Ingrid put her toes in the water and giggled. Beside her, Mary dashed in and sent a plume of water onto Ingrid, making her giggle turn to a screech. Ingrid covered her smile with her hands. Her eyes were as big as saucers, watching Mary go.
Next came Smitty. He had perked up since the bus ride. Only half her height, he reached up for Ingrid’s hand but she pulled away.
“Smells funny,” Ingrid said, to no one in particular. She wrinkled her nose and squinted her eyes up at the sun. “Smells like boy sweat.”
Smitty reached for her hand again and then she let him have it. “Come on, Ingy,” Smitty said. “You can tell me about your pitcher book.”
“Okay,” she said. And they went in the warm, stinky water together, Smitty settling in at chin level, Ingy at her waist. It tickled and Ingrid started her giggles again. She either forgot all about the smell or didn’t care because now she had Smitty’s attention.
There didn’t seem to be a shallow part where Tom could drive Dar’s wheelchair right in, so, after getting it wheeled up next to the middle pool, he reached down to scoop up the little man, who had thinner legs than even the college boy, Tom. “Ready?” Tom said, and picked Dar up with only a grunt of effort and no hesitation for the older man’s response. Tom swung Dar around and lowered him. Dar let out a whoosh of air when the water hit his swimsuit.
“Tommy-Tommy-Tommy! Wait-wait-wait!” he shouted, but in a playful way.
Tom laughed. “You’re okay, Derry-Strawberry!” he said. “I gotcha!”
The boy’s brow was already dappled with sweat. And the warm water gave him a sparkle up his legs. It was warmer than the air, but the tingling chill, he reasoned, must be the heavy mineral content. He was relieved that it was easier than he’d imagined getting Dar up out of his chair and into the pool with the rest. Especially with his audience of three still watching.
Down at this level, the water was clear and he could see big boulders under the surface, almost as if a pool company had designed this place with visitors in mind. Ingrid and Mary sat together and Tom swooshed through the water to bring Dar to sit near them. Dar smiled and clapped his hands. “You shure are good-good boy, Tommy, you shure are!” Dar screamed.
Tom pulled away from his shout, which was right in the boy’s ear. He stuck a pinky in there and wiggled it for effect. “Thanks, Strawberry. I do what I can.”
Smitty shouted, “It’s so hot! I’m sweating!”
Tom looked out from Smitty and the rest of them at their spot in the water. Only Zeke stood at the edge. While the others had mental ages that ranged from four to seven or eight, Zeke was probably the most mature of the five souls staying at Ocean View. His condition, as Tom understood it, was a lack of processing power and not a true mental retardation. Nonetheless, he stood at the edge, the last to get in.
“You coming or what, Zee?”
Zeke hesitated. He didn’t look at Tom or the others. Just stood with shoulders hunched and stared at the surface, now settled since Tom and Dar had made their dramatic entrance.
He was mumbling again, which was out of character for the man who Tom thought might be in his fifties and about the same age as Smitty.
Tom waded over to the edge and looked up, squinting at the older man who had a prominent farmer’s tan darkening his forearms and neck but leaving his pudgy belly plain white. “Come on, Cap’n. You don’t want to let Mary have all the fun without you.” He pressed that word, Mary, into Zeke like it was a gold coin.
With that, Zeke looked up and over at Mary who was playfully splashing with her friend, Ingy. They were laughing like kids. Despite her overbite, Mary shone her widest grin. Her yellow, uneven teeth were so big, while her eyes were so small and sharply black. No one knew for certain and with a name like Mary Smithson, it was hard to imagine, but Mary had very distinct Asian features. No one had ever met her parents and they mostly sent payments for her stay at Ocean View by certified cheque. Mary had never had a visitor as far as anyone could remember.
Seeing Mary play knocked Zeke out of his spell.
“Sure-shootin, Mr. Tom,” he said, and then he reached down to start easing himself into the pool. Unlike the others, Zeke’s face didn’t light up with a smile. It seemed like a real effort for him to get into that water.
“Just think of it like a big bathtub, Zee,” Tom said.
“Doan like the tub, Mr. Tom. Like showers. Me and my daddy, we’s always like showerin way better den tubbin.” But that didn’t stop him from getting in. His tone was conversational, not confrontational. He was just relaying the facts to Tom as he saw them. Showering was way better than tubbing. Tom smiled and reached out to help. But Zeke didn’t need help. He’d been capable of living his own life and doing things himself, always had been. Zeke didn’t even truly understand why he had to be at Ocean View. Up until two years ago, he’d lived with his daddy north of town and did just fine, thank you very much.
But, like most around town, Zeke was more agreeable than some and less than others. He lived his life. It just happened to be as a guest at a care home these days. Truth was, these days Zeke had trouble remembering what life was like before Ocean View. He remembered things from last summer and he had hazy recollections before that, but life was mostly about getting up and finding a project to do. Since he only worked in the off-season for the town of Dovetail Cove, now that was a challenge. But the days seemed to fill up, even during tourist time.
And this one would fill up with him sitting next to Mary in a big bathtub. In his way, Zeke was tickled at the prospect and made his way over to her as quickly as he could.
Tom watched Zeke go over to Mary. She noticed him and smiled. She wasn’t a pretty woman. She had bad acne and buck teeth which looked badly cared for. They were mismatched in their colour, some grey, some yellow. But her smile was priceless. She was happy to see Zeke, who was probably older than her by at least two decades. Tom laughed. He liked the Ocean View residents. He would miss them.
Then he looked off to see Nurse Karen and James Roundtree sitting in the shade, too far to hear what they were saying. Karen was gesturing in a big way. No doubt, she was telling James what she thought he wanted to hear.
3
“—It’s a matter of economics,” Karen said, her big voice rising, her big chest doing the same. She took a quick sip from the water bottle she had with her. She swatted at a fly. “In order to keep care at a maximum level for my guests—remember, James, they’re guests in my home—I need a minimum of commitments from your organization.”
She waved her hands in a pleading fan at the natural spring pool before them, where the Ocean View residents mingled and splashed. James’s eyes followed her hands, keeping silent.
“Don’t think for a moment I don’t lay awake at night and wonder how I’m going to make ends meet for those five lovely souls, Mr. Roundtree. I abso-tively always tell Chris, you know, I tell him again and again, and he agrees, he really does, they are like our family—”
James held his hand up to her but not in a forceful way. More like how an older sibling talks to a younger brother who is about to try an Evil Knievel jump off the roof on his bike. “I understand, Ms. Banatyne. Really, I do. I’m not questioning that. What I am saying is that your facility has not provided overview financial statements for the last three quarters. You understand that sharing those statements is a requirement to continue receiving subsidies under our program.”
James leaned back, propping himself on the grass. He took a look out at Tom staring back at him and then waving. James nodded.
He looked at Karen again. “Where’s Chris these days, Ms. Banatyne?”
“Oh, he’s at home today. Little under the weather—”
“Is he still keeping books for you?”
“Oh, of course he is. Just the same as ever. I always tell him—”
“Good, well, I’ll maybe drop by the house and have a chat with him. You understand, one of you needs to send those by the end of the month.”
Nurse Karen took a breath and looked off at the distance, away from the pool and her ragtag band of guests. She smiled back at James Roundtree but her lips quivered and she fought tears. She quickly looked away again, at the spot where treetops met sky.
“Sure thing,” she said. “Abso-tively.”
4
Zeke let Mary have it with a big splash that would have likely stung her eyes. Still, she kept that bucktooth grin of mismatched teeth. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary!” Zeke shouted.
Mary gave him a splash of her own, drenched his hair and his chest. “Zeke, the Sneak, he’s so weak!” she shouted right back at him. If they had been mentally older than the children they both were—particularly Mary—this might have ended in a playful embrace. But it didn’t. Smitty shouted at them both, “Hey yootoo! Stop it! Yer gettin’ me all wet heeere!”
Ingrid looked at Smitty, wiped her own face with a wrist and shouted, “Ya, me too. Stop it yootoo!” Dar just beamed a smile behind his dappled spectacles, pleased as punch to be out with the others in the hot pool.
Mary moved off from the others. She started chanting at the top of her lungs and it rose to shouting as she arched her back like an animal and howled at the sky. “We’s all at da hot pool, we’s all at da hot pool, we’s all at da hot pool!” When it died down, the group fell silent for a moment while she caught her breath. Tom scrunched his toes in the gravel and sand at the bottom of the pool and thumbed some rocks on the far edge while he watched Nurse Karen and James presumably discuss the future of Ocean View.
From above, he heard a voice. It was the pretty one leaning over the edge of her stone pedestal and resting her chin on the backs of her hands. Her smile was gleaming, her sunglass lenses dark bronze. “Hey,” she said.
Startled from noise other than the babbling and inane talk that he’d grown surprisingly accustomed to over this long summer, Tom turned up to her and made a visor over his eyes with a flattened hand. “Hey,” he said in return.
“What’s your name, college boy?”
Tom looked at his group who were all still muttering to themselves and each other.
“What’s yours?” he said, fighting a sly grin.
The girl rolled her tongue in her cheek and bobbed her blonde head. “Asked you first, cheater.”
Tom let out a laugh. “Tom,” he said, finally. “Tom Mason. How’d you know I’m in school?”
“Seen you around,” she said. “In town. Some kids told me. I’m Farrah. You know Mike?”
Farrah. Got it. Tom searched his memory. He hadn’t met many guys in town. There was a bonfire at Neckline Beach his first week and a couple other run-ins but nothing major. He mostly kept to himself this summer. “Mikey Dean?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dino,” she agreed. “I used to go with him.”
“Oh yeah?” Tom said, not really sure what else to say to that.
“Yeah,” she said. “He told me about you.”
It was Tom’s turn to roll his tongue in his cheek and fight a sardonic, needy smile. “And what did Mikey Dean say about me?”
“Said you were a faggot.” She laughed. She didn’t mean it in a bad way. Tom wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. He couldn’t help but join in. “Come ‘ere,” she said as her laughter tapered.
“Why should I?” Tom asked.
She looked down on the tops of the heads of Smitty, Zeke and the others. “My friends’ll show you their tits, that’s why.” With that, she popped out of view. And the group of Ocean View guests lit up with laughter. Zeke turned bright red and his eyes bugged out. Mary covered her face and Ingrid did a naughty-naughty-shame-shame finger cross with her arms outstretched so hard and so sudden, Tom thought they’d break off.
“Now, now,” Tom said, his best impression of a stern schoolmarm. “Everybody, don’t get excited. She’s joking.” He started to climb out of the water, all of it rushing down off his waist and hips as he pulled himself out of the pool. “Least I think so,” he added to himself under his breath. He hurried as if she wasn’t.
He looked for the best way up to the plateau above. He found two paths and took the one closest. It was the narrow walkway between the first shallow pool and the middle one. He tip-toed across the wet rocks, almost slipping. That would be a real how-do-you-do, wouldn’t it? Crack his skull open like a melon out here. That hot mineral water would make the blood keep on flowing, wouldn’t it? He’d be dead in a few minutes, likely.
Tom shivered off that thought and lay his flat belly against the hot rock. He pulled himself up and found purchase for his bare feet on some outcroppings below.
His head popped up just the same as Farrah’s had disappeared. He found all three girls lying on their backs, small pointed breasts still covered, but aimed at the sky overhead.
“Hey,” he said. “I heard talk of some tits.”
The brunette reached out and swatted Farrah. The black-haired girl gave a pfft! but said nothing. Farrah only smiled.
“Not t’day, big guy, keep your shorts from tenting,” Farrah said.
Tom looked out and made sure he could still see his crew from his perch halfway up the rock wall. The gang was horsing around but not to a dangerous degree. Mary and Ingrid were fiddling with Ingrid’s wet hair. Mary’s short, soaked, black hair glistened, but Zeke wasn’t looking at her right now. Waist-deep, his paunch sitting on the skin of the water, he simply stood still, staring up at Mr. Tom and the three girls.
Distracted, Tom didn’t hear what Farrah said next. “Huh?” he said, and turned back to face her. Her shoulders were red but the rest of her was oily and dark. Her hair looked like she’d been in the water and let the sun dry it. She pushed her big sunglasses up her nose and spoke again. “I said, ‘Are you heading home soon?’”
“Uh, yeah,” Tom said, watching Zeke watch him and the three girls. “In a couple weeks, for the school year, yeah. But I’m heading back over tomorrow, I think.”
“And then coming back? What for?”
“I just need a bit more money...” he said, trailing off and then returning his gaze to the girls.
“Yeah, watchoo gone buy with all your money, college boy?” She said it in her best, tough street kid impersonation, likely a mimic of something she heard Vinnie Barbarino say on Welcome Back, Kotter. The dark-haired one raised a hand at the sky, pointing at nothing, and shouted, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!” The other girls laughed.
Tom smiled. “A new camera.”
This piqued Farrah’s curiosity. Her eyebrows raised above her brown glasses.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Yeah, I don’t have a picture with me—” He looked down at his tight blue swim trunks but the girls couldn’t see them anyway. He’d cut a photo out of a hobby magazine showing the camera he wanted and carried it around, folded up in his old velcro wallet—a wallet that was sitting in the seat of the Ocean View short bus.
“But it’s the Asahi Pentax K1000. Do you know it?”
“Uh. No,” she said. But it wasn’t a well, duh kind of response. “What are you going to take pictures of? Me?”
“Sure I could,” Tom said, a bit of the aww-shucks-ma’am in his voice, as if this was suddenly Mayberry and he was a black and white version of little Ronny Howard. “I’m going into my second year of Fine Arts in the fall. I need my own camera that will take more than just a fifty millimetre. And I need to start working on my portfolio. I need some pretty impressive shots. Y’know, to make my mark and all.”
“So how much is this fancy camera?”
“Over three hundred. And I wanna get another lens too. Film ain’t cheap.”
“Uh-huh. So is that why you’re carting around the retards all summer?”
That stung. Tom wasn’t really sure why, but it bugged him. He didn’t know this girl. And she didn’t know him, but he felt like he ought to say something. “Hey,” he said. “They’re not retards. They’re, uh, delayed.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Farrah said. “Don’t get all bent out of shape. Ju
st sayin’. So is that why?”
“Yeah, I got on with Karen—Ms. Banatyne—so I could earn the camera and enough for school fees and spending money. My parents cover my tuition. You in senior year?”
“Yeah, we’re going in. Well, Jamie and I are. Betsy got held back a year in ninth.”
This time, the dark haired one reached out with her foot and gave Farrah a good kick. Landed her heel right in Farrah’s ribs. “Ow!” Farrah snapped as they both jiggled with the impact, their thin frames shifting. “Yer gonna dump me right over the edge on my head, you numbskull! How’d ya like my decapitation on your conscience?”
The browned-haired one, presumably Jamie, started laughing first. Farrah cracked next and then Betsy started. Tom didn’t join in but he did look over at Zeke who was still standing and watching. It was made even creepier by him suddenly starting to smile up at Tom. Zeke shifted his weight to his other foot in the water. Before that, he could have been a statue. Tom caught another shiver.
“You wouldn’t,” Tom said.
“Wouldn’t what?” Farrah said.
“—wouldn’t be decapitated. I don’t think you would, anyway. Not from this height. If you fell, you’d break a leg, maybe crack open your skull if you hit the right way. But you wouldn’t lose your head.”
Again, Farrah’s eyebrows went up, but this time it wasn’t quite so mild as before. “Well, ain’t you da morbid type.” It was her Vinnie Barbarino voice again.
“Hey!” Betsy shouted to no one. “Off my case, toilet-face!” Again, the other girls let out giggles.
All four were startled when a distant dog let out a few scattered barks that turned to a lonely howl. It faded, then ended in a choking death, like something had caught in the animal’s throat. But it struck Tom as funny just then. He and Farrah looked at each other, holding back a laugh. Then they both spit one out like Danny Thomas, but without the water. Tom liked Farrah’s sense of humour. He thought he’d get along with her if they ever spent any time together. But he knew she’d definitely need to be straight on not calling Zee, Mary, Ingy, Dar and Smitty retards again. She just didn’t know better. He’d let it slide.
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