Night Swim

by Jessica Keener

  “I remember this.”

  “I won’t forget what you did to help me.”

  “Kids are stupid.”

  I took his cigarette and sucked on the filter, then blew the smoke away from both of us. He twisted on the stool and placed his palm on my thigh. I didn’t flinch. I knew he was testing me.

  “Let’s take our drinks out.”

  The waitress handed us cokes in plastic cups. She was a high school student like me. Her hair was pushed under a hair net, her pink uniform soiled with chocolate ice cream and splattered hamburger grease. Anthony left her a huge tip. “Come on. We’ll talk in the car,” he said.

  I looked over at Margaret but she was still at it. The manager of the store, a medium tall man with thin, dark hair and brown-rimmed glasses was standing over her booth. Her new boyfriend turned and asked the manager what he wanted.

  “Are you ready to order?” the manager asked.

  “All set here,” the boy said.

  “Ready to pay then?”

  “I’m still drinking.”

  Margaret lit up a cigarette and smiled at the manager.

  “We’re almost ready,” she said. She looked over at me then and tipped her cigarette good-bye.

  At the take-out counter, a mother in blue striped shorts and navy shirt carefully handed her young daughter an ice-cream cone.

  “Watch the drips, honey,” the mother said.

  The little bronze-haired girl held her cone high, her love torch for all the world to see.

  “What’s the matter?” Anthony asked, brushing my chin.

  I shook my head. It hurt to see that child with her mother, but I didn’t want to tell him that.

  In the car, he reversed and swung out of the parking lot, bouncing over the curb onto the main street. I thought about Mother driving alone to Gooseneck Lake on a summer night. Too much drink. Too many pain pills. Her thin figure slapped against the dashboard when her car tripped over the embankment. Did she feel as I did now: wanting to break away but not knowing how?

  “Let’s drive to Gooseneck,” I said.

  He smiled. The lake put our heads toward a common goal, a destination, a feeling that we had purpose and it put me in a better mood. I opened the ashtray in the car and lit up the half joint lying inside it. It tasted stale, muddy.

  “All this time I thought you were a prude. You fooled me,” Anthony said. He put his hand on my thigh again.

  “People change.” I lit up and smoked languorously as if our time would never run out.

  On the way, he drove just under the speed limit. He glanced at my ankles and sandled feet, and sidled a look at my torso and waist. I watched him take in the whole picture, bit by bit.

  Whatever was meant to happen, I would let it.

  “I regret not getting together,” he said, taking the joint from me.

  “Yes. Me too, and now you’re leaving.”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  He didn’t say anything more about getting drafted but the danger of it was there, racing between us.

  “Do you like swimming?” I asked.

  “I don’t swim.”

  I coughed out the remaining dregs of marijuana in my lungs and sat up in the seat.

  “Why not?”

  “No one taught me.”

  “Well you can sit on the beach and watch me.” I slipped my feet out of my sandals and pressed my heels into the dash. We drove for a time in silence. The slow effect of marijuana squirmed through my body. I could tell he didn’t know what to think. Perhaps the awareness that I was stranger was making its way into his thoughts for he became more formal, a bit shifty in the car seat.

  “Where’s your brother, the singer?”

  “He’s in California now.”

  “You’re both singers. Runs in the family, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess. Yes.” I didn’t tell him that Mother played violin before arthritis set in, crippling her joy. I didn’t mention my great grandmother’s opera dream.

  “You know what runs in my family?” he asked.

  “Sports?”

  He laughed. “That’s good. Truck drivers. My father and uncle drive trucks.”

  “Is that what you want too?”

  “Why not? Money’s pretty good.”

  We parked in a rustic neighborhood with cabins, under tall, straight pines. This time when he kissed me I kissed him back, his tongue seasoned with cigarette smoke and earth. I kissed aggressively and then I broke off and ran into the woods toward the lake’s edge. He sauntered alongside me, easily keeping up, the athlete in him emerging effortlessly. But I soon lost my breath and slowed down. Then I tried to run again. This running and stopping on the soft earth kept on until we finally came to the water. It was not the high bank where Mother had toppled the car and ended up in the hospital. That was on the opposite side of the lake, near the highway. I pulled my shirt off and tossed it back. It was dark under a quarter moon. Too dark for anyone except Anthony to see my breasts. The water lapped the sand and tall grass. Lacy curls of white broke the surface.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  I slipped off my skirt and kept my underwear on. Then I went in and felt the water in layers: the warmer surface, the denser, cool bottom. My toes tickled the cold; my breasts hardening, my nipples pointing out as if greeting the air. Anthony came to the edge but didn’t go any further.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  I laughed but I was getting cold and plunged in before I could stop myself. I dove again, pushing my butt up and circling under, then exploding through the surface.

  “Come in, Anthony.”

  “No. You come here.”

  But I turned and swam away, paddling through water that numbed my skin. I dove under again, a strata of colder waters wrapping around my legs. I felt the soft bump of a fish against my ankle.

  “Hey, come closer so I can see you.”

  I turned toward shore, then stood up in the shallows, hugging myself.

  “Looking for this?” He dangled my skirt and blouse in his hand. I reached for them but he playfully pulled them away and started walking.

  “Very funny,” I called to him.

  “You want it, you have to give me something in return.”

  “Like what?”

  He stopped. He walked up to me and held my clothes behind his back. I stood still, the slow drips of water inching down my legs, settling into small pools in my underwear, on my lip and neck, in the crook of my crossed arms.

  “I should have kissed you that day I walked you home.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t think I was good enough for you.”

  “I didn’t think I was pretty enough for you.”

  I liked the way he looked at me now, full attention, his glaze dissolving so that I could see deeper. He took another long drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the lake. We both watched the red tip arc, dive suddenly.

  Gone.

  “Kiss me now.”

  He stepped closer and peeled my arms from my chest. He stepped closer again until his hips pressed into my wet underpants. His erection soon made his pants irrelevant. We pulled off the rest from each other and I let him in for a quick, slippery ride.

  ~~~~~

  Long past midnight, Anthony dropped me off at the end of my street. I insisted on it. I wanted to slip in the house unnoticed. I barefooted up our driveway to the backyard but saw Father’s office light on. I sneaked over to the window to peek in. There she stood in his office, much taller and broader than Mother, her arms around his chest. I ran into Mother’s rose garden, so overgrown now that only the thorns seemed to have flourished. Mother would be beside herself if she saw how we’d let it tangle, the bushes left on their own. I knelt down, face against the dirt path, furious with Father. I wanted to run back down the driveway to get Anthony.

  Too late.

  Maybe he heard something because the office light turned off, then on again, and off. The whole house became dark. I walk
ed into the kitchen and turned on the overhead light. I took out a pan and noisily placed it on the stove, then filled it with water to boil noodles. I was hungry. I had forgotten to eat. But I only heard silence thickened with heartache, and then a rustle from Dora’s room. She came out suddenly, pink rollers in her hair, and shuffled into the bright room wearing a blue cotton robe that made her skin look blacker.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re all wet. Where were you?”

  “Swimming.”

  “Lord.” She turned to go back to her room but changed her mind and came closer to me.

  “When did she come here?” I asked, referring to Sherry.

  “After dinner. They went to a movie.”

  We looked at each other, Dora softening towards me, not by smiling but by acknowledging what we both knew to be true: that my father had pushed me too far, stepped out of bounds, broken my rules, rules I didn’t know I had, rules about time and consideration. Time to adjust to this change without Mother. Consideration for letting a younger woman — any woman — take Mother’s place.

  “He doesn’t care, does he?”

  She sighed, then sighed again as if breathing could pull in better words or clear out the muddled ones that I struggled with. I could smell her hand cream and the perspiration on her temples. I stirred the pasta, impatient for it to cook.

  “Listen, Sarah,” she said, adjusting the flame under the stove. “Your father has his needs. You’ll understand that when you’re older.”

  I snorted. My breasts jiggled under my damp blouse. I felt sticky and hemmed in by my clothes. “Well, I’m not older. Okay?” I stiffened up, standing straight while I gave the pasta, overdone now, a few more rough twirls. I yanked the pot from the stove and emptied the hot water into the sink, including the pasta.

  “Can I help?” Sherry said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. She was dressed in a yellow shift that hovered above her kneecaps. She had wide knees, sturdy legs. Nothing like Mother’s slim calves. “Late night munchies?” She smiled, her lipstick faded on her lips.

  “I didn’t have dinner.”

  I hated her attempt to be teenage friendly and knowing.

  “What’s burning?” Father said, standing behind her, his hair wild in the summer heat. He didn’t look at me. He asked Dora.

  “Ask your daughter. She’s cooking.”

  But he ignored this and came in and poured himself a glass of water.

  “I’ve invited Sherry to stay over tonight. I’ll sleep on the couch and she’ll stay in my office, on the sleeper.”

  “Sure.”

  I left the room, the pasta, the pots and went upstairs to shower. I was disgusted, raging. I wished I had stayed out all night.

  In the shower, I splattered my face in a downpour of water. Why had Mother plunged into Gooseneck Lake, gorgeous in her short hairdo and party dress? Was she leaving her marriage? Leaving us? Running away as I had wanted to, before Anthony delivered me back. Six months later, her new Cadillac failed to protect her. February’s snowfall and a truck or was it the memory of Symphony Hall that conspired to kill her. I couldn’t accept that she was not coming back.

  When Anthony and I returned to his car, I made him hard again with my hand. I liked the control and power it gave me. He lay back in the backseat, his pants unzipped, his shirt on. But afterwards, after his groan and hump, he looked confused as if I had penetrated his private shelter without permission.

  On the ride back home, I leaned against him and smoked, the car filled with a tenderness that comes when there’s no future between lovers. No hope.

  I stepped out of the shower and stood at the top of the stairs wrapped in a towel. Downstairs I heard Father’s grumbling voice, a woman’s sigh, and something knock over in the living room. Then the rest of the lights in the house went out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pure Mechanics

  I took the train into Boston as soon as classes ended and followed the directions to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Beacon Hill. I had missed my period, which is not what I had planned, not what I wanted to think about. I woke up queasy in the mornings, feeling strange. But I forced myself to follow the school routine: science and the human body, English. Logarithms in Math. American History. I took aspirin, told myself I suffered symptoms of malcontent.

  Between classes, I ignored the clans and cliques that had regrouped in the hallways since school began. After my summer with Gregory, my night with Anthony, all the boys at school seemed young, too young and impish.

  But Sophie and I still had many of the same classes together. In the afternoons, she went to ballet lessons, tap and jazz. She started dating a senior named Benny Weiss. Benny’s skin was pale and he had plump lips the color of apple cider. He worked hard to look old and wizened. He read French philosophers and talked about existentialism. He wanted to sleep with her but she resisted, though they went everywhere like husband and wife. He drove her to the movies and ballet on the weekends. It surprised me at first and then I grew used to seeing them arm in arm, kissing in his car.

  Margaret rarely showed up at all, and twice had been warned by the principal to make an effort to come to school. We were assigned different homerooms. I was on the college honors track but I didn’t feel much on track except that I completed my work, and never missed choir practice.

  Mr. Edwards had asked me to sing another solo for the Thanksgiving concert, “One Hand” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. The theme this year was America. We practiced the American anthem. This was not an easy song. Its range stretched high and low. He also urged me to try out for the school play, Guys and Dolls, but I didn’t want to act. Every day I put on an act. I was the daughter who didn’t care — but I did. I did.

  I cared when Mrs. Brenwald finally died. Coming home after choir practice one afternoon in October, I turned up our street and saw a huge flatbed truck parked in front of her house and a man in brown overalls standing in her driveway. Dora, Robert and Elliot huddled at the curbside watching.

  The man wore a plaid flannel shirt. A cigarette burned in his hand; his face dirt covered. Mrs. Brenwald’s tall, brown weeds had been shorn. The electric weed cutter lay at his feet. I could see he had been working at it for several hours. But most striking was the car, without the sheet. There it stood, a memorial to a prehistoric life and now in her postmortem existence it would be moved again, carted away to an automobile collector, or so the man said.

  “I send ‘em off,” he said. “Don’t know more than that. Most folks take better care of their cars than their own family members, I can tell you that.” The man talked as if he were used to such odd spectacles and circumstances. It was his business. He lifted his chin toward the house and shook his head.

  “Pretty darn sad.”

  Years of rumors had been confirmed. Brenwald’s house was a maelstrom of newspapers and brown paper bags, and a dead cat.

  The man’s eyebrows cast shadows on his face.

  I turned to Dora. “When did this happen?”

  “This morning. She’s not in there,” Dora said. “They took her out. A utility man called the police. A family member came while you were in school. A niece.” Dora shook her head.

  One police car and an ambulance without flashing lights drove up the street and parked. We inched back onto our lawn. The policeman opened Mrs. Brenwald’s door revealing a peek at paper debris inside, a hint of the severest neglect. My chest felt punched. I didn’t want to imagine Mrs. Brenwald like this, or the thought of her getting hauled out on some stretcher. I saw Mother’s coffin. Overcome, I turned and ran into our house, bursting into tears.

  I couldn’t stop. Upstairs, I knelt at the window in Peter’s room, his guitar over my lap. Downstairs, I heard my brothers clunking across the kitchen. Dora called up to me. I strummed a chord but didn’t answer her, so she started up. I plucked “The Crystal Ship” by The Doors. Still, she kept coming up.

  “You all rig
ht?” she asked. She stood at Peter’s door huffing.

  I shrugged, hoping that would be enough. But my eyes hurt. I couldn’t hide the swelling.

  “You should cry some more,” she said. “It will cleanse you.”

  “No it won’t.”

  I turned back to the guitar, still hoping she would leave but she came closer. I hunched over the strings and felt her hand on my shoulder.

  “You don’t want to go inside too deep,” she said. “Not at your age.”

  She ran her hand gently across my back, then told me she would be downstairs cooking dinner. When she had gone back down, I wrote a song.

  Lost lady

  Staring at circles

  Staring at squares

  Reads a book, plays solitary games

  Seeks solace,

  Seeks peace

  Skips waves

  Runs away

  The train ride to Boston was forty-five minutes of fear stretching in my throat. Sophie had sensed something and asked several times what was wrong? I told her I didn’t feel well, which was true. Something was off center, atilt, pulled out of orbit. At sixteen, I should be getting a driver’s license, not this.

  I looked out the window to distract myself but I kept seeing ugly Miss Holloway standing in front of our sex education class.

  “One time, that’s all it takes, girls,” she said holding up a stubby pointer finger. Her finger, white and fleshy as a limp penis, pointed lamely to the ceiling. She dangled a condom in her hand, tightening her cheek muscles as she rolled it over a plastic penis mounted on a desktop for sex education demos.

  The boys were in another classroom, presumably viewing a similar demonstration given by the football coach.

  “Gross,” one girl from the back of the room called out.

  Miss Holloway flicked up her head but ignored the comment. Once the condom covered the plastic penis, she handed it to one of the girls in front to pass it around.

  “There’s no mystery to this. It’s pure mechanics.”

  If only it were that — if only I had understood what I was doing, if only I hadn’t taken this chance.