Swim to Me (23 page)

Sommers had said that Delores and Armando were heading back to the park. Thelma worried that Armando would miss the turn, that he'd get lost and panic, and was there anything worse than a frightened young boy driving around in a downpour like this? She'd
best put on her rain boots and poncho and wait outside for them. It was the sensible thing to do.

For the next half hour, Thelma stood in front of the park, the wind blowing so hard that occasionally she had to hold on to a telephone pole to right herself. Rain seeped through her clothes and soaked her to the skin. The water in her boots was almost at her ankles. She thought of emptying them, but why bother? They would fill right up again, anyway.

Twice, cars pulled over to the side of the road. The first time, a man who was riding with a tiny dog in his lap asked her, “Little lady, are you in some kind of trouble?” When she said, “Oh no, I'm perfectly fine,” he had answered: “Standing out here on a night like this don't seem so fine to me. Unless you is looking to get yourself killed.” The second time, a woman with two identical girls in the backseat wanted to know if she needed a lift. “No, thank you,” said Thelma. “I'm just waiting for someone.” The woman didn't seem to hear her. “There's room for one more—where do you need to get?” she asked. Four eyes, round and bright as soup-can lids, shone at her from behind the woman. “That's okay,” Thelma spoke louder. “I'm just waiting for someone.” The woman shouted back, “Suit yourself, then,” and drove away, the four eyes peering out the back window.

When Thelma finally spotted the WGUP van lumbering down the highway, she began waving her arms and ran onto the shoulder of the road. She even thought to take the hood down on her poncho so that Delores and Armando would recognize her. The van slowed down. She saw Armando's scared, tired face, and it struck her that maybe Florida shouldn't issue driver's licenses to anyone this young. She ran ahead of them into the parking lot to make sure that he found his way. When Delores got out of the car, barefoot and with salt caked on her face, Thelma had the unaccustomed notion to reach out and hug her.

She didn't, of course. “You need to go sit in the hot room and get the chill out of your bones,” she said to Delores. “And you, young man,” she said, shouting through the wind. “There's no way you're driving back to Tampa in this mess. You'll stay the night here. I'll put you up on the couch in my office.” As they ran into the administration building, she noticed the thin frame on the boy and thought how easily he'd fit into one of her T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. “I'll get a blanket and some sheets,” she said, when they got inside. “Now get out of those soaking clothes before you catch your death of a cold.” Giving orders had restored Thelma's sense of order and authority. She understood those feelings.

Later that night, Thelma lay awake listening to the haranguing sounds of Hurricane Claudia. She thought about all that had happened that day and how frightened she had been. She thought she had constructed her life in such a way as to seal off fright. She wiggled her toes against the soft, clean sheets and luxuriated in the warmth and dryness of her flannel pajamas. She thought about Delores and all of her girls safe and asleep under this one roof. From some place inside her, she couldn't say where, she heard a familiar raspy voice. “Take it,” it said. “Take another little piece of my heart.”

Delores barely had the energy to wash the salt off her face and brush her teeth. Even then, as she crawled under her blankets, she was engulfed by the taste and smell of the ocean, and by the time she fell into sleep, wrestling with her sheets, she was back in the water, fighting the currents.

Often when Delores swam in the Springs, a dolphin or two would shoot by her. Usually they came close enough so she could see a round black eye appraising her. Once, her fingers brushed up against one of the dolphins, and though it was only for a moment, she never forgot how strong and smooth it felt, like marble. There was life in that dolphin's eye and a hint of humor in its upturned smile line. If an animal can be said to be taunting, even flirtatious, then that dolphin was up there as one of nature's biggest teases. Delores often fantasized about what it would be like to grab hold of a dolphin's dorsal fin and hitch a ride. There was one dolphin that she thought she recognized as a regular, and she felt that it wasn't beyond reason to think that, one day, he'd just sidle up next to her and wait for her to hop on.

That night, as she bucked the waves in her sleep, she was visited by a gentler dream. She was on the back of a dolphin, the one she thought she knew. She was holding on to his dorsal fin and they were flying through the water faster than the birds overhead. They
were heading up the coast to New York to find Westie. She was aware of being propelled through the water by a force that wasn't her own. It felt like the tumbling-into-nowhere sensation that often accompanies dreams. It made her woozy, yet she gave herself up to it with relief and joy. She wished it would never stop, but abruptly it did. The dolphin disappeared, and when she went in search of him, all she found in the muck and tangle of seaweed was a small fish that glimmered like tinsel. She scooped it into her hands and held it to her chest. The fish wriggled and shimmied but she managed to keep it close. Eventually, the fish got smaller and smaller until there was nothing left of it but some drops of water. She kept trying to conjure up the dolphin again, but all her subconscious would deliver was a few grains of wet sand. When she woke up the next morning, she felt sad, but couldn't put a finger on the source of it. “You had quite a tussle going on there last night,” Molly said to her. “What were you dreaming about?”

Delores shrugged. “You know. The usual water stuff.”

By breakfast that morning, everyone knew about Delores's rescue of the boy. Someone had taped the front page of the
Tampa Tribune
on the door to the dining room. The headline, “Local Weather Girl in Heroic Rescue,” was circled in red magic marker. The cook, a bulbous man named Curtis Braunschweiger, usually served grits and potatoes for breakfast. On this morning, he went out of his way to whip up a batch of pancakes with blueberry syrup to honor the occasion. Just before she was to sit down to breakfast, Delores got called into Thelma's office. Her mother was on the phone.

This time, her “hello” wasn't as bouncy as usual. “I just read about you in the
Daily News,”
her mother said. “There's a picture and everything, although it's hard to tell if it's really you.”

“It's me,” said Delores.

“I'm not sure it was the smartest thing you've ever done, but it
certainly sounded brave,” said her mother. Then she dropped her voice. “Hon, I hate to rain on your parade. But it's about Helene. She's gone. She died two days ago. Up until three weeks ago, she was still taking care of Westie. Then a bunch of us in the building took turns caring for her. Frail as she was, she was quite the fighter. And remember the big globe in her living room? Westie loved to play with that thing. It's next to our TV set now. Oh my. Poor Helene. Poor Westie. And me? I'm up a creek here, trying to find someone to take care of him.”

Delores heard her mother's voice getting tight, as if she might cry.

“Mom, how's Westie? Does he know what happened?”

“He knows Helene is gone forever. But, then again, so is everyone else in his life so it's not exactly new to him.”

Delores hated when her mother jabbed at her like this.

“Gee, I wish there was something I could do.” The words tasted like sour milk even as she spoke them.

“There's not much you can do, unless you know someone who's available for babysitting.”

Delores said nothing.

Her mother continued: “Never a dull moment around here, I'll say that.”

“Tell Westie that I love him and I'll see him soon, okay?” said Delores.

“Sure, I will. He's downstairs with the Hellers today. They have a girl around his age. We'll see. Okay, bye hon.”

“Bye, Mom.” Delores hung up feeling guilty and annoyed at the same time. Poor Westie, poor Helene. She even felt bad for her mother, though she certainly had rained on her parade.

Delores came back to the dining room where she found that Blonde Sheila had saved her a place at the table. “He was watching
you last night,” said Blonde Sheila, rolling her eyes toward the heavens. “Who was watching me?” asked Delores, looking around the room. “You know,” said Sheila, still staring skyward. “Him.” Sheila had taken to wearing muumuus. Her body was sacrosanct, she said, a gift not to be squandered. Behind her back, Scary Sheila had told the others: “Sacrosanct, my ass. Her body is preggers.”

Lester sat on Delores's other side. “Were you scared?” he whispered.

“Everything happened so fast, I didn't have time to be scared.”

“In my opinion, it was a very brave thing to do,” he said with a creak in his voice. “I don't know for sure, but it's not the kind of thing most people would do. I don't even know if I could have done it. My father says it's the most courageous thing he's ever seen a girl do.”

“I guess no one knows how they'll act until something happens,” said Delores. “You don't think about being brave, or anything like that. You just do what you do.”

Lester considered her words and was about to say something else, when Helen stood on her chair and started singing “For She's a Jolly Good Fellow.” The others joined in, except for Sharlene and Adrienne, who came into the dining room together midsong. On this morning, they looked particularly funereal. Sharlene's hair was still wet from the shower. She'd taken to walking a few steps behind Adrienne, her shoulders slumped and head bowed as if her hair were leading the way. Adrienne wore a pair of old green thongs that slapped against the floor. There was a budding cold sore on the corner of her mouth. Neither of them even looked at Delores.

Adrienne rarely looked at anyone. When she first confided to Delores about her twirling debacle, she had said: “Once people laugh at you to your face, you always think that they're laughing at you behind your back. It's hard not to feel ridiculous.” Delores had
wanted to answer, “I know what you mean. I always feel at the verge of being found out.” But those were during the days when she was still presenting herself as the daughter of entertainment professionals with “a little bit of French” in her, so she let Adrienne bare her humiliation and said nothing. It made Adrienne wary of Delores, since she assumed that her silence was a form of judgment.

Now things were even worse. Delores was popular, and it had been Adrienne's experience that the popular ones judged the harshest. It had been the girls in the Pep club who had come up with that dreadful nickname “Sparky” in the first place. If Adrienne wasn't going to acknowledge Delores, neither was Sharlene. The two of them sat in a corner of the dining room savoring their grudges and pancakes.

Thelma Foote stood with the rest of them and sang “She's a Jolly Good Fellow.” That morning, she'd been awakened by a phone call. She'd answered with an irritated “Thelma Foote here.” A male voice had said, “My name's Roy Walker. I'm Delores's father.” Her first thought had been: oh no, not another one. “What can I do for you?” she'd asked. But this wasn't the time to bring up Delores's father.

She continued singing with the rest of them, and when they finished, she clapped her hands to get their attention. “Okay, first a hand for cook Braunschweiger for these delectable pancakes.” They all clapped, and Helen put two fingers in her mouth and made a loud, cheepy whistle. “And a big hand for Delores Taurus, whose Weeki Wachee spirit and bravery last night made us all so proud.” Everyone clapped again except for Adrienne and Sharlene. “Oh, and let's not forget Delores's partner in crime, Armando Lozano.”

Armando was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants that Thelma had given him the night before. His silky hair was shaggy and unkempt, and he looked around the room with the squinty
eyes of someone just awakened from sleep. “Armando is an intern at WGUP,” Thelma continued. “He was with Delores through her whole ordeal and drove her back here late last night. Although he is not a merman per se, he seems to me to be of that ilk. So let's make him welcome here, shall we?” The girls regarded Armando with nods and assessing eyes. He had full, kissable lips and smooth doe-colored skin. He was cute, and it was rare for a cute guy to be among them. Lester noticed the smile that passed between Armando and Delores. It was a little thing, but he saw how it made Delores blush, and how afterward, she looked down at the floor. Lester studied Armando. He had a nice complexion; that was for sure. But he had skinny arms and a narrow chest, and it gave him a stab of pleasure to think that Armando would never be able to hold his breath for two minutes underwater.

“There's one more thing,” continued Thelma. “Because of Hurricane Claudia, the park is closed today. That means your time is your own. There'll be no chores and no practice.” The girls banged their spoons against their glasses and let out cheers of “Yay, Claudia!”

Thelma folded her arms, put one foot against the wall, and leaned back. She was incapable of watching her girls and Lester without spotting areas that could use improvement. Sharlene had to do something with that hair. Lester's face was peeling from too much sun. Blonde Sheila still had that damn nun smile on her face and the demeanor of someone preoccupied with noble thoughts. Thelma preferred the old potty-mouthed Blonde Sheila with her stupid crotch jokes and obsession with other people's virginity.

If they ever did a mermaid version of
Hello, Dolly!
Helen would be perfect in the lead role. No inhibitions there. Unlike that Adrienne. My, my, what a mess: always half a beat too slow, and so downtrodden—totally the wrong image for a Weeki girl. Delores
needed to cut her bangs. Her feet were enormous, though probably they helped her to be such a fast swimmer.