The Swim Lessons I Paid For First

The Thursday

On the second Thursday, the ninth morning of ten, Shaye told me Abe was going to try a full length of the pool.

Twenty-five yards, from the shallow end to the deep end, no kickboard, no noodle.

“He asked me yesterday,” she said. “I told him we’d try today if he wanted. He said he wanted his mom to watch.”

So I watched. I crouched at the edge of the pool by the shallow end, in the yellow sundress I’d worn because it was the brightest thing I owned and I wanted him to be able to find me, with my sunglasses on and two striped towels in my arms, one for each of them.

It was a perfect June morning, the kind we get maybe ten of a year in west Michigan. The sky was that clean high blue.

The water was bright and the lane ropes floated in neat lines down the length of the pool and little kids in the shallow end were shrieking and splashing and throwing a ball.

Abe was holding the pool edge with both hands, right in front of me, his wet blond hair plastered across his forehead. Shaye was in the water beside him in her red swimsuit.

He looked up at me and grinned so wide I could see the gap where his front tooth had come out the week before.

“Watch me, Mom,” he said. “Don’t look away. Not even one time.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“Promise.”

Tucker had finished his own lesson and swum over to hang on the edge beside his brother. He was dripping, his hair darker blond than Abe’s, the color Alden’s had been.

He looked past me toward the back of the deck and his face changed.

“Mom,” he said. “Grandma’s here.”

I turned around.