Swim Back to Me

by Ann Packer

  But when she returned she found not just Mrs. Mitchell but also Alejandro and a short, stocky white man with thick eyeglasses, standing there in blue pajamas and a bathrobe, looking recently awoken and very disgruntled. Someone had turned on the room lights, and it was bright now, almost like a stage set.

  “Dees ees her, dees ees Carolee,” Alejandro said, diving back into the accent. He came and put his hand behind her elbow. “You OK, lady? You wanna sit down?”

  She glared at him. “I’m fine. I need to get home, I’m going to call a taxi.”

  “No, no. Mi padre is gonna help you.”

  “Now listen—” the man said, casting a furious look at Alejandro’s mom.

  “ ‘My father,’ ” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  “My father,” Alejandro said, switching now to the low, robotic tone of an automated phone system. “My father. Is going. To help you.”

  His father was going to help her. His father was going to help her because … he was a doctor. You’re a doctor now? she’d said to Alejandro, mocking him. Would she have believed him if he’d said, No, but my dad is? He’d set her up, brought her here to expose her prejudice. Her assumptions. He was showing her.

  Or was he? She looked at the three of them, Alejandro and his beautiful Latina mother and his angry white father. She didn’t think so. She didn’t know what he was up to, but his eyes were brighter, his stance was straighter, his whole being was focused in a way she’d never seen before.

  “I’m going to call a taxi,” she said. “What’s the address here?”

  “Chica, no,” he cried. “I ain’t lettin’ you pay for no taxi. You the boss lady.”

  “That’s enough,” his dad said.

  But Alejandro ignored him and headed off toward the dark end of the kitchen, leaving the three of them just standing there. His dad gave his mom a furious glare, and, as if in response, she turned from him and called to Alejandro, “What are you looking for? I wish I’d known you were coming, I would have put some Limonata on ice.”

  Carolee saw a cluster of family photos on a table halfway across the room. They were mostly too far away to see clearly, except for a large one of a much younger Dr. Mitchell—still with a full head of hair, his face partly masked by a pair of aviator sunglasses—holding a small boy in a swimming pool, both of them lit up with delight, the boy with his arms wrapped tight around the man’s neck.

  Alejandro came back with two beers. He handed one to Carolee and twisted off the cap of the other, leaning his head back for a long gulp.

  “You’re drinking,” his dad said.

  “Believe it or not, I can have a beer.”

  “Not in this house.”

  Mrs. Mitchell pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Robert,” she said to her husband. “Please, I am begging.”

  Dr. Mitchell flushed. Under his eyes were pads of flesh the size of Carolee’s baby toes.

  Alejandro said, “You always told me I could come to you for help.”

  Dr. Mitchell turned and walked a few steps away. Watching from behind, Carolee saw how tense he was, his shoulders rising and then dropping heavily as he exhaled. He turned to her and said, “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “With your urinary tract. What are you experiencing?”

  Heat filled her face as she explained her symptoms. She was furious at Alejandro for putting her through this, but she stayed on her best behavior, voice calm and polite, careful not to give offense. Dr. Mitchell said it sounded like a UTI but she’d need to be tested, and she said, “They’re kind of chronic. I’m pretty sure. I don’t want to trouble you, I can call my doctor in the morning, that’s what I was planning.”

  “Why don’t you write a prescription,” Mrs. Mitchell said to her husband. “Sandro can drive her to the twenty-four-hour Walgreens, everyone is happy.”

  “Uh-uh,” Alejandro said quickly, shaking his head. “Papi don’t work like that. He got principles, he need to give her a pee-pee test first.”

  The room went so silent Carolee could hear a clock ticking somewhere, and outside, in a backyard she knew would be vast, some small night animal passing with a rustle of disturbed branches through a shrub.

  Dr. and Mrs. Mitchell remained mute, staring at each other with what Carolee took to be easily revived hatred.

  “Es complicado,” Alejandro said happily.

  They rode in Dr. Mitchell’s Mercedes, Carolee and Alejandro both in the backseat like kids. The streets were dark and deserted. Dr. Mitchell drove with his hands at exactly ten and two o’clock. Alejandro was quiet, and out of the corner of her eye Carolee saw him picking at his cuticles. Saying goodbye to his mom, he had bowed his head and let her kiss him over and over again.

  Dr. Mitchell’s office was in Palo Alto, in a medical complex about four blocks from where David Connell’s family had lived—maybe still lived. Carolee had no idea what had happened to him, besides the obvious. Everyone had gone to college except her.

  It used to bug her, but it didn’t anymore. Growing up, she’d always thought she’d go to college, and her mom sure thought it: Carolee was going to make her proud, reverse the family history by not getting pregnant in high school, not dropping out before graduation, not getting married and divorced in just eleven months. Carolee was going to go to college and maybe even graduate school … but she broke her arm at the first volleyball game of her senior year, and after that everything went to shit. She had a cast over her elbow, so she couldn’t do her homework, couldn’t write her applications, couldn’t work the cash register at her job, and when spring came and everyone else was figuring out where they were heading for the next great thing, she had nowhere to go and no money to get there. The first year or two were hardest—she tried community college classes, hopped from one bad job to another, found some other losers to hang out with until she realized two of the guys were dealing meth—but things fell into place after that. Her mom said there was no shame in scaling back your plans, and most of the time Carolee believed her. Or tried to.

  At the exterior door Dr. Mitchell flipped through the keys on his ring, and she shivered as she waited. He looked over at Alejandro. “Your friend is cold. Where are your manners?”

  Alejandro looked as if he’d been struck, the sting of surprise making him go still for a moment. He shrugged off his peacoat and handed it to her, and though she didn’t want it—a rough wool thing with chipped plastic buttons—she draped it over her shoulders and avoided looking at either of them.

  Inside, Dr. Mitchell led the way up a flight of stairs made of pebbled driveway concrete. He unlocked his suite and began flipping light switches, first in a small waiting room, then in an open area with a reception desk and file cabinets and a long counter with computers, and finally in his office, with its fancy furniture and large framed picture of Mrs. Mitchell on the wall, a beautiful twenty-five or thirty years old, with perfect golden skin and masses of black hair, but sad eyes, even then.

  He came back into the open area and stopped abruptly. Looking hard at Carolee, he said, “He hasn’t been to see his mother in a month. Did you know that? A month!” He stared for a long moment and then headed down a corridor and unlocked another door.

  Alejandro shrugged, a kind of exaggerated, helpless, what-are-you-going-to-do? shrug, and she shrugged back. A moment later, his dad returned carrying a cup sealed in a plastic bag and a little foil envelope that looked like a condom. “Come on, genius,” he said to Alejandro. “Show her the bathroom.”

  The toilet was the handicapped kind, extra high, and there was a huge bottle of pink soap mounted to the wall. When she was finished she had to hand the cup to Dr. Mitchell and watch as he carried it away.

  At the reception desk, Alejandro had taken a seat and was eating foil-wrapped chocolates from a glass bowl, unwrapping them and popping them into his mouth one after another. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She thought of the way his mom had leapt from her chair when he first a
ppeared, and she wondered if Mrs. Mitchell sat there every night, in the same spot, waiting for him. Carolee’s mom sort of did that, but with her it was a ratty mustard velour couch and a box of wine. Classy, the last guy Carolee dated had said when they stopped by one evening. Then: Hey, I’m only kidding. But whatever, he was pretty much of an asshole, and she dumped him a week or two later. Which had its benefits, since not having sex meant a lot fewer UTIs. How she’d gotten this one, she didn’t know. It was her dead car. Or maybe it started with the UTI and the dead car followed from that.

  “Chica,” Alejandro whispered. His phone was in his palm; she was half aware he’d been texting someone.

  “What.”

  “You wanna go by the mall after? The guys are still there.”

  She stared at him, Alejandro with his hair in his eyes, his shoulders swamped by a baggy black T-shirt. He looked clueless: ready to forget the last two hours and power on.

  She said, “Are you serious?”

  His eyes widened. “I thought you were interested. You can play, Gordo has an extra gun.”

  “Do you not understand how mad I am? You don’t just kidnap people.”

  He sighed and looked away. “I know.” He reached into the bowl of chocolates and fingered through them as if there were a particular one he wanted to find. “I didn’t think you’d go if I told you.”

  “You were right about that. You should keep your family shit to yourself.”

  “What? I wanted to help you.”

  “Right, and crawling up your dad’s ass was just—a side thing.”

  He pushed his hair away from his face and seemed even younger, his mustache a series of faint lines made with a tiny paintbrush. “It ain’t a big deal. He just don’t like how I live.”

  “Alejandro, stop talking like that! You blew your cover, how dumb do you think I am?”

  His face colored. “Not as dumb as me.”

  “How dumb are you?”

  “Pretty fuckin’ dumb.”

  “Well, that’s one true thing you’ve said. What’s with the cholo act, anyway?”

  He kept his eyes on her for another moment and then looked away again. She wanted to walk out of there. She could hear his father pulling open a drawer, sliding stuff around like he was searching for something, trying to help her … and still, she was tempted to walk out right now.

  Alejandro Chavez. Alejandro Chavez who was really Alejandro Mitchell, rich and only half white, which meant an extra advantage because you got to check a minority box on ethnicity questionnaires. He’d had everything, and where had he ended up? Working a shit job, driving a shit car, playing war games late at night in a shit shopping mall. What a waste.

  She heard a sniff and looked up. He was staring down at the desk, eyes wide like he was trying to keep tears from falling. She said, “Oh, come on.”

  He shook his head and cupped his hands over his eyes.

  “What?”

  He bowed his head farther and pressed his palms to his face. His shoulders began to shake, and she realized he wasn’t faking. She hurried across the room and crouched next to him.

  “Alejandro, please.”

  He shook his head.

  “Your dad’ll be out here any second. What’s wrong, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something is.”

  He looked up with his eyes streaming. “I fuckin’ hate him.”

  She tried to think of something to say, but somehow she was remembering David Connell again, that weird dinner with his family, and how his older sister was there, visiting from wherever she was in school, so there were too many of them to sit at the kitchen table and they had to eat in the dining room, with its heavy velvet chairs. Maybe because of the atmosphere, the talk was slow and painful, with each topic squeezed dry before anyone was willing to let it go. Near the end of the meal, David started saying he should take Carolee home, it was getting late, and suddenly his dad stood up, pulled his keys from his pocket, and tossed them to David, saying, “Take my car if you want—it’s roomier.” Thinking back, Carolee had a total blank in her mind about what happened next, how the goodbyes went, which car they took, any of it. What his dad said, though: that she remembered. Maybe that was why she’d broken up with David—not the wealth itself but the way his dad more or less offered her up to him, like she was some random trinket he’d acquired somewhere, a little more of the plenty he used to prove what a good father he was.

  Carolee looked at Alejandro. “Of course you hate him—he’s a dick.”

  Alejandro stared at her.

  “What?” she said.

  He pulled up the neck of his T-shirt and wiped his eyes. “Did you just call my pops a dick?”

  “He isn’t one?”

  “Say it again.”

  “Dick.”

  “Say ‘Your dad is a dick.’ ”

  From the end of the hallway came the sound of water running and the lid of a hinged wastepaper basket swinging up. Alejandro grabbed his phone; Carolee jumped to her feet and moved away from the desk.

  His dad appeared, heading past the reception area toward his office. “What are you doing?” he said to Alejandro over his shoulder. “You can’t sit there.”

  She had an infection—but she already knew that. She had an infection but she was in luck because he had an antibiotic in his office, and he gave her six tablets in a blister pack, to be taken twice a day for three days. “Don’t stop just because you feel better,” he said gruffly, and she thought, I know, I’m not stupid, and then felt a tremendous pity for Alejandro, to be this man’s son.

  They retraced their steps, down the pebbled stairway, through the lobby, out to the car.

  Dr. Mitchell said, “Where do you live?”

  Alejandro waved him off. “I can take her.”

  “Where,” Dr. Mitchell repeated. “Do you live.”

  He drove out to the freeway, past David Connell’s street, through a neighborhood of large old houses where she’d been to parties when she was younger—children’s birthday parties with petting zoos brought in for entertainment, sweet sixteen parties with special themes: Carnaval! Hollywood in the thirties! She always had her mom drop her off a block away, so no one would see their car.

  In the Mercedes they sped south, the heater blowing, no one saying a word. Her exit came up, and she directed Dr. Mitchell to her apartment. He didn’t even turn around when she said thank you. “See you at work,” she told Alejandro.

  She was on the sidewalk when Dr. Mitchell powered down the passenger window. He leaned across and spoke to her. “Excuse my son. He should be seeing you in.”

  Fury rose up in her, and she said, “Actually, he’s being polite. He’s being a gentleman, pretending we aren’t fucking. Come on, babe, you’re coming in with me, aren’t you?”

  Dr. Mitchell’s eyes widened ever so slightly.

  Alejandro got out of the car, grinned uncertainly, shut the door behind him. He came and stood in front of her. “Are we making out?” he whispered.

  She rolled her eyes at him and then took each of his forearms and pulled them around her. At the curb the Mercedes idled, and she pulled Alejandro closer and waited, willing the car to leave. She wanted to keep hating him—Dr. Mitchell—but it was fading, and she found herself thinking that they all, all three of them, knew one thing: that wanting to be gone was one thing, but going was another.

  For SJH

  Dwell Time

  He was late, which wasn’t like him. Laura kept her eye on the clock as she moved around the kitchen, unpacking groceries, starting dinner. Her first husband had been late all the time, and early on with Matt she had arrived at restaurants and been amazed to see him there ahead of her; had even been taken by surprise, still choosing her outfit, when he showed up at her front door at precisely the time he’d said he would. He joked that she had the divorce equivalent of PTSD and needed cognitive restructuring. “Am I Adam?” he would say. “No. So there’s no reason to think I’ll behave
like Adam.”

  It was forty-five minutes now—only forty-five minutes, but still. She looked at the face of her cell phone to make sure she hadn’t missed a call, then tried calling him again for good measure. There would be an explanation: an unavoidable delay combined with a cell phone breakdown. “I’d’ve stopped at a pay phone,” he might say, “but I couldn’t find one. What ever happened to pay phones?”

  It was a Monday, which meant tonight it was just the two of them and her girls—his kids were with their mother. Laura was making enchiladas, a good compromise in the complicated culinary calculus of this family: simple enough that she wouldn’t feel she was making nicer meals for her kids than for his, but also sure to please them, or at least Charlotte, who in all foods preferred things folded or rolled to things lying flat on a plate.

  Once the baking dish was in the oven she made her way upstairs. Charlotte was in her room, and Trina wasn’t due for another five or ten minutes. Laura wandered into the master bedroom, took off her shoes, and looked at the bed. Neither she nor Matt had bothered with it this morning, and the bedclothes were invitingly messy, coaxing her to lie down for five minutes. But no, she was too jittery—she’d be up again in thirty seconds. Where was he?

  “Mom?” Charlotte called from behind her closed door.

  Laura went back to the hallway. “Yes?”

  The door opened, and Charlotte poked her head out, her waist-length hair in a different style from the one she’d worn not an hour earlier: her waves straightened by the plug-in hair iron she’d requested for Christmas, her part moved from the side of her head to the center. She was thirteen, newly involved with the mirror. “What?” she said to Laura, running her hand down the smooth length of her hair.

  “What what?” Laura said. “Didn’t you call me?”

  Charlotte stared for another moment, a dreamy expression on her face, and then shrugged and closed the door.

  Back in the kitchen, Laura checked the landline again: still no messages. She called his office again and again got his voice mail. She heard a car in the driveway and hurried to the window, but it was just Trina, being dropped off; she watched as Trina climbed out and went to the trunk for her backpack. This house was in the middle of nowhere, five miles from downtown Auburn, near the end of a long road bounded on both sides by orchards. It was a nice house, and it had made far more sense for Laura and the girls to come here than it would have for Matt and his three kids to cram into her little post-divorce cottage, but there were times—like now, as she peered into the darkness—when she wished she’d pushed for a new place for the new big bunch of them. Somewhere with neighbors. Somewhere in town.