Rita’s mom signs her up for a Saturday morning swim class at the Y because they’re surrounded by water. There’s the big lake and two rivers, even a creek out back of their apartment building that’s a little more than a miserable trickle for most of the year but roars awake when the snow melts. Two boys drowned there last year, according to Rita’s mom, something Rita suspects is as much of a lie as the swimming lessons. Her mom wants her out of the house on Saturday mornings in order to make breakfast for whatever young guy she dragged home from the bar on Friday—eggs with real potatoes and bacon instead of a couple of pop tarts fresh from the wrapper. Her mother needs to pretend Rita away if only for a few hours, pretend like she’s nineteen again and childless, the years when she could shove everything she owned into a backpack and follow a guy wherever he was going – Alaska, Tahiti, even Marrakesh. And Rita doesn’t mind swim class, though she’s the biggest and the oldest by far. There are toddlers who can barely walk and a five-year-old who cries and clings and has to be pried away from his mom by the swim teacher. But in the water they’re all the same in their goggles and red bathing caps and when it’s finally Rita’s turn to go under and hold her breath, she stays there long after the whistle is blown. Like a giant jar of mint jelly, she says to the swim teacher when he asks her what in hell was she thinking. For the rest of the class, she sits alone in the bleachers, thinking: Like I belonged there. That sweet.
