Night Swimming (3 page)

Charlotte puzzled over Heaven, hell, and holy ghosts for a minute before falling into a complete stupor on the sofa.

It was dark when she woke, and she felt around for the light. Her head pounded like a toy drum as she lay anchored to her seat, amazed. Somewhere between sobriety and sleep, a plan had formed. Had she dreamed it? She believed in destiny, and this seemed so serendipitous, like a vision a saint might have. However, there was nothing saintly about her plan. On the contrary, it bordered on blasphemy.

She had one year to live and two thousand dollars in savings. She certainly couldn’t make up for all the time she’d lost on two thousand dollars. How could she seize the day and throw caution to the wind on funds so meager they could be stuffed into a cookie jar? No, she needed more money, but how? The plan came to her as simply as bending down and finding cash at a carnival, fallen from the pocket of some unlucky fair-goer. She would rob the bank.

CHAPTER 3

T
HE
F
IRST
S
AVINGS AND
L
OAN
of New Hampshire was located in the center of Gorham. Low brown brick buildings that once signified industry now meant depression. Gorham was a town of hardworking middle- and lower-middle-class people.
Middle
—there it was again.

Charlotte spent her last morning there going through her file cabinets and desk drawers, much the way one would rifle through the crevices of a couch searching for loose change. Reaching back into the deep cubbyhole she discovered discarded candy wrappers and Gummi Bears covered in lint, a buffalo head nickel, rubber bands, paper clips, nail polish that had hardened to a solid mass, and a stick of gum, so old now it could be snapped in two like a tongue depressor. Going through her things felt no less than an archaeological dig of a life utterly disposable, of no importance at all, a life that had been buried in the back of a cabinet for fifteen years.

A hastily arranged going-away party was planned for Charlotte and would occupy much of her lunch break. Finally, a party that would signify closure and put a period at the end of this unmercifully long sentence.

“So why are you leaving, Charlotte?” Happy Turner inquired. Happy worked at the bank with Charlotte and lived on Middle Street as well.

“I’ve been doing this for so long, I just need a break,” Charlotte lied, nervous in her own story.

“Maybe this is a wonderful opportunity, Charlotte,” Sara Cabot added. “After all, one never knows what’s around the corner.”

“And Gorham isn’t getting any bigger,” Dottie Spencer concluded, suddenly embarrassed by the implications of the word “bigger.” She moved away as quickly as her clumsy legs could take her. It didn’t matter. Charlotte could hear the hushed buzzing coming from a hive of coworkers in the corner:

“Oh, Charlotte, if she only lost that weight. She has such a pretty face.”

“You know, if you can see past all that chubbiness, she’s actually very attractive.”

And “Charlotte? I knew her when she was thin, and she was beautiful.”

Charlotte was tired, tired of overhearing the judgments passed upon her, and she wanted out. She wanted to be some other person in some other place. She could not hear, taste, touch, feel, or see anything anymore. She was removed from the world, removed from the living. If she felt any hesitation up to this point, it was gone now.

Everyone was at Bickfords by noon, so they could safely return to work by one. Charlotte hated Bickfords, a dull, antiseptic restaurant chain whose greatest business came from its 25-percent-off special for senior citizens who ate dinner at three o’clock. It seemed somehow appropriate, though, that cheese rollups and weak punch be her send-off.

Charlotte desperately wanted to make a speech. If she were ever to have her fifteen minutes, this was it. But a rush of fear ran through her. She hated public speaking. She had even tried hypnotism to overcome her anxiety at speaking in front of groups. She’d asked MaryAnn to come with her and simply sit in the room, worried she’d be raped under the doctor’s spell. She’d read in the tabloids about things like that happening.

Halfway through, the hypnotist had asked Charlotte to raise her hand if she felt it was working. Charlotte squinted, opening her eyes ever so slightly to see if MaryAnn was still there. She was indeed, lifting her arm so high in the air it looked as if she were hailing a taxi. MaryAnn became an exceptional public speaker after that.

Yet, on this particular afternoon, she was determined: By hook or by crook she would make her speech. What did she have to lose? Absolutely nothing.

Today the room was filled with the usual suspects. She looked around at them recalling some anecdote they’d each shared with her. Bittersweet moments flashed like photographs against the walls of her heart. And she remembered.

She remembered the time she insisted that a bunch of the girls go on a skiing weekend. “We live in New Hampshire, for God’s sake. People come from all over to ski here, and we don’t let our feet touch snow.” And so Dottie, Happy, MaryAnn, and Charlotte all headed to North Conway for their big ski outing.

When they arrived at the top of the hill, MaryAnn had to go to the bathroom. But seeing there was no bathroom up there, she contented herself by hiding behind a tree.

She undid her pants until they rested around her ankles, and squatted down as low as she could. Unfortunately, her skis were pointed downhill, and they lost their grip on the snow. There she was, screaming at the top of her lungs as she headed bare-assed toward the lodge.

The ski patrol picked her up, no worse for wear, just painfully embarrassed by the whole episode. On their way down the hill, they stopped to pick up an injured skier. He looked as if he’d been attacked by a dozen angry trees, and they brought him into the vehicle on a stretcher.

“What happened to you?” MaryAnn inquired, eyeing the twigs caught on his coat.

“You’re not going to believe this, but I was skiing away when I spotted this woman, buck naked from the waist down, flying toward the lodge. Watching her, I skied smack into a tree. Never saw it coming. And you? What happened to you?”

MaryAnn went red with the question. “Exposure,” she said, and then, realizing what this implied, quickly added, “to the cold— exposure to the cold.” But it was too late. The man recognized her, and even his pain couldn’t dampen his laughter.

Afterward, MaryAnn failed to see the humor of the situation.

“What’s so damn funny, Charlotte?” she demanded.

“No denying it—you skied your ass off.”

“Are you done yet?”

“Done?” Charlotte asked, perplexed.

“Laughing
your
ass off,” MaryAnn fumed. It would be months before she could laugh about it herself, and some even wondered if it was that incident that had served to sever Charlotte and MaryAnn’s friendship.

Charlotte continued conjuring the slow, backward curve of her past.

Cal Vincent Clay’s daughter was there, poor thing, endlessly forced to endure the stigma her father had created by shooting at her mother. Fortunately, he missed, though no one could figure out how. The kitchen wasn’t that big.

Edgar Halfpenny was there, the only self-made millionaire in Gorham. No one could ever figure out why he settled in the town, but he showed up at every local event, whether he was invited or not. Halfpenny held a special place in Charlotte’s heart, for he had come to her aid when Charlotte was trying to raise some money for children with cystic fibrosis—a cause she adopted soon after Timmy LeBlanc’s death.

When Halfpenny heard about the shortage of funds to complete a neighboring medical center three towns over, he anonymously donated the deficit. He never uttered a word about it, but because Charlotte handled the day-to-day operations of his funds, she knew damn well it was Halfpenny who made the wing possible. She respected his wish to remain anonymous, so she never mentioned it. But a simple glance between them at the ribbon-cutting ceremony had said it all.

And then there was Al, Charlotte’s assistant. Al was so tall and skinny that when he walked next to Charlotte, people whispered that they looked like the number
10.
Another hurt she would work hard to forget.

Charlotte watched Al in the corner, being chastised by Kelly, the bank president, for God knows what. Sadly, this exchange was nothing new; Charlotte had seen it at the bank all too many times. The abuse had become routine for Kelly. He was a bully when it came to the meek, the fearful... Al. And still, Charlotte didn’t understand why Al put up with it. “Just kick him where the sun doesn’t shine, Al,” she advised under her breath. Her muttering drew MaryAnn’s attention. “One swift kick, then just walk away,” Charlotte continued. MaryAnn sidled closer to Charlotte and surprised her from the rear like an enemy plane flying below the radar. Charlotte immediately pretended she had been chewing on a cheese roll-up.
Wouldn’t MaryAnn just love it if I were now reduced to talking to myself? Hell, one thing’s for sure—it would be more interesting than the conversation I’m about to have.

“Well, good luck, Charlotte,” MaryAnn said, lifting her cup of watery punch up toward the fluorescent lighting that sibilated like an incessant insect.

“Was Bickfords”—
the most depressing place on earth
—“your choice, MaryAnn?” Charlotte asked, knowing the answer.

“It most certainly was.”

“So I hear you’re going to visit Florida,” MaryAnn continued. “What draws you there?”

“Palm trees, good vacation packages, Disney World.”

“Yes, Florida is nice,” MaryAnn said with mayoral authority. “Tom and I went to Water World for our second anniversary.” She paused before continuing, but she always continued. “And then? Are you staying on there?”

Charlotte hadn’t thought much past that lie. She figured that people wouldn’t care what she was going to do with her life after the weekend in Epcot. Not that MaryAnn actually cared; she was just nosy. Nonetheless, it was a reasonable question. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life in theme parks.

“No, after Florida I’m off to...to...”

Charlotte’s eyes darted desperately around the room. That’s when she saw the calendar hanging above the cash register. It was exactly the same calendar Charlotte had hanging above her own desk back at the bank: a states calendar that had come free with a gas purchase. The coincidence depressed Charlotte; her accessories were as banal as Bickfords’s. The calendar’s pages hung open to August, revealing the old capitol of Louisiana, a boring brick building against a boring blue sky.

“I’m headed for Louisiana,” Charlotte lied smoothly. “I have an aunt there. She asked me to come. Louisiana, now, that’s an exciting place, MaryAnn. Ever been there?”

She knew damn well MaryAnn hadn’t been there. The bullet train to Florida and the Mall of America were the extent of her worldly travels. She never stopped talking about that mall. An old conversation came crashing back like a rogue wave: the mall.
The damn mall.

“And do you know how big it is, Charlotte?”

“No.”

“Acres and acres. And did you know it has a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster and a shark tank?”

“No.”

“And a chapel. People can get married right at the mall. Isn’t that fantastic?”

Fantastic? Hell on earth was the only thing Charlotte could liken it to. It was everything she wanted to leave behind.

“And if you plan it right, I suppose you can have your honeymoon right there in the Mall of America. All under one roof. You never have to go outside.”

Or breathe air, or see trees growing in nature, or witness an actual sunrise. Hey, if you play your cards right, you can die and be buried right under the food court between Blimpie and Chuck E. Cheese. That’s, of course, if you’re lucky enough to get a spot.

The shop-till-you-drop motto had become dangerously close to possible as Charlotte saw it. MaryAnn could collapse in front of the video arcades and be whisked away in a shopping cart, just as if she were heading to sportswear or lingerie. There was no place on earth like the Mall of America, and Charlotte honestly believed that if there were the remotest chance of being buried there, MaryAnn would have probably secured a plot. Charlotte could just imagine the epitaph:

HERE LIES MARYANN IN PAYLESS SHOES AND SOCKS BURIED IN HER TARGET DRESS AND CRATE AND BARREL BOX

But MaryAnn was still breathing, which was all that was needed to ensure that she would ask her next question: “Louisiana? I didn’t know you had any relatives in Louisiana, Charlotte. You never said a word.”

“Yes, several, as a matter of fact.” In all the years they’d known each other, Charlotte had certainly never mentioned family in the South. She saw MaryAnn give her a sideways look.

Stick to your story, Charlotte. Stick to your story.
“Anyway, I’ve always dreamed of living in New Orleans. This is a dream come true.”

“Be careful what you wish for, Charlotte. I’ve never known any dreams to come true without some price to be paid. But maybe it will be different for you.”

Charlotte was surprised; she thought MaryAnn’s dreams had come true. What secret lay behind this cryptic admission?
Who cares? It doesn’t matter anymore,
Charlotte reminded herself, turning away, leaving MaryAnn alone with her hateful little jealousies. There was no reason for MaryAnn to be so snippy. The rivalry was long over, and MaryAnn had won.

MaryAnn’s husband, Tom Barzini, had been Charlotte’s boyfriend first. The months she’d been with him had been the best in memory. During this period her mother was still doing okay and Charlotte was her old self, “thin and beautiful,” as the reports went. But best of all, she was in love.

Meeting Tom had lifted her out of the humdrum existence that life had dished out and ultimately buried her beneath. She was in love, and suddenly nothing was ordinary anymore. The fish plant, the bank, the brown bags she hauled her groceries home in, the carports covered in their green corrugated canopies, the blue plastic pools gathering up bugs behind every house, the short, stingy driveways lined with trailers that were bought to pull motorboats down to the lake once a year, the depressing ornaments of dwarfs or ducklings and the shiny silver balls that reflected back the dull monotonous condition of life in Gorham, and even Middle Street itself were no longer boring. All the tiny deaths she suffered in the everyday wasteland of cups and saucers, snack tables, and laundry lines disappeared. She was filled with the promise that there was life after death in a small town, and his name was Tom.