Learning to Swim (4 page)

“For the summer,” I said.

“How nice.” Her eyes were back on the ocean, one hand limp in her lap, the other stroking Princess’s ears. Her little feet were firmly planted on the floor, keeping the chair rocking at a steady, slow pace to match her slow words. Her incessant bobbing back and forth and her distant eyes gave her the air of a rather insane person. The kind you saw tied up in straight jackets in insane asylums in old movies. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“Do you like the sea?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“You can’t get better weather than this, yes?”

I nodded again and, starting to feel like a mute, racked my brain for some way to contribute to the conversation. “And it was really stormy just a few days ago,” I said lamely.

The old woman nodded knowingly. “And that’s precisely how it goes. The storms in the spring giving way to the summer calm. You know, of course, the cycle of the sea?”

Without her eyes leaving the ocean, she seemed to know I’d shaken my head.

“Those storms in the spring, always in the spring, it’s the Sea Mother battling against the spirit of winter. The spirit of winter, they call him here, some call him Teran. And he battles the Sea Mother in the spring.”

I stared at her plainly, but she was engrossed in the ocean and her story, her big round eyes trolling the horizon.

“And the Sea Mother is victorious and banishes him to the bottom of the sea for the summer. And Teran sometimes causes a squall here and there as he tries to break free. But they say he won’t get free. Not until the autumn when he and the Sea Mother battle again. And that time, Teran will win. And then he will lord over the sea until they battle again in the spring. And it is an endless cycle, just like the sea itself.”

When she finished, her eyes flitted to my face and I looked away hurriedly, not wanting to be caught staring.

“You are skeptical, like my Seamus was in the beginning,” she said.

I opened my mouth to politely protest, but nothing came out.
Skeptical
wasn’t strong enough a word.

Something seemed to occur suddenly to the old woman. “Dear,” she said, “would you fetch me my coat?” She didn’t even look at me. “It’s just inside.”

With the rest of the bodies, no doubt.

She sensed my hesitation. “Just inside the door there. Be a dear.”

You’ve got to be kidding me!
It was at least eighty-five degrees in the summer air.

She nodded encouragingly toward the door.

I got up a little nervously, and peered through the screen door. The inner door was open, giving way to a dim interior. I wanted to protest, to run away in fear, but the old woman looked so tiny and helpless, hunched over in her rocking chair. There was something lonely about her. Almost pathetic. The image of the pale, bloated body from last night floated through my mind, but I pushed it quickly away.

The wooden screen door creaked as I opened it, bracing myself for some sort of shrine to the Sea Mother or ashrays. “Where is it?” I called, as the door shut noisily behind me.

“I haven’t seen it in ages, dear,” she called back.

Well then I’ll surely be able to find it.

The room I was standing in was dark and musty. I could see tiny particles of dust sailing through the shafts of light that illuminated the old carpet. The room was crowded with sofas and plush chairs, but it was tidy—no jacket thrown across the back of any furniture. It was not clean, exactly, but had more the air of something not having been touched in a very long time. The walls were covered with shelves laden with books of every size and color. The spines made a kind of dark rainbow across the walls, and there were seashells everywhere. I mean
everywhere
. They were on the tops of books, tables, the floor, and even one of the sofas.

There was a narrow archway in the back of the room that led to a room even darker than this one, but after examining a few of the nearest books (
A History of Berlin
and
Nymphs: A Complete Guide
), I figured I could pretend I’d spent my requisite time searching.

“I couldn’t find it,” I said, emerging back onto the porch where the light was slowly softening as the sun began to fall.

“Yes, thank you for looking,” the old woman said with a pleasant, though disappointed, smile.

“Are you cold? It’s warm inside,” I said.

“No, no, not at all, please come sit. I get quite lonely with Ronan the only one who comes to call. Come, tell me what brings you to the ocean if you are quite decided against believing her.”

I slid back onto the empty rocking chair. “My parents brought us here for the summer,” I said.

“They made you come, then.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. “You are a young lady, you think your life is full, and parents don’t always fit into that life. Are you an only child, my dear?”

“Yes,” I said.
Creepy, or a lucky guess?
I couldn’t decide.

She was nodding slowly now. “Tell me, dear, what is it that divides you from your parents?”

“I don’t know, my mom just …” I thought for a moment, trying to pin my discontent on a single thing. “I just graduated from high school,” I said weakly.

“Ah,” she nodded again in that slow, knowing way. “You have grown right out of your childhood and they are not ready for that.”

“We just can’t agree on what I’m going to do next year,” I said.

“Ah,” she said again. “And what is it they want you to do?”

“Go to college.”

She was quiet for a moment, still swaying in the rocking chair. “And this is such a terrible fate?”

I would look back on this moment and wonder what had brought me to indulge this old woman’s questions. But at the time, it felt natural to tell her these things.

“I just didn’t get into the school I wanted,” I said.
Or
any
of them
. I paused. “And I’d rather take a year off.” She was quiet again, and I read her disapproval in the silence. “To travel,” I added, trying to justify it. “See the world before I condemn myself to a degree and a career.”

“And your parents will not allow this.”

“We always argue about it.”

“Your mother does not want that path for you. As mine did not want for me.”

I was surprised. “You skipped a year before college?”

The woman laughed a dry, brittle, almost sad laugh. “I wanted to see the world and my mother did not want it for me. It is dangerous.”

“She thinks I won’t go to college if I skip a year,” I said. “But it would only be a year, I
want
to go to college.”
But on
my
terms
. I didn’t want to be the dumb girl the college let in because her dad knew the dean. “I’m not ready. Just not right now.”

“Time has a way of binding us. Months turn into years against our will.”

I was silent.

“I never returned to my mother,” the old woman said, and I saw her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly as they swept the horizon.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.

We were both quiet for a few minutes, and the noise of the ocean seemed to heighten to a roar in the silence. I began to feel awkward and tried to make my escape. “I really should get going,” I said, standing up. “It was really nice meeting you.”

“Cora, that is not to say I would not do it again, had I the chance.” I froze, standing awkwardly near the stairs. “Yes, I would
always
go again,” she said.

“I’m glad,” I murmured. And I was. To know the adventure might be worth it, whatever the adventure might be.

The old woman was nodding, her hands back in her lap. “At the end, the pros will always outweigh the cons, and so you must do what
you
feel you need. In your heart.”

Now I was the one nodding in her strange, slow fashion.

“And Cora?” She was smiling faintly. “It
is
dangerous.”

Mar Deire

Keeping up Appearances

The sun was just settling over the backs of the sprawling yards of the old houses as I jogged home. I’d forgotten my phone at the Pink Palace (on purpose), and it was after dinnertime. A tongue-lashing was in my immediate future.

I ran up the back stairs prepared for the combined anger of my parents, but somewhat emboldened by the old woman’s words. The adventure was always worth it.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t even asked her name. She had gone on about mine and even Princess’s, and I hadn’t even considered hers. But her message had reached me loud and clear. I had every intention of going into that house and revealing that Western had, indeed, rejected me and so I was not going to college in the fall.

But when I burst through the back door, I stopped dead in my tracks. Princess ran in ahead of me and scurried around the dining room table excitedly. It was set for dinner as I had expected, but it was also surrounded by people.

“Cora, we’ve been worried sick about you,” Mom said with a beaming smile that belied her true feelings.

The meal was in full swing, but everyone had politely stopped eating to watch me stumble awkwardly into the room.
Wonderful. An audience for my declaration of independence.

“We thought you’d fallen in,” a strange woman said genially.

I cringed and hazarded a look at my mother, who had a stiff smile plastered to her face.

Dad cleared his throat, bringing my mother back to the present. “Saved you some lobster, Cora,” he said. He was the first to return to said lobster. The man sitting next to him followed suit, then the woman who had spoken, and what appeared to be their daughter. And, lastly, my eyes fell to the young man brandishing his lobster with a popped collar and a smirk. Mr. Abercrombie.

“Come sit down and meet the Carltons, honey.” My mother was all blinding, bleached teeth and smiles.

I sat down awkwardly in the only empty chair left, across from the Carlton boy. Undoubtedly a strategic move by my mother. She chirped introductions as she shoveled all sorts of food onto my plate. “And, of course, this is Owen.”

Abercrombie smiled at me. “Hi, Cora.” His voice was deeper than I remembered.

“Dear, I heard you were involved in some strange happenings down south,” Mrs. Carlton said to me, her face quite alarmed. She was a pointy-faced woman with eyebrows too high to be natural.

I looked to my mother for guidance. She was wearing a similarly tragic expression. “Not really,” I said. “I just happened to be there.”

“Yes, how true,” Mrs. Carlton said.

“Yes, it all happened so fast, Cora hardly saw a thing,” Mom said with a polite smile. “No lasting damage done.”

Not that you asked
. In fact, the topic hadn’t been broached at all once we’d left the police at the pier.
Best to brush unpleasant things under expensive rugs.

“Well,” Mrs. Carlton went on. “That just goes to show how you children should stay away from that area. A rough place. Best to stay among the old houses.” She placed a protective hand on her own daughter’s shoulder. The girl was a pudgy little replica of her mother. But she had yet to stop sucking food into her mouth long enough to speak.

“Yes, Cora has certainly learned her lesson, no more hanging around down there,” my mother said, before moving on to a topic more pleasing to her (antique deck furniture).

I glanced at Abercrombie to see if he was buying this blame-the-south skit, but he wasn’t paying attention, just pushing vegetables around his plate absently. Every so often he shot a glance at me, smirking when he caught my eye. Or maybe it was all in my head. He was cute enough, “hotter than a Brad Pitt knockoff”
being Rosie’s phrase of the month. But his shaggy bleach-blond hair was shinier than that of most girls I knew, and his demeanor suggested a teenage boy who knows
exactly
how attractive he is.

I despised this.

His mother’s high-pitched drawl interrupted my thoughts when I heard my name.

Huh?

“Cora is still deciding on what she’s going to do next year,” my own mother jumped in, smiling at me, as if proud that this was the state of things. “Cora just has so many options. It’s so hard for young people these days to make a decision when there are so many possibilities out there.”

That was hardly the case, but I wasn’t about to point out to these people that I wasn’t good enough for my first-choice school, let alone any of the others.

“Well what are the options?” Mr. Carlton spoke up. He was a big, serious man with a face fixed in what was probably a permanent scowl.

“Well there are some charming private schools in the Midwest, but none near home, and I’d really like her close to home. And of course all her friends will be going to state schools, but I’d really like a private one.” It was remarkable how Mom could turn a tragic situation into a less disagreeable one all for the sake of appearances. She deftly changed the subject here. “It’s a pity, really, what some parents are willing to let their children do after high school. Can you believe there’s a girl from Cora’s class that is decided upon going to beauty school? And her mother knows. Sat right there at the graduation and told Frank all about it, as if she was proud of the girl.”

Mrs. Carlton clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

“Well, for my part, I’ll be happy as long as Cora doesn’t end up in a cardboard box,” Dad said. “She can live in the West Indies, for all I care, as long as it’s got an address. Real estate will be key in the coming years.”

I knew this was somehow referencing the talks he and Mr. Carlton had just had about their respective corporations, but I pounced on it as if I knew what he was talking about.

“Well, that’s great, Dad, because, you know, I’d like to live abroad. And travel. You know, take a year off.” My voice felt unnaturally high in the silence it occasioned.

Every eye turned on me. Even the little girl was judging me.