Learning to Swim Read online

  Learning to Swim

  A Hearts Out of Water Novel

  Annie Cosby

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products such as: Pepto Bismol, Range Rover, Barbie, Wikipedia, Laffy Taffy, Grey Goose, Big Bird and Swiffer.

  Copyright © 2013 Annie Cosby.

  LEARNING TO SWIM by Annie Cosby

  Write for You Publishing

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America.

  No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For Princess,

  Who spent the entirety of this novel by my side

  Contents

  Dedication

  The Pink Palace

  The Last Resort

  Battling the Spirit of Winter

  Keeping up Appearances

  Swimming Lessons

  Victory of Nature

  The Boy

  Meeting Seamus

  Seven Tears

  Ronan's Name

  Selkies

  A Valuable Book

  Pride and Prejudice

  The Best Man

  When the Tide Turns

  A Mop and a Dirty Floor

  Lúnasa

  A Colony

  The Father

  A Great Storm

  Comfort in the Storm

  The Hired Help

  Seamus's Shed

  Breaking In and Breaking Out

  The Meaning of the Word

  Wait for Me

  He Left

  The Selkie

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Pálás Bándearg

  The Pink Palace

  “Oh my,” Dad said.

  “This has to be a joke,” I announced.

  “It’s perfect!” Mom clapped her hands happily.

  We had just pulled up in front of that legendary house, the one we’d call ours this summer—and every summer thereafter if my mother had anything to do with it.

  It was unmistakable, perched between two modestly whitewashed houses like a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol. An enormous block of solidified cotton candy. Now that my mother and her bleach-blonde hair had arrived, the place was only one plastic Ken doll short of a Barbie dreamhouse.

  It even had a sign next to the front door with big, curly white letters against a purple background. The Pink Palace.

  No shit.

  I would have been cackling had the shock of my having to sleep here for the next three months not been too crippling.

  Mom was already bouncing along toward the front door, babbling incessantly. I jogged to catch up as Dad went to begin unloading the trunk. Princess was already settling in, sniffing the bushes around the pink front steps.

  We’d bought the house as-is. That meant that it was not fit to be lived in. So my father snapped it up “at a steal” and set his contractor friends to work on it. And then, when it was nearly finished, my mother set her decorators on it to make sure it would again not be fit to live in. At least not for anyone with a sensitive stomach.

  “Cora! Your room’s up here!”

  I followed her voice up to the third floor, afraid of what I’d encounter. Surely a life-size Barbie or a shrine to kittens. Neither would have been out of place. Mom’s team had wholeheartedly seized the house’s century-old name.

  “It’s a girl,” I said lamely, entering what would apparently be “my room.”

  It was big, with a king-size bed in the middle and a full-length mirror and a dresser on either side. But it was pink. There was a cool trunk at the foot of the bed that was the natural brown of wood, but everything else in the room, from the curtains to the mismatched lamps that sat around the room on various pieces of furniture, would rival the pink of any baby’s butt.

  “Isn’t it delightful?” Mom screeched.

  It had a big balcony that looked out onto the beach, which was promising, but I couldn’t take her happiness right now. Nothing would make her think badly of this house and this summer she had been so long in preparing. Not even my loudest whining or most stinging sarcasm. As if I wanted to be here, hundreds of miles from home, during my last summer before my high school friends disappeared from my life.

  “It’s lovely, Mom.” I tried to keep my voice monotone. “It’s all just too lovely.” I turned around and tramped back down the pink-carpeted stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Mom demanded, skipping down the stairs after me.

  The front door lay open and I could see the Range Rover outside, trunk open, and suitcases spilling out. Dad was near snoring on the couch. I pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen, which, surrounding a matching tiled floor, countertops and painted cabinets, was a hazy cloud of puce.

  “I’m just going out.”

  “What do you mean ‘out’? You don’t know a soul here!” When it was clear I wasn’t going to respond, Mom went on. “Make sure you’re back by five, we need to get you cleaned up for the barbecue.”

  “The what?” I swirled around abruptly.

  Mom rolled her eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Honestly, Cora, do you ever listen? The barbecue the Carltons invited us to. I’ve told you about it a million times. It’s to kick off the season and celebrate the holiday weekend. Everyone’s going to be there!”

  “Who are the Carltons? And who’s ‘everyone’?” That definitely did not include me. I was too awkward a person to enjoy introductions and small talk.

  “Oh, Linda Carlton is just divine! The realtor gave us her number. A must-know in this neighborhood. And she has a son your age who sounds just charming!”

  I intended to groan inwardly, but it must have been audible, because Mom’s face darkened.

  “Oh, you will go, and you will have the time of your life!” It was a demand, as if she could make me feel good or bad at her will. “And you will be an absolute doll to this Owen Carlton! He just graduated, too, and he likes to boat and play water polo. And above it all, he has his own sailboat! Oh, how I wished we lived on the coast and you could have a sailboat, Cora.”

  “Eh, I’m good.”

  “Oh, and this Owen, I think he’s going to an Ivy—”

  Nope. I was not going to talk about that. Not now. “I’m going out,” I said decisively.

  I headed for the back door, which was, miraculously, an off-white color. Oh, wonderful haven to my eyes! I grabbed the brass handle—

  “Unlike that Josh Watson.”

  My heart stopped. I turned slowly around.

  “Where’s he going? Stanford?” She wrinkled her nose as if Stanford were a pile of rubbish and not a fantastic university.

  He’s not going to Stanford, I thought miserably. Those shiny blue eyes were going to Western.

  “This Owen—”

  “Are you seriously bringing this up right now? Mom—”

  “Actually, on second thought, I’m fairly sure the Watsons hold some sway at Stanford. Maybe we could email them—”

  “What? No!”

  It was quickly becoming clear to me. She saw this summer away as some kind of fix-all. Some kind of cure for every problem she’d ever had. Especially concerning me. This summer was supposed to fix me.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she said, becoming interested in the arrangement of the k
itchen table and chairs. “Oh, and do be careful,” she added. “Linda tells me there’s a sordid crowd that runs around here, too. Petty robberies and things of that sort. Not ideal for a summer away, but … And don’t forget we need to go up to the pool and sign up for swimming lessons!”

  My stomach dropped to the pink tiled floor and my will to fight left me. She did, indeed, have a whole plan to fix me. I pushed open the back door and dashed through before letting it slam on whatever afterthought was currently leaving my mother’s mouth.

  A wide set of stairs led from the back porch across the backyard. Low and long, they ended in a curving flourish at the public boardwalk that ran horizontal along the beach. I wandered aimlessly down the boardwalk and it wasn’t long before I lost sight of the Pink Atrocity.

  Out of sight, out of mind, I sighed.

  I found myself in the middle of a great expanse of tiny red wooden cabins with a few mismatched houses interspersed. I was decidedly outside my comfort zone, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the row of old houses in the distance.

  It’s like a frickin’ standardized test, I thought glumly. I’d always done badly on the maps portion.

  At one particular fork in the boardwalk, I chose left at random—hoping it would lead to the pink monstrosity in the distance.

  I realized my mistake too late. The boardwalk snaked toward the biggest of the dodgy red cabins, a two-story deal with chipping paint and the word “office” painted in a window. A sign swung in the breeze above the door. It said “O’Brien Resort” and creaked like a verbal warning of imminent danger. I wondered vaguely if there was a seaside motel in the Saw movies …

  “Are you lost, dear?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled frantically about to find the source of the voice.

  A tiny old woman sat on the porch of a house a few yards back from the boardwalk. I’d taken no notice of the small yellow house when passing by, as most of the houses this way were just as tumbled down as the red cabins around them.

  The yellow house was short and squat, the paint faded and chipping around the windows. A round window peeked from above the porch but it was dark and cloudy.

  “I’m sorry,” the old woman said. She talked so slowly it sounded like she might kick the bucket any minute now. “Did I scare you?”

  Yes, I find you incredibly freaky, I thought. Your little house is creepy and your voice is like bugs crawling on my skin. “No,” I chirped aloud.

  “The ocean can make one jumpy,” she smiled.

  You have no idea.

  One of her wrinkled hands strayed to absently touch the shiny paisley scarf covering her hair. “Do you need directions somewhere?” The hand wandered down her short neck and finally settled back in her lap.

  “No,” I stammered, “I’m just looking.” Just looking? For what? An early death?

  “Oh, yes, there is a lot to look at, isn’t there?” The old woman seemed pleased with this. She sat in a huge wooden rocking chair, bobbing slowly but diligently back and forth. It creaked—either the chair or the woman’s old joints—at regular intervals. A matching chair rocked, empty beside her. An effect of the wind rolling off the ocean, no doubt, but a shiver skittered down my spine nonetheless.

  “The best suns are always after the best storms,” she said.

  I nodded, though she didn’t look at me. Her dark eyes, after appraising me once, had returned to roving the horizon of the ocean, never stopping to linger over anything in particular. Her hands lay limply in her lap as her feet, in house slippers, kept the chair rocking.

  “The waves are big today,” she continued. “There was a puddle over there, thought maybe the sun had caught an ashray.”

  My automatic grunt of a response died in my throat. Ash what?

  “Nothing left but a puddle of water if it’s caught in the sun. They’re nocturnal, you know.” She looked at me this time.

  “I … uh, yeah …” No, no, I didn’t know, and I sure as hell didn’t want to know.

  “So you must never swim at night. But do watch for water spirits,” she said. “Not all dangers are nocturnal.”

  “Water spirits. Of course.” I nodded vaguely because asking what a water spirit was would be counterproductive to my escaping this terrifying conversation.

  “You’ll help me, won’t you, dear?” she said, without looking at me.

  “I …” have absolutely no response for this. What on earth could I help her with?

  “And make sure you are careful, when you go to swim.”

  I grabbed at the excuse. “Yes, of course, and—and I was just on my way to do that—to go swim—I should be going. Swimming. That way.” I backed away slowly, waiting for her to toss another warning about ashbugs at me, but she was only nodding slowly at the horizon.

  As if I needed more reasons to be terrified of the water—water ghosts hadn’t even made my preexisting list. Summer in this town was going to be worse than I’d previously assumed. Already 100 percent of the population I’d met was certifiably whacko.

  She didn’t seem to notice I was slipping away, so I whipped around and hurried back in the direction from which I’d come. At that fateful, unfortunate fork, I took the other option and was quickly delivered to the grassy patch behind the pink house.

  A night of small talk with women like my mother, and even that sure-to-be odious Owen Carlton, would be a piece of cake after the conversation I’d just had.

  An Rogha Deirneach

  The Last Resort

  That evening, I emerged from my new room in a lacey cream dress. I’d first appeared in my jeans and a t-shirt from school, but I’d been quickly sent back to retry—this time with directions.

  “There; isn’t that better?” Mom watched me swish grumpily down the stairs.

  “She looks great,” Dad said, even though his nose was buried in a newspaper and not paying the least bit of attention to what I was wearing.

  “Oh, Cora, flip-flops?” Mom wailed. “Where are those adorable purple wedges I found for you in New York?”

  “I left them at home.” My best friend Rosie had insisted I pack them after deeming them “the cutest thing ever.” But she had ditched me shortly thereafter to be with her boyfriend and I had stowed the shoes away under my bed for the summer—and forever thereafter if I had a say in it.

  “Oh, Cora!” she wailed. “Regardless, I want you to make a just lovely impression on Owen Carlton—”

  “Yes, your mom is just short of arranging your marriage,” Dad cut in. “So you’d better make such an impression tonight that this Carlton woman and her son will want nothing to do with you in the future.”

  “Oh, Frank!” Mom exclaimed happily. “Why do you encourage her?”

  “She looks like an angel—let’s go,” Dad said decisively. He folded his newspaper shut, laid it on the table, and headed for the back door.

  I followed with a scowl. The last thing I wanted to do right now was feign interest in small talk, introductions, and especially snotty boys.

  From the back stairs you could see most of Oyster Beach. To the north stood big, old houses like ours (though less ostentatiously painted) that sat far back from the beach in a proud line. Smaller paths and stairs like ours lead across huge sandy backyards and screened-in porches.

  It was toward this backyard, summer bliss that we turned now. But behind us, the south of Oyster Beach looked like a wilderness from our porch. A messy tangle of boardwalk threading through that eerie jumble of deep-red cabins. I looked for the creepy old woman’s yellow house, but I couldn’t pick it out in the time before my mom shouted for me to catch up.

  The barbecue was in the backyard of a huge three-story deal about ten houses down from ours. It belonged to a family called Ritz, and it apparently wasn’t the biggest of the bunch, according to the blasé way in which everyone referenced it.

  A Mrs. Huston, who had called me “the nicest little darling,” even hinted that Ritz Manor was quickly being outgrown by the Ri
tz family. Six bedrooms weren’t quite sufficient.

  “How many children are there?” Mom was in her element here. She wore a pale lavender-colored pant suit with billowing legs that whipped softly at her ankles. She brandished a big glass of wine like it was part of her outfit.

  “The Ritzes have two.”

  I was glued to my mom’s side—and, thus, Mrs. Huston’s. Dad was playing washers with some men whose shouts were becoming increasingly boisterous as they made their way through the beer on tap in the pool house.

  “Cora, you must meet my Benjamin,” Mrs. Huston was saying. She twirled around looking for her son, some of her margarita slopping over the edge of her glass as she spotted him. She called him over the sloping lawn before I could protest.

  Several of his peers followed him from their mob beside the giant pool (that looked more like a pond) to have a gawk at me, as if some big, exotic bird had just landed inexplicably beside the house.

  And much to my chagrin, I was promptly deserted by my mother. She insisted on a full tour of the Ritzes’ extensive lawn ornament collection, and Mrs. Huston was only too willing to expound on her knowledge of it all. My feeble protests were ignored, and I was left with a wink to fend for myself in this overwhelming world of bare, tanned shoulders and the smell of salt.

  The necessary introductions already having passed, the Huston boy stood awkwardly a few feet from me, his friends obviously giving me the once- and twice- and, by this time, thrice-over.

  “So you’re from Missouri?” a blonde girl asked suddenly.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said lamely. “St. Louis.” I felt the need to clarify. Some of these kids spoke with distinct New England vowels and a few even had lazy Southern drawls, but their clothes were pressed and distressed to perfection, their hair dyed, teased and cut in ways I’d only seen in magazines.

  “Why are you here? Isn’t that like, really far away?”

  I was seriously going to slap this blonde girl.