Surfacing (7 page)

“Nah, c’mon. I don’t even know why the movie bothers me. I don’t even remember much anymore.”

“And it’s probably over by now.”

The girls walked back into the darkened room.

It was years before Maggie would even go near any substantial body of water. Until she agreed to step into a shower, her mother had to bathe her in only a few inches of tub water. Taking swim lessons for the first time when she was twelve years old was her father’s idea.

By that time, Maggie had discovered her unusual “gift,” and she had experienced how uncomfortable it made people, how lonely it made her feel. It was about this same time that her parents’ silent anger, blame, love, and hate for each other became audible and unavoidable.

“She’s terrified. What the hell purpose would it serve now?” Mrs. Paris’s voice lifted high into the air that carried up the stairs, reverberated off the bedroom walls.

“So she can learn to swim. So she can live her life, Gail. Move on.”

“What do swimming and living have to do with each other?” she shot back.

“It’s about not being afraid.”

“There are healthy fears, Don.”

“Well, yours are not healthy.”

Ultimately, Maggie’s decision had more to do with hoping to heal her parents, and therefore herself, than with overcoming her fear of water, although in the end she achieved neither.

She began taking swim lessons at the Y. She was too young for adults-who-never-learned-to-swim class and too old for the Guppy or Minnow groups. Maggie ended up taking private swim lessons. Her teacher was a young woman named Ma’ayan.

“My name means water in Hebrew. Well, literally it means fountain or underground spring,” she told Maggie. “Ma’ayan.”

The water of the YMCA indoor pool was dank and dark, which suited Maggie just fine. It was exactly the unbeautifulness of it all that allowed Maggie to sit on the edge and dip her toes. There was no clear, sparkling blue, no sunshine and sparkle about it.

“
I’m
afraid of the water,” Ma’ayan said. She wore a tight UV shirt over her bathing suit. She had curly brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She couldn’t have been ten years older than Maggie.

Maggie braced herself for another confession.

“I didn’t learn to swim until I went to college,” Ma’ayan went on. “So I really understand how to teach it. None of it came naturally to me or too early for me to remember how to do it.”

Maggie listened, waiting for the ridiculous, the pathetic, the miserable. People felt compelled to tell her the truth, and she felt oh-so-compelled to care, because she did.

“And I am a really good swimmer now. Every stroke perfect, but I am still scared.”

“Scared of what?” Maggie asked. She let the water touch her ankles.

“Of drowning,” Ma’ayan said.

No one said that around Maggie. No one used that word; no one ever connected Maggie’s fear of swimming to drowning. Not out loud. Not to her face. Not in so many perfect words.

“I am too,” Maggie said. “I am afraid if I go in the water, I might die.”

“You would,” Ma’ayan said, “if it were deep, or moving, or if you couldn’t swim. That’s why I’m going to teach you to swim.”

And she did. It took five months, the first month of which they never got in the water past their ankles, never lifted their bottoms from the side of the pool. The second month Maggie felt the weight of the water slightly push against her thighs, then tighten the skin of her belly and shoulders with its cold. She let the water show its power, all its power and all its will. At the end of the third month, she held her breath, dunked under, and let the water take control of her life, so she could know what it was she was taking back. And in the fourth month, Maggie lifted her feet from the bottom and began to swim.

“Bend your elbow and let it pierce the surface, like a knife coming out of the water, taking the path of least resistance.”

Swimming seemed to be all about the path of least resistance. Maggie kept her mind on that focus. It was about letting go.

“Now stretch your arm and let your hand slice the water. Don’t fight it. Be part of it. You are entering into a temporary agreement with the forces of the water, a mutual respect.”

Maggie pointed her fingers, used her feet like fins, and rocked her body from side to side, allowing the water to rush on each side. She felt the speed of movement like nothing she could feel on dry earth. It was like flying.

Learning to breathe was the hardest.

“Turn your head as little as possible, just to the point where the air meets the surface of the water. Trust that you are in control, that you can take in the oxygen and force out the water. Open your mouth just under your armpit.”

They practiced for weeks, standing in the shallow end, holding on to the side and bending at the waist, dipping their faces into the water. Maggie felt the water come into her mouth. She felt it rush back out. The smoother she could make that transference, the faster she moved through the water. The more she could fool the water into believing she had gills for respiration, the smoother her stroke.

At the end of five months, Maggie tried out for the middle-school swim team but her parents didn’t stop fighting. Instead, two years ago, they had spent a small fortune on fertility doctors, had another baby that turned out to be two babies, and for a while it looked like things might be better.

As predicted, and as was necessary for her plan, neither her mother nor father asked Maggie how she was getting back from the PSATs that morning. It had been an understanding since getting to high school that being responsible for your own transportation was part of the whole experience. If she needed a ride, she would ask. If she didn’t ask, they wouldn’t.

“Got your ID?”

Maggie nodded to her mother while downing her coffee.

“Calculator?”

Maggie nodded again. She didn’t care about the PSATs. You weren’t supposed to study for them, but of course, some kids did. Some kids had gotten tutors and taken an obscene number of practice PSATs, even though the
P
in PSAT stood for
practice
.

What Maggie cared about was getting there and being done when Nathan came to pick her up at noon. She cared that her parents were still planning on visiting Mrs. Paris’s mother in Frenchtown, New Jersey, and were not expected back until evening, “at the earliest.”

“Did you get a good night’s sleep?” Her mother’s final question.

“Yeah, Ma. Thanks,” Maggie said, making sure not to catch her mother’s eyes. It was better that way, not to directly look at each other, and it had been that way for a while.

Since Leah drowned? Just after?

When Maggie was in fifth grade, the school nurse sent her home with a raging red, goopy case of conjunctivitis. She wore two pairs of gloves as she pulled down on the skin just above Maggie’s cheek. “How on earth did your mother let you come to school this morning?” the nurse said, shaking her head. She pulled the latex inside out, all five fingers at once. “You don’t have to be a doctor. Just one look in your eyes and anyone would know.”

Maggie finished all three sections of the PSAT before anyone else in the room did, walked to the front, and turned in her test packet. The proctor, who had been flipping through
Elle
magazine, looked up and offered Maggie the chance to recheck any answers or fill in the blank ones.

“No, thanks.”

“Have a nice day, then,” she said.

“You too,” Maggie said, and she pulled open the heavy door. Nathan was waiting for her in the hall.

My sister, Maggie, and I like to play games, like clay face, and slapping faces, and motorcar. Our bodies are one. Our faces are one. I put my hands on my sister’s face. Her skin is clay now, and whatever position I squeeze her into, she must try to keep it frozen that way, like hardened clay. We make funny faces, squinting our eyes and twisting our mouths, sucking in our cheeks or blowing them out. If we lie on opposite ends of the bed and press our feet together, one of us is the car, motor and all, making appropriate sounds of speeding up and braking, and the other is the driver, taking control of our lives, negotiating our way down the road
.

Slapping faces is for when we are really bored — in the backseat of the car during a long trip, for instance. I let her slap me first, since she is younger and probably won’t come right out and wallop me right off the bat. First of all, she’s not that type, and second, if she does, then the rules of the game state that she must sit perfectly still and let me slap her back just as hard. We trade a few tiny pats for a while before one of us, usually me, ups the ante a little. It’s a stupid game, and if our mother hears us from the front seat, she’ll make us stop, so we have to be extra quiet
.

“You go,” I tell Maggie. She’s not even five yet and does whatever I tell her. I close my eyes and feel the lightest tap on my cheek, almost a kiss
.

But I am really bored today. I was bored the whole ride over to Grandma Ruth’s in Frenchtown, even though I think it’s funny because our name is Paris. I was bored the whole time we were there, and I got in big trouble for knocking over the orange juice in her fridge, where I apparently had no business being in the first place. In front of all my cousins, I was given a time-out and not allowed to watch TV. And so I am
extra
bored on the long, long, long ride home, so I do it
.

I haul off and whack Maggie right across the face
.

I watch as her eyes fly open and the imprint of my hand shows white against her red cheek. We look at each other. I can’t forget her eyes
.

I know I am going to get in big trouble now. Big trouble, like I always do, because they will always take Maggie’s side and it won’t matter what I say. No one will listen to me. My mom has been big on repercussions lately. She says I don’t get any. Whatever they are I don’t want them, but I bet hitting my little sister ranks right up there
.

“What is going on back there?” First our mom asks, and then our dad, louder and more demanding, adding “the hell” as a modifier
.

“Nothing,” Maggie answers, and I know it is hard for her to talk because her throat is closing up with the tears that have sprung into her eyes, which only I can see. But she doesn’t tell on me. My sister would never do that
.

She doesn’t say a thing
.

Maggie watched Nathan closely as he drove, wondering what he would open up and tell her one day, maybe shortly, maybe later, but right now he wasn’t talking, and she was grateful for that. She was oddly calm — considering what she was planning.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked him. They pulled around the circular driveway and Nathan threw the car into park.

“OK.” He cut the engine.

“I can make us lunch. Are you hungry?”

Nathan smiled. “I can always eat.”

“Yeah, my little brothers are like that.”

“You have brothers. More than one?”

“Twins.”

“Oh, right, you told me. Dylan and Lucas.”

He remembered their names.

The door was unlocked, and the house was empty when they walked in. Maybe if it hadn’t been such a beautiful day, but the sun was shining, clear and gentle, warm for late autumn. Maybe if the soft breeze hadn’t been moving constantly above, keeping the air perfectly comfortable. Leaves still clinging, magnificent in their colors, red and gold, with no awareness that their end was so close. Maybe then Maggie would have been more apprehensive about what she hoped was about to happen, but it all seemed so perfect and right, as if the universe were confirming not only her plan but her motivation as well.