by Don Calame
“That’s your brilliant idea?” Coop laughs. “And I’m the douche?”
I check my cell. It’s three thirty. I need to get to the pool before dinner.
“I have to go.” I stand and pick up my tray.
“Whoa. We’re not done here yet,” Coop says. “Sean’s still working on his number two. And we have to finish formulating our plan.”
I shrug. “I still have to go.”
“What’s more important than this?” Coop gestures toward the table.
“I’m gonna go practice my butterfly, okay? You happy?”
I walk over to the trash and empty my tray. Coop and Sean hoot with laughter just like I knew they would.
“Why bother, dude?” Coop says.
“Yeah, it’s not like it’s going to help.” Sean grins.
I sigh. “I know it’s a long shot, but I’m hoping that if I practice hard enough over the next few weeks, maybe I won’t make a total ass of myself by the time championships roll around.”
“Okay, well . . .” Coop bites his lower lip to stop himself from cracking up. “You give us a call when you’ve rejoined us here on planet Earth.”
This causes Sean to choke on his shake mid-sip.
I don’t bother responding. I just turn and go.
I CATCH THE THICK SMELL of meat loaf as soon as I enter the house. It’s only four o’clock. We never eat before six. Something’s up.
I head into the kitchen, where Grandpa’s in his usual position, hunched over the table, playing solitaire.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I say.
“Don’t talk to me. I’m on a roll.” He counts out three cards and flips them over. “Goddamn it. You jinxed me.”
“Ignore him. He’s just grouchy,” Mom says. She’s in her peach-patterned apron, at the stove, adding milk to a pot of boiled potatoes. “Mrs. Hoogenboom decided she didn’t feel like going for coffee today after all. Go figure.”
“Sorry, Grandpa.”
Grandpa Arlo waves this off. “Please. You think I’m discouraged? Nothing worth getting is easy.” He shuffles the cards and starts dealing them out again.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Mom says, adding a few shakes of salt to the pot. “I forgot to tell you. I’ve got a NutraWorld meeting tonight. They’re introducing a new product. An organic laxative. Everyone’s very excited.”
“You don’t want to get too excited where laxatives are concerned,” Grandpa says, moving a red jack onto a black queen. “Trust me.”
Mom ignores this. “We’re having an early dinner.”
“I just had a burrito at the mall,” I say.
“That’s fine.” Mom grabs the masher and starts in on the potatoes. “You’ll sit with us and you can have leftovers later.”
“But I was gonna go to the pool.”
Mom stops mid-mash and looks at me. “We eat dinner as a family. You know how I feel about that.”
The thing about having a father who leaves your mother for a younger woman is that it’s not only a cliché; it’s also a pain in the ass. It makes you feel so bad for your mom that you can’t argue any of her rules anymore. Especially the ones from after the divorce. Like this “we eat as a family” rule. What are you supposed to say to that?
Still, I have to get to the pool before it closes. I need to get in some practice before anyone on the swim team sees that I can’t actually do the butterfly. Especially Kelly. I figure if I can work on my fly every afternoon for the next month or so, I’ll eventually be able to do it well enough to try it at swim practice. And, hopefully, championships.
“When will it be ready?” I say, glancing at the rooster clock on the wall.
“Fifteen minutes.”
I do the math. Eat at four fifteen. An hour for dinner and cleanup. Five fifteen. Ten minutes to the pool. Pool closes at six. That’ll give me thirty-five minutes to practice if I get right to it.
“Would you tell your brother and Melissa dinner’s almost ready?” Mom asks. “They’re up in his room.”
“Goddamn two of diamonds,” Grandpa says, smacking his pile of discards.
I leave the kitchen and cross through the dining room. Climb the stairs and turn left down the hall. Pete’s bedroom door is shut, so I lean in and listen to make sure I’m not interrupting anything. There are whispers coming from inside, and then Melissa laughs and there’s the creak of the bed. I lean in a little closer and listen a little harder. Melissa laughs again and I’m imagining all kinds of things going on in there.
I hold my breath and get down on the floor, careful not to make any noise. I move my ear close to the open space between the door and the carpet. I feel a cool breeze on my cheek. They must have the window open. There’s more movement in the bedroom, the squeak of the mattress, more whispers. I shift a little to try and hear better.
And that’s when the lock snicks and the door opens and my heart leaps into my mouth. I scramble to my feet.
“Whatcha doing there, Matt?” Melissa asks. She steps out of the room and closes the door behind her.
“Oh. I thought I felt a, uh, wet spot on the carpet,” I say. “I was checking to see if maybe Scratchy had gone there. Again. Sometimes she does. We haven’t gotten her completely litter-trained yet.”
Melissa is a tiny Italian mouse-girl with short straight black hair, a pinched pierced nose, and a whisper of a mustache and sideburns.
“A wet spot, huh?” Melissa asks. “From the cat?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I was wrong. I must have imagined it.”
Melissa is wearing what she always wears: pink designer sweatpants and a tight white ribbed T-shirt, which hints at her dark nipples underneath. You’d think that nipples, being so small, would be as easy to ignore as almost anything else, but it’s like they’re eye magnets or something. I can look at her face if I’m really thinking about it but lose concentration for a split second and forget about it. I’m like a cat trying to ignore a piece of string.
“Up here, Matt.” Melissa leans over to catch my eyes.
I blink hard and try to act cool. “Oh, sorry, I was just . . . thinking. I was trying to remember something.”
“And you thought it was written on my chest? Let me give you a little clue here, Mattie,” Melissa says. “Girls don’t mind if you notice their breasts. Noticing can be flattering. Staring is creepy. You don’t want to be creepy.”
“No,” I say, feeling my entire body burn. God, why does she have to wear stuff like that? “I wasn’t . . . I was just . . . Dinner’s going to be ready in fifteen minutes. That’s what I was trying to remember . . . If you could let Pete know.”
Melissa laughs. “Matt, you’re such a geek.” She spins on her heels and pads off down the hall to the bathroom. The word LUSCIOUS is stamped in Old English right there on the butt of her sweatpants, jiggling at me.
There’s a familiar swell in my pants. I have to force myself to turn away. When the hell did I lose all control over my body?
I drop my head and trudge toward my room. Melissa’s right. I have to focus. I don’t want to finally get my chance to talk with Kelly and suddenly realize I’m asking her breasts out to a movie. Notice but don’t stare. Remember that.
I enter my room and shut the door behind me. I have to step around piles of clothes and towels and CDs and food wrappers and computer cables and books and my guitar and the guitar amplifier and I don’t know what else.
I started taking guitar last year because girls go for rock stars. Although, if you listen to Mom, they’re the wrong kinds of girls. But I figure, if the wrong kinds of girls are the ones that toss their bras at you when you’re onstage rocking out, then the wrong kinds of girls are right for me. Anyway, I’m not ready to perform in public just yet. I can strangle out “Stairway to Heaven,” but so can everyone else, so it’s not really a big deal. I have to practice more. I have to start taking lessons again. I have to learn more current songs.
Coop and Sean and me are going to start a band someday. Me on guitar, Coop on d
rums, and Sean on trombone and, eventually, keyboards. Sean’s really the only one who can play. He’s been taking trombone lessons in school since he was five. But he needs to start learning keyboards because the trombone never sends girls into bra-throwing frenzies.
We already have a name but we don’t tell anyone because it’s probably the coolest band name ever and it took us a long time to come up with it. We’re going to call ourselves Arnold Murphy’s Bologna Dare. Coop was the one who finally thought it up. It’s based on something that happened in grade school when Coop dared this dirty Oscar-the-Grouch kind of kid to eat a piece of baloney off the cafeteria floor. Which he did. Coop changed baloney to bologna because it sounds better. We won’t ever tell anyone what it really means; they’ll just have to wonder.
I find my Speedo wadded up on the floor, still damp from this morning. I figure if I get ready now, it’ll save time later. I’m out of my clothes and wrestling the soggy bathing suit over my knees when my bedroom door flies open.
“Knock, knock,” Peter says.
I drop to the floor like a felled tree. I scrunch up to try and hide as much of my junk as possible.
“Jesus Christ, Pete!”
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Peter says. “If you’re going to be using your spanky hanky, you ought to lock your door.”
“I was putting on my swimsuit.” I try to hoist my Speedo higher but it’s impossible in this position. I just end up rocking back and forth.
“Sure, whatever,” Peter says.
“What the hell do you want, anyway?”
“I wanted to know what you were doing listening at my bedroom door. But you’ve already answered my question.”
“I wasn’t listening at your door,” I say, rolling over and tugging my bathing suit all the way up, giving Peter a nice view of my butt in the process. “I just came up to tell you we’re eating in fifteen minutes.”
“Just enough time to toss one off.”
I get to my feet and find my team sweatpants draped over my desk chair. I step in leg by leg. “Not for me, but it’s probably fourteen and half more minutes than you’d need.”
Peter marches over to me and whales me in the arm with his fist. “There. Dead arm. How do you like that, smart mouth?”
“Ow! Crap! I don’t like it, nut sack!” I clutch my now useless arm with my other hand.
“Now you know: you mess with the bull, you get the horns.” Peter turns and walks out of my room.
I try to raise my arm, but it might as well weigh a thousand pounds. Sometimes I hate my brother. Like, real, deep down, wish-I-could-beat-the-snot-out-of-him hate. It’ll pass. It always does. He’ll do something out-of-the-blue nice and all will be forgiven. But right now I want to push him down the stairs.
DINNER LASTED A DOG’S YEAR. I must have looked at the clock, like, every thirty seconds until everyone was done. I took some meat loaf and mashed potatoes even though I wasn’t hungry. I thought it might help pass the time. I’m regretting it now as I ride my mountain bike, vurping onions and garlic and hard-boiled egg. I hop the curb and race toward the pool. I probably should have just bailed on the whole pool idea, but I got it into my mind that I was going to practice and I couldn’t let it go. The good thing about dinner lasting so long is I’ve finally got feeling back in my arm.
I lock my bike to the fence, kick off my sneakers, and flash my pool tag at the lifeguard sitting by the gate. She barely looks up from her magazine. “We close in twenty,” she mumbles.
It’s chilly tonight. There are even fewer people at the pool than usual. Which is good. I chuck my sneakers, towel, sweats, and T-shirt in a heap on one of the concrete benches.
I walk over to the swim lane and dip my foot into the water. It’s pretty warm. Warmer than the air, anyway. The smell of chlorine fills my nostrils. It’s always stronger at the end of the day. I don’t know why. Maybe the water evaporates during the day and the chlorine gets more concentrated.
There’s no time to waste. I clutch my goggles in my fist and step off the ledge. I drop right down and dunk my head under the water. When I surface, I push my hair back and slide my goggles on. I look over at the clock on the wall by the bathrooms through the blue tint of my goggle lenses. Five forty-two. I’ve only got eighteen minutes now, which means I might have just enough time to finish four laps.
In case you don’t know, eighteen minutes is not a great time for a hundred yards of butterfly. If it takes me eighteen minutes at championships, I’m pretty sure I’ll be asked to stop. Tony Grillo’s best time last year was fifty-six seconds. That’s a record time for the Rockville Swimming Association. Ms. Luntz told me. I didn’t ask.
The swimming lane is all mine. I take another quick survey of the pool to make sure nobody I know is around, suck in a deep breath, and plunge into the water. I push against the wall with my feet and I’m off.
The butterfly is the worst stroke there is. It’s pure torture. It’s all shoulders and legs. You need good upper-body strength and powerful thighs. Neither of which I possess. People worry about me. How thin I am. My brother calls me the broomstick in a bathing suit. Mom’s friends tease her about me. “Are you feeding this boy?” they say. I eat plenty, for sure. I can even eat more than Coop, and that’s saying something. We had a competition once. Who could eat the most slices of Napoliano’s Meatza. That’s their specialty. A pizza with every meat known to God or man piled on top. Sausage, bacon, ham, pepperoni, meatballs, chicken, lamb, and steak. It’s pretty disgusting. Coop calls it the slaughterhouse. He ate eleven slices before he did the growling splash monkey all over the restaurant floor. I ate eleven and a half slices and kept it all down. Sean couldn’t believe it. He had to stop after only five. So it’s not for lack of trying that I can’t gain weight. It’s just my metabolism. That’s what Mom tells everyone.
Which is why the butterfly is not my strongest stroke — not by a long shot. My body is much more suited to freestyle. That’s when I can use my wicked thinness to my advantage. Piercing through the water like a dart. Okay, not really like a dart. But at least I can finish four laps before sundown.
It’s up with the arms and head, suck in a breath, and back under again. A hard kick with feet together. Weaving in and out of the water. You’re supposed to look like a dolphin. Smooth and graceful. You’re not supposed to look like a palsied whippet struggling for its life. Which is exactly what I feel like. I am all splash and very little momentum.
I’m trying as hard as I can but I can’t get any kind of rhythm going. I’m completely winded and I’m not even halfway across the pool yet. My arms feel like soggy jeans. I can barely lift them. Finally, I give up and freestyle the rest of the way.
I hang on the edge of the pool. My head is pounding. My heart is doing a drumroll in my chest. My lungs hate me. They have shoved me aside and are sucking air in and out as fast as they can. The meat loaf and mashed potatoes are quicksand in my stomach. My body is in full revolution mode.
This whole thing is a joke. I don’t know what I was thinking. Tomorrow morning I’ll tell Ms. Luntz that I made a mistake. Coop was right. I’m sure Kelly doesn’t give a crap if I swim the fly or not. She’d never be interested in someone like me in the first place. So she smiled at me. Big deal. I probably had snot hanging out of my nose and she was just embarrassed for me.
It’ll be momentarily humiliating, and then it will all be over. Ms. Luntz will announce to the entire team that I am letting them down, but no one will really care. She’ll try to get someone else to volunteer. And I’ll be off the hook.
I swim freestyle back across the pool. I feel much lighter. It’s the right thing to do.
I get to the pool’s edge, pull off my goggles, and smooth the hair out of my eyes. I boost myself out of the water. A light breeze sends a chill through my body. I hurry to my towel and start to dry off.
And that’s when I see her. Kelly showing her pool pass to the lifeguard at the gate. She’s with Valerie Devereaux. Valerie moved here from Montreal thre
e years ago, and Sean has had a crush on her ever since. He loves her long, rust-red hair, her full lips, and most of all her French accent. Valerie’s a pretty nice girl, but rumor has it she’s not allowed to date until she’s eighteen. Which works out great for Sean because it gives him a good excuse not to ask her out. It also gives him the satisfaction of knowing that no one else is going out with her, either. Sean plans on growing another eight inches in the next three years, and he thinks he’ll have a shot by then.
Kelly and Valerie are both in their street clothes. Kelly gestures in my direction and says something to the lifeguard. Did they see me doing my imitation of a drowning man? Are they coming in to laugh at me? I should have gone to another pool to practice. I’m such an idiot.
The girls walk past the lifeguard and head right toward me. There’s nowhere to run. I try to think of what to say. I was just having fun? I was trying to see what it felt like not to be able to swim the butterfly? It all sounds so stupid in my head.
“Hi, Matt,” Valerie says.
I barely look up. “Hi.”
“I’ll be right back,” Kelly says. She gives me a quick smile and continues on toward the pool office. I do a fast wipe at my nose with my towel just in case.
“You here by yourself ?” Valerie asks.
“Yeah.” I nod and force myself to look her in the eyes.
“Where’s Sean and Coop?”
“Dinner, I guess.”
Valerie watches Kelly as she disappears into the office. “Kelly left her sweater here.”
“Oh.” I brighten. Maybe they didn’t see me swimming.
Valerie looks back at me. “So. How’s your summer going so far?”
I shrug. “Good, I guess. You?”
“I got a job,” Valerie says, smiling.
“Cool.”
“It’s just some filing and typing and stuff. At Dr. Malkin’s office.”
“We go to him.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw your family’s file.” Valerie’s neck and cheeks flush. “But don’t worry. I didn’t look at it or anything. I just noticed it when I was filing something else.”
