Part 18 (1/2)

”What is that?” I asked.

”Height, weight, body-fat percentage...”

”I'll skip it,” I said hastily.

”... Then you run on the treadmill for twelve minutes...” She looked at me. ”Or walk. Whatever. Then there's a sit-up test, and a flexibility test, and we enter all the data into the computer...”

”Skip! Skip! Skip!” I was positive that I couldn't do a sit-up to save my life, and what would the computer tell me after they'd sent it my data? Probably that I owed the treadmill an apology. I glanced through the wall of windows, toward the Olympicsized pool. There were three swimmers, a man and two women, all of them in swim caps and goggles. I didn't have a swim cap or goggles. ”Do you sell swim stuff?” I asked the tiny tangerine.

”Oh. Um. No.” She giggled. I guessed that she'd never seen anyone as big as I was. People my size were, most likely, infrequent and unwelcome visitors to the land of free weights and stairclimbers and Yogalates stretch cla.s.ses. I felt like telling her that she didn't have to worry, that I wouldn't break anything or eat anyone, but I decided that calling attention to her discomfort would only increase it.

I struggled out of the little foam-and-wire armchair across from her desk. ”When is the pool the busiest?”

”Mornings,” she said. ”It's real crowded right when we open, which is at six, and it stays busy until eight. Then it's busy at lunchtime, and then it kind of empties out, and it gets real busy after four or five.”

”So how are things at ten in the morning?”

”Ten's pretty empty.”

I thanked her and made my way to the locker room. In my purple skirted suit, in the unforgiving three-way mirrors at the end of the locker room, with wobbly white flesh fore and aft, even with the weight I'd lost I bore a disconcerting resemblance to Barney. Ah well, I thought, and dunked underneath the shower and made my way into the steamy, chemical-scented air of the pool.

The two women swimmers were gone by then. There was just one man with silvery hair and black goggles doing the crawl, plowing up and down the lap lane closest to the windows. I stuck a toe into the water, which was as warm as a bath, then eased myself, inch by inch, down the steps and into the shallow end, all the while maintaining a death grip on the metal handrail, terrified that I would slip and fall and hit my head and drown, and that my death would be written up in News of the Weird: t.i.tANIC-SIZED WOMAN DROWNS ON MAIDEN VOYAGE.

I walked toward the deep end, letting my feet drift up and back behind me, until I was floating. Then I put my face in the water, the way I'd been taught at my swimming lessons long ago. I blew a gentle stream of bubbles out of my mouth and stretched my arms in front of me, parting the water as if it were a curtain. I hadn't been swimming in years, but I had to hope that it was like riding a bike, that it would come back to me once I got started.

I put my face back in the water, set my feet against the concrete wall, pushed gently, and did a tentative b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke toward the opposite end of the pool, twenty-five yards away. I figured I'd try two laps-one out, one back-and then call it a day, but I felt okay. Before I knew it, my fingers were brus.h.i.+ng the lip of the deep end. I turned around, pushed off again, and stroked gingerly to the other side. I looked at the clock. The entire enterprise had taken me less than three minutes. I started off again. My eyes were starting to sting from the chlorine, so this time I kept my face above the water. I fanned my hands out in front of me and fluttered my legs behind. Every four laps, I checked the clock, and before I knew it, twenty minutes had gone by.

I didn't realize how hard I'd been working until I pulled myself up the steps in the shallow end and felt the muscles of my thighs and calves trembling.

”Harder than it looks, isn't it?”

The man in the other lap lane had gotten out of the water and was toweling off. He was thick-shouldered, barrel-chested, with brown skin and a thatch of silvery hair on his chest that matched his close-cropped silvery hair. I nodded, breathless, certain that my cheeks were red and that I was sweating as well as dripping. I dabbed at my face with the tiny towel I'd picked up on my way to the pool, wis.h.i.+ng I hadn't left my bigger one back in the locker, wis.h.i.+ng that I wasn't panting like an elderly asthmatic dog.

”Have a good day,” the man said, and I managed, ”You, too,” before wobbling back to the locker room and collapsing on the bench in front of my locker, where I stayed until I could breathe normally and trust my legs to support me.

I went back to the pool every day, Monday through Friday. I would have gone on weekends, too, except then the pool was usually filled with kids, or the members of a water aerobics cla.s.s made up of women age seventy and up, their swim-capped heads bobbing genteelly in the deep end. Each session, I'd alternate between trying to go a little longer or swim a little faster.

After eight weeks of swimming five times a week, my Barney swimsuit was flapping around my hips. I ordered a smaller one, this time in black, figuring I'd be Orca, a killer whale, instead of a friendly dinosaur.

”A new suit!” the man from the next lane said, and smiled his approval with teeth that were slightly stained and a bit crooked. ”You are shrinking.” His accent clipped each of his words precisely. I watched as he shook beads of water from his hair, unselfconsciously rubbing his towel over his arms and his legs. I nodded and picked up my own towel. ”Will you join me for some juice?” he asked. I was so startled that I couldn't think of how to tell him no, or that I had somewhere else to be, which would have been a lie.

Twenty minutes later, I sat in the juice bar with my smoothie, and the silvery-haired man from the pool sat across from me. His name was Vijay, he said, and he slid a business card across the table: Vijay Kapoor, M.D.

”You're a doctor?”

”Retired.” He rolled his r's. I imagined his tongue, curled against the roof of his mouth, trilling lightly. ”Now I do a bit of consulting for the drug companies. I fill in, here and there, to keep busy. And you?”

It had been so long since I'd had a conversation like this with someone who wasn't, in some way, paid to talk to me, to take my medical history or my credit information, to give me my prescriptions or my latte or my stamps. ”I do ill.u.s.trations for greeting cards,” I said.

He smiled kindly. ”And may I have your name, my dear?”

I felt my blush intensify. ”Addie Downs.”

We lingered with our drinks as he coaxed the particulars from me. I told him where I lived, a little more about what I did, and how I'd started swimming. ”I lost some weight,” I said. ”I'm just trying to tone up a little.” He raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I felt my face getting hot, wondering if he was trying to figure out exactly how big I'd been before the weight loss began.

”You look well,” he said, making me blush again.

”What about you?” I asked. He said that he was fifty-nine, which was older than I would have guessed, and he was married, the father of two grown sons. He and his wife lived in a big house in Evanston. She volunteered for charities and as a docent at the Art Inst.i.tute. He kept busy with part-time work, with the consulting he did for drug companies, the occasional lecture he delivered to medical students. ”It is not a bad life,” he said, and he looked at his watch, a gold disc that glowed against his burnished skin. ”Until next time?” he asked, and I agreed, bobbed my head shyly, an oversized schoolgirl in a sweatsuit. We were friends. That was all. He was old enough to be my father, and he was married, so what else could we be?

Vijay was always in the pool by the time I arrived, and he'd lift his sleek, dripping head out of the water and raise one hand. ”Halloo, Addie!” he'd call as I waded, as gracefully as I could, into the shallow end, and took the lane next to his. At first he was always faster, but eventually I found myself able to keep up with him. Our fingertips would touch the edge of the pool at the same time. We'd raise our heads, inhale, duck back under the water, and start swimming again.

Afterward, he'd help me out of the water, extending one square hand, handing me my towel. I'd take my shower, change my clothes, and we'd sit at what I'd come to think of as our table in the juice bar, talking about everything: the election, the weather, a prime-time medical drama we were both addicted to, even though he said the technical mistakes they made were cringe-inducing, and that the show would be responsible for ”an influx of idiots” into medical school. He inquired about my family. I told him about Jon, and he'd listened, asking thoughtful questions about the location of Jon's injury and the length of his rehabilitation, what seizure medication he was on and whether it was adequate.

”And Mommy and Daddy?”

I blinked, caught off guard by the diminutives, thinking for an instant that he was talking about his parents. ”Oh, they died when I was a teenager. My father had an aneurysm, and my mother had breast cancer.”

”So you are an orphan.” I almost laughed-the word sounded so strange, like something out of d.i.c.kens, or a song I'd heard Emmylou Harris sing about being an orphan girl. Vijay clicked his tongue against his teeth. ”I am sorry,” he said, and briefly placed his hand on top of mine.

At night, in bed, I could call up every detail about him: the shape of his bare feet on the pool's tiled deck, the tilt of his head when he asked me a question, the aggressive jut of his nose, his endearingly crooked teeth. I knew that I was being silly, that he didn't like me as anything more than a friend, a person he saw in the pool, a fellow swimmer he barely recognized as female.

Except I knew that wasn't true. My black tank suit started bagging around my hips, so I ordered a new one. The smaller I got, the more cuts and colors were available. Now, if I wanted, I could buy a tankini, or a magical patented Slimsuit in an exotic tiger print designed to whittle inches off my waist and keep spectators' eyes from resting too long on what the tag coyly called my ”trouble zones.” I went for a variation of my comfortable, familiar black tank suit... only I bought it in a color the catalogue called ”bright raspberry,” imagining how Vijay's eyes might light up when he saw me, picturing his smile.

I wasn't wrong. ”Addie,” he crooned when he saw me, ”how nice!” I smiled at him, did a modest, mocking half-turn before hurrying into the water, tugging my swim cap over my ears. An hour later, we sat across from each other in the juice bar and, unprompted, he started talking about his sons. ”American boys,” he said, his voice half proud, half rueful. One of them had an MBA, and the other was in medical school. The one with the MBA lived in Texas and was married with a baby, the other was engaged. Then he started telling me about his wife, whose name, I'd learned, was Chitra. It had been an arranged marriage in London. Vijay had met her the day before their wedding, and they'd been married for forty-two years. ”The two of us rattle around in that house like the last two peas in a can,” he said. ”There is no pa.s.sion left, no connection. We are like roommates; just two people living together.” Even as I made eye contact and sympathetic noises, I recognized this as a variation of the song that every married man who'd strayed had ever sung to another woman: My wife doesn't understand me, but oh, you, kid. Still, I couldn't keep my heart from lifting, couldn't ignore the way his touch thrilled me when he pressed his hand on mine and then, as I held my breath, reached across the table to stroke my cheek with one blunt fingertip. ”Addie,” he murmured. ”Do you know how lovely you are?”

He took me to a hotel downtown, not too expensive but not cheap, either. As I sat on the bed and watched him slip off his belt, then his shoes, then his wedding ring, the thought crossed my mind that I was no better than Valerie's mother, no better than any woman who thought it was okay to help a man break his wedding vows. He has children, I thought as he embraced me, smelling faintly of the pool's water. I could see our reflection in the mirror above the dresser, his middle-aged body, with the slight paunch that the laps hadn't eradicated, the purplish discs of his nipples, the silvery tangle of his chest hair. His hands looked tiny on the vast white field of my back, his short, compact body dwarfed next to mine. I felt the old self-loathing rise up inside me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself not to think, not to see, only to feel, telling myself that I deserved this, I deserved a little happiness; after everything I'd been through, I deserved some sweetness, even if it was only for an afternoon, in a rented room that smelled of cigarette smoke and bleach, even if it was with someone else's man.

His lips brushed my forehead, then my cheek. I s.h.i.+vered, closing my eyes. I kept my legs pressed tightly together as he caressed me, whispering in my ear, swirling his fingertips against my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my belly. ”Imagine that we are in the water,” he whispered, twining his fingers in the tangle of my pubic hair. I felt my hips lifting, as if they were borne upward on a wave, my thighs locked and trembling as he bent his head over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It hurt a little bit when he slid inside of me, but I didn't bleed, and Vijay didn't seem to notice my sudden, shocked inhalation, or that I'd started to cry, from the pain of it and from the joy that was just as intense, the feeling of being fused with someone else, being entirely connected, of not being alone anymore.

I thought of him when I woke up in the morning. At night, I'd remember something he'd said, the way he'd wrapped his hand around mine, showing me how to touch him. I was giddy, giggly, girlish, lighter than air. For the first time in my life, I found myself forgetting to eat. When we were together, I would take in every detail of how he looked and moved, of what he said, and replay them at my leisure when I was alone and he was with Chitra. I let myself imagine a life together, the two of us coming back from the pool to my house, eating lunch together in the kitchen, walking together in the cool of a summer's evening.

Vijay had never lied to me or led me on, never once suggested that such things were possible. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that grew into certainty every time we swam that he was falling in love with me, that he would leave his wife for me, that we would have a life together.

If this was going to happen, I knew that some changes were in order. My house would look shabby and small compared to the eight-bedroom mansion that he and Chitra had bought twelve years before (how did the lovelorn manage before the Internet? I'd wondered as I'd looked up street maps and the purchase price and, eventually, downloaded satellite pictures of his house on Google Earth). I considered the rooms in which I'd spent almost my entire life and saw all the ways they were wanting: the linoleum that was thin and graying, the carpet worn down to the fibrous backing in spots, the dingy paint and scratched-up toilet bowl, the scraggly rhododendron beside the front door.

I started slowly, with a pile of renovation magazines: Kitchen & Bath, Cottage Style, Metropolitan Home, and Country Living, figuring that I'd pick from the best of all worlds. After a few weeks' consideration, I ordered new tile for the kitchen floor, big hand-glazed squares imported from Mexico, the color of b.u.t.terscotch, and a tiled backsplash in a pattern of azure and gold and plum.

Every day I fixed something, bought something, did some small bit of rearranging, imagining with each change Vijay's reaction to coming home to such a sweet, cozy little place. (He'd complained to me often about the extravagant size of his current home, the trophy house Chitra had pushed for, with the two-story foyer and the his-and-hers bathrooms, and rooms Vijay claimed he didn't even understand. ”A mudroom? Are we pigs?”) Outside my little house, the landscapers I hired planted rosebushes and morning glory and trumpet vines that bloomed profusely and twined around new wrought-iron railings and the latticed frame I'd built around the front door. Working from a picture I'd seen in a magazine, I hung new shutters in dove-gray and had the house painted a warm, soft white the catalogue called b.u.t.termilk. I pulled up the worn old carpet and had the oak floors underneath refinished, and I painted the walls in shades named after foods I no longer ate: bisque and cream, vanilla and honey. I drew up plans to redo the kitchen, combining the dining room and living room into one big ”great room,” with one of the new flat-screen TVs anchoring one wall, new couches and a red-and-gold wool rug. Bigger windows, sliding doors, a brand-new master bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub big enough for two, a shower that converted to a steam stall... nothing was too grand for me to imagine, and to imagine sharing with Vijay.

Besides, I could afford it. The house was paid for; disability paid for Jon's room at the Crossroads. The only expenses I had were health insurance and my car payments, and there'd been years when I hadn't bought much besides groceries and the occasional new bra or cotton panties or socks. The small savings account my parents had left me for going to college and caring for Jon had been quietly increasing in a money-market fund, and I'd added to it every time I got paid, holding on to just what I'd need to pay my bills, socking the rest away. I'd never been acquisitive, never traveled, never wanted fancy cars or clothes (even if they'd fit me)... but now it felt as if I couldn't get rid of the money fast enough. Sometimes I imagined it whispering to me at night: Spend me, spend me, spend me.

So I pored over my plans and painted walls and ripped up carpet and tilled a patch out back for a garden. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons, I took the free cla.s.ses at the local home-improvement store and learned how to strip paint from furniture, how to install a new sink and hang wallpaper (I felt such a pang at that, remembering the pink-and-green stripes that Val had yearned for, hearing her voice in my head: All I wanted was a nice pretty room with pink and green. A nice pretty room like Addie has). I suffered through blisters and splinters and hot-glue-gun burns, throwing out my back, ripping out a fingernail, not minding any of it as I imagined Vijay's delight.

I finished my bedroom first, splurging on a king-size mattress and a headboard, because Vijay had once told me how he loved to read in bed once the day was done. I tossed the percale sheets that dated from my parents' marriage and replaced them with the most sumptuous, silky-soft, outrageously expensive Egyptian cotton I could find. I ordered a fringed cashmere throw that spilled over the foot of the bed like a pool of caramel, and set up a wooden table against one wall that I stocked with a coffeepot, a grinder, and a little refrigerator underneath for juices and cream. I pictured the two of us in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, swapping sections of the newspaper before we got out of bed and went swimming.

I wasn't his first. Vijay had told me that early on, one rainy morning when we lingered at the juice bar, waiting for the skies to clear before attempting the dash to our cars. ”Over the years, I have had friends,” he said. ”Friends?” I'd repeated. And he'd shrugged, c.o.c.king his head at me in a gesture that made it easy to imagine the little boy he'd once been, stuffing his pockets with sweets, then turning his charming smile on whatever woman caught him. His friends were nurses, a psychologist who worked down the hall, one of his son's teachers. There was a mutual understanding about these adventures, he explained: he was looking for companions.h.i.+p, not to leave his marriage.