Night Swimming

by Robin Schwarz

  While she was lost in thought, he left. Oh, well. At last, a fine mahogany box with the initials S. L. inlaid in twenty-four-carat gold caught her eye. Now, what were the odds of that? Coming across a box with Skip’s initials on them.

  The salesperson walked over when he saw her interest. “This box,” he began, “dates back to the 1850s. We surmise it was someone’s personal cache. It has a secret drawer that slides out right here at the bottom.” The man held up the box and pulled out the drawer. Blossom was delighted.

  “What was that used for?” she asked.

  “We’re not sure, exactly. However, the secret compartment is quite large, so we guessed it might have been used to hide several secret love letters or perhaps some ill-gotten gains. It’s always more fun to imagine the most wicked possibilities. It is quite curious, isn’t it?”

  “I love it. It’s going to be a present. How much is it?”

  “The price is...is...” The clerk looked for it on the back and inside but didn’t see one. He opened the secret compartment to its full length. “Oh, here it is, hidden in the back. How appropriate.” He laughed. “Two thousand dollars.”

  “Fine,” Blossom said, “perfect.” Skip would have no idea what she paid.

  “Would you like me to wrap it?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The secret drawer gave her a thought. She would hide a love note in there. Something that revealed her truest feelings for him. Then one day, when he was fumbling around, he would simply come upon it. She was sure she’d be long gone by then anyway. Perfect.

  Next, she went to the market and bought all manner of goodies for the evening’s festivities. In her downtime at the pool, she had learned recipes recommended by famous actresses who had served them only on special occasions. Recipes fit for a king...or an Oscar winner. Maybe even Tom Selleck.

  To begin, she would make miniature chévre tarts, which called for mild chévre cheese, sweet butter, whipping-cream, eggs, cayenne to taste, and scallions, none of which she had in the house. Next she would serve cream of watercress soup, so she would need potatoes and nutmeg and heavy cream and, of course, watercress. She was pretty sure she had the shallots and chicken stock.

  She was, however undecided about what to do for the main course. Fruit-stuffed Cornish game hens or pheasant with leek-and-pecan stuffing? Meryl Streep had great success with the hen, while Marisa Tomei swore by the pheasant. Finally, after sifting through six cookbooks, she decided: veal chops with sherry and lemon marmalade. There were no small bones involved, so no one would have to know the Heimlich maneuver.

  She would make a simple salad with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing and ginger candied carrots. For dessert she would have birthday cake, of course. And champagne. What was a birthday without a birthday cake and a champagne toast?

  Blossom spent the whole day preparing for this gastronomic delight. She set the table with fine linen, flowers, and candles. She put on Tony Bennett, the CD that had “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Falling in Love with Love.” Then, thinking the candles were too much, too romantic, she opted to remove them.

  Blossom put on a pretty dark-blue-and-yellow kimono and just a drop of vanilla perfume behind her ears. Then she wiped it off, deciding she’d smell too much like a cookie. Seven-thirty—that was the time they’d agreed upon. The clock clicked into place like the tumbler on a lock. She felt nervous.

  Now, don’t go getting the jitters, Blossom. This is just a friendly birthday dinner for a friend. Nothing more.

  At 7:45 Blossom was peeking out the window. It was not unlike Skip to be late. Sometimes he’d show up a half hour late for work. Blossom contented herself by remembering that and by putting on some more music.

  At eight o’clock she was rearranging the table setting, refolding napkins, refilling water glasses.

  At 8:15 she was back in the kitchen, trying to reestimate the cook time on the various dishes.

  By eight-thirty she was worried. He hadn’t even called to say he’d be late. She paced back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, trying to keep things warm without ruining them.

  At nine o’clock she was sitting by herself at the table, looking at the beautiful bouquet of flowers she had bought for the occasion. She got up and slowly began to remove the place settings. It was clear: He wasn’t coming. He just wasn’t coming.

  She put the food away and threw out the cake. It was too hard to look at.

  She waited until eleven before getting into her bathing suit and going down to the pool. The night was as black as the ace of spades. She was glad to be able to submerge her entire body in the water. That way she wouldn’t feel the tears running down her cheeks. What was she thinking anyway? Her attraction was too great. She would only be hurt by continually setting herself up. This was the truth. This was how things were.

  It was painfully clear that she would not find that special kind of love before she died, and that was that. Perhaps this awful fact would make the dying okay. What was life without love anyway? Just a series of meaningless events that filled the space of our lives with noise and distraction. It was time to face it. Time to face living alone and dying alone.

  A sadness too great to hold spilled over Blossom, and it would not wash away when she dove beneath the black waters, nor did it dissipate into the night air when she resurfaced. It stayed there, like an anchor attached to her heart, pulling her down, ever downward into darkness.

  CHAPTER 33

  SKIP KNOCKED ON BLOSSOM’S DOOR in the morning. She did not answer. He knocked again. When there was still no answer, he just assumed she had gone out. He had no idea she was inside, sitting quietly.

  “You see Blossom, Mrs. Feingold?” Skip asked. Mrs. Feingold walked toward the pool as if she were dodging land mines and hot coals. She didn’t swim; she just got wet from time to time, tapping water on her arms and chest. She told Blossom this was her way of doing laps and called it “the Jewish crawl.” Tap, tap, tap, and that was it. She would dry off the same way and go back inside.

  “Not yet. But I will later. I have some tickets for her.” Tap, tap, tap. “I double-booked for Saturday and thought Blossom would like them. By the way, did you see her new look?”

  “Her new look?”

  “It was my idea to do that with her eyebrows. She looks like Greta Garbo now, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah... the eyebrows... very nice, Mrs. Feingold. Well, if you see her, can you tell her I’m looking for her?”

  “Oh, yes, Skip. I’m dropping off the tickets before she takes Vinny to the groomer.”

  Takes Vinny to the groomer? This thoroughly confused Skip. He had no idea Mrs. Feingold was still laboring under the notion that Vinny was Blossom’s dog. Oh, well, he’d ask Blossom what she meant later, when he saw her.

  When Mrs. Feingold knocked, Blossom peeked through the peephole, then opened the door. Her shades were still drawn, which was not like her at all. The shafts of light that usually streamed through the rooms, warming the corners and the rugs, dusting the flowers, making them look as if they were wearing halos, were not there. Today the apartment was sealed as tight as an envelope.

  “What’s going on, Blossom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a beautiful day, and you’ve got this place closed up like a fallout shelter.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you do. Let’s open some of these curtains.” She walked over toward the window.

  “Don’t.”

  Mrs. Feingold stopped. “Okay.” She came back into the living room. She could see sorrow in Blossom’s eyes. An awkward silence passed between them until Mrs. Feingold broke the quiet. “Want to talk about it?”

  “I’ve done something unbelievably stupid.”

  “My dear, I’m older than you. I’ve had many more opportunities to do unbelievably stupid things in my life. What could you have possibly done that I haven’t done already?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “W
ell, important or not, I’m here if you want to talk about it with me.”

  “I don’t even know you that well, Mrs. Feingold. Hell, I’m still calling you Mrs. Feingold. I don’t even know your first name.”

  “Deneichia, darling.”

  “Deneni... Deneichi... think I’ll stick with Mrs. Feingold.”

  “People call me Dolly, honey, to get around it.”

  “Dolly.”

  “Yes. So call me Dolly and tell me what’s going on.”

  Tears were forming ever so slightly in the corners of Blossom’s eyes. She could barely get her mouth around the words. She wasn’t even sure of what she wanted to say. No one had ever asked her to express feelings like this.

  “Everything’s a mess, Mrs. Feingold—Dolly.” She took another breath as if getting ready to take a deep plunge underwater. “The thing is...well... I’m in love with someone.”

  “So? That doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “Someone who doesn’t share the same feelings I have for him. He’s in love, too, with his wife.”

  “Oh, Blossom, dear.”

  “They’re separated. But he wants her back. He loves her and wants everything to be the way it used to be. I, of course, being the horrible person that I am, want it to fail miserably so that I can have a chance. But you know what the irony is, Mrs. Fein—Dolly? Even if that happened, I wouldn’t have a chance with him. Even if he weren’t married, even if I were the only woman within a three-thousand-mile radius, he still wouldn’t be interested in me.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I just do. And what’s worse, this was my last chance for love.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It just is.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Blossom. We always have opportunities to invite love into our lives. You have everything you need to have love; you just don’t know it, honey. Now, I’m not sure about your friend who is married. It sounds like he has other things to work out that have nothing to do with you. But that doesn’t mean you have to be tied up in knots, hoping, waiting. That’s just disappointment preparing for its big entrance. You have to do something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sometimes when a situation is at its worst, it can bring out the best in us. When Mr. Feingold died, my life stopped. My happiness had always been tied up with him, with everything that was outside myself. His death forced me to look in another direction. It forced me to look inside myself. And you know what I found?”

  Blossom was trying to close down the sadness. Her throat hurt from suppressing the tears. “What?”

  “Love, dear. Underneath the fear, the loneliness, the betrayal of being left behind, the insecurity of facing life on my own, I found love.”

  “How?”

  “Through understanding. At my very lowest, just when I believed unhappiness would eat me alive, I surrendered. I didn’t suddenly become happy all at once; it took time. But I grew through the pain, grew to a place where I finally found understanding, and through understanding I found peace.”

  “But someone you loved had died. My situation is completely different from yours.”

  “The situation isn’t exactly the same, but the process is similar. Love is love, Blossom. It’s a universal truth. You say you love someone who doesn’t love you, and this is making you sad. Accept the sadness. Give yourself time to be sad. I did, and you know what happened? One day I was sad for a little less time than I had been the day before. And the next day I was sad for a little less time than that. And slowly the emptiness began to shift. Hell, it practically took an earthquake to shake me up, but I finally felt it. I was never good with subtlety.”

  Blossom smiled a little. Something of what that old bartender had said back in New Orleans reverberated in her. Sadness is okay. You have to have sadness to truly know happiness. Then, when you get it, it’s all that much sweeter, like honey from a rock. Yeah, that’s what he said. Like honey from a rock.

  Dolly continued: “But let me tell you something, darling, sadness no longer tore me apart or made me so afraid. I knew I could get through it because I had accepted something. Something that helped me. And it wasn’t the phone calls from friends who felt obliged, or the sleeping pills, or the endless glasses of brandy, or the noise of the TV, which distracted me from the pain. I had myself. I accepted myself. That’s when it began to be okay. And this is where it is the same, Blossom. Are you catching my drift, or am I gonna have to bring in the June Taylor dancers?”

  “I’m catching your drift.”

  “Good, ’cause most of those dancers are dead.” Blossom smiled again. “My husband’s death took so much, but it didn’t take what was essential for me to live. For a while I thought I died with him, but after a few months I was still here. Yet I was still feeling terrible. I couldn’t go through life feeling this bad anymore. I had to come to my own rescue.” Blossom realized at that moment that talking was as much a catharsis for Dolly as it was for her.

  “Life hands us lessons, and my lesson was to face this awful situation and grow from it, Blossom. I thought love had been taken away from me, but it hadn’t been. I was still the same person who had loved Mr. Feingold and my old aunts and my cousins and my friends. I still had love inside of me, and I still had it to give. Some people spend their whole life searching for love, Blossom. And the thing of it is, it’s right there, inside of themselves. If you can find that inside yourself, then you will find the source of your happiness. Believe me, I went through a lot of tsuris, not to mention therapy with Dr. Yagozoski, to come to this realization. I hope I can spare you that.”

  “Doctor who?”

  “My shrink. I know his name reads like an eye chart. But he came highly recommended. He helped that famous actress who was found in the bushes.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know the one. But, Dolly, what happens if I never find that special love, that one true love that every person has a right to know in their lifetime? The love that loves you back?”

  “Find the love inside of yourself, Blossom, and the rest will follow. I promise you this with every inch of my being. I know this much is true, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

  Blossom walked over to the window and peered out through a separation in the fabric. She saw Skip carrying a large potted plant across the lawn.

  “I don’t even know if I have that kind of love inside myself.”

  “You do, my dear. Everyone does.”

  Blossom sighed under her breath. If only Dolly knew the whole story.

  “You must think I’m foolish. It’s not even like I have a relationship with this man, and yet I can feel so devastated.”

  “You do in your heart. And sometimes unrequited love can be more painful than actually having the relationship. I bet his wife is not in the same kind of pain as you are, and yet she’s had the relationship. Love stinks sometimes.”

  Blossom got that. She understood it with excruciating precision. “Thanks, Dolly.” She looked at Dolly with utter reverence. Here was a woman who had been through so much and was still here to tell the story. Dolly was like a well so deep that if one were to drop a coin into it, it would be a long time before they heard the splash. Yes, Blossom thought, her soul is as old as Stonehenge. She wished she could have the opportunity to grow into a woman like that.

  Dolly interrupted her thoughts: “Oh, Blossom, dear, I almost forgot why I came over. Here are the tickets to that Tony Bennett concert I mentioned. They should be good seats.”

  “Tony Bennett?” Blossom exclaimed. She couldn’t believe her ears. “You never said it was a Tony Bennett concert.”

  “I didn’t? Do you like him?”

  “Like him? Like him? I love him. I have every CD he’s ever made.”

  “The only drawback is that you may have plans. It falls on Thanksgiving,” Dolly said, “and that’s the reason I can’t go. I promised my niece I would spend it with her family this year. She’s not really my niece. She’s more of an honorary niece, someone w
ho I’ve known since birth.”

  Blossom had forgotten all about the holidays. Here in L.A. the weather didn’t get cold, the leaves didn’t change color, and it just didn’t feel like Thanksgiving to Blossom at all. In fact, she was grateful to have plans that day.

  “Thanksgiving is perfect, Dolly. There is no one I’d more like to spend it with than Tony Bennett.”

  “So you see, my dear, things are already looking up. A few minutes ago I was ready to force you to watch those motivational tapes, all one hundred and thirty-six hours of them.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes, I’m kidding. There are actually two hundred and thirty-six hours of them.”

  Charlotte found her laugh. “Tony Bennett. I’ve waited all my life to see Tony Bennett.”

  “And now it’s happening. You see?” she said as she turned to leave. “And so will love.”

  CHAPTER 34

  THAT EVENING BLOSSOM slipped back into the pool, becoming lost again in her own lush liquid world. She lay on her back, looking up into the ineffable darkness, listening for answers. But there were only stars. Watery spears of light shooting across the night sky.

  She wished she could pitch a tent among the stars and wait for God. That way she’d be even closer to hearing the answers when He finally whispered them in her ear.

  Each star was beautiful tonight, blinking down at her from nowhere at all. A fistful of fire opals, white gold, a whole sky salted with silver, randomly shaken onto a vast black silk swath.

  Back and forth, back and forth, she began her nightly routine, her breath breaking like white noise around her ears.