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amy wilensky

Essay by Amy Wilensky

The day they poured the concrete was hot, so hot that we spent the morning puddle jumping on the blazing driveway in puddles we had made ourselves with the garden hose. We had waited most of the day, through a hectic morning, the infinite afternoon, until finally it was done and we filed down the path to see it, finished. It lay set like a gem in the center of the new gray field, a glinting sheet of turquoise. It had a diving board, two ladders, patterned vinyl siding and a slippery blue floor. I had never seen wet concrete before. I felt an irresistible urge to touch it, to poke it and leave a mark, and I would have done so-as I still touch wet paint now with the tip of my finger if no one's looking-if we had not been allowed to make the footprints. They are still there: five perfect right feet, inconceivably small, in descending order of size. Mine is third, although I am the oldest, the oldest of my grandmother's now nine grandchildren, but at that time, when the concrete was set, and the pool sparkled like a gem, there were only the five of us.

Growing up I spent summers-each summer-at my grandparents' swimming pool. Every day began there, and we would walk the two miles from my house, or ride our bikes, if my mother couldn't take us, or wouldn't when we wanted to go. My three cousins had three miles, and would arrive every so often on foot, dripping with sweat and fiercely freckled but undaunted. Mostly we were driven. A changing guard of friends accompanied us on occasion but as peripheral players only-none of us felt an overwhelming need to make the necessary effort to integrate outsiders. My summer world orbited decisively around it, this pool, this pinpoint on a map, this epicenter of a small suburban universe. I remember most specifically the contrast game, in which you would stand under the icy spray from the hose until you wanted to scream, at which point the holder of the hose would drop it and you would run and plunge headlong into the pool, which felt like a bathtub by comparison.

When I was little I thought the pool was beautiful, a magazine spread of a Hollywood starlet's oasis, a fenced-in, inclusive safety zone. Sometimes, when my aunt heard lightening, or when my mother's contest to see who could swim the most laps inspired unrelenting competition, we had to be bribed to get out of it. That summer the footprints dried we learned to jump in the deep end holding hands all in a row, my aunt in the middle counting to three, and then to three again when we balked the first time. These were the days when for sheer dramatic effect my grandfather would jump in wearing all his clothes and his heavy work shoes and when-I had to confirm this with a cousin because it seems so out of character-my solemn uncle and my dignified mother chased each other around the pool in circles, leaping over the diving board, until my mother, squealing, won and pushed my uncle in. My grandfather dropped silver dollars to the bottom for us to dive and practice holding our breath; by the time I could do this, the last to learn with apparently the smallest lung capacity, my grandfather had been dead a year. Occasionally there would be the unparalleled excitement of the discovery of a drowned mouse, saturated with water and preserved by chlorine, who required instant scooping and an elaborate burial.

By the time we hit high school, hit it each of us full force and unprepared, the pool had become a chore, a place to go for a quick dip if it was really hot, and a faintly buzzing background hum to camps and jobs and peers. Once or twice a summer, with a fleeting sense of obligation, I hunted down the long-handled net and made a perfunctory circle or two, dishing out the dead bugs and secretly reverting to my childhood habit of rescuing the live ones. My new little cousins, at my grandmother's while my aunt worked, loved the pool, begged me to swim with them, and once in a while I would break out of my sulky adolescent angst and humor them. After a condescending ten minutes or so, I stood shrouded in my towel, old enough to be the required omnipresent grown-up, watching. The sight of them paddling around depressed me. There were not enough of them; the two small blonde heads looked lonely and pointless, like faded sinking buoys in a great bay, and they did not know the right games. At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I did not want to teach them.

The summer after our first year of college my cousin Andy-my age exactly-had a party at the pool-a "pool party" I called it, mockingly, snobbishly, complete with lanterns, coolers, a borrowed boom box and the requisite complaint from the neighbors to the lackadaisical local police. What a cheesy American seventies cliché, I remember thinking when he invited me. "I don't think so," I answered too quickly, rolling my eyes. "You can help vacuum then," he elbowed me, not really trying to convince me, knowing I would never come. It reminded me how much he especially had always hated the vacuuming. That same summer my sister and I drove over one night, long after my grandmother had fallen asleep to the lull of the late show, for what we used to call a "midnight swim." I caught my breath as I pushed open the faded gate; the pool looked magical. I had forgotten how it looked at night, enclosed by hundred-year-old pines and a patch of stars on black, and I floated on my back, forgetting to feel old and detached and worried about everything and nothing in particular. For a little while it felt like when floating was enough, when a raring game of Marco Polo would suffice as the climax to a day of many high points, and beside me, eyes open at the stars but silent, Alison floated too.

This past Christmas I drove to my grandmother's house to deliver her the newspapers and some dishes my mother had borrowed and just because I hadn't been there in a while. I felt a twinge of maybe guilt that I store not so safely in my subconscious when I found my grandmother sitting alone on the sun porch that looks out over the swimming pool. As I sat down across from her I tried not to look at the Christmas tree, a fifth the size it used to be when we were little and Christmas was celebrated here. Out the window, over rows of thriving cacti on the sill, the pool was covered by an enormous dark green tarp that sagged miserably in the middle, weighted down by half a foot of dirty water, clumps of ice, mucky leaves and pine needles. The patio furniture, rusted and distorted, had been thoughtlessly left out, but someone had removed the cushions, a fact that surprised me and seemed somehow arbitrary. It occurred to me that I had not been in the pool, or out by it, for at least five years.

Finally I do look at the tree, at the few familiar ornaments first, and then the tree itself. "It's nice, isn't it?" my grandmother says. "Different." At first I think she is being sarcastic, although that would be unlike her, but my eyes follow hers, downward, and suddenly I notice that the tree is not in its usual stand but in a pot. That it is alive, rooted, growing even as we speak. The soil looks moist, as though my grandmother may have watered it minutes before. Our eyes meet. "Your mother bought it for me," she says. "I'm going to plant it in the spring." We sit comfortably in silence until I feel it is time to go, and I realize we are both looking outside, through the window, at the pool. This time I do not see the decrepit concrete, headless lanterns, skeletons of lawn chairs. I see instead a line of children holding hands, ready to take a unified first jump. I see my uncle tumbling backward, arms flailing, laughing as he falls. I see myself engaged in saving bugs, impervious to mocking voices, concentration plain in every aspect of my face. I see five small footprints, edges crumbled but distinct and perfect still, in descending order of size, not age. I drive away without my nagging twinge of guilt. When I reach the end of the long driveway, I realize I have been holding my breath.