Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer

Author:Ann Packer [Packer, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-59539-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

Molten

At four-thirty Kathryn chose a last CD and put it into Ben’s stereo. Low, gritty guitar chords burst from the speakers, the speed of a terrified heartbeat. She eased herself onto his beanbag chair, her head knocking time. I have a present: it is the present. You have to learn to find it within you. She loved this song, the hard, repeated chords, the singer’s hoarse voice. Usually she couldn’t really enjoy the last CD, she was so busy dreading the moment when she’d have to stop for the day: five-fifteen, five-twenty at the latest in order to be downstairs before Lainie got home from track practice, followed just a little later by Dave returning from work. Today was different, though. Both of them were going out tonight. Kathryn would be back up here by seven-thirty, and then she’d have hours. A vast opportunity. A bonus. A reprieve.

The verse went on, building to a glorious burst of sound, guitar bright and dirty at the same time, the fierce rat-a-tat of the drums. If you could save yourself, you could save us all. Go on living, prove us wrong. Your leap of faith could be a well-timed smile. Survival never goes out of style.

A philosophy of life. A philosophy of life in a rock song, a wake-up call of a rock song! Kathryn might have been surprised, before. Now she knew. Ben’s music contained everything.

She sang along to the next song, impatient without knowing why until the third one started and she understood she’d been waiting for it. It was her favorite on the album, the one she was always happiest to hear, although “happy” wasn’t really the word—“ravished” was more like it. She was ravished by the opening torrent of sound, by the way it thinned into a rocky stream of notes, and then into the vocals: Dreamed I was a fireman. I just smoked and watched you burn. (The first time she heard it, she thought it was “Jingo was a fireman.” Like the opening of a children’s story! Ben would’ve found that hilarious.) Dreamed I was an astronaut. I shot you down like a juggernaut. Dreamed we were still going out. Had that one a few times now. Woke up to find we were not. It’s good to be awake.

Actually, the first time she heard it she couldn’t tell what the words were. It was just noise, across the board. Racket. This band and nearly every other. (Of course, that was only about a week after the funeral—she could hardly understand her husband then.) Still, horrible as most of it sounded, she kept listening: first to ten-second bits, then to whole songs, whole albums. And it took. There were still bands she couldn’t stand, but others: the way one singer sort of half screamed and half laughed; the deep, velvety dee-dee-dee-doo of a bass; the clatter and roll of a drum set.

And the guitars. There’d been a moment early on when she suddenly stopped and asked herself just

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