FOR MY NEW suit I could definitely see a dark red, or blue. A navy blue with a sheen to it. Thicker straps would band my shoulders and make them look more proportional to the rest of my body. The black tank top I pulled on didn’t produce the sleek effect I wanted. I got out of my regular bra and put on my one sports bra. I put the tank top back on over it and pulled the fabric taut behind me. My boobs stayed pressed flat, smooth as armor.
I put my flannel and my pants back on and went downstairs. My parents were watching a show I didn’t care about and I stood in the kitchen. I opened the freezer and looked at the ice cream. I would need to explain why I’d be getting home so late from school. I was going to need to make sure I showered really well after practice, assuming they had showers at the Y on the east side, so I wouldn’t show up at home reeking of chlorine. The laugh track sounded. My bare feet were cold on the kitchen tile. I closed the freezer and got the phone books from the cabinet beneath the phone.
Back in my room, I opened the yellow pages. Under swimming, only swimming pool cleaners were listed. The info sheet from Coach should have said where the best place was to buy bathing suits and goggles. My parents knew. My brother knew, or had known, but it was barely dawn in Germany. He lived with roommates and I might not recognize his voice right away, or he might not know mine. I picked up the white pages and turned to the D’s. I moved my finger down the page. Of the five Deitches three had addresses that were possibilities. I wasn’t going to call Alexis. It was just interesting to know where someone lived, to guess where based on geography and on a feeling, some faint vibration. My guess was SW 37th or Montview. Montview was hilly and I could see Alexis there, in a house on a hill, in a second-floor window. I picked up the phone and called Erika.
I said, Where would you go to buy a bathing suit?
Erika said, What kind?
I said, An athletic kind. A Speedo, whatever.
Erika said, I guess an athletic store? The Sports Cavern? She said, Why are you asking?
I said, Just wondering.
Erika said, Are you buying a bathing suit? She said, You hate swimming. It’s one of your things.
I said, I never said I hated it. I could easily have gone to Sports Cavern at the mall alone — a couple buses, no problem. But for some reason it seemed terrible to go by myself, to grab suits off the racks and pull them on in the dressing room, to make a decision and walk out with the plastic bag. I hated the idea of Erika sitting around deciding what was and wasn’t my thing. I said, Will you come with me? Then, because I had to say it, I said, I’m thinking of doing swim team.
Erika said, Who is this?
I said, I’m serious.
She said, I know, you sound serious.
I felt for a good hole on my afghan.
She said, Are you going to say anything else about it?
I said, Practice starts Monday. We practice at this Y in Northeast.
She said, The one on 53rd?
The address may have been on the info sheet but I hadn’t looked at it. All of Northeast was the same to me. I said, I have no idea.
Erika said, It’s probably that one.
I was ready to get off the phone. I didn’t want to answer any more questions. I would tell her forget it and I’d go buy a suit myself.
Erika said, I think it’s really great, Julie.
I said, You don’t have to come with me.
Erika said, No, I think it’s awesome. Swimming is really good exercise. She said, I was just a little thrown off.
We hung up and I got the permission slip out of the notebook where I’d slotted it to keep it neat. I got out a pen that seemed like one my dad would use — his signature was easy, all scrawl. It was one thing to buy a bathing suit. It was another to think of what would happen after. I didn’t want to think about it yet. I wanted to wait to decide. I got out of my clothes and the sports bra and put on my best old flannel pajama pants and my softest sleeping sweatshirt. I pressed play on the tape deck, then rewound to the silence before Country Feedback, my favorite song on the album. I lay down in my bed and brought my arm to my face and breathed in. When I dried my clothes with fabric softener they never smelled as good as I hoped they would.
COUNTRY FEEDBACK WASN’T my favorite song on the album, it was just the song I listened to the most. It wasn’t even a song, just creaks and twangs and Michael Stipe caught in a conversation with himself. The song had first made me pay attention because he said Fuck in it. I’d had to rewind to make sure I heard it right — a curse in an R.E.M. song? He said Fuck off or Fuck all, it was impossible to tell, and it came after a junk-box list of lyrics, words like rusted parts in a yard. Their shapes were specific but who could tell what to use them for? The song scooped something out of me. It was listening to me and watching me in ways it shouldn’t. He sang Our clothes don’t fit us right. I wanted to know about Alexis and her swim team sweatshirt, how she got it to fit her the way it did, how it showed and hid her body beneath it. It was a perfect sweatshirt. I needed to find out whether the sweatshirt was a prize for winning a certain amount of races, and, if so, find out how many races I’d need to win to get one. I wanted that sweatshirt more than I wanted a trophy or a medal. If my parents asked where I’d gotten it I’d cross that bridge. At the end of Country Feedback Michael Stipe sang I need this, too many times, in a whiny, desperate voice. No wonder the song didn’t get played on the radio.
THE FOOD COURT was overrun with families and kids, surprise, it was Saturday at the mall and raining. Erika took a huge, steaming bite of her hot-topped potato. She said, Why don’t more things come with fake cheese?
I said, It’s just cheese.
She said, You’re completely wrong. It’s more than cheese. She twirled her fork in the potato as if winding spaghetti. She said, And less.
I was trying hard to be generous toward Erika. She was giving up her Saturday to go shopping with me, and Erika hated the mall, or said she did. It bugged me when she talked about food as if it were a phenomenon. We’d both ordered baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese, and Erika had added bacon bits to hers. The potatoes were delicious, who cared what the cheese was made of?
Erika said, Do you think the ideal thing would be to go out with a guy from another school, or would it just be annoying?
There were some skaterish guys drinking milkshakes a few tables over. I said, Doesn’t it depend more on the person than the school they go to?
Erika said, Obviously. At first glance I didn’t recognize any of the skaters from the fountain. I didn’t want to look harder.
The stores spidered out from the food court in all directions. Sports Cavern was way at the end of one of the spider legs. It was one of the stores with its own door to the parking lot. It was stadium-lit, way brighter than a cavern, as if shopping for sports gear was the same as playing sports. Erika said, I like that we’re coming here to buy swimming stuff. No one comes here for swimming stuff. We’re like the underdogs.
Erika was trying to make this into a mission. I said, I bet plenty of people come here for swimming stuff.
Sports Cavern was an amusement park of sports gear. It was like the grocery store with the talking cow. Mannequins acted out sports in frozen poses, and what was it about seeing a life-size doll crouched to take a shot that made me want to touch a basketball? I palmed a ball’s pebbly skin as we passed through to swimming.
The women’s bathing suits were crammed onto one long rack of limp, flashy spandex. I’d told my mom I needed to buy some new shirts and she’d given me forty dollars. I put my hand on the first blue suit I saw.
Erika said, Oh whoa, 38? I don’t think so, Jules.
I hadn’t noticed what size it was. And I didn’t know, I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought to find out, what the sizes meant, if I was supposed to choose the same size as my bra size or if the scale was different.