Lucy laughed. “One itty-bitty mention of Ethan, and look what happens to you,” she said.
I was only mildly annoyed with her. “Just you wait a few years,” I said. “I’m not going to forget how unsympathetic you’ve been to me while I’ve been going through this.”
I put my hat back on and we began pushing the wheelbarrow toward the garden.
“Do you think sex would be difficult?” Lucy asked.
I looked at her. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I mean…” She looked utterly guileless. “You know, with you being menopausal and all that.” Lucy had a knack for bringing up the most difficult subjects with an air of innocence. “Let’s say that you could get past your concerns about having a relationship with Ethan and—”
“I doubt very much that I could.” I stopped pushing the wheelbarrow at the edge of the garden and lifted out the hoe. “And even if I wanted a relationship with him, I doubt he wants one with me.” I started raking the hoe between the rows of tomato plants. The garden was the same oversized plot of fertile soil that Lucy and I had grown up with, but it seemed like much more work now than it had been when we were kids. “And besides,” I added, “I have very little interest in sex these days, anyway.” That was a half-truth. I’d gotten used to thinking of myself as asexual. I couldn’t have cared less about sex during the last few years of my marriage to Glen, which might have been part of the problem between us—yet another thing that was my fault. But my reaction to seeing Ethan—even to talking with him on the phone—was forcing me to rethink my definition of myself as a sexless creature.
“I’m afraid that’s happening to me, too.” Lucy dropped the kneeling pad next to the lettuce.
“You?” I looked at her in surprise. I’d expected Lucy to have an insatiable appetite for sex until she was on her deathbed—and maybe even then.
“Sad, isn’t it?” she said, lowering herself to her knees on the pad, a trowel in her hand. Her hat flopped low over her sunglasses. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that.”
We heard the sliding-glass door open and turned to see our mother walking toward us. She was dressed in the gardening overalls I’d bought her a couple of years earlier and wearing green rubber shoes and a straw hat, and she looked much, much better than she had just a half hour before.
“Mom,” I said, “why don’t you sit and relax and let Lucy and me do this today?” I suggested.
She stopped walking toward us. “Not a bad idea,” she said. “I’ll just get a cup of coffee and a piece of bagel and pull a chair over so I can visit with you.” She turned around and disappeared into the house again, and Lucy and I exchanged another look.
“What’s going on with her?” Lucy asked. It was not like our mother to let us do the work ourselves, not that we minded in the least.
I brushed a bug from my damp forearm. “Maybe she finally realizes that gardening in this kind of heat is more than she should be doing,” I said, dropping my hoe to the ground. I walked over to the patio and carried a chair back to the garden, setting it in the shade near where we were working.
“How can she drink coffee when it’s this hot?” Lucy said, when Mom appeared again on the patio. She walked toward us carrying a cup of coffee and half a bagel on a napkin. She sat down on the chair, all smiles.
“I was so sorry I couldn’t join you at your concert last night,” she said to Lucy. “How was it?”
“A lot of fun,” Lucy said.
“They were great, as usual,” I said, picking up the hoe again. Mom had planned to go to the ZydaChicks concert with Shannon and me, but she’d canceled yesterday afternoon, saying she was too tired to go out. I’d thought little of it at the time, but now I wondered if whatever had tired her out last night was related to her sadness this morning. As for me, I still felt a little high from having had that quality time with my daughter the night before. I missed seeing her every day. I knew I was calling her too much, irritating her, but I was only calling once out of every ten times I thought of her.
“Did Lucy tell you I want to plan a combination birthday and going-off-to-college party for Shannon?” Mom asked me.
“No,” I said, delighted. “That’s a great idea.”
“I thought we should have it at Micky D’s,” she said, “but Lucy thought it should be here.”
I sneaked a smile at my sister, mouthing the words thank you to her.
“Here would be perfect,” I said out loud.
“I think we should make it a surprise party,” Mom continued, “so could you put together a list of her friends for me, Julie?”
“Sure,” I said. I leaned on the hoe, thinking through the idea. “How about I take care of the invitations so you don’t have to worry about that part?” I suggested. “We’ll have to look at our calendars and see when would be good. She has to be at Oberlin in late August.”
“I don’t think a surprise party is such a great idea,” Lucy said.
“How come?” I asked, scraping the hoe through the dirt and weeds again.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I think…she might want to have some say as to who gets invited. That sort of thing. I know I would if I were in her shoes.”
“Well, why don’t you two talk it over and get back to me on it?” our mother said. She took a sip of her coffee. “And meanwhile…” She hesitated so long that we both looked over to see if she’d forgotten what she’d been about to say. “I have a question for Julie.”
“What?” I asked.
“I was wondering when you planned to tell me you had lunch with Ethan Chapman.”
Speechless, I looked at Lucy. Did you tell her? I asked with my eyes. Lucy looked as surprised as I felt and gave a little shake of her head.
“How did you know about that?” I asked, holding the hoe at my side.
“I have my ways,” she said, tucking a strand of her white hair beneath her hat.
“Mom,” I said. “How?”
“His father paid me a visit,” she said.
“You’re kidding.” I pictured Mr. Chapman as he had looked the last time I’d seen him. He’d been on TV, a slender, handsome middle-aged man, shaking hands, kissing babies and making promises as he ran for governor. It must have been in the late sixties. “Why?” I asked.
“He said Ethan told him he was going to see you and that started him thinking about our family, so he decided to pay me a visit.”
“Weird,” Lucy said. She, too, had stopped her weeding and was now sitting down on her kneeling pad, hugging her shins. “How did it go?”
“Oh, fine,” Mom said. “He’s a feeble old goat. Hasn’t aged too well. He shouldn’t be driving a car, if you ask me.”
I suddenly thought of the photo album she’d had out that morning. No wonder. Seeing Ross Chapman must have brought back many memories of the shore for her.
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“Not much,” she said. “He was only here a few minutes. What I’m curious about is what you and Ethan talked about.”
Could she possibly know about the letter? I reassured myself that there was no way she could, since Ethan had not even told his father.
“Sort of the same thing,” I said. “He just wondered about us. You know he and I were really good friends when we were little, and I guess he started thinking about me.You know how that happens sometimes.”
“Is he single?” Mom asked.
“Well, actually, yes,” I said. “He’s divorced.”
“So, he’s hunting for a new Mrs. Chapman, then, I guess,” she said.
I laughed. “Oh, Mom, I don’t think that’s what he’s after at all.”
“Well, if it is, I hope you’ll ignore his overtures,” she said.
“Why should she ignore them?” Lucy asked.
My mother let out a heavy sigh. She took a long swallow of coffee, then brushed a bagel crumb from her lap while Lucy and I waited. “Because,” she said, “the Chapmans are a reminder of times I wo
uld just as soon forget.”
I could almost see the elephant tromping in our direction from the patio, plopping down in the garden on top of the tomato plants.
“So—” my mother rested her coffee cup on the arm of the chair and folded her hands in her lap “—let’s decide if Shannon’s party should be a surprise or not.”
CHAPTER 15
Lucy
1962
I remembered something.
I’m not sure what stirred the memory. Maybe it was Mom mentioning Mr. Chapman. Maybe it was that, before she managed to close the photograph album with those fumbling, anxious fingers, I’d gotten a good look at one of the old pictures. It had been taken from the water and was of our bungalow standing next to the Chapmans’, the small houses bookended by our two docks. As I pulled weeds late into the morning, the sun hot on my arms, the memory came back to me in bits and pieces until it was fully formed.
When I was a child, my mother was obsessed with me learning to swim. An excellent swimmer herself, it worried her to have any of us unsafe around the water. I wanted to learn how to swim. I honestly did, but there was some fear in me that just wouldn’t let it happen. At the bay, I would stand shivering in knee-high water, terrified of…what? Crabs biting my toes? The sucking pull of the sand in the bottom of the bay? Drowning? I am not sure now, and I’m not sure I could have said even then what terrified me, but I could not go in. In the winter, Mom would take me to the Y, where she would hook me up with a male teacher who was known for getting even the most recalcitrant kids into the water. But I could outlast anyone in the game of “come on in, honey,” and after two years of trying, that teacher gave up on me. Everyone gave up on me, except for Mom.
One day during the summer of 1962, Mom thought up a new plan for teaching me to swim. I had just gotten my first violin—a silly, lightweight, off-white plastic thing from the five-anddime—and all I really wanted to do was sit on our screened porch and practice playing the simple songs in the music book that came with it. But Mom was insistent.
“I have a feeling today is the day!” she said, with her usual enthusiasm. She stood in front of me in a black-and-white polkadot, skirted bathing suit, the child-size orange life preserver in her hands. “I really do,” she said. “And I asked Mr. and Mrs. Chapman if we could use their dock because it has a slope you can walk down to get into the water. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”
I looked through the screen toward the Chapmans’ dock. I could see the top of their motorboat jutting above the bulkhead.
“Their boat is in there,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s a double-wide dock,” my mother said. “Plenty of room for both you and the boat.”
I don’t remember what prompted me to set my violin down and let her buckle me into the life preserver. I don’t know if I sighed with resignation as I followed her out the porch door, or if I felt some hope that, this time, I might actually do it. I might actually learn how to swim. For whatever reason, I walked with her across our yard and the Chapmans’. I remember kind of skating with my bare feet across the sand. I had walked that way in the Chapmans’ yard ever since stepping on a prickly holly leaf from one of the bushes that grew in their front yard. I was determined to swish any leaves away from my feet before they could hurt me.
The Chapmans’ dock was very wide, and Ned had moved their boat to one side so that there was still plenty of room for my swimming lesson. The entire male contingent of the Chapman family was there, plus Ned’s friend, Bruno. Ned and Bruno were cleaning the interior of the boat with rags and a bottle of blue detergent, and “Sherry” was playing on a transistor radio that rested on the bulkhead. Ned was as tan as his black-haired friend, and it was the first time that I realized that some blondes could tan every bit as well as people with darker hair. I liked that Ned was there, since he was a lifeguard. It made me feel a tiny bit more secure.
Skinny Ethan stood in the water to encourage me, and Mr. Chapman leaned against a tree near their dock, watching us approach the concrete incline.
“Are you ready to learn how to swim today, Lucy?” Mr. Chapman asked me.
“Maybe,” I said, my eyes on the water.
My mother held my hand as we walked onto the slope. It was not what I’d expected; I could barely see the concrete for the slimy green growth covering it. I was afraid of slipping, and I clung tightly to my mother’s hand.
I stepped into the water up to my ankles.
“That’s good,” my mother said. “It’s not too cold. Isn’t it nice?”
I nodded, concentrating on the dark water in the dock. You couldn’t see what was below the surface. I’d watched Julie net a zillion crabs in our dock and I knew this one would be just as full of them. Through the ankle-deep water, I could see that my toes were exposed and vulnerable.
“I need to go get my flip-flops,” I said.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Because of the crabs.”
“The crabs have better things to do than munch on your toes,” Bruno said. He was kneeling on the bow of the boat cleaning the windshield. He was wearing his swimming trunks and nothing else, and I had never seen a body like his before. Even his muscles had muscles.
“Use my flip-flops,” Ethan called from the water. He pointed to the sand behind us where his flip-flops had been carelessly kicked off, one of them resting on the other. I scrambled back up the slope and put them on. They were too big, but they would have to do.
“Look, Lucy!” Ethan said, when I’d returned to the ankledeep water and the safety of my mother’s hand. He was standing at the bottom of the slope, or so I assumed. I couldn’t really see. “It’s only up to my waist here.” He held his arms out above the water. I could see every one of his ribs.
“Let’s take one more step,” my mother said. “Just one step at a time.”
I wanted to give her something, and so I did it. I took a baby step down the slope and shivered as the cool water inched halfway up my calf. My teeth were starting to chatter. I could barely make out my toes now, and I kept hopping from foot to foot to keep the crabs away. The flip-flops were not enough to make me feel secure. I should have worn my sneakers.
“It’s easier if you get in all at once, Lucy,” Ned said. He was the expert and I knew he was right, but I just couldn’t do it.
“One more,” my mother said, and I held my breath and took another step forward. The water lapped at my knees, and my teeth were chattering so loudly now that I was sure everyone could hear them. My arms were covered with gooseflesh.
“That’s great, Lucy!” Ethan said. “Keep coming.” He was patting the surface of the water like someone might pat the cushion of a sofa to encourage a friend to sit next to them.
“Are there crabs by your feet?” I asked him.
“No!” he said. “The crabs are afraid of you. They see your feet and run away.”
That did not reassure me. I wanted to hear that there were no crabs at all.
“What if they don’t see my feet until it’s too late? Then they’ll bite me.”
“You’re being a big baby, Lucy,” Bruno said from his perch on the bow.
“Leave her alone, Bruno,” Ned said.
“How do you stay so patient with her, Maria?” Mr. Chapman asked.
My mother looked up at him. “Haven’t you ever been afraid of anything, Ross?” she asked.
“Not like that,” he said, and I felt like a freak in a circus.
“I don’t want to do this, Mom,” I said. “Can we go home?”
“Please, Lucy.” My mother sounded as though she was begging me. I wanted to please her, but I was shivering all over. I didn’t think I could take another step.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t,”
Finally she gave up. She looked at Ethan. “Thanks for helping, Ethan,” she said.
“Sure,” Ethan said. He took a couple of steps backward into the deeper water and began treading. Why could he go into water that deep and I couldn’t?
Why was I the only one to feel such fear?
My mother and I climbed back up the slope and I felt relieved to be on level ground again. I unbuckled the life preserver and kicked off Ethan’s flip-flops.
We had taken a couple of steps in the direction of our bungalow when I suddenly felt myself being lifted up and tossed into the air, the life preserver flying off my arms. I may have screamed; I don’t know. I do remember my mother shouting “Ross!” as I fell. I saw the bulkhead whip by in front of my eyes, and then I was in the deepest part of the Chapmans’ dock. I shot beneath the water’s surface, flailing my arms in the green, blurry, underwater world. I could hear voices, muted shouts. Then I broke through the surface of the water, gasping for breath, my mother holding me up, her dark wavy hair wet around her face.
“You’re okay, darling,” she said to me, her hands firm and secure on my rib cage.
I was sobbing. I pressed my head to her shoulder.
“Why’d you do that, Dad?” I heard Ethan ask.
“It’s the best way to get over a fear,” Mr. Chapman was saying. “Just jump right in. See, Lucy?You were in the deep end and you didn’t drown.You bobbed right up to the surface.” His voice was kind, but I was never going to go near him again.
My mother half carried me back to the slope, where she set me down and took my arm, walking me up the slimy green surface, and I saw then that she, too, was crying. At the top of the slope she let go of my arm, marched over to Mr. Chapman and smacked him hard on his shoulder.
“How dare you!” she said.
Mr. Chapman rubbed his arm where she’d hit him. “If you took her to a psychiatrist—which might not be a bad idea—he’d recommend you do what I just did,” he said.
My mother grabbed my hand. “She’s not your daughter!” she said, starting toward our house with me. I had never seen her so angry. I could feel her fury in my fingers where she was squeezing them. She called back over her shoulder, “Don’t you ever lay a hand on one of my children again!”