The Twilight Swimmer (32 page)

             
“It’s your night and you know it. Who washed them on Tuesday night?” demanded Brandi.

             
“You did, but I washed them on Wednesday. And yesterday—”

Brandi interrupted. “And I washed them Thursday, and now it’s Friday. So it’s your turn.”

              “No, because we had takeout yesterday. Which I was trying to say before you interrupted me. There weren’t any dishes to wash on your night, so it doesn’t count.”

             
Brandi guffawed. “We used plates for the takeout, and there was silverware, and I washed all of it. That counts. That totally counts.”

             
It seemed that raised voices would turn into a screaming match at any moment, and Conrad prepared himself to assert his fatherly privilege and thunderously demand an end to the nonsense. But before the girls could achieve the fever pitch that would force him to intervene, Cody surprised everyone at the table by digging his child’s hand into a bowl of mashed potatoes, lifting out a handful, and hurling it directly into Jenny’s face. The white glob spread on impact, some chunks finding their way into her mouth and nostrils, some coating the open eyes she had been too surprised to close in time. Now Jenny screamed, turning on her brother the anger she had, until then, reserved for Brandi.

             
Cody ignored Jenny’s outrage. He dug his hand into the mashed potatoes again, came away with another fistful, and flung the warm slop into Brandi’s face.

             
Now Conrad sprung from his seat. He strode past his stunned, silent wife. He strode past his two screaming daughters. He yanked Cody’s chair out from under the table with the boy still sitting in it, then lifted the boy and chair as one package and carried the package out of the dining room like a bag of groceries. Cody was screaming too, now, hot tears streaming down his face. But he didn’t protest being dragged away from the table, and when Conrad carried him upstairs and behind a closed door, the three women still downstairs could no longer hear his wailing.

             
Sherri handed napkins to her daughters and watched, still in silence, as they cleaned the mashed potatoes out of their eyes and ears and hair. She looked from one girl to the next, sizing them up, waiting for either girl to apologize for her role in Cody throwing a fit. Naturally, it didn’t occur to either girl that the victim of a food assault had anything at all to apologize for.

             
“I want you girls to stop fighting with each other. I
insist
that you girls stop fighting. Is that understood?”

             
The girls didn’t answer their mother. Instead, they stared past each other, at opposite walls, and imagined the sweet retribution they would visit on Cody for embarrassing them so completely in front of each other.

             
Sherri didn’t give up. “You’ve been best friends your whole lives, since you were too small to understand what a sister even is. Since before you knew your own names. And now, for no reason I can see, you’ve decided that there’s no one on the planet you dislike more than the exact same person you used to love the most. Are you fighting over a boy? Is that it? An outfit? Because girls, there isn’t a boy or an outfit or anything else worth fighting over. Not between sisters.”

             
Later that night, the girls sat on their beds doing homework and refusing to speak to each other. When Brandi realized she had read through the same calculus problem ten times and none of the digits had yet registered, she pushed her textbook aside with frustration and sat up, folding her legs beneath her and facing her sister.

             
“Why are you mad at me?” she asked, surprised to hear a slight tremble in her voice. “Whatever I did to make you so mad, I’m sorry.”

             
Jenny didn’t look up from her homework. But she did gulp hard, as if trying to swallow an uncomfortable thought or feeling.

             
“Will you answer me, please?” Brandi asked.

             
Jenny closed her notebook and looked up at Brandi. Her lips parted, as if she intended to speak. But she quickly closed them again and glanced at the clock hanging nearby on the wall. She hopped off the bed and crossed to the closet they shared, pulling out a pink tank top. While Brandi looked on, confused, Jenny took off her tee shirt and put on the tank top, then slipped on a pair of sneakers and threw open the bedroom window.

             
“What are you doing?” asked Brandi. “It’s almost midnight.”

             
“I’m going for a swim,” answered Jenny as she stepped over the windowsill and onto the slanted roof.

             
“Where are you going to swim?”

             
“The ocean. It’s a nice night.”

             
“Then I’m going with you,” said Brandi as she slipped off her own bed.

             
“No,” said Jenny, firmly. “I want to be alone.”

             
She pulled the window shut and disappeared from view. Brandi could hear her sister’s feet on the roof overhead as she ascended to the peak. She knew she was heading for the big oak tree in the backyard. They’d both used that tree to sneak out before, but usually together. Brandi didn’t like the thought of Jenny going anywhere at this time of night, by herself. She thought seriously about chasing after her, even if she had to trail behind her so Jenny wouldn’t know she was there. But that wouldn’t work if Jenny took the kayak, which she almost certainly would if she was heading to the beach. Frustrated by the lack of good options, Brandi flung herself back on her bed and reopened her textbook, but it was no use. She couldn’t concentrate on homework knowing that her sister was out there, somewhere, alone. She stayed awake the rest of the night, counting the minutes and hours until Jenny finally returned at dawn. She wanted to demand answers to the questions that had filled her mind throughout her waking hours, to insist that Jenny tell her what was really going on with her, what was really carving this rift between them. But when Jenny climbed back through the window, got undressed and slipped into bed, Brandi pretended to be asleep.

             
For the next two weeks, that night’s events repeated themselves. Jenny changed her clothes. Jenny climbed out the window. Jenny went swimming, returning just before dawn.

Whether Brandi was awake or asleep, whether the girls had turned out the lights or not, whether they had spoken a few brisk words to one another or pretended the other didn’t exist, the same sequence always happened.

At twilight.

             
Until that fateful night when Jenny went swimming for the last time, and never came home.

The fair was a week past, and already her parents seemed intent on forgetting Cody’s disappearance. Conrad had shuttled Brandi and her brother to school, Sherri had sat them down for family meals and tried, as usual, to draw them into conversations about whatever topic she had seen on the day’s talk shows that were the staple of her intellectual diet. For his part, Cody had indulged their parents far more than usual. He all but discarded his videogames in favor of conversation with his mother and playing catch with his father in the yard. He hadn’t been so lively for such a long time that Brandi hardly recognized him at first. She thought he was putting on a show so that their parents wouldn’t worry about him or, even worse, decide that he deserved some sort of punishment for his impromptu adventure. But it became more obvious as the days wore on that Cody had actually undergone some sort of change. His encounter with the Swimmer had left him energized, more full of life than he had been since Jenny’s death.

On Saturday afternoon, Brandi found herself eyeing her brother from behind a textbook. He was sitting on the kitchen counter chatting animatedly with their mother about an upcoming school project that would require a long list of craft supplies. As he rattled off items like construction paper, super glue, Popsicle sticks and more, Sherri grew progressively more excited. If Cody was manipulating her, he was a natural talent.

“When was the last time you saw him swinging his legs like that, like a kid?” asked Conrad from his nearby armchair. He had folded the Saturday paper and dropped it to the floor in a neat pile. “It’s good to see him like that.”

“He’s setting a dangerous precedent. Mom will expect that kind of attention all the time once she gets used to it,” answered Brandi with a smirk.

Conrad chuckled. “She knows how to adapt, your mother. Whatever mess life throws at her, she figures out how to make it work. And when life is going right, when her kid is sitting on a counter and swinging his legs and chattering, she knows how to forget all the messes and enjoy the moment. That might not sound like much of a skill, but trust me. It’s a big one.”

“I know it is,” said Brandi. She closed her textbook and climbed to her feet. “It’s nice out. Do you want to go for a walk?”

“You’re asking your father if he wants to go for a walk? Your brother’s metamorphosis is baffling enough. I don’t know if I can handle two kids who suddenly love to be around their parents.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

“Of course I want to, kiddo. I’m trying not to sound overeager.”

They walked through the neighborhood, kicking dead leaves that littered the asphalt road. The trees were shedding their foliage leaf by leaf, with every autumn breeze that rushed ashore from the nearby ocean. It was magical, this time of year.

“Are we just walking, or is there something you want to talk about?” asked Conrad.

“Just walking,” she answered. “Unless there’s something
you
want to talk about.”

Conrad gave Brandi a playful shove, then pulled her close and slung and arm around her shoulders. “Don’t parent your parent. You should never have to cleverly trick me into opening up.”

“But if I’m good at, why not, right?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What is it? What do you want to talk about?”

Conrad ran his thumb across Brandi’s shoulder, as if trying to determine if it had gotten any thinner, any bonier, since the last time he checked. Brandi hadn’t stepped on a scale for weeks, but she hadn’t noticed any change. She seemed to have lost all the weight she was going to lose, unless she took drastic measures. And since losing weight had always been an annoying consequence of lost appetite rather than a goal, losing more weight and turning herself into a living skeleton was not on her agenda.

“A very nice young man did a very brave thing. He asked me if I would allow him to take my daughter out on a date.”

“Really?” Brandi asked, genuinely surprised. “Which nice young man are we talking about?

“I’m sure you can guess, but I’ll give you a hint. He wears a uniform to work every day, and he knew exactly what kind of pistol I had in my holster, and how quickly I could draw it, when he gulped down his anxiety and blurted out the request.”

“Did you practice that sentence? That sounded like you practiced it.”

“You’re saying your old man isn’t clever enough to come up with a that on the fly.”

“I’m implying it, sure.” Brandi laughed and stepped away from Conrad before he could give her another playful shove.

“Anyway, kiddo, you’re dodging the question.”

“What question?”

“Do you want to go out on a date with Dallas?”

“Did you tell him it’s okay to ask me?”

“I did.”

“Why?”
              “Because I want you to be happy. And he seems to want the same thing.”

Brandi felt herself go just a little lightheaded at the thought of Dallas standing beside her father’s desk, probably within earshot of Sally, and formulating an acceptable sentence to ask for a date. It would have been a tricky balance. He couldn’t sound so eager that Conrad would imagine him trying to paw her in the backseat of a cruiser, but he couldn’t sound so indifferent that Conrad thought it was merely a whim. If he pulled it off, and he obviously had, he must have done so with sincerity. Sincerity that now made her head swim.

“He hasn’t asked me yet. Maybe he won’t go through with it.”

“You’re saying that you’re scarier than I am?” asked Conrad with a knowing chuckle.

“I’m implying it,” she said.

“If he does ask you?” said Conrad.

Brandi leaned against her father’s shoulder. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

That moment, Conrad’s radio crackled to life.

“I didn’t notice you brought that with you,” said Brandi, surprised by her own disappointment.”

“Your boyfriend is off-duty today, so I’m on.”

“Keep calling him my boyfriend and there’s no way I’ll go out with him,” said Brandi, her defiance undermined by her smile.

Conrad pulled his radio from his belt. “Hey Sally, what’s up?”

Brandi drifted away from her father and leaned against a parked car, watching him speak into the radio, framed by the brilliant orange leaves of a large sycamore. She focused on one leaf in particular as it shuddered on the tip of a branch, determined not to let go. But the breeze changed directions, caught the leaf off guard, and ripped it free. It rose on the wind before it began its slow, meandering descent, finally coming to rest a few feet from her father’s boots.