Deep End

The Long Saturday

Chapter 62: Deep End

By July, Clara has graduated from suspicious bubble-blowing to active argument with flotation devices.

"They are rude," she says about the foam belt.

"They are keeping you alive," I tell her.

"Still rude."

There is no answer to this that improves the afternoon.

Today is open swim at Mercer Pool.

The municipal one, not the Y.

The place with a concession stand that has never once passed inspection in the kingdom of heaven and a painted sign forbidding horseplay as if horseplay were a rare immigrant custom.

Maria is on lifeguard duty in mirrored sunglasses and a red shirt that somehow makes her look even more judgmental than usual.

When she sees us at the gate, she blows one sharp note on the whistle hanging against her chest and says, "Pastor."

"Lifeguard."

Clara waves both arms.

"Maria!"

Maria's whole face softens and then, because she is still herself, immediately recovers into contempt.

"You brought snacks, right?"

"In the bag."

"Water?"

"Yes."

"Sunscreen?"

"We are not new."

"You are with the pool."

She has me there.

Norah had to stay at the studio for kiln unloading, so this is me and Clara and a canvas bag full of towels, crackers, and my private desire not to be tested in public.

Mom said she would come "for moral support and shade," which in practice means she is now in a folding chair by the fence reading a paperback and monitoring my soul over the top of it.

"Your shoulders are by your ears," she says when we set our things down.

"Thank you."

"That was not praise."

The toddler area is chaos with infrastructure.

Mushroom fountain.

Low slide.

Tiny children in rash guards running with the total confidence of people whose bones have never betrayed them.

Clara lasts eleven minutes there before deciding the bigger pool is where civilization keeps its real prizes.

"I want that one."

She points at the shallow lane of the main pool, where children her size are jumping toward waiting adults.

"We can do that."

"Now."

We sit on the edge first.

Feet in.

Kick.

Kick harder.

Clara splashes me thoroughly and calls it instruction.

Then she wants me in the water with her.

So I slide in, the cool shock of it reaching higher than memory likes.

I tell my body nothing useful.

It does not believe me.

The pool comes with its own acoustic weather.

Shouts.

Whistle.

Water slapping concrete.

Muffled voices under the surface.

For one sharp second, every sound my mind no longer confuses with the lake arrives together.

I close my eyes.

Open them.

Clara is right in front of me in a pink life vest patterned with lemons, holding the gutter with both hands and waiting for her next instruction from the republic.

"Watch."

"I'm watching."

She bends her knees.

Jumps exactly two inches and lands back in the same place, delighted.

"Again."

"Compelling."

After five more ceremonial hops she spots another child jumping farther out toward his father.

"I want there."

She points to a distance I can cover in half a step and my body receives as a ravine.

"Let's start smaller."

"That is smaller."

She is pointing to something so mildly farther than before that the argument is mathematically on her side.

Mom is watching over the top of her book now.

Maria, from the stand, has turned her sunglasses toward us without obviously turning them.

I put my hands out.

"All right. To me."

Clara studies the water between us like a lawyer reviewing hostile precedent.

"You catch."

"Yes."

"Promise."

"Yes."

She nods, once, hard.

Then jumps.

For half a second she is nothing but knees and courage and lemon-colored flotation.

Then she hits the water, disappears to the shoulders, and I instinctively move too soon, grabbing her before she has done any of the work herself.

She sputters.

Then looks personally offended.

"I was doing it."

I laugh because there is no honorable alternative.

"You were."

"Again."

The second time I wait.

She jumps.

Hits.

Kicks.

Comes toward me with her arms performing an interpretation of swimming only generous adults would certify.

Then she collides with my chest under her own power and wraps both arms around my neck.

"I did it myself."

"You did."

On the stand, Maria gives one solemn nod as if approving a zoning application.

Mom lowers the paperback.

"There," she says. "No one died of learning."

"Stunning slogan for the Y."

Clara keeps going after that.

Again.

Again.

One more.

Then one more after that because the republic of childhood has no budget constraints and no doctrine of enough.

By the time she is done, my forearms ache from catching and not catching, and she has swallowed enough pool water to become municipally significant.

We sit on the edge wrapped in towels.

She eats orange slices with wet solemnity.

Maria climbs down from the stand for her break and stands over us with a paper cup of something blue that should not exist in nature.

"She has a decent kick," she says to Clara, not to me.

Clara beams.

"I am strong."

"Undeniable."

Maria looks at me then.

"You too," she says, which is irritatingly kind of her.

"Don't start."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Mom joins us slowly, lowering herself to the bench with the ceremonial noises of a woman who has earned every joint in her body.

"Your father hated public pools," she says, peeling a clementine with efficient fingers.

Clara looks up.

"Why."

"Because," Mom says, "he thought other people's bandages were too democratic."

That gets a bark of laughter out of me so sudden it startles the child at the next table.

Clara, who has inherited the Whiting devotion to a joke she does not fully understand, laughs too.

When Norah gets home that evening, Clara spends fifteen straight minutes demonstrating what she calls her deep-end jump on the living-room rug.

It bears no resemblance to water and complete resemblance to triumph.

Norah watches the fourth reenactment from the couch and says, "You survived solo pool duty."

"Barely."

"That's still survival."

Clara launches herself at my knees one more time and shouts, "I did it myself."

Norah looks at me over the top of her.

"Did she."

I think about the distance between my hands and her body in the water.

About the fraction of a second in which I did not move.

About how small the distance was and how much of me had to change to allow it.

"Yeah," I say.

"She did."