Swimming Read Online Free PDF

I put my ear to the door, all I hear is nothing, as if she’s not even there. Dot’s sitting at the kitchen counter, perfecting herself through knowledge. Roxanne is in the basement figuring out how to build her own pot pipe with a toilet paper roll and duct tape, aluminum foil, and a toothpick. I don’t know where my parents are; they’re gone. When they’re gone, June, a troubled parishioner’s wayward daughter, takes care of us. She cleans the oven, folds clothes, talks on the phone, twitching with the genetic energy that keeps getting her entire family into trouble with both God and the Law. June swears when my parents aren’t around, says: I wonder where in the hell all that damn cake goes . I shrug. She shrugs back. We have things in common. We like packaged foods, are never tired, can do many things at once, and she, like me, constantly walks into things, trips on stairs, or falls into space until one of her bony knobs hits something that leaves a mark. We compare bruises. She cleans the house in a spastic way, running the vacuum cleaner in looping disorganized lines that I follow like crazy trails. When she’s finished, she sits on a bar stool twirling, reading magazines, watching TV.
    Don’t you get sick of swimming? She’s watching me forage for food.
    No. Three times a week is practically never. Most swimmers my age are swimming twice a day . I’m unwrapping the aluminum foil around a marbled Bundt cake with white creamy frosting.
    I’d be sick of it already … She’s picking at a frayed edge of her jeans. What do you think about when you’re swimming anyway? She’s fingering an earring.
    Nothing. Swimming . I lie, pulling cream out of cake with my pinkie.
    When Leonard shows up, he’s incredibly busy; on the phone, buried in a book, intently staring at the wall with a posture that defies interruption. Whatever feelings he has are hidden, but his inside face is starting to show. The new one is stiffer, quieter, more alone. I interrupt, walking into his study and staring at him until he can’t stand it anymore, has to look up.
    Dad, can I start swimming with Coach Stan year-round again? The Sisters say that I’ve mostly stopped all the excessive flightiness. I’m almost thirteen … And I’m definitely not falling asleep in class. I have a feeling I’ll never fall asleep in class again …
    He stops me with one hand. No .
    I find my mother in the living room tracing back time with her favorite friends, a pot of tea and a plate of old cookies from the tin canister above the microwave sitting untouched between them. I listen as she swirls back to her pregnancy searching for odd meals, strange yearnings, one cocktail with hard alcohol, secondhand smoke, synthetic clothing, bug repellent, moments of close proximity with the Glenwood power plant. I listen as she examines the history of her dead relatives. She stares at me with narrow eyes and a flat mouth when I break into a space she hasn’t filled in yet with words, explaining earnestly with many hand movements the huge hole that not swimming for the Dolphins year-round has made in my now empty-feeling life. She stops me mid-sentence, says: Be quiet in a voice I’ve never heard before that must have hurt her throat to use.

Christ’s Mass
    Leonard’s driving like a maniac, barely missing the cars that line the street. We’re on our way to Christmas mass at Holy Name. Late. Nuns hate late. Late for Christmas equals late for Christ. I hold on to the strap of the door so I don’t crush Roxanne, who’s slumped next to me. If I crush Roxanne, she’ll crush Dot, who’ll crush Bron, then there’ll be trouble; we’d gotten our orders the night before: Leave her be . I hang on to the strap of the door as we careen and my mother sighs even though it’s her fault; when we were supposed to be entering the church with other families, she was walking around the house in nothing but a chiffon blouse and black panty hose, her vaginal muff flattened