This work was published in The Avenue Journal, Issue X: Dogs
Dog Paddling
by Kendyl Kearly
Deidre had been promised a swimming pool since they’d agreed to move here.
No one cherished the water like Gilbert’s wife. Every vacation had been to the beach; he never suggested something that suited his tastes more — camping or an away football game, maybe. Because Gilbert too had been at his happiest there, parked on the shore with a beer and watching her twirl and splash like a toddler in water wings, inventing sea games with the kids until they grew out of those things. Deidre never did.
Glossy brochures for Golden Acres had shown one-bedroom apartments photographed to look bigger, the dining room with white tablecloths and herb-roasted chicken (neither of which Gilbert had ever seen there) and a rendering of an Olympic pool, gray-haired swimmers treading water with imbecilic smiles.
“Look, Mom, a pool!” his son had said, tapping the image three times with his index finger. “That’s perfect for you.”
Before she could react, Gilbert had butted in: “That’s not even there yet. See how fake those people look?”
Then: “We’ll probably be in the ground before they start construction.”
Three years of jackhammers and bulldozer beeps waking them in the mornings. Three years of Deidre working up her polite courage to ask at regular intervals if an opening date had been scheduled yet. But now, they’d lived to see the Golden Aquaplex Grand Ribbon-Cutting Extravaganza. (Nursing homes, or at the better ones, take any minute occasion for a celebration: every birthday, every calendar holiday and all the fake ones too like National Soft-Serve Ice Cream Day, anything to break up the day-in-day-out of board games, movie nights and health care.)
They couldn’t even swim yet at the Golden Aquaplex Grand Ribbon-Cutting Extravaganza; the chemicals weren’t done, apparently. This was just 30 old folks gawking at their reflections while the attendants worried over puddles.
It wasn’t anything special as far as pools go, as with the apartments, not nearly as big as the brochure made it seem. But the room was airy with big windows looking out at the parking lot, though all the hand rails and safety get-up marred the effect. The smell of chlorine burned extra strong like at children’s pools that will likely be pissed in.
Deidre gazed upon it like she was back at the Atlantic Ocean, like she was a young mother in Ocean City again.
Gilbert held her hand and, on their way out, thanked the manager for making it happen.
He balked at the positive comment. “Of, of course. You’re so welcome, Gilbert.”
“That’s still Mr. Williams to you.”
In bed that night — they had one of the few queens in the joint, were among the few with someone left to love — she snuggled against his bony shoulder. He’d long since lost the muscle from his firefighting career. “I’m so excited, it feels like the big dance is coming up.”
She prattled off the list of exercises: water aerobics, water zumba — she’d even heard Golden Acres’ next investment would be aquatic treadmills. Fridays were to be open swim, with music and cups of sparkling cider that, if gossip was to believed, you could drink right in the pool.
“It’ll be like our old Friday date nights,” she said.
He stroked her white hair. “I’m looking forward to watching you.”
“But you’re going to get in too, right?”
“The view’s better on land.”
She kissed his cheek, confident that if he had anything left to give her in this place of bland desolation, it was hers.
The residents could talk of nothing else. The movies and games and fake parties went ignored in favor of discussions on which strokes people remembered and what bathing suits would flatter them now. The staff posted a pool calendar on the bulletin board, and Deidre copied the activities onto their own calendar printed with photos of the grandchildren.
When she met him at the pool for the first water aerobics class, he whistled low at her. Their daughter had bought her a polka-dotted one-piece, and she was a knockout.
She pretended to curtsy at him but only had eyes for that pool. The other folks stood around waiting for the go-ahead, but Deidre clapped two hands together and dived.
They all gasped at the splash. Gilbert stepped forward.
Her head crashed up through the surface, a confetti of droplets scattering in the light. Soaked hair flipped over her head as she transformed back into that swishing, gliding mythical creature once again.
She floated on her back, clear water running over her face. She took some into her mouth and squirted it up into a fountain. The wet gleam hid it, but Gilbert could tell she was crying.
How long had it been? The Murphys’ last pool party? (Gilbert had suffered through conversation with those horrible know-it-all neighbors for decades for Deidre’s sake.) Baby Marcus’ first swim lesson? The boy was in elementary school now.
How could he have let them come here?
He’d nearly had a conniption when his friend Brent had told him how much Golden Acres costs a month. He knew for a fact that his kids didn’t have that kind of money. How were they swinging it, second mortgages?
They would rather do that than, any of them, take their parents into their own homes.
At Deidre’s example, the others waded in. The lifeguard quickened over, blowing his whistle and chastising them for swimming before he’d arrived.
His name was Josh, a college student, and until two weeks ago, he’d been filing at the reception desk. Gilbert supposed prancing that pretty-boy chest around and laying hands on his wife as he led her out of the pool suited his tastes better than signing in the trickle of visitors.
Josh led them through basic safety rules with teen camp counselor authority: No running, no touching the water without a lifeguard present, no swimming beyond your ability. If you need assistance, raise your right hand.
He allowed them to step in one at a time. Deidre hung back.
“Jasmine brought you a suit, too,” she said, noting Gilbert’s trousers.
He winked. “I’ll just keep watch on yours.”
He lowered himself into a chair, and the start of the class tabled the matter. Until Josh approached him while the participants were testing out water weights.
“You know, Gilbert, we’re really trying to encourage all the residents to have at least one regular physical activity,” Josh said.
“Oh, is that so?” he replied, mock-serious. “Something just now made me want to pick up bare-knuckle boxing.”
Josh ignored him. “I heard about your heart attack last year. Regular exercise could—”
“Careful, or I might sue you for a HIPAA violation.” The heart attack had snuck up on him during dinner; everyone knew. He only remembered Deidre’s head blocking the fluorescent light panel as she leaned over him, one of her braids swinging down to caress him on the cheek. “Go teach your class so I can watch my wife swim.”
Josh lamented, but the two of them picked it back up every day that week. Deidre left his new swim trunks spread out on the flammable bedspread; Josh asked Gilbert’s doctor to speak with him. Deidre reminisced over vacation stories.
Gilbert didn’t know where the pressure from her was coming from. She could always make herself happy alone in the water, content to let him admire from afar like a sailor to a mermaid. Maybe Josh had gotten to her about the heart attack.
On Thursday, he broke. This was a husband who built her furniture then painted little flowers on it, who found the money every year for blue-stoned anniversary jewelry, who had been watching her lead a dry half-life for years now. Of course he would do it.
The water chilled between the soft folds of his skin as he stepped in: both hands gripping the rail, both feet firm on each step.
This is supposed to be good for my heart? The thing jack-in-the-boxed in his chest every other beat.
He eyed the perimeter but made himself walk toward Deidre in the middle.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Josh said now that everyone was in. Gilbert had been last.
The boy passed through the group, gripping people by the shoulders and leading them to different positions so they were evenly spaced. Gilbert was one of the tallest, though several inches below Josh, so he was taken to the back. The water reached up to the white whorl of hair on his upper chest. Goosebumps above that.
Easy does it.
Brent pushed a couple weights toward him, heavier beneath the surface than they looked. Gilbert closed his eyes and pretended he was just at the gym as Josh called out the steps. The workout evened his breathing.
Forty minutes. The class should last only forty minutes. Forty minutes would come soon enough like all the other milestones of life, and then look, it’s over.
Not so bad now. The exercise felt good, actually. And he could hear from the rhythm of the splashing to his left that Brent was going much slower than him.
“Good job, everyone!” Josh called at the end of the set. “Now go ahead and take a cool-down period and float on your backs for me.”
Gilbert was beat and followed suit. Laid back on the lilting surface, maybe he could understand Deidre’s fuss over it.
His shoulders would yell at him tomorrow. But he could almost fall asleep.
Maybe he did for a second. But then, water was in his nose and ears. He tasted it in his mouth.
“Arrrrgh!” he cried, thrashing.
Where was the bottom?
He couldn’t touch the bottom.
He kicked.
He raised his right hand.
He could hear outside his body the sound of his heart flailing. Like when he’d been hooked up to a monitor.
Gilbert managed onto his stomach. He pawed through the water enough to keep his head up.
Hard arms wrapped around him. One pressed upward on his stomach, keeping him afloat. The other rested on his back and guided him toward shallower water.
Their pressure eventually made his heart shush down again.
Josh murmured, “You’re okay,” at the same time that Brent laughed, “He’s learning to dog paddle!”
Gilbert started thrashing again.
“Stop!” he sputtered. “Stop it! I don’t need saving!”
If they only knew how many people Gilbert had rescued. Actually delivering people, children even, from burning buildings.
And now, piddling along like their former dachshund, the one that had to be put down when he started shitting everywhere.
“Let him go!” Deidre cried.
Josh relinquished him, and Gilbert found he could stand. He’d only floated into about 6 feet of depth and was back at 4.
“Gilbert, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Although I did instruct you not to swim above your ability,” Josh said. To Deidre: “I was just trying to show him that he could swim after all. The fear from a failed attempt can stay with a person and make them unwilling to try again.”
Gilbert shoved Josh in his 24-Hour Fitness chest, which didn’t budge and almost made Gilbert tumble back underneath again.
“If you ever touch me again, I’ll own this place!” he yelled as he splashed up the steps. “It’ll be called the Gilbert Williams Golden Aquaplex by the time we’re done! And I’ll own that Japanese clunker parked out there and the protein-powder-and-bong-water-smelling student housing hovel that I assume you live in!”
Brent snickered but called out, “His bark’s worse than his bite!”
Deidre covered her face with her hand. No one followed him back to their room.
He missed dinner, ransacking purses in the closet for the candies Deidre gave to the little ones. She’d shared a home with him long enough to know not to try talking with him for a few hours.
The lights were off when she came in later, but he was still awake. She showered — the smell of the incident had been left in both their hair to inhale for hours. Then she lumbered into bed, her back against the headboard.
“I’m sorry for pushing, Bear,” she said. “I just thought you didn’t like to do it, not that you couldn’t—”
“Let’s drop it. Please.”
He’d grown up on the South Side of Chicago, only a few miles from Lake Michigan’s shore. He and his friends had no more gone to the beach there than to the Magnificent Mile. It wasn’t uncommon for city kids.
“I was just excited,” Deidre said, “for the first time in I don’t know how long.”
He was turned away from her but felt the comforter shift as she buried her face in it.
“Most of these people, they’re waiting for death because they’re depressed the kids don’t visit.” She laughed. “Like how after Greg went to college, Hercules wouldn’t do anything but lie there and eat.”
The dachshund. Deidre had tried to take him on long walks, throw a tennis ball. No interest.
“You’re not depressed not to see the kids much?”
He felt her shrug. “They have their own lives.”
Ungrateful shits. You give your whole life to them, providing everything they needed, of course saving nothing. Until suddenly, you can’t provide for yourself and have to live out your years on their charity.
Deidre continued: “We have our own life too now. And it’s still a real life. That can have fun and water and Friday date nights.”
“Mm-hmm. Lots of fun in here.”
She sank down under the covers, so he could feel her words on his neck. “Maybe we could even go back to the beach one day.”
Her voice sounded sleepy, so he left her to dream of it.
The next day at lunch, management passed out waivers for anyone who wanted to use the pool. Deidre and Gilbert both signed without a word. Brent barked at him like a chihuahua, and the sound morphed into a wheezing laugh so hard that a staff member came over to check on him.
“Twenty bucks if you smother him with a cervical pillow,” Gilbert said to her.
Josh overheard and pulled him aside to offer him private swim lessons. He couldn’t guarantee they’d be private, of course, but Gilbert was the only potential taker Josh knew of so far.
“I am not a potential taker,” Gilbert said through his teeth.
Maybe it would make you feel more comfortable if your wife came, too,” Josh said. It’s a really important skill to be independent. And it might save your life.”
Even just the thought of Deidre watching him blow bubbles and tread water was too much! He stormed off. Josh called out that he hoped he’d see Gilbert at Friday Open Swim later, provided in the shallow end.
He tried to go down for his nap, but mental images of tearing the lifeguard a new one made that impossible. He used the john and hesitated at the sight of his bathing suit hanging to dry on the towel rack.
Gilbert left it where it was for now and checked the time. Past the hour now.
He headed out, following the sound of music down the hall. Sam Cooke.
Spotted rainbow light danced out the window of the pool room. Shades on the outdoor windows had been pulled down to darken the room enough for the cheap disco ball. Among the splashing and laughing, Deidre sat on the edge of the shallow end with two plastic cups of fizzy liquid beside her.
She wore a different bathing suit, fire engine red, that she must have saved for today. Her head was uncharacteristically dry.
Josh and another worker were assembling a volleyball net. He caught Gilbert’s eye through the window and waved.
Gilbert turned away and left them with the tunes of his youth. He’d heard today was someone’s birthday, and there would be cake. He sat down to wait.
Kendyl Kearly is a Baltimore-based writer and journalist, serving as an editor for The Baltimore Sun. Her fiction has appeared in The Avenue and Tart literary journals. Her journalism has been published by Esquire, AFAR, Tennessee Lookout, the Columbia Missourian, Edible Communities, Vox Magazine, Chronogram Magazine, Manhattan magazine and more. She can often be found along Baltimore’s harbor with a book.
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