Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
T he warmth that had been sitting in my chest and my knees and every body part in between now went ice cold. “Me go swimming?” That wasn’t part of the deal. When I invited Gary over, I was expecting just Kyle to go swimming. While Gary and I sat down at a table, fully clothed, and planned our next move to woo Janet.
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said, thinking fast. It was the truth, too. I had left my bathing suit back at my apartment. And even if I had a bathing suit, I certainly wouldn’t be prancing around half naked in front of Gary. “You brought your swim suit too?” I asked, just to clarify his intentions.
“Well yeah. Of course,” Gary said, as if him prancing around half naked in front of me was never in question. “You don’t have a swimsuit?”
“I never brought it with me,” I explained. “It’s still at my apartment.” My breath quickened and that warmth in various parts of my body suddenly returned.
“But you have a pool.” Gary pointed to the pool out the window, as if I didn’t realize it was there.
“Correction. Aunt Catherine had a pool. This was her house. Not mine.”
“But didn’t you move in?”
“Temporarily. Just until I’m done renovating so I can sell it.”
Gary looked at me like I was a crazy woman. “Why would you go back to an apartment when you now have this home?”
“Houses aren’t homes,” I said. It was a common mistake. One of the many myths propagated by the financial services industry. “Houses are assets,” I explained. “A piece of property to be bought and sold.”
“So you’re definitely not staying?”
“Certainly not.” I had no intention of staying in Aunt Catherine’s old house. Permanent relationships with a piece of real estate required commitment. Hard work. Maintenance. Things break. Every weekend turns into fulfilling obligations. No, thank you. Much better to keep things simple. “I never stay in one place. Buy, fix, flip, sell. Then leverage the profits for the next one.”
“That explains a lot,” said Gary. He had on his Freud face again.
“Will you please go swimming with us?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t like to swim,” I said. Which was true. I didn’t like being wet or even damp in general.
“This is Florida. You have to swim,” said Gary. “I think it’s a state law or something.”
“Then call the swimming police.” There was no way I was going swimming. No way in hell. “Besides, even if I wanted to swim, I couldn’t because I don’t have a bathing suit. As I already explained.”
Gary’s face brightened. “I have an idea.”
“What idea?” I had a feeling I would not like the idea.
* * *
Gary fetched a ladder from his van, then positioned it under the attic.
“If you find another vagrant cat up there,” I said, “I’m having the entire house exorcised by a priest.”
“Can you hold this steady?”
“What exactly are you planning to do up there?” I asked Gary’s butt as he climbed.
“The last time we were up here, I saw a bunch of boxes. One of them was labeled Clothes,” Gary called down.
I spotted Kyle at the far end of the hallway, waiting patiently. He was already in his bathing suit and swim floats. The inflatable orange rings hugging his arms were almost as big as his head.
Thump
The sound came from above me. “You okay up there?” I hollered.
“Yeah,” Gary called back.
Crunch
“Everything’s great!”
Thud
When I looked back down, Kyle was much closer, now in the middle of the hallway. I hadn’t even seen him move. He was still staring at me.
Crash
“You sure you’re okay?” I glanced back up through the opening into the attic. I couldn’t see anything. It was like a black hole. Or a portal to another dimension.
“Everything’s under control,” said Gary. “It’s all good.”
“It doesn’t sound like everything’s good,” I shouted. This time, when I looked back down, Kyle was standing right next to me.
“Holy hell,” I yelped. Remember the eighties horror movie Children of the Corn ? With the creepy kids with the white hair, standing in the middle of the cornfield? Yeah, it was like that.
Kyle just stood there for a while, staring at me. Thank God he wasn’t an albino, or I would have really freaked out. I could tell there was something on his mind. “Everything okay Kyle?” I asked.
“Purrfect ran away from me.” Purrfect ran away from me too, in most situations, so it didn’t surprise me. But Kyle seemed to take it personally.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s antisocial. Kind of an asshole, really.” It occurred to me I probably shouldn’t use the word asshole in front of a kid, but that cat was already out of the bag, so to speak. “Sorry. I didn’t mean asshole. I meant, ass.” The word ‘ass’ probably wasn’t any better.
Kyle continued studying me for a moment, then asked, “You don’t have a kid I can play with?”
“No, God no. I don’t have any kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with you. I mean, not you, you, as in you personally, I mean kids in general. Or you personally. I think.” I was blathering again. Talking to children was not a life skill that I had much opportunity to develop. As you can probably tell, I kind of sucked at it.
“How come you don’t have a kid?” Kyle asked.
How about a thousand reasons? “Because I’m not married,” I explained.
“My dad’s not married.”
“I know.”
“He has a kid.”
“He does.”
“He has me.” Kyle pointed at his chest. I may have been pretty dense occasionally, but I’m pretty sure Kyle took me as a fool.
“Well,” I said. “That’s different. He was married.”
“My mom’s gone now.”
“I know. Sorry.”
Kyle nodded again. I looked back up into the black abyss that was the attic door, wondering where Gary disappeared to. He needed to get back down quick. Kyle was asking a lot of questions and at that rate, it was only a matter of time before he was going to ask me to make him a flow chart and Venn diagrams to explain the birds and the bees.
“Were you ever married?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
How about a million reasons? “I just haven’t found a nice man yet.”
“My dad’s nice.”
“Well, yes. Yes, he is.” My brain scrambled for a new topic to change the conversation. But I did not know how to converse with an eight-year-old, as evidenced by the past five minutes we had been standing together in the hall.
Then it occurred to me. This was my chance. My chance to get some inside information. I still didn’t know Gary all that well. Did he go on a lot of dates? Was he even interested in getting serious with someone again after what must have been a very difficult divorce? It had taken my dad years to get back out there after what my mother did to him.
It made me wonder once again what happened between Gary and Kyle’s mother. How bad were the scars? How likely was it really that Gary would follow through on our plan to woo Janet? I thought it was a safe assumption that Ann was the one who had done the leaving. Gary didn’t seem like the leaving type. Gary seemed more like the getting left type. Regardless, this was my chance to get the inside scoop.
“I bet you and your dad were excited to come over,” I said. “So you could swim.”
Kyle nodded.
“Have you and your dad ever gone over to anybody else’s house to go swimming?”
Kyle shook his head. “We just swim at our house.”
“Wait. You have a pool at your house?”
Kyle nodded. At the park, after baseball practice, when Kyle had asked Gary to go swimming, I assumed he meant the public pool at the park. So that was why I offered for them to come over. If Gary already had a pool at his house, why did he accept my invitation to come here?
“Is your pool broken or something?” I asked.
Kyle shook his head.
“And it has water in it?”
Kyle nodded.
“Is it like filled with sharks? Or alligators? Or piranhas or something?”
Kyle shook his head again. Then he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Are you and my dad going to kiss?”
Luckily, I had made another batch of margaritas while Gary was fetching the ladder from his van. I picked my cup up off the floor where I had staged it while holding the ladder, then took a nice big gulp. I needed to buy myself enough time to plan a response. “No,” I said, as the tequila warmed the back of my throat. “No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”
“Is my dad going to kiss you?”
“No. No one’s going to kiss anyone.” I took another gulp of margarita and instantly regretted it, because now my glass was empty. Luckily, the sound of Gary’s voice saved me.
“Hey Mary,” Gary called down from the attic. “You might want to come up here and take a look.”
“Be right up!” Grateful for the distraction, I scampered up the ladder.
* * *
As soon as Gary grabbed my hand and hoisted me up through the opening, I asked, “What’s wrong?” I was afraid he had found a magic portal to hell, letting in an army of cats. And inquisitive children.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Gary said. “Just a lot of boxes to sort through. I figured it would go faster if we worked together.” Gary swept the beam of his flashlight so it illuminated the far side of the attic, where the boxes were stacked on top of each other from floor to ceiling. Gary took a step toward them, and the floor creaked.
“Make sure you stay on the crossbeams,” I warned. “Otherwise you could fall through.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Gary tiptoed across the attic, springing from beam to beam.
“You realize you’re wasting your time, right?”
“How do you figure?” Gary asked, pulling a box off the stack.
“It’s probably all junk.”
A box tucked under each arm, Gary balanced across a wooden board like a tight-rope walker in Cirque du Soleil. We each opened a box and started digging.
I pulled out a pair of polyester orange pants. “Even if we found a bathing suit in here, it would never fit.” Gary pulled out a faded denim jacket. “And even if it fit, I wouldn’t wear it.” I pulled out some green corduroy slacks. “And even if I wore it, I would never let you see me wearing it.”
Gary pulled out a mint green tablecloth. “So you’re proposing we go skinny dipping?”
“If you want me to go skinny dipping, we’re going to need another pitcher of margaritas.” Not giving him time to form a mental picture, I said, “Plus, there’s a small child present. I wouldn’t want to traumatize him. You’d have to take out a massive loan to pay for all the therapy.”
Gary’s flashlight pointed at the boxes, so I couldn’t see his face. Was he smiling? Frowning? Was his face stuck in a silent scream of terror? It felt like Gary stayed quiet for an eternity. I hoped he wasn’t dwelling on that stupid skinny dipping thing. It was only a joke. I mean, really, there was a child down there. Plus, I hadn’t waxed my bikini lines in weeks. There were a thousand reasons Gary Wright, and I would not be skinny dipping any time soon. Or ever. A million reasons. Damn it, now I was dwelling on the skinny dipping thing.
While I had been trying to wrestle my thoughts back under control, Gary grabbed another armful of boxes. For the next twenty minutes, we searched box after box. It was like Christmas morning, except instead of wonderful gifts and presents, it was old smelly boxes full of junk. We found pillowcases, towels, and a coffeemaker with a cracked glass carafe. The one thing we didn’t find was a bathing suit.
“Why do you care if I go swimming, anyway?” I asked as Gary handed me another box. By this time, there were only a few left to search.
“Kyle’s not a strong swimmer yet, so if he goes in the pool, I have to go in with him.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“Well,” said Gary. “If you come into the pool with me, I figured it would give you time to explain.” Gary frowned as he pulled an ancient-looking brassiere out of his box.
“Explain? Explain what?” I asked.
“The real reason you’re trying to set me up with Janet?” His face bathed in illumination from the flashlight, Gary met me eye-to-eye.
I had to do damage control, but something inside of me knew it was already too late. Like Kate Winslet, pulling out a roll of duct tape as the Titanic slipped under the waves. “I told you why I was trying to set you up with Janet,” I said, heart thumping faster in my chest. “She was obsessed with you.”
“Twenty years ago.”
“Yes, but …” My brain scrambled like an NFL quarterback with no offensive line.. “You and Janet are still a good match.”
“Well,” Gary said, his voice little more than a whisper. “It will be hard to match us when she’s already dating Jack Thompson.”
And there it was. The gig was up. All my plans came crashing down like a house of cards. “Gary …” I scrambled for the right words, but everything I tried to say ended up caught in my throat.
“Hey, look at this,” Gary announced cheerfully. “A bathing suit.” He pulled out a piece of clothing from the box, letting it dangle from his fingers. “I guess it’s your lucky day.”
It didn’t feel like my lucky day.
Not lucky at all.
* * *
When Gary said he found a bathing suit in Aunt Catherine’s boxes, I was expecting some sort of old lady bathing suit. Full body coverage. Polka dots. Ruffles. But this bathing suit must have been from Aunt Catherine’s glory days. When she was young, wild, and carefree. And enjoyed the feel of spandex between her butt cheeks. I suspected that maybe Aunt Catherine had once had a side hustle working as an exotic dancer.
I stared at myself in the mirror. The bathing suit was a two-piece. In a leopard print. The bottom didn’t even come close to covering my ass. Kind of like when my dad asked Janet about the funny smelling “cigarette” he found in my backpack. Janet had covered my ass then, about as well as Aunt Catherine’s bathing suit did now..
The top had a plunging neckline, that might as well have gone all the way down to my belly button. It looked like something Farrah Faucet or Bo Derek would have worn in a pinup poster, taped to the wall in a horny teenage boy’s bedroom.
I could see a lot more of my body than I wanted to see. Which meant that Gary would see a lot more of my body than I wanted him to see. Although now that he knew about Jack and Janet, he probably wouldn’t want to see me at all. Under other circumstances, I would have just cut my losses. Let Gary and Kyle go swimming while I put on a pair of cozy pajamas and locked myself in my bedroom with another pitcher of margaritas.
But now that I knew that Gary knew about Jack and Janet, I had to know how much he knew about Jack and Janet. And the only way to do that was to play nice in the sandbox. Or, in this case, play nice in Aunt Catherine’s pool. Resigned to my fate, I wrapped a towel around the entire length of my body and went outside to succumb to the humiliation.