The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“Think on it some.”


Frank knows my financial constraints. His daughter, Alice, also works at the library. Redheaded and pretty, Alice has her father’s smile and a way with kids. She’s better with people than I am, which is why she handles programming and I’m in reference. But we’re not here about Alice, or the perilous state of my house. We’re here to do what we’ve done for over a decade, setting buoys to cordon off a swimming area. The storm was strong enough to pull the buoys and their anchors ashore, leaving them a heap of rusted chains and orange rope braid, alive with barnacles. It’s little wonder I lost land.

“Shall we?” I ask.

“Might as well. Day’s not getting any younger.”

I strip off my shirt, heft the chains and ropes over a shoulder, and begin the slow walk into the water.

“Sure you don’t need a hand?” Frank asks. The skiff scrapes against the sand as he pushes it into the water.

“No thanks, I’ve got it.” I could do it by myself, but it’s safer to have Frank follow me. He isn’t really here for me; he’s here for the same reason I do this walk every year: to remember my mother, Paulina, who drowned in this water.

The Sound is icy for June, but once in I am whole and my feet curl around algae-covered rocks as if made to fit them. The anchor chains slow me, but Frank keeps pace, circling the oars. I walk until the water reaches my chest, then neck. Just before dipping under I exhale everything, then breathe in, like my mother taught me on a warm morning in late July, like I taught my sister.

The trick to holding your breath is to be thirsty.

“Out in a quick hard breath,” my mother said, her voice soft just by my ear. In the shallow water her thick black hair flowed around us in rivers. I was five years old. She pressed my stomach until muscle sucked in, navel almost touching spine. She pushed hard, sharp fingernails pricking. “Now in, fast. Quick, quick, quick. Spread your ribs wide. Think wide.” She breathed and her rib cage expanded, bird-thin bones splayed until her stomach was barrel-round. Her bathing suit was a bright white glare in the water. I squinted to watch it. She thumped a finger against my sternum. Tap. Tap. Tap. “You’re breathing up, Simon. If you breathe up you’ll drown. Up cuts off the space in your belly.” A gentle touch. A little smile. My mother said to imagine you’re thirsty, dried out and empty, and then drink the air. Stretch your bones and drink wide and deep. Once my stomach rounded to a fat drum she whispered, “Wonderful, wonderful. Now, we go under.”

Now, I go under. Soft rays filter down around the shadow of Frank’s boat. I hear her sometimes, drifting through the water, and glimpse her now and then, behind curtains of seaweed, black hair mingling with kelp.

My breath fractures into a fine mist over my skin.

Paulina, my mother, was a circus and carnival performer, fortune-teller, magician’s assistant, and mermaid who made her living by holding her breath. She taught me to swim like a fish, and she made my father smile. She disappeared often. She would quit jobs or work two and three at once. She stayed in hotels just to try out other beds. My father, Daniel, was a machinist and her constant. He was at the house, smiling, waiting for her to return, waiting for her to call him darling.

Simon, darling. She called me that as well.

I was seven years old the day she walked into the water. I’ve tried to forget, but it’s become my fondest memory of her. She left us in the morning after making breakfast. Hard-boiled eggs that had to be cracked on the side of a plate and peeled with fingernails, getting bits of shell underneath them. I cracked and peeled my sister’s egg, cutting it into slivers for her toddler fingers. Dry toast and orange juice to accompany. The early hours of summer make shadows darker, faces fairer, and hollows all the more angular. Paulina was a beauty that morning, swanlike, someone who did not fit. Dad was at work at the plant. She was alone with us, watching, nodding as I cut Enola’s egg.

“You’re a good big brother, Simon. Look out for Enola. She’ll want to run off on you. Promise you won’t let her.”

“I won’t.”

“You’re a wonderful boy, aren’t you? I never expected that. I didn’t expect you at all.”

The pendulum on the cuckoo clock ticked back and forth. She tapped a heel on the linoleum, keeping quiet time. Enola covered herself with egg and crumbs. I battled to eat and keep my sister clean.

After a while my mother stood and smoothed the front of her yellow summer skirt. “I’ll see you later, Simon. Goodbye, Enola.”