The lanes filled up. Except lane seven.
THEY SAY IT’S LIKE DROWNING BY AMY PURCELL 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 138 PREVIEW
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When Cass arrived at the pool the old women were already swimming laps, their pastel swim caps bobbing up and down. She stripped out of her sweatpants and tossed them towards the heap of water noodles and life preservers. She glanced at the clock, rolled her eyes pretending to be embarrassed about always being late, in case anyone noticed. No-one ever did. The other swimmers, especially Evelyn in lane seven, expected nothing of her.
Cass didn’t know Evelyn in any meaningful way. But Evelyn—her ballerina-thin arms cutting the water with soldier-like precision, her turquoise swim cap over her perfectly cropped bulb-white hair—became a constant in her life.
Not that Evelyn knew this. They never spoke. Yet Cass was certain Evelyn was never late to anything, never got obnoxious-drunk, never said the wrong thing, never ate Cheetos at two in the morning, and never made a mistake of any consequence. Evelyn made it look so easy, not just swimming but living.
Cass slipped into Evelyn’s lane. In the pool it was easier to forget that soon, four weeks according to her gyno, she would be a mother. A Maternal Being. Caring for Another Life. The enormity of it floated away as Cass kept pace with Evelyn’s breaststroke.
In the locker room after laps a few of the pregnant swimmers chattered about their impending arrivals. Cass fake-smiled and fake-nodded her way through their discussions about the safest jogging strollers and the most effective method for losing the baby weight afterwards. She widened her eyes, she frowned, she voiced what she thought were the appropriate oohs and aahs at the appropriate times.
The huge woman carrying twins who constantly asked the others if her nose was widening along with the rest of her—truthfully, it was—pointed to Cass’s toned shoulders and calves, leftovers from her high school swimming days. “How could you understand?” she asked. “You’re still so thin.”
Cass looked at her reflection in the mirror, caught Evelyn’s gaze before Evelyn turned back to her locker.
Cass was a stick figure, in a lime-green two-piece circa Esther Williams purchased at a vintage store in a panic-stricken moment after she’d taken the pregnancy test, after she’d pressed her fists into her stomach, whispering, “No, no, no.”
She was not One of Them. She was all arm sticks and leg sticks with a small bubble in the middle and a dark vertical stripe running up her belly like a broken zipper.
She longed to feel all the things the other pregnant swimmers said they felt. Where was her glow? Where was her maternal instinct?
She thought of the Tupperware Shape-O Toy she played with as a child, the yellow cut-out shapes that fit into the red and blue ball. Her body shape didn’t match any of the cut-outs. No matter how hard she tried, she didn’t fit in here or out there beyond the pool. She wouldn’t buy the Shape-O for Him-Her.
Alone. Evelyn knew the word horrified the young ones like Cass who, for some inexplicable reason, swam in her lane.
Was it too much to ask to have her own lane? Was it too much to ask to swim alone in a lane where you weren’t reminded of life? A lane devoid of other life forms that were busy creating other life forms inside themselves?
And it was her lane. She had been swimming in number seven at 6.30 am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before that girl was old enough to crawl.