Surfacing (4 page)

Matthew came over to see Maggie precisely two more times that school year. During the first of those two evenings, he tried again to make himself one with the girl who seemed accommodating, if not entirely willing. No one was waiting in the driveway outside, and this time they didn’t make it to the bedroom. Matthew kissed her hard, holding her up against the kitchen wall after accepting Maggie’s offer of a drink of water. He put down his glass and pulled Maggie to the floor with him. He landed with a thud, and she, only slightly more gracefully, on top of him.

Again, there didn’t seem to be time to wonder if this was what she wanted — whether it was wise or safe. Maggie tried to ignore the sharp pain in her back as the bones of her spine were pressed against the tile-hard floor, her underpants pulled to the side, bunched up and wedged uncomfortably into her bottom. Once again, it didn’t work, but once again, Matthew seemed to achieve some kind of success even if she had failed again.

The second time was two months later, when Maggie’s parents and brothers went out for the afternoon. He made his feeble attempts to enter but quickly resorted to rubbing himself up against Maggie’s bare thigh without bothering to take off his pants.

By June, Matthew had left town, working in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the summer, and then heading off for his freshman year of college at SUNY Albany.

Maggie’s sophomore year of high school began with two lofty goals — one public, one private.

To help the girls’ varsity swim team make it to States. To have sex, sexual intercourse, by the time Matthew James returned home for Thanksgiving break.

She would, then, surprise him on his next attempt with not only her willingness and accommodation, but with her skill. Basically her hymen, her cherry, her maidenhead, her virginity, would be broken, and everything could move smoothly forward for Matthew.

But this second goal, of course, was not something she talked about. Not even to Julie.

“I hate start drills,” Julie whispered to Maggie. Swim practice start drills meant that there were no assigned lanes; no matter the hierarchy of your finish times, all the girls lined up behind whichever blocks they wanted.

“I know. I got your back.”

Both girls watched a senior swimmer, Maxine Eldon, take her place on the starting block in their line. The girl next in line got ready to whip around the Styrofoam noodle and whack her in the legs before Maxine had a chance to dive forward.

“On your marks,” Coach Mac shouted. He put the whistle up to his mouth and held it between his teeth.

Maxine stretched out and gripped the base of the rubber starting block. A false start, even, or especially, with the threat of being hit with the wet noodle, meant coming back and doing it again.

“Get set.”

She bent her knees and froze into position.

But there was no punishment for hitting someone before the whistle. It was, in fact, a cheap chance to hit somebody as hard as you possibly could.

There was a split second while Maxine seemed suspended in air, leaning her weight as far out across the pool as she could without letting go, trusting the third call would follow. Coach Mac blew his whistle. There was a thunderous lunge forward, eight Styrofoam noodles landed their marks, and the swimmers hit the water.

“Is this really supposed to make us better starters?” Julie leaned toward her friend. She was next in line to do the hitting.

“C’mon,” the girl in front said, turning around. “Really give it to me this time. You’re such a wuss, Julie. C’mon. I can take it.”

The problem was, you had to swing the noodle fast and hard, otherwise it didn’t land. It just kind of flopped and missed.

“I’m not a wuss. I just don’t like hitting people,” Julie said.

“I’m going to hit you, Julie,” Maggie said, “as soon as you pass me that noodle. So you might as well get yours in.”

The girl stepped up on the starting block. She turned back and smiled. “Not too hard, though. OK?”

Her name was Rebecca, another sophomore, and so at one time or another she had probably told Maggie something she wished she hadn’t. It might have been a couple of years ago, or maybe it was just last year. Maybe about eating too much, or not eating, or about her unnatural fear of stairwells — maybe Rebecca had forgotten the whole thing by now. As she dove into the water and Julie half heartedly smacked her with the purple noodle, Maggie remembered what it was. Rebecca hadn’t gotten her period yet, and her parents were taking her to an endocrinologist. Big deal.

The coach worked them hard that afternoon, particularly hard, and Maggie particularly harder. He had a lot of expectations for her. He wanted the team to qualify for the state championship.

“Head down.” He paced alongside her lane shouting out adjustments and calling out her split times. Maggie could hear his muffled voice as her head turned back and forth in the water, like a radio station tuning in and tuning out. Maggie swam, allowing the ache in her shoulders, and hips, and ankles, and back, and lungs to fill her with strength. It was, as Cecily Keitel had said, something she could control. Underneath the water, she found air.

Condos that faced the pool, of course, were the most expensive, and those kids acted like they were better than everyone else. Leah had a friend who lived in one of those, though “friend” was a loose term. It seemed to Maggie that her older sister didn’t really like Meghan Liggett, or Meghan Liggett didn’t much like Leah. It was just a feeling she got from watching them together, at the pool and on the school bus. But Leah had never said that. She called Meghan her friend, and she would bark at her sister if Maggie tried to point out anything to the contrary.

Lately, the past few days, if Maggie thought about it, her sister seemed more annoyed at her. As if the difference between being nine and being five had gotten deeper. The space between them changing as unpredictably as Leah’s moods themselves. Sometimes she wanted Maggie to play with her; sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she liked her little sister; other times she shouted at her and told her to leave her alone. So a little sister needs to learn how to work the system, even if she doesn’t quite understand it herself.

“I have an idea.”

It
was
Maggie.

“Let’s go see if Meghan’s home. I bet her house isn’t so hot as this.”

“Mom told us to stay here.” But Leah was considering it; Maggie could tell. She liked that, and it made Maggie feel important. Maybe this would be one of those times Leah wanted to play with Maggie.

“I won’t tell,” Maggie said.

“You always tell on me. And I always get in trouble.”

That wasn’t true, but Maggie could see how it looked that way. If there was a fight, or even raised voices, if her parents heard but didn’t see something get knocked over, if the fridge was left open or there were crumbs on the counter, they always blamed Leah first. They acted as if they were concerned only with ending the fight, quieting the voices, or preventing further damage, but, when in doubt, their parents usually took Maggie’s side, because it was easier.

“I promise I won’t. We could even go for a swim and cool off.”

Maggie waited in the shower after swim practice until she heard everyone leave. It took a while. Julie was, of course, the hardest to get rid of.

“I’m fine,” Maggie called out from behind the industrial white plastic. “I want to condition my hair. I might even take a sauna.”

Because of the fact that no one
ever
went in the sauna, other than the time in middle school that they had a swim meet in Montreal, Canada, Julie wasn’t buying it. Those girls in Canada took off all their clothes while getting dressed. They rubbed down their glistening wet legs and arms with their towels while standing completely naked beside their lockers. They even talked to one another while dousing themselves with body lotion and powder. One of the Canadian swimmers, the one who had won in backstroke, actually stood completely nude, her towel lying on the bench in a crumpled heap, while she rolled deodorant under her arms. They made Cecily Keitel look like a prude.

There was no way Maggie was taking a sauna.

“I’ll wait,” Julie called back into the shower curtain.

“No, go, Julie. I’m fine. I’m taking the late bus. It’s always late — you know that. I’ll call you when I get home.”

“If you want to be alone, Mags,” Julie said finally, “just say so. I know you, and I still love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need,” Julie called out. She grabbed her stuff, waved back toward the showers, and left.

Slowly the locker room sounds diminished: the last toilet flushed; the few remaining voices drifted toward the hall. You weren’t supposed to have cell phones near the pool, but the girls turned them on as soon as they got out of the water. Eventually, even the musical rings and beeps of voice messages and chimes of texts stopped. Maggie wrung out her bathing suit, rolled it up, wrapped a second towel around her waist, and stepped out into the locker room. Other than the steady drips of wet bathing suits secured by their straps to the outside of the lockers, it was quiet.

As she passed one of the long mirrors at the end of the aisle, Maggie paused. She stood facing herself and then slowly let her towel drop completely to the floor. She was naked, full frontal, so unfamiliar — like a drawing from her health book, the one that showed the stages of puberty. How could her own image be so foreign to her?

Well, in her own defense, she hadn’t had much opportunity to stare at herself nude. At home there was always worry of her brothers barging in or banging on the bathroom door. Besides, the only full-length mirror was in her parents’ bedroom. Who stands naked in their parents’ room?

Maggie could feel goose bumps rise up so suddenly on her skin they hurt. She had read once that a mirror image is not a true representation of one’s self. It is a
reverse
image, and if you could ever really see yourself the way others see you — because still photography or even a video is a flat and altered one-dimensional image — you wouldn’t recognize yourself.

Yet, here she was, her flesh dripping with water, tight with cold. The curve of her hips, the darkness between her legs. Her shoulders, broad from swimming. Her neck, her chin, her lips. The long bones of her shins stuck out. The tendons of her feet and toes were flexed and visible. Her wet hair stuck to her neck and down her back, here and there, clumped together. Her belly, both flat and soft, inviting as a woman’s. Here was her body, stretching and pulling and yearning in ways that Leah’s never had.

Here was Maggie, seven years older than her sister would ever get to be.

Her brothers clamored around Maggie when she came home from practice.

“Daddy’s home not tonight. Eat we get in front of the TV,” Dylan sang.

When Mr. Paris was on a business trip, not only did they scrap the family dinner, but usually the boys slept in bed with their mother.

“Oh, right.” Maggie stopped. She dropped her swim bag on the floor. “So what’s for dinner?”

Lucas answered. The boys would talk like that, taking turns in an easy synchronization. “Spaghetti and.”

“Meat sauce,” Dylan finished.

“Sounds good.” Maggie left her swim bag on the floor and hoisted her knapsack higher on her shoulder. “I gotta start my homework. Where’s Mom?”

“In the.”

“Kitchen,” Lucas said.

Maggie poked her head in, leaving her body outside, her hands holding on to the door frame.

“Hi, Mom. I’m home.”

“Oh, you are.”

Her mother looked up with surprise from the counter, where she was cutting carrots, but of course, she had heard the door open. She probably heard the boys talking and Maggie’s voice. She would have heard the flop of the swim bag, heavier footsteps. The thing was, Mrs. Paris never missed a beat. Mr. Paris called it Paranoid Hearing.

A mother’s hearing
, Mrs. Paris would snap back.

But Maggie could remember when Mrs. Paris would drop everything to be waiting by the front door when Leah’s school bus hissed to a stop in front of the house. As soon as Leah walked into the house, Mrs. Paris would offer her something to eat and then ask a million questions while she nibbled on Goldfish or cut-up apples.

How was your day? How was the bus ride? Did you get your spelling test back yet? Didn’t you have gym today?

And Maggie would sit at the counter dreaming about the day that she and her big sister would get off the bus together and she would come home to yummy snacks and someone rifling through her knapsack, asking questions.

“How was practice?” Mrs. Paris went back to her carrots but didn’t expect or wait for an answer. “We’ll be eating in about half an hour, OK?” And that was it.

“Sure, Mom. I’ll be in my room.”

For a while, Maggie focused on algebra and her history paper on the Second Congo War, until the urge to check her Facebook grew too strong. She went on Matthew’s page, clicking on his friends, studying the photos, referencing and cross-referencing. She would go back to reading about Zaire, but Maggie’s mind kept returning irrationally to Matthew, over and over. Like the pull of the moon on the tides of the ocean.