Dive

by Adele Griffin

  Your moods were nothing, in exchange for what I got.

  On Lyle’s instruction, you cleared out your posters from the walls of your work space, along with your comics collection and Spider-Man rug, and we weren’t better than two strangers on the third floor, no more than a bathroom and the silence between us. Even at Mom and Lyle’s engagement party, you played that game of always stepping out of the room I walked into.

  You hated me fierce all through that first year, and when I remembered to, I hated you back.

  MALLORY DOESN’T COME TO visit us until the movie is starting. She crouches next to Lyle’s seat and they whisper together. I lean hard over my armrest, but I can’t hear their secrets. The lady sitting on the window side has fallen asleep and her breath is crawling too close on my ears and neck. I hold my shoulder up to my ear, then I zip my jacket all the way to my chin. Then I nudge the lady with my arm to redirect her breath. The first time doesn’t work so I nudge harder and she wakes up with a gasp noise.

  “Would you please mind your space?” she says in a whisper that has slurp in it.

  “You were breathing on me,” I answer, in my regular voice. Lyle turns and with one hand he pushes my chest deep into the seat back.

  “Is my son making trouble?” he asks.

  “He woke me up,” huffs Slurpwhisper. “He elbowed me.”

  “I’m very sorry about that. Ben and I will make certain it won’t happen again,” says Lyle. They talk over me like I’m not even here.

  I stretch back my neck and roll my eyes and go, “Shheeez.”

  “Come on, Ben,” Lyle says. “What would Ms. Faunce think? At the last parent-teacher conference, she told me you’d been maturing in leaps and bounds.” He takes his hand off my chest. Even though it didn’t really hurt, I go, “Oww!” and start a wild coughing fit. Leaps and bounds—like I’m some dumb rabbit. Ever since that conference, Lyle’d been way over-talking those leaps and bounds, even though old Ms. Faunce is the type who’d put in a good word for any kid.

  “Bennett,” Mallory whispers. “Do you want to trade? If you give me your word that you’ll behave, I’ll let you.”

  “Trade for the rich-people seats?” I ask, leaning over Lyle, who is looking at Mallory like she just lost her mind.

  “Right.” She nods at me slowly. “But you have to promise you’ll be a man. Promise me no horsing around up there. No elbowing, no nonsense.”

  “I promise, I promise,” I say.

  “I’ll tell the flight attendant Lyle and I want to talk privately, and that’s why we’re trading.”

  “Okay, yeah.”

  She pats Lyle’s arm and is back in a minute with one of the plane ladies.

  “Nice meeting you,” I say to Slurp-whisper as I stand up. She opens one eye at me and frowns.

  Mallory leads me to her big spaceship seat and makes me promise her again. So I promise her again. Then the plane lady comes over with earphones and a blanket. I move back the seat as far as it can go, set my earphones to a good music station, and settle in.

  Inside my mind swims up a picture of you, the way I imagine how you are now, asleep in a germless steel bed and wearing one of those tie-back napkin nightshirts that hospitals use for clothes.

  Ben, if you want to use my old room as your work space, you can have it, you tell me in pretend. ’Cause I’m never coming home again.

  But Lyle’s sad, I answer you. He needs you back. Even if I don’t, not really, not anymore.

  But you’re way better than me at being Lyle’s kid, you say.

  “You think?” I ask out loud, and my own real live voice freaks me; not just because of how it bursts out by accident, but because it sounds way too happy.

  Boy am I a jerk.

  I look over at my new neighbor, Eggcheeks, to see if he’d heard me talking, but he’s rolled over on his chin and snoring. I take care not to elbow him. I know how to keep a promise.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER I saw you dive that my hate feelings about you changed some. The town pool and tennis club had opened for the summer, my first summer at Lyle’s, and one day we all went over for swimming. I was feeling not-so-good with the day at first, on account of Mom. She was wearing her new pink two-piece. Pink is her favorite color, but like everything else, Mom took it to the extreme. The rest of the mothers had on one-piecers, some of them with attached lettuce-leaf skirts. Mom seemed to have a spotlight shining on her stomach, from the way people’s eyes kept straying to it.

  Lyle wasn’t bothered. He liked Mom’s uncarefulness. She was different from his clients, who wrote Lyle thank-you notes about how they finally stood up and spoke their piece in front of the boss or auditorium or wedding banquet, after reading his book. Mom had no shyness of the Other People, no worry about how she expressed herself in public.

  Still, I bet there were better expressions than giving the whole town a whopping eyeful of your stomach whether they liked it or not.

  Dustin’s going to dive for us, I hope, Lyle said, starting in on you right away. You were walking apart, a couple of steps ahead and to the side, pretending like you weren’t with us.

  I don’t know about that, you answered without turning around. My back’s stiff. Which was your inside-out way of letting Lyle know you were still mad about mowing the lawn. It was your weekend chore, and while you never talked against it directly, your comments circled in shadowy rings around your main complaint.

  One dive, Lyle persisted.

  For me, added Mom.

  You kept walking, your hand reached around massaging your back.

  When Lyle said you could dive better than anyone in town, I had my suspicions. I thought Lyle was making an angle on the positive. “An Angle on the Positive” is the title of chapter three in his book, about how important it is to concentrate on the good parts of yourself so that you can face your audience with brave eyes and a steady voice. I figured you needed those positive angles more than I did. You were the one Lyle whispered to Mom about, the one who had taken to sleeping in a tent in the middle of your room and hanging around with a bunch of kids who wore black T-shirts printed with skulls and dripping-blood words.

  Maybe he’s forgotten how to swim, Mom said, teasing.

  That’s not going to work, Gina, you answered.

  The afternoon loafed on, with Mom and Lyle standing waist-high in the shallow end water, talking and leaning their backs against the wall, and me doing jackknives with a kid I knew from my class who had decided to stop beating me up now that second grade was almost over. His friendliness made me feel good. I took it as a sign of an easier time in school next year.

  You spread a towel over the warm concrete along the pool edge and watched the other kids jumping and diving off the low, middle, and high dives. Your legs were crossed at the ankle and wedged up to your chest, your arms hugged your shins, and your nose dug into the space between your knees. You stayed like that all afternoon, until the sun had quit warming the top of the water and families were packing up to go home.

  Are we leaving now? I asked, after my new friend had been called back and hauled away by his family. My fingers are getting peely, see?

  In a little while, Mom said. We’re waiting to see if Dustin wants to go in.

  Lyle sneaked a look at you.

  Is he gonna dive? I asked.

  Only if he wants to, Lyle answered.

  You waited. I’d seen you do this before, hold the same position for so long it was like the real you had gone somewhere else, leaving your body parked behind like an idling car. You waited until Mom finally had climbed out of the pool and disappeared into the changing cabana, and Lyle was collecting our books and tanning lotions. I was at the snack center, in line for a drink of water at the fountain. I probably wasn’t supposed to have seen you either, except I was watching. Even as far back as then, I had a hunch of you that you didn’t especially appreciate.

  It happened pretty sudden. You spouted up from your towel and started running like a short-distance hurdler, fist
s like hammers, back-tucked elbows, puppet knees. You speeded down the side of the pool and then began to scale the ladder, two rungs at a time. Even as I scooted out of my place in line, running to get a better look, you were already out on the edge of the high-dive board, whipping it up and down in long slinging bounces.

  Then you leaped clear, and your body caught the air the way a kite catches wind. The slide of my own sucked-in breath was the only sound to go with my picture of you as I watched you fold into a smooth hand-toe touch before you stretched and tensed and dropped like a dart aimed clean through the center of the world. You hardly bubbled the surface of the water as you shot beneath it. Inside a crazy second, I wondered if you had figured out a way to disappear.

  You surfaced to the sound of people clapping, me included. It was the best dive I had ever seen off TV. Lyle was clapping too, heavy hard claps, and yelling, Atta boy, Dustin! Way to go, kiddo! but his eyes were also straining past you to the cabanas. Mom had missed your dive completely.

  But this was your inside-out way of getting back at Lyle.

  MY EYES GROGGY-OPEN TO the glass and echoes of another airport. This one is too hot and I’m stuffy inside my clothes.

  “Lyle, Lyle, Lyle,” I say. “I’m awake. Put me down, I’m not a kid.”

  Lyle stops and drops me to my feet. “The only person I know who can sleep through a plane landing,” he says.

  I take off my jacket. “Are we close by the hospital?” I ask.

  “Not exactly,” says Lyle. “It’s about another hour by car.”

  “We’ll need to rent one after we claim our bags,” Mallory says. “What kind are you thinking, Bennett?”

  “Red drop-top,” I say. “Like your other one.”

  “That’s unnecessary,” Lyle grumbles. “We don’t need that.”

  “Skinflint.” Mallory is joking, but she’s right. Lyle’s a pincher. He keeps a giant water cooler full of loose change in his office at home. Once it fills to the top, he takes it to the bank. The money he gets in exchange he puts into his retirement account, which he calls his rainy-day plan. Lyle’s as ready as Noah for a rainy day.

  Lyle uses a pay phone to call the hospital. His expression doesn’t show a hint of the news he’s getting, but he gives a quick thumbs-up when he catches me staring at him.

  “They say Dustin’s stable,” Lyle says when he gets off. “But listen to this—he’d been moved this morning from critical. Gina didn’t even tell me he was admitted to critical because of some head trauma. She didn’t even tell me!” Lyle can’t seem to stop repeating this all different ways. “She didn’t even tell me. She didn’t even tell me.”

  “But now he’s stable,” Mallory says. She makes the surface of her voice all smooth, like to remind Lyle of what the word stable means.

  Lyle catches one of his hands in Mallory’s and the other one in mine. “I’m very glad you two are here,” Lyle says. “Thank you for being here with me.”

  For a minute we stand linked and quiet while other airport people drag past us, mulepacked with luggage and snack foods.

  After we collect our stuff off the bag-wheely machine, we head to the car-rental booth at the other end of the airport. Mallory asks for a midsize red convertible four-door. She gets mad when the car lady hands the forms to Lyle to sign.

  “I’m paying and I’m driving,” Mallory announces. I can tell she’s using Lyle’s chapter two: “Your Vocal Focus.” Her voice is so big that other people turn.

  The lady gives the key to Mallory and apologizes, but it’s too late, Mallory’s energized. As soon as we’re out in the car lot, she starts in on her speech.

  “I’ve earned my own salary and paid my own way since I was sixteen years old. More than half my life spent as a working woman. To still be faced with that kind of prejudice really gets me where I live.”

  “Ah, she’s a dumb teenager,” Lyle says.

  “No excuse for ignorance,” Mallory answers. “No excuse.” She wears her chin and mouth pulled high.

  We stay quiet because there’s no arguing with Mallory when she is taking her stand against Ignorance. Once I asked her what was hardest: being famous, being black, or being pretty. When she frowned at me I thought she was mad, but then she rubbed the top of my head like you’d pet a dog, and she told me she was living fine with all of it. She told me it was other people’s opinions about her that got to be tiresome.

  The weather is warm and the sun presses pinwheels through my eyelids. Mallory forgets her bad mood as soon as the guy drives the car around. Cars aren’t my thing, but I can tell this one is top quality.

  “Mal, I don’t know,” Lyle starts.

  “When it comes to the selection and steering of the automobile,” she says, “I’m in the driver’s seat. And if we get ticketed, I’ll pay.”

  Mallory is a whole different type of driver from Lyle. She wouldn’t ever set a time of arrival or think that the challenge is in keeping it legal. She zoops down the top and vv-vrooms the engine, rolls the stick shift through its gears, and cruises back and forth between lanes so many times that soon we don’t have any car friends left on the highway.

  From where I sit, Lyle looks unbendable. He rests a hand exactly the same way on each knee knob. From the front he must be a sight; it’s like taking Abraham Lincoln out for a spin. Mallory turns to him and goes, “Whoo-haaa!” a couple of times, to try to spur him into the mood. I join in with a “Whoo-eee!” but neither type of whoo takes effect.

  “Tell us where we’re going,” Mallory shouts through the wind, and so Lyle pulls out the map the ignorant teenager car-rental lady gave him. He seems to relax as he slides his fingers over the roads that lead to the hospital. Mallory knows how to get Lyle sidetracked.

  I feel the crunch of my juice-wrapper Slice tucked inside my jacket pocket. Soon as I pull it out, the wind’s grabbed it backward from my hands. I turn around and it’s a firefly on the highway before it crazy-catches another direction and then it’s gone, sucked underneath the hood of the car behind us. I keep watching, hoping that it might snap back to me or pop out the other side, but it doesn’t.

  LYLE FIGURED OUT ABOUT me and airplane models, even when Mom said I probably didn’t have the patience for them. But she was wrong and he was right, which was becoming a pattern, so far as I saw it. Lyle said from the minute he saw my first paper airplane, a Swallowdive that unfolded into a birthday card for Mom, he thought I had more complicated designs inside me. He said my brain was right for holding three dimensions.

  The first Sunday Lyle came back from the hardware store with a model, I thought it looked too hard, which gets me smiling now, since it was cake. An F-14 Navy Tom Cat, only eight separate pieces. Lyle said he’d help, but the model was mainly my project. He put down newspaper on the kitchen table and read me the instructions while I built it myself. After the glue dried, I painted it gunmetal with U.S. and French flag decals. Then Lyle showed me how to string clear-varnish-coated twine through the holes in the wings. We hung the Tom Cat from a long tack Lyle hammered into a corner of my bedroom.

  The next Sunday, Lyle brought back a Desert Patrol Vehicle. It was an Ages 9–11, except for I had only just turned eight.

  This one’s all yours, bud, he said—I have confidence you can do it.

  It took me a week to finish, and I had a hard time with the rubber cement, nonsoluble, which means it never washed off. My hands smelled like glue all day at school, reminding me of how much I needed to come home.

  When the DPV was done, Lyle said I was almost a pro.

  Lyle strung it and tacked it up on the opposite corner of the room. At bedtime my decals glowed better than the night-light I’d pitched in the trash after you made fun of it. The only thing out of place was how my planes looked against your shadowy Spider-Men crawling up the sides of the walls.

  You used to be real into Spidey, with the fake web-spinner and Halloween costume and everything, and your mom had wallpapered your work space special. After I took over the room, you to
ld me it was baby wallpaper only good for pee-wee runts like me. I think you said that since there was nothing either of us could do about me sharing the room with Spider-Man. Except for I didn’t even want him.

  My complaint about the wallpaper knew to stay put, because it was too close to getting into it with you about your mom and your work space. So I kept quiet until my third model, a World War II B-17 Allied Bomber with two 300-pound bombs and thirty one-caliber machine guns, plus a detachable driver and two gunners. The box picture showed a man building it alongside the kid, like a warning of how tough it was to assemble. Only I did it alone. It took almost two weeks to finish, and Lyle said hands down it was the best workmanship of the three. Maybe I was feeling extra proud, but after Lyle hung it, I couldn’t help by accident saying a small bad thing about Spider-Man.

  I know it’s not how you see your room, Ben, Lyle answered, but let’s wait awhile. Let me wait for a good time to talk to Dustin. Changes are hard on him.

  Yeah okay, I said out loud, but in my head I wasn’t perfectly agreeing.

  It wasn’t too long after, though, that I came home from school to see bald walls and my bedroom furniture pushed into the middle of my room. My three models had been unhooked and were lined up careful on my bookshelf. I found the long strips of Spider-Man squashed in a pail in the bathroom.

  Surprise! called Lyle when I came downstairs. We’re giving your room a remodeling, so to speak. Okay by you?

  Sure, I’ answered. Sure, it’s okay. Thanks, Lyle.