It happened between track five and track six. The little boy came from nowhere and refused to let go of his shorts. He tried pushing him away but his breath was running out and the boy was too young to hurt. Gasping he broke to the surface, all of a sudden, his shorts were free and fingers were brushing against him in the water. The boy’s mother had him tucked below her arm and was swimming one-handed away. He blinked laughing at himself knifed back into the water and his waiting lap.
He couldn’t breathe next day at the pool. A panic had his heart at his throat with his lungs whistling slow. The little boy and his mother weren’t there but he still couldn’t complete his laps. By twenty he was exhausted, dragging his wheezing self out the pool. Maybe the boy’s father had a problem with their coming to the pool so late, he thought while towelling himself dry. The boy must have been around five or six, with such exuberant glee he must be autistic, he thought pulling his shorts on; and she, he saw only a flash of sparkling eyes and her cap, purple and flowered. The brightest in the whole pool.
The third day he ate one and a half hours before. He meditated. His breath was nice and easy. He was prepared. They came ten minutes to nine. She was in a plain black swim suit and her purple swim cap. The boy in fluorescent trunks and floaters tied to his arms. She smiled at him. The boy waved. He waved back but they were already swimming. He waited for them after class. He wanted to see how she went home. If they were his family, he would never let them travel alone. A man in a gleaming black Pajero came to pick them up. The boy’s father. Old money he thought to himself while beeping his beat-up Honda open. She seemed nice though. She must have to deal with so many people pitying her because of the boy. But she seemed happy almost determinedly so.
They spoke on the fourth day. The water’s stinging today, she said. Must be the chlorine, he said. She smiled and nodded. She must think him an uncle, he scolded himself in the shower.
They didn’t come for the next two days and the pool was shut on Mondays. The longest weekend. He spent most of it snapping at his wife, grovelling at his boss. They must have been busy; their little family of three.
It was Wednesday night nine thirty-three p.m. when they exchanged names. For some reason he checked the red digital clock right after; as if it was of the utmost consequence when exactly they met. The boy likes him already. He floats on his back beside him staring at him moonily. They talk so much, the three of them, he could barely do ten laps. The boy’s father didn’t pick them up that night. She was driving. He lingered at the car door telling her to mind the potholes in the road. He thinks it’s love what he feels.
He is also part of a family of three. His daughter is two months old and his wife hates that he has the time to swim every day. He swam to forget them for a bit. But he feels like he would do it all again with this boy and his beautiful, brave mother. She must feel so alone. Only she and the boy against the entire world. He wanted to be whatever she needed. Solid and light-footed. Playful so that she can forget her life for a bit too.
They didn’t come to swim on the weekend again. He was beside himself. His wife was happier than ever. She kept talking about some old thing her mother sent her. The baby was crying less and making more eye contact with him which frightened him a little. On Saturday he decided he won’t go tomorrow but again on Sunday night, he couldn’t help but go and wait for her and her little boy.
The pool opened again on Tuesday. She was there before him. Today in a low-cut pink swimsuit. Last time when he complimented her on her cap, she blushed and gushed about how it was her favourite. If earlier she alternated it with another, now she wore only her purple cap. She must feel the same he thought to himself. They were pretending to race each other in track 5 and track 6. A game the boy loved disrupting. He would swim in between and lunge for either of their shoulders whenever he felt like.
He worried his enthusiasm for this game sounded fake but she didn’t seem to notice. She was like always, friendly but not overtly. He couldn’t ask her why she didn’t come on the weekends or if she was happy in her marriage. They never spoke about such things. It was safer to talk about the boy or the water or their childhoods. They grew up in the same neighbourhood. How funny is that, he said. He liked knowing her old stories. He imagined her husband didn’t. He imagined their marriage to have reached that point where you stop listening to each other. It’s like static, he would have liked to tell her but they weren’t that friendly yet.
The next day Wednesday morning came with a text message from the pool. The pool was shut for maintenance work. If he knew where she stayed, he could have run into her somewhere around there. You are worse than your child, his wife broke in on his thinking. But then at least it’s not your fingernails, she teased, he had been chewing on his lips. He smiled and said, big meeting at work; the lie came so easy he almost believed it true he could always be called in for something big out of the blue.
They didn’t come on Thursday or Friday and the weekend. He comforted himself thinking she must be on her periods. But the thought didn’t stay comforting for long. He tortured himself with images of her contorting on her bed bowed in two around a hot water bag. The boy not understanding her sickness, thinks the bag, a toy and pulls it from her hands pulling out the cap and burning them both in the process. He imagined her husband putting a stop to their swimming intuiting his presence and their new friendship. How could he not notice, he thought to himself, wasn’t she happier already?
She didn’t come the next week or the week after or the month after.
Eight weeks later at twelve fourty-seven p.m. he ran into her without her boy at the meat stall. Two kilo mutton two kilo beef, she said. She’s having a party, he thought ashamed of himself. He had killed her off in so many different ways and here she was buying meat for her family. She was perfectly fine. He checked the time on his phone to be sure she was real. He said hello. It took her a minute to recognise him. She laughed and said, sorry, your face is different outside the pool. Good different? He asked, he was feeling reckless it must have been the blood in the air. Her smile slipped, of course, she said with her customary politeness. Angry he lost the moment, he pushed on, am I invited for this party? She was frowning now the butcher had her order ready. Her lips twisted to the smallest fakest smile, a nod to say bye and she was gone. He blew it. He blew his chance.
He goes to another swimming pool now. From eight to nine p.m. he swims his customary forty laps with ten to fifteen other men and boys. It is an only men’s class.
Nina George is a writer from Kerala who enjoys plotting stories to tree barks among many other things.