SWIMMING LESSONS by Michael Horton
The sun spreads across the silt- brown water like melting butter. Wobbly strings of bubbles rise toward the surface. The boy’s ears fill with water and silence. He hangs suspended. Alone. The panic and fear that possessed him when he was lifted in the air and flung out into the river – those feelings remain on the surface. Below in the silence, everything feels different, held in check. There is time. Time to decide to rise up through the bright yellow circle or go on hanging in the brown water. The broad slow slide of the river surrounds him. Silent but not still.
Matthew stretches his arms and legs out. Stretches them longer as if they’ve grown and he’s finally the right size. Arms and legs spread out into a living X. X marks the spot. He is weightless. The water supports him. Holds him close, as close as he’s ever been held.
He isn’t afraid though he should be. It’s like he’s discovered a special place. A place where there are no expectations, no demands. A place he doesn’t feel like he has fallen short again.
He can’t see his father but imagines he can, standing on the lopsided gray dock jutting into the river behind their rental cabin. What is his father thinking? Is he afraid for Matthew? Does he have second thoughts? If Matthew continues to hang in the slow drift of water, will his father dive in – disappointed?
No!
Matthew wants it to stay just the way it is.
It doesn’t.
The urge to breathe bursts upon him. His lungs demand air. Arms sweep in panic, legs jerk and kick. The yellow light is too far away. Forever away. He reaches for it, reaches for it.
The light expands.
Arms flailing, eyes as wide as they have ever been, he breaks through the surface, sucks thin air and water into his open mouth. His thrashing spangles the river into chips of light. Overhead the sky pulses a shallow blue. On the dock his father, tall and lean and dark, is a silhouette in the sunlight.
Matthew swallows, gags, coughs. Water splashes into his eyes blurring his vision. His splashing fills the air. He can’t breathe the water. Panic and the hot surge of shame flood through him. He is drowning.
Somehow, without knowing how, his head remains above water. Instinctively arms and legs are doing things by themselves, clawing and kicking furiously, thrashing the water as if fighting a tide. He moves against the slow current, not with it. He pushes against the water’s density, pulls himself through it towards his father. There is a certain expectancy in the way his father stands on the dock, his stillness.
His father leans forward and sets his hands on his knees. Waiting. Because of the sun, because of the splashing, Matthew cannot see his face. The space around his father is too bright and his father too dark. He could be smiling. Matthew can’t see, but he might be.
Above the wet furor of his own splashing, he hears the cabin’s screen door slam. Matthew’s little brother suddenly appears on the dock in his faded cartoon- print underwear. Jamie presses up against their father and stares out at Matthew.
Matthew sees his brother’s bare arm encircle their father’s leg. Their father glances down at Jamie’s head, level with his hip. Matthew continues to churn in slow progress towards the dock.
Reaching it is like climbing to the top of a mountain. He flings a hand out, curls his fingers over the gray boards. With both hands, Matthew grasps the dock, pulls himself half out of the water, tilts his head far back to look at his father; an uncontrollable grin splits his face.
His father’s expression is serious except for the lines beside his eyes. A keen observer of his father’s feelings, Matthew believes his father’s eyes are smiling.
Matthew’s little brother is looking up at their father.
“Me,” he says and tugs at their father’s hand. “Me too.”
Where Matthew is sandy- blond and thickset – husky had been the word his mother used, not fat – Jamie is dark- haired like their father and so thin and light Matthew can pick him up and carry him around easily. Younger by two years, Jamie wants to do everything Matthew does. Sometimes Matthew lets him follow him around. They play soldiers. Build forts. Sometimes Matthew tries to teach him what he knows.
“My turn,” Jamie says. Their father looks down, both brothers looking up. Jamie is excited. No worry, no fear, no held- back tears, his face wide- open and eager.
Not Matthew. When his father asked if Matthew was ready, his father acted like it was all one to him. Matthew knew it wasn’t. Sourness had surged in Matthew’s throat and heat rushed to his face. He would not say he didn’t want to – but Matthew didn’t want to. Fear and shame muted him. He nodded his head.
Jamie – Jamie was just too little to know. He’d know better someday.
A trace of a smile pulls at their father’s lips as he glances down at Jamie’s upturned face. He shakes his head. But Jamie tugs at his hand. Their father puts his hand lightly on top of Jamie’s head – Jamie, the one he says is his, through and through, no question about it. Matthew, he sometimes jokes, shaking his head, must be the mailman’s.
Their father shakes his head again. It means something different this time. Matthew sees the wink. Slipping strong hands under Jamie’s arms, their father lifts him up. Lifts him like he is hardly there. Matthew always feels like he is there.
“On three,” their father says. He swings Jamie out, his feet sweeping over the river and back, out and back, and “Three!” He lets go. Jamie arches out over the river. Flying, weightless, the arc higher and longer than Matthew’s. The river is as wide as the highway they’d driven on to get there. Our retreat in the woods, their father called it, standing and looking out the cabin’s back door through the trees to the river.
Jamie hardly splashes.
Matthew stares where his brother disappears into the river. The surface smooths over almost immediately. A half- bubble like a soap bubble slides a moment on the surface then flicks out. Everything is quiet. Not the full silence Matthew heard suspended in the river, this is a poised silence, a held breath.
Matthew can no longer tell where Jamie had been thrown into the water. Can’t tell he’d ever been there at all. He might not even have a brother.
A shadow passes over Matthew’s head, the dark blue shadow of his father’s body. A perfect dive, toes pointed. He enters the river without a splash.
Matthew grips the dock and the water buoys him. Above the sky is a shade of clear blue backed by infinite depths. Not knowing what will happen next but knowing something will, Matthew waits.
Jamie comes up. Up, up, up out of the water into the sunlight streaming strings of silver, lifted high by their father. He holds Jamie up like he is presenting him. Matthew’s chest tightens. His eyes grow hot.
Jamie’s eyes are wide – wide and blinking. He looks surprised. He coughs up water. Coughs and coughs. Their father holds Jamie high and walks in the neck- deep water to the dock where Matthew clings. He lowers Jamie and Jamie grabs hold of the dock next to Matthew. Their father leans forward, rests his hands on the edge of the dock, and lets his legs drift out behind him. The three of them float in the brown river holding onto the dock. Willow and river maple run along the banks, their leaves shiny and still.
His brother doesn’t cry, only looks surprised. His face wide- open and surprised.
Matthew had been unable to hold back a scream.
Jamie bobs close beside Matthew. In their tiny apartment in the city they sleep in the same bed. Matthew always against the wall away from the edge. Before she disappeared – flew the coop, their father says, laughing short like he isn’t mad – their mother tucked them in, read stories, kissed them each on the forehead. Mornings when Matthew wakes, he feels the tug on his hair. Every night in his sleep, Jamie twirls Matthew’s hair into a knot around his finger. It doesn’t really hurt. Matthew’s hair comes loose easily when he pulls away.
Matthew stares hard at his brother floating between him and his father. Jamie blinks and blinks, like he’s had a huge surprise. His mouth is open.
Looking at him a moment longer, Matthew’s breath releases in a sigh. He lets go of the dock with one hand, reaches for his brother.
“You’re too little,” Matthew says, and understands it’s true as he says it. The tightness in his chest opens. Holding the dock one handed, he pats Jamie’s shoulder so he knows he isn’t being mean. “When you’re bigger,” he says, “when you’re as big as me.”
Matthew glances over Jamie’s otter- slick dark hair. Their father looks beyond them both across the river into the trees. Whatever he is looking at, Matthew can’t see it.
Matthew breathes in the river’s breath, the smell of water, the heat of summer. He looks to the spot where he plunged through the surface. The river has erased it all.
When he looks back, Matthew feels glad. Glad his brother is saved, lifted aloft, sputtering and blinking. Glad his brother didn’t drown.
And he’s glad Jamie didn’t learn to swim.
Matthew feels the water buoying him, buoying them all. Looking down at the surface, he sees a murky reflection of his face on the brown water and smiles but the reflection is wavery and unrecognizable. He looks over at Jamie then over to their father.
“You’ll learn,” he says to Jamie. “Just like me, you’ll learn.”
Michael Horton’s work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Iron Horse Literary Review, Raleigh Review, Whitefish Review, and Porter House Review.