Florence Adler Swims Forever(45)

“Are you nervous?” Stuart asked, forcing her to look up.

Anna let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Yes, quite.”

At the edge of the pool, she crouched down and tried, as gracefully as she could, to sit. Her legs dangled in the water, which was colder than she’d imagined.

“It’s only about three feet deep here. You can stand,” he said, extending his hand to help her into the pool.

She had no choice but to grab it and slide off the pool’s edge and into the cold water. “Oh!” she said, without meaning to. She shuddered as the water hit her skin.

“It’s not bad, right?”

Once she got used to the temperature, the water actually did feel kind of nice. It was an odd sensation, to be standing in several feet of water, much different than soaking in the tub at the apartment.

“I’m only going to teach you one thing today.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Stuart said, smiling at her. “You’re going to learn to float. If you can float, you can swim.”

Before Anna could say anything, Stuart fell backward and began to demonstrate. “See how my arms are extended and my chin’s up. I keep my chest out, too.”

Arms, chin, chest. It didn’t look that hard.

“The trick with floating,” said Stuart, righting himself, “is that you’ve got to relax. If you’re not relaxed, you’ll sink like—”

A rock? Florence? Anna could understand why he had abandoned the metaphor.

She grabbed hold of the pool’s edge and attempted to dip her head and shoulders into the water.

“Not that way. Come out here,” said Stuart. “I’ll hold you up.”

Anna moved toward Stuart, as if she were walking in slow motion. When she reached him, he placed his hand, gently, on the small of her back and coaxed her to lean backward until she was staring up at The Covington’s roof line and the dusky sky that peeked out between the hotel’s looming towers. She shot her arms out to the side and puffed up her chest but could do nothing about her clenched stomach muscles. The very idea that Anna might relax in this setting was laughable.

It was such a strange sensation, to feel the weight of her body resting in the palm of Stuart’s open hand, like she was a small bird instead of a girl, already grown.

“Tilt your head back more,” said Stuart, his voice garbled and far away. “Tilt your head until you can see nothing but sky.”

Was it even possible to do so? Anna lifted her chin until the hotel’s edifice disappeared from her peripheral vision and all she could see were clouds, turned pink by the sun as it sank beyond the Thorofare.

Anna didn’t feel Stuart’s hand against her back. Had he let go?

“Now breathe,” she heard him call to her.

Only then did Anna realize she’d been holding her breath. She let the air out of her chest but as she did so, she could feel herself begin to sink. The sinking feeling made her panic, and her head slipped beneath the surface as she tried to feel for the floor of the pool with her feet. Almost immediately, Stuart grabbed her under an arm and pulled her up.

“Embarrassing,” she sputtered when she’d wiped the water from her eyes.

“Why embarrassing?” Stuart asked with a grin. “No one’s born knowing how to swim.”

“I’m an adult, not a small child.”

“Children have it easy. Adults always have a much harder time learning.”

“Why is that?”

“Children believe they can swim, so they do,” said Stuart. He reached out and grazed her wool-clad stomach with the tips of his fingers. “Adults carry around all of their fears right here.” He touched her chin, briefly. “And here.”

Anna blinked. She wanted to remind him that there were good reasons to be afraid but she worried she’d ruin the evening. Instead, she told him she’d try again.

They spent the next hour floating around The Covington’s pool as it slowly emptied of people. As Anna grew more confident, Stuart removed his hand from her back, and eventually he started floating beside her, their outstretched arms and legs occasionally bumping into each other as they drifted from one side of the pool to the other. Anna liked knowing that Stuart was next to her without feeling compelled to speak to him. With the water in her ears muffling the sounds of the outside world, she could almost pretend she was back in Germany, and that the boy floating next to her would whisper, Komm schon. Lass uns gehen, when it was time to go.

By the time Stuart deemed Anna highly proficient at floating, it had gotten dark and the tips of her fingers had turned to prunes. A waiter, who was clearing away empty cocktail glasses and straightening wayward chaise lounges, warned them that the pool would be closing in a few minutes. Anna could tell Stuart was about to say something to him, when a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit walked out onto the terrace and straight toward them.

“Stuart, if you’d told me you were coming, I would have had something sent out.” Anna thought she detected Stuart’s shoulder muscles tighten.

“Anna, this is my father, John Williams. Father, this is Anna Epstein.”

She made a move to get out of the pool—it felt improper to meet Stuart’s father, or anyone for that matter, wearing nothing but a bathing suit—but Stuart grabbed her wrist and muttered, quietly, “Please stay.”