Sara Jaffe - Dryland

Blue suit number two was too small to try on over my underwear. I peeled the suit down and eyed the Do Not Remove protective sheet on the crotch. So it was okay for all the people who tried on a suit to stuff their crotch up against the paper, but it wasn’t okay if their crotch was touching the suit itself? Or was a person never supposed to try on a suit without underwear? But then why the sheet? I didn’t care. I wasn’t the kind of person who believed excessively in germs or was sicked out by sharing things, so I got my underwear off and pulled the suit up all the way. If I swam in the first suit, then this one, I don’t know, I choked in it. The suit was so tight I could barely stand up straight. The crotch pulled so high that it exposed the white skin where my thigh curved into its socket, and the coarse hairs that sprouted down the curve. I hadn’t, I realized, worn a bathing suit since I’d had hairs there. The hairs above my knees were thick and blonde and I knewȁ4from Erika, who else? — that shaving once would mean the hairs would grow back thick and dark, but I hadn’t thought about the problem of the dark, thick hairs that sprouted down from my crotch whether or not I’d ever scraped them with a razor.

Erika said, through the curtain, Anything to show me?

I couldn’t get out of that suit fast enough. I said, I’m good.

Erika said, Hey Julie.

I was one leg into the final suit. I said, One second.

Erika said, Are you annoyed at me about something?

I said, No. I said, The first two were really bad. I tried to put the sound of a laugh into my voice.

Erika said, Are you crying?

I said, I’m not crying.

Erika said, Okay. I could feel her standing right there on the other side of the curtain. She said, Hey Julie, I have a question and I want you to feel completely like you can say no to it, okay?

I said, Okay. The mirror showed me to myself in the middle-size swimsuit. The suit didn’t pull or sag, and it covered what it needed to.

Erika said, Because I know swimming might just be your thing, and I make you do my things all the time.

I said, You don’t make me do anything. The stripes on the maroon suit ran diagonally from shoulder to ribs. The stripes took on the path of a cross-current, a potential counter to the strength one could see, if one wanted to, in the broadening pull of my shoulders. Swimming was going to be something — not my thing, but a thing — I did on my own. Alexis had asked me, she’d made a point of it. I didn’t even know if someone could just join without having been asked. Erika could, obviously, do whatever she wanted, but it might be embarrassing for her if she went to talk to Coach and found out that the team was full, or that she’d needed an explicit invitation.

Erika said, I mean, the thing is, I like swimming.

I took a look at myself in my suit. The stripes were silvery gray, and maroon wasn’t blue but it was, in a way, a color as deep and innocuous. The fit of the suit felt great — tight and enmetaling, a good sling, a shell. I raised my right arm and crooked my left arm behind my head to pull my right elbow. A swimmer’s stretch. I could show Erika how to do it. I pulled back the curtain and let her take a look at me.

ON SUNDAY NIGHTI couldn’t focus during L.A. Law. It was a boring episode, mainly about the drinking problem of one of the older male lawyers. During the second-to-last commercial break, I stood up and said good night to my parents. There was something — a clipped, vein-pumping energy — that was ordering me up to my room to be alone with it.

In my room I lay on my bed, on top of my covers. It was quiet in my room and my energy was loud. Earlier, on the phone with Erika, when she’d called for the third time to ply me with swim team questions — Did I want to share a combo lock? Did we need to bring towels? — she’d asked if I was nervous, and I had said no and meant it. It was just this energy, a body feeling, fluttering around looking to be fed.

I put on a CD and shut it off. All my music was too calming. I needed something that would match my energy, or drown it out. I put in my one dance album and clicked forward to the bounciest track. The beats introduced themselves and bounced around my room, and then what was I supposed to do? Chase after them? It was embarrassing, for the singer or for me. It was embarrassing, still, in the silence after pressing stop. The phone rang. If it was for me it was Erika with another swimming question I didn’t want to answer. I let the phone ring until someone picked up. I heard my dad walking toward the stairs and to spare him the flight, the soft knock, I called, Getting it.

The voice on the phone said, Julie! I hope it’s not too late. The voice said, It’s Alexis, did your dad tell you? I hope it’s not too late. I thought you might have your own line.

I blinked a few times. I sat down on my bed. I said, I have an extension. I said, It’s not too late.

Alexis said, I just wanted to check in and make sure you had all the info about tomorrow.

I said, Coach gave me the sheet.

Alexis said, Oh good, I figured, I just wanted to make sure. She said, I mean, most of the stuff is obvious, anyway.

I wanted to ask how she had gotten my number. I wanted to ask because I wanted to know how she had gotten it. To think of Alexis turning the thin phone book page and running her finger down the W column until she got to a number that, she guessed, was mine made me feel something. It was the feeling of running my finger down rows of names to look for her.

Alexis said, I got your number from the yearbook list. The one everyone signed on the first day?

I said, Right.

She said, You must think I’m some stalker.

I said, No. I said, I remember that list.

Alexis said, Great. She said, I just wanted to call. I felt like it was my responsibility, since I asked you.

I said, It’s okay.

Alexis said, I’m psyched to see you swim tomorrow.

I said, Thanks. I said, Me too, and then I said, You too.

Alexis said, Don’t forget a towel.

My energy knocked around in me. It wanted something big from me. I wanted to know what Alexis thought she’d see when she thought about seeing me swim. I wanted to know what Coach thought. I strained to see it myself. I made fists and shut my eyes. I pictured the pool at the JCC where I’d done summer swim lessons. I saw the bearded swim instructor. I saw my neon-green T-back with the decorative black zipper. Lane lines and kickboards and the smell of chlorine. I saw a blue field I pushed my body into.

The image dissolved when I hit the water. I couldn’t dredge up a memory to hang it on. I’d only taken lessons for a couple of summers. No doubt there’d be people on the team who’d been in lessons since infancy, who’d passed every level, who might have been instructors or lifeguards themselves. Alexis might have been a lifeguard. But a lifetime of training only mattered so much. My brother had started late. One day when he was eleven or twelve, he’d gone off to swim lessons, like any kid, and the next he’d come back with a note from the instructor saying someone needed to get this kid — my brother — into training, pronto. One day he’d gone off to swim lessons like any kid and come back another kid. He’d hatched out fully formed and he’d swum and swum faster. I jumped out of bed and got the slippery Sports Cavern shopping bag from my closet. I dumped out suit, cap, goggles, receipt. I looked at my swim things in a pile on the carpet.

My parents had the ten o’clock news on. They didn’t hear me go down to the basement. On the laundry room side, I found the boxes and tubs that held my brother’s and my old toys. I opened a box and rifled through stuffed animals. I tore the tape off another and felt through Star Wars figures and clumped Barbie hair. The dehumidifer’s hum wombed the basement in white noise. I unlidded a tub that said GAMES and found a red canvas tote bag full of chess pieces. The pieces clattered as I shook them out into the tub. The red bag was soft and worn and had the logo of my brother’s club team on it. I brought it under the bare lightbulb by the washer. Along the bottom of the bag, where wet suits had rubbed, some of the red dye had leached out, and the color was verging on pink.