Again I noticed how everything had shrunk. The pool used to seem endless. I remember coming up, gasping for air after the first lap I’d ever done completely underwater. It had seemed like forever to get from one wall to the other. Looking down in the now, it was just a standard sized Olympic pool.
The door behind me opened, “Mister—umm—Kendall?”
I turned around, and it was her. “Yeah?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, but I need to get going. Are you—?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m done.”
We walked back down the hall together. “So you worked for Ol’ Roger, huh?” she asked.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Did I? I’m his niece,” she said. We stopped.
“How is he? Can I visit him?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, her face falling, “I guess you didn’t hear.”
I knew what that meant, “When did it happen?”
“’Bout three years ago. Stroke. He went to bed and just never woke up.”
Something in me fell. “Oh—I’m—I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, it’s okay. He was ‘bout ready to go, anyways. Always said he was just waitin’ around for the black chariot, and it was takin’ it’s own sweet time about getting’ there.” She smiled.
“Black chariot?”
“It was a poem. Aunt Zoe loved it. Emily Dickerson or Dickenson, something like that. ‘Bout a woman who says the chariot waited for her. He liked that poem,” she said, turning and walking again. I followed her out the front door. She locked it behind us. “Sorry you had to find out like this.”
“Yeah,” I said, “Listen, thanks.”
She walked toward the sidewalk, and I could just hear a bus coming from up the street. “Thanks for not being an axe murderer,” she said. Just as she made it to the bench, the bus pulled to a stop. She got on, and the bus pulled away.
I left the radio off for the ride back home. Something about that seemed right. Wind past the car windows made this hollow sound that I liked to listen to sometimes. Susan said it drove her crazy. I felt like I should have some sort of deep thought while the radio was off. It was like I wanted to have some powerful revelation, but nothing happened.
My head started to hurt long before I even pulled into the driveway. I could tell from the way the pressure was growing at the base of my skull that this would be a topper. I wondered if it was already too late to take medication. I figured it was.
I pulled the car into the driveway and shut it off, listening to the engine tick for a moment. In the garage, I looked at the bike as I walked past. Up the stairs to the kitchen, I kept wondering about little things; what mom would fix for dinner, if it was time to get new shoes. It bothered me that I wasn’t thinking about important things, and that I didn’t really want to think about them. Sarah was so smart; she and her friends must sit around and discuss important people, and important movies all the time. I wondered how she got so smart and I was still so stupid.
The kitchen was dark and cool. All the heat of breakfast had gone. On the counter, mom had left a note “Mikey, gone with Milly to get some things from the farmer’s market in Eukiah. Back in a few hours. You should call that nice Susan girl. Love, mom”. It was done in that flowing, loopy cursive that she had always wanted me to write in. My penmanship had always been blocky at best, so I never wrote in cursive except to sign checks.
The television was on, and I could hear the sound of a crowd. I walked into the living room. On the screen, two football teams were assembling on a big chalk line. I could just make out the number 10 on the far end of it. I’d never been excited by football. Not like dad was, anyway. The rules seemed too fluid to make any sense; not like engines. Engines made sense.
I sat down. Dad looked over at me, then back at the screen. “From last night. I taped it,” dad said.
“Who’s winning?”
“Score’s tied,” he said, “She leave?”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing he meant Sarah. He nodded without looking at me. “Who’s Milly?”
“Millicent Barnes. Your mother’s best friend. I swear those two are like Lucy and Ethel.” I could tell that was some sort of reference to something, but I didn’t know what.
“You don’t like her?” I asked.
“Woman’s a damn do-gooder. Works over at the Hospital with the loonies. Ever since they met, all your mother can think about is “the community”.”
She hadn’t said anything about it to me since I’d gotten back. I wanted to ask more, but his tone said not to. On the television, the referees blew whistles, and the players wandered around the field.
I got up and walked into the kitchen. The pressure at the base of my skull had turned into a vise creeping up around my ears. I realized I’d forgotten to go get my medication from upstairs. I picked up the phone and dialed Susan’s apartment. The phone rang twice, then picked up. A man’s voice said “Hello?”
I couldn’t say anything for a moment, then “Umm—is—is Susan there?”
“Yeah, hang on a second,” he said, then there was a loud ‘thunk’.
The phone picked back up, “Mike?” Susan asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, “who was that?”
An exasperated sigh on the other end, “I’m fine, Mike, and yourself? That’s good, thank you so much for asking,” she said, another sigh, “That was my brother. He’s in town for a little while.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” I said.
“That’s because you never asked,” she said, “it was a surprise visit. He showed up last night and we had Thanksgiving dinner together.” The phone muffled again, and I heard him saying something in the background. Then I heard her say something like “No, I won’t tell him that, and neither will you,” the phone unmuffled, “how was your dinner?”
“Sarah got into a fight with my father, and she left this morning. She and her girlfriend broke up, I guess,” I said.
“That must be very hard for her,” she said, the phone muffled and I heard him mumble something, and when Susan replied to him, there was a laugh in her voice, “Yes, he does, and in the pictures I’ve seen, she’s very attractive—but she’s a lesbian.” He said something else and she laughed hard. The phone unmuffled, “You still there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “You’re—busy—I guess. I’ll call back some other time.”
“When are you coming home?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow,” I replied.
“Okay. Call me and let me know, alright?”
“I will,” I said, and hung up. A second late I realized I hadn’t said goodbye. I felt like picking up the phone and dialing her again to say it, but realized how stupid that would be. I sat down at the kitchen counter, and noticed again how cold the kitchen was with mom not in it.
My head was pounding by this time. I walked upstairs, my head splitting with each step. My nose felt runny, and when I reached up to wipe it, there was blood on my finger. I stared at it for a moment. The morning had already been very busy, and I thought , this isn’t fair. I opened my bedroom door to find all my clothes out of the suitcase, stacked neatly on the bed. The collared shirts were in a perfect column, and the pants sat seam to seam. I rolled my eyes and said “mom,” out loud. I went into the pocket on the side and pulled out the bottle. I shook a pill from it, and walked to the bathroom. I had to sniffle back blood, again, and tasted it in my throat.
Pill in mouth, handful of water from the tap, swallow; second handful of water to finish. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. I thought, I should be able to see pain this bad.
I shut off the light and went back to the bedroom. Again, I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know how to feel about her going through my things. She’d of course say she was only doing my laundry because she had a load to do, herself. I knew the truth, though. She was snooping. She’d done it since I was a kid. I remembered coming home from school one day to find my bedroom completely spotless. That was the day I got a lecture from dad about lying. At the end of it, he asked me “Is there anything you want to tell me?” and I’d finally admitted that I’d been working at the Y for almost a year instead of taking boxing lessons. I knew exactly what mom had done; she’d gotten suspicious of something, then cleaned my room to find it.