Night Swimming Read Free Page A

Kreme after another, until she resembled a cardboard clown with a ring of white powder around its mouth, begging to have a ball thrown into it—or at least more food. She moved on to the freezer, microwaving pizzas, blintzes, cheese ravioli. Soon it was back to the wine, opening a second bottle. She was on her way to drunkenness; that much became clear when she decided to forego the glass and drink directly from the bottle.
    She tried to hold back the tears of lost time and lost chances. But a terrible grief grabbed her by the throat. She struggled to remember every moment of meaning floating somewhere in the alcoholic blur of her brain.
Memories.
That’s what her mother had said, Have your memories. So in a haze of Muscatel she began sorting all the sad and silly incidentals of her life. Memories stored away in the inner recesses of what was still good and what had made this little town meaningful. Benny Sanaswaso claiming that Ernie Pinkwater got a big part in
Hamlet.
    “Oh, really, Benny? Which part is he playing?”
    “Macbeth.”
    She almost couldn’t breathe for the laughter he caused.
    Then there was Jimmy Swenson, who, on a bet, stuck his tongue out against a frozen bike rack, forcing the fire department to come and get him unglued. There was her mother forever poised at the sewing machine, making all of Charlotte’s school dresses. The heavy Singer sat in the sunroom, its peddle worn from wear. She could hear the
rat-tat-tat
of the needle repeating itself along the hems of her cotton skirts, silver thimbles clinking like castanets, and scissors that sang like a song through the cloth. When her mother sewed, the house was filled with music. She could smell the sweet color of crayons, the nostalgic musk of store-bought Halloween costumes, the subtle Scotch tape from distant Christmases. Oh yes, these were the good memories, the sweet used-to-be memories before she was fat and dying.
    Dying. Just the thought brought her crashing back to earth like a rocket reentering the atmosphere. And there she sat, shaking, short of breath, trying to regroup. Dying. What did that mean? Unbidden, a scene long forgotten lodged itself into her consciousness.
    It was a Saturday afternoon and overcast; the day seemed to have a certain sadness built into it. Charlotte was at the vet’s with her hamster. Everyone else sat in the waiting room with their giant Labrador retrievers, Great Danes, Clydesdales. Charlotte sat with a little shoe box, holes punched at the top so that poor Jasper could breathe. Jasper, the center of the universe, her first pet, who was unceremoniously bathed by the veterinarian in some antiseptic grease and died the next day despite her efforts to keep him alive. Charlotte could barely contain her grief, positive it was the vet who killed him by lathering poor Jasper in brilliantine. A proper burial and service was prepared the following day, and Charlotte was comforted by MaryAnn, who reminded her that two years was a long time for a hamster to live and that Jasper was two and a half.
    But that first introduction to death did nothing to prepare her for the next. Timmy LeBlanc sat in front of her in first grade and had a disease she couldn’t pronounce. “C.F.” was what he called it for short. They would pass notes and draw funny pictures of Mrs. Kleem, the meanest teacher this side of hoosierdom. And then one day Timmy didn’t come in, and a day stretched to a week, then two. No one was talking, so Charlotte finally asked Mrs. Kleem where Timmy was.
    “He transferred,” was all she said, avoiding Charlotte’s eyes like an accident you try to look away from. That’s when Charlotte knew Mrs. Kleem was lying. Mrs. Kleem always looked directly at Charlotte. It was her own unique way of driving daggers into the hearts and souls of ill-behaved children. She couldn’t hit them but she could stare them down into submission, or so she thought. And so Charlotte called Timmy’s house and learned that he had