The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 36: August 7

Today my friends and I swam the entire length of the harbor, and out into the Reach, and around the point, and to the beach where my friends are staying. As we swam past the docks, we chatted with the people on them. “George,” we said, as we neared the first dock. “When’s your daughter arriving?” George replied, “Late tomorrow night. Would you like to take a rest here? Can I get you a drink?” We demurred. We had places to be! People to visit! As we stroked past I thought I saw George growing older and older. His grandchildren beside him grew older, too, taking his place before being replaced themselves by their children. It was like a trick of stop-time photography, everyone shading into everyone else. (It helped that I didn’t have my glasses on, and that the members of George’s family are tall and thin and slightly stooped, even the young. At a squint, they blend.) Near the yacht club dock we exchanged pleasantries with the commodore. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Out into the Reach!” we said. We swam and we swam. We waved to people on boats and deflected, with good cheer, their slightly concerned disbelief regarding our swimming project. Eventually, we reached our destination, and all of us were blue, and all of us concurred, “That might have been a little shorter, that swim.” We lay on the hot rocks. We each drank a beer. Time passed. Time passed. I started to doze. The cold water had slowed our pulses but everything else spun at great speed. I worried I would awake to find myself an old woman, my husband dead, my daughter grown and turned into me. But life, when I woke up, was as I’d left it.