Learning to Swim(23)

“Maybe you should call your friend Emily Mills and tell her about it. She might be able to give you some advice. After all, she's got a century of experience under her belt,” I snapped. I couldn't stop myself.

“So that's what this is about. You're punishing me.”

“Not everything is about you, Barbie.”

“I beg your pardon?” She reeled backward dramatically, as if my words had cut her to her very soul.

I winced as I recognized the superangry tone in my mother's voice. I couldn't even imagine what this whole thing was going to cost me. Unfortunately, even though I was practically a legal adult, Barbie still wielded enough power over me to make my life a living hell. Although she couldn't really pull off normal punishments like restrictions (because she was never home herself and therefore unable to enforce them) or taking away my car keys (for obvious reasons), she fought dirty.

For instance, if I was sleeping, one of my favorite possessions would just go AWOL. She would stop at nothing. My favorite DVDs, my favorite articles of clothing. One time last year, I'd waked up to find that the TV was gone. Eventually, the items would return, but in the case of the TV, it was gone for an entire week. Punishments in the Rogers household were nothing if not cruel and unusual.

“Did you forget who you're talking to?” Barbie said through clenched teeth. “Do I need to remind you who puts the roof over your head?”

In the past, I might have answered these rhetorical questions with something like: “Did I ask to be born?” But I no longer felt the need to remind her of such a primary fact.

So instead I said, “I'm your daughter. Yet you continue to make choices that have a negative effect on me and my life. Like making me move every time you get your heart broken.”

I'd found in previous arguments that my mother had no idea when she was being hit smack in the face with psychobabble. She thought I was a lot smarter than I actually was. If I kept calm and talked about choices and negative effects, she just assumed I knew what I was talking about.

Her eyes narrowed and she said, “No more swimming lessons, got it? I don't want you near the pool again.” She put her hands over her heart. “The thought of it is giving me palpitations.”


But unlike her, I wasn't in the mood for promises that I had no intention of keeping (although the irrational fear thing was still working for me).

“I have to go,” I said, and boldly walked away.

When I got home after work, I was shocked to see the TV still perched on the table across from the couch. In fact, despite my certainty that something would be gone, everything was still in its place. Weird, very weird. Not to mention unnerving. But even my mother's weirdness couldn't affect my surprisingly lightening mood. I had to get over to Alice's to watch my hunky lifeguard-with-a-girlfriend mow the yard.

I put on a yellow wannabe Tommy Hilfiger sundress and then took it off because I thought it looked too obvious, like I was still harboring the idea that he might like me-like me. I finally settled on a “no mistaking it, we're just friends” outfit consisting of a clean white American Eagle tank top from two years ago, black shorts from the Gap (last year's summer line), and my duct-taped flip-flops.

When I got to Alice's, we sat on her back porch in one-hundred-degree first-day-of-August heat until we heard a loud whirring sound. We walked around front just as Keith came rolling in on a gigantic monster truck of a lawn mower. He was wearing a navy blue baseball hat with VARSITY CLUB written on it and these camouflage-print cutoff shorts that were ragged at the knees. His black T-shirt was already sticking to him, and he gave us a friendly wave as he started mowing.

“So what do I do?” I asked Alice.

She took out a handkerchief from a striped capri pants pocket and wiped at her cleavage. “What do you mean?”

“Am I supposed to go talk to him?”

“It's going to be hard to have a conversation while the lawn mower is going. Why don't you wait until he's done and then ask him inside for some iced tea?”

It sounded easy enough. I could certainly handle that without breaking into a dripping sweat, right?

I followed Alice back inside and into the kitchen, where she was preparing one of my favorites: pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. This may have seemed like an odd meal to make when it was a million degrees outside and two million degrees inside, but Alice had never let the temperature interfere with her cooking. She said it was all a matter of what you were used to, and for the past forty years she had made sure there was a hot meal on her table every night.

My mind flashed forward to six months from now. Barbie and Ludwig were on the skids and the map of Maryland was out again and Barbie's finger was about to land somewhere far away from Jones Island, and then Alice was helping me pack before we said our final goodbyes.

I shook my head and tried to rid myself of such fatalistic thoughts. I did have a doomed relationship to foster, after all.

After I helped Alice finish peeling the potatoes, I went into the living room and paced around, pausing every now and then to glance out the window to check on Keith's progress.

“Alice,” I said when he was almost finished. “What if he doesn't stop the mower? What if he just drives off without stopping to talk to me?”

“Steffie,” she yelled out from the kitchen, “you're the reason why he's here. He's not going to leave without seeing you.”