Swim to Me (2 page)

A little more than two years after the Weeki Wachee trip, on a late Sunday afternoon, Delores, Westie, and their parents were holed up in their Bronx apartment. Outside, the low March clouds were the color of dirty sheets. Inside, the smell of liver covered every inch of the house like fresh paint. After reading in
Teen Girl
that bangs “were a pick-me-up for any kind of face,” Delores locked herself in the bathroom and took a pair of scissors to her brown, straight hair. She needed a pick-me-up.

She wet her hair and combed it down in front of her face. The
scissors made a snipping noise as dark brown ribbons filled the sink. In the background, she could hear her father say something in a gruff voice. Her mother yelled back: “Liver, what'dya think it was?” West was playing on the floor of their room. Delores didn't hear what her father said, only the sound of a door slamming. Often when her parents fought, Delores would run a bath and lie there with her head underwater so she wouldn't hear them screaming. Now, the pounding on the door made that impossible.

“Delores,” her mother shouted. “You and me and West might as well eat dinner. Your father has picked this moment to lock himself in the bedroom. I swear, that man is dumber than a slotted spoon.”

“Ugh, liver again?” Delores asked her mother.

“Liver is a delicacy, Miss Snotnose,” her mother shot back. “Not everyone knows how to prepare it so well.”

Liver stuck in Delores's throat like a wad of mud. She was sure her mother cooked it just to be spiteful. Delores and her father would watch with disgust as her mother would cut her liver into jewel-sized pieces, then say to her family, “Liver is a specialty in France. The way I have a natural taste for it, it wouldn't surprise me if I had some French blood in me.” Then she'd stab a piece of the meat with her fork, shove it into her mouth, and make smacking noises as she chewed out loud.

There was no use getting into a fight about it. If Delores or her father refused to eat her liver, her mother would cry, then rush into the bathroom, where she would make loud retching sounds. Delores knew what her father meant when he said he felt “like a trapped mutt.” Sometimes it seemed to her that her life would never get any bigger than this; that she would never get out of here.

When her father finally did come out of the bedroom, his fists were clenched at his sides as though at any second he might reach
for a gun. He walked toward the kitchen, never taking his eyes off the piece of liver lying on his plate. He stood over the table and in one sweep, picked the piece of liver off his plate and chucked it against the kitchen wall.

The history of the Walkers' marriage was written in food stains. “Cockroaches eat better than this,” he shouted. “I'm going out to get some real food.” Westie started bawling. Her father grabbed the car keys and his Yankees cap and headed out the door. Delores was left at the table with West as her mother ran to the bathroom. Part of her wished she could leave with her father. West's eyelashes were lacquered with tears; there were puddles of strained carrots on his bib. He looked fenced in and miserable in his high chair. Poor kid, at eighteen months old, he was even more trapped than she was. She pointed to the plum-colored stain that the liver had left on the wall. “Look, Westie, isn't that pretty?” Then she crouched down next to where the liver had landed on the floor. It lay there curled like a glove.

She picked Westie up out of his high chair, and showed him the shriveled piece of meat. “How do you like that?” she said, holding him on her knee as she wiped the snot from his nose. “Liver bounces.”

“Ous,”
said Westie. The word came out in little bubbles.

Just then, her mother came back into the kitchen. Water was dripping from her chin.

“I try so hard to please. And this is the thanks I get,” she said, pointing to the meat stain. “I don't deserve this.” She started to cry.

“Mom,” said Delores, still on the floor with Westie. “Do you know that liver bounces?”

“Ous,”
shouted West.
“Ous,”
he said again, kicking his legs.

Her mother cried harder. “Do I deserve this?”

“No, Mom,” said Delores, staring ahead at the flesh-colored walls and the balding shag rug. “Nobody does.” Delores hated her mother in the way only a teenage girl could hate her mother. She hated her for being whiny and self-pitying. She hated herself for not being more sympathetic and felt guilty about envying her father's ability to up and leave.

“Why don't you go watch
Glen Campbell?”
Delores said. “I'll feed Westie and clean up.”

Her mother blew her nose then went into the living room to watch her favorite TV show. Delores put Westie back into his high chair and sang the “Ugly Duckling” song to him as she cleared the table. West loved it when she came to the quacking part:
“. . . and all the birds in so many words said
QUACK
, the best in town,
QUACK QUACK
, the best,
QUACK QUACK
, the best,
QUACK QUACK
, the best in town . . .”
He would spit, thinking he was quacking as well, and laugh as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

West and Delores joined their mother on the couch, and they were well into
Bonanza
when her father came back. He was carrying a grease-stained carton of Chinese food. Because he had been drinking beer, his words came out like mashed bananas. “This is real food. Taste it,” he said, scooping out a clump of chow mein and holding it up in front of them. Her mother smacked his hand away, and the food flew into the armrest of the worn lime green sofa. West wailed as she sponged away at some water chestnuts.

“The two of you are nuts,” said Delores.

“Believe you me,” said her mother, “if I could afford a lawyer, I'd call one tonight.”

Her father threw a dime at her feet. “Whatcha' waitin' for? Call one.”

Her mother lobbed the dime at his head. “I wouldn't waste this
precious money on you.” Westie was shrieking now, and even Delores began to cry. Again, her father reached for his Yankees cap and shoved the car keys in his pocket. “Gotta get out of this insane asylum,” he said, stepping over the pool of soy sauce and cornstarch that was spreading on the beige broadloom.

D
ELORES LAY ON HER BED
next to Westie in his crib. She tried singing the “Ugly Duckling” song to calm him down. He was hiccuping in between his sobs. She sang “Thumbelina,” and used her thumb to act out the words. She pulled Otto, a little white hand puppet she'd had for years, out of the shoebox and held him up in front of his face. “Hi,” said Otto in a funny squeaky voice. “Please don't cry. Delores and I will take care of you.” Finally, the hiccups subsided. He tried to keep his eyes open, but soon he grudgingly fell asleep. His fist lay balled against his cheek and his curly blond hair was matted from all the tears. He looked angelic and at peace. Delores gently moved a damp curl from his forehead. She closed her eyes and did the thing she did when she wished that she were somewhere else. She lay as still as possible and willed herself underwater. After a while, she could feel the water undulating around her, feel her foot brushing up against a wisp of sea grass and the blast of fish scuttling past her. She could even hear the lapping sound of it. She imagined she was swimming without needing to take a breath. On this night, Westie swam beside her, his chubby legs moving as slowly as a turtle's. “Swim Westie,” she shouted. “Swim away.”

She was talking in her sleep, and the effort of it rocked her awake. She looked over at Westie, who was sprawled on his stomach. Outside, she could hear the sound of the TV. According to her alarm clock, it was after eleven. She went into the living room, where she
found her mother sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette. Her mother studied the floor as she exhaled: “You might as well go to bed, Delores. He's not coming home tonight.”

She was right about that. Her father didn't come home that night or any night after that.

Prologue

PART ONE
One
|
Two
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Three
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Four
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Five
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Six
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Seven
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Eight
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Nine
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Ten
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Eleven
|
Twelve

PART TWO
Thirteen
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Fourteen
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Fifteen
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Sixteen
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Seventeen
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Eighteen
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Nineteen
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Twenty
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Twenty-one
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Twenty-two
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Twenty-three

PART THREE
Twenty-four
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Twenty-five

Acknowledgments

The air in the bus smelled like the inside of a suitcase: stale and used. Delores got on the bus early to make sure she had a window seat. Through the opaque windows she could see her mother waving. She didn't wave back, and when the bus pulled out from the station, she kept her eyes forward until she was on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Alone in her seat, she pulled out her suitcase and unpacked Otto, who was wrapped carefully in a pair of her pajamas. Otto was a puppet with a white ceramic clown head that her father bought her the time they went to the Barnum and Bailey Circus in Madison Square Garden. It was one of the few times she and her father ever went anywhere alone.

At intermission, when he told her she could buy anything at the circus that didn't cost over five dollars, Delores chose the puppet with a bald white head because, even though he had a red dollop of paint on his nose, he also had a rhinestone teardrop under each eye and the sad demeanor of someone pleading, “Get me out of here.” Delores recognized him as a kindred spirit, and she picked him with the intention that one day they would be able to help each other.

On days when she felt particularly lonely, she'd take Otto out of the shoebox where he lived and occupy his frumpy puppet's body with her fingers. She'd tell Otto things about school or her parents—things she wouldn't tell anyone else. Then she'd twist her
voice into a high pitch and listen as Otto told her how pretty she was. “Someday, Delores,” he'd say, “you and me, we'll live by the ocean. You'll swim all day. You'll be tan and beautiful and the most popular girl anyone ever knew.”

She would have liked to keep Otto on her lap, liked to hold on to something that was hers, but it was weird enough being alone on the bus. A bald puppet with rhinestone teardrops would only call attention to her. So she packed up Otto again, this time between her suede fringed jacket and the satin green miniskirt her mother had given her. Delores had stuffed her money, along with a return ticket and the letter inviting her to Weeki Wachee, inside Otto's hollow head—a small comfort. His sad eyes were looking down on her. “We'll be okay,” she wanted to call out to him. “This is what we've always wanted. You'll see.” She tried to contain her thoughts, knowing that if she allowed herself to think about Westie she would cry. Better to stare straight ahead, holding on to the brown paper bag that her mother had packed with sandwiches and other food that she promised would keep overnight.

The world slid by, turning from the buds of early spring into the soothing green pines of Virginia and the Carolinas. She ate one of the sandwiches along with an apple and some Chips Ahoy from the bag. The stack of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and the individual packages of cookies, four to a packet, made her homesick. There was a dull tugging in her heart. She kept reminding herself that she wasn't doing to Westie what her father had done to them. She wasn't abandoning him. He'd always know where she was. She'd call him once a week. And one day he, too, would swim away.

The bag was heavy on her lap. It would be a long time until anyone else would know what her favorite foods were. As the bus put distance between them, Delores thought about her mother differently. She thought about how she'd hugged her tight at the bus stop.
“Honestly, hon,” she'd said, “I didn't think you'd have the nerve to go through with it.” She'd smelled of cigarettes and Mum deodorant. Delores thought about how, when she was little, her mother would wash her hair, brush it, then wrap it around her fingers while it was wet to curl it. In her absence, her mother was becoming more of a mother than she had been at home. If Delores cried now, she'd reveal herself to be the frightened sixteen-year-old girl she was instead of the mermaid she was about to become. She pushed the sad thoughts out of her mind.

By leaving home now, Delores believed she wouldn't turn out like her mother, who had never left home or tried anything new. Her mother had been only a few years older than Delores was now when she'd had her. Her mother never talked much about her childhood, other than about her mother, Audra. Audra, she always said, “could have been an Olympic swimmer.” Audra was thirty-four when she learned she had an untreatable blood disease. She left her two-year-old daughter and her husband to spend whatever time she had left with the man she'd begun having an affair with a year earlier. The man was rich, and they moved to a house in Westchester.