Night Swimming (5 page)

“Me, too,” MaryAnn chimed in. “And go to the Oscars.”

“And win.”

“And make a speech thanking all the little people who helped me become so successful.”

“And go back to my seat and kiss my husband, Tom Selleck.”

“No, I want Tom Selleck; you take someone else.”

“No, I want him; I said him first. You can have Warren Beatty or Robert Redford. I’m taking Tom Selleck.”

“No way.”

And then a big fight would ensue, and an hour would go by until someone would break the ice by making the supreme sacrifice of giving up Tom Selleck, and the day would return to normal.

Charlotte and MaryAnn knew more about Hollywood than Rex Reed. They read the tabloids,
People,
and
Us,
and watched every TV show that gave them the inside scoop on every piece of Hollywood trivia known to man. Ask them anything, and they knew it. They knew all about John Barrymore, including the loss of his virginity to his stepmother. They knew that Valentino’s wife locked him out of the bedroom on their wedding night and that their marriage was never consummated, that the tabloids declared Tom Selleck had the head of a Viking and that each of his dimples could hold a split of champagne. They were always astounded by Gig Young’s story. So many attested to his warmth and stability, so many insisted he was the sweetest, kindest human being they’d ever met in spite of the fact that he blew his wife’s brains out and then his own. Their encyclopedic inventory of every star and event known to Hollywood was recorded and stashed away in Charlotte’s and MaryAnn’s memories. To them it was all magic and all possibility. The more they knew, the closer they were to their dream.

And when they were old enough, they promised they would go there together and step into this wonder world, which up until now they had only envisioned from the confines of their finished basements. They were certain they’d both end up in Hollywood, the land where dreams come true.

Charlotte imagined herself in Hollywood, mingling with movie stars while waiting in the same grocery line to get milk. Maybe even Tom Selleck would be there, standing in the
under 10 items
express lane with his orangeade and Krispy Kremes. Mmmmm.
Wouldn’t it just be so, so perfect if we loved all the same snacks?

Yes, she would drive to Hollywood in her brand-new secondhand Jaguar. An airplane was out of the question. Charlotte had never been on a plane and could not fathom how so much tonnage was capable of leaving the ground. She could only compare the concept to her own tonnage. And so she would drive and, at long last, see all the unexplored country that now lay between Hollywood and herself.

The first stop she made was just beyond the driveway of a dark house inside the New Hampshire border. She wanted to steal plates as far away from Gorham as possible, but needed to obtain them from New Hampshire so they would match the inspection sticker. There, with the lumbering agility of a refrigerator repairman, Charlotte stole quietly into some anonymous driveway and, with a screwdriver in one hand and her pocketbook in the other, knelt down in the half-light of a street lamp and began unscrewing plates on a blue Pontiac.

When both plates were finally removed, she drove the car to an empty lot in back of a 7-Eleven and put on her new plates. Her mission complete, she took off like a thief in the night. Which was, suddenly, who she was.

Her only tenuous connection to her old life now was the phone ringing madly back in her empty house on Middle Street. But the person calling would never reach Charlotte to tell her the news that would have changed the course of her life, news that would profoundly affect the journey she was about to embark on: An awful mistake had been made. There had been another Charlotte Clapp from Durham, New Hampshire, who’d gone to Doctor Jennings that very same day. With no one home to get the phone, Charlotte would have no way of knowing that her chart had gotten mixed up somehow and that she, Charlotte Clapp, from Gorham, was going to live, and while it might be short of forever, she would live a long, long time.

But the call came too late, like the punch line of an ill-timed joke. For Charlotte was gone now, driving as far away from her old life as possible while her phone rang on to no one and nothing at all.

CHAPTER 6

N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY
. Charlotte had never been there, but then again, she’d never been anywhere. She had decided to find her way cross-country slow and easy; no one was waiting for her in California—no one even knew her in California—so she could take her time. She contented herself in thinking that such freedom was the upside of being completely alone.

She knew about New York City from gossip and movies and books. She also knew about it because MaryAnn had relatives living on Staten Island. They made annual visits to Gorham, and Charlotte was once invited over to meet these exotic family members. All the way from Staten Island. Imagine. She was only six at the time, but Charlotte still recalled the visit. She didn’t know what she expected. Accents? Uniforms? Crowns? But they were just ordinary people. Nonetheless, MaryAnn insisted they were quite special, and they both sneaked into the guest room to forage through the suitcases and look for any signs of royalty. A Norelco shaver, an electric toothbrush, and lacy red see-through underwear were as close to something special that they would find. Armed only with these memories, Charlotte entered New York City.

She arrived midafternoon on Monday, having first been lost in Queens and then in the Bronx. Before finally wending her way out of what Dante might have described as a bad section of the underworld, she witnessed the most extraordinary scene. Amid the tossed tires, boarded windows, and general rust and ruin, situated right under the El, appeared an ice-cream truck, merrily painted with cups and cones, sherbets and ices, slushies and Slurpees. An ice-cream truck sat incongruously like a calliope of color under the crush of a neighborhood that looked as if it had had its teeth knocked out. The truck had broken down, and now the refrigeration unit was failing, melting all the ice cream inside.

The driver opened the back doors and called out to every soul within shouting distance to “come and get it.” There was free ice cream for all. Dozens of children dashed out from every dark corner and dived into the pure deliciousness of it. Cherry vanilla and orange Creamsicles, push-ups and Popsicles that left their tongues purple, blue, red, and green. And there were root beer Popsicles, too, that left gold wet kisses on their lips. This was truly an unexpected gift from the ice-cream gods. Charlotte had a theory that there were gods for everything: quick-pick gods, love-at-first-sight gods, outlet gods, and even gods that made bricks fall on your head every once in a while. And today, in the middle of litter and lament, the ice-cream gods had blessed the Bronx.

Charlotte pulled over and disappeared into a vat of caramel creme. It was such an odd sight to see this flock of ragtag kids covered in smiles, indifferent to the broken glass underfoot. Where on earth had they come from? They looked like flowers that had fought their way up through the cement and declared life in spite of the odds. Tiny scoops of children and chocolate, sloshing and swashing their way among the irrepressible mayweeds and nettles.

There’s good to be found everywhere. The gods never cease to amaze me. Just when you think you’re lost, something wonderful finds you. Just when you think it’s over, it’s all just begun.

At last she found her way into Manhattan. No wonder the world spoke of Manhattan the way they did. Life was everywhere, and it had a current all its own, an energy that rose from the belly of the beast and spread over the avenues like magic.

But what she truly came to see was Lincoln Center, for that was a place Tony Bennett had sung. Maybe he would be there tonight. She could go and see him and wait outside and get his autograph and tell him that she knew every song he ever sang and that she thought he was even better than Frank Sinatra, and...and...and... But he wasn’t in town, so that was that.

Lincoln Center was a square of buildings surrounding a large circular fountain, where Charlotte was sure wives met their husbands on warm moonlit nights—expectant husbands who were holding tickets for that evening’s performance, probably to celebrate something romantic like an anniversary.

She walked around the circle.
I bet the three tenors sat here. Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and...and...
Charlotte could not remember the third tenor. Who was he? How come no one could ever remember the third tenor? The parallelism to her own presence did not go unnoticed. She had shown up in this life; she had been here, but no one could recall her. She suddenly felt bad for...for... for whatever his name was.

With no Tony Bennett performance before her, Charlotte scanned her possibilities, and, never having been to an opera, she was inspired to buy a ticket to
La Boheme.
Why not? This was a new time in her life, and everything was open to yes.

The curtain rose to tragic backdrops and moody lighting, but it was the singing that electrified the theater: The perfect silvery notes that hovered like breakable angels over the audience. And they sang, and they sang, and they sang. And Charlotte sat frozen in her seat, transported to that cold, wintry garret in Paris, dying alongside the young girl whose last breath, full of snow and grief, was lifted toward heaven in that final and heartbreaking aria.

And then Charlotte wept. She wept for the girl; she wept for herself; she wept for everything that had been created in this world that had this much terrible beauty. For the first time in years she was feeling something other than the deadening numbness that life in Gorham, New Hampshire, had served up.

The next morning Charlotte felt somehow cleansed, new. She settled her bill, leaving New York City under a sky as gray as gunmetal. She hoped it would rain. Rain always made her happy. It smelled like hope to her.

She was somewhere in New Jersey when she heard a siren grinding closer and closer toward her. She looked down at her speedometer. Christ, she was twenty miles an hour over the speed limit. But maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe they’d pass her on their way to something really important. A fire—no, a murder if she was really lucky. She balanced the two in her mind. Speeding ticket, murder, speeding ticket, murder.
They’d skip right over me if it were a murder.
As she slowed, she watched them come up behind her like a hound dog on a fox’s tail. With a sticker that didn’t match her plates, she was doomed before she even began. It was over, all over.

A trooper got out of his car just as they do in the movies: slowly, with Gestapo boots and a bulletproof swagger.

Charlotte rolled down her window.

“You know how fast you were going?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Twenty miles over the speed limit.”

She could see her fat, pitiable body in his mirrored sunglasses and knew there would be no mercy here.

“Can I see your registration, please?” he asked, looking around, hands on hips, feet spread apart, clearly the king of Route 4.

Charlotte reached over into the glove compartment and fumbled around for the paper that was about to seal her fate.

Suddenly, Herr Schtopenglopper’s walkie-talkie crackled. There had been a shooting in Shorthills, a domestic brawl on a well-known estate. All hell was breaking loose, and the husband was holding the wife’s boyfriend hostage.

The cop looked at Charlotte. “You’re lucky this time. But if I catch you going eighty again, I’ll have your license.”

“Yes, sir,” was all that Charlotte was able to utter. The speeding-ticket gods had looked down on her, and just like that she was free.

She sat there for a moment, contemplating her fate as the car sped off. If that woman had stayed faithful, or met her boyfriend at a hotel instead of her own bedroom . . . How unpredictable life was: Simply turning a corner could make the difference between living and dying, finding love and not finding love, incarceration and escape.

Her heart was still beating hard as she started up the car— beating much faster than fifty miles per hour, the pace at which she now resolutely set herself. And as she pulled onto the highway, she remembered what a famous actor had said about himself: “If they ever find me out, I’m a goner.”

Meanwhile, back in Gorham, Al had opened the bank just as he was supposed to on his first day as assistant manager and discovered that the vault was open. And it was clearly less full than it had been before the weekend. He notified the Gorham police immediately, exclaiming, actually panicking to Chief Makley that the bank had been robbed.

When President Kelly got in and learned of the news, he nearly had an aneurysm. Everyone assumed this reaction was because the bank had been robbed. Normal reaction. It would have been strange if he weren’t upset. He paced back and forth, drinking Pepto Bismol straight from the bottle and yelling at Al through the pink chalky circle that enveloped his lips. His face was beet-red and his ridiculously large distorted pink mouth made him look clownish, like one of those drive throughs that you yell your food order into, “A cheeseburger, a Coke, and a large fries.”

The ranting continued, Kelly pointing at Al as if Al had robbed the bank when the only thing he did was report it. Poor Al, all he could think of was this was his first day on the job as assistant manager and somehow he had already screwed up. The finger waving continued until Al was backed up against the water cooler, Kelly’s finger practically up his nose.

How could reporting a robbery become a criminal act? Al suddenly felt so ill, he thought that perhaps he was not cut out for his new job. But to his credit, he stood his ground (he had to, he couldn’t be pushed back any farther, as the wall stood in his way). And so he bit the bullet that had just been fired at him and tried to be philosophical. Hell, it was only his first day. How much worse could it get? Much worse.

CHAPTER 7

W
EDNESDAY AFTERNOON
found Charlotte somewhere near Ohio, eating a whole cherry pie and drinking gallons of hot coffee at a truck stop. She thumbed through a newspaper a patron had left behind. But it wasn’t a local paper. Someone from Louisiana had come through earlier and left it.
Louisiana.
Surely this was a sign. If there had been a NASA calendar hanging over the register at Bickfords, would she have told MaryAnn she was going to the moon? Again she thought about how funny it was—the little coincidences that make up your destiny. Charlotte continued looking through the paper for nothing in particular when her attention was drawn to the obituaries.