Swimming Lessons (13 page)

“It does,” she replied, trying to contain her excitement. “Could you, I mean, is it possible for me to learn how to do that with a camera?”

“Not with
that
camera,” he said with a short laugh, pointing to her instamatic.

She felt a rush of heat flash cross her cheeks and tucked the cheap cardboard camera behind her back. “Oh, this thing. I just picked it up…” She couldn’t tell him it was all she could afford.

“You have to get a better camera,” he said, matter of fact. “Nothing too expensive. At least not right off. If the bug bites you, you’re hooked for life. It depends what you want and how many pictures you plan to take.”

“I figure I should at least take pictures of the sea turtles. I can’t keep asking you to do it for me.”

She turned to look at her daughter. Little Lovie was on her knees in the sand, holding tight to a wooden stake while Flo wrapped orange tape around the nest. The nameless little boy was holding fast to another stake. Their expressions were very intent and serious.

“But that’s not all.” She smiled and pointed to the children. Ethan turned his head. She saw the flicker of a smile spark in his dark eyes and immediately he lifted his camera to his eye.

“I’d like to learn to…how did you say it? Capture the moment.”

Medical Log “Big Girl”

I
n downtown Charleston, in the Medical University Infertility Clinic, Cara sat on a chair in the outpatient dressing room, buttoning her blouse. She stopped midway and let her hand drop to rest over her abdomen. She closed her eyes.

Beneath her palm, deep in her womb, her fertilized eggs had been planted. Her child was alive inside her body. Her and Brett’s baby…

Embryo
, she reminded herself, opening her eyes. The light of the overhead fixture was glaring. She raised her hand to continue buttoning her blouse. It was early yet. She mustn’t allow herself to get too attached.

And yet, she couldn’t help herself. The embryo would grow to become a fetus, she just knew it would. The transfer of the 2-4 cell embryos had been painless; she didn’t feel any of the cramping she had the last two times. Surely that was a good sign?

She offered a tremulous smile to Brett when she stepped out into the waiting room. He rose from his seat like a shot, crossing the distance to her side in three long strides to take possessive hold of her arm. “Here, let me
help you.” His tanned face appeared pale with worry and his blue eyes were beacons trained on her.

“I’m all right,” she said reassuringly. “Everything went like clockwork. Best ever. I just have to take it easy for a few days and wait for pregnancy symptoms. You know the drill.”

“Nausea and swollen breasts. Got it.”

She smiled again, a small tremulous effort, grateful for his humor at a time she felt weepy with maudlin sentiment.

He kissed her forehead. “Come on, little mama. Let’s go home.”

On the Isle of Palms, in her beach house, Emmi felt the walls closing in on her.

It was a dark, cloudy afternoon in late June. Roiling black clouds were heading toward the island from the mainland, swift and strong, providing a spectacular lightning show beyond the Intracoastal Waterway.

Emmi stood shivering in the middle of the dimly lit room. It wasn’t that the air conditioning was set too low, or that the thin cotton sweater afforded her too little warmth. Emmaline Baker Peterson suffered the chill of memories.

Her grandparents had purchased the small, three bedroom beach house on Isle of Palms after World War II, then passed it on to her parents, who then passed it on to Emmi. She’d spent most of her childhood summers here and when she married, she brought her children here, too. She was attached to the old beach house with its white enamel appliances, hearty pine paneling, lumpy sofas and framed photographs of three generations of family members cavorting on the beach or proudly displaying fish on lines.

Her big, showy house in Atlanta had been decorated by professionals and was a show place for Tom’s business entertaining. Here at the beach house, Emmi liked things the way they’d always been. She preferred to put her feet up, literally, on any surface she chose and just relax.

Only now, she couldn’t relax. She no longer felt at home, or even that she belonged here any more. Everywhere she looked, a memory of a happier time jumped out at her.

On that blue floral sofa, she and Tom had made out while the television blared loudly. She spied the frilly, black and white checked apron with ruffled edges, as old as the kitchen it hung in. Whenever Emmi had worn it, Tom came over to wrap his arms around her and nuzzle her neck. Under the front window was the scuffed and marred colonial table and chairs that she sat at as a girl. She could still see her sons, James and John, sitting there with their long legs curled around the spindled chair legs, shoveling cereal into their mouths, their hair sun kissed, their bodies tanned brown as berries. On the wood table by the sofa was an old black telephone that never rang. Her sons had not called once since she’d arrived.

She turned around, her eyes traveling from one object to another, from one memory to another. Emmi spun, her head getting dizzy, her eyes filling, her heart pounding harder. When she stopped short she felt her stomach continue spinning. She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the echo of her family’s voices reverberating in her brain, mocking the silence in the spinning room. Her blood felt as though it was draining from her face, her chest, her legs and into the floor. Dizzy, her knees buckled and she collapsed into a heap.

She didn’t know how long she lay on the floor, howling like a lone wolf. When she was done her throat felt raw and her voice was hoarse. Yet, her bellowing had drowned out the sound of voices in her head. Dragging herself to a sitting position, she felt shaky and weak, but oddly better, as though her violent crying had purged her body of all the heartache it had carried for far too long. Slowly she drew herself back up to her feet and took several long, deep, shuddering breaths. The crazy panic had subsided and her heart beat normally again. Only the chill remained. It encased her heart in ice.

When she looked again at the room and objects that had once been so dear to her, Emmi felt a strange detachment. The golden paneling, the worn sofa, the sepia family pictures…

She knew what she had to do. She went to the phone and dialed the number of an old friend of hers, one of the few that was close to only her and not to her
and
Tom as a couple. She hadn’t talked to Cindi for a few years, but that didn’t matter with old friends. After a few rings, she heard Cindi’s rural southern drawl on the line.

“Hi Cindi! It’s me. Emmi.”

“Emmi! Well, hey girl. When did you come down?”

“A while ago. Sorry I haven’t called yet. I’ve had a lot of sifting and sorting to do. You know how crazy that can get.”

“I surely do. I’m just so happy you called. I was thinking about you just the other day. I drove by your house and saw the sweetest little car in the driveway. I asked Chip if he’d seen you then I got to wondering if you’d decided to rent your little beach house after all.”

Emmi swallowed hard. “No, not rent it. I want to sell it.”

Ethan’s presence in Toy’s beach house no longer was a novelty. At some point during the past month he had stopped eating take-out and begun to come early for dinner. Little Lovie had grown bored and stopped hanging around the table while they worked, preferring to play with her toys or read. In the past weeks, Ethan and Toy had made good progress on the grant, but in the past few nights as the grant neared completion, Toy got the impression that Ethan was in no hurry to finish. He took long breaks and they started taking their dessert on the porch. They also began talking. Not about the grant or the Aquarium, but about personal topics never broached at work.

Toy learned that Ethan loved sharks, sailing, surfing and anything that put him into salt water. She also learned that she looked forward to his coming over every night in ways that had nothing to do with his being a valued colleague. Ethan discovered that Toy loved poetry, old movies, sketching in her journal and taking photographs.

How Ethan had found out it was her birthday, she didn’t know. She’d gone to great pains not to mention it to anyone at the Aquarium. He arrived at the beach house promptly at seven looking a little sheepish and carrying a box in his hands. He placed the gift-wrapped box with pink ribbon unceremoniously on the floor beside the table, then began pulling out the grant papers from his backpack.

Toy pretended not to notice the mystery box but secretly hoped Ethan noticed the fresh flowers on the table and, on the counter, the two-tiered carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that she’d baked specially for tonight. Her face was freshly scrubbed and void of
makeup. She’d donned a clean, ironed white blouse over khaki shorts. She even spritzed a bit of the French lime and floral scented perfume that Cara had given her for her birthday, the expensive scent that she saved for special occasions.

It was also the last night of the grant writing effort. Tonight was merely a formality of checking the grant over before handing it in to Kate for mailing. They sat across from each other as they had most every night for three weeks and reviewed the grant page by page, making certain they’d crossed every
t
and dotted every
i.
Little Lovie hung close by, her radar on full alert that something was different tonight though she didn’t know quite what.

Ethan and Toy ignored her heavy sighs and worked steadily until the last page was turned. The end of the project was nothing more than a whisper of paper on paper, but it sounded to them like a gong. They both leaned back in their chairs. They’d done it. In unison, they smiled with deep satisfaction and their eyes met.

In that moment, Toy felt a strong connection with Ethan. It struck deep and true and in that instant, she knew they’d crossed that imaginary line.

Suddenly an awkward silence surfaced between them. A tension she hadn’t felt with him for weeks bubbled in her chest. Ethan must have felt it, too, because he quickly rose and began packing away the grant. The zipper of the bag hummed shut, and hearing it, Toy realized the full impact of the grant being completed.

Now there was no reason for Ethan to keep coming by the beach house in the evenings. That realization sucked the elation from the room like a giant vacuum. She felt hollow inside.

Little Lovie came to her side and hung on her chair. “Can we have some cake now?” She asked with a pleading tone. “Please?”

“It sure looks good,” Ethan said, his gaze settling on the creamy cake.

“It’s a carrot cake. I made it to celebrate the grant being done,” she replied, thinking that in truth, she’d made it because he’d said it was his favorite.

“It’s your birthday cake,” Lovie corrected her. She turned to Ethan. “Mama bought flowers, too.”

“They’re real nice.”

Toy rose to go to the kitchen. She reached up to the glass cabinet and pulled out three of her best china plates. “Don’t pay any mind to my birthday,” she said as she carried them to the table. Little Lovie leaned far over on her elbows when she carried the cake to the table. “It’s just another day, and just a cake.”

“Too late.” Ethan bent to pick up the mystery box from the floor and held it out to her. Toy put the cake down and looked up at him, startled by the rare vulnerability she saw in the usually confident eyes.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I brought you something,” he said. “To celebrate.”

“A present? No presents allowed!”

“Don’t think of it as a present. It’s for your work.” He set the box on the table and with his finger nudged the box closer. “Open it. You’ll see.”

Toy licked the frosting from her fingers then lifted the box, shaking it close to her ear.

“If you could see your face now you’d see how much you look like your daughter.”

“A five-year-old, you mean?”

“Open it, Mama!”

“Okay, okay.”

The box wasn’t wrapped in frilly paper but the tape was indestructible. She resorted to using the cake knife to slice it open. Inside, nestled in the paper, was a camera. Toy’s hands trembled as she lifted the camera box out then gingerly, as if it were made of spun glass, opened the package. Out slipped a slim silver digital camera no bigger than a deck of cards. Turning it in her hands she found it fit perfectly in her palm and weighed next to nothing.

“It has zoom,” Ethan said, leaning forward as eagerly as a boy while he pointed to a button.

She nodded, unable to speak.

“It’s light, so you can carry it in your backpack on the beach. I thought you’d like that.”

She nodded again.

“And look. You can preview your pictures on that screen to set them up.”

The camera had all sorts of bells and whistles that she didn’t know anything about but she wanted to learn. Oh, yes, she truly did. She coveted this camera.

Releasing a short whoosh of breath, she said, “Thank you. But, I can’t accept this.”

His face fell. “Sure you can.”

She could hear her mother’s voice in her ear.
Nice girls don’t accept expensive gifts from men. Makes them beholden. Makes them expect something in return
. Toy shook her head. “No, it’s too fine a gift. The nicest I’ve ever received. I appreciate the thought. But I can’t.” She was reluctant to put the camera back in its box.

“Toy…” He seemed to struggle with his words at the tip of his tongue, then said simply, “Think of it as a donation to the turtle hospital.”

She gave him a slanted glance.

“Really, you need a camera. Now that the turtle hospital made the move to the basement, I can’t always be there to take a picture for you. I’ll be busy on the third floor. And frankly, that instamatic just doesn’t cut it.”

“You’re just being nice.”

“I’m being practical. The more turtles you take in, the more you’ll need to be taking pictures to monitor their progress. And if you get this grant—and you will—you’ll need it. Take it, Toy. Please.”

She gently, longingly fingered the camera.

“For the turtles,” he urged.

Her lips twitched. “Well, when you put it like that…”

He smiled victoriously.

“Take my picture, Mama!”

Toy brought the camera to her eye and looked through the lens. First she aimed it at Little Lovie. The little minx posed with exaggerated flair then stuck out her tongue. Toy moved the camera to Ethan. He stood still, arms at his side, watching her, looking as if his heart had stopped. She felt again the pull of their connection and the air grew thick between them. She pushed the zoom button. The camera released a high pitched hum and in an instant, Ethan’s face appeared inches from her own. She saw the coarse, late evening stubble along his jaw, the thick black lashes that framed eyes as rich and tempting as dark chocolate. Her breath stilled in her throat as she saw the truth evident in the focus of the camera lens.

You’ll see it and just know.

Slowly she lowered the camera, lowering her gaze as well, sure that he could zoom in on every sensation and every longing she felt in her heart.

“I…I don’t really know how to use it,” she said.

“I’ll teach you.”

“You will?” she asked, looking up at him again.

He nodded. Then a half grin slid across his face. “Now that we’re done with the grant, I find my evenings are free now.”