head start on the sunset happy hour. Inside the small, wood restaurant it was quiet and they were seated right away. Cara wanted a chance to talk to Linnea about the summer looming before them. June was almost over and Linnea usually spent the month of July with her and Brett at their house on Hamlin Creek. Linnea loved working on the turtle team with Cara in the mornings, and surfing and hanging out with her friends during the afternoons. Cara loved having kids hanging out at their house.

  She ordered her usual chicken fajita salad. Linnea ordered a cheese burrito and Little Lovie ordered whatever Linnea did.

  “Here’s to a great summer,” Cara said, raising her soda glass.

  “I’m so glad you took us out to eat,” Linnea said. “Mama and Daddy are going out tonight and that means Cooper and I will likely get stuck with pizza again.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t eat that stuff. So many calories.”

  Cara gave the slender thirteen-year-old a stern look. “Calories? Precious, don’t even go there. You’re so young. You can eat anything you want and burn it off. I remember those good ol’ days. Wait till you hit my age…”

  “You have a great figure, Aunt Cara,” Linnea argued back. “You’re so tall and thin. Not short like me.”

  “Oh, Linnea…” Why was it young girls were never happy with what they had? They always thought what they didn’t have was better. “When I was your age I was in agony because I had long legs, big feet and unruly dark hair. I wanted to look like my mother, like you do,” she added ruefully. “Your grandmother was a real beauty, you know. She was the quintessential belle—petite, blond and graceful. I was a Rutledge from head to toe, which would’ve been great for a guy. But tall, dark and brainy wasn’t so great for a young Southern girl back when I grew up. I was the proverbial ugly duckling.”

  “You grew up to be the swan, though.”

  “Did I tell you today that I love you? And keep on talking,” she replied with a light laugh.

  “Love me, too?” Little Lovie asked, worried. She climbed up on her knees in the booth to better sip her soda. Like her namesake, Little Lovie was destined to be another beauty.

  “With all my heart.”

  Cara laid her right hand in the middle of the square wooden table. “Okay, first pact of the summer. Let’s swear that we’ll love each other forever. No matter what.”

  They loved to make secret pacts at the beginning of every summer. Her heart pumped with affection when two small hands joined hers. “Forever,” they all said.

  Their dinners arrived in good time. After they swallowed the first bites, Cara brought up the topic on her mind.

  “I was thinking about this summer. You’re getting pretty old now, Linnea. What do you think about a job? Brett was saying he could begin training you on the tour boat. Nothing hard. You could go out on the boat with him, help haul up the crab traps and show the tourists the shells. Easy things like that.”

  “All summer?” Her voice took on that worried note again.

  “Maybe not all summer.” When she didn’t reply, Cara added, “For a month, maybe?”

  Linnea swirled her drink with her straw. “I dunno, Aunt Cara. It sounds great and all, but…” She looked up. “Here’s the thing. I’m going away this summer. To camp. It’s all arranged. There’s this really great place in North Carolina. All the girls are going.”

  Cara was never popular as a girl, but even she knew that if all the girls were going, there was no use arguing. But all she could think was, a summer away from the beach?

  Linnea took off on a long, rambling description of the camp in the mountains, the girls who were going, the activities, the boy’s camp across the lake. Cara half listened over the inner roar of her disappointment. She had stored up years of knowledge to share with a young girl. She saw herself as Linnea’s mentor as much as an aunt.

  Looking at Linnea’s face as she went on and on about the girls and the camp, however, Cara realized that this was her niece’s first step away from her and toward independence.

  “It sounds like heaven,” she lied, trying to sound upbeat and supportive. “I guess I can understand. But I don’t know how I’ll tell your Uncle Brett. He was counting on you being here this July.”

  “I’ll miss being here with you this summer, too,” she replied with a woman’s perspicacity.

  Little Lovie looked crushed. “You aren’t coming to our house this summer?”

  “I’ll come by after camp. After all, I can’t spend a whole summer without the turtles.”

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, kiddo,” Cara said to Lovie.

  “Auntie Cara, if Linnea isn’t going to be on the turtle team, can I?”

  Cara looked into the bright blue eyes of the child and realized that she, too, was growing up. At nearly six, she wasn’t the baby any longer. Maybe it was the hormone treatment, maybe it was because she was due to have her eggs implanted, but Cara felt a sudden welling of emotion. Toy, Linnea, and now Little Lovie. All my babies are growing up, she thought, and her smile was bittersweet.

  “Well,” she replied, “I suppose the turtle team will have an open spot, won’t we?”

  Lovie nodded her head, eagerly.

  Cara glanced at Linnea, who was also smiling in a very grown up way. She looked again at Little Lovie. “You’ll have to go through basic training, of course. Early morning risings without complaints and nights slapping mosquitoes on the beach. Are you up to it?”

  “Yes,” Lovie replied as though making a vow.

  “And you’ll have to make sure no other children touch the hatchlings.”

  “I can do that.”

  Cara paused, pretending to scrutinize the child. Then she burst into a wide grin. “Okay then. You’re on the turtle team.”

  Lovie was beside herself and grinned ear to ear.

  Linnea hugged Lovie and Cara thought of all the little children her mother had taught to care for the sea turtles. She felt another surge of emotion, the kind that often comes with the passing of a torch.

  Cara was about to launch into the turtle team’s plans for the summer when from the corner of her eye she saw Palmer at the entry asking the waitress where they were seated.

  “Oh, look,” she said, changing the topic. “Your daddy’s here.”

  Linnea took a final bite of her burrito then scurried from the booth to greet him.

  “Take it easy, sugar,” Palmer said in his long drawl as he hugged her. “There’s no fire. Let me say hello to my sister here.” With that he bent at the waist to kiss Cara’s upturned cheek. “So, how’re you doing, sister mine?”

  “Good, thanks. You?”

  “No complaints.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a few quarters. He gave one to Linnea and the other to Lovie. “There’s a gumball machine over by the door. Why don’t you girls find out what a quarter will get you?”

  The girls took off giving Palmer room to slide into the booth. Middle age had given him a paunchy belly but he squeezed in and settled back against the wood stall. His face was ruddy and full cheeked, a common enough reaction to too much sun and bourbon.

  “I see you’re taking care of her kid again,” he said.

  He always knew exactly the right thing to say to get her riled. “Her kid?” she repeated in an icy tone.

  “Yeah, Toy’s kid. Lit
tle Lovie, right?” he said, stretching out the name. “I never understood how she named her after our mother. Kinda cheeky, don’t you think?”

  “It was an act of respect. And love. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

  He shrugged. “Just seemed odd to me. Like she wanted something for it, you know?”

  “Oh, puhleese,” Cara said, pushing her plate away.

  On cue, the waitress showed up. “Can I get you anything sir?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have a Coke.”

  “Nothing more for me,” she told the waitress. Then to Palmer, “I thought you had a dinner date?”

  “I do. But not till later. If you’ve got a minute, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Fire away.”

  “It’s about that Toy Sooner girl, actually. Well, not about her, but about the beach house.”

  Cara bristled. The beach house was always a touchy subject between them. Palmer had never completely reconciled that their mother had left her the beach house at her death. Her brother had already been given the family house on Tradd Street in Charleston, complete with the heirloom antiques, the cabin at Lake Lure and the family shipping business. But, as their mother had said, Palmer’s hand was always in the cookie jar. Sadly, Cara had come to see that this was true.

  “What about the beach house?” she said as evenly as she could.

  “You do realize what it’s worth today?”

  “Not this again.”

  “Hear me out. Your taxes have shot up accordingly. I reckon…” He spread his palms. The broad gold wedding ring flashed. “What? Fifty…Sixty percent?”

  “Forty. Ditto on the insurance. It’s common knowledge. What’s your point?”

  He whistled softly and shook his head. “That’s a hefty hike. I’m not talking out of turn when I tell you that Brett’s talked to me.”

  Cara’s eyes widened. She couldn’t comprehend this. “About what?”

  “We boys get together from time to time. We talk finances. You know that.”

  “Brother dear, I do the finances in our family.”

  He chuckled, low and rumbling. It was a sonorous sound that always had the power to lessen the tension between them.

  “Sweetheart, I’m on your side. What I’m trying to tell you is that your husband is worried about keeping up the payments. He’d never say that in so many words, he’s too loyal to you. But it’s got to be hard going. You opened up two new locations of his business. That’s a lot to undertake.”

  Cara felt a squeezing in her chest and stared out the window. Everything he said was true. Outside the window, The East Islands real estate sign advertised a three bedroom condo for just under a million, as though it was a bargain. And it was. The prices were shooting to the stars. Was Brett worried about money, she wondered?

  The waitress brought Palmer’s Coke and he took a lusty gulp. When he finished, he asked, “How much are you charging that lil’ gal for staying in that house?”

  Cara brought her attention back with a sigh. She was charging Toy the barest minimum that Cara could afford to let it go for, and the maximum that Toy could pay.

  “She’s paying what she can,” she replied, deliberately vague. “For the last four years she’s put herself through school and raised a little girl, all while working nights to make ends meet. Now she’s got herself not just any job, but the job. Though it doesn’t pay a lot, it’s the long view she has to take now. She’s really turned her life around and I’m proud of her. Palmer, you know it was Mama’s final wish that I help her.”

  “And you have. No one can say you haven’t. But it’s been five years, Cara. Five years! I’m thinking about you, not her. I’ll wager you could get three, four, maybe five times the amount of rent from tourists than you are from that gal.”

  “Maybe…”

  He leaned forward. “How long are you going to let this go on?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “We haven’t set a timetable.” Brett had brought up this very topic the other night after paying for Cara’s expensive fertility treatments.

  “It’s costing you money to keep her in that house, plain and simple,” Palmer said. “Think about it. That’s all I’m saying.”

  She pursed her lips. “I have, actually,” she replied. “I know we could be getting more in rent, a lot more. And I wouldn’t be honest if I said the money wouldn’t be welcome. But the truth is, neither Brett nor I have the heart to ask Toy to find another place. After all, she’s only just started getting her life going. She’s family.”

  “Family?” he said, his voice rising. “She’s no kin to me.”

  “She is to me. Maybe not by blood, but in heart.”

  “You have Linnea. And Cooper. They love you. They need you.”

  “And I need them. But they also have you and Julia. Linnea is becoming a young woman right before our eyes. But Toy has no one. And Little Lovie…” She closed her mouth tight, emotion welling in her eyes. How could she explain to her brother the depth of her feeling for that child?

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to be so involved with another woman’s child?”

  “I may never have a child of my own.”

  Palmer let out a sigh. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied, though clearly it wasn’t.

  “You ever think about adopting? Lots of folks do.”

  “Of course, I’ve thought about it. But I’ve been focused on having my own child.”

  “You aren’t getting any younger, you know.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll try to keep that in mind. But remember, brother, you’ll always be older than me.”

  His grin spread like a shrimp net over the water, wide and full. “And you just remember, sister mine, that with age comes wisdom.”

  A few days later, when Toy walked out of the elevator onto the third floor of the Aquarium, she heard a loud splash and a man’s muffled curse.

  “Ethan?” she called out, hurrying over. But she didn’t see him. Another splash and she stopped short in surprise. Ethan was hip deep in Big Girl’s tank, his long arms outstretched, and he looked to be chasing the turtle. His head shot up when he spotted her.

  “Thank God you’re here!” he called out. “Grab a bucket. A clean one. Then hurry and bring it over here.”

  Toy felt a flutter of panic as she set down the turtle’s prepared food and raced to grab a bucket. “What’s going on?” she called over her shoulder as she rinsed a utility bucket at the sink. She was in such a hurry that water splashed all over her. “Is Big Girl all right?”

  Ethan lifted his arms and in his cupped hands she saw three perfectly round turtle eggs. Ethan released a proud father’s grin.

  “You’ve got to be kidding! She’s laying eggs?”

  “Either that or ping pong balls.”

  Big Girl started swimming slowly in the small fiberglass tank and Ethan continued following behind her, bent at the waist and with his hands outstretched. Toy couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped her lips.

  “You look like a catcher waiting on the next pitch,” she said.

  “Hey, you come in here and try catching them.”

  “No, I wouldn’t deprive you. It’s clear you’re having too much fun. Besides, you’re doing a great job. Here,” she said, stretching over the rim of the tank to hold the bucket out for him. “You can put them in here.”

  Ethan waded closer and gingerly laid the three eggs into the white bucket.

  “Oh-oh,” Toy warned. “Batter up! Here comes another.”

  He dashed back as Big Girl released one, then two more glistening white eggs. They floated down into Ethan’s waiting hands. When he placed them in the bucket, Toy stared at the six eggs nestled in a circle at the bottom.

  “This is nothing at all like helping a loggerhead on the beach.”

  He waded over to catch another egg then brought it to the bucket. “One more. Four hundred eighty-five to go.”r />
  “It’s so sad that she’s stuck in a tank and can’t lay her eggs in the sand. I don’t know what to do with them.”

  “Turtles are your bailiwick, not mine.”

  She carefully lifted the bucket to examine the eggs. What he said was true but she was completely stumped.

  They waited and watched Big Girl awhile longer before Ethan shrugged and headed to the tank’s rim. “That’s it for me. I think that’s it for Big Girl, too. At least for now. If not, it’s your turn to jump in the tank.”

  “Seems only fair,” she replied, gingerly placing the bucket on the floor so not to disturb the eggs.

  Ethan grabbed hold of the rim of the tank and Toy couldn’t miss the tightening of well defined muscles as he easily hoisted himself up and out. Water poured from his clothes and clung like a second skin.

  Always until now, he’d been this person she worked with and respected—the way she would view a teacher or a doctor. But there was no denying he had a beautiful body, lean, taut and deeply tanned. When he stripped off the dripping T-shirt, she felt her face flame and spun on her heel at the first glimpse of hard chest muscles covered by dark hair. “I didn’t want to see that,” she muttered to herself as she hurried to the supply cabinet. She returned with two towels in her hand.

  “You’re soaked,” she said brusquely, eyes averted while handing him one.

  “If I had a dollar for every time I jumped in a tank, I’d be a wealthy man.” He nonchalantly took the towel from her. “Thanks.”