Pool Day

A sneak preview from my novella-in-progress

Somehow February is over and March arrives tomorrow and it’s time I send another one of these out. I’m coming down to the wire on my deadline and I’ve spent all day today running through different options of what to share with you, undecided.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing this month–I’ve written a first draft of a new essay, revised another one, started a handful of other things. I had lots of ideas for what I might say here, but I didn’t flesh them out all the way. None of those feel ready to share. Or feels appropriate, for one reason or another, to share here.

So instead, something older. Something I’ve already shared at a reading, so why not share it in a newsletter?

This is a present to you: a sneak preview of my novella, a work-in-progress but one I’ve spent a lot of time on. This is a scene cut out from the middle of the story, the end of the first act. I’m giving it to you with nearly no context, and I do hope and think it can stand alone. I’ll tell you just the basics: five college friends are traveling in Italy together, and have rented a house on the top of a hill. They want this to be the best trip ever, and they expect they will stay best friends for ever. The rest unfolds from there.

And this is a present to me: a way to meet my deadline, and to move on and get back to my other pending projects.

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Pool Day

Everyone made their way out to the pool at their own pace. The one of us who was (is, still) always the first in the water was the first in the water. Those who were (then, now too) slow to submerge were slow. But it was already hot enough, by mid-morning, to entice everyone in. Between dips, we dried off on the striped lounge chairs, rotating them like sunflowers. Whatever tension had built up over breakfast dissipated by the water’s edge. We could drop it. We could all keep our own little secrets, visible or invisible. We let them slide off our skin into the cool water.

We could float endlessly, face up to the clouds. The water was soft, unlike yesterday’s salty waves.

The hours seemed to pass so leisurely. We thought we’d be like this forever. Young, invincible, everything ahead of us, as close as sisters, closer. Floating like that until one of us got hungry and we began to fix a few things for lunch. Those quiet moments almost get forgotten when we think back to this trip now. It’s a shame, how the mundane pleasures fade first. But it was those moments we’d been craving, seeking, when we’d planned the trip. It was those moments that defined it. Or were supposed to, at least.

After lunch, Maggie called. Had we ignored a text from her that morning? Hard to say. Did we have a plan with her for that day we’d forgotten? No, we didn’t think so. But she called, which seemed surprising. She had never called before.

We put the phone on speaker and all said our hellos from wherever we stood. “Girls, what time is your train out of here tomorrow? I need to say bye to you before you leave, at least!” Her voice came out choppy, somewhat distorted by the speaker and the distance.

We told her we didn’t have much planned, that we were packing up our things, keeping it simple before tomorrow’s travel day. To which she responded: “Okay, why don’t I just come to you, then? I’m in town already.” We looked at each other. Half of us nodded, half of us shook our heads. Maggie added: “I haven’t seen that pool of yours yet.” We mimed different responses, tried to negotiate in silence, but there was no real option other than saying: “Of course! You’re totally welcome. Come on over.” Maggie responded brightly, said she’d grab something to drink and be over in a little bit, and we mumbled our affirmations towards the phone while our eyes said other things.

As soon as she hung up, we began passing the blame around. “I didn’t invite her, she invited herself!”

“You could have said we were busy.”

“Busy with what, would I have said? She would have just as well invited herself to whatever I’d made up.”

“I just would have preferred a chill, quiet pool day today, just us.”

“Well, let’s be nice about it, come on. We owe her at least that much.”

Once she was there, we were glad to have her, after all. She waved from the road and let herself in the gate, coming directly out back to the patio. She brandished a bottle of wine in greeting, the green of the bottle catching the light, and with a touch more drama than called for, exclaimed: “Now that’s a view!”

The afternoon went on as it would have, pleasantly enough. We swam, we played cards, we looked at photos from the days prior. Periodically, one of us would head inside to pack, or would claim as much and instead sit on her phone in the cool air for a while before reemerging.

Come early evening, most of us had gotten out and wrapped ourselves in towels, and now sat scattered around the terra cotta. Someone had placed a phone in a bowl and was playing the summer’s biggest hits. The biggest swimmer of us all was still in the pool, even though the air had cooled and the sun’s rays no longer hit the deck. One of us brought her a slice of melon and she swam up to a corner ledge and crossed her arms, bobbing up and down. And it’s unclear whose hand or foot made contact with the wine glass sitting at the edge of the pool, unclear why she’d left her wine glass so precariously posed at the lip, but all the same, the wine glass fell to the terra cotta with a clunk, cracked, the wine dribbled out, pooled, and poured slowly over the lip into the water below. A thin trail of red hit the chlorinated blue, curled around itself, before dispersing.

The two girls, one in and one out, watched in silence before the brief quiet was replaced with shrieks.

“You broke the glass!”

“You’re bleeding!”

“It’s just the wine. You knocked my glass over!”

“Why would you leave it right at the edge of the pool?”

“Because I’m in the pool, where did you want me to put it?”

“Um, maybe not so close to the edge!”

“I didn’t ask you to come stand right where it was and kick it over!”

“I didn’t kick it!”

“What happened, what happened?” another one of us, across the patio, asked in a panic, and with that unleashed our cacophony.

“Don’t step, the glass is broken.”

“Can you go get the broom? And shoes?”

“Wait was it one of their wine glasses?”

“You are actually bleeding! Look at your hand!”

“Oh my god, do you have a piece of glass in your hand?”

“Oh. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Do not put your blood in the pool!! We can’t ruin their pool.”

“The wine already got in the pool. And like, so much sunscreen. I think the pool will be okay.”

“I don’t feel it. Is that weird, that it cut me without me noticing?”

“You’ve been in the pool too long, it’s made your hands all pruney.”

“Wine got in the pool? Like how much wine though?”

“Okay but that’s not the same as blood. That’s gotta be a health hazard.” Our voices tumbled-over one another.

“Jeez. Calm down.”

“Just like, tread water. Don’t put your hand down.”

“I got the broom! Where is the glass?”

“Don’t sweep it into the pool!”

“Oh, my god! Quit it with the pool. I know, I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re barefoot! You idiot.”

“My shoes are right there, girl. Can you breathe?”

“Can someone help me out of here, maybe?” She held her hand aloft still, red slicing down to wrist, and had swum over to a further edge of the pool while the glass was being swept up. “I don’t want to drip.”

“Oh god, of course, coming. Where’s your towel?”

Maggie sat there, quietly, watching us. She did not say a word, as we clamored after one another, running around the pool deck with broom and sandals and back into the house in search of bandaids. Once we’d gotten ourselves back together–hand bandaged, glass thrown out, broom put back away–we tried to laugh it off. Tried to show Maggie it was nothing. What did we look like to her, to an outsider? A bunch of annoying tourists? What did we look like to ourselves, through the eyes of an observer?