Learning to Swim (2 page)

“Are you lost, dear?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled frantically about to find the source of the voice.

A tiny old woman sat on the porch of a house a few yards back from the boardwalk. I’d taken no notice of the small yellow house when passing by, as most of the houses this way were just as tumbled down as the red cabins around them.

The yellow house was short and squat, the paint faded and chipping around the windows. A round window peeked from above the porch but it was dark and cloudy.

“I’m sorry,” the old woman said. She talked so slowly it sounded like she might kick the bucket any minute now. “Did I scare you?”

Yes, I find you incredibly freaky
, I thought.
Your little house is creepy and your voice is like bugs crawling on my skin.
“No,” I chirped aloud.

“The ocean
can
make one jumpy,” she smiled.

You have
no
idea
.

One of her wrinkled hands strayed to absently touch the shiny paisley scarf covering her hair. “Do you need directions somewhere?” The hand wandered down her short neck and finally settled back in her lap.

“No,” I stammered, “I’m just looking.”
Just looking?
For what? An early death?

“Oh, yes, there is a lot to look at, isn’t there?” The old woman seemed pleased with this. She sat in a huge wooden rocking chair, bobbing slowly but diligently back and forth. It creaked—either the chair or the woman’s old joints—at regular intervals. A matching chair rocked, empty beside her. An effect of the wind rolling off the ocean, no doubt, but a shiver skittered down my spine nonetheless.

“The best suns are always after the best storms,” she said.

I nodded, though she didn’t look at me. Her dark eyes, after appraising me once, had returned to roving the horizon of the ocean, never stopping to linger over anything in particular. Her hands lay limply in her lap as her feet, in house slippers, kept the chair rocking.

“The waves are big today,” she continued.
“There was a puddle over there, thought maybe the sun had caught an ashray.”

My automatic grunt of a response died in my throat.
Ash
what
?

“Nothing left but a puddle of water if it’s caught in the sun. They’re nocturnal, you know.” She looked at me this time.

“I … uh, yeah …”
No,
no, I didn’t know, and I sure as hell didn’t
want
to know
.

“So you must never swim at night. But do watch for water spirits,” she said. “Not all dangers are nocturnal.”

“Water spirits. Of course.” I nodded vaguely because asking what a water spirit was would be counterproductive to my escaping this terrifying conversation.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, dear?” she said, without looking at me.

“I …”
have absolutely no response for this
. What on earth could I help her with?

“And make sure you are careful, when you go to swim.”

I grabbed at the excuse. “Yes, of course, and—and I was just on my way to do that—to go swim—I should be going. Swimming. That way.” I backed away slowly, waiting for her to toss another warning about ashbugs at me, but she was only nodding slowly at the horizon.

As if I needed more reasons to be terrified of the water—water ghosts hadn’t even made my preexisting list. Summer in this town was going to be worse than I’d previously assumed. Already 100 percent of the population I’d met was certifiably whacko.

She didn’t seem to notice I was slipping away, so I whipped around and hurried back in the direction from which I’d come. At that fateful, unfortunate fork, I took the other option and was quickly delivered to the grassy patch behind the pink house.

A night of small talk with women like my mother, and even that sure-to-be odious Owen Carlton, would be a piece of cake after the conversation I’d just had.

An Rogha Deirneach

The Last Resort

That evening, I emerged from my new room in a lacey cream dress. I’d first appeared in my jeans and a t-shirt from school, but I’d been quickly sent back to retry—this time with directions.

“There; isn’t that better?” Mom watched me swish grumpily down the stairs.

“She looks great,” Dad said, even though his nose was buried in a newspaper and not paying the least bit of attention to what I was wearing.

“Oh, Cora, flip-flops?” Mom wailed. “Where are those adorable purple wedges I found for you in New York?”

“I left them at home.” My best friend Rosie had insisted I pack them after deeming them “the cutest thing ever.” But she had ditched me shortly thereafter to be with her boyfriend and I had stowed the shoes away under my bed for the summer—and forever thereafter if I had a say in it.

“Oh,
Cora
!” she wailed. “Regardless, I want you to make a just
lovely
impression on Owen Carlton—”

“Yes, your mom is just short of arranging your marriage,” Dad cut in. “So you’d better make such an impression tonight that this Carlton woman and her son will want nothing to do with you in the future.”

“Oh, Frank!” Mom exclaimed happily. “Why do you encourage her?”

“She looks like an angel—let’s go,” Dad said decisively. He folded his newspaper shut, laid it on the table, and headed for the back door.

I followed with a scowl. The last thing I wanted to do right now was feign interest in small talk, introductions, and
especially
snotty boys.

From the back stairs you could see most of Oyster Beach. To the north stood big, old houses like ours (though less ostentatiously painted) that sat far back from the beach in a proud line. Smaller paths and stairs like ours lead across huge sandy backyards and screened-in porches.

It was toward this backyard, summer bliss that we turned now. But behind us, the south of Oyster Beach looked like a wilderness from our porch. A messy tangle of boardwalk threading through that eerie jumble of deep-red cabins. I looked for the creepy old woman’s yellow house, but I couldn’t pick it out in the time before my mom shouted for me to catch up.

The barbecue was in the backyard of a huge three-story deal about ten houses down from ours. It belonged to a family called Ritz, and it apparently wasn’t the biggest of the bunch, according to the blasé way in which everyone referenced it.

A Mrs. Huston, who had called me “the nicest little darling,” even hinted that Ritz Manor was quickly being outgrown by the Ritz family. Six bedrooms weren’t quite sufficient.

“How many children are there?” Mom was in her element here. She wore a pale lavender-colored pant suit with billowing legs that whipped softly at her ankles. She brandished a big glass of wine like it was part of her outfit.

“The Ritzes have two.”

I was glued to my mom’s side—and, thus, Mrs. Huston’s. Dad was playing washers with some men whose shouts were becoming increasingly boisterous as they made their way through the beer on tap in the pool house.

“Cora, you must meet my Benjamin,” Mrs. Huston was saying. She twirled around looking for her son, some of her margarita slopping over the edge of her glass as she spotted him. She called him over the sloping lawn before I could protest.

Several of his peers followed him from their mob beside the giant pool (that looked more like a pond) to have a gawk at me, as if some big, exotic bird had just landed inexplicably beside the house.

And much to my chagrin, I was promptly deserted by my mother. She insisted on a full tour of the Ritzes’ extensive lawn ornament collection, and Mrs. Huston was only too willing to expound on her knowledge of it all. My feeble protests were ignored, and I was left with a wink to fend for myself in this overwhelming world of bare, tanned shoulders and the smell of salt.

The necessary introductions already having passed, the Huston boy stood awkwardly a few feet from me, his friends obviously giving me the once- and twice- and, by this time, thrice-over.

“So you’re from Missouri?” a blonde girl asked suddenly.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said lamely. “St. Louis.” I felt the need to clarify. Some of these kids spoke with distinct New England vowels and a few even had lazy Southern drawls, but their clothes were pressed and distressed to perfection, their hair dyed, teased and cut in ways I’d only seen in magazines.

“Why are you
here
? Isn’t that like, really far away?”

I was seriously going to slap this blonde girl.

“Yeah, where is Missouri?” another girl piped up. She was dressed in shorts entirely too short for human legs and a tank top entirely too tight for human torsos. “I don’t even know where it is.” She snorted derisively, as if this somehow proved my inconsequentiality instead of her ignorance.

“It’s between Kansas and Illinois …” I faltered at the blank stares I received. “Near Chicago.” That was a stretch.

“
Ohhh
!”

There was no need to explain the three hundred miles between the two cities, as the majority of the kids had already wandered away in boredom—with the realization that the new bird wasn’t quite as exotic as they had hoped. Even the Huston kid had hightailed it without so much as a nice-to-meet-you.

The only ones left standing before my anxious eyes were Blondie, the bimbo and a boy who smirked at me, but stood like an Abercrombie model with his hands perched on his hips.

 “So why
are
you here?” Blondie asked.

“Lay off her,” the Abercrombie model piped up.

“What?” Blondie exuded innocence. “I’m just asking.”

“My parents just bought a house,” I explained.

“Which house?”

My cheeks flared to match the words I was about to speak. “The Pink Palace.”

Blondie chuckled. The bimbo flicked her head to shake her bangs out of her eyes. “That’s been deserted forever.”

If I’d had any say, it would have stayed that way.

“I hope you have plans to repaint,” Abercrombie said. I glared at him, but his smile was playful, not provoking.

“It must’ve been really cheap,” Blondie cut in. “Like, a real fixer-upper.”

I shrugged noncommittally.

“It’s just weird to have someone new here,” Blondie went on. “We don’t really get new people.” She flicked her head in an exact imitation of her friend. Her blonde bangs whipped around and landed perfectly across her forehead. “These are all, like, real old families that have been summering here forever. We’ve all been neighbors since we were, like, born.”

I don’t want to be here,
like,
any more than you want me here, you infuriating dimwit.

“We don’t see a whole lot of people from Missouri.” The bimbo, though just as annoying, didn’t have the same vitriol in her voice that Blondie did. She just seemed … well, clueless.

“People at home just don’t really think much of coming
here
, of all places,” I said.

“Why?”

Damn
… that had been a complete lie
.
My friends thought it was über cool that I got to “summer” away from home. Time for my finest bullshitting.

“I guess there’s just not, like, a lot of people in Missouri who can afford summer houses,” the bimbo answered for me. She seemed to regard this as some critical shortfall of Missourians.

“Most people’s summer houses are on the lake,” I corrected, gathering steam from my anger. “You know, on the lake there’s a ton of skiing and night life and stuff. Usually the only people who come out here are, like, old people.” I hated myself as I groped for approval from these kids, but I also couldn’t stop. “I tried to convince my parents to get a house on the lake instead, but, you know parents. Really boring. Wanted to come out here.”

Abercrombie took a step forward. “It’s a shame you had to be banished to the ends of the earth with the rest of us.”

Blondie feigned a smirk, but it turned out more like a grimace.

Afraid of what else I’d lie about if left to my own embarrassed, wandering mouth, I excused myself on the grounds of needing to use the restroom. The Abercrombie model grinned stupidly at me as I hightailed it.

I told my dad I wasn’t feeling well and skipped out of the waist-high white gate that enclosed the elite gathering. I congratulated myself on escaping the premarital introduction that my mother was undoubtedly trying to arrange with the famous Owen Carlton that very moment.

But if I was being truthful with myself (which I wasn’t), I was a little lonely, too. I took my shoes off and walked in the sandy grass beside the boardwalk, the sun casting an orange glow over it all.

Everything was just sand—it seemed to consume everything. It covered the landscape, as if smothering anything that tried to push out of the ground. Definitely a place where water spirits and ashrays—whatever they were—could thrive. And now, in the strong wind that hinted of a storm, the feeble grass whipped mercilessly at my legs.

Suddenly my big toe caught on something hard and cold, and I jumped.

Get a grip!

I reached down to pry the thing from where it was lodged in the sand. To my relief, it was just some sort of musical instrument. I brushed it off with my dress; it was long and silver with six round holes. It looked like a small flute.

My first instinct was to blow into it, see the sound it would make, get the sand out, but I was too wary of its previous owners. And I was reminded of the disgusted way in which I’d heard the word “locals” pronounced by numerous people in the old houses.

I was also afraid to draw attention to myself from the crowd of families that still laughed and played in the yard behind me. I gave the hubbub one more glance over my shoulder before dropping the flute into one of the big pockets on the front of my dress and moving off with a renewed desire to get away from the Ritz estate.