The women in the class were the other kind of elderly. Spunky, silver-haired adventurers. Takers of tango lessons and passengers on European tour buses. They wore waterproof makeup in the pool and their bathing suits came in the cruise colours – citrus yellow and orange and lime green – with tropical prints of toucans and palm trees and extra frilly layers of fabric stitched around the middle.
Brad’s every movement sent vibrations through their bodies. Whenever he dove in or pulled himself back onto the deck – picture a slick performing dolphin at Marineland – the girls gasped and turned to each other, bubbling and giggling. Stace could imagine them sixty-five years ago, in braids and pig tails, passing folded notes at the back of a one-room school house.
They would do anything he asked. Whenever he called or waved his hands, another one pushed away from the side and went lustily flopping out to join him in the middle of the deep end. Stace didn’t like these women. She thought they lacked solid convictions and reliable stick-to-itiveness. They gave up without struggle or protest and they hurried for improvement, rushing to fix up all their old deficiencies and sacrifice their fears to this boy in his Speedo.
Brad made them practice a manoeuvre he called The Blast Off. Or sometimes The Rocket Ship. You had to reach back with your arms locked straight at the elbow and face out into the middle of the diving well. With your fingers clawed into the gutter, you leaned all the way forward, submerged up to your neck. Your chin rested on the surface, your legs coiled, and your feet pushed flat against the vertical tile of the pool wall. All the tension in your body strained forward, preparing for ignition. It was horrible. Whenever he got Stace into that position, she felt trapped by her own contorted limbs, folded-up, like a person in a straightjacket. An uncomfortable pressure seeped through her insides, a near-bursting feeling, like the desperate urge to pee.
The ladies tried their best, tried to do it right, tried to look as if underneath the jokes and silly pretending, they really could swim any time they wanted. They wanted to Blast Off and join Brad in the middle of the deep end, but it never worked like that. Instead, as soon as they released, as soon as they let go, their smiles flattened and their bodies hardened. They failed so completely, so quickly and perfectly, that Brad sometimes had to flash over and dive down or sink his hand way below his knees to get hold of an armpit or a flailing hand or the corner of a bathing suit. When he brought them back to the surface, the women broke to the air spitting and sputtering and sometimes they let out these huge pressurized belches that sounded like they came from deep in their stomachs. He’d cover up the uglier sounds with encouragement and say things like, “That was a good try, Gladys,” or “No problems here. We’re getting closer every day.”
When they tried to share in his optimism, tried to smile back into Brad’s face, that was true conversation, the kind of perfect communication Stace could understand. The way it all returned: old terrors carving themselves back into the familiar creases around their eyes. The deep end was like a reversed fountain of youth. Confident ladies full of laughs went out and went under, but the people who came back were thin-haired and fragile. The people who came back were panicked and stiff and confused and not sure of anything anymore. Lines of mascara ran down their faces and the whitest of the bathing suits went all the way over to transparent, revealing knots of pubic hair and leaving nothing to the imagination anymore. The women sobbed sometimes and cried out. They dug their fingernails into Brad’s neck and shoulders. Stace could see a fresh constellation of half-moons and purplish crescents cut out of his skin, layered over older scars.
She resisted him for the first four weeks and always passed when it was her turn to Blast Off. She felt no attraction when his eyes locked on hers and she did not want to be in the same place with him.
“Come out to me,” he said.
“It’s not far. Just breathe and relax and let yourself go. It’s easy, easy, easy. Let it go. Come on. Out to me. Right now. Come on.”
His hand reached over to her with the palm up, but he kept the tips of his fingers just out of range. He could stay like that for hours, dropped in the middle, with both hands and half his chest out of the water, relaxed and conversational, like he was standing on the top rung of a glass ladder that went all the way to the bottom.
But she could see the strategy. As soon as she trusted and let go, he’d move backwards, slither away and leave her out there by herself.
“It’s all in your head,” he said. “That’s where it starts and where it ends. Trust me. Come on. Now. Come out to me right now.”
There was a catch in his voice sometimes. A small hesitation, like he was holding back on a secret he couldn’t tell them yet. This was his job, work he got paid to do, and there were moments, she could see them, moments when he really had to try hard to keep his true feelings down. How many times in a week did he end up like this? How much waiting and coaxing and lying were required to get through an average Tuesday night? The worn out pick-up lines of the swimming teacher: how many times did he have to burn through them?
“You need to trust and let go. I’m right here. Come on.”
Sometimes while he waited he would fire a narrow squirt-gun stream of water through the small gap in his front teeth.
By the fifth week, the other ladies had had enough.
“Don’t be such a suck,” the woman beside her said. She waved her hand out to the middle.
“No need to make a big show. Just go for Godsakes.”
“I can’t,” Stace said. “I’m not ready. Still have to sort some things out. I’m working on it.”
She hated even trying to talk about it. What words could you use? How would you describe this feeling? She tried to smile.
“We’ll see. Maybe next week. We’ll see. But you guys are doing great. I learn a lot by watching.”
The woman laughed in her face.
“You’re working on it?” she said. The maternal scolding in her voice was impossible to cover up.
“Learning. Maybe next week. Can you hear yourself talking? Look around. Look at yourself. What in the world do you have to worry about? You’ll make it. Just go. Go.”
Brad took his cue.
“She’s right,” he said. “Take your turn. Can’t keep dodging. I’m right here.”
FOR A MOMENT, she could imagine it: letting go and pushing away, flying toward Brad. She wanted to be chosen and she believed there must be something like a transparent hand that lived inside of water. It made permanent selections and cradled some people, holding them always at the top, but it dragged other people down to the bottom and there was no way to protest.
“What you need to do is get over yourself,” the lady said.
“I’m getting sick of you sitting there watching the rest of us drown.”
She sneered and reached over to grab Stace’s right hand. She pried the girl’s fingers off the gutter and flung her whole arm out into the water.
“Go on,” she said.
Stace watched her hand splash down hard in front of her face. Brad took it, gave a sharp tug and pulled her away completely.
“Come,” he said. “This is it.”
A hot pulse of anger passed through her.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait.”
But it couldn’t be stopped. The hand triggered a chain reaction – the slowest Blast Off in history – and she felt the spring uncoiling, her arms, legs, torso and neck letting go. Brad backed away immediately and moved way out to the centre.
A single perfectly clear breath entered her body and for about five seconds everything was exactly as it should be. She went horizontal, parallel to the ceiling and floor, her weight spread out across the surface tension of the water. She even propelled herself forward, kicking. Her hands scooped through a dog-paddle and she inched towards Brad and his retreating hand.
“Good, good, good,” he said. “Out to me. Come on. You’ve got it now.”
He smiled. He smiled for her, but kept backing away.
“Look at you,” the lady called out, genuinely happy.
“I told you so. You’re doing it. You’re doing it right now.”
When Brad comes to her in the river, when he crosses over and reaches out, it will feel like swimming with no clothes, like skinny-dipping. His body – cold and slippery and hard – will press tight against hers and the water, moving all around and below, will push them wherever it wants. He will get it, understand immediately, and feel what she feels right now: stupid and spared. The same tingling, an electric charge of appreciation for what might have been lost will zip through his system. When they touch for the first time down here, deep where no one else can see, she will initiate the contact and make her intentions clear. Her already wet tongue, still salty with the diluting hint of blood, will go into his mouth and slide around and she will reach down between his legs without hesitating. He will know what to do. When they climb out, the required excuses will be made and they will leave the others behind. Maybe it will happen at his apartment, on a futon mattress on the floor, or maybe in a tent, maybe on the beach with the waves lapping at their toes, any dark place he wants, a car, it doesn’t matter, but it will happen tonight, as soon as possible.
She holds the rope and waits. The current sways her like a kid on a tire swing and she can imagine the time unfolding. In a couple of seconds, his head will break through the surface and he will pop up like a curious seal. At first, he will wear one of those urgent, serious and worried expressions. His mind will be crowded with procedures: the right roll-over for a floating spinal injury, what to do if he finds her unconscious and face-down.
But when she waves and calls out, when he hears her voice, sees her on the swing, it will change. The charge will flow and his worry will fade. He’ll smile and anticipate and his arms will churn. He will crawl through the water, cutting the fastest, straightest line directly to her body.
She waits some more, a little longer, the smile still stretched on her face, but he doesn’t come up. It seems darker than before and against the shifting backdrop of the water, it is hard to mark any clear distinctions or to see very far. An echo from the past, the sloshing of broken wave, whispers in her ear. Her shoulders tighten. Time builds on itself. She pulls herself up a little higher, concentrates, and tries to pick out the exact spot where he entered the river. She can retrace his path through the sky and she knows he came through bullet smooth. He went in deep, the way you practice it on the high dive, and left no splash, no ripples or wake to follow back to the centre of his entry. The wind gusts and she feels the first real chill pass though her body. Her hands are chaffing and with her adrenaline waning, she feels the first true ache begin to emerge from her body. An early redness spreads across her skin, the start of what will be the deep black and purple of an all-over bruise. It has been too long. Already way too long.
Where?
She tries to suppress the question. To think it through calmly. But there are limited possibilities. He is either coming towards her right now or he is not coming at all. Either he is swimming under the surface, playing submarine, already close by and ready to reach out and pinch her and laugh; or he is in bad shape somewhere else, quiet, and carried in the current of a dark river.
There is only one other option. He is not moving at all, not at the surface, not in the current. Limbs wedged between the bars of an underwater cage. Something soft passing through something hard. A picture from TV comes into her mind: One of those deep-sea camera crews, scuba divers with long poles standing in a metal box. They pour a mix of blood and fish guts and stir the chum, baiting the Great Whites to come closer.
She puts her face in the water and opens her eyes, but there is nothing to see. On the other side, she cranes her neck upward and tries to look over the edge of the roof. Nobody is left. Probably on the fire escape working their way to the ground, she thinks. Probably on their way. But that will take at least two minutes. Two more minutes.
She calls anyway, yelling the question up against the face of the building, the hotel windows, the Odeon sign.
“Do you see him?” she asks.
On the night she learned to swim, Stace had to go down before she could come back up. After the Blast Off, she moved toward Brad, but he kept pulling back until he was almost all the way over to the other side and she knew she would never reach him. There was progress at first. She stayed at the surface for what felt like a long time. But then her patience ran out and her concentration lurched. Her eyes wandered from the pruned fingers of his hand and went up to the ceiling, to the network of criss-crossing catwalks and lights and girders above her head. Her chin followed and tilted, and her shoulders dropped and her hips and legs and feet lowered a bit, and then a little bit more, until she was straight up and down, vertical and wrong, standing at attention in deep water. When the grip came back it reached out of the blackest part of her memory and closed around her ankle. It felt like a set of slender fingers, or a vine or some coiling tentacle, extending up from the bottom of a swamp. It pulled her down patiently, insistently, as if there were no need to rush. Her second breath came in a garbled mix of half-water, half-air and every muscle in her body contracted. She felt like she was rusting all the way through and she went down so fast that Brad could not get back in time to make his grab. She sank to the bottom like an object with no life in it, like a bronze sculpture of a swimmer, heaved overboard.
Below the surface, though, it was not what she expected. The underside of the swimming pool did not feel like the ocean. Not the same element, not water the way she remembered it to be. In the pool, all the valves and pipes that made the place possible – the pumps and filters and automated heating elements – sent out waves of precisely controlled sound. She exhaled through her nose as she descended and listened to the humming: a boring, competent drone, a hmmmmmmmmmmm that might go on forever, like the buzz of office lighting or the murmur that leaks from computers.
There was a trance, a hypnotic suggestion, inside that sound. She yielded to it and let herself be absorbed. It made her think of cubicles and automatic pencil sharpeners and taking a number from the dispenser to wait in line for your driver’s license to be renewed.
That’s when it happened. An understanding, a new realization, came into her head and triggered a transformation that was almost total. Maybe this was how all learning worked in the end. The right kind of concentration deployed in the right way at the right time. If you paid attention and sorted carefully, put things in the right place at the right time, it was possible to think yourself away from yourself, away from the things you could not do. Like a child bicycle rider who hits on that ancient balancing trick for the first time and races away from her parents, Stace felt herself changing, her capacities expanding. In one moment of insight, an action that once seemed mysterious and impossible entered the realm of the clear and knowable.
She saw it now: A swimming pool was more parking lot than ocean. Right angles, a perfect square with no secrets, utterly transparent, bleached. It was like a beaker in the lab, an ice cube tray under the tap. If you did not fear it, you could not be scared.
She rolled back through the advice she’d been given. It really was in your head. That was true. You had to relax, yes, and, no, you could not fight it. If you knew that going under, that submersion, was only a temporary condition and if you accepted that little bit of pressure, the water pushing back, then you could open your eyes and hold a breath without worrying about the next one. You could go to the bottom, feel the tiles under your toes and look up at other people’s feet, other bodies floating above your head. See through to the light on the other side.
And if you truly figured it out – if you really understood a swimming pool – you could wait there on the bottom for a few calm seconds. You could shrug off years of wrong-headed pain and leave it on the floor like an overburdened backpack. You could Blast Off in reverse. Push up and away, fly back to the surface. Your life could be altered, changed forever, in less than ten seconds.
/> SHE PASSED BRAD on her way up and he missed her for the second time. When they surfaced, he was the one panting, obviously flustered and angry.
“What the hell was that?” he said. “Is this a joke? Were you trying to do that, go down as fast as you could?”
“No,” she said. She smiled at him. “No.”
She put one hand on the gutter and looked down, first at her feet scissoring back and forth in the waveless warm water, then lower, all the way to the bottom.
“Maybe you aren’t ready for this,” he said. “Maybe we need to go back to the shallow end and start again.”
“ No,” she said again. “No.” It came out crisp and fast.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “It was my fault. But it’s okay now, I think. Let’s pretend it never happened.”
IT COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED. And it would have been impossible to lead another person down the strange corridors and passageways, the new-firing synapses of her brain. Brad had never seen anything like it: Water letting go. The film of worry cleared completely from somebody’s eyes. A girl turning herself around so quickly.
She moved forward every week. First the floats and the introductory front swim. She could see them now, understand how everything fit together, the breathing and the basic movements flowing into each other. He made precise adjustments, guided her arms and legs with just the tips of his fingers, moved her head with an open palm on her cheek. The back swim and the kneeling front dive and the stride jump. She went down to the bottom and retrieved three or four rubber rings at a time. At the end of each class, they treaded water for thirty seconds longer. His head bobbed close to hers as he counted off the time and she could see droplets of water hanging in his eyelashes.
He gave her a copy of the Royal Life Saving Society manual. The book was a yellow and blue three-ring binder with the society’s logo printed on the cover. An oar crossed with a grappling hook and knotted together with a shamrock of coiled rope. Everything you needed to know was in there: what to do with poison, electrocution, a severed finger in a glass of milk, plucked eyeballs. If you fell into sub-zero water you were supposed to float on your back with your knees curled up to your chest. This kept your dwindling body heat concentrated in the core area. It was called H.E.L.P. – the Heat Escape Lessening Position. A drowning victim would grasp at anything to survive and a rescuer would have to ensure personal safety before trying to aid another. If a victim pulled you down you were supposed to strike hard and move back immediately, kick to the face or stomach or groin if necessary. And if they became hysterical or violent, you had to stand by, just out of reach, and wait until they lost consciousness before moving in to help.
Light Lifting Page 11
