by Julia Kent
And death is exactly what I’m grappling with as I sputter to the surface and get to the edge as fast as possible, my throat in spasms, my heart twisted because it’s being pulled into the past by memory.
I decide whether to stop or whether to keep going.
Fifteen years ago, that’s exactly what I did. Coming to in a hospital bed, finding out Mom had died, finding out Mom had died for me, sacrificing her soul and her life by choice to save mine. A piece of me died with her.
A bigger piece of me lived with her, though. Lived with her inside me.
There was a point when everything fell apart, when Dad blamed Declan and Terry fought with Dad, when I learned Dad wished Dec had chosen Mom over me, and it felt like we were all just pieces of dead skin in a wind tunnel, spinning and spinning, peeling off and shredding until there was nothing to cling to, when I had a choice.
Stop or keep going.
Grace made us all keep going.
Mom did, too.
I saw her once. It was the day Terry moved out, grabbing as many personal items as he could and disappearing, swallowed by the world outside Anterdec, his disappearance treated like a servant vacating his post, like a pool service guy who moved on. Declan was gone somewhere, Dad was a human volcano, and Mom came to me.
Appeared out of nowhere. From the grave.
She didn’t say a word. Just looked at me with eyes that stretched across planes of pain. My skin thrummed with the knowledge she was there, with the ability to look at her looking at me, and as I opened my mouth to tell her I was sorry, that I loved her, that she made the wrong choice, that I was grateful she chose to save me, she vanished.
Like all wishes.
Poof.
Amanda doesn’t know. No one does. It’s not the kind of story you tell people because first of all, they think you’re crazy.
But most of all, because telling it dilutes the beauty you get to carry inside you.
I was swimming, right here in this lap pool, turning myself into butter by doing a few miles as hard as I could. You can cry while swimming, but it’s hard. You can also scream underwater.
And no one hears you.
The first soft notes of the intro to a song pulse out from the sound system, music muffled and low until my ears can discern the melody.
Yes.
The first song from The Yes Album fills the room, like “God Save the Queen” preceding Queen Elizabeth.
“Hey,” Amanda says softly, her voice careful. We’ve been in the same position before, each scaring the other during a swim. This time, I don’t flinch. She’s given me fair warning with the music.
I relax.
“Hey.” She strips down, the view of her body as she slowly reveals herself to me in the steamy pool room like watching art in motion. How often do we get the chance to see another human being shed their socially required outer armor and be vulnerable, skin on display, completely open?
I do.
Every day.
But not like this. In the bedroom or the shower, she moves fast, the removal of her clothes a step in a checklist, a process, on the way to a final destination. Here, though, she flows. It’s all one movement, broken down into smaller movements, choreographed by necessity.
She savors each second, the juncture of time and touch, of lifting limbs and brushing skin all coming together as my eyes take in the sight. We ignore too much in life. We have eyes that see but don’t connect our vision to emotion. When we do, it feels like art.
When we don’t, we’re just blank walls.
As she slips into the water with me, Amanda’s breasts bob, floating to the surface. Being in here is like no other moment we spend together. Explaining what it’s like to be in the water with her is like trying to describe a kiss. You can do it, but why? Unique expressions of who we are don’t translate.
“It’s so warm,” she tells me, delight floating across her face like sunshine between the leaves of an oak tree, the water and light in the cocoon of the lap pool spinning magic.
“I turned up the heat. I know you like it warm.”
“Doesn’t that make it impossible for you to do laps?”
“No. I’m not competing anymore.” I reach for her, hands enjoying the slippery magic of her skin. She kicks toward me, one hand on the pool’s ceramic-tiled edge, the other on my shoulder, pressing down. My feet are on the bottom but the feel of her next to me, weightless as she moves in for a kiss, makes all my boundaries dissolve.
We are the water.
Dipping under the surface, she runs her hands down the length of my legs, first skimming the outer edge of my thighs, then skimming over knees and calves. She slides an appreciative hand up between my legs before breaking the surface, her hair wet and flat against her scalp, her hand leaving me to wipe her face.
“Tease,” I say.
“I’m a sure thing.” Kicking her legs, she smiles at me. “Thanks for turning up the heat.”
I find one breast, physics changing the feel of her flesh, the beauty in my hand requiring less effort to hold, making me grasp a bit more. “Always.”
She laughs. “I meant the water.”
“I didn’t.”
Pulling away, she disappears underwater, swimming with amateur strokes for a meter or two, surfacing then dropping until she’s halfway down the pool. Catching up to her is easy.
But I don’t.
The lap pool is a strange environment: extremely narrow, Olympic length, and created out of sheer grief. Multiple griefs, really. After Mom died and I nearly died, outdoor sports like football and lacrosse weren’t on my list of priorities. Dad required his sons to “have a sport,” so swimming became mine.
But McCormick men don’t do anything half way.
We’re remodeling the estate, but this lap pool, like my wife, came in the After, the period of life without Mom. Amanda never met Mom. Mom never saw the lap pool. Dad had it built as a training ground for his competitive son, the elite athlete who would pivot from one sport to another without complaint, as if it were ordained by a higher power, met as an obligation I was born with.
The grief lives here, too.
Amanda’s presence, the songs on The Yes Album, the bathwater temperature–it’s all so different from the grueling laps I churned out in the drive for excellence. If I swam hard enough, made flipturns fast enough, lifted heavy enough, turned my body into a machine that won–well, maybe the grief could be redeemed. Maybe I could use it as fuel, burn it up, make it go away, transmogrify it into some useful energy that would make sense of what happened to Mom, me, and Declan that day at my soccer tournament.
Water makes sense. It just is. We work around it, make it work for us, find ways to harness its power and are consistently reminded of how little control we really have over it.
“Cramp?” Amanda calls across the room, breaststroking toward me with a lazy set of hand gestures that almost make me laugh.
“No. Just lost in thought.”
“Is it the mementoes?”
“Mementoes?”
“I texted you. I found a small closet behind some heating vents. Filled with old stuff of yours, Terry’s, and Declan’s. Trophies, artwork, report cards, pictures... stuff like that.”
“I already have all that. Dad had Grace sort through it when we each went off to college.”
“Maybe she missed some stuff? I don’t know. But I found it and made boxes for each of you. Terry, Declan, Shannon, and the baby are coming over tomorrow for dinner anyhow, so it’s the perfect chance to give it to them.”
I’d forgotten about the dinner. Her idea. Our second-to-last honeymoon night.
“I thought we were on our honeymoon. You don’t see other people when you’re on a honeymoon.”
“You mean like the nine thousand work-crew people we’ve dealt with for nearly two weeks?”
“Touché.”
She laughs.
“Amanda,” I ask her, “you’re redoing all the bedrooms. I hate the yellow tile in the
guest bath — ”
“Do we really need to have this argument again?”
“No,” I concede. “But why haven’t you changed a thing in the living room. Other than the new fireplace insert.” We have wood stove inserts in every fireplace now, plus an additional freestanding stove in the basement as backups for power outages. An automatic order for three cords of wood has been initiated.
“It’s — well,” she says, her halting words worrying me.
“There’s no budget. I got too wrapped up on the prepare side,” I start before she cuts me off.
“It’s because your mother was perfect.”
“What?”
“Her taste.” She laughs through her nose, the sound charming. It melts me. “Every piece of that half of the first floor was lovingly hand-picked by Elena.” Hearing her say my mother’s name makes my throat ache. “I love the Degas. The African masks. The carved stone pieces from Greenland. The lapis lazuli box from Chile. It’s clear she lived a life where she brought back pieces of it to live in physical harmony with her, so that daily life was a reflection of all that she’d done.”
“Yes,” I agree, astounded by her insight.
“I don’t want to change that. I want to be that. And for now, I’m not that. I want our living room to reflect us, but we haven’t had enough us for that to happen yet, Andrew. Give me more us. Take more time off. Travel. Live. Be.”
“Mom took most of those trips alone. Or with us. Rarely did Dad go off with her.”
“Don’t be like James, then.”
“I’m not,” I vow, the words less to assure her and more to warn myself.
“Come here,” she beckons. A few strokes later, we’re standing in the middle of the pool, arms around each other, her mouth at my heart, the absence of her soft strands of hair strange. My chest starts to chill and gooseflesh sprouts along her arms. Her breasts smash against me, the small of her back like the curve of a shell, the thick muscles and lush curves of her ass so ripe, so warm.
So perfect.
She is so, so perfect.
Amanda
He is perfect.
So, so perfect.
We’re in tandem, a twosome made of one body yet wholly separate. Distinct. The water makes me feel like the boundaries of who I am aren’t real.
Andrew is real.
Nothing else.
Melting into the warm, wet embrace of my husband has become no less extraordinary with repetition, each again another invitation to find a new part of myself. To let go of other parts.
To take in whatever pieces of himself he will give.
His hands ride up my back, gliding over the hills and valleys of my ribs, my spine, my shoulders, until he stops at my wet hair, the thickly united mass an impediment. Our skin slides as he kisses me, my thighs slick against his, feeling our differences, enjoying them.
Andrew is tall, and without heels I’m in a different position, his arms curling, neck bent to meet me fully. I can’t help but touch him, as if this is my last chance, desperation filling me with a sudden rush like a thunderstorm burst on a hot day in Florida, the coastal winds bringing a spontaneous downpour, the push harder than expected, so intense that all you can do is stop and give in.
I am lost in his kiss. His touch. The way the water laps against my hip, up between my thighs, as if he ordered it to make love to me on its own. Our movement makes the light change, over and over, each second a re-created visual feast. Opening my eyes, I find him staring into them, so serious, so loving, so everything.
Dipping his head, he bends to take one breast in his mouth, one hand moving to my navel, down the soft skin beneath the light-mottled water, his touch electrifying. I let myself take, his mouth and hands and sheer nakedness a gift, one I’ve been trained by his love to learn to accept freely, fully, without hesitation. As his tongue plays, I’m consumed by this connection, the heat and warmth and constant attention so perfect. I am full.
Almost.
“Come here,” I whisper to him, moving against the edge, our past selves teachers for what comes next. We’ve made love in this pool before, the very first time a gorgeous homecoming for my dear, sweet man, but this time it’s less tender, more riveting, edgier. He feels the same, pulling me in, entering me with a profoundly simple maneuver that means so much more. We’re together, half on the pool’s edge, half in the water, Andrew holding me up so the angle is just right as we curl in and out of each other’s orbit.
We gaze into each other’s eyes, changed by the water, made smaller, more compact with wet hair, no clothes, no impediments to our freedom. Friction is reduced by water but the intensity is not, strokes and kisses, caresses and grips all heightened by the mood the pool sets for us.
“You’re perfect,” he groans as we come together, my throat tight, fingertips digging into his shoulders, the grip my only way to communicate because every ounce of me is focused on the divine feeling of him in me, on me, around me.
And just like that, I float away.
Not on water.
On love.
“You’re perfect, too,” I say as we move fully into the water, standing in each other’s arms, my smile buried in his chest. “Good thing we found each other. This much perfection would be wasted on a mere mortal.” I move one hand up and down my body. “You lucky man.”
A rumble of amusement vibrates under his pecs. “I’m honored you would choose a wretched beast like me to grace with your presence.”
“So now you admit it.”
He kisses the top of my head. We sigh. We breathe. We just are.
“Even if you do pick atrocious tile colors,” he murmurs in my ear, making me laugh, almost swallowing a mouthful of pool water.
“No matter what we do with the remodel,” I whisper, my words like water flowing over polished rocks, the taste of salt on my lips, “the pool stays.”
Chapter 9
Andrew
On the second-to-last day of our staycation honeymoon, I walk into the kitchen to find Amanda standing in front of the brand-new stainless steel oven, holding the manual, her face screwed up in concentration. She has one hand in a silvery oven mitt, scratching her neck.
“How do I set this to broil?” she mutters to herself as I go to the coffee machine, grab an espresso cup from a small stack on the counter, and start to make myself coffee.
On second thought, I put the cup back and grab a beer. We’re having family over tonight, after all. Beer trumps coffee.
“Why do you need to broil?” I ask as I stare into the new fridge, which really does remind me of a spaceship-movie set as I open both doors and try to find an IPA. Weeding through a farmer’s-market-worth of vegetables and half a cow of meat, I finally locate the most important part of the meal.
Hops.
“I’m making dinner.” She’s distracted, reading the manual. New technology does that to the best of us.
That’s why I don’t bother with manuals.
Men are smart like that.
“I’m sure the catering staff can figure that out.” The first sip of beer is always the best.
“I’m making dinner,” she says again, the words not quite sinking in as I go through the second sip. Third sip. Ahhhh...
And then it hits me.
“You mean you are making dinner for all of us?”
“Yes.”
“All of us?”
Stretching out her fingers, she ticks off the list. “You, me, Terry, Declan, Shannon, and a nursing baby. That’s five people who have teeth and chew, unless you count Ellie’s first tooth coming in and how she noshes on Shannon’s nipple.”
“You had better not put nipple on the menu.” I eye the top of my beer bottle and frown.
“I’m not that fancy. I was thinking grilled filet, salad, and wine.”
“You’re practically Connie.” I cock one eyebrow. “Why not ask her to cater?”
“She doesn’t do private homes.”
“Bet she would for us.” I pull out
my phone and start to call.
An oven mitt attached to my wife blocks me. “No. I want to cook.”
“You never cook.”
“I do!”
“Cheeto-marshmallow treats and espresso-based coffee don’t count.”
“You never let me cook.” She crosses her arms over her chest. Uh oh. When men do that, it’s a sign of dominance.
When women do it, it’s a sign of an impending fight.
“Excuse me?” The beer turns sour in my mouth.
“You insist on eating out all the time. How do you know whether I’m a good cook or not?”
She’s got me there.
A quick kiss on her forehead gets me some goodwill. “I am going to extract myself from this discussion and cede it all to you. Your kitchen, your home, your choice.”
“Good man.”
“Smart man.”
“My man.” Amanda pulls me in for a real kiss, the kind that blends her coffee-flavored mouth with my IPA until I want nothing but that taste forever.
I set down the beer bottle. “When are they coming over?”
“Five.”
I look at the clock. “We’ve got half an hour. How about we go upstairs? No work crews, no designers, no delivery people. It’s just us,” I murmur in her ear, my fingers sliding under her shirt, finding a breast that is woefully unattended.
“Your fingers are icicles!” she squeals as her nipple hardens under my touch.
“Warm me up, baby.” I look at the newly installed countertop. “How about we christen the kitchen? Haven’t had sex in here yet.”
“Yes, we have! Plenty of times!” I can tell by the flush on her face that she’s interested.
“Not in the newly remodeled one. That’s part of the honeymoon-remodeling deal: we have to re-dedicate each room.”
She drops to her knees, the oven mitt still on one hand, the other one reaching to undo my pants. “How about we start here?” she says, warm breath brushing against my now bare skin as she takes me into her mouth and I lean against the new marble counter, fully–
Ding dong!
Teeth are not meant to be used on a penis.
