Learning to Swim Page 13

  Doris veered her car from one side of the road to the other. (Like Alice, Doris was a notoriously bad driver.) “I told her she needed to go to a doctor, but dammit, she was too stubborn. Even after the other night when we were all out to dinner and she got so sick, she refused to go. What did she do instead? She went to Thelma's house! What did she think Thelma would do if her heart stopped beating?”

  Everything seemed so surreal, like I was having a really bad dream. Like I would wake up and find that I was sitting in Alice's backyard, with my feet in the baby pool. Alice and I would laugh, and she would pick up her notebook and we would entertain ourselves by making a list about what our wills would look like if we were worth millions of dollars.

  “Why didn't she tell me?” I asked, trying to hold back my tears.

  Doris sighed. “She didn't want to worry you, honey. She thought you had enough on your plate.”

  And suddenly I felt guilty. Maybe if I hadn't been so caught up in my own ridiculous life I would've noticed that Alice was really sick. Maybe I would've had enough sense to cancel my date with Keith and stay with Alice. Maybe I could've prevented this whole thing.

  Doris and I parked the car in the St. Agnes Hospital parking lot and bolted inside. We received our visitor passes, got into the elevator, and went up to the fifth floor. When the doors opened, I took a few steps forward and stopped dead in my tracks. Keith was standing in front of me. I was too out of sorts to really freak out about running into him after our Chernobyl of a date. There were much more important things to be worried about. Still, my fingers went numb at the sight of him and the memory of how amazing his lips had felt against mine.

  “Hey,” I mumbled.

  “Hi,” he replied.

  I noticed his eyes were bloodshot, like he had been crying.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Visiting Alice,” he said as he slipped his sun-glasses on.

  “Is she okay?”

  Keith gulped a few times, as if he was trying to restrain himself from breaking down. The only thing he did was shrug, and then he stepped inside the elevator, waving meekly as the doors slid shut.

  I was on my way to becoming a basket case.

  But before I could completely lose it, Doris grabbed my arm and I followed her down the hall, trying really hard to ignore the nauseating frog-in-formaldehyde stench that seemed to permeate all hospitals. I walked into Alice's room and stopped in my tracks. This was not the cheerful, light-filled space depicted on General Hospital. Medical equipment was everywhere, and the room, with its gray tiled floor and dingy white walls, looked as dismal as a scene from one of Alice's old black-and-white movies.

  “Steffie,” Alice said with a smile, pushing herself up in bed. Thelma, who was sitting in a chair beside Alice's bed, reading an old edition of Glamour, gave me a little wave before focusing back on her magazine.

  Until then I had done a good job of holding it together. There had been no crying jags or dramatic proclamations like “What if she doesn't make it?” or “I'll never have a better friend!” But when I saw tough little Alice wearing that hideous blue hospital gown, and lying in that bed with an IV running into her arm, and hooked up to a bleeping heart monitor, I could feel myself start to break down at the thought of losing her forever or even for just a day.

  “Don't cry, honey.” Alice was the picture of calm. She held out her hand. “I'm going to be okay, really.”

  I took her hand in mine. “So, what happened? Did you have a heart attack?”

  “No, no,” Alice said dismissively. “Nothing like that. It's just that my heart valve isn't working properly…”

  “Mitral valve prolapse,” Doris said authoritatively.

  Alice rolled her eyes and smiled at me. “They're going to fix my mitral valve.”

  “How do they do that?” I asked.

  “Well, they stop your heart, take it right out of you, and fix it,” said Doris, making an X over her heart.

  The image of an Inca warrior holding a still-beating heart above his head popped into my mind and I wanted to throw up. “How do you breathe if they take it out?” I was no science whiz, but didn't the heart have to pump oxygen through the blood or something?

  “They've got machines for everything, Stef,” Alice said. There was no nervous lilt to her voice or anything. “They're going to pump blood mechanically for a while.”

  Thelma looked up from her magazine. “What if there's a power outage?”

  “For Pete's sake, Thelma. What kind of question is that?” Doris snapped.

  Alice sighed and raised her hand, as if signaling for silence. “They have a nurse riding a stationary bike in the basement that's attached to a generator. Happy now?”

  This was one of the funniest things I'd ever heard. I'd always looked up to Alice, but right then, my admiration for her was at world-record-setting levels. She found the humor in everything, and at the same time, she managed to handle every crisis with such dignity and grace. I was so thankful to know her and grateful to have her as my best friend.

  “So you're having surgery tomorrow?” I croaked.

  Alice looked over at her IV and began fiddling with it. “Actually, they decided to do it this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon!” Doris and Thelma exclaimed in unison, equally horrified.

  “Can I talk to Steffie alone for a minute?” Alice asked them.

  They both wiped their eyes and left the room quietly.

  “They took that well,” she said. “Don't you think?”

  I smiled as I sat down next to her. “I wish you'd told me you were sick. I could've helped you.”

  “Oh, Stef, that's all you needed—someone else to take care of. Besides, there's nothing you could've done.” She grinned and squeezed my hand. “Anyway, I wanted to talk with you about Keith. He was just here,” she said.

  “I know,” I said softly. “I saw him.”

  “He's such a sweet young man,” Alice added.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then I paused. “Did he come here just to see you?”

  I didn't mean it to come out sounding like it did, which was, Why in the world would Keith come here to see you, of all people?

  But Alice just laughed. “Thelma brought me to the hospital last night, and she phoned Keith and asked him to bring over some of my medications because she didn't want to leave me. He came right over and then he dropped in again this morning.”

  Her explanation wasn't really that helpful. I was more curious as to why he'd taken the trouble to come to the hospital to see my best friend. Naturally, I didn't have to explain any of that to Alice because, as usual, she could read my mind.

  “Keith will always be special to me too,” she said. “I loved his mother—bless her heart—and I used to babysit for him when he was a little boy. After she died, well, I spent a lot of time with him. Then when his father started dating again, Keith went through a really hard time. He needed someone to talk to.”

  “And you were that person?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I had to admit that the news that she and Keith were old friends was a total shocker. What other surprises was she going to spring on me? That Keith and I were siblings, separated at birth? Then it dawned on me.

  “Wait a minute. Did you ask Keith to give me swimming lessons?”

  She started fake coughing and pressing her call button. “Wow, I think I need to see the nurse.”

  I let go of her hand and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Knock it off, Alice. Tell me the truth.”

  She sighed deeply. “Yes, I did. But I was worried about you. And that near-drowning incident really scared the crap out of me.”

  Everything suddenly fell into place. After all, I had wondered how someone like me (a pear girl who toted a plunger around) had caught his eye.

  “No, Steffie,” Alice said firmly. “Stop right there.”

  I wandered over to the window and peered outside. Jones Island seemed so tiny from up he
re.

  “I know what you're thinking. I might have suggested the swimming lessons, but I most definitely did not suggest anything else. I can't say I was surprised to find out that he had become so fond of you. I knew that once he got close to you, well, he'd love you as much as I do.”

  Love? Had she just said love?

  “He did mention one terrible mistake he made,” Alice said coyly.

  My mind flashed back to last night when I'd gone all looney on him for having an ex-girlfriend. I knew exactly what he was referring to. “Let me guess. Going on a date with me?”

  Alice chuckled. “You really are dense sometimes.”

  “What?” This was really not a great time for Alice to be laughing at me.

  “He said Mora was the mistake. If it wasn't for her, he would have found you sooner.”

  Unfortunately, this information made me feel even worse. On top of not noticing that Alice had been sick, I had also overreacted the previous night. I was just so certain that my relationship with Keith would turn out the same way my mother's always did: with me being left alone and devastated when he returned to his girlfriend.

  But before I could share any of this with Alice, we were interrupted by the nurse, who added another bag of clear liquid to Alice's IV. “We're going to start prepping you for surgery,” she said to Alice. “I'm afraid your guest is going to have to leave.”

  My heart plummeted into the pit of my stomach as my breath caught in the middle of my windpipe. Alice and I looked at each other, both aware that it would've been a great time to make a joke, if we could have thought of anything to say.

  Finally, Alice motioned toward her bedside table. “There's something in there I want you to have.”

  I opened the drawer. On top of a King James Bible, there was the notebook and pen that Alice used for her lists.

  “I'm certainly not going to be needing them for a while,” she said with a weak smile.

  Despite her bravado, I could see the fear in her eyes. I was afraid too, but when I sat on her bed and hugged her tightly, I reminded myself that I had to be as strong for her as she'd been for me.

  “You're my best friend, Alice,” I whispered.

  “And you're mine,” she replied.

  Doris, Thelma, and I went into the waiting room and planted ourselves on a pleather couch. There was no way any of us was going home until Alice was out of surgery. I couldn't speak for Doris and Thelma, but I didn't care how long it took. I was just going to camp out there in my maid outfit all night—all week, if need be.

  I sat sandwiched between Doris and Thelma for what seemed like hours, watching lame soap operas and listening to Thelma and Doris argue. Every now and then I left them to duke it out while I perused the vending machine. Finally, the doctor came out to talk to us. The moment we saw him, we all held hands and braced ourselves for what turned out to be the best news I had ever received in my entire life.

  Alice's surgery had gone so well that she would be able to return home in a few days. After the doctor gave us her prognosis, he said with a knowing wink, “She's in great shape for a fifty-nine-year-old!” And of course, we all thought that was hilarious. Alice had been telling everyone that she was fifty-nine years old, but forgot that she was in a place with medical records and accurate dates of birth.

  I left the hospital feeling as though Alice's illness had given me a new perspective on life. Her brief brush with the grim reaper, combined with Keith's confession about his dead mother, had made me feel grateful that I at least had a mom. I was determined to go home and turn over a new leaf. As I walked up the steps to my apartment building, I made a silent promise to the powers that be that no matter what, I would do my best to get along with Barbie from here on out.

  Of course, that was before I knew she had progressed to stage seven: the finger move.

  17

  When I walked in the door, the map was spread out on the coffee table with a purple Sharpie beside it.

  I heard a noise and turned. My mom was leaning against the kitchen doorframe. She looked terrible. Her mascara had run all over the place and her eyes were red and puffy. “How do you feel about Ellicott City?” she asked.

  “You and the jackass broke up?” It was a dumb question to ask, because I already knew the answer.

  “Oh, Stef,” she said. And then came the waterworks.

  The acid in my stomach started overflowing as the reality of what was happening began to sink in.

  “If you could've heard him this morning, you just wouldn't have believed it,” Barbie said. “I mean, how could this happen? Just yesterday, he told me he wanted to marry me. But now… now.” She shook her head. “It's that daughter of his. Last night she tracked us down at the hotel where we were staying. She waited for us in the lobby and pounced just as we were about to go out to dinner. She told him she would never talk to him again if he left. She said she wanted nothing to do with him. She would never forgive him.” Barbie looked at me, totally bewildered. “Can you believe that? And he bought it. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

  Honestly, I was impressed. He loved his daughter so much that he didn't want to hurt her. But apparently this concept was quite foreign to Barbie. “Well, she's his child,” I said. “I'm sure he just wants to protect her.”

  “This isn't about her, Stef. He deserves some happiness in his life as well. I mean, she's not a baby, for God's sake. She's going to college in a couple years. Doesn't she want to see him happy?” Barbie's voice was shrill. “It's your whole generation. So selfish.”

  Selfish? What about her? Didn't she see herself as selfish? Her boyfriend was staying with a wife he didn't love because he didn't want to hurt his daughter. My mom, however, couldn't have cared less about me. She would've tossed me aside for him in a minute. She already had. This infuriated me.

  “I don't want to move,” I said sternly.

  Barbie grabbed a tissue out of her zebra-print lounge-pants pocket and wiped her nose. “We don't have a choice, Stef. I can't stay here. I can't stand the thought of running into him with his happy little family.”

  I thought about how it would feel to leave everything behind again and start a new life in a new town with no Alice, no Keith, and no Tippecanoe. Although the maid job was crappy, I wouldn't have met either Alice or Keith if I hadn't worked there. Nothing could replace any of it.

  “Keith is going back to school anyway,” Barbie added. “And who knows what will happen when he gets back around all those college girls…”

  That was a low blow, and from the stunned look on Barbie's face, she knew it too.

  I took a deep breath. “I can't do this anymore.”

  Barbie strode over to the couch, sat down, and began looking at the map. “What are you talking about?”

  “I'm tired of dealing with your love lunacy,” I said firmly. “I'm tired of your lies, I'm tired of moving, I'm tired of your hysteria and having to live my life with your crazy rules.”

  “Well, I am really, really sorry that you have it so bad,” she said angrily. “I am so sorry to disappoint you.”

  The guilt trip wasn't working this time. I was going to stand my ground. “Oh, I am disappointed. In myself.”

  Barbie choked back some tears. “What do you mean?”

  “I can't keep trying to save you, Mom.” I stood motionless when I called her that, and so did she. At her request, I never called her Mom. She'd always wanted to be my pal instead of a mother figure. But that had never been what I needed. “If you want to move to Ellicott City, go ahead. But I'm not going anywhere.”

  She looked at me as her eyes filled with tears. “What are you going to do—move in with Alice or something?”

  Actually, the idea had occurred to me.

  My hesitation must have been obvious, because my mom took it as a big Yes, I am moving in with Alice, you crazy lunatic! and she snapped out of her sadness and responded every bit as maturely as I would've expected.

  “Fine,” she said irately. “Stay with Alice. Ge
t your stuff and get out of here. As a matter of fact, I'll help you!”

  Barbie stormed into the kitchen and grabbed a big black trash bag. She stormed into my room. “I'd hate to keep Alice waiting!” And then she yanked open my underwear drawer and dumped the contents into the bag. “I'm going to be so happy living with an old lady.” She was imitating me by speaking in a really high, weird voice that made her sound like she had sucked in some helium. “Is that it, Stef? Or is it I'm tired of watching you destroy your life!”

  I just shook my head, disgusted and disturbed by the whole performance.

  “I need someone stable…,” my mother continued in her helium voice. “Well, living with Alice will be right up your alley, won't it? You guys can stay home all weekend and play bingo at the senior center and eat soft foods and talk about how much you hate me and what a crappy mother I am and how I'm a big fat failure at every damn thing I do and how I've always treated you like crap and how no matter what I did or how much I tried it was never good enough for you…”

  I turned away and walked slowly to the door as my mother continued to rant. For the second time in two days, someone left our apartment without saying goodbye.

  It was nearly nine by the time I got to Keith's house. Fortunately, the whole scene with my mother had unnerved me so much that my entire body had gone numb. So numb that I wasn't even nervous about showing up uninvited. So numb that I rang the doorbell without hesitation, not even caring that Keith's parents might regard me as the girl who'd dashed their hopes of a Mora Cooper daughter-in-law and that they might therefore be not-so-happy to see me standing there in my maid uniform. But numb or not, I was still relieved when, after only a few seconds, Keith answered the door himself.

  “Steffie? What's wrong?” he asked with concern. “Is it Alice?”

  “She's fine,” I replied. “The doctor thinks she might even come home in a few days.”

  “That's a relief.” Keith was barefoot, wearing ripped jeans and a heather gray T-shirt that was fraying at the edges. His brown hair was all rumpled and tousled, and he had a little bit of stubble. He looked so cute that all my numbness faded away and I found myself fighting the urge to throw my arms around his neck and plant a big wet one on his lips.