Janice held onto it. “Not so fast. Do you know how to kick?”
She was insulted. She knew that much. “Of course I do.”
“It’s just that most people kick with their knees bent like this.” She mimed kicking with her fingers bent at the knuckle. “But really you should keep legs straight and kick from your hip like this.” She kicked with straight fingers.
Maribeth didn’t say anything. She had always kicked with bent knees.
Janice demonstrated and then handed the board to Maribeth. “Don’t forget to point your toes, graceful like a ballerina.”
Maribeth started kicking. The board flipped over and she went with it. Graceful like a water buffalo.
“Here,” Janice said, taking the board back. “Hold it in front of you and keep your elbows straight. Then kick from your hip crease. Lightly. No need to fight the water.”
After a few tries, the board stopped wobbling so much, and after a few more, she was able to kick straight. She went up the length of the pool, then back. Up. And back. Her hamstrings and calves started to burn and her pointed toe sent her foot into a spasm. None of it was graceful, none of it was fun. But for a moment or two there, she did zone out enough to forget about her birth mother and about Jason and the kids.
Then Janice took the kickboard away. “That’s enough for today,” she said.
“But I only kicked,” Maribeth said.
“And that’s plenty for one day,” Janice repeated.
Well, at least she was not on the verge of passing out this time. Up in the locker room, Janice reminded her to get the information about her parents. Maribeth promised it by Monday. Which was when they agreed to meet for their next swim lesson. Maribeth wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it seemed too late to back out.
46
Saturday morning Maribeth texted Stephen. Pick me up at 11 or meet at the craft fair?
A minute later, her phone rang. “I can’t make it,” Stephen said.
He’d been so keen to go when she’d suggested it a few days ago. “Medical emergency?” she asked.
“In a matter of speaking.” He did not sound right. His voice was not just hoarse but raw, as if he’d been drinking glass.
“Are you sick?”
“If I am, it’s by my own hand.”
“What do you mean?”
He coughed. “I am hungover, M.B. Very, very hungover.”
“I’m coming over,” she said.
“I’m not fit for company,” he said.
“I don’t expect to be entertained.”
“I’m just in very bad shape.”
“Didn’t you once tell me that it was okay to ask for help?”
The line was silent. Then he said: “Come over.”
HE WAS GRAY. His hair, his skin, his rumpled, sour-smelling T-shirt, all of it gray. She knew he was nearly sixty, but this was the first time she’d thought of him as old.
The source of his misery was sitting out on the counter: three empty wine bottles and a half-full pint of something else.
Maribeth could see he was embarrassed by the booze, by having her witness it. So she brushed right past, brusque as can be, as if she were the cleaning lady and this were an unpleasant business but nothing unusual.
She took the bottles out to the recycling bin, wondering if this was the scandal. A binge alcoholic cardiologist. Word would travel fast, if not to her.
Back inside, he was hunched over a mug of coffee.
“Warm that up for you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Can’t keep it down?” she asked.
Another sad, little-boy shake of the head.
She dumped the coffee and poured a glass of water and set it before him. “Do you have any Alka-Seltzer?”
“Upstairs. Bedroom nightstand.”
As she climbed the stairs, the treads groaned, as if the whole house were suffering. She found the large master bedroom, its king-size bed rumpled and unmade, and paused at the threshold. She could smell him, his usual scent of bergamot and leather, mixing with the spoiled-cheese aroma of vomit.
Walking lightly on the balls of her feet, she went to his nightstand. (She assumed it was his; it was cluttered with medical journals.) She opened the drawer; inside were more medical journals, a deck of playing cards, a Kindle, some Post-it notes, but no Alka-Seltzer.
The nightstand on the other side of the bed was bare, save for a framed wedding photo covered in a film of dust. Now Maribeth truly felt like an interloper as she opened the drawer. There, next to a package of Kleenex and a dog-eared collection of Junot Díaz stories, was an open box of Alka-Seltzer.
Had Felicity used it to settle her stomach during the chemotherapy? Had she read the Díaz stories to take her mind away from the bleakness of her present? The uncertainty of her future?
The master bathroom smelled strongly of vomit. Holding her breath, she rifled through the medicine cabinet, found a bottle of pain reliever, and went back downstairs.
Stephen sat at the counter, staring into space, the glass of water untouched. She dissolved the Alka-Seltzer and tapped his hand. She placed three tablets of Tylenol in his palm. “Swallow,” she commanded. “Drink.”
He drank the water, eyes closed, in one gulp. Maribeth resisted the urge to say “good boy.” When he belched, the fumes were strong enough to give her a contact buzz.
“Better?” she asked.
A grimacing attempt at a smile. “A little.”
“I’m going to make you eggs, something greasy. It’ll absorb whatever booze is left in you.”
“Who’s the doctor now?” he said weakly.