2001-02 Charles River Review: Swimming to Italy

Photo of Man Wading

Mrs. Arena is laying out flowers for Pat again. I watch her as she places them next to the little white cross down by the edge of the pond. The cross is a memorial for her son Pat, who died a couple of years ago, right on the very spot. He accidentally electrocuted himself trying to install an underground cable all by himself. They found him, simmering, facedown in the muck and the shallow water. When they flipped him over, he must have looked like the missing link joining man to the reptiles.

Pat had been in the process of building a house for his mother, the same house I'm living in now, with my own mother. It's a little two-bedroom ranch built on a hillside. Mrs. Arena lives in Pat's old house, which is directly across from ours; we've been renting here for about a year now. The pond is the only thing between us. Mrs. Arena doesn't come around to our side much, only when something absolutely needs to be fixed, or the rent's late, or she has something to put on the memorial, like rosary beads or a bouquet.

We never knew Pat. Awhile after he died, Mrs. Arena decided to put an ad in the paper rather than let a new house sit empty. She didn't want to sell it, but she didn't want to live in it either. The rent is pretty cheap because Mrs. Arena wasn't looking to make money off us; she was just trying to fill a vacancy. Pat left her the real estate, free and clear of any mortgage, and I think she probably felt sorry for us--a single mother and her bastard son--having to move into a house that isn't even finished yet. A lot of the windows and doorframes still need trim, and the landscaping is pretty rough. There's no medicine cabinet in the bathroom, only a cheap little mirror my mother put up. The bedrooms still only have sub-flooring, and there are these odd snarls of wire dangling down from little holes in the ceilings where light fixtures are missing. They look like long spider's legs, or the tentacles of domesticated jellyfish, scared completely shitless when they dropped in and realized where the hell they were.

I am watching Mrs. Arena from the sliding-glass door in the living room. It is the slider that leads to nowhere. I guess Pat planned on building a deck or something to take advantage of the views, but there's nothing but a ten-foot drop on the other side of the glass. From where I am standing, I'm looking right down on Mrs. Arena's gray head of hair; it's not blue like I've heard some people say about old women. With the exception of a few girls in my class who dye their hair a different color every week, I've yet to see blue hair on anybody. Mrs. Arena has her back turned to me, and she's saying a prayer or something over the memorial. She is wearing a black dress, black shoes with heels, and a black cardigan sweater; this is her usual outfit. She wears it like it's her uniform and she's a waitress, like my mother, only at a funeral parlor that happens to serve food. She has no idea I'm up here. If she ever looked up here and wasn't totally blinded by the sun's reflection in the slider, she might be able to see a shadow. How well can a 73-year-old woman see anyhow?

It's not like I'm hiding or anything. I just don't want her to know I'm watching her down there while she's talking to Pat, or whatever it is she's doing. I've got nothing better to do right now. I've just opened a can of ravioli, and I'm waiting for my mother to come out of her bedroom. She's in there with her boyfriend, Tim. I know it's Tim because I can hear his music and smell his pot. Both are seeping out from under the bedroom door and stinking up the house. He still listens to southern rock from the seventies, that's his favorite. It's Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers all night long. My mother met Tim during a shift at her restaurant and he's been hanging around here for the last six weeks, coming to see my mother on her nights off, so it's like I never see her at all lately. He claims to be a carpenter, but from what I can tell he's an out-of-work carpenter. There's plenty he could do around here, but I haven't seen him lift a finger. I have no idea how Tim gets out here because he doesn't have a car. He doesn't even have a pickup truck with nothing in it, like most of the guys my mother dates. He must be getting rides from a friend, or maybe he's hitchhiking. It's too bad somebody wouldn't pick him up one of these times, drive him into the woods, tie him to a tree, and shoot him.

My mother asked him to move in a couple of weeks ago, but he doesn't want to take on a 37-year-old woman and her 16-year-old kid, or so she tells me. This has been the story of her life. Tim is a complete asshole, he doesn't like me, and I like him about as much as I like a good wedgie, but for deciding not to move in here--for arriving so quickly to the conclusion that a 40-year-old pot fiend with no money, no job, and no transportation just wasn't going to be able to make it work--I could just about kiss Ol' Freebird for that.

Mrs. Arena is staring out at the pond now. I see her doing this from time to time. Sometimes she's up in her picture window, sitting in a chair and looking out at the pond. There's something about that pond that she just can't seem to let go of; it's like there's something in there. I get the feeling that she still sets a place for Pat at the dinner table, that there's always one empty chair down at the "funeral parlor restaurant." I watch her as she walks around the water's edge and starts heading back to her house, back over to her side, being careful where she steps.

When I am sure she is out of earshot, I start dribbling my basketball around the living room, working on some of my moves. Today has been a big day for me. Coach told me I was going to start in the season-opening game at Central. The last guy to start his first game as a sophomore was a dude named Rick Catherman, but that was like 25 years ago. He set the school scoring record and got a full scholarship to Wake Forest. He was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers and didn't make it out of training camp, but he played professional ball in Italy for ten years and had a nice career over there. Coach played with him in high school. They went all the way to the Class D New Hampshire State Finals. He talks about him constantly.

The cool thing about starting in the Central game is that they turn the lights down when they introduce the starting lineups and flash these spotlights on the players. They always pack the place, and the fans are pretty rowdy. They even have this kid that sits up on a stage at one end of the gym, where they have plays or concerts when they're not playing ball, and he jams on this organ like it's a Celtics game.

I want to tell my mother about all this, but she won't come out of her room, and she's in there with Tim, so I practice my killer crossover in front of the slider and pretend that there's a defender in front of me. Mrs. Arena has gone back inside. I turn on a dime and speed dribble into the kitchen to get my ravioli off the stove.

When I knock on my mother's bedroom door, I hear Tim say, "shit." There's a lot of shuffling around and the music suddenly gets lower. I hear them talking about something, but their voices are muffled by a screaming guitar sequence on "Mississippi Queen." I knock again and my mother says, "What is it, Rob?" Her voice sounds very close now. She's talking through the closed door. There is only an inch and a half of hollow-core between us. I keep on knocking.

"Are you coming out of there anytime soon, or what?" I say.

There's a strange little pause before my mother says, "You need something, Honey?" The door is still shut. I am starting to lose my patience.

"C'mon, open up," I say, giving the knob a little jiggle. "I want to tell you something. You've been in there forever."

"Alright now," she says, a little impatiently herself. "Just hold your horses." I imagine her hustling to fix herself up a bit on the other side of the door, which finally opens just enough so she can stick her head out into the hall. I'm knocked back by the strong, sweet smell of Tim's skunkweed.

My mother says, "Now what is it that can't wait until tomorrow?"

It's dim here in the hall, but I take a good look at her. She looks terrible. Her hair's going in five different directions and she's got too much makeup on again. It makes her look like a clown.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm starting up at Central on Friday."

"Oh, Honey," she says, a little too dramatically, "good for you." She's looking at me, but her eyes are rolling all around in her head. I know it's hard for my mother to look at me sometimes. I have never known my father, never even seen a picture of him, but my mother tells me I look just like him. I wonder what it's like to look at your own son and be reminded of the man you slept with 17 years ago, the chair-lift attendant at a ski resort up in Maine.

Her nose is running. I try to look over her shoulder to see into the room, and just as I do, she tries to look behind her out of the corner of her eye. The bedspread is all bundled up on the floor in front of the bed. I can see Tim's nasty feet hanging over the end of the mattress.

"I know you're working, and you can't go to the game."

"If I wasn't, you know I'd be there in the front row." She jams her thumb in her mouth and starts working on the nail.

"I know," I say, knowing it would be more like her to show up in the second half with a snoot-full, maybe dragging Tim along. When my name was called and I ran out to mid-court under the spotlight, I would search the dark faces in the crowd, trying to spot hers.

She runs the length of her forearm under her nose with a long sucking sniff, coughs a couple of times, and then smiles like an insane person, completely cross-eyed. Her nose is red and raw. One of her nostrils looks like it got smeared with confectionary sugar, like she's been eating a lemon donut. She pats me lightly on the chest with her hand.

"We'll talk about it in the morning, huh?" It's now just about 6:30 in the evening. "You're going to need to rest up for Friday, kiddo." She messes my hair and gives me a peck on the cheek. She sniffs into my ear.

"Sure thing, Mom. Good night."

I finish up the last of my ravioli. I don't want Tim eating it later on when he gets the munchies. I'm lying on my back on the living room floor, shooting my basketball straight up toward the ceiling, letting it roll off my fingertips, getting that good rotation, and then catching it when it falls down in front of my face. I do this over and over. The television is on but I'm not paying attention to it. It's just background noise as I picture the ball going through the net again and again. Coach calls this a positive visualization technique--seeing something happen can help make it happen. I am trying to concentrate so I don't have to think about other things, like Tim giving drugs to my mother, but it's impossible not to think of that with the southern rock opera still going strong.

My mother's bedroom shares a wall with the living room. The awful music I'm hearing is coming from behind that wall. I throw the ball against the wall hard, so it bounces back and I can catch it. I do this a few times. It's another positive visualization technique. I picture Tim taking the hint and turning off the stereo, or better yet, I picture Tim turning off the stereo and leaving the house for good. I pound the ball off the wall again, and I hear Tim pound back with his fist on the other side. If he's not careful he'll put his hand right through this cheap drywall. I would just love to see that. If he won't turn off the music, seeing his fist come plowing through that wall would be the next best thing. I whip the ball against the wall again, and two seconds later I hear stomping across the bedroom floor, and then the bedroom door opens.

Tim flies into the room like a blur, his long hair trailing straight out behind him. Barefoot and bare-chested, he's wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans unbuttoned at the waist. When he starts to come at me, I gun the ball right at his head. He ducks, and it slaps up against the wall and makes a big hollow thud. The ball ricochets off Tim's backside, and then it's loose in the room.

Tim is right on it. He gathers the ball up in his hands, rests it on one hip, and makes a B-line for the sliding door. He whips it open and sends my basketball sailing out into the night air.

When he turns around, I am standing right in front of him, looking straight into a tattoo of the Confederate flag on his chest muscle. His face is just as red. Under the Stars and Bars, in flowery cursive ink, are the words, "Ain't Nothing Like The Rebel Music." It's hard to believe that this wanna-be-slave-monger is from New Hampshire, where people like to live free or die.

I say to him, "You shouldn't have done that, Tim." He leans right into me so I can smell his rotten cottonmouth breath.

"Oh, yeah? You want to take an issue up with me, Superstar? Big Tim will make you understand the error of your ways." He gets right down in my face. I can smell the stale sweat coming off his body; he's really humming. I can't understand why my mother lets this man slobber all over her.

Big Tim is standing right in front of the open slider with his arms down at his sides. I could push him out right now, and he would fall ten long feet and land flat on his back. I could break his neck and kill him just like that. This is what I am visualizing when I sense my mother in the room.

"Robbie! What in the world!" I turn around to look at her, and she is checking out all the dirty ball prints that I've made on the wall, as if I've spray-painted it with obscene graffiti.

She says, "Will you please go to bed now?" The clock on the wall says 6:50 pm. "Sweet Home Alabama" is coming out of the stereo. Tim is spared.

Outside, I discover where my basketball has landed. It's floating in the middle of the pond like a buoy, out in the moonlight, on a perfectly still lagoon, as flat as black glass. Although it is a cool night in November, I have no choice but to go in after it if I want to be ready for the Central game on Friday. Plus, if Mrs. Arena finds it in the morning, she'll be placing a special transcontinental phone call from the other side of the pond. Shortly after we moved in last April, Mrs. Arena made a point of telling me to stop leaving all my things lying around outside: baseball bats, paint cans, some loose barbells, an old motorcycle frame I thought I might be able to use one day. She said, "We don't live in a trailer park here, and I won't see it become one." A few nights later, I threw a bucket of cold water on her bug zapper. For the next 60 seconds, until the zapper sputtered and finally shorted out, it sounded like 10,000 mosquitoes getting the chair all at once.

I wade out into the pond for the first time since I have lived here. I am too old to get excited about frogs and lily pads, or catching tadpoles in a net, and I hunted for my last lizard a long time ago. This is not a pond for fishing, or swimming for that matter, but here I am going out to fetch a basketball like a golden retriever, all so I can keep practicing, so I can avoid upsetting an elderly woman who lives all by herself now. I start doing a front crawl out to the middle of the pond. I am tearing up the water, which is brown and murky and surprisingly warm. It tastes funny, almost dirty in my mouth as I breathe in and out. Flailing around in this water is like moving through week-old coffee slowly turning to sludge at the bottom of a giant thermos.

When I catch up to the ball, I am completely covered in slime, algae, and muddy water, and smell like a compost pile. I must look like a freak of nature rising up out of the ooze, an accidental combination of carbon and molecules, a frightening genetic mistake. Breathing a little heavy and filthy from head to toe, I am a heaving mass of human pond scum. I wrap both my arms around the ball and take it into my belly like a life preserver. When a basketball is in my hands, I am in complete control. It feels good in my possession, like the presence of a good friend. In a couple of years, I hope basketball will help me earn a scholarship, get me into college. I hear the University of Maine has a pretty good team. I think I could probably play for them. Maybe I could try to look up my father when I got there. Who knows? He might even want to come to some of the games.

I look around now at the wooded hillsides and the rock formations that surround most of this pond like a wall, and I feel like I am floating, not in some puddle in the middle of nowhere, but in the moat of a huge ancient stadium. The other side of the hills is all marshland, a series of little inlets and clam-flats where men root around and dig in the muck like barnyard animals, filling up bushel baskets for a day's pay. The inlets lead into the river, which spills into the ocean. Then there is nothing but the open sea all the way to Europe, all the way to Italy even. What would it take to play ball there like Rick Catherman did? Maybe I would have to swim there. I could do it if that's what it took to get there. I would play for room and board. I would play for a plate of fresh spaghetti every day. No more canned ravioli. God, do I love basketball.

From here I can make out the flowers that Mrs. Arena left out for Pat, over by the little white cross. How will they fare in this cool weather? Will they even make it through the night? The lights are on in Mrs. Arena's living room. I can see her sitting on her couch watching television. I wonder what she's thinking about in there all by herself. I spin around in the water and look back at my house, the house that Pat built but never quite finished, the one he was building for his mother. It is in total darkness, except for the moonlight casting down on the slider to nowhere. The slider looks so misplaced, the way it just sits up there, halfway up the side of the house with nothing underneath it, just an empty space. It makes it look like a vacant house, a project abandoned by a developer who lost his shirt, a place where nobody lives.

When I turn back to Mrs. Arena's house, my eyes catch a brilliant flash, and I am suddenly blinded. Everything has turned to white. But everything that has just turned to white is now breaking up into spots of different shades and colors, as if I'm looking through a lava lamp. I inhale the heavy smell of decay in the air--like sugar-sweetened ammonia--and take it in like a smelling salt. As my eyes adjust, I realize that Mrs. Arena has turned on her floodlights, and the pond is all lit up. She is standing in her picture window and looking right down here, where the lights are upon me and steam is rising off my body in thin ribbons of smoke, like I've just had an acid bath. What can she think of the sight of me, treading water in the middle of the pond, holding onto a basketball for dear life, looking like Swamp Thing? Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Maybe just like Pat looked the day they pulled him from this water, his body limp and the life charged right out of him. And like a lightning bolt, something strikes me: the long-shot possibility that there might be an instant--maybe just a split second--when Mrs. Arena gets the wrong idea in her head. Maybe her imagination gets the best of her, and she sees my basketball as a rock jutting up through the surface, not as piece of loose junk, but something to be held onto. She is so full of hope that--if only just to fool herself--she entertains a miracle, and mistakes me for him, her own son. I can see it happening now.

I squint through the glare of Mrs. Arena's floodlights and struggle to make her out in the window. I want to be ready when it happens, to make sure I'm watching when she thinks she sees a man rising from the dead. To have my eyes pinned on her the moment she realizes that her son Pat, having been gone for so long, has finally come home. It's not that I'm trying to frighten her. I just want to see the look--the look on her face when I am Pat--before she recognizes who I really am, and the look goes away.