Night Swimming Read online

“So I hear you’re going to visit Florida,” MaryAnn continued. “What draws you there?”

  “Palm trees, good vacation packages, Disney World.”

  “Yes, Florida is nice,” MaryAnn said with mayoral authority. “Tom and I went to Water World for our second anniversary.” She paused before continuing, but she always continued. “And then? Are you staying on there?”

  Charlotte hadn’t thought much past that lie. She figured that people wouldn’t care what she was going to do with her life after the weekend in Epcot. Not that MaryAnn actually cared; she was just nosy. Nonetheless, it was a reasonable question. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life in theme parks.

  “No, after Florida I’m off to...to...”

  Charlotte’s eyes darted desperately around the room. That’s when she saw the calendar hanging above the cash register. It was exactly the same calendar Charlotte had hanging above her own desk back at the bank: a states calendar that had come free with a gas purchase. The coincidence depressed Charlotte; her accessories were as banal as Bickfords’s. The calendar’s pages hung open to August, revealing the old capitol of Louisiana, a boring brick building against a boring blue sky.

  “I’m headed for Louisiana,” Charlotte lied smoothly. “I have an aunt there. She asked me to come. Louisiana, now, that’s an exciting place, MaryAnn. Ever been there?”

  She knew damn well MaryAnn hadn’t been there. The bullet train to Florida and the Mall of America were the extent of her worldly travels. She never stopped talking about that mall. An old conversation came crashing back like a rogue wave: the mall. The damn mall.

  “And do you know how big it is, Charlotte?”

  “No.”

  “Acres and acres. And did you know it has a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster and a shark tank?”

  “No.”

  “And a chapel. People can get married right at the mall. Isn’t that fantastic?”

  Fantastic? Hell on earth was the only thing Charlotte could liken it to. It was everything she wanted to leave behind.

  “And if you plan it right, I suppose you can have your honeymoon right there in the Mall of America. All under one roof. You never have to go outside.”

  Or breathe air, or see trees growing in nature, or witness an actual sunrise. Hey, if you play your cards right, you can die and be buried right under the food court between Blimpie and Chuck E. Cheese. That’s, of course, if you’re lucky enough to get a spot.

  The shop-till-you-drop motto had become dangerously close to possible as Charlotte saw it. MaryAnn could collapse in front of the video arcades and be whisked away in a shopping cart, just as if she were heading to sportswear or lingerie. There was no place on earth like the Mall of America, and Charlotte honestly believed that if there were the remotest chance of being buried there, MaryAnn would have probably secured a plot. Charlotte could just imagine the epitaph:

  HERE LIES MARYANN IN PAYLESS SHOES AND SOCKS BURIED IN HER TARGET DRESS AND CRATE AND BARREL BOX

  But MaryAnn was still breathing, which was all that was needed to ensure that she would ask her next question: “Louisiana? I didn’t know you had any relatives in Louisiana, Charlotte. You never said a word.”

  “Yes, several, as a matter of fact.” In all the years they’d known each other, Charlotte had certainly never mentioned family in the South. She saw MaryAnn give her a sideways look.

  Stick to your story, Charlotte. Stick to your story. “Anyway, I’ve always dreamed of living in New Orleans. This is a dream come true.”

  “Be careful what you wish for, Charlotte. I’ve never known any dreams to come true without some price to be paid. But maybe it will be different for you.”

  Charlotte was surprised; she thought MaryAnn’s dreams had come true. What secret lay behind this cryptic admission? Who cares? It doesn’t matter anymore, Charlotte reminded herself, turning away, leaving MaryAnn alone with her hateful little jealousies. There was no reason for MaryAnn to be so snippy. The rivalry was long over, and MaryAnn had won.

  MaryAnn’s husband, Tom Barzini, had been Charlotte’s boyfriend first. The months she’d been with him had been the best in memory. During this period her mother was still doing okay and Charlotte was her old self, “thin and beautiful,” as the reports went. But best of all, she was in love.

  Meeting Tom had lifted her out of the humdrum existence that life had dished out and ultimately buried her beneath. She was in love, and suddenly nothing was ordinary anymore. The fish plant, the bank, the brown bags she hauled her groceries home in, the carports covered in their green corrugated canopies, the blue plastic pools gathering up bugs behind every house, the short, stingy driveways lined with trailers that were bought to pull motorboats down to the lake once a year, the depressing ornaments of dwarfs or ducklings and the shiny silver balls that reflected back the dull monotonous condition of life in Gorham, and even Middle Street itself were no longer boring. All the tiny deaths she suffered in the everyday wasteland of cups and saucers, snack tables, and laundry lines disappeared. She was filled with the promise that there was life after death in a small town, and his name was Tom.

  At the six-month mark in their romance, Charlotte’s mother had become gravely ill and needed constant care. Charlotte was unable to see Tom as regularly during this time, and one night when he came to pick her up at the bank, he found that Charlotte had left. Her mother had called her home earlier that day. But MaryAnn was still at the bank, and she and Tom went out that night for drinks. Gossip spread like a rash, and before Charlotte knew it, Tom and MaryAnn were a couple.

  That’s when it started: the terrible weight gain that steadily began filling in Charlotte’s waistline and other fine curves with heavy creams, puddings, and cookie dough dense as clay. Slowly but surely, a perfectly proportioned person was transformed into something round and enormous, like a bowl too big for the potter’s wheel.

  Her mother hung in there for several months, and for several months Charlotte fed her fury with flapjacks, cream puffs, and rich, buttery brownies. The longer her mother lived, the larger Charlotte got. Finally, after eight months, she had to take a leave of absence from the bank to care for her mother around the clock. It was during these final three and a half months that Charlotte’s weight tipped the scales. Her poor mother watched as her only daughter became the size of a small third world country. But she was incapable of doing anything about it, trapped as she was in her own dying body. And so she prayed.

  When Charlotte went back to work after her mother’s passing, shock reverberated throughout the bank. The old Charlotte had virtually disappeared; she had become almost featureless beneath the layers of her own flesh. Everyone stared while her sausage fingers hoarded the candy bowl left out for customers. And she seemed genuinely unabashed. Perhaps everything that had happened made her numb.

  The worst of it was that Charlotte knew she had only herself to blame. MaryAnn had a reason for her betrayal; she was getting even for the improbable night that happened long ago. A night that happened well before Tom Barzini ever came into the picture—an awful, irreversible night that changed everything.

  Charlotte tried to content herself by saying that losing Tom to MaryAnn was destiny. She hoped that this would finally heal things between them and make things equal. But she knew they would never be friends again, not the way they had been best friends since the first grade. It pained her to lose Tom, pained her more than anything in life. But it also pained her to lose MaryAnn. Yet one irrevocable hour in their lives had changed everything.

  Charlotte liked to think that wearing that god-awful purple chiffon bridesmaid’s dress that made her look like an Italian ice at Tom and MaryAnn’s inevitable wedding was penance. And yet this still didn’t soften MaryAnn. She continued to harbor resentment, which puzzled Charlotte. Wasn’t it Charlotte who should have held the grudge? After all, the man she loved was stolen away from her. But she had let it go, managing to eat her way through it, slowly and steadily gaining 138 pounds over the next s
everal years. So much sadness, so much regret. And while her heart could not hold all that grief, her body expanded to accept it.

  This gave Charlotte one more reason to be happy to say good-bye to Gorham, New Hampshire, good-bye to MaryAnn and that unmercifully endless wedding. And most of all, the terrible night she would rewrite in her head a hundred times, the night she would work hard to consign to oblivion and dismiss from her thoughts forever.

  And in remembering all this, and the sad regrets her mother had confided to her on the day she died, Charlotte finally had the nerve to break away from the crowd and move to the back of the room. All eyes began to turn her way. There was something single-minded in her walk. Everyone saw it. You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.

  She repeated these words like a mantra. Like a drum growing ever louder. Like the sound of a train gaining speed, leaving the station by way of her brain. Faster. Faster. Her adrenaline pounded. You can do this. You can do this. You can... chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a...

  Suddenly, her brain screeched to a stop. And with that, she turned to the waiting many.

  “Just look at you all. Can our parties be as boring as our lives? Is there anyone actually having a good time? This is like a wake. A word of advice to all of you: Live. Live like there’s no tomorrow.”

  And with that, she moved toward the front of the room, parting the crowd like the Red Sea, and walked out of Bickfords with the biblical impact of Charlton Heston.

  CHAPTER 4

  SHE RETURNED TO THE BANK that afternoon with a dozen plastic garbage bags, ostensibly for gathering up all the mementos she’d collected over the years: a dog whose head bounced up and down in nauseating agreement, a windup flower that danced to the tune of “April Showers,” a dead Chia Pet, a ceramic donkey pulling a cart, a chipped coffee cup that read Employee of the Month, a scented candle that was a present from... Who could even remember now? It was as gone as the scent itself. And then it was five o’clock, as it had been five o’clock every day for the past thousand years when Charlotte closed the bank.

  “Want me to close tonight, Charlotte?” the assistant manager asked.

  “No, let me... for the last time, Al. I’ll drop the keys by after I clean out my desk.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, for old times’ sake. I just want to take it all in before I leave.”

  And so it went. The last few obligatory hugs and kisses.

  “That was some speech,” Happy said, getting her things together. “Very unexpected.”

  “Yeah, for me, too.”

  “Was it rehearsed?”

  “For fifteen years.”

  “Did you mean it to come out that way?”

  “No, it was much better than I imagined.”

  “Well, Lordy me,” Happy said, “who’da thought you had it in you?”

  Nothing else was said about Charlotte’s speech. In fact, it was glaringly avoided.

  Happy and Al were the last to leave the bank, offering up their parting well-wishes.

  Finally, gratefully, Charlotte was alone. She turned the combination to the vault just as she had for the past fifteen years. But this time, when she entered, she filled her Hefty bags with piles of cool, crisp, cumbersome cash. A million dollars in twenties weighs 125 pounds. It was a fact she had looked up on the Internet that very day—preparation was key. But this mother lode was a mishmash of fives, tens, twenties, and fifties. And it wasn’t one million; it was two million. She persevered like an exhausted mule, lugging each bag, one by one, through the back door to her car. It was Friday night, so it would be at least two days before anyone realized the money was missing.

  The upside to Gorham (if there was one) was that the Savings and Loan was too small a bank, in too small a town, to have any sort of security guard. But the downside was that there would not be very much cash in the vault. So why did Gorham’s Savings and Loan have this money? Charlotte knew why.

  Every so often the bank president would allow his brother-in-law to temporarily store inordinate amounts of cash for several days before he took it out again. No one in the bank said a word, though everyone knew about these goings-on. Jobs were scarce in Gorham, and it was better to turn a blind eye than risk unemployment.

  According to her count, this was the sixth time such excessive amounts of money had sat in the vault without explanation. Charlotte chalked it up to gambling wins and tax evasion, though she wasn’t really sure what the story was. She didn’t care, either.

  All that mattered was that the gods had conspired to make this cash available to her. And while Charlotte knew it wasn’t legal for her to help herself, she was comforted by the knowledge that the president’s brother-in-law and, in all probability, the president himself were as corrupt as the day was long. Besides, if he’d done it six times already, he certainly would have no trouble replacing it. Charlotte was meant to have this money—why else would the timing have been so perfect? She just wished she could see the president’s face when he discovered it was gone.

  Charlotte dropped the bank keys safely off with Al. Al, who had been assigned the ponderous title of assistant bank manager and who would be immediately promoted upon Charlotte’s departure. Al, who now faced the awesome responsibility of opening the doors at nine and closing the vault by five. Al, who would have to deal with Kelly even more than he did now. Poor Al.

  Little did Kelly know that Al would get even. He was simply waiting for his moment. And that moment would come. It would most definitely and triumphantly come.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT WAS DARK WHEN SHE ARRIVED HOME. Dark enough to drag the bags into the house without causing suspicion. She felt as if she were dragging bodies, an eerie feeling for Charlotte, who had never ever done anything remotely unethical.

  Her life felt as though it had become another person’s, a pantomime, an accidental trip into someone else’s reality. It was as if she were waking up out of a long anesthesia induced state. And she was.

  At around two in the morning Charlotte drove her ’89 Toyota over to the Point of Pines Bridge at Gorham Pass. Leaving her car running and the driver’s door wide open, she heaved her enormous body against the back of the car. It moved, but not enough to break the fence and topple into the dark waters below. She pushed again. One thing became clear in the exasperated push and pull, the grinding determination of iron weight against iron will: She would need a new strategy.

  Standing outside the driver’s door, she stretched her right foot into the car and onto the gas pedal. It jerked forward, and she grabbed the roof to keep her balance. She tried again, this time advancing the pedal slowly, steadily: The car finally began to push the fence out like a tight metal parenthesis bending in the middle, enough so that she could push again on her own. And she did. Inch by inch, her car nosed ever closer to the edge, and finally let go into the tumbling darkness of the Gorham River.

  She stared down into the featureless water, and a small sadness washed over her. She had owned that car for fifteen years. Now it was alone at the bottom of the Gorham River. How lonely it would be by itself in this cold, murkish underworld, slipped from its devotion like a loved ring off the knuckle of a swimmer. “Good-bye, old car,” she said. And as she turned to walk away she felt the sadness of the car at the bottom of the Gorham River, grieving inside its own dumb heart.

  She trudged the two miles home, like a tugboat caught in fog. Nothing stirred: no cars, no rabbits, no branches. This was Gorham, after all, where nothing happened... where nothing was ever going to happen.

  At three a.m. she called a cab from a town sixty miles away and waited for an hour among the objects that she would leave behind: faded floral curtains, a beanbag ashtray, a worn-out ottoman, and several small, dusty glass figurines because her mother could not afford Hummels. Yes, she would pay for the time and mileage; yes, she knew it would be extra. Closing the door to the paneled living room one last time, she left the front door unlocked. Why lock it? Her life was over in that house. S
he struggled with her four large suitcases—suitcases that had been collecting dust in her cellar for years. They’d been used for storage. Her mother had bought them years ago, perhaps hoping one day she would really and truly take that trip to the pyramids, but the suitcases remained in the cellar, collecting dust instead of memories. Now, as she wrestled to lift them into the taxi, the cab driver did not budge to help her. Why? Because I’m fat, she thought. Watching her trying to hoist the bags into his trunk was like watching Dumbo trying to flap his ears fast enough to fly. But there would be no liftoff here. By the time the task was over, she sank like a boulder into the backseat, all 253 pounds. The seat was wide and comfortable and able to accommodate her bountiful behind, a behind softly dented like an old couch she’d been sitting on for years.

  “Going far?” the cab driver asked.

  “Yes. Florida.”

  “You got a lot of bags.”

  “Well, I’ll be gone for a while.” Forever.

  “Where to now, lady?”

  “The Whitestone train station.”

  When he dropped her off, she asked to be left just before the platform.

  “You sure? These bags look heavy, lady.”

  Like you might help. “I have friends meeting me.”

  “Whatever.”

  She paid him his money, and he drove off, leaving Charlotte to drag the bags into the high grass along the side of the lot. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Nor would there be. There was no train till morning. She walked three blocks until she finally reached Tally’s used-car lot. She found the ’86 Jaguar she had purchased with two thousand dollars in cash the day before.

  The old inspection sticker was still on the front window, and it would stay there. She only needed license plates and the good luck of not being pulled over by a state trooper. If she were pulled over, it would reveal that the sticker and plates did not match.

  The keys were exactly where she had asked for them to be: under the passenger’s floor mat. She drove back to the train station and found her luggage untouched in the weeds. She had no clothes or shoes or soap or snacks, just a medallion she rescued from her mother’s jewelry box, and every CD Tony Bennett had ever recorded. Charlotte loved Tony Bennett.