Night Swimming (2 page)

For the first time in months she forgot about how fat she was. Weight seemed gigantically unimportant now, like losing a button or missing a bus.

“I know how difficult this is to hear, Charlotte, particularly after your mother’s own passing.”

You don’t know anything. You have no idea how I feel. You with your sixteen-inch neck and penny loafers.

“Is there anything that can be done?”

“Unfortunately, it’s exactly what your mother had.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s nothing to be done. Medicine just hasn’t advanced as quickly as it needs to.”

Charlotte stared at the clip on his tie. A stupid thermometer. Probably rectal.

Up until now her life had been as tedious as water dripping from a faucet, drop after drop, day after day, year after year. It was as steady and monotonous as the white noise coming from the freezers of the fish plant at the end of her street—the endless hum of refrigeration to keep the dead fish fresh. This is exactly how she felt. She was going to die—and she hadn’t yet lived.

The years rolled over her like a dark intractable wave that suddenly made her feel like she had to swim for her life. So on that very same day, without the hint of hesitation, she walked into the bank where she had worked for fifteen years, and quit.

CHAPTER 2

C
HARLOTTE LAY IN BED
, staring at the ceiling, recalling the dark canopy of gloom hovering over her mother’s final hours. Even in death, Charlotte thought of her mother as lucky, at least luckier than she was. Her mother had found love, borne a child, and accepted the life she was given as a happy one, in spite of the fact that it seemed to Charlotte that her mother’s happiness had been doled out in tiny teaspoons. Teaspoons so inconsequential it was as if a single packet of sugar had been poured into a lake. Yet her mother could still taste the sweetness of it.

And her mother had grace to accept the things she could not change. And within that tiny circle she found her happiness. But Charlotte did not share her mother’s stoic grace at facing death. Her mother was still young then, young enough to enjoy life and maybe even see Charlotte marry and give her a grandchild.

But her mother became ever weaker, slowly succumbing to the invisible worm crawling through her body. Charlotte had tried to make her as comfortable as possible in the end, and her mother responded by telling Charlotte more about herself in those last few months than she had in all their years together. She thought now of their last real conversation.

“Mama, take a little water before you sleep,” Charlotte had coaxed.

Her mother waved the glass away, instead making a request of her own. “Charlotte, reach in my jewelry box. There’s something I’d like you to have.”

Charlotte opened the small mahogany music box and saw a single delicate diamond suspended on a simple chain.

“Where did you get this, Mama? I’ve never seen it before.”

“It belonged to your great-great-grandma on my mother’s side. It’s old... older than me, and I’d like you to have it.”

“Thank you, Mama.” She closed her palm around it as if it were the Hope diamond.

“Charlotte...”

“Yes, Mama?”

“I am going to die soon.”

“Mama!” Charlotte protested, as if by denying it she could make it untrue.

“It’s true, Charlotte, and we both need to face it. But first I want to talk to you about something. Something that’s been troubling me.”

Oh God. She’s going to bring up marriage, my pathetic lack of suitors, my weight.

“I’ve lived in Gorham my whole life.” Her mother paused, seeming to consider the weight of the words she was about to utter. “I loved your father, of course, and there was never a day that I was sorry I married him. And then we had you, which was the best part of us.”

Charlotte smiled and nodded tentatively. Where was this going?

“However, Charlotte, I do have regrets.”

“Regrets? What kind of regrets, Mama?” She had never heard her mother express anything like this. The glass was always half full; there was always a silver lining, a pot of gold, a ray of hope. God always provided. Regrets were counter to everything she knew to be true about her mother.

“My one regret is that I never did anything special with my own life. Something important in a personal way.”

“But Mama, you
are
special. You are loved, and you mean so much to so many people.”

“I am blessed in that way, but what I’m saying is something different, Charlotte. I wanted to travel in my life, see Paris or Italy. Once I even wanted to see the pyramids.”

This struck Charlotte like an epiphany, a cymbal crash at the end of a movement. She believed her mother thought what lay beyond Middle Street was simply and only the moon.

“I never knew,” Charlotte whispered.

“I’m telling you this, my angel, because I don’t want you to wake up one day and say ‘if only.’ I want you to live your life, see things beyond Gorham, experience it all. Life is like a tasting plate. You have to try everything...at least once.”

Charlotte continued to be stunned by her mother’s confession. If she had wanted to do these things, why hadn’t she done them? But Charlotte knew, deep down, that it was a rhetorical question. People just got stuck in life. All she needed to do was look at her own life for proof.

“Don’t be afraid, Charlotte. Don’t let life slip through your fingers as it did with me. Don’t let it get away. In the end all we have are our memories. So have wonderful memories, Charlotte. If you don’t have wonderful memories to look back on, then you’ll have your regrets. Do you understand, my sweet daughter?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

Charlotte wanted to go on talking, to find out down to the last detail what else her mother had wished for herself, but she was looking away, exhausted and lost again in her regrets.

Charlotte slipped the necklace on in front of the mirror and turned around to show her mother. “Look, Mama, look how beautiful . . .” But her mother had already closed her eyes. Charlotte stared down at her, one shade paler than snow and cool to the touch. At that moment, she looked like Snow White. Eggshell frail, old and powdery, but still beautiful.

“Mama,” Charlotte whispered. “Mama, take some water before you sleep. You have to stay hydrated.”

Charlotte helped lift her up a bit, and her mother’s knotty arthritic fingers, knuckles thick and twisted like the branches of an apple tree in winter, reached out tenuously for the glass of water. Charlotte raised the cool, clear liquid to her mother’s lips. But she could not take any of it in. Not one drop. And yet she looked up at Charlotte and said, “That’s better, that’s much better. Thank you, honey. Now you should go rest.”

Charlotte clutched the necklace resting against her chest: a single diamond on the thinnest chain. It was all her mother had to give her. But no, there was more. It was that last conversation they ever had together that became the greatest gift of all. Less than an hour later her mother was gone, leaving behind words that would linger for years at the back of Charlotte’s mind.

But now her mother’s words pulled at her like an undertow. Charlotte had a year left to live. Dr. Jennings had been quite clear about that. He said she should go about living her life as she normally would, that it might be several months before she would begin to notice symptoms. Hadn’t that been true for her mother, too? One day she seemed fine, and the next, well... Charlotte knew how that went.

And now it seemed that there wasn’t enough time left for the one and only thing she had ever truly wanted: to love and to be loved in return. A happy, pleasant existence complete with a garden, lace curtains, and conjugal visits.

But perhaps her moment had finally come to be brave. Brave enough simply to go up to handsome strangers and engage them in conversation, ask them to dinner and inquire if they would be amenable to a brief but affable affair, no strings attached, of course— just for the night, perhaps, or an hour, or less. Charlotte would take anything. She was dying—what was to stop her from asking such candid questions of strangers now?

But who on earth could love me? I’m fat, boring, and dying. Not a great calling card, by my own admission.

Maybe if Charlotte were rich, none of this would feel quite so oppressive, so thoroughly depressing. She could stuff herself with buttered lobster and twice-baked potatoes until she burst. She could say whatever she wanted, to whomever she wanted, and sound amusing, as only the rich do. But Charlotte couldn’t afford fancy meals that came with toast points. And she couldn’t say whatever she felt. She would come off as rude and inappropriate. No, she wasn’t rich or rude. She was just Charlotte Clapp, living on Middle Street, with middle-class savings and middle-class dreams.

Nobody in particular.

Someone simply passing through.

Simply Charlotte.

What could she possibly do now? Eat. Yes, she could eat. She rushed to the cupboard and opened every door, pulling down chips and dip, Oreos, Cheez Doodles, Pinwheels, cashews, Pringles, peanut butter cookies, trail mix, chocolate-covered cherries, and frosted cupcakes.

She’d been trying to limit her consumption lately, but the thought of dieting disappeared with her diagnosis. She dove into this smorgasbord like a last supper. She cracked open a bottle of wine, brought down one of her mother’s fine and fancy crystal glasses that hadn’t been used in years, and, after rinsing the dust off, filled the wineglass to the top, finishing it off in one swallow. She was almost dangerous in her consumption. No one would have dared put their hand in for a cookie—not if they wanted to see it again. One Krispy Kreme after another, until she resembled a cardboard clown with a ring of white powder around its mouth, begging to have a ball thrown into it—or at least more food. She moved on to the freezer, microwaving pizzas, blintzes, cheese ravioli. Soon it was back to the wine, opening a second bottle. She was on her way to drunkenness; that much became clear when she decided to forego the glass and drink directly from the bottle.

She tried to hold back the tears of lost time and lost chances. But a terrible grief grabbed her by the throat. She struggled to remember every moment of meaning floating somewhere in the alcoholic blur of her brain.
Memories.
That’s what her mother had said, Have your memories. So in a haze of Muscatel she began sorting all the sad and silly incidentals of her life. Memories stored away in the inner recesses of what was still good and what had made this little town meaningful. Benny Sanaswaso claiming that Ernie Pinkwater got a big part in
Hamlet.

“Oh, really, Benny? Which part is he playing?”

“Macbeth.”

She almost couldn’t breathe for the laughter he caused.

Then there was Jimmy Swenson, who, on a bet, stuck his tongue out against a frozen bike rack, forcing the fire department to come and get him unglued. There was her mother forever poised at the sewing machine, making all of Charlotte’s school dresses. The heavy Singer sat in the sunroom, its peddle worn from wear. She could hear the
rat-tat-tat
of the needle repeating itself along the hems of her cotton skirts, silver thimbles clinking like castanets, and scissors that sang like a song through the cloth. When her mother sewed, the house was filled with music. She could smell the sweet color of crayons, the nostalgic musk of store-bought Halloween costumes, the subtle Scotch tape from distant Christmases. Oh yes, these were the good memories, the sweet used-to-be memories before she was fat and dying.

Dying. Just the thought brought her crashing back to earth like a rocket reentering the atmosphere. And there she sat, shaking, short of breath, trying to regroup. Dying. What did that mean? Unbidden, a scene long forgotten lodged itself into her consciousness.

It was a Saturday afternoon and overcast; the day seemed to have a certain sadness built into it. Charlotte was at the vet’s with her hamster. Everyone else sat in the waiting room with their giant Labrador retrievers, Great Danes, Clydesdales. Charlotte sat with a little shoe box, holes punched at the top so that poor Jasper could breathe. Jasper, the center of the universe, her first pet, who was unceremoniously bathed by the veterinarian in some antiseptic grease and died the next day despite her efforts to keep him alive. Charlotte could barely contain her grief, positive it was the vet who killed him by lathering poor Jasper in brilliantine. A proper burial and service was prepared the following day, and Charlotte was comforted by MaryAnn, who reminded her that two years was a long time for a hamster to live and that Jasper was two and a half.

But that first introduction to death did nothing to prepare her for the next. Timmy LeBlanc sat in front of her in first grade and had a disease she couldn’t pronounce. “C.F.” was what he called it for short. They would pass notes and draw funny pictures of Mrs. Kleem, the meanest teacher this side of hoosierdom. And then one day Timmy didn’t come in, and a day stretched to a week, then two. No one was talking, so Charlotte finally asked Mrs. Kleem where Timmy was.

“He transferred,” was all she said, avoiding Charlotte’s eyes like an accident you try to look away from. That’s when Charlotte knew Mrs. Kleem was lying. Mrs. Kleem always looked directly at Charlotte. It was her own unique way of driving daggers into the hearts and souls of ill-behaved children. She couldn’t hit them but she could stare them down into submission, or so she thought. And so Charlotte called Timmy’s house and learned that he had died.

Charlotte was shocked. Hamsters died. Ants died when you stepped on them. But children didn’t die. She wept for weeks. There was nothing sadder than this, not even Jasper’s passing. And from that moment on, her perspective regarding life took on a different view forever.

And now Charlotte would find out for herself what it was like to die. She would finally meet up with Jasper—that was if animals didn’t have their own separate heaven. A special heaven. However, she would certainly see her mother and Timmy LeBlanc again... and maybe even some people she preferred not to bump into. What could she do? If the Catholics were right, this was inevitable.