Donna said, For what?
I said, 500 Free.
The striver said, Really?
I said, What.
The striver said, You get tired after four laps.
Donna said, If that.
The striver said, You stopped in the middle of our race.
I said, That wasn’t why I stopped. Lane Six coolly called me. It wanted me to get back to it. It wanted me to do the 200 pull, all arms, easy, and maybe the 200 kick, maybe 100 of it, if I decided to be a kicker.
Donna said, You know what? If you want to swim in that losers’ lane, that’s totally fine with me.
It was pathetic. It was ironic, those losers. They weren’t the ones Coach said had potential, or whatever it was, they weren’t the ones getting tips from the pros. They didn’t know what it was like to be in Alexis’s or anyone’s room, to have anyone push an arm against theirs before taking them there. Coach blew his whistle. Donna said, Saved by the bell, but it could have been me who said it.
THE TABLECLOTH WAS uneven beneath the plates and food. I took the cloth’s edge and pulled it toward me. On the bus ride home Erika had asked what I’d been doing swimming in Lane Six and when I told her about the 500 she’d asked me if I thought I could do it, backtracked and said of course I could do it but she was surprised that I wanted to. She’d been as bad as Coach, putting a concerned look on her face and making me explain myself instead of saying she was happy for me.
My dad asked how swimming was going.
I said, It’s fine. I had nothing about swimming to say to my parents. What I wanted to know, I didn’t want to hear about from them. They’d use the wrong words, or they wouldn’t have been paying attention to the right things. They’d have forgotten the things I most wanted to know: how he stroked, when he breathed, if he did or didn’t kick. They wouldn’t know, he wouldn’t have told them, if swimming the 500 felt like swimming forever.
My dad said, Have you had any meets yet?
My mom said, Not that you have to tell us about all your meets.
My dad said, Right. We’d only come if you wanted us to.
It was the middle of the night in Germany. The early early morning. If my brother were still in training, it was around the time he’d be getting up. I shook the salad dressing bottle until the oil and vinegar and the flecks of herbs combined.
I said, I’m thinking about swimming the 500 Free. I said, It’s twenty lengths, in case you forgot. Ten times there and back. I said, A counter sits at the end of the lane with a number chart to help you keep track.
My mom said, I remember that chart.
I said, Do you remember anything else about it?
My mom said she remembered it seemed long. She said it was the event when people got up to use the bathroom. She said she thought my brother had only swum it once or twice, it wasn’t one of his main races. She clearly didn’t know, or care, that he had set the county record.
It had been four years since my parents told me my brother was taking a break from swimming. They hadn’t said if break was the word he’d used or the one they’d chosen. It wasn’t as if they’d be the first ones he’d tell if he started again.
I ate a few more bites and excused myself. I ran up the stairs to my room. I wanted to be in close reach of my phone so I could pick up right away if Alexis called. She would be so happy to hear my news.
ON SATURDAY I woke up and went to the window. Ben’s car was parked outside and Ben was in the yard, lifting branches in the drizzle. I hadn’t heard Pledge barking or the bell. I’d been sleeping heavily. I thought I’d been exhausting myself the first weeks of practice, but now that I wasn’t stopping, or was stopping less, I fell into bed flattened out, depleted.
A note on the kitchen table said Ben might be in the yard. I zapped my Lipton and went out in my sweats and rain boots.
Ben said, Just up? Lucky you.
I said, Do you always work when it’s raining?
Ben said, If I want to live here and I want to work, I guess I have to. He had on solid-looking hiking boots and a Gore-Tex raincoat. I didn’t feel that bad for him. He said, How nice of you to bring me coffee.
I said, It’s my tea. I said, Do you want some coffee? If he said yes I hoped there was some left in the pot my parents had made earlier. Nobody had ever shown me how to make coffee.
Ben said he’d come in for some when he finished the row he was working on. What he was doing to the yard looked okay — some smaller shrubs and some taller ones, a cross between random and arranged. It looked, not perfect, but better than it had before. He said, I hope no other landscapers see me doing this. This is a really weird time of year to be planting.
I set up in the kitchen with my Rice Chex and the A&E. There were shows in the TV listings I knew about just from reading them. Ben might think it was funny, or cool in a way, that I knew something about MacGyver without ever having seen it. Ben knocked on the sliding back door. He slid it open. He kicked off his wet boots and put the raincoat over a chair. He said, My jeans are a little muddy, do you think they’ll care?
I said, I don’t care. It was my house, too. I got up and poured Ben a cup of coffee from the coffeepot and brought it over to him.
He said, Oh thanks, I like it black.
I said, I can get you some milk if you want.
He said, No, for real. It’s great. He reached in the inside pocket of his raincoat and handed me a tape. He said, For you. One side was My Bloody Valentine and the other was R.E.M.’s Murmur. He said, I put a few extra songs on the R.E.M. side.
The handwriting on the front of the case was scratchy ballpoint. It looked like a little kid’s writing. I said, You know Country Feedback?
He said, Fuckin’ A. Only good song on the album.
Somewhere in the house, in the attic, or basement, there could be a boxful of tapes that Ben had made for my brother and that my brother had left here. Or were tapes from Ben something he would have taken with him?
The coffee was steaming Ben’s cheeks. He still had the outside on him. I took a slug of my tea and it was the bitter, tannic end, the tea bag in too long, my favorite part. I said, Do you ever talk to my brother?
Ben rolled his bead. I was sure that my brother had given it to him. Ben said, Not for a while.
I said, How long?
He said, Jeez. When did he go to Berlin? Three years ago? He called me once right when he got there.
I said, What did he say?
Ben pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows. He said, I don’t really remember. He might have blushed, or it might have been the steam and the cold. He said, And what I remember, I don’t think he’d want me to repeat to you.
Something swarmed behind Ben’s answer. I thought I could hit it from a different angle. I said, What did you do last night? Did you have a late night again?
Ben laughed. He said, Oh my god, you’re priceless. Do you want to just ask me what you want to ask me?
I said, What do I want to ask you?
Ben said, First with the magazine, now this.
I said, What with the magazine? Do you have it?
Ben said, God, maybe somewhere. But how do you know about it? It’s not like he sent you one.
It was true, I didn’t know how we’d gotten it. I couldn’t imagine my parents going out and buying it any more than I could imagine my brother sealing an envelope, writing our address, licking stamps. I said, Maybe his coach sent it?
Ben said, That guy. Oh my god, he would. Then he stopped, like a cartoon of a guy running into an invisible wall. He said, Julie. Tell me what magazine you’re talking about.
I said, Swimmers’ World. I’m not sure of the exact issue.
Ben laughed and his laughter swarmed away from me. He laughed like there was a third person at the table who was telling the most insane joke. People could laugh however they wanted, but it was rude. It was annoying. I had never mentioned the magazine out loud to anyone before. I said, What is so fucking funny?