Look Closer

by Stewart Lewis

  “Thanks. Get those college apps done so you can get out here, okay? I miss you!”

  “Miss you, too.”

  I hang up and head home. The sun has slipped behind some clouds, cooling down the air a little, and people’s moods seem to be elevated as well. The smiling continues. I think of my father, and try to smile back.

  When I get home, the house is completely silent except for the ticking grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs. Mom is probably at yoga, and Larry is still at work. I grab some yogurt and plop down on the living room couch, turning on the TV. It’s tuned to local news. I start to change the channel, but the meteorologist woman is smiling so widely, it’s infectious. Like one-hundred-degree weather is the happiest thing in the world.

  After the weather, they do a “breaking news” segment on a guy who was killed in Columbia Heights when some scaffolding collapsed. They cut to people talking about what a great person he was, then his mother crying, then other neighbors saying they’re concerned about safety with all the construction in our city. I don’t think twice about it, but then the victim’s name comes on the screen: Brady Hart.

  I run to the kitchen and get the box of Cheerios out of the trash. The name is still there, underlined. Brady Hart.

  I feel my heart leap as I release my grip, and the box falls to the floor.

  2.

  there are no coincidences

  Sleep has been one thing that comes easy for me, pulling me into an empty state, a beautiful nothing where I don’t have to think. It’s when I wake up that the harsh reality settles in: My father is no longer on the planet. But this morning, it’s that man’s name that first enters my mind. It doesn’t make sense. How could a dead man’s name be underlined on my cereal box? What is going on?

  I get out of bed, put on my swimsuit with some jean shorts on top, grab my bag, and walk the four blocks to the community pool. The dour woman who sits at the front gate is reading a self-help book. She gives me a quick nod and lets me in.

  It’s nice to be here this early, before the buses full of day campers come and the whole atmosphere becomes chaotic. It’s quiet, and the water is sleek and bright, unruffled like a perfectly pulled sheet. I throw my towel on a nearby chair and start stretching. I’m thinking about the red-haired woman, the boy, and the man with the thick accent. They were strangers, but I felt connected to them. As if they really saw me. For so long I’ve been lost, unseen, kind of sneaking through my days, but yesterday was different.

  I pick the far lane, close to the lifeguard, whom I’ve barely noticed before. He has bleached hair and, like, a sixteen-pack. He smiles at me in a flirty way. I attempt to smile back, but he’s already waving at someone else.

  I step into the water, twirl my hair up, and stuff it underneath my cap. I dunk my head. The water is cold. I’m suddenly self-conscious, even though I’m in a one-piece. The other fast girl on the swim team, Gwendolyn, once told me my nose was big and my swimming cap accentuates it. When I told Jenna, she said, “Damn, here I was thinking Gwendolyn was the good witch.”

  I adjust my goggles, take a deep breath, and go under. I push off hard, swimming most of my first lap underwater. I feel clean in the pool, the water filling every pore of my skin. I emerge in a full freestyle, alternately breathing on each side. My arms break the surface, my breath like a delayed heartbeat, my body a precise and unrelenting machine. I go into a deep pocket of time, and the water becomes an escape, a way to make sense of a world that doesn’t make sense to me right now.

  Swimming has always been my thing. Coach Dawson, who I’ve always just called Coach, said that I could easily win regionals, then nationals, and eventually try out for the Olympics. When I walked into his office and told him I was quitting, his eyes filled with tears. He told me he understood, and that his door was always open to talk. A couple times when I was overwhelmed, I took him up on it. He told me about also losing his dad when he was a kid and showed me his picture. Another time, he helped me by doing this super annoying math homework. I knew he wasn’t supposed to do my work for me, but after losing someone close to you, the usual rules go out the window. He did it, and I accepted it, and I was thankful to have one less thing to worry about. It’s the little gestures that carry a lot of weight. Like the day he told me I’d always have a spot on the team. But after everything that had happened, I lost my competitive spirit along with part of my heart.

  Today, though, I feel like I could swim circles around Gwendolyn, my big nose and all. I flip, turn, and push off, rocketing through the clear blue, suspended in a kind of liquid gravity. When I come up for air, I can hear the world going on, in aural fragments—a car horn, a faraway voice—but it’s the water I crave, where I can be completely immersed, cut off from the world and shut into my thoughts.

  I gain momentum as my mind goes back to the summer after freshman year in Rehoboth Beach. My father had a cottage there, in the woods, about a mile off the shore. He took me sailing, and we’d eat peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches on the boat, with nothing around us for miles but the shimmering ocean. “Everything tastes better out here,” he’d said, and he was right. He’d sing these silly Irish songs and pretend he was a drunk pirate. It never got old. We’d get giant Slurpees on the boardwalk, chase pigeons, and secretly laugh at the old ladies with blue hair and eyebrows drawn in the wrong place. We’d get up early and go for lemon pancakes at the diner, and then look for purple shells on the state beach. I never felt inferior around him. I was the center of his world. He told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. All I want now is to be a girl with a father who’s alive.

  After twenty laps, I stop for a break and catch my breath. The earlier lifeguard has been replaced by a middle-aged guy with a small ponytail and a potbelly. He waves at me awkwardly.

  I start again with the breaststroke, letting the water rush past my face before each intake of breath, plunging back in, anticipating the dip and curve of my neck. Swimming is all about the rhythm and the timing. Dive, swish, carve, pull, kick, shoot. The water is something to conquer and it feels natural to do so.

  Like a GIF or a looped drumbeat, my mind goes back to the name on the box and the guy who died. Every lap is a question. If Larry and Mom didn’t do it, who did? Our cleaning lady sometimes brings her little boy, maybe he underlined the letters? Was it meant for me to see? Is someone trying to tell me something? If so who and what?

  When I’m finished with my laps, I dry off and go to the changing room, which smells like chlorine and mildew. There’s a mirror with one large crack down the center. I look at it, positioning myself so the crack goes right through the reflection of my body. It seems fitting. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever be whole again.

  Behind me, a mother tries to get her toddler’s swimsuit off. The child jumps around, avoiding the mother’s grasping arms, and it makes me giggle. I used to be the same way.

  I stop for iced tea at Peregrine on my way home. The man behind the counter doesn’t smile. I know the feeling. I lost my smile about a year ago. Still, I try one on. He’s not impressed.

  I make it to our modest row house off Logan Circle, in what’s known as the “gayborhood.” There are lots of guys with silver crew cuts and ripped arms wearing sporty clothes and carrying little dogs. My mother runs a nonprofit and is a self-declared social butterfly. She has a lot of gay friends, including our neighbors, a couple both named Jason who we call “the Jasons,” but they haven’t been around much since Larry came into the picture. I don’t blame them. Sometimes it’s hard to believe my mother and I are even related. When I walk in, she seems ecstatic that I’ve already been up and out.

  “Tee Tee!”

  “Mom, please don’t call me that.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you!”

  She seems especially peppy this morning, probably the result of several espressos.

  “Nice to see you, too, but I’m only dropping off
my stuff.”

  “Okay! Where are you going?”

  I don’t have an answer, so I say the first thing that makes sense. “To see Coach.”

  “Oh.” My mother’s face twists with hope, and I have to look away. There’s no filter on her facial expressions. “That’s great. Say hi for me.”

  “Sure.”

  I hang my swim bag at the bottom of the stairwell and head back out. It’s not oppressively hot yet, but I can feel it coming. I have to tell someone about the cereal box, and Coach seems like a good candidate. He carries his grandfather’s lucky handkerchief to swim meets, and one time, he said he saw a sign that we would win, and we did. He might not think I’m losing it.

  I grab a hot dog from a stand that is opening and eat it on the way. It tastes fluffy and salty and juicy all at once. After I’m finished, I feel like I could eat another one. I can’t remember the last time I was even hungry. There is definitely something happening to me. Maybe my mother could sense it.

  I text Coach, and he texts right back to meet him at the S Street Dog Park. Technically, you’re supposed to cc parents when a student texts a teacher, but Coach and my mother have known each other for years, and he’s also a family friend. I zigzag the streets packed with multicolored row houses that line the brick sidewalks. This area is mostly gentrified, except for a few properties that have not been attended to in what seems like decades.

  At the park, I do the double-gate dance to get inside. There’s a gay couple with a blond Frenchie that has a pink, diamond-studded collar, an old man with an even older black Lab, and in the far corner is Coach, with his pug named Julie.

  Julie jumps on me in greeting, and Coach says, “No jumping!” He reprimands his dog like the kids on his swim teams.

  The dog is so blissfully happy, I wish I could channel her cluelessness about the world. Being a dog would be so much easier. I love Julie. Once, when I was in my deepest state of sadness, Coach brought her to school. He let me sit with her in his office while he coached the boys’ team. She looked at me with such pure, unconditional love that I started to cry. Then she tilted her head and whined, and I laughed. How thin the line is.

  “Hey, stranger,” he says.

  “Hey, Coach.”

  His bald head glistens in the sun. He’s one of those men who shaves his head because his hair’s receding. He says it’s for swimming, but I think it’s also for vanity. He wears a navy-blue tracksuit and an old-school green headband. Somehow he pulls it off.

  “What’s going on?” he prompts.

  We sit on one of the circular benches. I haven’t seen him in a while, so at first it feels odd. To cover the silence, I start talking. I tell him about a book I’ve been reading, then ease into seeing the name and the news about the guy who died. Thankfully, I was right. He doesn’t judge me. Instead, he seems a little intrigued.

  “Do you think someone’s trying to tell me something?” I ask.

  “Could be. This has caused a shift in you. I can see it.”

  “I just ate a hot dog and loved it.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Julie starts barking at the Frenchie.

  “Julie, no barking!” Coach yells, then turns to me. “Do you feel different?”

  “Yes. Kind of.”

  “Well, I know you, Tegan. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, you’re someone who will go with her gut. That’s all we can do, right? There are things happening out there that are so much bigger than us. Be careful.”

  Julie starts jumping around the Frenchie, who snorts and lies down, like he can’t be bothered.

  “Now, can we talk about you joining the team in the fall?”

  “Coach…”

  “I know, I know. But the team isn’t the same without you. The pool even looks sad.” Coach’s lower lip sticks out, beseeching me. I stare right back at him, neither a yes or no in my expression.

  “Think about it?” he prods gently.

  “Okay.”

  “And keep me posted if you get any more signs of soon-to-be dead people. Just make sure it’s not me.”

  “Coach, you’ll probably live until you’re a hundred.”

  “I would like to live long enough to see you compete in the Olympics. How about that, Tegan?”

  “Coach!”

  “Sorry, sorry. Your times were fantastic. I’m sure they still are.”

  “Probably. I did laps this morning. I’m just not ready…”

  “It’s cool, I get it. Sports aren’t our whole lives. You’ve been through a lot. But I gotta tell you, I know how much the old Tegan loved swimming. She would show up to practice early and stay late. The whole team looked up to her.”

  “Except Gwendolyn.”

  Coach waves the thought away as if it’s an annoying fly.

  “Forget about her. She’s fast, but you’re faster. You’re my torpedo. I tell you what. When and if you’re ready, text me when you go for your laps. I’ll time you, for fun, no commitment. Deal?”

  I think about it. It’s hard to keep telling him no.

  “Deal.”

  His face beams again. We hug, and I know it’s weird, but I want to hang on to him. I want some kind of father figure in my life to make the world feel safe again. But when we break away, I get a sinking feeling. Coach is great, but he could never replace my father. No one ever could. I say bye to Julie, who is now sniffing out the old Labrador.

  As I walk home, I think about how I’ve been blind since my father’s death. In addition to making myself invisible, I’ve been moving through time and space without really connecting with anyone. Now it’s as if someone turned the lights on the world. I can see everything, everyone more clearly. The patterns of the trees against the sky, the rusted wheels of locked-up bicycles, the couch in the old dumpster with its guts falling out, the toddler with a lollipop bigger than his head, the white-haired man carrying a cello on his back. I see it all and take it in, even smiling at strangers.

  If I’m going to get another sign, I need to be ready.

  3.

  there will be ones that get away

  In my dream, I’m in a helicopter with my father, but we’re not in a war zone. It’s a tropical landscape. There are lush green mountains, crashing waterfalls, and searing rainbows. The world is overly saturated with color and teeming with life. We’re smiling at each other, and the sun is huge in the sky, shooting razor-thin rays between us. He has one hand on the controls and one hand in mine. He says something to me, but I can’t hear him over the sound of the propeller. We get close to the side of a mountain, but I’m not scared because he’s totally in control. We dip into a utopian valley, and for a second, I think we’re going to crash into a teal-colored river, but he scoops us up at the last second. We steady out and head straight toward the horizon. Then his face turns serious, and he jumps into the back seat. “Your turn!” he yells. “Go for it!” I laugh as if he’s kidding, but he’s not.

  I get into the pilot’s seat and grip the controller with both hands. Then I look back, and my father’s gone. I try to keep the helicopter steady, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I call out for my dad, but he’s nowhere. All I can see is white. I release my hands and close my eyes. The propeller sound gets louder and louder. I scream, but nothing comes out.

  When I wake, sweat rings the collar of my T-shirt. I immediately take a shower, trying to wash away the dream, but it leaves me with a hollow feeling. What does it all mean? I remember someone telling me that you are everyone in your dream. So I wonder if I was my father, trying to tell myself something. But that doesn’t really make sense.

  I dry off, put on my robe, and walk to the window to stick my hand out for the temperature. (I prefer an actual test as opposed to a weather app.) When I pull it back in, my breath catches in my throat. There’s a name written in the dust on the windowsill
.

  tom elliot

  I jump back a little and stare at it, frozen in shock. I can almost hear my heart pounding through my chest. I blink twice to make sure I’m not seeing things, but it’s still there. I frantically wipe it away, but the letters are seared in my mind. tom elliot. My stomach flips over itself, and at that moment, I feel alive. My blood runs as if someone plugged me into a charger. I literally leap to my desk and open my laptop, typing in the name. There are five Tom Elliots in my zip code. To get their phone numbers and addresses, I use the credit card my mother gave me for emergencies. I’m pretty sure this counts as an emergency. I start to make a list, but then I crumple it up and throw it away. What am I even doing?

  I try to distract myself with a podcast, but it doesn’t work. I take the list out of the trash and uncrumple it. I stare at the creased letters, shaking my head. I can’t sit here; I have to do something, so I start calling the numbers. A woman answers on the first ring. I tell her I’m an old friend, and she gives me Tom’s number in Utah. I cross him out. The next one doesn’t answer, and the machine has someone else’s name on it. I nix that one, too. The third is a nonworking number, and after that is an old lady who hangs up when I ask for Tom. She must be a widow.

  This is stupid. I go back to my podcast, but again the voices go in one ear and out the other. I keep looking at the crumpled list. All but one is crossed out. I sigh loudly, as my mother walks by my room.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Nothing,” I say, as if saying it will make it true. “Just going to start on my applications.”

  She gives me a thumbs-up and walks away, like that’s totally normal. But it doesn’t feel that way. I look back at the last number on the list. I plug the numbers into my phone and stare at it awhile before hitting the call button. “You’ve reached Lisa, Edward, and Tom Elliot,” a woman says. “You know what to do.”

  No, I don’t, I want to say. When it beeps, I hang up quickly.

  I search online for their names, and an address appears in the online phone book. Dupont Circle? That’s right near me. My mother comes to my room with some juice, and I quickly hide the crumpled paper.