The Ex

21

The same afternoon heat that made the Midnight Espresso coffee shop uncomfortable made Koch Public Recreational Swimming Pool almost unbearable anywhere but in the water. Only dedicated sunbathers appreciated the searing afternoon glare. They reclined on loungers and on beach towels spread on the pool’s concrete apron. Occasionally people climbed trailing water from the pool or rose from where they lay baking on towels, the hot, high sun puddling their shadows at their feet as they walked to and from the snack stand with drinks whose ice was melting almost before they could take it into their mouths and chew on it, or cup it in their hands and rub it over chest or shoulders.

But it was only the relatively few adults who seemed to be suffering severely or taking precautions against sunburn. Most of the swimmers and sunbathers were teenage or younger.

Bernice was seated with Michael in the water at the shallow end of the crowded, noisy pool. She’d obeyed Molly’s instructions and lavishly applied sunblocker on Michael. Then she’d smeared it liberally on herself. But she still preferred to keep both of them submerged to limit exposure to the sun. Besides, the water was blessedly cool compared to the hot, rough concrete surrounding the large, rectangular pool.

The only problem was that almost everyone else felt the same way. The pool was too crowded to swim more than a few strokes in any direction without bumping into someone. Or to dive, which was what Bernice enjoyed most about coming to Koch.

She watched a prepubescent girl in a two-piece black bathing suit pinch her nose between thumb and forefinger then leap from the diving board and create as large a splash as her light body would allow. Bernice couldn’t actually see the girl enter the water. Her view was obstructed by the splashing and turmoil of dozens of scantily clad bodies of every hue among the glittering blue water and white foam of the pool.

She reached down with cupped hands and dribbled water over her shoulders. “Lots of people had the same idea we did this afternoon,” she said to Michael.

Too busy playing to acknowledge her, he concentrated on the small red plastic boat he’d brought. He grinned as he made the boat skip over the glinting water then suddenly dive straight down.

Bernice kept a watchful eye on him, but she also sneaked glances at the deep end of the pool, waiting to see if the activity around the diving board would subside.

There continued to be a line of people waiting to dive, especially from the low board, which Bernice preferred. The impact of hitting the water from the high board had once made the top of her swimming suit slip down, and she’d had to hurriedly work it back up and refasten it underwater to avoid embarrassment.

Apparently the red boat had gone to war. It had resurfaced, and Michael was making gun sounds in the back of his throat and slapping his hand down ever closer to it, splashing water as imaginary shells closed in. The boat was rocking, threatening to swamp.

It was then that Bernice noticed there were only three people waiting to dive. She decided to take advantage of the lull.

“Michael, if we get out and go to the other end of the pool for a few minutes, will you promise to stay on the towel while I dive?”

He docked the boat next to his small chest and smiled up at her, squinting into the sun. “Promise.”

She gave him a hug, feeling him trying to pull away from her. “What a good boy!”

Making sure he had a grip on his boat, she picked him up and carried him from the pool to where their towels lay on the concrete, along with her blue rubber thongs and the bottle of sunblocker. She slipped her feet into the thongs, carefully hooking the strands of rubber between first and second toes, then picked up everything and went with Michael to the deep end of the pool.

That end of the pool was only slightly less crowded. The only place there was room to spread out a towel was well away from the water, which was fine with Bernice. It kept Michael all the farther from danger and allowed her plenty of time to dive, surface, and get to him even if he did decide to wander toward the pool.

She spread out the large Miami souvenir towel with the sunset-and-flamingo design, then made sure Michael was happy seated on it, pouring a thin stream of water from his toy boat.

“Promise me again to stay here until I come back?” she asked.

He was watching the water from the boat making dark patterns on the pale concrete. “’Course,” he said, without looking up at her.

Confident he was busy with the boat and would obey her, she slipped her feet from the thongs and hurried over the sun-heated concrete to the diving board.

After waiting for one other diver, she got up on the damp rubber matting of the board and glanced over at Michael.

He was still on the towel, watching her now. She waved to him and he waved back. A few men and teenage boys looked her way, but the frail, almost bustless woman in the yellow-flowered two-piece suit didn’t hold their interest.

With a final glance at Michael, she walked to the end of the board, sprang twice for height, then did a fairly neat jackknife, entering the water clean and not making much of a splash.

After the heat of the sun, the cool envelopment of the water felt wonderful. She reached the slightly angled bottom of the pool, pushed away with her hands, and quickly surfaced, stroking to the side of the pool and checking on Michael even before she climbed up the aluminum ladder onto the concrete. He was still safely on the towel, as he’d promised.

Bernice smoothed her wet hair back where it had worked from beneath the rubberband behind her head and started to walk over to Michael. Then she noticed there was another lull around the diving board. And he was preoccupied playing now with the plastic bottle of sunblocker.

“One more dive, Michael!” she yelled over to him.

He glanced her way, smiled, then pretended the sunblocker bottle was another boat, steaming toward the red toy one at the edge of the towel. Bernice hurried to the diving board.

Still wet and cooled down from her first dive, the water didn’t feel so luxurious when she entered it after her second dive and cut toward the bottom. She’d attempted a swan dive, and she knew she hadn’t been nearly vertical on entry and would have scored low if anyone had been judging.

Again her palms found the smooth concrete and she turned in the cool silence and began her rise to the surface.

She was surprised when her progress was stopped.

Then she realized something-someone-was clutching both her ankles, keeping her from rising.

Worried but not panicked, she twisted her body to see downward. Through the blue murkiness she could actually see the hands, the long pale fingers, encircling her thin ankles, but she couldn’t make out the face of whoever was doing this to her.

She bent down lower, contorting her body so she could reach the strong fingers and try to pry them from her ankles. But her buoyancy prevented her from reaching the hands.

She’d assumed someone, probably a teenage boy, was playing a joke on her. But the grip of the fingers was so powerful, seemingly as unbreakable as steel bands. Maybe he didn’t realize how strong he was.

Enough is enough! she decided.

She tried kicking herself free, but the hands allowed all the lateral movement she wanted without permitting her to rise. She knew she was merely wearing herself out.

Sitting in the sun on the warm, damp towel, Michael stared at the pool and wondered why Bernice hadn’t come up yet. Then, as a skinny black girl in a green suit bounced twice on the edge of the board and dived, he turned his attention back to his boats.

Beneath the water, Bernice decided to change tactics and was paddling upward as hard as she could, trying futilely to provide lift for herself and whoever was keeping her from rising. She was aware of a slim girl in a green suit shattering the surface above her head and sliding past only a few feet away, her eyes clenched shut as she gracefully arched her body and began a smooth arc up toward bright sunlight and air. Bernice’s chest began to ache as she realized her increased efforts were only causing her to rise a few feet then sink back toward the bottom of the pool.

She understood then that this was no joke, and she panicked, flailing desperately with her arms and hands, writhing and trying to kick free as she strained every muscle and ounce of will toward the dim light above.

Still, she could not rise.

The white boat with the sunblocker collided with and sank the red plastic boat at the edge of the towel.

Michael looked around again for Bernice but didn’t see her.

He wasn’t alarmed. He picked up the white boat, now the sunblocker bottle again, and tried to remove its lid.

Bernice hung suspended beneath the water, her arms spread wide as if she were about to embrace a lover. The last of the air in her lungs had escaped through her slack mouth and was curving away in a graceful string of bubbles.

The cruel hands had finally released their grip on her ankles, and she slowly began to rise.

Deirdre gripped the tile lip of the pool and easily hoisted herself up and out of the water.

Someone screamed. Several people began to shout.

Deirdre snatched up her towel and started drying herself off.

Then she walked around the hot concrete apron to the other side of the pool to join the growing tide of people streaming around a confused Michael to see what had happened in the deep end.