Swim to Me (16 page)

Delores and Thelma exchanged looks. “I just need a few minutes because I want to take Westie back to the dorm with me,” said Delores. “We'll be right back.” She held Westie's hand a little tighter, turned around, and headed toward the dorm.

For the first time since she had left the Bronx, Delores had that hollow feeling inside her. It stuck to the back of her throat like liver and made it hard for her to speak. How she'd worried about her mother. What if she'd shown up with her hair uncombed or wearing some awful outfit she'd gotten on sale at Alexander's? It would have been humiliating. Delores hadn't bargained for the makeup and the boots and the new way of speaking. It had never occurred to her
that her mother's fantasy of who she could become might equal, or maybe even supersede, her own. She was starting to realize that becoming a mermaid and living underwater wasn't the only way to separate from the Walkers of the Grand Concourse. Her mother had made the escape without ever leaving home.

A couple of times her mother had mentioned to Westie that they needed to buy a present for Helene—Helene with the big globe in her room and the thin wax-papery arms. Helene was doing poorly with her breast cancer, her mother had told her earlier. “She's probably not going to make it,” she had whispered. She had already started looking for someone else to take care of Westie. No father, no mother, and now his babysitter was about to be gone. Westie might as well be an orphan.

An idea took form. Maybe it was crazy, but in the scheme of things, it seemed crazy in a good way. “C'mon, Westie.” She was nearly running now. When they got to the dorm, she found Molly and pulled her aside. “This is my brother,” she said, looking around the room. “Westie, this is my friend Molly.

Molly couldn't take her eyes off of Westie. “He's a real cute one,” she said.

Delores looked down at her little brother, then whispered to Molly, “I want him to talk to Otto. Do you think you could stand watch for a few minutes?”

“Little brothers. They're the best,” said Molly. “Go on. I'm here.”

Delores took Westie over to her bed. She picked him up and put him on the bed. The woolen blanket was itchy under his bare thighs and he kept squirming until he nearly slid off. “Just a minute, Westie,” said Delores. “I have something to show you.” She knelt down, pulled her suitcase from under the bed, and unwrapped Otto. Placing the puppet on her lap and straightening out his stained skirt, she sat down next to Westie. “This is my friend Otto. You met him
when you were very little,” she said. “No one else knows him but you. Not Mommy, not Helene. Other than you, he's the best friend I have.”

“Hi, Westie,” said Otto, in his sweet, croaky voice. “I've heard so much about you.”

Westie started and looked up at Otto's soap-white head.

Otto continued: “I used to live where you live, but now I live here. I spend most of my time in the suitcase under Delores's bed. I don't see her as often as I used to.”

Delores whispered in Westie's ear: “Otto's very lonely here. I think he'd be happier at home, with you. Do you think you could take care of him for me?”

Westie blinked hard, then touched Otto's head. “He's soft, isn't he?” said Delores. Westie shook his head yes. Otto continued: “I'd love to come live with you, Westie. And one day soon, we'll all live together again, won't we Delores?”

“We will, I promise.”

Delores put Otto in Westie's lap, next to Dorph. “Will you take him?” Westie shook his head yes again. “Now, every time you talk to Otto, you'll also be talking to me.” She took his hand. “Look, I'll show you how to make him come alive.”

Westie was captivated by the puppet, its rhinestone tears and the way he could make him dance and twist around and clap his hands. “I like Otto,” said Westie. “I'll take care of him.”

“You've made Otto very happy,” she said, scratching Dorph. “I'll bet you that Otto and Dorph become great buddies.”

Delores heard Molly's whisper behind the closed door, and her floating “lollapalooza” jarred her back into place. It was time for them to go. Delores put Dorph in Westie's free hand and kissed Otto on the head. “See you soon,” she said to him. And to Westie
she said, “Okay, little man, we have a deal. We'll all be together some day. Remember that.”

Thelma and her mother were waiting for them outside the dorm. Thelma was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled down over her forehead. She hadn't bothered reapplying the Sugar Blush from earlier that morning, so her lips were pale and stern. Her hands were folded behind her back and her feet were planted a couple of inches apart. If Delores hadn't known who these two people were, she would have thought that the woman in the windbreaker and the white Keds was standing guard over the woman with the heavy makeup and the red patent-leather boots.

“Time to get this show on the road,” said her mother, as soon as she saw Delores and Westie. “I'll call from Boca. It was wonderful to see you doing so great.” She leaned close to Delores and whispered under her breath: “We've come a long way, baby. Don'tcha think?” It was the first time in a long time that Delores had heard her round her vowels and drop her consonants.

Delores kissed Westie good-bye and patted Otto. “Don't forget what I told you,” she said, then turned and ran back into the dorm.

T
HERE WAS A LARGE
bathroom in the dorm. On one side were three separate showers, each with its own white plastic shower curtain. Opposite the showers were three bathroom stalls separated by the standard gray metal walls. Delores locked herself in one of the stalls and sat on the toilet crying. She held her hands over her mouth so she wouldn't cry out loud. Every now and then, she'd flush the toilet in order to drown out the sounds of her blowing her nose. She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there when she became aware of someone in the next stall. Judging by the white, frosted
nail polish on the short, stubby toes, they had to be Molly's feet. Delores tried to breathe normally and not make any gulping noise.

“Delores, is that you?” Molly said.

She cleared her throat. “Yup. Oh, hi, Molly.”

“Hey. Your brother's adorable. He looks like you.”

“Nah, more like my father,” said Delores, tears welling up again.

“Brothers, they are out of sight,” said Molly.

“That's the truth,” whispered Delores.

“Did I ever tell you how I got that scar on my neck?”

“Uh-uh.”

“My brother Larry. One day, when I was ten and he was four, we were sitting at the kitchen table cutting out pictures from a magazine. We must have been making a card for my parents, or something, I can't remember. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Larry reached across the table and cut my neck with the scissors. It didn't hurt as much as it shocked me. I guess he just wanted to see what would happen. There was blood everywhere; it was really a mess. I got up and went and found my mother. She took me to the hospital and I had twenty-seven stitches. I never cried, not one time. Isn't that funny? Anyway, Larry's almost eleven and I miss him like crazy. No one in my family ever talked about what happened until just now.”

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Finally, Delores said: “Does everyone in your family have names with
L
s in them?”

Molly started to laugh. Then Delores laughed. Soon they were laughing so hard that they could see each other's feet swaying underneath the partition.

They both flushed and met at the sink; Delores splashed some water on her face. Molly told her what had just happened. Thelma had called, and Sharlene had answered the phone. “Thelma yelled
at Sharlene, poor thing, and told her that she was a lazy slob, and if she kept up the way she was going, she might as well get herself a waitressing job at Howard Johnson's right now. She said the tank was disgusting, and it was embarrassing to have strangers see it. Sharlene started crying and Thelma told her to buck up and not be such a candy ass. So guess who's cleaning the tank at this moment? Sharlene and Adrienne. Can you imagine?”

At that moment, Delores felt sympathetic toward Thelma. She thought about what it might feel like to live in this penned-in, artificial world for twenty-five years and to put up with the people who passed through: dropouts, runaways, girls in desperate situations with nowhere else to go, liars like herself. Just last week, Blonde Sheila disappeared for two days. No one knew where she was, and Thelma ended up calling the police. It was quite a to-do until Blonde Sheila came back beaming.

“Where the hell were you?” Thelma asked her. It turned out, she and the preacher from the Spring Hill Church had gone to Ocala for a two-day Bible study retreat. “God summoned me there,” Blonde Sheila said, with more than a little sanctimony. Hives the size of quarters erupted on Thelma's neck. “I don't give a fart if God summons you to Bethlehem,” she screamed in front of everyone. “The next time you pull a disappearing act like that, you and your cute little born-again tail are out of here! You get that?”

Thelma couldn't be enjoying her job. She deserved better.

Suddenly an idea fixed itself in Delores's mind, and all that mattered was getting to Thelma Foote's office as fast as she could. She hoped she was still there, she thought, as she ran across the park. She hoped she hadn't yet gone to lunch.

Thelma's door was slightly ajar. Delores knocked.

“What?” Thelma's voice was tight.

“Can I come in?” Delores said softly.

“Oh, it's you. Don't tell me she's still here.”

“Who?”

“Your mother, who else?”

Delores had to smile. “She was that bad, huh?”

“No, of course not,” said Thelma, taking off her glasses.

Without her glasses, Thelma's eyes looked tired and naked.

“It's just been a long couple of weeks. Your mother's a perfectly nice woman.”

“You don't really think she's all that nice.” Delores raised her voice. “You think she's obnoxious and boring and a big phony.”

Delores sat on the metal foldout chair across from Thelma. “And you know what else? I'm a big phony, too. I come from the Bronx and live in a really small, dark apartment with food stains everywhere. My father walked out on us a year ago, and no one knows where he is. He isn't in the entertainment business, or at least wasn't the last time I saw him. He worked in a wholesale grocery store. My mother bags groceries at Gristedes. At night, she works as a maid cleaning office buildings. One of the offices happens to be that stupid fashion magazine she goes on about. Most of my clothes are things that she stole that didn't fit her. She's completely made up the way she talks, the words she uses, the hair and makeup. It's all a lie. The only real person in my family is Westie, who, as far as I can tell, is being raised by an old-maid lady who lives in our apartment building and will probably die soon. When I lived in the Bronx, I was ugly and unpopular. I've never been on a date and if I hadn't gotten the job here, I'd probably be working at some grocery store in the Bronx, too. So there, now you know everything there is to know about me.”

Delores slumped into the metal backrest of the chair and waited.

Thelma put on her glasses and her eyes came to life again.

She cupped her chin in her hand and stared at Delores without blinking. When she finally spoke, her words were filled with affection. “Oh my dear,” she said. “You must be starving. Let's go get some lunch.”

Roy Walker sat on the edge of his bed wearing a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pale blue boxer shorts. As he did every morning when he awoke, he got up, walked around his bed fifteen times, then fell to the floor for his fifty sit-ups and twenty push-ups.

Since he'd left home, he'd formed many habits like this. He got into the shower, cold water only, and soaped up his whole body. Then he took the bar of soap and ran it through his hair, kneading his fingers into his scalp to ensure a thorough massage. Somewhere he'd heard that the secret to keeping your hair was to make sure the blood circulated vigorously on the top of the head. Roy had always prided himself on his thick, wavy hair, which was down to his shoulders by now, and he was certain that the patch of baldness on the crown of his head, tiny as a teacup, would prove to be just an aberration.

Because the windows inside his trailer were no larger than tissue boxes, he could never gauge the weather for sure until he stepped outside. Looked like rain. A sheet of low, gray clouds floated overhead. At any moment, there'd be a steady, hard rain on his metal roof, soaking the laundry hanging on the clothesline, filling the buckets with water, and turning the ground into a muck of silt.
Then it would only be a matter of minutes before the sun would bear down and all that had been soaked was baked dry again.