Swim to Me (31 page)

Later in the afternoon, Delores took Westie for a ride on her back, just as she had done a few months earlier in the Springs. “Hang on, buddy,” she yelled, as she rode the waves out to where the water was calmer. This time, there were no turtles, just clumps of seaweed and an old beer can. As she dried him off, she asked him if he liked the water. He stuck out his tummy and nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “I like it a lot.”

She rubbed his hair dry and said, “Westie, can you keep a secret?” Again he nodded.

“Mommy doesn't know we came here today. This is just between us, so let's not tell her, okay?”

Sensing that this was part of some great adventure, he nodded solemnly, then pulled her by the hand. “Swim,” he said. “I want to swim.”

“Would you like to come back to Florida with me? You could swim every day. You could see the turtles.”

Westie considered her offer for only a moment. “Okay, I'll come.”

“Are you sure? You'd have to leave Mommy for a while. But I would be with you every day. Maybe you could also meet an elephant.”

Westie nodded again. “Yes, I can see the turtles and elephants.”

Delores hugged him. “Okay then. This is another secret, just between us. Promise?”

“I promise,” he said.

The first night Westie spent in the dorm, he cried himself to sleep. In between sobs, he'd say, “Mommy, I want my mommy.” The more the girls tried to comfort him, or sing to him, the louder he cried. He calmed down only after Delores promised to take him to the elephants the next day, but by then he was also exhausted.

The following morning, Delores and Westie walked down to the Springs, where they found her father waist-deep in the water next to Nehru. He was murmuring to Nehru, who appeared to be bending down so she could hear him. Delores watched for a while before hollering: “Hello. Umm, hello.” He turned toward her and she pointed down at Westie. “Look who's here.”

Westie stared at the man in the water who, though he looked remarkably similar to him—short and round, like a hatbox—was a complete stranger. Roy stared back, all the while stroking Nehru's trunk. At one time or another, most children with siblings wonder if, should they all be drowning, whom their father would save first. Most probably wouldn't answer: the elephant. She thought back to their conversation of the week before, and how he'd said: “I like working with the animals, and for the most part, people leave me alone.” He looked at peace there, in the water with Nehru. She'd never thought about peace, and what it was. But if he felt about
Nehru the way she felt every time she swam in the Springs, then that was peace. That was home.

Her father whispered something to the elephant, then climbed out of the water. He crouched down on his knees and stared into Westie's face. “Well, well,” he said. Had he noticed the gap between Westie's two front teeth? Just like his gap. “Well, well,” he said again, a grin creeping over his face. Westie squinted and moved a step closer to Delores.

“Westie, do you know who this is?” she asked. “This is your father. Your daddy,” she said, knowing full well that just because you call someone your daddy, doesn't mean you feel it. “Daddy,” she said again. Even saying the word made her feel peculiar, though for all Westie cared, she might as well have said:
This is the man in the moon.

Roy scanned the boy with his eyes. “So, young man, how do you like it here so far?” His voice, too loud and too singsong, betrayed his discomfort with children.

“We just got in last night,” said Delores. “He bunked with me in the dorm and was a big hit with the girls, weren't you, Westie? We're going swimming later. Westie likes to swim.”

“So, young man, you like to swim?” asked her father.

He was clueless; he had no idea how to talk to anyone, much less his own son.

Delores tried to move the conversation along. “Westie's never seen an elephant before. This is his first,” she said.

Roy pointed to Nehru. “She's big, isn't she?”

Westie nodded, his eyes filling with the sight of the creature.

“Would you like to meet her?” asked Delores. Westie looked up at her with a “Can I really do this?” expression on his face.

“Go on,” she said. “Nehru's real nice, you'll like her. Your dad will introduce you.”

“You think?” asked Roy, under his breath.

“It'll be fine,” she said. “Take him.”

Roy went to lift up Westie, who held on to Delores's legs. “It's okay,” she said to him. “He's going to lift you up so you can pat the elephant.” Westie tentatively disengaged himself from Delores's legs.

Roy scooped the boy into his arm and waded back into the water. Westie looked like a cub snuggled against his father's broad, tan chest. He's so pale and new, thought Delores, and it made her wonder when people started to look used up. With his free hand, Roy patted Nehru on her chest. He urged Westie to do the same. Tentatively, Westie poked at the animal with one finger. He poked again and again. Roy took his hand and held it up so he could pat Nehru's flank. Nehru bent her head and Roy whispered something Delores couldn't hear. The elephant sucked in some water and squirted it out her trunk. Westie giggled as the spray rained down on him. Contained within the arc of the spray was a perfect, fleeting rainbow. Now her father and Westie were splashing water back at Nehru. As they did this, Delores had the bizarre notion that maybe Westie might become comfortable with Nehru, Roy with Westie, and that maybe even the four of them could eventually add up to something that resembled a family.

Before she went off to the television station that afternoon, Delores asked her father if Westie might stay with him until early evening. At first, he hesitated, saying that he'd have to run it by Wulf. Then he considered what it might be like to bring Westie to the Giant Café after work. They'd eat hamburgers and key-lime pie. He'd introduce him to Rex, and if Mr. Hanratty came by, he'd stand up and say: “Mr. Hanratty, I'd like you to meet my son, West Walker, though we call him Westie now.” He'd take him back to
his trailer to show him where he lived, and if there was time, they'd visit Lucy.

“Yeah, that'll be okay,” he said to Delores. “I'll take the kid.”

T
HE AIR-CONDITIONING
in the van breathed out warm air. It was so hot that, from time to time, Thelma and Delores would have to wipe the steam off their sunglasses. Thelma claimed she had better things to spend her money on than air-conditioning. Yet when Delores tried to open a window, she got annoyed. “I'm not paying to cool down all of Florida,” she said, yanking on one of her driving gloves. So Delores sat as still as she could, feeling the sweat under her arms and down between her breasts.

They drove in silence for the first half of the trip. Then Thelma began talking as if they'd been in a conversation the whole time. “I must say, I used to have respect for Mr. Sommers, but over time I've come to think of him as something of an ass.” She kept her eyes on the road. “That nice man who runs the Giant Café has been setting up his new café at the Springs over the past week. Rex is his name, and I'll tell you this, he's a real gentleman, something you don't see very often.”

Delores jumped in: “Did Sommers give Armando my job?”

“No,” said Thelma. “He just put him in your spot while you were gone.”

“How do you know he didn't give it to him for good?”

“Oh, he'd never do that. Right now Sommers is golden. And it's all because of you. He's not going to do anything to change that.”

Ever since her trip to New York, Delores had been thinking a lot about her television job. Her mother had called her “cheap,” and Delores couldn't dislodge the word from her brain. And now that Westie was here, did she really want him to see her sitting half-naked in a bathtub on television?

“I'm tired of the bathtub thing. And besides, it's not dignified.” She cocked her head as she said
dignified.
She'd never used that word before.

Thelma glanced at Delores. “The thing about dignity is that it's more how you feel than how you look. If sitting in the bathtub humiliates you, then I would be the first person to tell you not to do it. People like us hold our dignity inside, and let the rest of the world judge us however they want. It's humiliation that's unbearable.” She banged her fist against the horn and shouted “You stupid louse” to the blue Dodge that had just cut her off. She went on: “You know Rex, the man I was telling you about? He's almost eight feet tall. People stare and say stupid things to him all the time like ‘Hey, big fella, how's the air up there?' He's always very respectful, no matter how insulting they get. Eventually, they come around to liking him just for him, and he never lets on that they've made witless fools of themselves. That's what I call dignity.”

When they pulled into the parking lot at the studio, Thelma reached across Delores to put her gloves in the glove compartment. “Whatever you decide to do, I'll stand behind you,” she said, not wanting to make any more of it than that.

They rode up to the eighth floor where they headed straight to Sommers's office. His receptionist greeted them with a big hello, then buzzed her boss. “Fishgirl is back,” she whispered, then giggled over something he said. “You betcha.” She hung up. “Have a seat, doll. Thelma, he'll be just a minute.”

When Sommers finally called them in, he was sitting on his couch, his arm around the back of it. He was staring out the window and chewing on a Fig Newton.

“So how was the Big Apple?” he asked Delores, still looking out the window. “Makes this place look like some rathole in the middle of nowhere, doesn't it?”

“I like it here,” she said.

“Well, don't get too used to it. You and I aren't going to spend the rest of our careers in this swamp, I'll tell you that.”

Delores took a seat across from him. Thelma sat on the other side of the couch. “What about Armando?” asked Delores. “Is he going to spend the rest of his career in this swamp?”

Sommers threw back his head and laughed extravagantly. “She slays me, she really does,” he said to Thelma.

She caught a whiff of stale onions, then said: “Delores isn't trying to be funny.”

“Oh, I know what she's getting at,” he said, turning to Delores and raising a finger. “He subbed for you when you were away. I told you before you went to New York that I'd take care of who would fill in for you. Right before you left, he came to me and said that our viewers tune in to see Delores Taurus, not just any mermaid. He said that no one could replace you, so we shouldn't even try. He suggested we do something very straightforward and simple, then said he would like to try it. I figured, what the hell? He's good looking; he's got that ethnic thing going and a great head of hair. He did a couple of dry runs and was good. His timing was
perfecto.
Says he learned from the best.”

“Hmm,” said Delores, scowling.

A wormy smile crept across Sommers's face. “You worried that your cute boyfriend's gonna steal your job?”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“You've got that right. You know that your little friend plays on the other side of the street, don't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Excuse me, Mr. S., but this conversation is completely inappropriate.” Thelma sat up and put her hands on her knees.

“Oh, come now, Thelma. Everyone knows that Armando likes boys.”

Delores suddenly felt light-headed and had to grip the sides of the chair to steady herself. “I don't understand.”

“It's okay, child, nothing for you to worry about.” Now Thelma was glaring at Sommers, who didn't seem to notice.

“Would you like me to spell it out for you?”

“No, not really,” said Delores.

She remembered the night after the hurricane when they were driving back to the studio. Roberta Flack had come on the radio and he'd said something about her song being “X-rated.” She'd put her hand on his knee and he'd just sat there, didn't react or make a move. She remembered thinking that it felt no different than resting her hand on a stack of books.

“I don't want to do the weather from the bathtub anymore,” she said.

Thelma leaned forward while Sommers tried to dig a piece of the fig cookie from between two molars. Not bothering to take his finger out of his mouth, he said something incomprehensible.

Delores and Thelma exchanged looks, and Delores thought about what Thelma had said earlier about dignity and humiliation. The news about Armando, Sommers mocking her to her face, this was the kind of humiliation Thelma was talking about. Unbearable.

“Now I don't understand,” said Sommers.

“No more bathtub. End of story. That's all she wrote,” said Thelma.

Sommers took his finger out of his mouth. His face reddened to the color of clay. “Are you telling me what you will or won't do?” he shouted at Delores.

“Yes, I guess I am,” she said, not believing that she'd just talked back to him like that.

Thelma nodded at Delores, encouraging her to continue.

“Do you have any idea what you're saying, who you're talking to?” he was still yelling.

“I do.” She brushed her bangs off her face with the back of her hand.

Everything about Sommers—his wiry hair, rat-a-tat speech, jerky motions—bespoke a man whose fuse was about to blow. Delores could picture what it would be like when he finally exploded: fragments of his tiny, sharp teeth; shreds of his expensive shirts; bits of Fig Newton sinking into the shag carpet and splattering against the ceiling-to-floor windows.

He turned to Thelma. “To what do you attribute her sudden change in attitude?” he asked, trying to contain himself.

“Ask her,” said Thelma.