Эд Макбейн - Last Summer

“Here I am,” I said.

“Don’t leave me,” she said. Her eyes were closed.

“You can let go of your nose now.”

“Don’t leave me,” she said again, and released her nose, and opened her eyes.

“Don’t worry.”

David and Sandy came in with masks and fins and swam to where we were drifting near the boat.

“Everything okay?” David asked.

“Fine.”

“Let’s swim in.”

“Just roll over on your back,” I said to Rhoda, “and I’ll tow you into the shallow water.”

“All right,” she said, and obediently rolled over. I crooked my elbow under her chin, keeping her head up and out of the water, and began pulling for shore. David and Sandy dove under together, and surfaced about fifteen feet from where I was still towing Ropda.

“Same old garbage down here,” Sandy said.

“We ought to try the other side of the island,” David said.

“Peter, will you need us?”

“No, I think I can manage,” I said. I put my feet down, but I still couldn’t touch bottom.

“What’s the matter?” Rhoda said, alarmed.

“Nothing, just have to go in a little further, that’s all.”

“We’re going to try the other side,” David said.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“See you later,” Sandy shouted.

“Be careful,” Rhoda called, which I found curiously touching.

I towed her into the shallow water and then spent the next five minutes coaxing her to stand, assuring her the water would only come to her waist, demonstrating (“See? it only reaches to here on me”), cajoling, and finally losing my temper and shouting, “I thought you weren’t afraid of the water!”

“I’m not! ” she shouted back. She was suspended in the jacket, refusing to lower her feet.

“Well, for Christ’s sake, it’s only three feet deep here, a midget could touch bottom!”

“Don’t yell, and don’t swear,” Rhoda said.

“Put your feet down.”

“I will.”

“So do it.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

“ Now , goddammit!”

“Why do you swear all the time?”

“I don’t swear all the time, put your goddamn feet down!”

“All right! ” she shouted, and lowered her feet.

“Are you touching?”

“Yes.”

“So stand up.”

“I will.”

“Rhoda...”

“I can feel the bottom with my toes,” she said.

“That’s right, now stand up.”

“Are there crabs?”

“Of course there are crabs, this is the ocean.”

“Do they bite?”

“No.”

“What else is there?”

“Barracuda, and moray eels, and giant squids. Stand up! ”

“You’re so masterful,” she said, grinning, and stood up. It was the first time I’d ever heard her make a joke. It wasn’t such a good joke, mind you, but it caused me to smile nonetheless.

“Okay?” I said.

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Can you walk in?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so let’s walk in.”

“All right.” She hesitated. “Give me your hand, Peter,” she said. “Please.”

“Sure.” I took her hand in mine. “Don’t be frightened,” I said. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

“I know that.”

We waded in toward the shore. She treated the water as though it were an enemy, some strange mysterious foe that would reach out to swallow her if she did not carefully watch each ominous swell, each deadly surface ripple. When we were some two or three feet from the beach, she ran to the shore and immediately plunked herself down, as if delighted to find dry land beneath her once again.

“Whoo,” she said, “that was really exciting.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry I’m such a baby,” she said.

“Well,” I said.

“But I’ll try, Peter.” She nodded and then smiled weakly. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Well, first take off the jacket,” I said. “You can’t learn to swim with a life jacket on.”

“Some people do.”

“Yes, but that’s not the proper way.”

“Do I have to?”

“If you want to learn,” I said. “If you don’t want to learn, then leave it on.”

“I want to learn.”

“Then you’ve got to take it off, it’s as simple as that.”

“Okay,” she said, and nodded, and began loosening the ties. “We won’t go in the deep water, though, will we?”

“No, well stay where you can touch bottom.”

“Not deeper than my waist,” she said.

“Not in the beginning.”

“Not until later in the week.”

“That’s right.”

“Or maybe next week.”

“We’ll see how you do today,” I said.

“All right, I’m ready,” she said, and dropped the jacket to the sand.

“Now don’t go in with the idea of being afraid, okay?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“No, not much,” I said.

“Well, not much,” she said, and grinned.

She was terrified.

We spent perhaps twenty minutes in the shallow water, trying to teach her to kick. I would hold her hands and she would stretch out cautiously on the surface and then begin kicking, only to have her feet and then her legs sink slowly beneath the gentle waves. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen in my life, it defied all the laws of physics. We eventually wound up with her arms around my waist, her cheek pressed against my ribs, and she kicking wildly while holding on for dear life, only to have her feet disappear, and then her legs again, it was absolutely supernatural. Finally, she released me, and stood up, and said, “It’s impossible.”

“Well,” I said, beginning to agree with her, “let’s rest for a while.”

“Take my hand, Peter,” she said, and we waded in to shore together.

The island was silent, the cove sat still and smooth, opening into the vaster ocean and the distant horizon and the huge canopy of blue sky and drifting pristine clouds. I lay back with my hands behind my head, and tried to understand why Rhoda couldn’t stay afloat.

I was beginning to think she was pretty stupid.

She lay beside me on her side, saying nothing. I glanced at her once and saw that her brow was furrowed, her lips thoughtfully pursed. Then she sighed, and rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the sky, and we were silent for a long time, looking up at the slowly moving clouds.

When she began speaking at last, it was without preamble, as though she assumed I’d been inside her head and would know immediately what she was talking about. She did not look at me, she continued staring at the sky without following any of the moving clouds, allowing them to pass across her field of vision the way her thoughts seemed to be drifting across the screen of her mind. Her voice was soft, the amorphous clouds above were hypnotic, I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face. Drowsily, I listened to her, and in a little while I think I dozed and only dreamt her voice beside me going on in its same monotonous tone.

She began by apologizing again for the way she’d behaved, and by admitting she’d lied about her fear of water, but saying again it had nothing to do with her mother’s death. The truth of the matter, she said, was that she was afraid of so many things, probably because she felt so out of it most of the time. She couldn’t understand this feeling because, after all, half the entire world was composed of people who were twenty-five or younger, which she most certainly was, so why shouldn’t she feel right at home? And yet, she always had the feeling instead that a party was going on, and she hadn’t been invited. (She’d tried to explore this feeling in her column called “Feelings,” and had got letters from a lot of girls at school who thought she was merely a square, which she supposed she was.)