Learning to Swim (4 page)

“Mmm,” he said, gracefully gathering up the box and the milk carton, and stuffing most of another slice in his mouth as he disappeared.

“Thanks for watching Tiger,” I called out. I heard a muffled reply.

The boy’s eyelids were drooping. “Are you sleepy?” I asked.
“Tu veux dormir?”
I led him to the bedroom, and convinced him to set the half-eaten slice of pizza on the bedside table. I pulled down the covers on my bed, and he crawled in, Tiger jumping up after him. Some people think it’s barbaric to let your dog sleep with you, but I like that warm body snuggled in the curve of my knees. My dog, my house, my rules. One of the many reasons I’m single.

In the bathroom I spread the contents of my wallet out to dry on a towel, tossing out the wet business cards. Now I remembered I had to call Thomas.

Sometimes I wonder what Thomas sees in me. I’d met him late last summer when he was in Lake Placid for a running race, and he pretended not to care that I wouldn’t commit to dating just him. Not that guys were lining up to take me out, but you never know. He’s a history professor at the University of Vermont, and the most methodical and organized person I’ve ever met. He would never do anything on a whim, like diving into Lake Champlain. Nor would he understand what had compelled me to do so.

So I didn’t tell him. I said an emergency had come up and I had had to turn back to babysit someone’s son. Which was true, sort of. Anyone else might have asked for details, but not Thomas.

The conversation ended awkwardly, as it always does. I know Thomas wants to say “I love you,” but the natural response would be “I love you, too.” And I don’t, which I’m sure he knows. I can’t lie about it, and he knows that, too.

Something’s missing, and I don’t know if it’s him or me. He’s smart enough that I don’t have to limit my vocabulary around him.
We both like to run and bike and cross-country ski, and, well, all his parts are in good working order. At times I think I should end the relationship so he doesn’t keep hoping it’ll turn into more. But I would miss him, I think. So I do nothing. And feel more than a bit like a cheat at times like these.

I went down my creaky stairs to shut the door that closes off my stairwell. As I clicked the deadbolt, my brain went into replay, seeing the boy falling, me diving in, the long swim, the dreary walk, as if on a tiny screen inside my head.

If you threw a child in the lake, would you stay to watch him drown?
Could anyone have seen me rescuing him? Like an icicle moving down my spine, the next thought arrived:
If you threw a child in a lake and knew he survived, would you come looking for him?
I tried to reason it through. But because I couldn’t imagine tossing a kid off a boat in the first place, trying to work out the subsequent thought process was futile.

The boy was curled up in the bed where I’d left him, facing the wall, with Tiger next to him. The bedroom window was open a few inches, as always during the months with no snow on the ground. But if someone banged a ladder against the side of the house to try to get in, I’d hear it. Or Tiger would.

As I brushed my teeth I scowled at my reflection in the wavery mirror. My face was haggard, with dark shadows under the eyes. I don’t know when I’d last needed sleep this badly. I had to concentrate to keep the toothbrush moving.

I tiptoed into the bedroom and eased into the bed. I pulled the covers up and settled down on my side, back to the boy, Tiger between us. I closed my eyes and was just about immediately halfway to Never Never Land.

“Trrroy,” came a quiet murmur beside me.

“Mmm,” I said, too tired to turn over.

“Je m’appelle Paul.”

I lay in silence for a moment, hearing the small sounds of his breathing. “Okay, Paul,” I said at last. “Sweet dreams.
Fais de beaux rêves.
”

I
WOKE ABRUPTLY, IN THE SAME POSITION I’D FALLEN ASLEEP
. Sunlight was streaming in the window, and the dust in the air seemed to dance on the windowsill. Tiger was standing beside the bed, giving me that look that said I was sadly neglecting her. I peered at my bedside clock: 8:47. I never sleep this late. I’m a roll-out-of-bed-at-7 kind of girl. Or earlier.

For a moment I wondered if I had dreamed it all: the drive, the ferry, the child, the swim. Maybe I’d never left the house to go visit Thomas. I pushed myself up on my elbows and turned and saw the small body, facing me, sleeping hard, curled into a tight ball.

Troy, what have you done?
I could almost hear the words, an inner Jiminy Cricket. What the voice should have been saying was
Troy, who are you?
I’d woken up yesterday as one person and today as a different one. This person had dived from a ferry and rescued a child and brought him home with her. Troy Chance didn’t do things like that.

But I had.

It seemed to make sense at the time
. I could hear someone saying this in earnest explanation: a driver who convinced herself that she hadn’t really hit someone, that it was just a bump in the road or a wild animal, and it wasn’t safe to stop. Or a woman who took home a baby she found in a pram outside a store, because clearly she could take better care of it than the person who left it alone.

I could wake this child now and walk him to the police station a block away and explain that I hadn’t been thinking clearly yesterday—that the coldness of the water, the length of the swim, the shock of
finding a child thrown away, all had robbed me of the ability to think rationally. They’d believe me. This was a small town: people knew me and liked me. I’d been the sports editor of the daily newspaper; I’d covered their kids’ baseball and hockey games, soccer tournaments, and track meets, put their photos in the paper, spelled their names right. I’d be a hero for rescuing a child, and not reporting it right away would be swept under the rug.

But I had known what I was doing
.

I had saved a boy someone else had thrown away, and had made the decision not to turn him over to authorities, not to risk him being sent to a bad foster home or returned to the person who had tried to drown him. I’d found him and he trusted me, and I’d made the decision that he needed to be with me. For now.

Sitting there propped up in bed, I watched the boy sleeping, his body moving slightly with each breath.

It wouldn’t sound rational to anyone. I knew that. But neither had it been rational to have been on deck on a gray misty day—or to have believed what I saw was a child, or that I could find him in the murky water. Or that we could survive that long cold swim to shore.

But we had. And maybe I wasn’t meant to blithely pass him on to someone else.

I eased myself out of bed and bit my lip not to groan. I wouldn’t have thought swimming could cause such pain; I felt a million years old. The boy didn’t stir. I hobbled out to my office and clicked my computer on before heading down to let Tiger out. As she gratefully relieved herself on the grass, my brain inched into gear.
Maybe the boy’s parents hadn’t been on the ferry
. Maybe someone had snatched him—like the young Las Vegas boy I’d read about who had been abducted by drug dealers and abandoned—and then dumped him into the lake.

But what if his parents or guardian or stepparent had done it, but claimed someone else had? Susan Smith had claimed that a carjacker had taken her car with her two small sons, but she had been the one who had driven them into a lake to drown. If I saw a tearful news clip, would I be able to tell if that person was telling the truth?

I didn’t know.

I shook some food into Tiger’s bowl and climbed back upstairs. The boy was still sleeping. I sat at my computer and opened my browser.

If this child had been snatched by someone and dumped, the story would be all over the news, and it would be safe to let him go home. I should have checked last night, but my brain simply hadn’t been working. I’d be guilty of letting his parents endure a sleepless night, but I could trot out the
too tired, too cold, too confused
excuse. Which would be true.

Tiger climbed the stairs and wandered into the bedroom, and the bed creaked as she jumped on it. She was staying close to the boy.

I pulled up Google and searched
missing boy Vermont
and
kidnapped boy Paul
, then a variety of combinations. I found a depressing 2006 story of a mother who had drowned her eight-year-old son in Lake Champlain near the Canadian border, but that was all. The Burlington newspaper had nothing, but I emailed the news desk asking if they’d had any report of a missing French-speaking boy, using my anonymous eBay email address. Montreal was less than a hundred miles from Burlington, so I checked the newspaper there. Nothing. If frantic parents were pleading for the return of a beloved child, I couldn’t find them.

I Googled
missing children
, then searched MissingKids.com. I found the missing children’s website for the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and entered Paul’s name, gender, and eye and hair color.
Records found: 0
. I searched again, using no parameters other than gender, and came up only with two brothers, neither of whom resembled Paul in the slightest.

Then I looked up the Lake Champlain ferry website, and from the schedule saw that Paul’s ferry should have passed mine roughly midway in the lake, not a mile or two from shore. Maybe mine had been late or his early, or both—but otherwise, I never would have seen him fall. Five minutes earlier or later, and one small boy would have drowned.

I’d been hearing small noises from my bedroom, as if the boy was moving around. I went to the doorway, and it took a moment to
register that the bed was empty. No boy, no dog. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. I saw the window was open a few inches, just as I’d left it. For a split second I wondered if they could have crept past me while I had been engrossed in my research, but even I’m not that oblivious. Boy and dog had to be somewhere in the room, and there were only two options: under the bed or in the closet. My eyes went to the bedside table where we’d left the half-eaten piece of pizza. Okay, missing boy, missing dog, missing half slice of pizza.

“Paul,” I called out softly. “Paul, where are you?
Où es-tu?
”

A whine from Tiger. I eased back the hanging sheet that served as a closet door, and there was Paul crouched in the corner, one arm around Tiger, his other hand gripping the gnawed pizza slice—looking as if it were perfectly normal to hide in a closet with a dog and a piece of pizza. I knelt, a careful distance away. “Good morning, Paul,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Would you like some breakfast?
Veux-tu prendre le petit déjeuner?
”

He shifted but seemed unsure what to do. I snapped my fingers and Tiger obediently came toward me. “Did something frighten you?” I asked Paul.
“Tu as peur?”
No answer. “Paul, sweetie, come on out,” I said, opening my arms and letting a little emotion into my voice.

He wouldn’t look at me, and I waited a long, long moment. Finally he moved into my arms. I could feel the frailty of his limbs; I could feel his heart beating; I could almost feel his fear and confusion and loneliness. I hadn’t known you could form an attachment to a person so quickly, so atavistically. Had my sisters experienced this when their children were born? I realized I would do anything to protect this child.
“Je ne te blesserai jamais,”
I whispered to him. “I will never hurt you. Never.”

And I knew I wouldn’t be marching this boy down to the police station, not today, and possibly never.

T
HE BOY WAS LOOKING THOUGHTFULLY AT THE SLICE OF
old, cold pizza he was holding, as if considering eating it. Time for breakfast.

Even if I had run his clothes through the washer and hung them up to dry last night, they’d still be wet. I searched through my dresser and pulled out my snuggest Lycra sports shorts and tiniest T-shirt, and knotted two bandannas around his waist to hold up the shorts. They came halfway down his legs like baggy pantaloons, making him look like a tiny pirate. I turned him to let him look at himself in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. His mouth twisted with amusement, and for a moment he looked like anyone’s kid, playing dress-up.