The Headmaster's Wife(38)
No one should have been swimming that day, least of all Augustus Holt, who could barely tread water. His father was a wealthy industrialist, the owner of Holt Industries of Pittsburgh, and after Augustus’s death his significant gift to the school in the boy’s name came with a catch: Every Lancaster student would now have to pass a swimming test to graduate.
Growing up in Craftsbury, Elizabeth never became much of a swimmer. There were no pools, only the short season at Caspian Lake, ten miles to the south. Saturdays when they had a family picnic, she was not one of those who swam out to the raft and jumped off it.
She was afraid of water. She had always been afraid of water. It was not a rational fear, she knew, and maybe it was no more her dislike of that murky lake with its reeds that slid against her legs like damp noodles. Maybe it was that her hippie parents never pushed her to do anything she did not want to do, some kind of Waldorf nonsense where you figure it out on your own and decide you want to learn something when it is time.
Regardless, she made it all the way to Lancaster managing to hide this fundamental fact about herself, and even though they explain the swimming requirement to her when she is admitted, and later when she first enrolls, she never for a moment considers they are really serious about it. What? She won’t graduate because she can’t swim the length of a pool? Really? Is this a serious academic position for a serious academic place?
It turns out, of course, that it is.
And so she puts it off. And a week before graduation she gets a note in her mailbox from the registrar that she needs to report to the pool at 4:00 P.M. on Friday and pass the test or not walk in the commencement ceremony.
Coming into the steaming warmth and chlorine-soaked air of the Olympic-size swimming pool, she thinks for a moment she might pass out. This feeling only grows when, approaching the pool, she sees that the only other person in the entire domed space is none other than Arthur, sitting on the lifeguard stand with a clipboard in his hand. He is proctoring this. She considers turning and leaving, as he has not seen her yet, but then he looks up and his eyes pass coldly over her standing there in her black one-piece bathing suit.
It has been more than a year since Russell Hurley was kicked out of Lancaster, and she has not been alone with Arthur since. The times she has been at parties and he walked in, she left. The school is small enough that they cannot avoid each other entirely, though they have not spoken in that amount of time. She has not dated since Russell, and while Arthur has—some bubbly, curly-haired sophomore she has seen him with—she doesn’t think it was serious. A few times she found herself confronted with him coming down the stairs in one of the academic buildings, and they did not acknowledge each other. Her heart beat fast as she looked away until he clattered past her.
But now there is nowhere to go. She breathes deep—all that hot chemical air—and walks toward him. He does not climb down off the stand. She speaks first.
She says, “I need to do the swim test.”
He looks again at his clipboard. All business. “Yes, I see your name here,” he says.
“So what do I do?”
“You need to go from one end of the pool to the other. You cannot stop or hang on to the side until you get to the other end. Then you can take a break. There is no time limit.”
At the shallow end, she climbs into the pool. She is almost dizzy from the heat and the silly fear she has of water, and the stress of looking over at Arthur, smug on the lifeguard stand, looking down at her, at the water rising up around her and soaking her bathing suit.
She stands for a moment and looks down the length of the pool. It feels like a great distance, a near-impossible task. It is also humiliating, the fact that she isn’t a good swimmer, can’t swim, and that Arthur is here to witness it. She takes one last look up at him. One last glance to the other side. Then she takes a deep breath and goes for it.
She does a modified doggie paddle, her arms and legs flailing under the water, propelling her forward, her head barely above the water, like a retriever cutting through a pond.
It is beyond humiliating, and she tells herself just to keep moving, push and kick, push and kick, over and over, and finally she looks up, thinking she must be nearing the end, only to realize she has not traveled more than a third of the way. She puts her head down and presses on, and a moment later, she is in trouble.
Her legs, which had been behind her, are now surprisingly below her, as if she has lost her natural buoyancy. The water is in her nose, and she tries to compensate by whirling her arms faster, but this seems to make it worse, and now she is under, closing her eyes and trying to push toward the top.
She doesn’t so much hear Arthur, other than as some distant swoosh, as feel him, his arm around her waist, his hands up over her breasts, her neck, pulling her up and sputtering out of the water.
“Easy now,” he says in her ear. “Easy now.”
At the pool’s wall she hangs on to the edge, and he is behind her, saying, “You okay, Betsy? You okay?”
She pulls herself up and out of the water. On her knees, she completes the humiliation by throwing up.
And Arthur is there, whispering to her kindly, sliding her hair away from her face. She turns toward him, and the nausea has passed, and now she starts to laugh, uncontrollably, some great release of tension, and Arthur laughs, too, and when she says, “Oh, f*ck, now I’m not going to graduate,” he says, “Not to worry. I mean, you went back and forth the whole length from what I could see,” and they laugh even harder now, and she is grateful to him.