THE ROOM GOES FULLY DARK. Someone is trying the door from the outside, but the door is locked. There’s a tentative knock, the sound of a knob being twisted back and forth.
Should we watch it again? Sean says.
No, Clare says. I just want to stay like this. I want him back.
There’s a louder knock at the door, and muffled talking. The baby is sound asleep.
They’ll say there’s been a mistake, Sean says. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.
The dark in the room has taken on weight. The sounds at the door are getting louder.
Clare pulls the blanket to her chin. The baby looks perfectly at peace.
I would empty the world, she finally says. There is nothing I wouldn’t do.
IT SEEMS THAT EVERYONE in the hospital is outside the door to their room, trying to get in. The male nurse. The young doctor, and the child with the clipboard. The two older doctors, finally prepared for the conversation they’d been putting off. It sounds, now, like someone is hammering at the door with a mallet. The hinges are starting to pull from the frame.
We don’t have much time, Sean says.
I know, Clare says.
Across the room, the crib begins to shimmer and glow. The baby floats up and away from the mattress until he is above the rail. Even if he is never coming back, Sean thinks, he was ours. Clare is not so eager to please. Now the baby hovers in space. He is still sleeping. He begins bobbing slowly toward them to nestle in the crook they’ve made with their arms.
When he settles down, he is heavier than either could imagine. His breathing is regular. He’s having the dream of dreams. He is thinking of fat ships on a placid sea.
Hello? Hello? someone is shouting from the hallway.
Don’t wake him, Sean says.
Boo, Clare says. And the baby opens his eyes.
POOLS, I AM A HAWK
IT WAS SUMMER. The trees—brown, bare sticks during winter—were suddenly full and verdant; heat shimmered off the asphalt. School was out, long gone, flushed like a memory of being sick. It would come again, Emily thought sadly, but for now, the timeless, languid world beckoned. Earlier, her little brother Sean had protested sunscreen application and nearly driven their mother to tears as she said, “Please, please, just your cheeks,” and Emily thought they’d never leave the apartment. They were in the car now. The pool was open, and their mother had promised they could swim.
At a stoplight, Emily watched as a mother duck wandered across the street with ducklings in tow. “Just like our book!” her own mother exclaimed as her brother sulked in the hot back seat. He sulked, and then he nodded off. Through the window, Emily watched as the mallard paid her ducklings no mind; she waddled to the curb and just kept going. “Hmmm,” her mother said, but Emily wasn’t listening. She been imagining the pool, but now she thought of Mr. Garrity and what he’d said to her on the last day of music class; one of his awful songs was in her head: “His Eye Is on the Tiny Bird.” He’d turned off the classroom lights and she’d run out the door. But now that it was summer and she was getting older, she would let nothing frighten her. On that point she was determined. Clear, she thought. The song went away.
The pool they were going to was across town at a club. It was invitation only. “Are we lost again?” Emily asked her mother. It felt like they’d been in the car for hours, and the windows were stuck. Her mother said of course not, but Emily knew they were, because her mother kept pulling over to check her phone. Right, left, left again. The car was an oven. They were in a neighborhood Emily hadn’t seen before. The houses were much larger, set off the road, blindingly white in the late morning sun. Tall oak trees lined the block like ancient sentinels.
“Wake up, Sean,” her mother called from the front. “Emily, wake him up.”
“Why?” Emily said.
“Because if he sleeps now, he won’t sleep later.”
Sean was three and a half. They shared a room, which Emily thought was ridiculous. For her tenth birthday, she’d asked for her own room, but her parents had bought her a sprinkler attachment. It didn’t work and no one even noticed. She shoved Sean hard to wake him up, but he just shifted in his seat, moved further away from her so she couldn’t reach him without unbuckling.
Finally, the car stopped for good and Emily’s mother got out. Through the car window, Emily could see the tan clubhouse and the gate they were supposed to walk through to get to the pool. There was a tall white fence around everything. She opened her door and stood near her mother while she helped Sean’s fat feet into his sandals.
“Ducks eat hay,” Sean told Emily.
“That’s not right,” she said back, and that was the end of the conversation. Her mother handed her a heavy bag full of rolled towels and sunscreen and led the way through the parking lot. Sean reached for Emily’s hand because there were cars around, and Emily happily took it. They swung their hands back and forth like they were walking through a meadow, where no parents dared to tread.
At the clubhouse gate, her mother became flustered again. While she made a phone call, Emily and Sean sat on a bench near the entrance. Other kids with towels slung over their shoulders looked at them curiously as they walked by, as though they’d never seen anyone sit on a bench before. Finally, a woman showed up. She was wearing sunglasses and looked glamorous, as if she sat by pools like this every day. “I’m sorry,” she said to Emily’s mother. “I thought they’d just let you in.” Trailing behind her was Nathan, a kid from Sean’s class. When Sean saw him, he jumped off the bench and the two boys hugged.
“It’s no problem,” Emily’s mother said.
“That’s so cute,” the woman said. She was looking at the two boys.
“Isn’t it? All I hear all day is Nathan, Nathan, Nathan.” Now the boys were holding hands and singing a song they both knew.
The woman already knew Emily’s name, which made her happy. She smelled like a fashion magazine and when she walked, she placed one foot directly in front of the other.
They followed her through the gate, down some steps, and through a garden. Nearby, people were playing tennis. The air smelled like food frying. The pool was bigger than Emily had expected—a long rectangle, clear water. There were two diving boards, one high and one low: children lined up and ran off the low board without bouncing, some with goggles, all shrieking in pleasure at being so conveyed into water on such a morning. Her mother took Sean into the family changing room, but Emily insisted on changing by herself in the women’s room. “Come right out,” her mother said, as though she wouldn’t have.
The changing room was silent and dark. The wet floor was cold, and the air smelled like chlorine. An older woman sat naked on one of the benches, tending to her feet. “Don’t mind me,” she said. Emily didn’t. She found a locker and carefully unpacked her bag. “Are you one of the Domini kids?” the woman asked when Emily was in her suit.
“No,” Emily said. “I’m Emily.”
“Oh,” the woman said, and went back to her feet.
Once outside, she had no trouble finding her mother.
They were sitting—her mother, the woman, and the two boys—between the large pool and a smaller pool, one Emily hadn’t seen, which was clearly for children. Her mother was talking a mile a minute, and the woman was nodding with a straight mouth, now and then saying good or I didn’t know that, no. Her mother didn’t say anything to her as she came over and put her towel down. The two boys were sharing French fries. Emily was embarrassed for her mother, but didn’t know why she should be.
The line for the small board was long, and other kids kept cutting in, but Emily endured. This wasn’t her pool, she knew—she was just a visitor. All the other kids seemed to know one another. She didn’t want to attract any attention. When it was her turn, the girl behind her said, “But you haven’t even been in the water yet.”
“No,” Emily said. “I haven’t.”
“You’re supposed to shower,” the girl said, but Emily pretended she
hadn’t heard. She hoisted herself up the steps and cantered until she reached the end of the board. She stopped to see if her mother was watching. She wasn’t. “Go!” someone said. Emily plugged her nose and jumped. By the sound of the water, a roar in her ears, she imagined the splash had been big, but no one said anything when she surfaced. She swam calmly and vainly to the ladder, knowing exactly what she might look like to anyone watching.
She’d been worried about the tall board, but it went much the same way. The sign said the board was ten feet, but it felt higher as she climbed the ladder. Water dripped from her suit with every step. At the top, she paused to look around. She was the highest point, she figured, at the club. She could see now that the flowers in the garden were planted in the shape of an anchor. The people lounging on chairs in their bathing suits looked like old floppy seals. She thought about waiting for later to jump, but she didn’t know if you were allowed to climb back down the ladder. No one was climbing up behind her, but still. She stayed at the back of the board with her arms on the guardrails until she felt the sun on her shoulders. Her hesitation, she reasoned, was not so much because she was scared of the height, but because she was being thoughtful about how best to land: legs together, arms at her side. She remembered the resolution she made in the car, walked purposefully to the end of the board, and jumped. The water, very flat, very blue, came whooshing up to greet her. The sting on her left arm indicated it hadn’t gone exactly how she’d planned, but she was still secretly thrilled at her own audacity.
WITH THAT DONE, she swam in the deep end for a few minutes, hanging on one wall, then hanging on another. In the shallow end, some older kids were dunking one another and splashing. There was a lifeguard, but he was talking to a lady who was leaning up against the base of his chair. The lady’s skin was so tan and wrinkled she looked like an ugly crocodile wearing a visor. Somebody was swimming under water, doing laps that way.
Anything goes in this pool, Emily thought. She looked for her mother but didn’t see her.
With her hands on the side of the pool, Emily took a large breath and forced her head under. The point was to stay submerged as long as she was able. She opened her eyes and began counting in her head. Everything was clear. She could see the bottom of the pool, where the wall gently sloped its corner and became its floor. The almost clear water in the shallow end gradually shifted to blue in the deep end. She walked herself down the wall with her arms. The light flickered near the surface with the swimmers treading water. They were headless now. She looked to where she thought the diving board would be and was pleased when out of nowhere a girl about her age plunged as though from a great height and articulated a J; it took her halfway to the bottom of the pool, a pelican movement she’d seen on the Nature Channel, and Emily watched as the girl held herself tight, then opened in the water like a blossom to kick her way to the surface. She made no sound. Directly below her, Emily saw a flash of silver she knew was a small quivering coin; she also knew it was too deep for her to dive, and at this point her lungs were ready to burst anyway. She counted to seven, and when her vision began to pulse dark, she finally let herself up and took a gulping breath. At this, a woman sitting near the pool said oh my out of sheer surprise, but otherwise no one else seemed to notice that Emily had been there and then been gone. No one had seen how long she’d been under, but she knew it was a personal record. When she came back to where everyone was sitting, she was surprised to see that her towel was still at her mother’s feet. She unrolled and spread it on a white reclining pool chair.
A large hawk was circling above them. Emily squinted into the sun to follow him. “There’s a hawk,” she said, but her mother wasn’t listening. The two boys were raising a ruckus in the toddler pool, whacking at each other with inflatable swords. Some invisible switch had been flipped on the day, and it was now almost unbearably hot. The woman was talking to her mother about private school, and her mother was nodding. Emily closed her eyes and tried to imagine what the hawk saw, but all she could think about was how she looked on her reclining chair. She squeezed her eyes tighter until stars flickered across her lidded darkness, and then she saw it as he would: a flash at the bottom of the pool, her bright coin. He’d never get it.
“He was looking at the young girls,” the woman was saying when Emily tuned back in. “He had sunglasses on, so it was hard to tell.”
“Who was?” Emily said.
“No one,” her mother said.
At her mother’s suggestion, then, Emily stood and walked over to where the two boys were playing in the shallow water. On her way, she passed an older boy in a crimson bathing suit. She could tell he was watching her. The concrete had been heated by the sun and burned her feet, but she knew that skipping would look undignified, so she cleared her mind and concentrated only on each foot as it met the walk. She raised her eyes to meet his, but he looked away quickly.
“Hi, Emily,” Sean said, when she’d let herself through the gate. The toddler pool was wide and round, but shallow, and Emily stood on the edge of it.
“Do you want to go home?” she said.
“No,” Sean said sadly, because he thought Emily was there to gather him up. Nathan came up behind him then and poked him in the ribs with the tip of his inflatable sword. “Aieeee!” Sean screeched, and then the two of them were off, chasing each other in a high-kneed and kicking way around the pool. There were other kids, but they didn’t appear as comfortable in the water as these two, and seemed to resent the churn they were turning up.
Imagining herself in a play, Emily thought: now I will enter the water. And she stepped in. The water was warmer here than in the bigger pool. She walked around in a large circle, made the perimeter with her arms out. “I’m a gliding hawk,” she said to the boys, but they didn’t care at all.
She knew that if she went into the center of the pool and just stood still long enough, they would come to her. So that’s exactly what she did. Some parents were slapping sunscreen on one another near the gate. A rhythmic pocking sound carried over from the tennis courts, leisurely percussive, the clean sound of old age. The water level was at mid-thigh for her, but waist-level for the boys, who had indeed drifted toward her in case she knew something about being in this pool that they did not.
“I found a coin in the big pool,” Emily said. She explained, “It’s treasure beyond our wildest dreams. It’ll send us to private school.”
She demonstrated how she’d seen the coin by dunking her head in the water and opening her eyes. “You have to hold your breath,” she said.
Sean could do it, but Nathan couldn’t. “I’ll help,” she said. “One, two, three.” When she’d learned to swim, Ms. Gravrock had held her head under and told her: now or never, Emily. So that’s what she did with Nathan. When he dunked, she placed her hand on top of his head and held down while she counted. “No coin,” he reported, gasping. So they did it again. This time she counted higher, with her hand firmly at the base of Nathan’s skull. His hair floated up and waved in the water like seaweed and tickled the top of her hand.
There was a commotion behind her. “Stop!” someone yelled, and then there was a whistle. Emily knew immediately that both were directed at her. She was mortified. She turned around and saw an angry man, still dressed, splashing toward her in the pool.
“What are you doing?” he said. His face was red and streaked with sunscreen. Emily thought he might hit her; suddenly she couldn’t move or talk. He picked Nathan up in his arms. Nathan coughed twice like a seal. “Put me down,” Nathan said. “Don’t do that,” the man said sharply to Emily. He put Nathan down and, unsure what else was required of him, waded away. A woman with a concerned look on her face stood near the side of the pool and held a towel open to welcome him like he was a child. He grabbed the towel and shook it violently. “Nathan, are you okay?” the woman called, but both boys, frightened of the man and unsure who the woman was, had already scampered to the other side of the toddler area, where there was a slide and s
andbox.
“He’s okay,” Emily said. Then, with a slight thrill, she said, “He’s my brother.”
“He’s not,” the woman said. She had sunglasses on. “That’s dangerous.”
No, it’s not, Emily thought, but the woman had turned and was following her husband to the great row of shaded chairs that sat under a long blue canopy. Emily sat down in the shallow water, but it seemed like everyone was looking at her, so she stood up and left. We should go home, she thought, but then she remembered at home there was nothing to do. They lived in a tiny apartment that cooked in the summer. Their neighbors had recently installed an above-ground pool, but her mom said they didn’t want any kids in there for insurance reasons, and Emily wasn’t allowed to ask.
The big pool was getting crowded. The line for the low board was long and most of the chairs had been claimed by towels. Emily made a few slow circles around the pool, trying to think of something to do. On the southern edge, there was a low chain-link fence, beyond which was a long manicured lawn that led to the tennis courts. Behind the tennis courts was a row of thick trees. Some older kids chased one another, throwing a tennis ball stuffed into a sock. It arched in the air like a comet. As Emily watched, the group of kids left the sock on the grass and disappeared up a trail into the woods.
Farthest South & Other Stories Page 5
