Surfacing (15 page)

“I told the coach you had to go to the bathroom,” Julie said to her when Coach Mac gave the girls a short break. “You OK now?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Maggie said, “but everyone knows we all pee in the pool.”

Julie smiled. “Don’t get me started.”

The whistle blew; their break was over.

Maggie didn’t think that what her sister was doing was swimming — not real swimming anyway, even if it had gotten her a deep-water pass at camp last summer. It looked to Maggie like the doggie paddle as Leah headed right out to the middle of the pool.

She could have shouted out, reminded Leah about how soon Mommy was coming home. Made fun of her stroke. Stopped her. Called her back. Told her she wasn’t going to be able to hide her wet hair.

Stopped her. She could have stopped her.

Leah didn’t say anything while she made her way toward the slide and the ladder on the other side. Her head was barely above the water. Maggie remembers her sister’s head looking like a funny insect skimming the surface, bobbing up and down, like those water bugs you see on ponds and streams. When she got to the other side, Leah held on and waved back at Maggie.

“Hey there, Sis,” she called out.

Leah never called her that. It was all for Meghan’s benefit, to sound cool. To look like a big shot.

Maggie looked over to see if Meghan was outside, still acting as if she didn’t notice anyone in the blue, blue pool — to see if Meghan was still standing on her green, green lawn — but she had gone.

Things at home were so strangely the same that Maggie was able to ignore the surreal conversation she had had with her parents about divorce. The tension was still there, in the short responses and averted eyes, but if anything, her parents were fighting a little less. It was easy to pretend it hadn’t happened and that it wouldn’t happen, like a bad dream you can’t quite remember.

The morning of the state finals, Maggie woke up before her alarm went off, before any of the three fail-safe clocks — her cell phone, desk clock, and computer — chimed. The blackness always confused her. Was it morning? Was it midnight? Was it only a few minutes after she had fallen asleep or hours later? Finally she just got out of bed and flipped on the light in the bathroom. Only then did she remember her dreams. It was sometimes hard to distinguish a memory from a dream. Had that really happened, or had she dreamed it?

The house was silent. It was four thirty, December dark. Too late to go back to sleep. She had to get up in twenty minutes anyway.

Hosting the state finals was big business for West Hill. The athletic director, Mr. Eli, who had never come to a meet before, was wandering around checking on the ticket booth, the raffle booth, the two separate concessions. Six schools were all converging for a ten-hour event. Hundreds of spectators, competitors, and coaches. There were even rumors of scouts from Florida State, Penn State, and the University of Maryland being there.

“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” Nathan said. “I looked everywhere.”

Maggie was crouched by the entrance to the old boys’ locker room. It wasn’t used much, and the whole wing was slated to be torn down, renovated for a new ceramics and woodworking shop, but the water was still turned on. The sinks ran, the toilets flushed.

“Are you nervous?”

Maggie nodded. She was wearing her flannel pajama pants, a sweatshirt, and her pool sandals. Her goggles bulged from the side of her suit where they were stuffed into the leg opening. Her cap was bunched up in her fist.

“Are my parents here?” Maggie asked. “I haven’t seen my dad yet. Is my dad here?” She had scanned the bleachers when she came in but hadn’t seen her father.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him, but it’s mobbed out there. I could tell you it’s just a swim meet, right?” Nathan tried.

She nodded again.

“But that would be stupid, right?”

Nathan sat down beside Maggie. “Or that it’s supposed to be fun?” he tried.

“It’s not,” Maggie said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about something. I wanna make a date.”

“A date?”

“For ten years from now,” Maggie went on.

“What?”

“I don’t mean a date date, like a going out on a date. But a real number, a calendar date. For us to meet in the future, in our futures.”

Nathan shifted back. “Huh?”

Maggie pulled at Nathan’s arm. “Just wait. Just do this for me. Ten years from now, we meet at the Dutch Reformed church on Old Main Street. OK? Say, like, twelve noon. So wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, in ten years we each make it there at the exact same time, OK? No matter what?”

“And what if we’re still together? Did you even consider that?”

“Yeah, I did. If we’re still together, then we just have an anniversary. We go out to dinner or something. We mark ten years from when we first . . . you know.”

“You know the date?”

“You don’t know that date?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“OK, so ten years from that exact day. You can’t forget. I’ll write it down for us both, and you have to put it in a safe place. No matter what happens, we have to be there.”

Nathan stood up. “You must be really nervous, Maggie. It’s just a swim meet. If you guys lose, at least you can sleep in the rest of the semester. We can actually go to the movies.”

Maggie got to her feet beside him. “No, promise, Nathan. Promise me you’ll be there.”

“And eat pizza in public.”

“I’m serious. Will you be there? No matter what?”

“OK. OK,” Nathan said. “I promise.”

Her knees were shaking so much, it would have been audible in a silent room, the knocking together of her bones. Maggie knew that
real
athletes lived for these moments, for the moments when the difference between winning and losing hung in the balance, in determination, in flesh and muscles. And this moment was far from silent. There was cheering and yelling from the stands and the deck, and the echo of stomping on the metal risers was deafening. Then, just before the referee lifted the whistle to his mouth, the sounds lowered to an unnatural stillness. Maggie’s body seemed to know what to do, even if she didn’t. Her grip, the arch of her back, the readiness of her shoulders.

“Swimmers on your marks. Get set. Go.”

So many times Maggie had wondered about all the tiny things that might have been different. One shift in the lineal sequence of events, in somebody’s decision, one choice, no matter how irrelevant, and the story changes completely. Maggie was the only one who saw Leah’s considerable feat of both courage and skill. Maybe if she had looked impressed, if she had clapped.

Maybe if Meghan had come back out or stayed to see it the first time.

Instead, Maggie watched her sister head out again, across the pool, across the deep water. By this time, Maggie was getting anxious. She kept turning her gaze from the water to the road, where she thought she might see her mother’s car returning. But there were so many silver cars. Which one was her mom’s? She didn’t know, but at some point, her fear of being caught outside the apartment had changed to the hope that her mother would get back and find them, even if it meant getting in
big trouble
.

Maggie stood on the concrete deck now, taking a tiny step forward, another one back, her footprints drying in the heat almost as quickly she shifted from leg to leg. The last thing she remembers is the sun all of a sudden bursting out from behind the cloud where it had been hidden. She remembers thinking it was funny, as if someone had just flipped on a light switch.

But oh, no, they were outside. That’s funny.

The sunlight created a glare, a blinding reflection on the surface of the pool, so that everything became invisible, a white burst of blur. Maggie put her hand to her forehead to create a brim of shade, and when she was able to see again, she couldn’t see her sister anymore.

When a swimmer is right on your shoulder and you can hear her breathing, her strokes pulling and gliding, the splash of her hand slapping the water, her velocity and mass creating a momentum you cannot deny, it is all a blur. Everything you know about swimming flies away, and all you can do is hold your breath until your lungs are about to burst, until the pain is so great, and then push on past it.

You don’t see anything, not the line on the bottom of the pool, not your own hands diving through the surface and grabbing the water as if it were lead and forcing it behind you. You don’t see the marker, the end, the electronic timer pressed up against the side. You reach past it, beyond it. You swim as if you are going to crash right into the wall and never stop swimming.

Maggie hit the touch pad. Her head lifted into the air, and her lungs involuntarily filled with oxygen. A millisecond sooner and they would have taken in water, because that’s what lungs do. They breathe.

The LCD scoreboard lit up instantly with all the finishing times. All heads turned to look. Maggie’s lane recorded 4:12.41. In lane 5, right next to hers, the numbers read 4:12.02. Maggie had lost by less than four tenths of a second, an amount of time no human brain could comprehend. If she were swimming prior to 1912, the race would have been determined by a judge. He might have called a tie or made his decision based on bias. He might have blinked. He might have lied because he would have been human. Maggie didn’t think of any of these things. The team had lost their chance of going to Nationals.

The definition of time is, itself, circular. The very quantity needed to explain time is time itself. It relies on the acceptance that time is linear, made up of events in sequence, and time is the interval between them. Theoretically, in a dreamlike state, there is an infinite measure of the space from beginning to end. It never stops.

In three days, the high school would be on midwinter break, a quarter of the kids would get on a plane to some Caribbean island. In eleven hours and fourteen minutes, the sun would rise again and it would be tomorrow. In five days — in 120 hours, in 7,200 minutes — it would be the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and sometime after that, Matthew James would be returning home from college. Or so said his Facebook update, which Maggie hadn’t looked at in more than two weeks, or fifteen days, a perfectly reasonable amount of time.

“Dad? Mom?” she called out. “Dylan?” Maggie realized she sounded weak. It was hard for her to get enough force behind her voice. “Lucas?” she called out, louder, but no one responded. Mrs. Paris appeared instead, at the top of the stairs. She didn’t move to come down.

“Who dropped you off ?”

“Julie’s mom. Where were you guys? Where are Dylan and Lucas?”

“They’re at Grandma’s.”

“Again?” Maggie asked.

“Yes.”

“Where’s Dad?” Maggie asked, but she already knew. She knew now why he wasn’t at the meet. Why he wasn’t home.

The dress coat, the one he never wore, the one that hung year after year on the same hook in the hall, was no longer there. She looked down to the spot where his old sneakers were supposed to be sitting, side by side, worn only on weekends to jog. Without a word, Maggie ran upstairs, past her mother, and flung open the door to her father’s office. Mr. Paris didn’t often work at home, but he kept all his papers, his computer — her dad wouldn’t go anywhere without his computer — his books, letters he hadn’t opened, on a wooden table in an extra room on the second floor.

The table was gone. Papers, stacked or boxed, sat on the floor, pushed into one corner. No computer anywhere to be seen.

“You lied!” Maggie yelled. “You lied to me. He left. He said he’d stay, but he’s gone.”

Mrs. Paris had come, almost, into the room by now. She stood leaning on the door frame, her arms crossed over her chest.

“What are you talking about? Nobody lied. We both told you. We sat down together and talked to you about this.” Her voice was shaking. “Why are you crying, Maggie? You knew about this.”

“I’m not crying,” Maggie said, because she wasn’t and wouldn’t.

“You disappoint me. How are Lucas and Dylan going to be able to handle this if you can’t?”

There was a familiar voice in Maggie’s head, talking to her. And now it was angry. It repeated Mrs. Paris’s words, each one, just to make sure Maggie understood, and then filed them away for future use. In an instant, the voice tried out a shocking response and gave its approval.

“I disappoint
you
,” Maggie shouted back. “Are you fucking serious?”

She had never cursed at her mother before, but if any occasion seemed to call for it — and seemed likely to go unpunished — this was it.

Mrs. Paris took a deep breath. Her chest heaved up and down, taking her arms with it. Finally she spoke again. “We didn’t lie to you. Your father moved out this morning. He —
we
thought it would be easier if you kids didn’t have to watch.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Believe it or not, we were thinking of what would be best for you and the boys.”

Did her mother truly believe that her life, the way she behaved, the choices she made, had ever been for anyone other than herself?

“Like the way you left me and Leah alone?”

Maggie could see her mother’s body start to tremble. She watched as her mother’s face melted into another form, older, more tired. It was still her mother, but it wasn’t.

“I left to buy food. I left you safe inside the house. I told you to stay inside.” Mrs. Paris’s voice was unnaturally pitched, and with each word, it got higher, louder, and less familiar. “And why don’t you ask where your father was that day? It was Saturday, wasn’t it? Where was your father? Why don’t you ever ask that?”

Too late, Mrs. Paris’s hand flew up to her mouth and locked, a riveted metal clamp.

Maggie figured that her sister had gotten out of the water.

Boy, she is fast
.

Maggie kept her hand like a hat over her eyes and scanned the concrete that surrounded the pool. There would be footprints, wouldn’t there? Little wet Leah footprints.
She wouldn’t just leave me like this, would she?

The sun was so hot, but water couldn’t dry that fast. It had been a second, less than a second, since she had turned to look for Meghan. And Maggie was pretty sure there were no footprints. Leah shot up out of the water, just her face, her eyes wider than Maggie had ever seen them. No voice came out of her mouth, just a fierce popping sound.