Alex Myers

Diving Lessons


When the car turned off the paved road to jostle down the sandy, rock-strewn driveway, Nick felt a jolt of irrational but familiar
excitement.  Excitement that said summertime, no obligations; excitement that lasted until he wiggled the key in the lock,
heard the latch click and pushed the door open.  The curtains were drawn over the windows so the inside of the house was
muted and gray.  The dimness, broken only by the light from the open door, lent the living room an almost damp feeling, and
as Nick stepped inside he expected his feet to sink into the soft, dusty floor.  He put down his bag and looked around at the
indistinct shapes of the sheet-covered furniture, his excitement replaced by a certain tightness, a certain uncertainty.  This was
not what he expected; this was not what he remembered.

Pushing through the grayness and the damp light, he moved to the nearest window and shoved the curtains aside, letting the
sunshine flood in.  It illuminated the dust he had set swirling, the motes clogging the beam.  Nick moved to the next window;
under his feet the dried out shells of long dead lady-bugs crackled.  Looking at them, Nick remembered how they always arrived
in droves late in August, signaling the end of summer.  So many that he stopped bothering to blow them away for a wish, so
many they became a nuisance and his mother would...

"Will you look at this place?" Amy, Nick's wife, cried as she came through the front door.  "What a great spot.  It's so cute."  
The dampness of the room had not dimmed her words as Nick thought it would; her voice bounced brightly through the gray.  
Amy too dropped her bags on the floor and moved about opening the curtains.  "Oh, you can see the lake from here.  That's
lovely."  Watching her go from window to window, Nick realized how slowly he had been moving, as if gathering dust himself.  
In her pink tank top and sandals, her brown hair gathered up in a pony tail, Amy looked ready for a day at the beach.  She
pushed the curtains aside with an exuberance that made Nick wince.  There wasn't anything in the room that he could look at
safely, without it stopping him with some memory, some realization.

"Do you want to bring in the other bags and stuff, or do you want to open up the rest of the house?" Amy asked him.  She
hovered across the living room from Nick, her glance darting around, clearly excited by this adventure.  Nick stood silently,
couldn't think, so Amy answered her own question: "I want to see what upstairs."  And she clambered up the stairwell, her
sandals slapping on each wooden step.  Nick, still in a reverie by the window, still struck by something about the lady-bugs,
broke away and followed her, moving through air that felt like water, breath that felt like choking, the light cutting through the
room to illuminate the dusty, unremembered surfaces.

How long had it been, Nick wondered as he climbed the stairs, since he was last here?  Three years?  It must be more.  He and
Amy had been married for three years; his father had been dead for two; his mother only one.  So it must be more; it felt like
more.

Nick's father had fought cancer for years, fought it readily through the first surgery and the doctor's reassurances of
remission, fought it wearily when these reassurances turned out to be false.  Then finally gave in, a defeat that had been
impossible for Nick to fathom.  Worse, if anything could be worse, was his mother quickly following.  The lightning of the stroke
after the long, slow thunder of his father's cancer.  Speechless.  Senseless.  Yet so many mourners, contemporaries of his
parents, had told Nick that it often happened like this, as if the surviving partner could not live alone.  As if death had followed
a pattern.

Amy was waiting at the top of the stairs -- the three bedroom doors on the landing were shut tight, and she was peering
closely at a framed photograph on the wall.  Nick didn't need to look to know what it was: a snapshot of him and his dad,
taken twenty-five years ago, a young Nick smiling for all he is worth at his mother behind the camera -- his father's arm around
his shoulder, both of them holding forth fish that are too small to truly be photo-worthy.  Automatically, Nick headed towards
his own room, scarcely acknowledging Amy, not wanting to explain the photo to her, unable now to translate the smile of his
six-year-old self.  He opened the door of the room but did not enter, wanting to stay outside for a second.  Single bed,
nightstand, chest of drawers.  A small lighter patch of wall where something must have hung for a long time -- he didn't
remember what.

"This is my room," said Nick, feeling Amy standing behind him, grateful for her presence, which kept him from being alone.  
"Was my room, I guess."  She peered in over his shoulder and was content at its innocuousness, he supposed, because she
soon turned away, walked across the hall to the next room, the guest room.  Nick heard her turn the knob, let her explore
alone; there was never anything in the guest room.  He couldn't leave his room yet.  Something was missing from it, though he
couldn't say what.  Maybe it was the bare mattress that met his glance, absent its usual bedspread, a tattered red and blue
quilt that Nick had loved since he was tiny.  Gazing in on all that was not there, Nick realized that he had never been to the
house without someone else being there first, making it ready for him.

The family camp was what Nick's dad always called this house, what Nick always called it in his mind.   The family camp.  Nick's
grandfather had bought the land, built the house, and eventually left it to his son.  It was the site of all of Nick's childhood
summers, full of ritual.  First, the annual packing of the trunk, saying goodbye to school friends, and driving out of the city.  
They always stopped for lunch at the same restaurant, and afterwards Nick would sit at the car window watching the roadside
fill with trees instead of stores.  Then the turn off the last paved road and finally the glimpse of the lake through the trees.  
The family camp.  The name seemed ridiculous now.  There was no family. Just him and Amy and this place.

"Nick? Was this your parents' room?"  Amy's voice carried across the hall.  He shook his head to clear it, went to the sound of
her question.  She was still in the guest room.  Nick stood in the doorway watching her as she opened drawers, plugged in
lamps.  She moved with efficiency and purpose that he envied; to her, the room was just a room, the house just a house.

"No, this is the guest room. My grandparents stayed here when I was little," Nick explained.  The double bed slumped in the
middle like an undercooked cake.  The room was bright but indistinct; it was the place in the camp where Nick had spent the
least time.  No memories filled the space, and he wasn't sure if he felt safer there or disappointed.  But he knew that the next
room Amy would open, the only other room upstairs, was his parents' room.  The two windows overlooking the lake, his
father's sock drawer, pairs lined up as if for battle.  "I'll bring in the rest of the bags," he said abruptly and went downstairs.

Outside, the car glistened in sunlight that seemed impossibly bright.  Nick popped the trunk, grabbed two bags and headed
inside.  He had expected the house to feel small, the way childhood places often do when viewed through adult eyes.  But
instead it felt like the house had grown in his absence, multiplying its empty spaces, reaching higher, away from him.  Even
from the outside, it loomed over him, the cedar shingles gray, the porch railing showing rot where the gutter clearly leaked.

Nick dropped the bags in the living room, then went out the door again before his eyes could adjust to the dim interior, before
he could get stuck in another dusty memory.  He grabbed the last bags from the car, reluctantly pushed the trunk closed and
entered the house again.  He could hear Amy's footsteps as she walked around upstairs.  He wondered if she had opened up
his parents' room or if she had left it untouched, like some inviolate shrine.

"Nick?"  Amy's voice floated down the stairwell.  "Will you open up the downstairs windows?  It's awfully stuffy in here."

"Sure," he called back.  She was right -- it was quickly becoming a hot day. His grandfather had built the camp with economy in
mind -- a summer place where folks would spend most of the time outdoors.  The ceilings were low, the walls thinly insulated.  
Nick moved around the perimeter of the living room, opening each window.  Soon a breeze swept through, like a sigh, bringing
the smell of the lake and the warm summer woods back into the room.  He heard Amy's footsteps coming downstairs, turned
to watch her open a suitcase and pull out some bedding.

"I'm going to set up our room, okay?  Can you get things in shape down here?"  Nick nodded, watched her go back upstairs.  
In shape.  He moved automatically towards the couch, lifted the dusty sheet off of it, trying to submerge his mind in simple
tasks.  The chairs uncovered, Nick moved to the shelves: mysteries with creased spines, the summer reading of his mother's
choice.  Nick wasn't prepared to throw anything out; that wasn't what he'd come to do.  He'd done enough discarding when his
mother had died.  The weeks of going through his childhood home, emptying the basement and the attic, each box an
unknown burden of memories, responsibilities, grief.  He was an only child, and his mother had saved everything: report cards,
hand prints, drawings, letters, his whole childhood in boxes.  An only child, and as he went through each piece, he felt the
weight of his family name for the first time, settling on his shoulders, each memento reminding him: this is who you are, how
you came to be.  In the end he had stopped opening boxes, let Amy, guided by indifference or objective judgment, sift
through them while he readied the house for sale, hoping for the catharsis that would come when it was no longer his
responsibility.

Perhaps it was that experience which had made Nick reluctant to open up the family camp.  He'd put it off all spring and now it
was late in June.  But as the days grew warmer, Amy had dropped hints, "Wouldn't it be great to get into the lake?"  or "Let's
get out of town this weekend."  Part of Nick had wanted to go to the family camp.  Coming up here was a ritual associated with
freedom from obligations, relaxation, getting away from it all.  So Nick had convinced himself that the family camp would be
easier to deal with than his parents' home had been.  There was neither basement nor attic full of boxes; there was no bed on
which his father had withered and died.  Nick's mind, ever willing to deceive itself, had created an image of the family camp as
fresh, clean, smelling like a summer day, as if it waited there, ready for him to come home.  He had not been prepared for the
dust, the damp, neglected air, the shock of realizing that the characteristics of the camp that he longed for came not from the
place itself but from the tidiness and activity, the presence of those who inhabited it.  The empty spaces of the camp felt not
like soothing solitude, but a gap, an aching space where a tooth had been yanked out.

He had not been prepared for this, Nick thought as he lifted a crossword puzzle book from the shelf.  It was folded open to a
puzzle half-finished in his father's neat hand: vestige of a rainy afternoon?  A sleepless night?  Nick put it down, walked instead
to the kitchen, which was small and utilitarian. "That's fine," his mother would say, "I don't come here to cook."  In the kitchen,
Nick knew that the drawers held only forks and knives, the cupboards only pots and pans.  No chance of encountering ghosts
of the past.  He filled the sink with soapy water and submerged the stacks of dusty plates that he pulled off the shelves.  He
was still lost in the pleasant nothingness of dishwashing when Amy came downstairs.

"Nick, you look tired.  Let's take a break from cleaning," she said.  It was her habit to ascribe her own feelings to him, and he
had learned that what was veiled as generosity was often actually self-serving.  "Want to show me around?"  Amy rubbed his
back gently, looking at him closely, which made Nick wonder what his face showed, wonder whether her concern had been
sincere.

"Okay," he said, drying his hands on a dish towel.

They left the house through the back door, passing through a screened-in porch that faced the lake.  At the foot of the back
steps there was a short stretch of lawn, clumpy with weeds and untended grass.  Nick pointed to a raised bed at the side of
the yard.  "That's where my mom put in her vegetable garden," he said.  He looked at the lawn, thick with dandelions, realizing
he was going to have to mow this soon.

"Next spring I can start seedlings inside," Amy was saying, "and put them in here.  Fresh tomatoes.  There's enough room for
zucchini too."  She was standing next to the garden bed, carefully studying its dimensions.  "What do you think, Nick?"

Nick looked at the overgrown garden bed and thought of turning the soil, the bags of fertilizer, the deep roots of the dozens
of dandelions growing there.  "Yeah, sure," he replied, surprised at Amy's readiness to imagine next summer already, realizing
how far behind he was.  Suddenly anxious for motion, especially motion away from the house, Nick turned and walked across
the grass.

The lawn gave way to a mossy forest floor as the trees closed in around them, spindly hemlocks and a few white pines; the
ground was orange with their fallen needles.  A root-strewn path, still looking well-worn, led to a small, pebbly beach.  Nick
stepped gingerly onto the dock, not sure how solid the wood was.  The deck dipped and swayed as he walked along its length
to the rectangular float at the end.  Behind him, he felt Amy's weight join his, and the dock dipped lower.  The sunlight
sparkled on the water, glinted off the hull of a distant motor boat across the lake.  After the trees, the openness of the lake
felt expansive, other-worldly.  The far shore was thick with greenery; a few docks poked out here and there, but otherwise it
was all trees.

There were no islands on the lake, a fact Nick had lamented when he was young.  He loved stories of shipwrecks and pirates,
castaway and marooned.  As an only child, Nick was friendly with loneliness and wanted an island of his own.  Summers at the
family camp had always been a time to let his imagination run free.  He could wander in the woods endlessly, getting as lost as
possible, relying on the lake shore to guide him home.  Even rainy days were a chance to draw treasure maps, read books on
the couch, and imagine the next adventure.

"What a gorgeous lake," said Amy, coming to stand next to him, shielding her eyes with her hand.  The skin of her forearm,
turned to the sun, looked dangerously pale.  "Why didn't you bring me here sooner?" she asked.

"I don't know," Nick replied automatically, as he groped for an answer.  "Dad was sick and couldn't really be up here.  Not to
enjoy it, anyway.  And then with Mom -- that summer after -- it just seemed like too much."  Nick knew Amy hadn't been
asking about the past three years, the years of their marriage, the years of his loss and his loss.  Nick knew she meant before
all that, when they had been dating, then engaged, when Nick's father hadn't been short of breath or going to chemo.  She
meant then, when Nick had taken a few long weekends off from work to come fishing up here with his dad.  A few precious long
weekends – Nick didn't take many – that he didn't spend with Amy.  Nick knew she had been hurt a little at the time, but
she didn't say anything.  It was still pretty early in their relationship, and he knew she didn't want to seem too clingy.  And Nick
hadn't wanted to say how much he didn't want her to come, how he wanted to go to the family camp and bask in the sun with
his dad and have his mom cook him dinner and feel like it was summer and he was a kid again, an only child.  Not engaged, not
committed, not one half.  He knew that was what Amy meant when she asked, "Why didn't you bring me here sooner?"  But
Nick didn't acknowledge it.  He just let his words rest on his parents' deaths, let the emptiness hang there.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Nick, I know... " Amy trailed off.  "It's just that this place is amazing.  So quiet, so peaceful -- the
lake is gorgeous.  Do you think it's warm enough to swim?"

She squatted down on the dock, dipped her hand into the water.  Nick didn't think so.  The flashes of sunlight made the
surface of the lake seem inviting, but he remembered early summer plunges that set his teeth chattering, his body shaking
convulsively even after he got out.  But he also remembered the days in late August when the lake was the only salvation from
the unrelenting heat, when he would swim out looking for a cold spot where he could dangle his legs, floating and splashing
until his skin felt loose and free.  Today the sun was intense, and he was certain that the surface of the water, where Amy had
dipped her hand, would be warm, deceptively warm; it was sure to be cold below that.

In the inescapable sunlight of the dock, Nick felt uncomfortable; he could feel the sweat sliding from his hairline down his neck.  
Amy turned her gaze from the lake and said "Let's finish unpacking and have lunch.  Then maybe we can take a break, go for a
swim, before doing any more cleaning."   On another day, Nick might have resented her bossiness, her taking charge, but now
he was grateful to be given direction.

Back inside the house, Nick picked up two suitcases and went upstairs.  Without conscious thought, he headed towards his
room, his childhood room, before realizing that, of course, he and Amy wouldn't be sleeping there.  He turned on the spot and
suddenly wondered: would Amy have made up the bed in the guest room or his parents' room?  He thought he knew the
answer, but hoping he was wrong he went to the guest room.  The mattress was still bare.  He crossed the hall. It was hard to
go over the threshold to his parent's room, harder to unpack his suitcase into the empty drawers of his father's bureau.  It
was impossible to imagine sleeping in this room with Amy (let alone making love to her in his parents' bed).  A gust of wind
pushed the curtains into the room, and he knew what Amy would say: she picked this room for the lake view, for the two large
windows, for the comfortable queen-size bed.  Nick's room had only one window and a skylight.  There was just the narrow,
single bed, from which, as a child, he could look through the skylight and watch the moon rise.  Let the darkness grow and the
sounds of the country -- haunting loons on the lake, the scream of a rabbit caught by coyotes -- fill the night, let himself drift
off into that deepest of sleeps, knowing his parents were in the next room.  Nick left the half-unpacked bags on the floor,
knowing he could not sleep in his parents' room, knowing he could not explain this to Amy.

Downstairs, Amy had made sandwiches, put chips and soda on the table.  The sight of the checkered tablecloth soothed Nick.  
They took chairs opposite each other -- Amy facing the lake and Nick facing the living room.  He saw already the signs of Amy's
presence: the stack of magazines on the freshly dusted coffee table, a sweatshirt draped over the back of the rocking chair.  
Small notes of change filling the air.  Amy was talking, Nick realized, laying out plans for the afternoon.  "I think another few
hours should get the downstairs all set -- the bathroom doesn't look too bad," she continued.

Nick let his mind wander past the cleaning, transported by the chips and the soda to another meal just like this in some distant
summer.  His parents talking, Nick lost in his own world of plans for a solo canoe trip to the far shore, maybe a bike into town
for ice cream.  The endless possibilities of a summer day, the stretch of vacation unbounded by responsibilities or even
awareness of the day of the week.  Those are his parents' worries, which touch him only incidentally -- perhaps an insistence
that he mow the lawn or a promise that on the next rainy day they will shop for school clothes.  But otherwise, the blissful
unawareness of sunny days spent as he pleased, the salty chips washed down with the too-sweet soda.

"And I think we've got enough groceries to last the week without having to drive to town.  We can just stay here and relax,"
Amy continued, and Nick nodded in agreement.  "It is just so nice to be here, away from it all," she went on.  "This will be such
a great place to bring our kids."

The pause, in which Nick knew he must place a word of affirmation.  He said what came to mind, "This is a great place to be a
kid," which he knew was both true and not exactly the correct response.  But his mind was spinning through conversations he
and Amy had shared on this topic.  Kids.  He realized that they had talked about this before, having kids, and he had not said
no.  And somehow his not no had become kids, here; those long summer days for someone else.  But Amy was smiling,
beaming at him, seeing in his answer confirmation of her vision.

"Let's go for a swim," she urged.  "It's still stuffy in here, and I'm hot."

In the bathroom, Nick pulled on swim trunks, his pale stomach hanging out a little over the waistband, as if reminding him, in
his mother's voice, to wait an hour before swimming.  But then they were through the trees, out on the dock in the sunlight,
the sparkling lake stretching before them.  Nick wanted to wait for the sun to warm him, but Amy had already put a toe in,
declared it warm enough, and grabbed his arm.  And before he knew it, he was jumping, being pulled by her from the dock into
the water, his hand in hers, certain the water will be cold, not ready for the plunge.