This short story first appeared in the Virginia Writers Project Journal. It is reprinted here with permission.

Every morning, she shapes the word “HELP” in the steam on her glass shower door. She leaves it there for no one to see.

She understands the grim futility of her gesture. Regardless, she admires her tenacity, her daily attempt to call for the calvary to show up, but not the actual calvary. Not real people. She desires celestial involvement, an ethereal not corporeal intervention, some cosmic shift that would render life bearable again.

            She doesn’t cry right after it happens. Not when the cop arrives at her front door. Not when half the town, including his former co-workers and her current colleagues, shows up at the wake. Not as they lower his steel casket into the gaping red earth on that brutally sunny day.

He had worked over the mountain, an hour away. On his way home, he’d call and leave a message.  Since the day of his death, each night before trying to sleep, she listens to voicemails from the days before he died, the ones she hadn’t yet erased:

            Monday February 4–Claire, I’m at Kroger. Got your Calcium for the leg cramps. And Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Anything else?

            Tuesday February 5–Check out the sunset! Sky’s on fire!

            Thursday February 7–What’s that Wendell Berry quote? The one about hope and what? Despair?

Friday February 8–I’m leaving the office early to beat the storm.

            This week, high winds from another storm knock down power lines. No phone for three days. When the company restores her service, she notices his voicemails have vanished. She calls the company, but the tech says, “That file is gone.” She weeps—a feral howl so frightening that she swears she will never cry again.

Six Months Later

            Tonight, she’s heading for the on-campus pool, just as she does every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. She arrives an hour before closing time when the pool is almost always empty. That way she can avoid any colleagues or former students. She’s finagled an extended leave from the university and wants to stay invisible, away from stares and fumbled condolences.

            Often, at that time, there’s only a front-desk attendant and a few trainers in the gym but no guard, only a sign:  NO LIFEGUARD. SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. She always swims at her own risk.

The past two weeks, though, a scrawny kid fidgets in the chair, an orange rescue float across his lap. She thinks he’s probably a high schooler. When she arrives, he glances up from fiddling with his walkie talkie, tips his chin in her direction. A vee-shaped hank of blue-black hair hangs down his forehead and across one eye. She wonders how he can even see.

            Ugh. All those piercings:  nose, ears, lips, and even one eyebrow. And, if that isn’t enough, the boy sports thick rings on eight of his ten fingers.

            She swims, thinking of the cheap ring she’d won at the Hanover County Fair years ago. The brittle metal left a green circle around her finger. Her friend, Dessie, said she’d die of blood poisoning. She didn’t die. She realizes that if she’d died then, she wouldn’t have to be living through these grim days.

            She makes the turn at the end of her lane, wondering what would happen if the boy ever had to dive into the saltwater pool. Would the cheap metal turn his fingers green?

Does she care? No.

            She swims for fifteen minutes, trying to think about nothing. In the deep end, the arch of her left foot cramps, then the spasm rips through the calf. Her muscles have cramped before, but these contractions are the worst. She swims to the side but as she tries to haul herself out, pain slams into her chest. Her heart. Feels crushed.

            The boy yells.  Blows his whistle three times.

            In a flash, the man-child runs toward the lane, an orange tube under his arms.  He tries to lift her out. She groans in pain.

He jumps into the water and faces her. “What’s happening?”

            “Cramps. Chest pain…” She’s breathless.  All ache, in and out. Can’t tell where from or why.

            He slips behind her. His arms slide under hers. He tries to recline her onto the tube. She panics and pushes away.

            He inches forward, pressing his cheek against the side of her head. “What’s your name?”

            She turns; finds his eyes. Hazel and calm. “Claire.”

            “Claire, just breathe. One deep breath.” 

            She resists the urge to fight. She breathes the one deep breath, then allows his arms to encircle her shoulders. She leans into him and onto the tube.

            “I’ve called for help. Someone will be here any minute.”

His steady voice belies his pounding heart which she can feel against her back.

            Excruciating pain wraps her soul, tightening with each breath. She gasps.

            The boy eases in, holding her closer. “Breathe with me. In for four, out for four.”

            She breathes. One-two-three-four.

            At the far end of the pool, as a man approaches with a rescue board, she experiences an enormous pressure on her chest. She wonders what her husband, Samuel, felt during his last minutes.

            She weeps, not because of the pain, which is still overwhelming, but because this boy seems to care whether she lives or dies. His lavish expenditure of effort brings her to tears.

As the attendant arrives with the board, she experiences vivid sensations: tastes that first tomato of summer, feels the warmth of cotton towels straight out of the dryer, hears Samuel’s off-key voice, in the shower, singing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Inexplicably, despite the pain, or more precisely, in addition to that exquisite pain, she feels enveloped by the bountiful tenderness of the universe.

***

The Virginia Writers Project anthology is available on Amazon.