Night Swimming
Song lyrics on page 162 are from “Smile,” music by Charles Chaplin. Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, copyright © 1954 by Bourne Co. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Robin Schwarz
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: June 2004
ISBN: 978-0-446-55700-9
The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Book design by Giorgetta Bell McRee
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
EPILOGUE
To my father, who gave me my love for words,
and to my mother, who told me to take typing as a backup.
I love you both, dearly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank Jim Patterson for his unending support. He not only offered his invaluable advice and encouragement, he took me under his wing as well. His immeasurable generosities included an invitation to join him on his book tour. A simple thank-you seems greatly insufficient. Suffice it to say that I will be forever grateful.
I would also like to thank my dear and closest friend Laurie Garnier, who unfailingly read every draft (and there were several) and who provided countless ideas and insights that enriched the story in so many, many ways. I wish to thank attorney Millie Wayland for her legal expertise and continual magnanimity and Richard Viets, a U.S. Marshall, who patiently explained the workings of our criminal justice system. Thanks to Irene Markocki, who never lost faith; Janet Wollman, Shana Kelly, Fran Marzano, Tanya Gunther, Joe Smookler, Rob Snyder, Linda Kaplan. Thanks to Flag Tonuzi for his beautiful cover; Michael Carr for his copyediting extraordinaire; Penina Sacks, my production editor, who is a pearl of a girl; Le Biarritz for the countless hours I sat in there writing, rewriting, drinking, rewriting; David Schneiderman; Carter Campbell; Megan Rickman; Christine Price; Scott Mills; Stuart Pittman; Emily Nurkin; Dr. Tom Pearce and Dr. Charles Hatem (to whom I owe a long-overdue thank-you and who in no way represent the doctor portrayed in this book). To my dear friend Sally Chapdelaine, who offered excellent suggestions in making Night Swimming an even better swim. A special thanks to Dick Duane who championed my efforts well before Night Swimming was even a trickle. And to my wonderful agent, Suzanne Gluck, who took me on, believed in me, and made all the hard work worth every word. Finally, a big, big thank-you to my fabulous editor, Caryn Karmatz Rudy, whose sharp mind and tender counsel was vital in guiding me through. Her suggestions always and only made this book better and better and better. And I promise you, Caryn, I will not make any more changes to Night Swimming. And when they are on the shelves in bookstores, I will not take them down one by one, rewriting sentences I think would be better if only there had been an “a” instead of a “the” or that the sky should have had more stars or less stars or no stars at all. Let the stars fall where they may, and thank you all.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
—ANAÏS NIN
CHAPTER 1
CHARLOTTE CLAPP hated going to the doctor. All 253 pounds of her hated going to the doctor. Especially Dr. Jennings. Handsome, young, single Dr. Jennings—the most successful and eligible bachelor in town. Of course, in a town as small as Gorham (population fifteen hundred, including newborns) the competition was slim.
Charlotte considered why Dr. Jennings chose to settle in Gorham. He wasn’t born here, and most people who are, set their sights on getting out. There must be something wrong with him under all that perfection. Why else would he be here in Gorham—in other words, nowhere? Gorham boasted one tiny two-man police station, a post office, a 7-Eleven, a fish plant, a church, a Bickfords restaurant, a bowling alley, a beauty parlor, a bank, one school, one doctor, one gas station, and an upside-down stop sign that had been swinging from its hinge for months. Summer or winter, most of Charlotte’s neighbors found their entertainment by staying home and watching TV. Living in Gorham was like watching paint dry.
Charlotte Clapp had lived in Gorham her whole life, all of it in a small house on Middle Street. Middle Street—even the name was neither here nor there. It wasn’t the beginning of anything or the end. It was simply and unremarkably the middle. And this middle was where she lived, floating in what felt like a long and everlasting in-betweenness.
Charlotte looked around Doctor Jennings’s waiting room. Two other people waited there as well. A woman was knitting a scarf that was so long, she could throw it out of a window during a fire to save herself. Next to her sat a man with an utterly nondescript face, notable only for its extreme thinness. Charlotte held up her wrists and squinted to compare them to the man’s scrawny pipe-cleaner neck. Was it possible her wrists were wider?
This depressing thought reminded her that she would soon have to disrobe for the fantastically fit Dr. Jennings. She shuddered. If only there were another way to have a physical. Virtual physicals. Yes, why hadn’t someone thought of that yet? They probably had. It was likely they existed everywhere except in Gorham. But how would I know, having never left the zip code? And then he appeared, Sir Doctor Jennings, white coat and all, looking like a Nobel Prize winner or, worse yet for Charlotte, Dr. Kildare. She stood up to enter the examining room. I don’t care wha
t anyone says; I’m not going to get on the scale. That’s for damn sure.
“Good morning, Charlotte,” he said, motioning her in. Charlotte paused, aware of just how much room was left in the doorway in order for her to pass. None. He moved.
“Take a seat and relax,” he said, motioning to the chair. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The nurse handed her a paper nightgown. “Change into this, honey, and leave the opening at the back.” Charlotte stared at the flimsy garment before her. It was a joke. She could use it as a handkerchief or a handy wipe or something to line the inside of a gift box with, but certainly not as a cover up. Calista Flockhart? Maybe. Charlotte? No. The armholes in the gown were no bigger than the holes you’d find in Swiss cheese. She tore them open, leaving her backside exposed like the state of Texas. Now all that was left to feel sick about was the reemergence of Dr. Jennings. Handsome, single Dr. Jennings. It would be an awful visit: He’d come in and ask her to sit up, when she was already sitting up. He was probably outside that door right now, dreading the prospect of having to touch any part of her. Why else would he be taking so long to return? Charlotte sat as straight as she could but still had more folds than a blanket stuffed in a trunk. She wondered if Dr. Jennings talked about how fat she was to other people.
I have this patient who is incredibly obese. I was thinking of suggesting that she get her stomach stapled.
And then he’d be off to an office supply store to get the necessary equipment. Hammers, nails, sump pumps. Oh, Charlotte, stop thinking like this. He’s a professional. Act normal.
Finally, there was a knock at the door, and Dr. Jennings entered. Charlotte’s resolve to act normal evaporated like steam disappearing from a teacup.
Oh, God, don’t look at me. If the blind can read braille, surely you can just close your eyes and figure it out.
“Why are you in a gown?” he asked, to Charlotte’s surprise.
“The nurse told me to change.”
“I don’t need to examine you; I only need to talk to you about the tests we took last week. They just came in today.”
Thank you, God.
“But, since you’ve already changed, we can talk like this.”
“Maybe I should just change anyway.”
“No, that’s not necessary. I have some things to go over with you. Please, why don’t you sit over here,” he said, pointing to a chair.
“No, I’m fine.” If I move off this table, this thing will rip open like the Grand Canyon. Jennings will try to hide his eyes, but he won’t be able to, because everywhere he looks, there I’ll be, filling the whole room with mountains of flesh. My cleavage alone could be a danger to him. He could fall into it like a crevasse and never be heard from again. And then the room will go dark while my behind blocks the sun like an eclipse.
“No, really, I’m fine up here on the table. It’s comfortable, in fact.”
“Okay. Well, Charlotte, I have some rather upsetting news. We got the results from the blood tests you took, and they weren’t exactly what I’d call good.”
Dr. Jennings’s voice delivered these words as if he were placing a dinner order. It sounded as matter-of-fact as “Oh, and no butter on the scrod...I like it dry.” Charlotte stared at him, watching his mouth move but only heard the slow, syrupy sound of bass notes pull his lips apart like taffy.
“Charlotte, we checked and rechecked the lab results, but I’m afraid it looks unquestionably like cancer.”
Dr. Jennings continued, but Charlotte’s brain was stuck on one word. The C word, the unmentionable disease she had feared since the first time her mother sat her down eight years ago and softly, ever so softly, told her the terrible news that Charlotte had already known but simply could not face. The C word only meant one thing, and that was death.
“. . . and so, Charlotte, I am in the unfortunate position to have to tell you that, as I see it, you have a year.”
She had gone in last week for a routine physical. No big deal, just a tune-up really, as if she were having her car inspected. Then this morning she had received a call from Dr. Jennings’s nurse.
“Can you come in today, Miss Clapp? Dr. Jennings needs to do a follow-up with you.”
A follow-up? Of course, this made sense. An efficient doctor, must be routine. Nothing to worry about. Certainly nothing to prepare her for the news she’d just received.
No, this couldn’t be right. This had to be someone else’s news, not hers, not thirty-four-year-old Charlotte Clapp’s. Her life might be boring, but it was predictable. And this... this had not been predicted. And yet here was Dr. Jennings, cool, self-assured, twenty-nine-year-old Dr. Jennings, doling out fates like a postal worker tossing letters into the correct address bins.
“One year, Charlotte... one year,” Jennings repeated. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe she only thought she’d heard it again, as the words were irrevocably lodged in her brain, echoing over and over like a distant drum of doom.
For the first time in months she forgot about how fat she was. Weight seemed gigantically unimportant now, like losing a button or missing a bus.
“I know how difficult this is to hear, Charlotte, particularly after your mother’s own passing.”
You don’t know anything. You have no idea how I feel. You with your sixteen-inch neck and penny loafers.
“Is there anything that can be done?”
“Unfortunately, it’s exactly what your mother had.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s nothing to be done. Medicine just hasn’t advanced as quickly as it needs to.”
Charlotte stared at the clip on his tie. A stupid thermometer. Probably rectal.
Up until now her life had been as tedious as water dripping from a faucet, drop after drop, day after day, year after year. It was as steady and monotonous as the white noise coming from the freezers of the fish plant at the end of her street—the endless hum of refrigeration to keep the dead fish fresh. This is exactly how she felt. She was going to die—and she hadn’t yet lived.
The years rolled over her like a dark intractable wave that suddenly made her feel like she had to swim for her life. So on that very same day, without the hint of hesitation, she walked into the bank where she had worked for fifteen years, and quit.
CHAPTER 2
CHARLOTTE LAY IN BED, staring at the ceiling, recalling the dark canopy of gloom hovering over her mother’s final hours. Even in death, Charlotte thought of her mother as lucky, at least luckier than she was. Her mother had found love, borne a child, and accepted the life she was given as a happy one, in spite of the fact that it seemed to Charlotte that her mother’s happiness had been doled out in tiny teaspoons. Teaspoons so inconsequential it was as if a single packet of sugar had been poured into a lake. Yet her mother could still taste the sweetness of it.
And her mother had grace to accept the things she could not change. And within that tiny circle she found her happiness. But Charlotte did not share her mother’s stoic grace at facing death. Her mother was still young then, young enough to enjoy life and maybe even see Charlotte marry and give her a grandchild.
But her mother became ever weaker, slowly succumbing to the invisible worm crawling through her body. Charlotte had tried to make her as comfortable as possible in the end, and her mother responded by telling Charlotte more about herself in those last few months than she had in all their years together. She thought now of their last real conversation.
“Mama, take a little water before you sleep,” Charlotte had coaxed.
Her mother waved the glass away, instead making a request of her own. “Charlotte, reach in my jewelry box. There’s something I’d like you to have.”
Charlotte opened the small mahogany music box and saw a single delicate diamond suspended on a simple chain.
“Where did you get this, Mama? I’ve never seen it before.”
“It belonged to your great-great-grandma on my mother’s side. It’s old... older than me, and I’d like you
to have it.”
“Thank you, Mama.” She closed her palm around it as if it were the Hope diamond.
“Charlotte...”
“Yes, Mama?”
“I am going to die soon.”
“Mama!” Charlotte protested, as if by denying it she could make it untrue.
“It’s true, Charlotte, and we both need to face it. But first I want to talk to you about something. Something that’s been troubling me.”
Oh God. She’s going to bring up marriage, my pathetic lack of suitors, my weight.
“I’ve lived in Gorham my whole life.” Her mother paused, seeming to consider the weight of the words she was about to utter. “I loved your father, of course, and there was never a day that I was sorry I married him. And then we had you, which was the best part of us.”
Charlotte smiled and nodded tentatively. Where was this going?
“However, Charlotte, I do have regrets.”
“Regrets? What kind of regrets, Mama?” She had never heard her mother express anything like this. The glass was always half full; there was always a silver lining, a pot of gold, a ray of hope. God always provided. Regrets were counter to everything she knew to be true about her mother.
“My one regret is that I never did anything special with my own life. Something important in a personal way.”
“But Mama, you are special. You are loved, and you mean so much to so many people.”
“I am blessed in that way, but what I’m saying is something different, Charlotte. I wanted to travel in my life, see Paris or Italy. Once I even wanted to see the pyramids.”
This struck Charlotte like an epiphany, a cymbal crash at the end of a movement. She believed her mother thought what lay beyond Middle Street was simply and only the moon.
“I never knew,” Charlotte whispered.
“I’m telling you this, my angel, because I don’t want you to wake up one day and say ‘if only.’ I want you to live your life, see things beyond Gorham, experience it all. Life is like a tasting plate. You have to try everything...at least once.”
Charlotte continued to be stunned by her mother’s confession. If she had wanted to do these things, why hadn’t she done them? But Charlotte knew, deep down, that it was a rhetorical question. People just got stuck in life. All she needed to do was look at her own life for proof.