Girl Underwater (23 page)

•

The Saturday swims turn into Saturday lessons at nine o'clock. Colin has been teaching the neighborhood kids since he was fifteen, and it shows. The younger ones clamor for space in his classes, while some of the eight- and nine-year-olds are now formidable swimmers on the local team. Colin was there when they took that first leap, when they swam their first strokes. If this pool had a mascot, it would be him.

While Colin teaches, I sit in one of the lawn chairs and watch. It surprises me how easily I'd forgotten the familiar sounds of kids learning to swim: the cries, the protests, the whimpers; then, inevitably, the laughter. Some have no fear whatsoever. They just march toward the edge of the pool and tumble in, their parents gasping as Colin scoops them into his arms. Others hate everything about the water: the shifting surface, the coolness, the depth. But even for them, there always comes a moment of sudden, breathtaking awe—the moment they learn to trust it. Not just the water but themselves.

I'm processing this utter transformation when a little girl tugs on my shorts. Her bathing suit is a faded, beloved purple, with orange swirls. Her hot pink goggles match her crooked cap. She looks like me at six years old. She could be me.

“Are you the other teacher?” she asks me.

“I, um . . .”

“With Colin. You're here every week.”

Colin smiles from across the deck but makes no move to join the conversation. The girl studies me, her goggles fogging up even as she talks.

“I just watch,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because . . .” I take a breath. “Because I'm scared of the water.”

“Oh.” She seems to think about this. “Why?”

Because it's so cold, and foreign, and hopeless. Because I thought we were going to die out there. Because it's everything I ever loved, and now it's everything I've ever hated.

“I don't know,” I whisper.

“Come with me,” she says, and gives my hand a tug. Colin watches as she leads me to the water's edge, our bare toes curling around the sun-beaten cement. This isn't the shallow end; it's deep, and blue, and fraught with uncertainty. It's where people drown.

“I can't—”

She tightens her grip. Colin comes up beside us, his familiar, summery scent washing over me as he takes my other hand. The fluttering in my chest subsides. The ripples of panic in my throat sink back down.

“I won't let go,” he says to me.

And then we jump.

D
awn over the lake breaks with a hum, soft and musical.

Every summer, the town of Brookline hosts outdoor concerts a few blocks from our house. The sound of their revelry was always just within range, though the finer details were lost, swallowed by the street noise. Only the echo of something faintly instrumental ever made it to my window.

This sound is like that, but couched in blackness. It grows louder, building and building until it fractures the silence, this dark, eerie hour—everything. The cold snaps up my spine like a jolt of electricity. My face and fingers are numb. My nose is crusted in ice. I try to lick my lips, but my tongue feels fat and dry, and my muscles won't respond to the command.

The hum is now a drone. A roar. An engine.

A plane.

My vision takes an agonizing moment to clear. Colin's eyes are closed, his lips tinged blue. The boys are still curled up in our laps, their bodies warm—
warm!—
to the touch. I don't have the time or forethought to rouse them. I just go.

I try to kick open the door, but snow is everywhere. Four, maybe five feet high, surrounding us on all sides. My first thought is an avalanche—
How else could there be so much snow?
Then I remember the storm's final phases: the lightning, the hail, the violent gusts of wind. We must be buried in a snowdrift.

Placing both hands on the roof, I push upward with my back, legs, and shoulders. The fuselage barely moves. I try again, fighting the electric pain in my hands and arms, the relentless ache in my ribs. For what feels like hours, this process continues. Finally, something shifts and one of the slabs gives way. I clamor up and out and into the snow.

Dawn.
Calm, scarlet skies, the snow-capped peaks casting shadows on the valley below. Everything is breathlessly clear. Not a cloud in the sky.

In this scene of perfect stillness, the hum has gone silent.

No.
No.
I want to cry. Scream. Hurl myself into the abyss of this godforsaken lake and succumb. After all we've been through, how much we've survived . . .

I drag myself toward the water's edge, no longer knowing why or how or for what purpose—something simply draws me there, an invisible force tugging at my soul. My body doesn't feel like mine anymore. I'm so cold and tired. So utterly spent after days in a wilderness that hasn't shown a shred of mercy.

Then, of course, I see it. The orange duffel bag floating an impossible distance from shore. The blowing ice and snow scratched my corneas, and it's hard to see much of anything. But I know it's out there. That stupid bag and the unreachable cabin are the only constants in this savage, ever-changing place.

Cold, clear water laps at my feet. I'm not the teenager who swam across Otsego Lake, a placid but solid nine miles. I'm not the eighteen-year-old who swam to Alcatraz on one of our family vacations out west. I'm weak, and exhausted, and as close to death as I've ever been.

But as Colin would say, I'm still a
swimmer
. A distance swimmer. And there is a distance before me now, a deathly stretch from here to there.

I
have
to do this. For the families we left behind, for the one I found out here. Tim, Liam, Aayu.

Colin.

The air smacks my bare skin as I peel off my heavy layers: gloves first, then hat and boots and everything else. The stinging lashes don't affect me as much anymore. I'm numb. My legs wobble as I shuffle toward the water's edge, my knees giving way as the icy water meets my toes. For so many years, this sensation was entirely different; getting wet was like coming home. Now it feels like my final act. A battle waged against a cruel mistress who doesn't care about all those years, all those memories. I never belonged in the water. I never belonged
here
.

My brain squeezes like a fist as I dive in, recoiling against the cold. The first few strokes are a desperate, ugly effort. Shoulders aching, chest splintering with each breath. It's more than pain; it's agony, visceral and electric. An icy blackness encroaches my vision, stealing my ability to form a coherent thought. My first and only urge is to sleep—how sublime it would be to sleep.

Somehow, I find my rhythm: arms reaching, hips rolling, the two-beat kick. These motions sustain me onward, across a body of water so expansive it seems never to end. I'm nearing the limits of my reserves when the orange bag floats into my grasp.

The bottom is charred black, but the label is somehow intact:
EMERGENCY
. I loop one of the straps around my ankle, but it must be snagged on something because it resists me after a few strokes. I pull hard, thrashing and yanking and treading water, trying to set it free while staying afloat in frigid temperatures. Numbness gives way to fear. A vacant sky littered with distant stars and a crescent moon mocks my efforts. I want to scream, but my muscles are numb, my lungs cold and raw and failing.

You're going to make it.

Colin's voice sweeps through me, and although it's just a memory, it feels real, heightened somehow. It reminds me of the last time he made that promise—and the fervor with which he kept it. It makes those thoughts of giving up a little less visceral.

So I keep fighting it, until finally, finally, the strap gives way—

And the bag rips open.

I'm too clumsy with cold to catch the contents: Bottled water, packets of food, medicines. Something plastic and angular that feels like a flare gun. I will never know for sure. All that matters is that hope, once again, is lost.

I tread water for a precious few seconds. My head throbs, my muscles ache, and it feels, impossibly, like I'm burning alive. Another ten minutes out here, and I will freeze to death, then drown. A swimmer's worst nightmare—and certainly mine, since that day fifteen years ago when my father sat me down at the kitchen table and explained what it meant to die.

Ahead of me, the opposite shore looms in all its impossible, terrifying mystery. I never thought I could make it, but I'm halfway there now. Three-quarters of a mile to that damn cabin, maybe a little less. Fifteen minutes if I swim to the point of exhaustion. If it takes me longer than that, I won't make it at all.

Every stroke is harder than the last, and my rhythm deteriorates into clumsy, disjointed movements. My legs float behind me like deadweight, a motor with no engine. I can barely breathe. The frigid water fists my heart, hard, and takes hold. I wait for my lungs to give out and my arms to stop working.

In the meantime, I keep swimming.

The shore draws closer, but not fast enough, because the cold finally wins, and my body sighs with exhaustion, and my legs sink—

And hit stones. Soft, polished stones.

Land.

Then: music. A soft hum cresting the mountains and rolling into the valley like an approaching train. Or no, not a train—a
plane.

My legs refuse to carry me, so I crawl through snow to the tree line. My blood must have frozen because my fingers are a stony white, my skin dusted with ice crystals. And yet my heart keeps beating and my lungs keep breathing, which gives me purpose. The cabin is just ahead. Reachable.
Real.

I punch open the tiny window and crawl inside. A brief search yields flares—a dozen of them stacked in piles like orange cigars. I carry the box back down to the water's edge and into the open. It takes only a second to set the first flare, and a second more to let it go.

It rains across the sky in a dusting arc, a blaze of color that reminds me of Boston's epic fireworks display. I set off another flare, and another, even after the plane—or no, it's a helicopter—changes course. It sails over the black surface of the lake, suspended in boundless skies as it accelerates in my direction. Its approach fills me with a strange sense of undeserved accomplishment. It doesn't feel real, like I'm dreaming someone else's dream, imagining someone else's rescue.

As it lands, the world in front of me starts to break apart. Distant shouts, then voices, filter into my consciousness, but everything seems so far away. I know this feeling; I've experienced it many times before, in what feels like a hundred different lifetimes.

I'm underwater—drowning, drifting.

Gone.

•

I wake sometime later to the sound of churning propellers and shouting. A team of people are unloading me off the helicopter onto the roof of a building.

“Wait.” I manage to grasp someone's arm. “Wait!”

No one hears me. I palm the oxygen mask and rip it off my face.

“The others,” I rasp. “The others, please . . .”

The gurney I'm lying on jerks to a stop. A female doctor with startling gray eyes and a midwestern accent leans in close, her ear nearly touching my lips.

“What did you say?”

“The others.”

She gives me a blank look that haunted me then; it haunts me still.

“What others?”

T
he chlorine stings the whites of my eyes, but it's nothing like the icy burn of a glacial lake. It's familiar. Normal. Everything is blurred but somehow heightened. The little girl with pink goggles grins at me, then kicks her way to the surface.

Colin's eyes are open, too, but he doesn't go anywhere. He grasps both my hands, holding on to them as he promised he would. We sit on the bottom of the pool, our legs stretched in front of us, bubbles rising to the surface.

Thank you,
I say, mouthing the words so he can understand.

As we float to the surface, everything suddenly comes into focus. Our story isn't about two star-crossed lovers who survived five days in the wilderness.

It's about two people who found their way home.

W
ith the exception of Tim's baseball games, my interactions with Colin are limited to the Dorchester community pool. His days are busy, with work and classes and family obligations. We live from Saturday to Saturday, until one day, the routine changes.

I'm on the porch, listening to the drone of the late-summer cicadas, when Colin arrives just after dawn. He opens the car door, stealing a glance at my shoulders as I climb in. He's looking for swimsuit straps, which he does every time he picks me up. As usual, he sees only my bare, freckled skin.

After fiddling with the vents—“Are you warm enough?”—and being chastised—“It's eighty degrees outside!”—he focuses on the road. He taps the steering wheel as he drives, a rare display of nervous energy. Every minute or so, his phone beeps with a message.

“Someone really wants you,” I say, angling for a view of the display.

“My sisters,” he says. “They're wondering where I am.”

“At six thirty on a Saturday?”

“I'm on breakfast duty every Friday, but I missed yesterday. Had to go to work early because one of the guys had chest pain.”

“Oh.”

“He's okay, don't worry—back to work in the afternoon,” he says, like this kind of thing happens all the time. “But it really devastated the Shea breakfast routine.”

“You must be a good cook if they're texting you at the crack of dawn.”

“Terrible, actually.” He glances over at me again to see if I'm shivering. “You cold?”

“I'm fine, Colin.”

He will never accept this, but at least now it's a bit of an inside joke.

“We can skip the pool today, if you want.” I roll down the window, suddenly desperate for air.

Colin's response comes before the words are even out of my mouth. “We'd love to have you,” he says. Then, a little embarrassed: “I just hope you're not hungry.”

“Why? Is there not enough food? I could run to the store—”

“Because I've yet to cook an edible meal.”

I give him a look that says,
Yeah right.

“I'm serious.”

“You used to make a delicious chip soup.”

He smiles, and the tension in my belly—wherever it came from, whatever it means—blossoms into something almost like warmth.

•

Breakfast at the Shea household is a spirited affair. There is no real order to it, despite Colin's role as chef, cook, waiter, etc. His sisters spend most of the prep time sprinting from bedroom to bathroom to bedroom again, getting ready for their various activities. A household of teenage girls—
whoa.
My mom could barely handle one.

Colin explains their various obligations: The youngest, Corinne, has summer camp. Elizabeth failed gym (“a total scam,” she explains), so she's on her way to Saturday classes. And the eldest, Lauren, volunteers at a nursing home down the street. They offer sporadic details at a rapid clip, their Boston accents so thick it sometimes requires clarification. Colin tells me they're just hamming it up; they like to mess with folks from “Snobsville.”

Corinne, though, is shy and deferential, like her big brother. Once we're sitting down, she asks me thoughtful questions about my interests and listens with rapt attention. She looks about thirteen, a startling image of her mother.

“You're so pretty,” she says. “Just like Colin said you were.”

The other girls glare at her, as if she's just spilled some terrible secret. Colin's short hair does nothing to hide the blush creeping up his neck as he flips the pancakes.

“Thank you,” I say. “You know, you look just like your mom.”

She beams. “Really? She was so beautiful. Even when she lost her hair.” She stares at her empty plate for a long moment. “Did you know Colin shaved his head to make her feel better about it? I know the team only does it for big meets and stuff, but he kept it that way for a really long time—”

“Done!” Colin announces, clicking off the burners with an air of finality. Sweat trickles down his brow, which he wipes with the back of his arm. His collar is damp, his skin glistening. He smells good, though. Somehow, he always smells good.

If he heard Corinne, he doesn't show it—nor does he comment on my silence. He says nothing as he serves a heaping stack of pancakes, a pile of eggs, crisp bacon and toast, and an impressive assortment of accoutrements. The eggs are a little runny, and the bacon is on the charred end of the spectrum, but no one seems to notice.

Colin and the girls mutter a lightning-fast prayer, barely a mumbling of the lips. “My mom's tradition,” Corinne explains via whisper. Then we dig in.

The food is gone in minutes, attacked by a crowd of hungry teenagers. Colin returns to the stove twice to replenish the plates, and by the time he finally sits down for good, the girls are already out the door, yelling good-byes and telling him to pick them up at such and such time.

A draft of cooler air sweeps inside, melting into the heat. Even the walls look like they're perspiring.

“You do this every Friday?” I ask, as the door slams behind them.

“Used to do it every day.” He samples a helping of cold eggs. “After my mom died, I tried really hard to keep some of her traditions going. But doing this on a daily basis wore me out. Now it's just Fridays and whatever other day I can manage—like today.”

I wait for him to say more about his mom—about those last few days, the sacrifices he made to make things easier for her. But Colin never was much of a sharer. He sips his orange juice in a contemplative silence.

“Do you miss her?” I finally ask.

He nods, the smile on his face wistful but not sad. “All the time.”

For just a moment, he closes his eyes and breathes it in: the hum of the ancient, wheezy air conditioner, the absence of chatty girls and all their obligations, the quiet of a weekend morning. Then he sees the aftermath of a family meal, and it's back to reality again. He gets to his feet.

“I'll clean,” I tell him. “You rest.”

He gestures to the huge stack of dishes. “I didn't bring you over here to clean up after five people.”

“The cook never cleans.”

“This cook does,” he says.

I glare at him before heading over to the sink. The truce lasts for about a minute before Colin joins me, dish towels in hand. It's even hotter over by the stove—or maybe it's just him. His body heat has a languid, seductive effect. I just want to lean into him.

Hot water from the faucet fogs the glass, obscuring the view of the neighbors' small but tidy yards. I turn it to cold—ice cold, as far as it will go. I try to focus on the dishes. The homey, flowery china. The old jelly jars substituting as glasses. The pots and pans and . . .

He reaches over me, his hand grazing mine as he turns off the faucet. The sudden contact makes me dizzy. The way he lingers—a shade of a second, just enough for me to notice—makes me feel something else entirely.

Something like wanting.

I put the plates down and turn, slowly, to face him. My hands are dripping wet, my skin slick with sweat. It's a strange, luxurious feeling—a kind of reckless abandon. There is no hope for propriety in hundred-degree heat. I back up against the sink and run my wet hands through my hair. It doesn't help much, not like I expected or even wanted it to.

Colin clears his throat. “Hot?” he asks.

“Hot as hell,” I murmur.

He smiles, but there is nothing soft or shy about it. His mind is elsewhere—on my hands, my hair, my soaked shirt. His voice sounds deep and husky. “Good thing my sisters aren't here to chastise you.”

“Good thing.”

His eyes turn a shade darker as the teasing smile fades. He takes a step closer, and my shoulder blades hit the cabinets above the sink, arched and waiting. I wait for him to touch me again, to say everything I'm feeling, but he doesn't. He seems suspended in a lonely in-between—the place we've occupied for months.

So I just say it. “I fell in love with you.”

I take a step forward, indulging in the heat and charge and mystery of him. He holds my gaze with a feverish intensity, but he otherwise stands very still. I look up into those glorious blue eyes, wondering how I ever doubted the conviction there. How I ever doubted
him
.

“I love you, Colin.” My voice breaks, but I don't care. I want him to see me cry. I want him to know I was wrong, I was weak, I was terrified. “Colin, say something—”

Then he kisses me.

•

It isn't like our last kiss. This one is all heat and fire, bare skin and sultry sweat. An exploration that takes place in ways that are new yet familiar, this coming together of need and desire that never had a chance in a frigid nowhere. He tastes like mint and oranges, like a summer morning. I give in to it, breathing him in, dizzy with the scent and feel and taste of him. The kiss deepens. Frantic, fast, everywhere. I love the roughness of his hands, the ease with which he pulls me close. He's so strong. I can feel his muscles working against me, his hips driving into mine. He lifts me up like I weigh nothing at all.

He carries me toward the living room and up the stairs, careful to dodge the haphazard array of backpacks and textbooks littering the hallway. He knows this house. Knows its secrets, its quirks. There is no uncertainty in our hasty trek from kitchen to bedroom.

We're barely over the threshold when he stops. “Fuck, it's hot,” he breathes, and continues down the hall. He's kissing my neck when we bump into the bathroom door, stumble over the raised tiles, and end up in the bathtub. He turns on the shower and a sheet of deliciously cold water rains down on us. The change in temperature surges through me like an electric charge. My back hits the tiles, my legs still hiked around his waist. I open my eyes to see him breathing hard, his eyes swimming with desire. Water snakes down his face, his neck, his shoulders, until finally finding its way to his soaked T-shirt. He never even bothered to take it off.

So I do it for him. Slower now, fingers grasping fabric. I love the way he feels; I
remember
the way he feels. Strong. Warm. Vulnerable in ways that go so much deeper than physical scars. The water from the showerhead roams his shoulders and pools in my hands. I let my fingers wander up to his chest, a flutter of movement against his skin. He tenses. His heart thrums to the beat of rushing water.

“Don't stop,” he whispers.

I kiss his hands, his wrists, his bare, beautiful chest. He says my name and it reaches, somehow, across months of memory and pain and regret, and it finds me in a place that feels safe, and whole, and right.

I'm glad it was you.

He lets me linger, then kisses me again. The newness of it makes my blood hum, but Colin isn't like anyone I've ever kissed. He seems to know me. My wants, needs, desires. Our tempo has a duality to it, a naturalness that goes beyond mutual understanding. I'm not trying to breathe right, or turn my head the right way, or kiss him the way he wants me to. I don't think about those things at all.

When I'm with him, I never have to.

“Stay,” he breathes against my hair. There is nothing polite about the way he says this, no tentative gentility in his hard, needful gaze.
Stay.
As if the word itself has physical power.

He leans back, hands sliding from my jaw. When he sees the gooseflesh on my skin, he turns the water off, but instead of losing its magic, the moment gains a surreal, tangible sadness. I feel as though my very soul is separating.

“Stay,” he says again.

Stay.

Swim.

Breathe.

I never doubted him when he willed me to survive. His conviction carried five people from the wilds of Colorado to the comforts of Boston; in so many ways, he brought us home.

And now, here, at
my
hand, it ends. I can't stand to look at him as I shake my head, stumble out of the tub, and leave him behind.

This time, there won't be any going back.