CHAPTER 15
Lucy
1962
I remembered something.
I’m not sure what stirred the memory. Maybe it was Mom mentioning Mr. Chapman. Maybe it was that, before she managed to close the photograph album with those fumbling, anxious fingers, I’d gotten a good look at one of the old pictures. It had been taken from the water and was of our bungalow standing next to the Chapmans’, the small houses bookended by our two docks. As I pulled weeds late into the morning, the sun hot on my arms, the memory came back to me in bits and pieces until it was fully formed.
When I was a child, my mother was obsessed with me learning to swim. An excellent swimmer herself, it worried her to have any of us unsafe around the water. I wanted to learn how to swim. I honestly did, but there was some fear in me that just wouldn’t let it happen. At the bay, I would stand shivering in knee-high water, terrified of…what? Crabs biting my toes? The sucking pull of the sand in the bottom of the bay? Drowning? I am not sure now, and I’m not sure I could have said even then what terrified me, but I could not go in. In the winter, Mom would take me to the Y, where she would hook me up with a male teacher who was known for getting even the most recalcitrant kids into the water. But I could outlast anyone in the game of “come on in, honey,” and after two years of trying, that teacher gave up on me. Everyone gave up on me, except for Mom.
One day during the summer of 1962, Mom thought up a new plan for teaching me to swim. I had just gotten my first violin—a silly, lightweight, off-white plastic thing from the five-anddime—and all I really wanted to do was sit on our screened porch and practice playing the simple songs in the music book that came with it. But Mom was insistent.
“I have a feeling today is the day!” she said, with her usual enthusiasm. She stood in front of me in a black-and-white polkadot, skirted bathing suit, the child-size orange life preserver in her hands. “I really do,” she said. “And I asked Mr. and Mrs. Chapman if we could use their dock because it has a slope you can walk down to get into the water. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”
I looked through the screen toward the Chapmans’ dock. I could see the top of their motorboat jutting above the bulkhead.
“Their boat is in there,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s a double-wide dock,” my mother said. “Plenty of room for both you and the boat.”
I don’t remember what prompted me to set my violin down and let her buckle me into the life preserver. I don’t know if I sighed with resignation as I followed her out the porch door, or if I felt some hope that, this time, I might actually do it. I might actually learn how to swim. For whatever reason, I walked with her across our yard and the Chapmans’. I remember kind of skating with my bare feet across the sand. I had walked that way in the Chapmans’ yard ever since stepping on a prickly holly leaf from one of the bushes that grew in their front yard. I was determined to swish any leaves away from my feet before they could hurt me.
The Chapmans’ dock was very wide, and Ned had moved their boat to one side so that there was still plenty of room for my swimming lesson. The entire male contingent of the Chapman family was there, plus Ned’s friend, Bruno. Ned and Bruno were cleaning the interior of the boat with rags and a bottle of blue detergent, and “Sherry” was playing on a transistor radio that rested on the bulkhead. Ned was as tan as his black-haired friend, and it was the first time that I realized that some blondes could tan every bit as well as people with darker hair. I liked that Ned was there, since he was a lifeguard. It made me feel a tiny bit more secure.
Skinny Ethan stood in the water to encourage me, and Mr. Chapman leaned against a tree near their dock, watching us approach the concrete incline.
“Are you ready to learn how to swim today, Lucy?” Mr. Chapman asked me.
“Maybe,” I said, my eyes on the water.
My mother held my hand as we walked onto the slope. It was not what I’d expected; I could barely see the concrete for the slimy green growth covering it. I was afraid of slipping, and I clung tightly to my mother’s hand.
I stepped into the water up to my ankles.
“That’s good,” my mother said. “It’s not too cold. Isn’t it nice?”
I nodded, concentrating on the dark water in the dock. You couldn’t see what was below the surface. I’d watched Julie net a zillion crabs in our dock and I knew this one would be just as full of them. Through the ankle-deep water, I could see that my toes were exposed and vulnerable.
“I need to go get my flip-flops,” I said.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Because of the crabs.”
“The crabs have better things to do than munch on your toes,” Bruno said. He was kneeling on the bow of the boat cleaning the windshield. He was wearing his swimming trunks and nothing else, and I had never seen a body like his before. Even his muscles had muscles.
“Use my flip-flops,” Ethan called from the water. He pointed to the sand behind us where his flip-flops had been carelessly kicked off, one of them resting on the other. I scrambled back up the slope and put them on. They were too big, but they would have to do.
“Look, Lucy!” Ethan said, when I’d returned to the ankledeep water and the safety of my mother’s hand. He was standing at the bottom of the slope, or so I assumed. I couldn’t really see. “It’s only up to my waist here.” He held his arms out above the water. I could see every one of his ribs.
“Let’s take one more step,” my mother said. “Just one step at a time.”
I wanted to give her something, and so I did it. I took a baby step down the slope and shivered as the cool water inched halfway up my calf. My teeth were starting to chatter. I could barely make out my toes now, and I kept hopping from foot to foot to keep the crabs away. The flip-flops were not enough to make me feel secure. I should have worn my sneakers.
“It’s easier if you get in all at once, Lucy,” Ned said. He was the expert and I knew he was right, but I just couldn’t do it.
“One more,” my mother said, and I held my breath and took another step forward. The water lapped at my knees, and my teeth were chattering so loudly now that I was sure everyone could hear them. My arms were covered with gooseflesh.
“That’s great, Lucy!” Ethan said. “Keep coming.” He was patting the surface of the water like someone might pat the cushion of a sofa to encourage a friend to sit next to them.
“Are there crabs by your feet?” I asked him.
“No!” he said. “The crabs are afraid of you. They see your feet and run away.”
That did not reassure me. I wanted to hear that there were no crabs at all.
“What if they don’t see my feet until it’s too late? Then they’ll bite me.”
“You’re being a big baby, Lucy,” Bruno said from his perch on the bow.
“Leave her alone, Bruno,” Ned said.
“How do you stay so patient with her, Maria?” Mr. Chapman asked.
My mother looked up at him. “Haven’t you ever been afraid of anything, Ross?” she asked.
“Not like that,” he said, and I felt like a freak in a circus.
“I don’t want to do this, Mom,” I said. “Can we go home?”
“Please, Lucy.” My mother sounded as though she was begging me. I wanted to please her, but I was shivering all over. I didn’t think I could take another step.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t,”
Finally she gave up. She looked at Ethan. “Thanks for helping, Ethan,” she said.
“Sure,” Ethan said. He took a couple of steps backward into the deeper water and began treading. Why could he go into water that deep and I couldn’t? Why was I the only one to feel such fear?
My mother and I climbed back up the slope and I felt relieved to be on level ground again. I unbuckled the life preserver and kicked off Ethan’s flip-flops.
We had taken a couple of steps in the direction of our bungalow when I suddenly felt myself being lifted up and tossed into the air, the life preserver flying off my arms. I may have screamed; I don’t know. I do remember my mother shouting “Ross!” as I fell. I saw the bulkhead whip by in front of my eyes, and then I was in the deepest part of the Chapmans’ dock. I shot beneath the water’s surface, flailing my arms in the green, blurry, underwater world. I could hear voices, muted shouts. Then I broke through the surface of the water, gasping for breath, my mother holding me up, her dark wavy hair wet around her face.
“You’re okay, darling,” she said to me, her hands firm and secure on my rib cage.
I was sobbing. I pressed my head to her shoulder.
“Why’d you do that, Dad?” I heard Ethan ask.
“It’s the best way to get over a fear,” Mr. Chapman was saying. “Just jump right in. See, Lucy?You were in the deep end and you didn’t drown.You bobbed right up to the surface.” His voice was kind, but I was never going to go near him again.
My mother half carried me back to the slope, where she set me down and took my arm, walking me up the slimy green surface, and I saw then that she, too, was crying. At the top of the slope she let go of my arm, marched over to Mr. Chapman and smacked him hard on his shoulder.
“How dare you!” she said.
Mr. Chapman rubbed his arm where she’d hit him. “If you took her to a psychiatrist—which might not be a bad idea—he’d recommend you do what I just did,” he said.
My mother grabbed my hand. “She’s not your daughter!” she said, starting toward our house with me. I had never seen her so angry. I could feel her fury in my fingers where she was squeezing them. She called back over her shoulder, “Don’t you ever lay a hand on one of my children again!”
At home, even I knew I was milking the traumatic event for all it was worth. Grandma clucked over me, helping me change out of my wet bathing suit while I bemoaned the terrible treatment I’d received at the hands of our neighbor. She rubbed me all over with talcum powder from her special pink tin of Cashmere Bouquet, then dressed me in my favorite green baby-doll pajamas. I could hear my mother complaining to my grandfather about what had happened and Grandpop’s soothing voice in response. I was allowed to stay up late, playing my plastic violin, and Julie was forced to go to bed at the same time as me, so that I would be able to fall asleep without nightmares about the rag-that-looked-like-a-head stuck in the wires on the attic ceiling.
When I was nine, I jumped into my neighbor’s pool and began to swim. I’d had so many lessons that I knew the mechanics by heart. All I needed was the practice—and the courage that came from surviving one of the worst things life had to offer: the death of my sister.