“Want me to help you with your exercises?” he says, and she says that’d be nice and smiles and backs up to the pool’s edge till her shoulders are braced against it. He looks up and sees the girl looking at him and smiles and she smiles and he thinks everyone’s smiling, the three of us, smiling, smiling, smiling, and waves with just a flap of his hand at her and she looks back at her pad and resumes writing, though her strokes seem broader now, so she might be drawing. His wife holds on from behind to the lip in the drain — or whatever that part is right at the edge of the pool that acts as a gutter; the gutter, he’ll call it, though who knows, that might actually be it — holds the gutter lip from behind and tries to make her legs buoyant but can’t raise them to the top of the water. He grabs the left leg, holds it out of the water, and twists the toes around and back and forth as the swim therapist in the Catonsville Y back home told him to, bends the foot and then the calf as he also was told to, presses the leg to her chest at the knee, does the same with the other foot and leg, looks up while doing it and sees the girl staring at them, and he smiles and she looks back at her pad but makes no writing motion on it, just stares at it. He does this with his wife for about ten minutes — it’s tedious to him but the therapist says it helps her, loosens up the legs and feet and increases the circulation in them — and then tries walking her in the water; and after a few attempts — she tips left and right and never gets a step forward — she says, “I can’t today, the legs are stuck, won’t move when I ask them to.” “Lean back against this thing again — the wall — and we’ll see how strong they are right now,” and she gets in the same position as before, shoulders against the end of the pool, and he grabs her calves and sticks her feet against his chest and presses her folded-up legs into her body till her butt’s raised almost above the water — and he gets an erection seeing her in that position and thinking of her that way in bed, she on her back with him on his shins above her and watching his penis go in and out as he moves back and forth — and he says “Push” and tries to keep her legs pressed to her chest, and she tries pushing them out but she can’t today, she does about half the times he does this with her, when she’s really trying, and he says, “Again, push, let’s do it,” and pretends to exert himself in keeping her legs against her chest but lets them out slowly till she’s pushed him all the way back and straightened her legs. “Good, great, way to go; took a while but you did it.” She grins—“I didn’t feel I had enough oomph in my legs to do it, and boy was it an effort”—and he says, “How about again?” and pushes her legs in the same way, her butt rises a little above the water and he gets another erection though doesn’t remember losing the last one, and looks at the girl, who’s staring at him and he smiles, checks to see the erection’s underwater, and says, “It’s exercise for my wife,” and thinks, There’s no double meaning in that for himself, is there? — no, and the girl continues to look but doesn’t smile, and he says, “Exercise for her legs — they’re a little weak so we got to strengthen them, make them strong,” and his wife turns to see whom he’s talking to and says, “Why are you telling her that? You might frighten her,” and he says, “Nah, we’ve established some kind of tacit relationship with our looks and she seemed interested so I thought I’d explain it — no good?” and she says, “Well, you just untacitized it, and maybe I don’t like every kid and Harry knowing so much about it if they don’t have to or they don’t find out for themselves,” and he says, “Sorry,” and then, “Push, come on,