In Sight of Stars(48)

I follow silently, wishing I didn’t always seem to say the wrong thing. Halfway around the perimeter, she finally stops to take in the opposite side of the city. The winking PepsiCo sign. The shimmering green-black of the East River. The steady lines of traffic to the north and south of us, even at this hour, alternating streams of white and tangerine, crawling toward us in one direction, snaking off into infinity in the other.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I don’t mean to be like this. I know you were only trying to help. It’s just sometimes…” She turns away from me again, stares out through the grating for a while. “Do you ever wish you could fly, Klee? I don’t mean jump, I don’t mean kill yourself, but fly. Really fly, like a bird. Like in my dreams.” She puts her arms out, closes her eyes, and tilts almost imperceptibly from side to side. Like a kid pretending to be an airplane. “Even for a few minutes, just let loose and forget everything. Everything but soaring weightless through the sky. I think even if you crashed and burned at the end, it would still be worth it. Just to have those few minutes to fly free.”

“No,” I say, “I don’t.” And that’s the truth. I don’t think about it and I don’t want to try. Because the fact is, she’s wrong. And, that’s something that she doesn’t get. She’s lucky enough not to have to get it. To know it. It’s all a hypothetical to her. But I’ve lived it, so I know. It’s not worth it. Not one iota. I’ve thought about this a hundred times since my father died. Because after the freedom is the nothingness.

Nothingness.

If not for you, then for everyone else left behind.

*

“What are you thinking about?” Sister Agnes Teresa leans forward and swishes her hands through the water.

She doesn’t wait for my answer, though, just stands and pulls her robe off to reveal a navy one-piece. “Yeah, I know it’s not pretty, and yes, even nuns own bathing suits,” she says, draping the habit over a chair. “I told you we were swimming. You think I was going to send you in alone?” She waddles to the steps, and I try not to stare. “You coming, or you just going to sit there enjoying the view?”

I shake off the thoughts of Sarah and follow her down, wading tentatively into the cool water.

Once in, I lie back and let my body relax, my arms and legs drifting outward, my body floating weightlessly, the hollow echo of nothingness temporarily displaced by the water in my ears.

*

“I’m bored. Come swim with me.” I tap Dad’s shoulder, then tug at it. “Please? We could race.”

He opens his eyes and squints up at me, says, “In a minute,” then rolls over and pulls the towel over his head. The back of his neck is burnt, so I adjust the towel downward to cover it and the rest of his reddening shoulders.

We’re on vacation at some fancy resort in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The hotel pool has been crowded all day, but it’s nearly dinnertime so the other guests have begun to depart, finally leaving enough room on the far side so we could do it, race, he and I, if he wanted.

“Play with the other kids. Let him rest, Klee.” Mom glances over from the chaise lounge next to him, a book splayed open on her chest.

“They all have brothers or sisters to play with. Plus, now they went to dinner. They don’t want to play with me.”

She picks up the book again and turns the page. “Don’t be silly. Play alone, then.”

“I’ve been playing alone all day.”

Dad rolls over and sits up. “It’s okay, Mari. I’ll do it. Let’s go, kiddo. I bet you can’t beat me.” He gets out of the chair and bolts toward the pool.

“No diving, it says!” I call after him. Dad doesn’t listen, plunges into the deep end, but no one left around the pool seems to care. I lower myself in from the side and take off after him to the deep end.

I might be scrawny, but I’m fast. We race five times and I beat him twice, though one of those times is mostly a tie. By then, we’re both tired and panting, so we quit and float on our backs. Just me and Dad, side by side. Palm trees line the edge of the pool, and brown coconuts dot the high fronds. That song comes to me, the silly one Dad sings sometimes about the lime in the coconut and the doctor mixing it all up, which makes me smile.

“I like it here. Don’t you?” I say, but my voice through the water sounds far away and distorted, so I’m not even sure he can hear me. I stand, letting the water leave my ears, and hold to Dad’s swim trunks so he doesn’t float away. “I wish we could stay longer.”

Dad rolls his head to the side to look at me, the waterline covering his bottom eye. “If wishes were fishes,” he says.

“If fishes were wishes,” I say.

“If only … That reminds me…” He rights himself and moves toward the steps, so I follow. He sits and pats the step above him for me, and I smile again and brace myself, because I’m pretty sure I know what this means.

“There was a great Taoist master,” Dad says, “named Chuang Tzo. And one day—well, one evening, the great Chuang Tzo dreamt he was a small silver fish darting through the waves.”

“What kind of fish?” I ask, swishing my hands through the water while he thinks on this.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.”