And it was true. Eliza was an amazing wife.
“I’ll bring a tray out in about thirty minutes or so. Pull our monkeys out of the pool in about fifteen. Good grief, would you look at them?” Eliza shook her head and laughed. “Should we feed the little snipers? Or should we make them suffer for their crimes?”
We watched as the boys threw plastic rings to the bottom of the pool and dove in to retrieve them with the same frantic energy crazed dogs burn while chasing tennis balls. They were long skinny string beans, tanned to the hue of peanut butter, who could swim like fish. Their olive complexions, black curly hair, and blazing blue eyes were a result of Eliza’s Mediterranean origins. But they would grow tall like me. Their height belied their age, and people frequently assumed they were older than their five and a half years, expecting more from them than what they were mature enough to deliver. In other words, they caught a lot of hell.
“We have to feed them. It’s the law. They’re just little rascals, that’s all. But they’re too tall to be tormenting dogs,” I said, delivering the family joke for the hundredth time. “Did you give our nice neighbor the money?”
“Yeah. She’s a . . .” Eliza mouthed the word bitch. “Now we have to go to the bank. Okay, I’m gonna go fix our lunch.”
“Hurry back. I’m going for a quick dip to cool off.”
I’d always thought that renting a condo made much better economic sense than buying. I wasn’t a reckless man, with money or anything else. And I never invested in anything without tons of due diligence and consideration. But I also recognized that if this year’s vacation lived up to last year’s I might change that position and entertain the idea of buying something, sometime down the road. If I rented it out when we weren’t there, over time it would pay for itself. Maybe.
I stood up, walked to the edge of the deep end of the adult pool, and considered my next move. Rufus remained behind, sleeping like the old dog he was. Dive in? Slip in? A gradual immersion in the shallow end? There were not many people around the pool, because most of them were either on the beach where it was considerably cooler and beyond the shouts of Marco! Polo! or they had already gone inside to escape the merciless heat.
Perspiration was pouring out of me and the sun was blinding. I took off my sunglasses and put them on the edge of the pool. I dove in the deep end and for the first moments my body was shocked by the cool water. I wondered if that kind of cold shock could cause a heart attack. Yes, I was a worrier, but not excessively so. I surfaced, backstroked over to where my boys were standing in waist deep, and hoisted myself up onto the side of the pool.
“Nice dive, Dad!”
“Thanks! Whew! That felt great! Mom wants y’all to dry off soon. She’s bringing lunch down here for us.”
“Great,” Luke said. “I’m starving!”
“What else is new?” Max said and pushed water toward his brother’s face with the heel of his hand.
“Hey!” Luke said. “Stop!” He pushed a wave of water back toward his twin in retaliation.
“All right, you two. Out of the pool. Adult swim time. I’m going to do a few laps and then I’ll dry off too. Why don’t you boys gather up all your stuff and get a table for us? One with an umbrella.”
“Does that mean we can have our guns back?” Max said.
“Do you think y’all can use them responsibly?”
“Yes! Yes, sir!”
“Okay, then. But no shooting little dogs. Got it?”
They scampered away toward my lounger and I slipped back into the water.
God, this feels so good, I thought.
I turned on my back and began doing backstrokes. When I reached the end of the pool, I turned over and began doing breaststrokes toward the shallow end.
Swimming gives me time to ponder my life—you know, assess things. Lucky for me, I’m about as satisfied with my lot in life as any man I know. And not too terribly arrogant. I hate arrogance. And I don’t take anything for granted. But I think my male bravado and swagger is in the acceptable zone, and if I’m hiding some great mountain of hubris, no one has ever accused me of it. I’d say my friends and colleagues view me as a reliable, good-natured, well-mannered fellow. A man’s man. But most important, I’ve got the steadfast support and admiration of my father, Ted.
If I ever get a little free time I like to hunt birds and fish the rivers. I can swing a golf club and a tennis racket well enough to play nine holes or doubles. But I sure as hell will never be a club champion, because sustaining any level of success would be impossible if I spent my time chasing balls. Besides, I’m not all that competitive. And I’d say I’m a respectable golfer and tennis player nonetheless.
I swam a few more laps and continued thinking about life. I knew I wasn’t exactly curing a terrible disease when I built another shopping center or apartment complex, but you know what? I took a certain pride in the fact that the work I did had provided enough money at thirty-seven years of age to buy a large tract of land outside of Charleston and build a home there for my family that resembled Tara, but on a much smaller scale. And I loved my little family and our menagerie, which seemed to be growing all the time.
The problem with buying a property that came with a barn was that it called for animals. Before I knew it, we had horses, goats, and a brace of German Shorthaired Pointers that loved to flush out coveys of quail. Next came the peacocks and chickens, followed by a cat who we named Crank. And naturally all those mouths to feed needed supervision, so we hired a property manager, Mr. Proctor, who saw to the animals and did all the landscaping and house repairs as well. Mr. Proctor was the same age as my father—too old to really work full-time but too young to retire at sixty-eight. Crank and Rufus were house pets. Everyone else lived in the barn. Oh, Mr. Proctor.
He’s a good guy, I thought.
I swam to the deep end of the pool once more and stopped. Suddenly I had a sense of being watched. There were two feet in front of me at eye level, female feet with a pedicure that I seem to remember Eliza called French for some baffling reason. They were very pretty feet and they did not belong to my wife.
“Adam? Is that you?”
I looked up. The feet in question were connected to perfectly tanned, very long, beautiful legs. Above the legs was a turquoise tank suit and a super flat stomach below perky, if smallish, breasts. The sun was so bright that I could not make out the details of her face. But I knew that voice. It had haunted me for more than half my life.
“Eve?”
“Oh, my gosh! It is you. I remember you swimming laps like this when we were teenagers. I’d know those shoulders anywhere.”