Drowning Lessons Read Online Free PDF Page B

smiling.
    â€œYeah,” I say. “Poor Mrs. Wolff.”
    Nonnie died at ninety-six. I was twelve. And though I didn’t cry when told or at her funeral, still, Nonnie’s death shook me. I knew she was really gone when Mother reclaimed her room and painted it a resolutely cheerful shade of yellow, the new-paint smell murdering all those other smells I’d loved.
    Now it’s Mrs. Wolff’s turn to be the powdered doughnut. Dressed in sports coats and ties, Geordie and I greet the survivors: Lenny and his wife, Elaine; Mr. Wolff. I’ve never seen Mr. Wolff in a suit. Until now I’ve only seen him in the stained T-shirt and green work pants he wears to the pump house. “Good to see ya,” he says, hugging me (though built like a bear, Mr. Wolff is not the hugging type). I hug Lenny, then Elaine. Already I’m tired of hugging people. We get in line to look at the corpse, then take our places among the respectful. Next to me sits a girl with long brown eyelashes and cherry lips like Lenny’s. I wonder two things: first, is she related to him? and second, is it okay to think about sex with your best friend’s relative at his mother’s wake? I spend the next few minutes searching for appropriate feelings, but it’s like looking for aspirin in a dark medicine chest.
    Then Clyde arrives, looking like hell in a seersucker suit. Clyde was always the tallest of us. Now he’s the baldest, gauntest, and most successful, with his own video company in Boston. Clyde’s latest project: a documentary about the Wright Brothers, narrated by former game-show panelist Orson Bean. When Clyde’sdone hugging people, I say, “Did you bring your bathing suit?” It’s code, our private joke, our secret handshake. Man, he looks awful. “How goes it?” I ask, as if it’s not painfully obvious.
    â€œFine,” says Clyde, “thanks to an array of pharmaceutical products. Still working at Corbinger’s?” Corbinger’s: the bicycle-seat factory. At one point, five of us worked there. I stayed.
    â€œI quit,” I tell him. “Last week.”
    â€œNo shit?” says Clyde.
    â€œHonestly,” I say, “ever since they stopped making banana seats my heart hasn’t been in it. I just passed my civil service exam. I’m going to work for the P.O.” P.O.: that’s shorthand for “post office.” Somehow it’s easier to get out that way.
    Like Geordie, Clyde’s been through a nasty divorce. The day the papers came through he passed the world’s largest kidney stone, his “piece of the rock,” he called it. Now he’s got a duodenal ulcer, some strange intestinal malady, plus bursitis in both elbows and a bone spur on his left foot. He walks with a cane and wears a special orthopedic shoe: thick, soft, black, a far cry from the brown wing tip on his other foot.
    â€œHow’s the stiff looking?” he asks.
    â€œStiff,” I say, shrugging. “There are some pretty good-looking nonstiffs here, though.” I nod toward the dark-lashed girl. Clyde looks, nods in turn, smiles. All the chronic illnesses in the world wouldn’t keep him from admiring a pretty face. When the young lady catches his look, he wiggles his fingers at her.
    â€œSo,” I ask, “did you bring your bathing suit, or what?”
    Clyde closes his eyes and bows his head like he’s about to own up to something embarrassing. For a second I’m afraid he’s going to say, “Al, those days are over for me,” or something heartbreaking.Instead he pops up his head, screws up his face, and says,
“But of course!”
    We gather on a ramp behind the funeral home. Still raining. Water surrounds us, dripping from eaves, gurgling in gutters, splashing into puddles. Lenny lights a cigar. “I can deal with a half hour of just about anything,” he says.
    Clyde, who never smoked, snatches the