Later he always wanted to know if she’d had fun, and she learned to say yes, even on the days she’d been ducked and tortured by bullies, even when her throat was raw from the chlorinated water she swallowed. Then he would sigh, with a kind of sad satisfaction, and finally leave her alone.
But he rarely went into the pool himself, and when he did, he’d hang around the shin-deep kiddies’ end, looking pink-skinned and oversized, offering Robin rides on his back, wanting to be her whale, her sailing ship. He called her his fishie or his mermaid. “Had enough, little fishie?” he’d say, as if she had been clamoring for more, and then he’d rise, like Gulliver, from the water. “Had fun?”
These children in the Marriott pool demanded more attention than they would ever get. But at least they had one another, and the harmless illusion of a parental audience. Robin let the water carry her and she stared directly into the sun, wondering dreamily if you could really go blind this way.
She wanted to concentrate, to make plans. Somehow she’d have to get Linda to give her some of the insurance money. As soon as they’d checked into the motel the day before, Robin had suggested to Linda that she be allowed to carry half their fortune. Linda had looked puzzled. “Why?” she asked. “For safekeeping,” Robin answered. “You know, in case of crooks or pickpockets.” Linda had smiled. “Oh, Robin,” she said. “This isn’t Newark. They don’t have pickpockets in Iowa. Besides, I want you to just relax and have a good time. Let me worry about things.” But Linda seemed unable to contemplate the future. Since their visit to the farm, she hadn’t mentioned a word about alternate plans. All she had said afterward was that she had to think things over, that she needed a few days to clear her brain. She told Robin they were both entitled to a little fun, anyway, after all they’d been through. That’s why they were staying at this place, which was kind of expensive, but look at the terrific pool, the attractive and convenient coffee shop. “There is nothing better in this world than a big, hearty breakfast while you’re on the road,” Linda said two days ago. Since then she’d hardly eaten anything at all, and never went near the pool. She spent most of her time in the bathroom, running water into the tub. Once Robin put her ear against the door and heard Linda talking to herself, but she couldn’t make out the words.
Everything appeared lighter now, faded, and there were drifting dots of colored confetti in the cumulus clouds. Robin shut her eyes, but the colors remained, trapped inside her lids. When she opened them again, she found she was in the very center of the pool, looking toward the diving board through the vee of her feet. Then there was a great splashing, and a figure went swiftly past her, its wake making her bob and rock in the water. When he surfaced, she saw it was the redheaded boy who’d been at breakfast earlier that morning, sitting across the room with his family.
Robin had come into the coffee shop alone because Linda said she wasn’t hungry yet and would probably get something later in town after she went shopping. She’d gone shopping the day before, too, but came back to the motel without any packages. Today she gave Robin a five-dollar bill and repeated that thing about big hearty breakfasts before she drove away. Robin decided to have just orange juice and pocket the rest of the money, her first step toward freedom. She was excited about the prospect of time to herself, too, until she entered the coffee shop, where she felt terribly visible, and shy.
“Only one today?” the hostess asked, as if it were some tragic failure on Robin’s part not to have found a breakfast companion.
Once she was seated, Robin had the place mat to stare at, with its pattern of illustrated riddles, and inverted answers. Yesterday there had been different ones, with Presidential facts and figures. Linda had played with her food and shifted the dishes so she could read aloud. “ ‘Which U.S. President served two terms, but not consecutively?’ ” When Robin didn’t say anything, Linda turned the place mat around and read the answer. “ ‘Grover Cleveland. Elected in 1884 and again in 1892.’ I think I actually knew that one.” Then she said, “Listen to this, Robin. ‘Until 1825, all U.S. Presidents, except for John Adams, came from Virginia. And the state became known as the mother of Presidents …’ Oh. Why did I always think it was Ohio?”
Robin looked down. What has four wheels and flies? She was never any good at things like this, and she tilted her head to glance at the answer. A garbage truck. Dumb. She turned her attention to the menu but was aware of the redheaded boy, who was the eldest of five children and was taller than his parents. He stared at Robin above the stack of wheat cakes in front of him and poured syrup until it dripped over the sides of the plate. Robin heard his mother say, “Watch what you’re doing, dreamer.”
When the waitress came to Robin’s table and said, “Oh, is it all by its wonesome iss morning?” Robin didn’t answer, but she forgot her decision to economize, and ordered the Old MacDonald Special. When is a door not a door? The redheaded boy chewed, and stared rudely, and Robin felt her whole body bloom with sensation. She wondered if she’d broken out in a rash, and she looked down at her arms, which were still that unbroken white, paler than the paper napkin she was destroying in her lap. She felt furious with Linda, whose absence made her, Robin, so conspicuous. No one else was eating alone, except for a man in a business suit, and he was reading a newspaper.
The family across the room was lively and noisy. The small children sloshed their cocoa and clanged silverware against china. Their voices played against one another without pause. The redheaded boy’s was deeper even than his father’s, and he sounded like a bass instrument in an orchestra of violins. He smiled at his mother, or past her at Robin, whose face went up in flames. What goes up a chimney down or down a chimney down, but never goes up the chimney up or down the chimney up? The answer had been shredded by the moisture under her orange juice.
She looked across the room again and he did this asshole thing, lifted a glass of milk as if he were toasting her with it. She couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t even finish drinking the juice. She spilled it a little in her hurry to get up, and a spoon clattered to the floor behind her.
Robin continued to float in the subsiding wake, but her peacefulness had been broken. And now he circled, swimming underwater like a shark, shimmering and quick in the wobbly light. When he came up alongside her he was all energy and motion, shaking his streaming head, churning his arms and legs. “Hi!” he said once, and went under again. She thought he touched her foot, and her balance, that easy buoyancy, was instantly lost and she sank like a stone. This time he definitely touched her, pulled at one of her arms to yank her upward. “Don’t! I can swim!” she said, and water entered her mouth, making the words come out strangled, in bubbles.
He was laughing, and his wet eyelashes and freckled skin were golden. “Don’t,” Robin said again, above the surface of the water now, but she did not struggle as his arms held her aloft. She felt languid, sleepy. Men, boys were so much more naked in their bathing suits. She looked at the glittering expanse of his chest, at the tiny useless nipples, and became excruciatingly aware of her own, as if all feeling had drained from the rest of her body to enter those two essential points. “Don’t,” she said, yet a third time, but it was whispered now and said only to comfort herself.
They hung by their wrinkled fingers from the diving board. He told her his name was Steve and that he was on his way to Texas to visit his grandparents and a million aunts and uncles and cousins.
“That’s funny,” Robin said. “We just visited mine, here in Iowa, on their farm.”
Steve’s family traveled in that big yellow camper trailer. She must have seen it in the parking lot. Most of the time they slept in it, but every once in a while they stayed at a motel. “The old folks gotta have their privacy. You know,” he said, and she nodded, offhand and wise.
She told him her name and said that Linda was her aunt and that they were on vacation, too, just seeing the country while Robin’s parents were on a cruise.
Had she been to the Hidden River Caverns, he wanted
to know. Weren’t they neat?
Yes, neat. Lovely.
Was she going to Texas?
Maybe, she didn’t know. Theirs was a kind of unplanned, casual trip. Like they went anywhere they felt like going. Linda was more like a sister than an aunt. They had lots of fun together.
“Neat,” he said.
Yes, neat.
They climbed out of the pool and he borrowed a piece of paper and a pen from his father. His red hair dripped onto the paper, onto her, as he wrote the address of his relatives in Texas.
“Lubbock,” she said. “1224 Macon Street,” as if she had asked him for directions and was trying to memorize them.
“We’ll be there two weeks,” he told her. “Until the fourteenth or fifteenth, and then we’ll head back.” He wrote his home address, in Michigan, and wanted hers, too.
She was dismayed. Her father was a pilot in the army, she said. They didn’t have a permanent address right now.
“In the Air Force?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
There were gestures from his parents. “We’re leaving in a little while,” he said. “I have to round up the kids, help to pack. But, hey, we’ll write to each other, Robin, okay? You’ll have to write first.”
Robin’s skin, which was like her father’s, was burning. The water from her bathing suit and hair formed a warm puddle at her feet. His mother and father were watching them, smiling, talking. She felt humiliated and full of pleasure. Steve turned and waved.
She meant to go right back to the room, number 24 on the second level. The sunburn was bothering her. Her shoulders ached and the backs of her knees were pulled taut. The room key was on an elastic band around her wrist. Steve had worn his on his ankle; she would wear hers there the next time she went swimming.
Her wet feet left clear imprints on the paved walk. She looked behind her and saw them disappear rapidly in order. She was almost at the coffee shop. After that was the game room. This morning, before breakfast, she’d looked inside. There were pinball machines, a little electronic shooting gallery, and a bowling game where you knocked down the pins with a heavy metal disk. A few kids had been in there, punching the coin returns, hoping to loosen some change.
As she approached now, Robin heard various pinging sounds and the Muzak that was piped in everywhere. She stopped in the welcome shade of the doorway and saw that only one man was there. He was wearing black bathing trunks and he was playing the baseball game. He gripped the sides of the machine with both hands and held a cigarette between two fingers. His player had two strikes, one ball, and there were already two outs against his team. He looked up, even though she had not made a sound. “Bringing me a little luck?” he said. There was a glass on the surface of the machine and ice rattled as the silver ball shot around, ringing bells. “Come on in,” the man said in a lazy voice. “The water’s fine.”
It was much cooler inside, and darker. After the brightness, Robin’s vision was dim. Looking down, she could just see inside her top where the sunburn ended and that other whiteness began. She raised the straps gingerly and then tugged at the bottom of her suit where it rose over her buttocks.
The game ended abruptly and the lights on the machine went out. He shook the machine hard and the glass slid toward him. His drink was clear and a lime peel floated in it. “Look at you,” he said. “Like a sunset in Hawaii. You’re sure going to feel that tonight.”
“I feel it already,” Robin said, surprised at her own ease in answering him.
The man’s body was heavily furred, but the longish dark hair on his head was thinning. His toes were narrow and bent, like fingers. The black trunks were brief and tight and hinted at their secret weight. Robin felt slightly dizzy.
“Want to play?” he asked, and before she could reply he pushed coins into the machine. Colored lights flashed and Robin could hear the steel balls roll down into playing position. Her father had liked pinball, too, and once he took her to an amusement place downtown where only men went, each one facing his own game intently, like the captain at the helm of a ship. She had leaned her chest against her father’s machine while it shuddered and rang, and all the vibrations seemed to happen inside her.
The man fixed it so they could play against each other. His cigarette smelled wonderful; its smoke was slow and blue. “Puff?” he offered, holding it out to her, and she shook her head, blushing. Was he some kind of mind reader?
Her team was up first and he released the ball so quickly it skidded past the batter before she could act. She flapped the lever, too late, and the little metal bat fluttered frantically.
The man laughed. “Easy,” he said. “Ea-sy does it.”
Her first batter struck out. The second one hit a pop fly, the third a single.
“Nice going … er … let me guess—is it Debbie?”
Robin shook her head.
“You look like a Debbie I know,” he said. “Blond like you.”
She had a strange intuition that he was talking about his own daughter. “Ginger,” she told him, and he said, “Yeah, that fits, too. That’s cute.” He finished his drink and chewed a piece of ice. Her next player struck out.
Then he played and the machine rattled against her hipbone. “That’s some sunburn you got,” he said. He put the glass against her back.
“Oh! Don’t do that!”
“Did I hurt you?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought it would feel good, you know, cool.”
She didn’t answer.
“You know you’re all pink, like a little rabbit.”
“Rabbits aren’t pink.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right. Only their eyes.” He laughed. “So who are you here with?”
“Friends,” Robin said.
“What are you, fifteen, sixteen?”
She hesitated. “Sixteen,” she said. “Sixteen and a half.”
“Jailbait in almost any state,” he said, seemingly to himself.
“Well, I’ve got to go now,” Robin murmured.
“Hey, before we even finish our game? It’s all paid for. Do you want a drink, a Coke or something?”
She shook her head. He went to the doorway, threw his cigarette out and then came back, shutting the door behind him. The room was even darker now. Robin could smell the chlorine rising from her own flesh. A Muzak waltz ended and a Spanish number began. “Qué bonita! Nita! Nita!” a chorus of men sang. The pinball machine glowed; there was no score yet for either side.
He released another ball. “Go ahead. Shoot,” he said. “Hit it.”
“It’s not my turn,” Robin said.
“Take my turn. It’s okay. Why not? You took the part that once was my heart.”
“Somebody—my friends—are waiting for me,” she said. “You could play both teams at the same time, if you want to. You could just—”
He threw up his arms. “Would you please …” he began, and then stopped for a moment and inhaled deeply. “Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. Look,” he said, disarmingly serious. “I didn’t have a whole courtship in mind. Okay? What I want is just one little thing and that’s all. I just want you to suck me off.”
She walked around him and opened the door. The sunlight began again right after she crossed the threshold. He didn’t follow her or do anything to stop her, but she started to run and kept running until she reached room 24. On the way, she pulled the key from her wrist so it was ready, aimed at the keyhole, when she got there.
17 Linda wondered if she’d be involved in a wreck on the way to the clinic. Fate often made a mockery of people’s foolproof plans. The week before, there had been an article in the newspaper about a woman from Sparks, Nevada, who had saved for years for a trip to Hawaii, her life’s dream. The minute she got there a coconut fell from a palm tree, hitting her on the head and killing her instantly.
But there was hardly any traffic this morning—only a few law-abiding citizens moseying smoothly along, well within the speed limit. She would have to go into a tree or
off a bridge if she wanted to have a convenient accident. And even her own driving was steadier than usual, bringing her safely toward Allison Street and her appointment. She thought: I probably won’t die. It’s really silly and theatrical to think about dying. But just in case of a freak series of mishaps, she should leave Robin some word, shouldn’t she? Tell her where the money is and wish her good luck with the rest of her life. At least advise her not to get pregnant when she didn’t mean to. Pregnant. The word was fat and hollow; it filled up quickly with Linda’s terror. In the printed material accompanying the pregnancy-test kit, none of the pictured models seemed unhappy with their positive results. They were all smiling, and eagerly sharing the terrific news with loved ones. It could have been an ad for the telephone company.
She hoped the pickets would be gone when she got there this time, away on a coffee break or something. It was a private matter, strictly a personal decision, and they were turning it into some kind of public extravaganza. Yesterday, after she’d passed through them on the way back to the car, she had felt physically assaulted, although no one had actually touched her. Those voices. And the faces, so fierce with judgment.
Last night, soon after she and Robin turned off the lights and went to bed, the telephone rang. Neither of them made a move to answer it. Then, inexplicably, and with a fool’s rush of hope, Linda thought of Wolfie. But he didn’t know where she was, nobody did, except for the receptionist at the clinic. She could be calling to confirm Linda’s appointment, or to cancel it because of a sudden outbreak of illness on their staff, because of overbooking, or even a negative urine test!
When Linda finally picked up the phone and said hello, there was nothing from the other end but heavy breathing. Supercreep! she thought, astonished. Had he followed her all the way here? She waited in dread for that weird humming to begin, but instead a muffled voice said, “Open your Bible, sister. Isaiah 33.”
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