Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

“I love this,” Lila said as they grabbed arms and pushed off together. Their hair brushed the ceiling. “No babies in here,” she said, and looked around as if it was surprising not to see hundreds of infants suspended in air.

“We're saved,” Eddie said like a TV preacher. “Praise the Lord.”

“We're young,” Lila said, wildly throwing her head from side to side with the music. She jumped high, kicking her bare legs. “And we're free.”

E mily watched Lila walk on the beach. She couldn't remember herself ever looking like that: every part so new and nested perfectly together. She did remember when her hips spread, a little with Eddie, but more later. Emily looked over the length of her body to Lila's feet marching in the shallow waves.

“Want to lay out with me?” Emily called.

Lila looked up and smiled shyly. She swayed her thin hips up the sand. “Spread your towel here,” Emily said. “It'll be fun to talk to you.”

“I like your bathing suit,” Lila said.

“This old thing?” Emily looked down at her paisley hip hugger. “I got this before Eddie was born.”

“Really?”

Emily nodded.

Lila flipped her towel up like a wing and then let it settle on the sand. She lay down on her stomach with a palm resting under each hip.

“Did Birdflower tell you we work together at the Trolley?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “He says he doesn't think you like it.”

Lila shrugged. “What's to like?”

Emily dug her feet into the cooler sand below the surface. “Did you get in trouble for missing a day?”

“I'm just decoration around that place,” Lila said.

“I used to take off like that,” Emily said. “No excuses, no plans. Just drive right onto the highway.”

“I'd love to be able to drive,” Lila said.

“No need for it here,” Emily said, her eyes still closed.

“Yeah,” Lila said. “Even if I could, there wouldn't really be anywhere to go.”

Emily leaned up on one elbow. “I would have loved to grow up here.”

Lila opened her eyes and looked into Emily's face. “Can I ask you a question? I've been dying to ask you this forever.”

“Okay,” Emily said, looking past Lila's profile and farther down the beach to where an older couple waded in the water.

“Why didn't you just reach up and catch the bottle?”

Emily watched the old woman slowly step back to shore and the man do a sidestroke into deeper water. “Have you ever had a bottle thrown at you?”

“No,” Lila said, sitting up. “But it seems like you could've caught it and slammed it back at his truck.”

“It wasn't a movie,” Emily said, watching the old man grow smaller as he floated on his back beyond the waves. “Imagine if you were riding your bike and your father drove up. You'd take a step forward, wouldn't you? And then what if he threw a Coke bottle hard as he could at your face?”

Lila was quiet. “It's horrible to imagine,” she said finally.

“Why do you care about this?” Emily asked.

“I can't help thinking about it, is all,” Lila said.

Emily lay back and let the sun ease her. She wanted to explain that more and more often now she thought of John Berry; she liked the way he loved her. You could tell he did by the way he breathed, and by the way his skin prickled when he held her. John Berry slept curled up, his face marked with the light sweat of sleep. He was more instinctual than most men. His moods swayed with warm weather, with heat, the seasons.

Emily saw the old man throw his arms up as if cheering. At first she thought he was motioning to his wife about some sort of sea life, maybe dolphin beyond the wake. But then his head dunked under, and when he came up, his hands waved frantically.

“I think that man's in trouble.”

Lila stood up, shielded the sun from her eyes.

Emily started to run up the beach. Her feet pounded the wet sand. The man's hands fluttered madly now and his sharpening face was flushed and contorted. His wife waded out, holding up her yellow shift from the water; she pointed to him and yelled.

Emily told Lila to stay with the woman and then ran into the surf. Her body rippled under a wave; she flicked her feet like fins and pulled herself forward with breaststrokes. She saw the man just beyond the wake and thought of her own aging parents. Her heart beat fast; she could feel her hips and ribs pressing down the water. She rose to the surface and swam quickly to him. He grabbed her, strangling his arms around her like a lover. She let out a chain of silver bubbles.

She wedged her foot against his stomach and pushed hard — his bathing suit went down to his knees and floated gracefully off. She scooted up quickly for air, grabbed him across the shoulder, and settled her other hand on the loose skin of his waist.

They started moving slowly, and after a few yards, the man said weakly, “Underwater you looked like a mermaid.”

Emily swam hard, concentrating on the flat of green to be crossed and the beige beach and blue sky beyond it.

Lila emerged from a wave, swam to them, and took the man's other arm. “I can carry him,” Emily said.

“But he's heavy,” Lila said.

They tugged at the man from each side. Emily thought Lila was purposely swimming too fast and she saw her looking down through the water at the man's body, squinting her eyes to make out the edges of his genitals. Emily swam hard. “Hold your breath,” she said each time a wave rose over them.

Their feet touched a sandbank and they moved into shallow water. “Are you okay to stand?” Emily said.

They helped him up the beach. She guessed he was seventy or so and she could tell he was embarrassed. His wife ran to him and wrapped a moss-green towel around his waist. He pulled from them. “I'm fine now,” he said and staggered toward his blanket.

Emily lay on her stomach, letting the sun ease and loosen her muscles. She was trying to even her breath and figure out why she felt annoyed at Lila: because she had told her to stay on shore, because she could have been drowned and then everyone would have said it was Emily's fault. She thought how young Lila looked in her bathing suit. Her cheek pressed to the sand, flushed, as she watched the ghost crabs tickle out of holes, then, like tiny race cars, speed back in.

“I'm sorry,” Lila said. “If I did anything wrong.”

Emily sat up. “I don't know,” she said. “I just wanted to save that man myself.”

Lila laughed. “Maybe another will go down.”

“Yeah, maybe all the men on the island will go out there and I'll save each and every one.” She didn't wait for Lila to answer, but got up, walked to the water's edge, and scanned the long line where sea and sky met. He probably loves this girl, Emily thought.

“Want to walk down to the kettle,” Lila yelled to her.

“I'll take you in the car to get a soda first,” Emily said. As she turned and made her way back, she saw Lila looking strangely at her. “You know,” she said. “You must be a weird mother to have.”

Emily smiled. “You don't have to tell me that.”

Lila tipped the Coke can to her lips, then let it bump her thigh as she walked. She was watching Emily move, the way you could nearly see her joints work. The skin on her chest and shoulders was patch-brown and slightly wrinkled. I'll look like that, Lila kept thinking, and it was just as surprising as when, years earlier, leaning over her cousin's bathing suit, she'd seen her breasts, pink nipples, like the world's most delicate embroidery.

Sometimes it would occur to Lila that she was more interested in Emily than Eddie. Lila would try to think the way Emily did — about men mostly and always about water. To Lila, Emily's mind was like a light source always shaded, a sheet slung over the window, a towel draped over a lamp.