Learning to Swim Read online

  I stood up and handed him my kickboard. He gave me a little smile. “Sorry about that,” he said, with a glance in Mora's direction.

  “It's okay,” I said.

  He looked at me really intensely, as if I had just spoken a different language and he was trying to interpret what I had said. Finally, he said, “Why don't you turn on your back and we'll practice floating again.”

  I leaned backward until I felt his hands supporting me from underneath. He was staring down at me and his face looked incredible, even when it was inverted. Maybe it was the light (the sun was still rising in the sky), but there was some sort of sparkle in his eyes. Whatever the look was, I liked it, much more than I should have. Just like I liked the way his skin felt against mine and the way he said my name.

  “So what happened to you last night, Steffie?” he asked.

  I froze and my feet sank to the bottom like dead weight as I stood up again. “Well, something came up.”

  He gave a curt nod, as if he thought I was blowing him off or something. “Let's try it again.”

  For a moment, I thought he was talking about his party. As in, “Let's try it again. I'll invite you, and this time you show up.” But then I realized he just wanted me to float again, and my stomach began to cramp.

  “This time I'm going to take my hands away,” Keith said. “Just relax and keep your arms spread out.”

  The wind picked up and a chill raced over me. “I'll sink.”

  “Not if you relax,” he said. I leaned backward until I felt his strong hands. “It's all mental, Stef,” he was saying. “You need to believe you can do it. You need to conquer your fear.”

  I closed my eyes and kept repeating those words in my head.

  He took away one hand and then the other. I felt a surge of pride as I realized I was on top of the water, floating all by myself. And then I thought, What if I drown?

  And then I sank.

  Keith scooped me back up and said, “You all right?”

  I coughed up the water I had swallowed. Who (besides me) drowned in the shallow end? “I'm fine,” I said.

  “You lost your concentration,” he said. “This time I'll hold you up until I think you're ready.”

  I tried really hard to relax. I tried to pretend that the hottest guy in the world was not standing beside me, staring down at me with those gorgeous brown eyes while his hands practically caressed my bare skin. Instead I imagined myself at Alice's house, sitting on her slightly lopsided IKEA couch, covered up in the afghan she'd made herself, watching reality TV.

  And after a while, I realized that Keith had removed his hands and I was not only breathing rhythmically, I was floating. I bobbed away, just lying there, looking up at the brightening sky.

  “You did it,” he said excitedly.

  I stood up and grinned. As he looked at me, I felt as though he could see right through me.

  Keith looked at his waterproof sports watch and scowled. “Sorry, Stef. I have to go.”

  I could feel my face tighten as I tried to hold my smile. But it didn't work. I knew I was frowning. I knew he was going to meet Mora.

  “Can we meet again tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I'd love to,” I said meekly. “But I can't. I told Alice I'd help her mow her lawn. Her back is out or something like that.”

  “Really? Well, I'll come by after work and do it.” His eyes were glowing again.

  “You don't h-have to do that,” I stammered. “I can handle it.”

  Keith chuckled and lightly gripped my upper arm. “I know you can, Stef. Check out these muscles.”

  Holy Cheesy Nacho Hamburger Helper. What was that?

  “Actually, we have a big riding mower that we hardly ever use.” He grinned. “It'll be much easier this way. And besides, I want you to save your strength for me.”

  With that, Keith hopped out of the pool. Streams of water dripped off his long legs and his swim trunks, which were hanging so low that I got a quick look at the upper part of his left butt cheek.

  Minutes later, I dried off, tucked my suit into a Ziploc bag, and changed back into my uniform. I rode my bike home, humming so loudly I was practically singing. I just couldn't help myself.

  “Back so soon?” my mother asked. For once, she was not sitting in front of the TV watching some washed-up B-list actress like Connie Selleca (aka Mrs. John Tesh) grapple with her daughter's cracked-out pimp. Instead she was doing something incredibly bizarre. She was sitting at the kitchen table painting a large oyster shell. Yep, my mother was entertaining herself with arts and crafts.

  “What are you doing?” I was certain that my eyes were deceiving me.

  “Oh,” she said with a little laugh. “I saw a shell like this when I was with my friend, and so I thought I'd make one for them to remember our day. That's all.”

  Translation: she was painting a shell for her married boyfriend. How Marthaesque was that? But I didn't say anything. Instead, I went into my room and changed back into my pajamas. I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. It was Sunday morning at nine a.m. After all, I had the whole day to contemplate how I was rapidly going through the initial stages of love lunacy, and berate myself accordingly. I thought I should get an early start on it.

  Barbie came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. She looked almost worried about me. “Stef,” she said. “I just want you to know that I love you. You know that, right? You're the most important thing in my life.”

  I definitely did not want to have this conversation with my mom. Not then. And so I decided to ignore the need I felt to point out that I wasn't really flattered to hear that I was the most important thing in her life. For one, she had already dumped me twice for this Ludwig guy. For two, besides her ’99 red Malibu, she really didn't have that many things to write home about. No other family. No real friends. Just the occasional married man. So what was she really saying? That she loved me more than this guy she had been dating for a couple of weeks?

  “It's not easy being a mom,” she continued. “Especially a single one.”

  And that's when I saw it. Considering the size, I was actually surprised that I hadn't noticed it before. “You're wearing a new ring,” I said. It was gold and sparkly, encrusted with diamonds.

  “Oh,” she said, stretching out her hand and admiring it. “Yes.” She smiled and sighed. “My friend is, well, very generous.”

  Normally this would've been my breaking point. I would've jumped out of bed and listed all the gifts she had received from all her men and pointed out that none of these relationships had ever amounted to anything more than a move across the state. Instead I kept my mouth shut and closed my eyes really tight as I tried to remember how it felt to float.

  “I've made some mistakes. I know I have,” my mom said softly. “But you need to give me a break here. You're not my mother, Stef. You're my daughter. And you need to respect my decisions. And you need to trust me. I'm going to make a better life for us, Steffie. I promise.”

  I was on top of the water, just bobbing along.

  And it worked, it really worked.

  Then Barbie said this: “So how was the party last night? Did you have fun?”

  I pictured Keith's brilliant smile and the cute dimple on his chin and the way he said, “You just have to believe you can do it.” For some reason, it felt okay to lie.

  “Yes, Mom. Everything was great.”

  9

  Alice (and other Tippecanoe Country Club employees) had a favorite saying: “A trip to Mr. Warthog's office is like a trip to the dentist.” Meaning it was unpleasant and you felt crappy afterward. (Most of the employees at Tippecanoe had bad teeth.)

  There was only one reason why an employee was asked to Warthog's office midseason: to be fired. So even though I went to work on Monday morning in a love-lunacy-style schizoid mood (I had spent all of Sunday vacillating between these two thoughts: I love Keith McKnight and I hate myself), my mood was made even more not-so-fabulous when Mr. Warthog summoned me to his of
fice. And it was made still worse by the fact that, when I opened the door, I saw that my mother was waiting for me too.

  “Come in,” Mr. Warthog said, waving me in and motioning for me to take a seat next to Barbie.

  Barbie's legs were nervously bouncing up and down. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest and she gave me one of her nasty “You're in big trouble” stares.

  “Stef,” Mr. Warthog said. “I just got through explaining to your mother that a member has filed an official complaint regarding you. Apparently you were using the club pool when it was closed to the public. That is against Tippecanoe rules.”

  Translation: Mora had ratted me out. Warthog had told my mother, who, unbeknownst to him, thought I had been called into work for some mysterious reason. I had been caught in flagrante delicto, so to speak.

  “I could suspend you without pay, Stef,” he said solemnly.

  “But you're not going to do that?” Barbie leaned forward and flashed him a toothy smile.

  I could see him blush as he glanced from her pearly whites down to her giant boobs.

  His pudgy face turned bright red as he swallowed. “No,” he said, with considerable difficulty. “I'm going to let it slide.”

  My mother gave him a big “You're my hero” sigh.

  With more considerable difficulty, Warthog turned away from Barbie and settled his beady little eyes back on me. “But no more, okay, Stef?”

  All I could do was nod my head and mutter an “I'm sorry.”

  “You don't mind if I talk to Steffie for a few minutes, do you?” Barbie asked.

  Please mind, please mind, I willed.

  “Of course not,” he said, practically beaming.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Warzog,” she said sweetly.

  Then she grabbed my arm and yanked me out of his office and through the back door, to where the deliveries are made. She stopped and turned to face me. Her eyes were bulging and her neck was beginning to blotch. Even so, she still looked hot. “Are you crazy? You were in the water!” she shouted. “And you lied to me!”

  “Maybe you should call your friend Emily Mills and tell her about it. She might be able to give you some advice. After all, she's got a century of experience under her belt,” I snapped. I couldn't stop myself.

  “So that's what this is about. You're punishing me.”

  “Not everything is about you, Barbie.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She reeled backward dramatically, as if my words had cut her to her very soul.

  I winced as I recognized the superangry tone in my mother's voice. I couldn't even imagine what this whole thing was going to cost me. Unfortunately, even though I was practically a legal adult, Barbie still wielded enough power over me to make my life a living hell. Although she couldn't really pull off normal punishments like restrictions (because she was never home herself and therefore unable to enforce them) or taking away my car keys (for obvious reasons), she fought dirty.

  For instance, if I was sleeping, one of my favorite possessions would just go AWOL. She would stop at nothing. My favorite DVDs, my favorite articles of clothing. One time last year, I'd waked up to find that the TV was gone. Eventually, the items would return, but in the case of the TV, it was gone for an entire week. Punishments in the Rogers household were nothing if not cruel and unusual.

  “Did you forget who you're talking to?” Barbie said through clenched teeth. “Do I need to remind you who puts the roof over your head?”

  In the past, I might have answered these rhetorical questions with something like: “Did I ask to be born?” But I no longer felt the need to remind her of such a primary fact.

  So instead I said, “I'm your daughter. Yet you continue to make choices that have a negative effect on me and my life. Like making me move every time you get your heart broken.”

  I'd found in previous arguments that my mother had no idea when she was being hit smack in the face with psychobabble. She thought I was a lot smarter than I actually was. If I kept calm and talked about choices and negative effects, she just assumed I knew what I was talking about.

  Her eyes narrowed and she said, “No more swimming lessons, got it? I don't want you near the pool again.” She put her hands over her heart. “The thought of it is giving me palpitations.”

  But unlike her, I wasn't in the mood for promises that I had no intention of keeping (although the irrational fear thing was still working for me).

  “I have to go,” I said, and boldly walked away.

  When I got home after work, I was shocked to see the TV still perched on the table across from the couch. In fact, despite my certainty that something would be gone, everything was still in its place. Weird, very weird. Not to mention unnerving. But even my mother's weirdness couldn't affect my surprisingly lightening mood. I had to get over to Alice's to watch my hunky lifeguard-with-a-girlfriend mow the yard.

  I put on a yellow wannabe Tommy Hilfiger sundress and then took it off because I thought it looked too obvious, like I was still harboring the idea that he might like me-like me. I finally settled on a “no mistaking it, we're just friends” outfit consisting of a clean white American Eagle tank top from two years ago, black shorts from the Gap (last year's summer line), and my duct-taped flip-flops.

  When I got to Alice's, we sat on her back porch in one-hundred-degree first-day-of-August heat until we heard a loud whirring sound. We walked around front just as Keith came rolling in on a gigantic monster truck of a lawn mower. He was wearing a navy blue baseball hat with VARSITY CLUB written on it and these camouflage-print cutoff shorts that were ragged at the knees. His black T-shirt was already sticking to him, and he gave us a friendly wave as he started mowing.

  “So what do I do?” I asked Alice.

  She took out a handkerchief from a striped capri pants pocket and wiped at her cleavage. “What do you mean?”

  “Am I supposed to go talk to him?”

  “It's going to be hard to have a conversation while the lawn mower is going. Why don't you wait until he's done and then ask him inside for some iced tea?”

  It sounded easy enough. I could certainly handle that without breaking into a dripping sweat, right?

  I followed Alice back inside and into the kitchen, where she was preparing one of my favorites: pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. This may have seemed like an odd meal to make when it was a million degrees outside and two million degrees inside, but Alice had never let the temperature interfere with her cooking. She said it was all a matter of what you were used to, and for the past forty years she had made sure there was a hot meal on her table every night.

  My mind flashed forward to six months from now. Barbie and Ludwig were on the skids and the map of Maryland was out again and Barbie's finger was about to land somewhere far away from Jones Island, and then Alice was helping me pack before we said our final goodbyes.

  I shook my head and tried to rid myself of such fatalistic thoughts. I did have a doomed relationship to foster, after all.

  After I helped Alice finish peeling the potatoes, I went into the living room and paced around, pausing every now and then to glance out the window to check on Keith's progress.

  “Alice,” I said when he was almost finished. “What if he doesn't stop the mower? What if he just drives off without stopping to talk to me?”

  “Steffie,” she yelled out from the kitchen, “you're the reason why he's here. He's not going to leave without seeing you.”

  “I thought you said he was just trying to be nice,” I shouted back to her.

  “Well, he might have been in the beginning.” She walked into the living room. “But I think all the attention he's been giving you is more than just him being nice.”

  My toes were tingling at the mere mention of him wanting more. “What about Mora?”

  “I wouldn't worry about her. From what happened today, it's obvious Mora's a replica of her mother. And Keith,” she said, nodding out the window as Keith drove past on his mower, “is too nice
and smart to end up with a woman like that.”

  Alice had been furious when I told her about the whole Mora-trying-to-get-me-fired thing. So furious, in fact, that I almost wished I hadn't told her. She'd asked me to spend the evening at her house and make a Mora voodoo doll out of a pincushion, which was both funny and scary at the same time (because I really, really wanted to do it).

  She put her arm around me and gave me a good squeeze. “He's probably going through a hot sex phase. God knows I've been there!”

  I elbowed Alice in the ribs. “Ew! Thanks for the visual!”

  She started laughing so hard she went into another coughing fit.

  I stepped away from the window, worried that Keith had seen me staring at him and Alice guffawing like a hyena. “It's weird that he's over here mowing your yard, isn't it? I mean, it's so nice of him.” I said this partially to convince myself that Keith's mowing Alice's yard was largely due to the fact that he found me oh-so-irresistible.

  Alice sat down on the sofa and put her feet up on the ottoman. “Not really.” (She completely missed the cue where she was supposed to jump in and tell me again how much he secretly liked me!) “Keith's just a good person, and that's what good people do.”

  Suddenly, I heard the lawn mower's engine cut out. I stepped back to the window just in time to see Keith pick up his shirt and use it to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  “That was fast.” I gulped as I stared at his incredibly toned torso.

  “Go on, Stef,” Alice said, nodding toward outside. “Now's your chance.”

  As I stepped outside, I felt a flutter of nerves, the same feeling I had in fifth grade when I had to recite the line “Papa, the Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin’!” in a (very lame) school performance of The Music Man.

  “Hey.” Keith greeted me with his signature gaspinducing smile.

  I took a deep breath. “Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

  “Thanks, but I have some water.” He hopped off the mower and took a swig from the bottle that he had kept in his messenger bag.

  I nervously glanced toward the house as my mind went blank. What was I supposed to say next? “Thanks for mowing,” I said mechanically as I squashed a mosquito on my arm.