She remembers that she was once a very good swimmer. She remembers failing her last driver’s test three times in a row. She remembers that the day after her father left them her mother sprinkled little piles of salt in the corner of every room to purify the house. She remembers that they never spoke of him.
She does not remember asking your father, when he comes home from the pharmacy, what took him so long, or who he talked to, or whether or not the pharmacist was pretty. She does not always remember his name.
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… trying to imagine the pool without us. The lifeguard’s empty chair standing tall by the bleachers. The scoreless scoreboard. The sharp chlorinated tang of the uninhaled thick wet air. The long-poled skimmer net proper up in the corner, secretly dreaming of better things — a dead leaf, a butterfly, a crocodile, a little brown bird, something, anything, besides the usual haul of rubber bands and tangled-up knots of hair.
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