The Cape Ann (15 page)

“My underpants?”

“If you let me wear your underpants, I can go swimming with you.”

It was perfectly true that children our age sometimes went swimming in their underpants, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted to lend mine.

“I’d let
you
wear
mine,”
she said. I must have looked unimpressed, because she added, “Please.”

Beverly wasn’t a child easily moved to say “please.” In her need,
she had stretched to the furthest boundary of her social grace. I pulled my cotton underpants from the bundle.

“You can come in while I take off my overalls,” she told me. “I don’t mind.”

“I’ll wait out here.”

We left our clothes with Mama, who noted my white underpants with pink rosebuds on Beverly’s tight, meager behind but said nothing. Except for her size, Beverly seemed very unchildlike to me. She had none of the shyness I associated with little girls. The niceties of social behavior were of no interest to her. What was important was to manage—to manage to get underpants, to manage to get money for a ride on the merry-go-round, to manage to get food. Beverly managed pretty well, though I felt a trifle buffeted in her wake, a bit resentful at her lack of conspicuous gratitude. Now I lagged peevishly as she marched like a quick shore bird on twiggy legs, head up, hurrying toward the water. Reaching the dock, she sprinted its length, hurling herself into the cold, glittering lake.

I plunked down at the edge of the dock and tested the water, scooping in and out with my feet. Beverly was swimming, really
swimming
, beating the water viciously with long, skinny arms, kicking—shlupp, shlupp, shlupp—with bony feet. I didn’t know how to swim yet. I could only do the dead man’s float, a sport about as exciting as its unfortunate name, and one marking me as a member of the Pollywog swim class. I’d never seen Beverly at swim class, but she was surely a Sunfish at least.

This was the summer, my instructor had assured me, when I would learn the crawl. The crawl was
power
. It was self-propulsion. It got you from here to
there
. Not from here to
here
, like the dead man’s float. If I could do the crawl from the dock to the diving raft and back, I’d be allowed to use the raft. Then I could learn to dive. The mere thought of diving made my head light. Diving was like singing harmony or typing without looking at the keys. It seemed like magic, but was something which could be learned. I marveled at that.

There was Beverly, hacking her way through the water as if she were cutting a path, clearing the way to the raft. Here was I, dabbling with my toes. There was she,
diving
. Well, belly flopping, but it was advanced belly flopping, with a purposeful, unabashed flair
to it. Each time she hoisted herself onto the raft with her chowmein-noodle arms, she’d hitch up my cotton underpants with the pink rosebuds on them, and then fling herself fearlessly back into the deep, dark ice water.

I poked along back to the shore and stood on the sand, where a delicate, brackish foam, like a lace frill, gathered at the water’s edge. Slowly, pulling my courage together, I inched forward, encouraging myself by reporting silently, “Now it’s covering your feet. Now it’s over the little white scar where you got cut on a nail in Aunt Betty’s garage. Now it’s at the bottom of your knees.” After a long time it reached my waist, and I ducked under to let the water cover my shoulders. It was colder than the inside of our refrigerator.

A hundred or more children and grown-ups were splashing and swimming and playing games. I tried to find an empty space to practice the dead man’s float. Now and then a vacant five feet or so would appear, and I’d lay myself out on it, bobbing like a cork until I ran out of breath or someone knocked into me. I loved the quality of sound when my ears were covered by water, the shouts and jokes and merry-go-round music muffled to murmurs, like those coaxing voices that drift into your ears from far away when you are falling asleep.

Then Beverly was there, pushing my head down further. I came up spluttering and coughing. “Don’t do that!”

Hands on her hips, bony chicken breast thrust out, she laughed and promised, “I’ll teach you how to swim.”

“Really?”

“Sure. You know how to float. I seen you floating.”

I nodded.

“Well, watch me.” She lay down on the water, arms extended ahead of her, floating as I had. Then she began to kick. Shlupp, shlupp, shlupp. And she was moving forward a little. I was amazed and delighted. That was something I could do. When Beverly stood up, I lay out and kicked my feet. Sure enough, I moved a little, too.

When I planted my feet to rest and breathe, Beverly ordered, “Now watch this.” Again she lay down in the dead man’s float. After a moment she began to kick. When she had propelled herself a short distance, her arms, one after the other, rose out of the
water and flailed down through it, to reemerge a second later and repeat the arc. It was hardly graceful, but there was no denying that Beverly advanced through the little jostling waves.

“You see,” she said, returning to where I stood, “swimming is just the dead man’s float with kicking and hitting.”

She was absolutely right. Why hadn’t I seen that? I lay down as she had, began to kick as before, and when I’d got that rhythm going, I started slapping away at the water as if I had carpet beaters attached to my shoulders. It took so long to coordinate all of this that I was nearly out of breath before I got organized, but I was going forward, even against the waves, and excitement overtook me so strongly I forgot to hold my breath. Choking, I waded back to shallower water, for I had plowed out into depths nearly over my head. I threw my arms around Beverly. “Thank you.”

“Godsakes,” she muttered, backing away.

“I can swim.”

“There’s more to it,” she pointed out practically. “You don’t know how to breathe.” Once more she admonished me to watch, though she needn’t have bothered. Nothing could have induced me to look away. Beverly was sharing her
power
, and I was deeply impressed by her generosity.

As I watched, she repeated the previous lessons, but this time when she’d whipped along for several feet, she lifted her head straight out of the water and gulped air. Then she resumed whipping and kicking. This was the tricky part, keeping yourself afloat while you raised your head to breathe.

I gave it a try, raising my head, glimpsing a rushing world of water and light, drinking half a glass of lake water as the swells from my own efforts sloshed into my open mouth. Sputtering and spitting, I waded sheepishly back to Beverly.

“I did that when I was learning,” she said. “So did Charlie.”

Charlie? Charlie was her little brother, a year younger than Beverly and me. Charlie was only in kindergarten. “Charlie can swim?”

“Sure.” She waited for me to get my breath. “Try again,” she exhorted.

Again and again I tried, each time taking on water until I began to feel half-drowned. Still I was buoyed by accomplishment. I was swimming, sometimes only a couple of yards, but
swimming
. This was one of the best days of my life. Life could go by, weeks and
months of it, and you didn’t feel that you were growing any older or any bigger. Then unexpectedly a day would come along when you learned something valuable, something powerful, and afterward you were bigger and older, and you knew it. And forever you loved the person who had taught you.

When I was exhausted, Beverly and I lay down on the dock. From the corner of my eye, I studied her. Her skin was slightly blue and transparent, like skim milk. Just under the skin of her narrow breast, her temples, the insides of her arms and thighs, lay intricate patterns of blue veins. Her shoulders and ribs and hip bones stood out in sharp relief beneath the sheer covering of skin. There wasn’t much to her. Where did she get her strength?

Beverly’s face was a pointy, mouse face. Her eyes were hazel, the surrounding lashes pale, thin, and stubby. She looked like she’d been lacking a little bit of everything when she was born, and had never caught up. But she could swim and she could dive. And she’d taught me to swim.

Beverly lived in a one-room shack, out past the lumberyard, without a refrigerator or running water, but there was something inside Beverly that was as staunch and sturdy as a telephone pole. My beloved Sally lived in a new cottage with dormer windows and a spare room, but she was hidden away at home on Memorial Day because her mama cried too much. Both were my friends now.

“I’m going to go tell Mama I can swim.”

“I’ll come with,” Beverly told me, jumping to her feet.

Halfway up the path, I started to run. “Mama, Mama, guess what! I can swim. Beverly taught me.” As I called out the news, a thrill ran through me; it was so strong it shook me like a chill. “Can you come watch?” My teeth were chattering, not from cold but from excitement.

“That’s wonderful. I’ll come down a little later. Put the towel around your shoulders. You’re shivering.” She set out my wedge of blueberry pie on an old piece of church crockery. “Here’s a fork,” she said. “Bring them back when you’re finished. Beverly, what kind of pie would you like?”

“I ain’t got no money.”

“This would be for teaching Lark to swim.”

“What kind you got?” Beverly asked, pressing herself up against the counter.

“Apple, blueberry, and raisin.”

“Raisin. I never had that.”

Mama cut into a fresh pie and lifted out an extra large slice. Handing it to Beverly on another church plate, she said, “Thank you for teaching Lark to swim. I’m proud of both you girls.”

When Beverly and I returned our plates and forks to the baked goods booth, Mama warned, “Now don’t go swimming for half an hour. You don’t want to get cramps.” Bending down to me, she placed a quarter in my hand. “That’s for you and Beverly.”

If this day got any better, I’d have to sit down because I’d be too excited to move. Passing the quarter to the merry-go-round man, I asked, “How many tickets for that?”

“Three for you, three for your friend, and a nickel left for an ice cream cone.”

Beverly and I grinned at each other in disbelief. “Godsakes,” Beverly breathed. Climbing onto the merry-go-round, we each scurried to claim our favorite animal before someone else got to it. I mounted a wildly galloping black horse with bright, colored-glass stones in his harness, while Beverly, still wearing only my cotton underpants, scrambled onto the back of a vaulting lion.

How we flew! With each rise and forward leap of my horse, my happiness rose and leapt similarly until it seemed the great black steed would spring into the musical air. I gripped the pole with both hands, but Beverly, some distance away, held on casually with one bony blue hand and waved to me. I smiled and nodded. She waved to people waiting to get on the merry-go-round, and she waved to the man who ran it. Then she waved to picnickers far afield. When bootlegger Barney Finney, who’d given Beverly a lift to the picnic, strolled by on his way to the bingo tent, she waved and called out, “Hey, Barney, look at me on the merry-go-round!”

Beverly wanted to ride three times in a row. “I’m going to ride two times and come back later,” I told her.

She looked dubious. “What if we lose our last tickets?”

We left our tickets and nickel with Mama and made our way over to the tilt-a-whirl to watch it swinging round and round, up and down, the cars spinning in violent circles. “I’d like to ride
that,”
Beverly declared warmly.

“Not me.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be so scared, I’d cry.”

Beverly gave me a scornful glance. “Godsakes,” she muttered disgustedly.

“Let’s look at the booths.”

Wandering from stall to stall, we inspected ratty-looking foxtail collars and imitation Dresden vases in the white elephant booth; gaped admiringly as high school boys hurled balls into the open mouth of a plywood clown; fingered crocheted antimacassars in the handiwork stall until Cynthia Eggers told us our hands were filthy and we shouldn’t touch. Taking in Beverly, Cynthia queried pointedly, “Where are your clothes?”

“Mrs. Erhardt’s got ’em.”

“You shouldn’t run around in just your panties.”

“They’re not
my
underpants,” Beverly explained.

“That’s even worse.”

Ambling back past the white elephant booth, my eye was struck by an item I’d missed before. “What’s that?” I asked Mrs. Navarin.

“An ocarina,” she said, laying it on the counter in front of me. “Sometimes it’s called a sweet potato.”

“What do you do with it?” I wanted to know.

“You play it,” she said, putting it to her mouth and blowing into it. It was apparent that Mrs. Navarin did not know the first thing about playing the ocarina, but it was also clear that the strange instrument was capable of producing sweet, round notes.

“How much is it?” I pursued.

“Ten cents.” She put it back on the table. “Would you like me to save it a few minutes?”

“I’ll run get Mama,” I promised, hurrying off, Beverly behind me.

“Mama, come quick. There’s a present for Hilly at the white elephant booth. Mrs. Navarin’s saving it.”

“Go on, Arlene,” Maxine told her, and Mama came away, wearing her frilly white-organdy bake-sale apron, her purse under her arm.

“Isn’t it perfect?” I exclaimed as Mrs. Navarin blew into it again.

“Well… I guess,” Mama agreed hesitantly. “I’m tone deaf, but if you think he’d like it, we’ll take it.”

Mama carried the ocarina (it even had a pretty name) back to the baked goods booth, and Beverly and I headed for the bingo tent to “have a look.”

“There’s Papa!” He was approaching from the parking lot, a
paper cup in his hand from which he drank, Barney Finney in step beside him. Barney said something which caused Papa to laugh hard.

“Papa,” I called, running toward him, “guess what I can do! I can swim! Beverly taught me. Isn’t that something? I’m getting to be really big now, aren’t I?”

Papa laughed and reached into his pocket. Drawing out a handful of coins, he gave me a quarter. “Run along now and play,” he said, laughing again.

“Can I go on the tilt-a-whirl now?” Beverly asked.