Learning to Swim Page 14

  “I appreciate you stopping by to tell me,” he said. “I was worried about her.”

  “I figured,” I said. “She told me that you guys were pretty close.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a simple nod. “Alice is great.”

  I continued to stare at him, unable to look away. Why hadn't I just kept my mouth shut the previous night? How could I have let him leave?

  “You must be tired,” he said. “Have you been at the hospital all day?”

  I nodded; then we shared an awkward pause.

  “Well,” he said finally. “Thanks again for letting me know how she was doing.”

  It was obvious that he was dismissing me. But I wasn't ready to leave, not yet at least. “I didn't,” I announced before he could shut the door.

  “Didn't what?”

  “I didn't come here to tell you how Alice was doing. I came here because I wanted, I mean, needed to see you.”

  Wow, I was really going for broke. I'd never really admitted to “needing” anything in my life. But as I looked into Keith's eyes and thought about how brave Alice had been in her darkest hour, I tried to muster enough courage to tell him how sorry I was and how I felt about him.

  Keith hesitated a moment. I was hoping that he wasn't coming up with an excuse to send me away. “Um, do you want to come in? My dad and stepmother are at the beach house.”

  “Okay,” I said in relief.

  He led me through the marble-floored entranceway, past the white-on-white living room with the cathedral ceiling, and into a smaller (but definitely not small), dark, paneled room furnished with a black leather sectional, a big wood desk, and a giant flat-screen TV. The place was even more magnificent up close than it had appeared through Alice's binoculars.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked politely.

  “No thanks,” I said breathlessly as I took in every inch of my surroundings.

  I glanced at the bookshelves. They were lined with pictures of Keith from his glory days. Keith as captain of the Brucker's football team, making the touchdown that would win the game. Keith as a Cub Scout, making a leg splint out of some wood and an Ace bandage. There were more pictures as well, recent ones. Keith answering questions on some college quiz show… Keith reading Moby-Dick while lying in a hammock… Keith giving a little girl a hug during a birthday party… and Keith and Mora dancing at the country club. I looked closely at that picture and studied the expression on Keith's face. He was frowning and his shoulders were slumped forward a bit, as if he couldn't wait for someone to cut in. This was when I realized that Keith and Mora were truly over, and all the irrational, envious feelings I had about their relationship suddenly vanished.

  I turned to Keith and began my mea culpa. “I'm sorry for last night. I don't know what got into me. I had no right to talk to you like that.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and grinned a little. “It's okay.”

  “No, it's not okay.” I sighed. “I shouldn't have panicked.”

  “You were feeling panicked?” Keith seemed very confused. “Why?”

  I gazed into his kind brown eyes and was once again swept away by his charms. He was more than I'd ever hoped he'd be. A sweet, smart, sensitive (and gorgeous—like I'd forget that) guy who understood, just like me, what it was like to have a mother with serious issues.

  “Well, because I was scared.” I had to fess up to everything. Being honest with Keith was the only thing that would give us a real chance.

  “Of what?”

  I braced myself for the humiliation that might follow this admission. “I was afraid of getting love lunacy.”

  “Love lunacy,” Keith repeated.

  “Yes, it's what I call the sickness that makes my mom go all nuts whenever she falls for a married man.”

  Keith didn't flinch, so I kept explaining.

  “So then I met you, and I liked you instantly, but you were with Mora and—”

  “You thought you'd go nuts like your mom,” he said, finishing my sentence.

  “Right.” I closed my eyes and waited for the snickering, but it never came. I opened my eyes and Keith was just standing there smiling widely.

  “Stef, in a million years, you could never be like Barbie.” He took a step closer to me. Six more and we'd be in lip-lock territory.

  “Really?”

  He sat down on the couch and motioned for me to join him. My whole body started to tingle as I sat next to him. He moved closer, putting his arm around me.

  “Listen, if you were anything like her, I wouldn't want to spend every minute with you,” he said. “The fact that you're Alice's friend speaks volumes. Stef, you're the most interesting person I've ever met.”

  This was the best thing I'd heard in my entire life. I touched his cheek as if trying to commit every second and every feeling to memory. I should've been on top of the world. After all, Keith still liked me. How great was that? Unfortunately, as happy and grateful as I was to get another opportunity to be with Keith, I still felt terrible.

  “Are you panicking again?” he asked softly.

  “It's not you. It's my mom.” Barbie, I thought sadly. It always came back to Barbie. “That guy she was dating…”

  “The married man?”

  I nodded. “He broke up with her. So as per the final stage of love lunacy, she wants to move.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. Keith placed a kiss on my cheek and I practically melted. “I don't want to go. I mean, I haven't talked to Alice, but I'm sure she'll let me stay there if I want.”

  Keith glanced away before gazing sadly into my eyes. “Look, Stef. I would love it if you stayed. Just knowing that I could see you for what's left of the summer and when I came back for vacations and stuff, well, it would make things so much easier. And believe me, I can relate to what you're going through. I know what it's like to have problems with your mom and want to get away from her for a while. But I think you should know that as troubled as my mother was, I'd give anything to see her again.”

  I shuddered once Keith was done talking. He was one hundred percent right. As much as I hated to admit it, I still loved my mother more than anything, and my place was with her, at least for now.

  “I just don't want to say goodbye,” I said, curling up in his arms, almost like a child.

  Then Keith kissed me, and for once, I didn't think about my mother or love lunacy or Alice or what I would be doing tomorrow or the day after that. All I thought about was Keith and how lucky I was to be with him.

  18

  When I got home, around three in the morning, my mom was sitting on the couch, waiting for me. In all our years together, I had never seen her in such a bad state. She looked like she had just stuck a wet finger in an electrical outlet. Her hair was frizzy, her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was red and puffy. The apartment was a wreck as well. It looked completely ransacked. Various drawers, opened and empty, were scattered among full Hefty bags.

  Barbie flipped her phone shut as her eyes filled with tears. “I was worried about you,” she said. “I called everyone I could think of. I was just about to call the police.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said sympathetically. “I went to see Keith.”

  “I called him too, but he didn't pick up.”

  “We didn't even hear the phone ring.”

  She glanced away. “I guess I had that coming, huh?”

  “I honestly didn't hear it ring.” I peered longingly at my bedroom door. I was exhausted. My day had been more frightening and thrilling than a marathon ride on Space Mountain.

  “Why didn't you tell me about Alice?” she hiccupped.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, which at that point had become a grease-fest from all the stress. “I didn't get a chance.”

  She stood up and took a step toward me. “I'm so sorry, Steffie.”

  I instinctively stepped backward. I wasn't in the mood for a makeup hug. “She's going to be okay.”

  “I know,�
�� she said. “I spoke to Thelma. I called over there, looking for you.”

  “Do you know where my pajamas are?” I nodded toward the mound of garbage bags outside my room. Barbie peeked inside one bag and then another.

  She pulled out my nightshirt and handed it to me. “Here you go,” she said cheerfully.

  I took the nightshirt and headed to my room. Before I shut the door, I was overcome by an almost morbid sentimentality. I glanced back toward my mother and around the room where we had shared breakfasts and dinners and watched more hours of TV than I could count. “What time are we leaving tomorrow?” I asked quietly.

  My mother's eyes grew wide as the meaning behind my question sank in: I would be moving to Ellicott City with her.

  “I'd like to leave as soon as possible.” Her lower lip was quivering as she practically beamed motherly love. (In retrospect, it would've been a great time to ask her to buy me another pair of Michael Kors flip-flops.)

  “Is it all right if we leave in the afternoon?” I asked. “I'd like to say a few goodbyes first.”

  “Sure.” She choked back tears and smiled at me. “The afternoon would be fine.”

  I went to the hospital the next day. When I arrived at Alice's room with a bouquet of lilies in hand, I saw that her bed was empty. I had one moment where my heart stopped and I thought, Oh-my-God-she-croaked, before Doris and Thelma showed up and informed me that Alice had gone down for some tests and would be back in another hour or so. I guess I could've waited, but the truth of the matter was, I really couldn't bear the thought of saying goodbye to my best friend in all of North America. So I left Alice's notebook on top of her bed, along with a list I had made:

  Reasons why you, Alice Anne Werner, will always be my best friend:

  You know all the lyrics to “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher.

  You once told me “mi casa es su casa.”

  You can apply eyeliner, lipstick, and nail polish while driving eighty miles an hour down Route 50.

  Every time you go grocery shopping, you always buy a half gallon of my favorite strawberry ice cream even though I know you can't stand it. (Because, as you've said numerous times, fruit has no business being in dessert.)

  You're the only person who could make a job cleaning toilets fun.

  When we went to Thelma's and she served pumpkin bread for dessert, you and I went back to your house and spent one hour analyzing why we've always hated pumpkin bread and another hour discussing who in their right mind would even consider pumpkin bread a dessert and another hour discussing whether a pumpkin is a fruit or vegetable.

  You can make a list about anything.

  You knew I would hate the movie Gone with the Wind before I even watched it. (And boy, were you right.)

  You can always tell when I'm in a fake happy mood and you know exactly what to say to put me in an honest-to-goodness good one.

  You asked Keith to teach me how to swim.

  * * *

  After the hospital, I went by Tippecanoe to quit my job. I said farewell to all the staff and then strolled down to the pool. When I walked through the gates, I kind of expected things to be different. Considering my new relationship with Keith and everything that had happened with Mora (not to mention the fact that I was no longer a maid), the whole social structure might have changed.

  But it was exactly the same. Rafaela Berkenstein and her smarty-pants friends were off to the side, still discussing Sylvia Plath. Amy Fitz and her jocky friends were still doing cannonballs off the high dive, and Mora Cooper and the rest of the popular crowd were still talking on their gem-studded cell phones. The only difference was that there was a recent addition to the Mora group. One of the assistant golf pros, a hunky preppy-looking twenty-three-year-old, was sitting on Mora's lounge chair. Mora was giggling and rubbing some sunscreen on his shoulders. She seemed to sense my presence and looked my way. I held my breath, expecting some sort of confrontation. But nothing happened. In fact, her eyes barely registered me. She simply went back to rubbing sunscreen on the golf pro, laughing as he craned his head back and kissed her.

  Keith was nowhere in sight, so I knocked on the door to the lifeguard office. Goatee Boy looked up from his clipboard. “Yeah?”

  “Is Keith around?” I asked.

  “No. He left this morning to go to his parents’ beach house.”

  “This morning?” I had to do everything in my power not to faint.

  “Yeah, his dad called him a little while ago. I guess he forgot something and asked Keith to bring it by.”

  The news that Keith had left hit me a lot harder than I would have expected. I hadn't planned on a big, gooey love scene, but I was hoping for some sort of exchange where we said how much we'd miss each other and what was on the horizon for us. Everything seemed so unfinished.

  I rode my bike back home, crying like a toddler and moving as if in slow motion. My body seemed heavier, weightier, nearly impossible to manage. And my insides felt as if they were being crushed by a trash compactor. I was minutes away from hacking up my breakfast, so when I opened the door to my apartment, I had intended to make a mad dash to the bathroom. But I was blindsided by what I saw.

  I was certain I was dreaming. It was as if the previous evening had never happened. The Hefty bags were gone, and the apartment looked exactly like it had two days before, with everything in its rightful place.

  “I'm glad you're home,” my mom said.

  19

  As soon as I'd finished hyperventilating, I made a mental note to add this to the Steffie Rogers's most-shocking-moments list.

  “I don't understand,” I said, trying to shake myself out of my stupor.

  Barbie walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her low-rise jeans. “You've made a lot of sacrifices for me, Stef. I decided that I wanted to make one for you.”

  I could barely contain my joy. “So we're staying?” I asked excitedly.

  Barbie grinned. “Well, you really seem to like it here.”

  We are staying on Jones Island.

  The realization that I would not have to leave Alice, that I would not have to move again and start my senior year at a new school, that I would be here when Keith returned on breaks and vacations, was enough to make me want to bend over and kiss the nasty orange carpet I was standing on. “Thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around Barbie as if it was the most natural thing to do.

  She held me tighter than she ever had. “I love you, Stef.”

  “I love you too,” I said. In fact, I more than just loved her. I was glad she was my mother.

  When Barbie and I were finished embracing, she said, “Thelma called to say that Alice really wants to see you before we leave. I told them we weren't moving after all and that we'd be over to see her this afternoon.”

  “That sounds great,” I said merrily. “But there's one thing I want to do first. Do you know where my bathing suit is?”

  Barbie's elation looked as though it was about to fade. “It's in your top drawer. Why?”

  I thought about Alice in that instant and I knew she'd remind me not to lie to my mother, no matter how crazily she might react. So I didn't. “Because I thought I'd go for a swim.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and I braced myself for the eruption. She breathed in deeply and then opened her eyes. “Have a… g-good time,” she stammered.

  And then (as if the hug wasn't enough), she kissed me on the cheek.

  * * *

  A half hour later, I was standing on the sand at Crab Beach and staring at the horizon. It was a warm, sunny day, and the calm water looked like an emerald green mirror. I swallowed my nervousness and began to walk toward it. I kept going without hesitation, wading in until the lukewarm water was up to my waist. I stopped for a moment, allowing my fingers to trail across the smooth surface as I practiced the stroke that Keith had taught me.

  I kept telling myself over and over again, You can do this.

  Then I took baby steps until the water was up t
o my chin. I cleared my mind, took a deep breath, and plunged forward. Salt water splashed up my nose as I wiggled around, moving my arms and kicking my legs. It was awkward at first, but the movements became smoother as my confidence increased and my rhythm steadied. But the truth of the matter was, I didn't care about my technique or how I looked. What mattered was that I had not sunk to the bottom of the bay. I was propelling myself through the water.

  I felt as if I had achieved the impossible. I flopped around, twisting and splashing as I celebrated my independence. It was as if I had taken on the dark side and had not only survived, but conquered it as well. I was not my mother. I could swim.

  After only a few minutes, I was both exhausted and elated. I turned on my back and floated, allowing the tide to slowly pull me back to land. When my butt hit the sandbar, I stood up and turned toward shore. And that's when I saw Keith. He was sitting on the beach, watching my every move.

  My heart fluttered as he grinned and stood up and began walking toward me. It amazed me that after fifty-eight days, he was still the most breathtaking thing I'd ever seen.

  “I thought something came up at the beach house.” I was shivering from the breeze so much that my teeth were chattering.

  Keith smiled. “Well, I was driving up there when Alice called me and told me the good news. So I got ahold of my dad and told him he'd have to live without his wallet for a while.” He stopped right in front of me and put his warm hands on my waist. “I saw you out there,” he said softly. He didn't need to say anything else. I could practically see the pride in his eyes. I knew he understood just how much my solo venture into the water had meant to me.

  He reached out and brushed the hair out of my eyes.

  I knew without a doubt it was something a boyfriend would have done.