instead, pulls himself onto the raft. With water sheeting down his body and the clay gone he lies in the center of what they’ve lashed together. They aren’t quite callous that the other man pulls them hand-over-hand toward the delta with his whole mind and heart. They just make their love like joint checking used to be.
The man making love to her thinks, “You can love her. Or you can know. But you can't love her and know. It's too much.” So he pretends he knows. It’s enough.
But the man pulling them all toward an open end with a nonexistent rope made of what’s felt is exhausted. It is not quite an interruption of their union when he says, “I’m hungry,” as he pulls and pulls and pulls. But he gets tired, bored, lonely, sad, and ties a knot in the rope no one can see.
The other two know he is angry from the neck up.
Agreement or not, the unforgiving middle of a heart cannot be quieted. They do not ignore him but do not include him either and their sweat comes together in places to trickle down off their backs past the hairs and over the muscles.
The other clenches his cringing repetitive curse. “I’m hungry.”
Between kisses, between dives, twists, caresses, and unfolded origami car commercial double magazine pages one of the two of them acknowledges him with minimum courtesy, “We know. God, we know.”
His bare feet are burning. He wonders about the knot that holds them there being beaten by the sun.
CREPE MYRTLE & SUMMER CICADAS
I am with my husband, who has the day off. It may seem a comfort. Melodious wind and tension left in the sky. But these are delirious times. And electricity doesn’t mix well with water.
We’ve come to the swimming pool after a thunderstorm. My husband does not swim. He has his reasons. I wouldn’t say he doesn’t want to be here. But coming to the pool today was my idea.
Years ago someone put a lot of thought into this apartment complex. It’s got to be older than I am. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it just needs to be taken care of a little bit better. A little gazebo full of mailboxes has a sturdy wooden floor under which possums must congregate. But anyway the speed-bumped drive is flanked first by flags and then by unambitious trees that grow up any way in raised planters made of railroad ties. Each gray-and-maroon-painted apartment building has a foundation among hardwoods and the swimming pool sits serene amidst them all on landscaped embankments. Crepe myrtle, boxwood, and Bill’s Blue deodar cedar nearly strangled by the smilax that’s been left untended for years.
The birds are quiet now, just after midday, just after the thundering rain. But the incessant sounds of cicadas reminds us of the surrounding heat, which makes the pool road’s sloped asphalt seem a steam plate. It is silly to bring a towel to lie on because the chaise lounges are pooled with water. But habits die hard. The sky is still black with clouds. There is the stench of Banana Boat sunscreen but that may be a film on the water.
My girlfriends say my husband’s controlling.
We’ve been talking about it. Not what my girlfriends say. They don’t understand him like I do. What I meant is, we’ve been talking about my wanting to come to the pool today. I thought it would be something fun for us to do on his day off. I didn’t think he’d be playing poker online all morning, drinking all the milk, and then keeping at that computer stuff while we waited two more hours for the rain to stop.
I was watching talk shows in the living room but saw him go and get the emergency credit card that’s taped to the wall behind the calendar. He took it back to the back bedroom and shut the door. I heard the lock click. What am I gonna do? Go back there? Try to get the credit card away from him? Try to unplug the computer, turn off the power strip, change his password, tip the monitor over? I’ve tried all that shit before. What’s the point? All he’s gonna do is shove me out of the room and get back on that stupid website. No use having that lady upstairs call the cops again. It’s not like I care. He’s the one who said we needed to only use the credit card for emergencies and keep it taped to the wall and hidden like that. He can do what he wants.
I thought maybe we’d go to breakfast or out to the mall and then talk and laugh by the pool and then make dinner together and make love all night. But once he’s on that computer there’s nothing I can say. Plus, he didn’t want to go to breakfast or out to the mall. Said we didn’t have the money. He said we were going to Sonic or staying home, said he always has Sonic for dinner on his days off, said I should know that by now. But I didn’t want Sonic. I wanted to make dinner at home. He said, “Fine. Then make dinner. If you don’t want to go out and spend more money I don’t have, great. Why are we even talking about this?” I am definitely not making love with him after he kept the volume up all the way on his poker game when I was trying to hear my aunt on the phone. So coming to the pool is probably our only fun thing together for his day off, now, and he won’t even get in the water with me. He can pretend all he wants but I know he’s not asleep over there.
I dive in and split a limpid box full of wet blue that I wish were cooler.
For five minutes, I’ve got the pool to myself and my husband has all of the deck chairs since it just stopped raining. Then some obnoxious man, his kid, and his buddy show up. I didn’t mean to be such a bitch. But. Whatever.
The man is a jerk, you can tell. He has red hair and muttonchops that are probably meant to be funny. His trunks are ugly forest green and five years old at least. But his kid is worse. This child is the kind that I truly hate. Speech impediment. Loud. Female. An awkward tween with no discipline. Not at all cute. She’s got a fat belly, stumpy legs, drooped broad shoulders, and must be totally attention-starved because she stomps right and left and shrieks around her too-young father and his pot-smoking friend. They are men with tribal armband tattoos and budding tans.
They miss her doing a cannonball that splashes water onto my head. I look at my husband, appalled. But. He’s not watching. He probably really is asleep.
Safely perhaps, the child flops around in the shallow end of the pool. I do a little breaststroke to get further out into the middle of the pool. I can tolerate a lot. I don’t really care what people do. But the wave action she creates is still a problem and I’m here to have fun. I don’t want to get too close to those guys she’s with. They are lying in the sun at the farthest possible point away from the child. So I’m caught between them while the girl shrieks continually, “Daddy, did you see that?”
“See what? Do it again, Hoss.”
Hoss? Now, if I had a child, and I don’t—my husband says we don’t have the money—and I were a man, which I’m not, and my child were a little girl, which I hope to God I never have, I’m thinking that one of the least endearing terms I could ever use for my daughter would be Hoss. I mean, sure the kid’s a little fat, a little boorish, a little—well, yeah, Hoss is apt. But certainly she grew into her expectations.
If I had a daughter, she’d wear dresses every day and have gorgeous long hair that I’d braid across the top of her head or into two matching fishtails. I’d help her with her homework. My husband wouldn’t scream profanity at the computer screen in the back bedroom behind a locked door. I wouldn’t turn up the volume on the TV. No. My parents would come and visit. They’d stay in the back bedroom. I’d have four pillows for them to choose from and a new, warm blanket that matches the curtains.
I’m not afraid of them or anyone.
The girl in the pool keeps trying to do flips.
I want to be nice. I want to not care that this girl is playing at whatever kind of back flip she hopes that is. Who thinks they can plant a handstand without pointing their toes? She’s got one leg bent and both feet angled like an inline Egyptian statue. Lord. I would love to just throw the bratty little ass-child straight up over the blasted fence into the dumpster. Yet I am forced to resort to the much-abused pleasant onlooker who seems to give a shit. Now her dad and his friend aren’t watching at all. Dammit. She’s made eye contact with me and seems to assume I’m enjoying her show. As if I would e
ver want to be an audience for her. I’d rather watch my father organize his pressed-penny collection.
Okay. Well. Fine. That was a good one.
She needs to tuck her chin.
Better.
She’s just pushing water backwards. Pushing off too hard with her legs and she’s not getting the height. Damn, girl. Needs to spring up, then arch her back, then lead with clasped hands.
There. Good. She arched her back enough. Another good one.
But the rest of her tricks have been poorly executed and lacking in grace.
Oh. She definitely got water up her nose with that move.
Plus, she needs to scoot back about five feet to be in a more shallow part of the pool. That water’s up to her shoulders. She’s fighting all that buoyant resistance. No wonder she’s not getting the height. By the time she pushes off, she’s already sinking.
Who am I to tell her she’s in too deep?
I call out to the girl maybe because of the charge in the sky. “Sweetie!”
The child is defenseless. She looks down at her father. Her father looks at the little girl and then at me. But I have them divided. The little girl treads water and looks at me unresponsive.
The pool is surrounded by crepe myrtle and a mockingbird flicks her tail.
“Sweetie, why don’t you just play quietly