Ted changed into his father’s old Speedo. The elastic was nearly all gone, little holes where the chlorine had eaten at it like chemical moths gave it an almost fishnet allure, and only the string, the original replaced by an old shoelace, kept Ted from exposing himself to all the septuagenarians.
Things were no more present day in the water. Marty went in the lane designated “slow,” but “slow” was aspirational. The eighty-year-olds in that lane appeared stationary, moving with the tide from side to side, like human jellyfish. The “medium” lane was “slow” by any standards, and oddly the “fast” lane was slower than the “medium.” Ted chose the fast lane, because it was probably the first and only time in his life he could. He thought, I should move into an old-age community right now, ’cause I would dominate athletically. I would rule.
As the sign said NO SWIMMING WITHOUT A BATHING CAP, Ted wore a Red Sox cap that Marty had lent him. He looked like an angry sperm. He dipped his toes in the water. Fucking freezing. He remembered that his great-grandmother Baccha had been a “polar bear” at Coney Island, one of those old-country Eastern Europeans who joined together in the new world to swim in the frigid Atlantic during Brooklyn’s dead of winter. She’d go out there off the boardwalk with a bunch of other hearty Poles and Russians, and wade into water barely above freezing. “You get used to it,” they’d say. And they might as well have been talking about the pain of life itself-you get used to it. These were tough people. And possibly collectively insane. Now Ted respected Baccha’s fearlessness in the face of frostbite, but as a child, when told that she was a polar bear, Ted had of course thought she was an actual big, white, quite dangerous bear, and that the four-foot-ten shrunken crone that slipped a dollar bill into his palm every time he saw her was some sort of shape-shifter. It was something he told only close friends when he was in third grade.
“My father’s mother’s mother is a polar bear,” he would say. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Maybe some of those old-country, cold-defying genes had been passed down to Ted, because after a lap or two, he found himself getting “used to it.” Ted was by fifty years the youngest person in his lane, probably the lightest person in his lane, and the only male as far as he could tell, though he didn’t feel like looking too closely. He did the unfortunately named breaststroke. When his head dipped under the water, and he looked forward to see if he could pass, the huge limbs of the yentas propelling them forward reminded him of the scene in Fantasia where the hippos dance in tutus. Was that it? Hippos in tutus? Fantasia-the acid trip that Uncle Walt, America’s kingpin dealer of dangerous saccharine fantasy, bequeathed to the world’s children like a gateway drug. The sweet tasty hash brownie that is Mickey mousse. How many pierogis were ingested to make this scene possible? He laughed at the image, inhaling some water chlorinated a touch below actual bleach. The fumes off the water pricked at his lungs as he ducked in and out of his lane to pass like a race car driver, like the slowest race car driver in the universe. He found himself constantly trapped behind someone’s fluttering feet, in the middle of this underwater stampede, taking a few plump white toes in the face now and then.
Much was unpleasant. He stopped at one end of the pool, and looked under the water again at the swimming hippos, oddly hypnotized by their weightless bulk. Bless them, he thought, bless the hippos. There was a tap on his shoulder, and he came up for air. It was one of the Hippowitzes staring him down. He remembered reading somewhere that in Africa, the hippos were the ones to look out for, more dangerous to man and meaner than lions. Ted smiled at this one.
“Pervert,” she said with a mixture of disgust and vanity that was truly unique, and pushed off, displacing as much water as a small boat.
Ted showered until the feeling came tingling back to his fingers and toes. When he padded out to the lockers, Marty was already there, naked, toweling off, with his back to him. Ted was amazed at the number of moles and age spots on his father’s back, like the stars of a dying galaxy. Ted took that moment to pull down his Speedo with a modicum of privacy, but just as he did, Marty turned, so Ted pulled his suit back up.
“Good swim?” Marty asked.
“Yeah,” answered Ted. “You?”
“Not bad. Not bad.”
Marty turned his back again, Ted pulled down his suit, Marty turned back to Ted, Ted pulled up his suit.
“You all right there?” Marty asked.
“Yeah,” Ted answered.
This little dance happened a few more times, Ted not getting enough time to pull his suit off before Marty turned around again, until Marty finally said, “You gonna get dressed?”
“Yeah.”
“You gotta get undressed first.”
“The Splinter is aware of that.”
Marty turned fully to face Ted now, a towel around his waist.
“You uptight naked in front of me?”
“What? No. I’m thinking.”
“Are you kidding? I changed your diapers. I’ve seen that thing.”
“I don’t recall.”
“Okay, I watched your mother change your diapers. Jesus, you’re serious.”
“I can’t. Just look away.”
Marty dropped his towel to the floor, standing facing Ted now and naked.
“Can’t be any worse than me. I look like an old woman with a dead sparrow where my cock should be. Ecce homo…” Marty made a magnanimous gesture toward his crotch, reminiscent of Carol Merrill on Let’s Make a Deal.
“I prefer not to.”
“Check it out, Bartleby. Get naked with me, you fucker.”
“No.”
“Take ’em off or I’ll take ’em off.” Marty made a grab at Ted’s Speedo. Ted leaned back as he brushed his hands away, losing his balance and slipping hard and flat on his back on the wet floor.
Marty laughed. “That was fantastic. Positively Chaplinesque. Keatonesque. Ten from the Russian judge.”
Now Ted was just pissed.
“All right,” he said, and stood back up, ripping the bathing suit down to his ankles in one violent motion. And there they stood, father and son naked, man to man, a couple of feet apart.
Marty’s eyes went down to Ted’s manhood and stayed there. He scrutinized the area inscrutably, tilting his head this way and that, appraising, as one would a precious stone.
“Happy?” Ted asked angrily. “And just for the record, and this goes without saying, but I was swimming, you know.”
Ted grabbed for his towel, but Marty stopped him.
“Look at me, Teddy, look at this shit.” Marty spread his arms out to be inspected like a man about to be patted down for weapons.
“It’s okay, Dad, I don’t need to…”
“Look, Ted, look. Please. I need you to see.”
Ted did as his father said. He took him in. He beheld the damage done by time and cancer. His eyes found the new angry scar from a recent surgery on his father’s chest, glistening wet and red. It looked raw, like it still hurt, and Ted flinched, instinctively feeling the hurt in his own chest. He beheld the dying animal in front of him that was his father, and he felt his eyes fill with tears.
“Fucking chlorine,” he said.
Marty shifted his open arms toward Ted now and stepped forward to hug him. Ted received him and hugged back. There they were, father and son, naked and wet, embracing in the bowels of a YM-YWHA in Brooklyn, late summer 1978.
Marty was crying too. He whispered in Ted’s ear, “That’s a perfectly respectable prick you got there, son.” That particular phrase felt better to Ted than he would have ever imagined, and he didn’t care to unpack why just then. As Marty was speaking, another old man entered the locker room from the pool to change, and saw the two men holding each other.