There's a Word for That by Sloane Tanen

Author:Sloane Tanen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Henry went to the YMCA in Santa Monica after his visit with Bunny. He’d gone after their last couple of visits, needing to burn off energy. Dr. Zimmerman had strongly advised him against swimming, but Dr. Zimmerman wasn’t spending every other day in family therapy with his mother. The Y was on his way home from Malibu, and the pool was clean and nearly empty in the evenings.

He dived into the heavily chlorinated water and tried to keep up with the other swimmers, a few elderly people, all doing laps at an impressive pace. How he loved the silence and weightlessness underwater. He’d stopped for a rest when he noticed a woman in a navy swimsuit and a red swim cap standing at the edge of the pool. He decided to get out, not wanting to share his lane. He swam to the stairs.

“Don’t get out on my account,” she said.

“I was finished anyway,” he said, pulling himself up on the railing and removing his goggles. He didn’t welcome the cold air any more than the unwanted conversation.

“Henry Holter?” she asked, looking him up and down. He pushed his chest out a bit. Henry had been told he had a young man’s body. He took a childish pride in that fact, if for no other reason than that he did so little to maintain it.

“Yes?” He took off his cap and removed his earplugs. He didn’t recognize the woman without his glasses on but there was something pleasing about the blurred view of her. That she didn’t remove her cap was a testament to her lack of vanity.

“I’m Janine,” she said, lowering her body into the pool. “We met at Directions.”

“Ah!” Henry said, genuinely surprised. “I don’t think I ever caught your name. Didn’t recognize you without my glasses and with you wearing that cap.”

“You look as if you’re feeling better.”

“Ah, well. Perhaps I’ve been empowered by the Q-TIP technique.”

Janine appeared confused.

“‘Quit taking it personally,’” he clarified, wondering that Janine wasn’t familiar with the Directions vernacular. In a typical display of sanctimonious theatrics, Mitchell had introduced the concept after handing both Henry and his mother their very own Q-tips. Henry laughed at the memory. “I find there’s nothing like a catchy acronym and a symbolic cotton swab to set forty years of familial dysfunction right.”

She grinned and Henry felt his stomach tighten as if he suddenly had something at stake. “So, you swim here?” he asked idiotically. He was distracted by her eyes, which were expressive and, like her smile, a little hard to read.

“I used to swim here when I was a girl. And then I stopped.”

“Why’s that?”

“My mom died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

“No,” he said. “Hard to know what to say is all.”

She put on her goggles, adjusted them, then disappeared into the pool. He felt a sense of urgency. His heart was racing. He stood at the edge of the water, staring in like an ass. She broke the surface with a beatific expression, any sorrow seemingly washed away.

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