Chapter 1 #2
The smell of the pool was only faint as we entered the building and nodded at the teenagers behind the front desk.
Charlie scampered past the tennis courts and through the double doors to the pool deck, jogging across the tile and concrete floor toward his team mates as I looked for a spot on the bleachers.
I waited for it: the lifeguard bellowed, “Slow it down! No running!” at Charlie and Charlie hollered back, “Sorry, Ruby!” Yep, they ran through that routine every practice.
I settled down and watched Charlie root through his bag to find his goggles and swim cap. He hated the cap, but his coach was making him wear it now that he had moved up to swim with the Sharks.
“Hi,” a man said and I felt the bleacher shake as he sat down. Neil, a swim parent. Alton’s dad? Dashiell’s? Not one kid on the team had an easy name to remember.
“Hi,” I answered and nodded briefly. I turned back to the pool and watched as Charlie slid in behind two older girls waiting at the second block.
They grinned at him and he smiled back and said something to them, holding up his swim cap.
One of the girls (Mac something?) smoothly pulled it on his head then helped him adjust his goggles.
Man, it took me about ten minutes while restraining him in a scissor hold with my legs to get that dumb cap on him. It was like alligator wrestling.
Another girl lined up behind Charlie and patted his shoulder.
Good. Stick with the girls, pal. Charlie had had a hard time with some of the boys when he moved up swim groups.
Most of them were three or four years older than he was, and they didn’t take it well having a little kid in their lane.
They were pretty interested in drowning him for a while.
The majority of the girls treated him like a little brother who didn’t annoy them.
They stood at his lane and cheered when he raced.
“Your nephew is really fast,” Neil whoever’s dad commented.
I had my standard answer ready. “He really loves to swim.” I had heard that compliment a lot in a variety of forms in my time around the pool.
He was fast, he was talented, he was just good.
If I agreed, I was bragging, and if I denied it, I was a liar.
Charlie was really fast. At seven, he was consistently beating the ten-year-olds he swam with in butterfly.
When he raced his own age group, it didn’t even seem fair.
And not just butterfly—he was fast in backstroke and freestyle, too. Only the breaststroke stymied him.
Neil continued. “I was watching practice the other day, and one of the boys was complaining to Coach Sean that Charlie kept passing him in the kick sets. Know what Coach said?”
I shook my head.
“He looked at the other kid and said, ‘If you don’t want him to pass you, then kick harder!’” Neil chuckled and I smiled too. I liked Coach Sean.
The bleachers shook again as my friend Tara plunked down next to me.
We had been at high school together, three years apart.
Not friends then, but you tended to get close to people huddled under a tent in sleet at an outdoor meet.
Her daughter, Darby, was in fifth grade at Charlie’s elementary school and was also in the Shark group.
“What’s up, Emily?” she asked. “Neil, bust a move away from us. Lady business.”
He shook his head at her, but then smiled at me and got up. “Ok, I’ll talk to you later, Emily.”
“Sure,” I nodded at him. “Which one is his kid?” I whispered to Tara, as Neil moved away.
“Ellis, in that suit that says ‘USA’ on the butt,” she answered, then narrowed her eyes at me. “Why? Are you interested?”
“In him?” I tried to keep my voice down. “No way, man. No way, no time.”
She shrugged. “He’s cute. Sells insurance and drives an Escalade.”
I elbowed her. “Tara, you’re married.”
“It doesn’t hurt anyone to keep tabs. He gave me a good deal on a home and auto package.”
The familiar, “Ready, go!” rang out from the pool deck. The first swimmer dove in, and we watched the rest follow, one by one, then freestyle up and down the pool for a few minutes.
“How’s your sister doing?” Tara asked.
I sighed. “Ok.”
“Is the new anti-nausea stuff working?” Tara was a nurse at Cherry County Hospital.
She had come down from the pediatric floor where she worked to visit Cassie while she got her chemo the day before.
It had been the last day of Cassie’s chemo before a three-week rest. This cycle had been absolutely brutal for her.
I sighed again. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe. She was up most of the night.”
“You mean, you both were up most of the night.”
“It’s ok,” I shrugged. “I read to her, and we planned out the garden. She wants to get some annuals for the beds.”
“That’s nice that you’re keeping it up,” Tara told me.
I sighed yet again. Mother of pearl, I was depleting all the oxygen from the building. “Yeah. I guess. Nothing much growing yet.”
Tara shook her head and frowned. “It was weird to see her yesterday, see her like that. I was a freshman when she was a senior and I remember her so well. She was Homecoming queen, prom queen. Everything queen. Just gorgeous.” I nodded.
I remembered how pretty she had been. Beautiful, really—the best of both her parents.
“And she’s just…I mean, I know what cancer does to you.
But to see the prom queen like that….” She trailed off again, and we watched the swimmers for a while until Tara poked me.
“See that? That one there?” She pointed to indicate what could have been any swimmer in the pool.
“What?”
She pointed more vigorously. “That girl, there? In the lane with Charlie. The tall one with the funky pulldown.”
I’d learned so much about swimming in the seven months that I’d been home. The “pulldown” she referred to was the underwater action in breaststroke when a swimmer pushed off the wall.
“What’s the matter with her pulldown?” I asked, peering over the metal bar that separated us from the pool below.
“I swear she’s doing a second dolphin kick.” Swimmers were only allowed one dolphin kick in the breaststroke pulldown; two of these meant a disqualification, or DQ, from the race.
I looked again as the swimmer pushed off from the wall, glided underwater, and came up to start the breaststroke. “I don’t see it.”
“That’s Macdara, the breaststroke leg on Darby’s medley relay team. If she DQs, there goes the relay.” If one swimmer messed up, the entire team’s time didn’t count. Tara rolled her eyes. “Of course Macdara’s in the relay.”
“What’s wrong with her? She’s sweet to Charlie,” I told Tara. “She capped him today.”
“Well, she may be sweet to Charlie, but we all know she doesn’t deserve to be in the relay. Other girls are faster in the breaststroke.” Tara glanced around. “You know who she is, right?” She paused and waited for my response. I had nothing. “Dude, she’s Macdara Whitaker. Well, Whitaker-Rendic.”
Oh…I definitely knew that name. The pool was part of the George Whitaker Athletic Complex.
Back when Michigan had been a timber wonderland, the Whitakers had made a fortune felling white pines.
And then, rather than resting on their laurels and pissing away the money, each successive generation seemed to find success in something else.
So now the Whitakers were by far the wealthiest people around, even counting the uber-rich summer people who came up to Harbor Springs and Petoskey.
They owned a few islands in Lake Michigan; their name was on a bunch of stuff all over the place.
Including the building in which we were sitting, built by George Whitaker in honor of himself.
He had been a dual-sport baseball and football player at Michigan State, and the Athletic Complex really was amazing. Our little town was lucky to have it.
“Coach Sean wouldn’t put her in the relay unless she deserved it,” I assured Tara.
She snorted. “Coach Sean needs to get paid just like everyone else. Speaking of which, how is the job search going?”
“Job search is non-existent. I’m still working at the NGS, and Martha has been great about giving me time to take Cass to her appointments, take Charlie to swim meets, whatever.
She’s a nice manager and I’m lucky to work there.
I’m not hoping to find something…in my field, not right now.
So I’m good.” I didn’t mention the nights I spent waitressing at Roy’s.
Tara would freak—Roy’s was kind of a pit.
If her husband didn’t mention to Tara that he saw me there, I wouldn’t mention that I saw him there either.
“Hmmm,” Tara frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, just hmmm. It means that I don’t think you should waste—”
“Mommy!” Charlie called up from the pool, then clapped his hand over his mouth. It wasn’t the first time he had done that. “I mean, Emmy, watch me do a hundred back for time!”
I smiled at him and shot him a thumbs-up, grateful for the interruption. Even if swimmers weren’t really supposed to yell stuff to the parents in the bleachers. Or to the aunts.
After practice, I rubbed Charlie dry while he wiggled. “Stop, Aunt Emmy!”
“You’ve got to be dryer to put some clothes back on, pal.”
A mom I had seen at the pool before turned to us.
“Are you Charlie’s aunt? I’m sorry, you must not be on the email list so you didn’t get the info about the online team store!
It’s open right now, so you can get Charlie a Shark swim parka for after practice.
They’re easy for the kids to put on when they’re wet and really great when it’s chilly. ”
I knew what she was talking about. I had received the team store email, and I knew about the parkas.
Nylon on the outside, furry on the inside, with a nice big hood.
Perfect for a little guy who was going to have to run with wet hair out to my car in a snowy white parking lot in a few months.
And they cost a hundred bucks, without tax.