Night Swimming

by Robin Schwarz

  Blossom had made life change its course simply by throwing a rock into the water. Just that simple motion and suddenly everything was different. She shook her head in wonderment, then slowly submerged her own endlessly buoyant body into the dark water and, like the stone, settled into a place of peace. Yes, the pool became her solitude, like an anchor at the bottom of the bay, like that stone.

  The first night, all she did was float like a whale that had surfaced after its demise and involuntarily undulated its way onto a beach.

  The next day she decided not to wait for Skip to knock on her door. Instead, she headed straight down to the pool. Life was too short to wish for hopeful encounters that would change the course of the world. Even her tiny world.

  Skip would have to take a lunch break. Everyone had to have lunch, so lunch became her opportunity. And at noon, throwing caution to the wind, she asked him if it was a good time to hang the print, and he said yes. All he had to do was remove a rock some nincompoop had thrown into the pool. Blossom blushed.

  “Of all the nerve!” she said. But her guilt was quickly assuaged by her excitement at having him in her apartment. In anticipation, she had prepared an extravagant spread of smoked salmon, caviar, and champagne. She had read about such gourmet repasts in Los Angeles magazine. It named famous stars who took food like this on picnics, and while Tom Selleck was not one of them, it still seemed like a good idea.

  “You eat this for lunch, Blossom?” asked Skip.

  “Oh, only two, three times a week,” she lied. “Sit down before it gets cold.” Dumb, Blossom, dumb. It is cold. Laugh, like you made a joke.

  “What about the picture?” he asked.

  “Oh, that? That can wait. We can hang it after,” she said, pulling her chair as close to Skips as was appropriate. “So what do you do for fun, Skip?” she asked nonchalantly.

  “What do I do for fun?” he repeated. “Well, I’m on a committee in Venice to improve and restore the town’s architectural antiquities Not that Venice has that many old buildings. But architecture has always been a sort of a hobby with me.”

  It’s wonderful that you like buildings. I know nothing about buildings. I don’t even care about buildings. I gotta get this chitchat going in another direction.

  “Oh, that’s nice. I like buildings—the leaning tower of Pisa, Buckingham Palace...”

  Skip laughed.

  “So, got a cat or a bird...or a girlfriend?” she continued, as if that were the next likely question.

  “Let’s see,” he said. He was as unsuspecting as prey leaning over to get a drink at the river while a lion, feline and treacherous, hid in the bushes, making ready for her pounce.

  “No cat, no bird...no girlfriend.”

  Relief.

  “Do have a wife, though.”

  Blossom was paralyzed with grief.

  “You do?”

  “Yup. We’ve been married for seven years. No kids yet.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s an actress. Of course.”

  Blossom had visions of a tall, gorgeous blond with cheekbones that could support books. She imagined a perfect Barbie doll running in slow motion toward Skip when he came home at night.

  “We’re sort of separated right now.”

  Separated?

  “She says she needs time to figure stuff out. I tried to get her to do it in the relationship, but she said she just needed some space for a while. She moved in with a girlfriend a couple of blocks from where we lived.”

  If a whole chorus of Bible-toting Baptists had risen in one great heavenly voice and sung hallelujah to the Lord Jesus Christ at that moment, it wouldn’t have approached the joy and glorious cries of exultation going on in Blossom’s head.

  “Separated—oh, that’s a shame,” she said. A crying shame.

  “I know. But I haven’t given up on us. We have a lot of good things going. I like to think of this period as a sort of time-out, like in football. Sometimes you need that to get your focus back. Teams have come from behind taking that kind of breather. I like to think that Jeannie and I are at half-time.”

  Hearing Jeannie’s name and all those meaningless football metaphors confounded Blossom. She didn’t know what to say, so she said something irrelevant.

  “Does Jeannie like football?” Who cares? Who cares what she likes?

  “No, but that’s okay. We have to work on things we can both like together.”

  “I love football,” Blossom lied.

  “You do?”

  “Yup. All my life.”

  “You root for the Saints, then, I guess.” Blossom didn’t have a clue what Skip was talking about.

  “Yeah... love those Saints. Go, Saints.”

  Skip looked at his watch. An hour had passed. “Uh-oh, Blossom, I better get going. I lost complete track of time. Get me talking about myself and I don’t shut up. One of Jeannie’s complaints, I must admit.” As he made his way to the door, it occurred to him that he hadn’t even gotten around to hanging the picture.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. It’ll be here. You can do it when you’ve got more time.”

  “If that’s okay. Thanks for lunch, Blossom. It was good. Got a little buzz on from the champagne.”

  And as she escorted him to the door, she thought, yes —it had been a perfect lunch. She had gotten to know him more than she had hoped that afternoon, and relished every greedy moment. Maybe he would come back tomorrow to hang the picture. No matter, Blossom thought, he would come back. That was the most important thing. He would come back.

  That next night, without exactly meaning to, she found herself wandering down to the pool after dark, taking comfort in how it cradled her, how it rocked her into a feeling of reassurance. And the next night. And the next. Something was happening, something magical. Each time she lowered herself into the water, her body felt welcomed, as if it were entering a place it hadn’t been in years, a space of ultimate exoneration from all that had weighed so heavily on her for so long. Here in the waters she was weightless. And so she began swimming every night, late enough so no one knew she was there. No one except that old man in the moon, smiling down at her from his silver porthole.

  CHAPTER 20

  AWEEK HAD PASSED, and Blossom had not seen Skip. Every morning she would dress in one of her boundlessly blessed kimonos and head down to the pool, but he did not show up. Anxiety rose in her like bad weather. She was distracted beyond hope, wondering where he was. Did he quit? Did he go back to Jeannie? Did he move away? She couldn’t bear the questions repeating like rain in her head. She had to find out.

  Blossom waited until well after dark, and instead of taking her nightly constitutional in the pool, she decided to try to find Skip’s house. She took the long way, down Santa Monica Boulevard, because she was so nervous. At least this gave her time to change her mind. His address sat next to her in the front seat, scrawled only moments ago, after getting the information from an operator.

  “Are you sure that’s the only Loggins in Venice?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Jeannie Loggins, no Skip.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it seems strange that it would only be under his wife’s name.”

  “Do you want the number or not?”

  “Actually, if you could give me the address, I’d appreciate that.”

  And so the operator spelled out the address, and Blossom had it memorized before it could hit the paper.

  Am I crazy? What if he’s outside with his wife, enjoying a barbecue? What if the whole family is there, celebrating a wonderful and unexpected reconciliation. No, they wouldn’t be out now. It’s midnight. Jeannie and Skip will be inside. I’ll see their silhouettes on the shade. Oh, Jesus, Blossom, you sound like a bad AM radio show.

  She wound her way through the watery avenues, looking for a number 9 Rose Street. Number 9... number 9... 16, 15, 11, 10...

  9. There it was. A sweet little cottage, trimmed in flowers an
d awnings and shutters. But the shades were drawn, and it was dark inside.

  Maybe he’s gone to bed. Maybe he’s inside, curled up under his covers, all alone.

  How she wished she could go inside and slip in next to him. Be as close to him as two spoons in a drawer. But she couldn’t. Ever, ever, ever. There was no more use in sitting in front of the dark house. It only made her feel lonely. And so she put her car into drive and silently rolled away like a lost marble.

  As she was driving home, she noticed several large white trucks lining the street in front of Venice Beach. They were movie trucks with Miami, New York, and Los Angeles written on the side. Orange cones cordoned off the area. But it was what was between the trucks that grabbed Blossom’s attention.

  A forest of pine trees had been erected on the beach. A vast swath of green, its unmistakable aroma wafting over Blossom. Pine. She hadn’t smelled pine like this in so long, it made her eyes water. Screened-in porches, lemonade, children laughing with the lyrical lightness of distant wind chimes. It was the smell of home. Not Gorham per se, but New England, Robert Frost’s New England. And the rich, warm drowsiness of pine sleepily cast its spell on her.

  Blossom couldn’t help herself. She parked the car and walked toward this unexpected oasis.

  What she saw inside the pine forest was even more extraordinary than the forest itself. There, standing like a memorial to a time long gone, was a 1930s roller-skating rink. It was as bizarre as if she’d found a grand piano standing all alone on an empty beach, or a lit chandelier hanging deep in the woods from high in an aspen tree. The whole scenario was straight out of a Fellini film.

  Curiosity drove her in. A sign hung above the doorway read, Lake Arrowhead Roller Skating Rink. Trophies gleamed in the dark, and the pipes on the ancient Wurlitzer looked like a bell tree. There was an ice-cream stand, and a clutch of skates hanging like a tease in the corner.

  Blossom wanted to roller-skate. She hadn’t been on skates since she was a little girl, and the urge, mixed with the perfume of the pine, brought her back to a time of unadulterated happiness. There, hanging on a hook, was a pair of red skates with silver laces. They were the ones that caught her eye. She made her way over to the clanging collection and lifted the red ones off their peg. Slowly, she wedged her pudgy feet into the openings. They were tight, but not tight enough to dissuade her. Wobbling up and onto the worn-out, unpolished wooden floor, she began to skate.

  She imagined how ludicrous she must look, a large balloonish shape making its way around the rink, like a low-floating dirigible. This must be a present from the roller-skating gods.

  Suddenly, a light went on and flooded the entire room. A young boy, no more than twenty, covered in tattoos and piercings, glowered at Blossom.

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

  Blossom was too startled to say anything at first.

  “Well?”

  “I was passing by, and I smelled the pine, and I walked over to see what was hiding in the grove, and I saw that it was a roller rink, so I came in and went roller-skating.”

  This was all true, albeit a little bizarre.

  “This is a closed set, lady. They’re making a film here. If they knew you got in, my ass would be fired. I just went to get some coffee and all hell breaks loose.”

  Blossom started to cry. She didn’t know why, exactly—all she had to do was take the skates off and go home—but some untapped sadness, some sense of not belonging made her sad.

  “Hey, lady,” the boy said, “what’s the matter?”

  But Blossom just wobbled over to the side, her tears falling on the uneven wooden floor.

  “Hey, look...it’s not me that doesn’t want you here. I’m just a hired gun. I mean, if it were up to me, I’d let you skate.”

  “I understand,” she said, her eyes large as lakes.

  She began to take off her skates.

  “Wait, wait a second,” the boy said. “You want to skate that badly? Go ahead. I mean, if it means that much to you. What, were you some kind of roller-skating queen once?”

  “No, I just wanted to skate among the pine trees like I did as a little girl. Stupid, right?”

  “Hey, I’ve wanted to do some pretty wacky things in my day. See if my motorcycle could reach a hundred and twenty, make it across the rails on a bridge before the train came.”

  It wasn’t exactly the same, but the kid got it, understood that crazy ideas pop into everyone’s head from God knows where and God knows why, but they just do, and these desires must be granted.

  “Okay, you ready for the whole thing?”

  Suddenly, the ceiling opened, exposing the dark dome of heaven above their heads. The silvery planets painted on the ceiling were eclipsed by the actual nighttime sky, awash in constellations.

  “Now you can really see the sky,” he said, as though he had invented heaven himself.

  “It’s beautiful, truly beautiful.”

  “Did you know all those planets were named after gods?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s Mercury, the winged messenger, and Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war,” he proclaimed, proudly exposing the extent of his education.

  Blossom thought for a moment, trying to bring up the sketchy memories of what she’d learned in sixth grade. “Then there’s Jupiter, who was the main god, the big-cheese god, sort of like the president of the gods; there’s Pluto, the god of the underworld, and let’s see, there’s Neptune, god of the sea... but wait, I’m leaving two out... they’ll come to me in a second. Oh, yes, there’s Saturn, but I can’t remember what he was the god of.”

  “Maybe cars,” the boy said in all seriousness.

  Blossom giggled. “Yes, maybe. But there’s one more. Oh, yes, Uranus. And I must admit I have no idea what he was the god of.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” the boy said. “He’s the god of assholes.”

  This struck Blossom as so funny, she nearly fell off her skates. “Yes, of course,” she agreed, “Uranus is the god of assholes. So in all likelihood, he’s the busiest.”

  Now the boy laughed, while “Moonglow” and “Pennies From Heaven” played from the ancient Wurlitzer, and the ocean clapped along the shore in absolute approval. And Blossom skated. Her cumbersome body rolled easily to the tunes coughing out of the old organ, and the millions of mirrors surrounding the hall made it seem as if the rink were blessed with infinite fields of Blossoms.

  “Falling in Love Again” played under the starry canopy while the Wurlitzer gods bestowed one last gift upon her. And three more times she glided around and around to the tune of “Moonlight Serenade.” That was the best note to end it on.

  “Thank you,” she said to the boy, who was smoking a cigarette upstairs.

  “No problem, lady. Just don’t come back with your friends, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said as she was untying her laces. “By the way, what’s the movie about?”

  “I don’t really know too much about it. It takes place on Lake Arrowhead in the thirties. There’s some old brothel upstairs here, and someone gets shot.”

  “Who’s in it?”

  “Nobody you would know, except for maybe Gene Hackman. I guess he’s the only star.”

  Blossom smiled: her old friend, Gene Hackman. She stood and turned to leave.

  “Well, thank you . . .” she said, and was about to say the boy’s name until she realized she didn’t even know it.

  “That’s okay. Best left unsaid, if you know what I mean.”

  “More than you can imagine.” And Blossom left, stepping out of the thirties and back into this decade, feeling as if she were the only person in the world to have truly time-traveled. She drove home thinking about what had once been said of Hollywood. “Hollywood? It’s rather like living on the moon, isn’t it?” Yes, it was.

  The next morning Blossom decided to call the management company and try to find out exactly where Skip was.

  “I w
as wondering,” she asked, “I was wondering about the pool. When will it be attended to?”

  “We’ve been sending a guy down there every night to do the work. Is there a problem?”

  “No, not at all...I was just wondering when the usual guy would be back.”

  “Not for another week.”

  “Another week?” Well, at least he wasn’t dead. But who knew? Maybe in another week she would be. “I guess we all need a little R and R,” she said feebly.

  “Yup.”

  “Okay, thanks for your time.”

  “Okay.” The anonymous voice hung up.

  So Skip was on vacation. But where? This sent Blossom into another of her high-flying obsessions. Her desire to know was making her crazy. Was he with his wife? Did they get back together? She couldn’t even eat, thinking the worst, which in some ways, she guessed, was a good thing. The only thing that made her feel slightly better was swimming. And that she did to the extreme. She never seemed to tire of going back and forth, back and forth, ever so slowly, ever so measured, like a pendulum winding down, marking time, becoming lost in the rhythm of her own breathing. She was light in the water, light in her being.

  She never felt that the person she presented to the world on the outside truly represented the person hidden away on the inside. It was as if she were two different people: the one the world saw and the person that she really and truly was. Wasn’t it Robert Redford who had said the same thing about himself? He was beautiful on the outside, and clearly, Blossom was not. But perhaps it was similar in this way. Maybe she was interesting or even pretty on the inside, the part no one could see. That’s what Robert Redford must have meant.

  No one could get past his good looks to know who he truly was, and no one could get past Blossom’s obesity to see who lay hidden beneath all those Krispy Kremes and sadness. She thought Robert Redford was misrepresented just like herself. Well not just like. If truth be told, I’d rather be beautiful and have to prove I’m talented and smart than be fat and have to prove that I’m even worth talking to. It’s so unjust. At the end of the day, Blossom believed Robert Redford had it over her in so many numberless ways. Yes, he was talented and smart, and handsome to boot, but face it, he would have been revered even if he were a moron. Why were looks so important? I say let’s bring back the Rubenesque woman. Abundant, voluptuous, more to love. Yeah, what happened to her? Probably some eighteenth-century version of the South Beach Diet. And so she dealt with life’s inequities by taking her nightly constitutional in the pool and immersing herself into the only place she felt safe.