A Swim Back Home

A Swim Back Home

by

Denise Sawyer

A Swim Back Home

by Denise Sawyer

Copyright © 2023 by Denise Sawyer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

First Edition

ISBN-13: 978-1-891486-17-3

Published by: Romagnoli Publications

email: [email protected]

website: www.romagnoli-publications.com

Reviews

A Swim Back Home is a poignant tale of longing for childhood and the wish to return and change that one thing that would make everything right. When that chance seems to be handed to Renee, she is forced to weigh the possible costs to her family - a process that changes her as much as any tinkering of the past would do. With humor and wisdom, Sawyer expertly interweaves the conflicts between adult reality and childhood yearnings, and between fantasy and reality, into a compelling tapestry that is a joy to read.

Edward H. Jacobs, Ph.D.— author of Fathering the ADHD Child and ADHD: Helping Parents Help Their Children

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the members of my writing group: Linda, Ed, and Josh. Without your encouragement and excellent feedback, A Swim Back Home would have been recycled into paper straws. I thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. As Linda liked to say, I love us.

In childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking out. In memories of childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking in.

Robert Brault

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

About the Author: Denise Sawyer

Author’s Note

1960’s References

Chapter One

I wasn’t planning on going in the pool that day. The sky threatened rain and it was on the cool side, but my husband and I were having our usual tired argument about my collecting things, and then John goes and drops his little nugget: So when were you going to tell me about the storage unit, Renee?

I was thinking NEVER, John, but I couldn’t tell him that. It’s not like I’m a hoarder; I just like collecting mementos from the 1960s, specifically Life magazines, newspapers, albums, posters, and yes, I admit, some furniture. If I were a hoarder though, I would have piles of garbage reaching to the ceiling. The Life magazines are stacked neatly under the living room couch. You can hardly see them. So I wondered how he found out about the storage unit. Now that I was retired, I always brought in the mail.

Although I had woken up with a terrible headache that morning, he had kindly waited until the four Tylenol had numbed my headache to spar with me. He stood at the foot of the bed and tossed the Pack-A-Way Self Storage bill in my lap. Attached to the late notice was a sticky note written in the formal cursive hand of our neighbor next door. Her note said she found the bill mixed in with her mail and that she was sorry it took so long to get it to us. I reached over to John’s nightstand and took a sip of his coffee. It was black and bitter. So, did you go there?

Yeah, Renee, I found the key, he said solemnly. First you turn every room into a Mid Century throwback, and then I find a storage unit full of even more crap. He headed for the master bath.

You didn’t seem to mind hauling my father’s old workbench all the way up from Massachusetts, I said dumbly.

John abruptly turned around. That was five years ago. I knew how much that monstrosity meant to you and besides, nobody else in your family would take it.

When I didn’t respond, he went into the bathroom and started brushing shaving cream on his face from a bar of shaving soap he kept in a metal dish by the sink.

John, it’s my money, I said, watching his reflection shave in the bathroom mirror.

He put down the razor and stood in the doorway. You’re the one who wants to sell the house and buy a condo in Florida. Where were you going to park the workbench, huh, Renee? He turned back to the mirror. This is crazy, he said to his reflection. Then he shut the door.

John didn’t understand what it was like to move several states away from your friends and relatives right before entering the sixth grade. My parents robbed me of the life I was supposed to have in New Jersey. John would never get it because he never left New Hampshire. I waited until I heard the shower running before I threw off the covers in disgust. I’m going for a swim, I mumbled to the bathroom door.

* * *

A low mist had covered the slick lawn. I opened and re- latched the pool gate quietly. It was still early, but I didn’t want to alert the widower next door. He had a wildlife camera supposedly fixed on his backyard, but lately he had been making skinny-dipping innuendos.

The early morning headache started to make a comeback, but I ignored it. Diving had always calmed me. And I wanted to practice a few dives before John went to work, not that I was any good. He didn’t like me diving when no one was home saying, What if you crack your head on the bottom?

I watched the robotic pool vacuum we called Rosie zip around in the deep end. John had thrown her in the night before. He had set her up on a cleaning schedule with a timer to clean every night. My job was to toss her in after I was done swimming for the day, but I kept forgetting. I was also forgetting to close the garage doors and the porch slider. John gave up and silently threw Rosie in the pool each night before securing the house. I looked at the timer. She had another fifteen minutes of cleaning left. I considered taking her out; however, she was heavy. I decided to leave her in. I’d swim around her. Down at the deep end, her power supply sat safely on the pool deck, plugged into an electrical outlet in the pool house. Although a little frayed, her long blue cord was plugged into the other end of the power supply. I waded in up to my waist. The water was refreshingly cool. I plunged under the water, hoping that the shock of cold water on my head would freeze out the headache.

The sun peeked through a hole in the thick cloud cover, and I dreamily watched the sun cast shimmering aqua-colored ripples on the bottom of the pool. The ripples formed an iridescent chain link fence that do-si-doed around itself, collapsing and reforming new links.

I surfaced and smoothed back my hair. My mind drifted back to John. Yes, the workbench was a heavy wooden hulk as tall as an altar. It took up the entire back wall of the garage. Back in the 1950s, it was my father’s old drafting desk. He had carted it home from the plant after they gave him a newer, snazzier desk. With its deep wooden drawers and center cabinet, it made an excellent workbench. For sixty years, it stood silently in garages, first in Colonia, New Jersey, then in Massachusetts, and finally up here in New Hampshire. Each smear of paint was a tiny snapshot in time, proof of ordinary lives lived.

I could never part with this family heirloom. They have self-storage units in Florida too. I bet there are LOTS of storage units down there. People were retiring and hauling stuff from their hometowns where they had lived all their lives.

The last time I saw my childhood home was maybe 20 years ago. I received a fancy invitation to my Uncle Gene’s 80th birthday party. I was brimming with anticipation when I backed out of my driveway in New Hampshire for the five-hour drive down to the mecca of my childhood. During the party, my cousins and I reminisced about Christmases spent together, like the Christmas when my cousin Stephen played scary music on an old piano in his cellar and then ran up the stairs and locked the door. After the party, I was riding in my cousin Anne’s car when the four-glasses-of-wine melancholy set in. As we drove along the Garden State Parkway, I told Anne how lucky she was to have lived her whole life in one town and then inherited her parents’ house.

Yeah, but the neighborhood is shot to hell, Renee, and I can’t afford to live anywhere else, she said, weaving around a slow-moving pickup truck.

But you could have lunch with someone you went to kindergarten with, I remember telling her.

Yeah, but I don’t. Besides, everyone moved away as soon as they could.

I told her that I would have stuck around and that I was devastated when we moved to Massachusetts for my father’s new job back in 1966. That’s when Anne suggested we drive by the house.

As much as I longed to see my cherished childhood home, I wasn’t sure I could handle any snooty upgrades or homesteads ravaged by time. It was meant to be flash-frozen like a yearbook photo of the high school hunk. You don’t want that memory tapping you on the shoulder at Trader Joe’s to look like Homer Simpson. But I yearned to see my home again. My heart quickened as Anne merged smoothly onto a busy street lined with strip malls. Although the street had a vaguely familiar- sounding name, nothing looked familiar. However, when we rounded the corner onto Lake Avenue, I held my breath, waiting for Lake’s candy store to appear on the next corner. PULL IN HERE! I shouted.

Lake’s wasn’t there. In its place was a bank, hogging most of the plaza. Also crammed in there was a pizza place, a dry cleaner, and a salon, all with garish neon signage on their large glass front windows. What the hell!

Anne turned off the engine. Were you expecting it to look the same?

The wine buzz had worn off, and now I was irritated. Yes, I expected the old clapboard store with its creaky wooden floor, and huge candy counter to be right where I left it. I took a breath. Let’s go around the corner and see what the rest of the block looks like, I told her.

When we turned onto Cameo Place, the neighborhood redeemed itself. I was pleased to see that the original 1950’s look-alike split levels had survived. However, as we drove further into the development, many of the starter homes were replaced by showy 4-bedroom colonials wedged into their quarter-acre lots. As if to prove their superiority, their taller silhouettes cast menacing shadows over the older homes.

I think you went past my house, Anne.

The GPS agreed and ordered her to turn around. Rolling slowly back up the street, Anne came to a stop in front of a hulking, dirty green dumpster parked in a crumbling driveway. Tall pieces of rotting lumber stuck out of the dumpster. They looked like wooden swords abandoned after a noble fight. Where my house was supposed to be, was a deep pit blocked off by a wobbly, orange construction fence.

They tore down my house! I hollered out the window. Then I undid my seatbelt and got out of the car.

Where are you going? Anne said from behind the wheel.

I strode up the driveway. When I reached the dumpster, I hefted myself up and peered over the edge, catching a whiff of rotting wood and age. I was hoping there would be something I could salvage. I was mildly aware of what a nut job I must have looked like to neighbors peeking through kitchen windows. Shoving over pieces of fake stone siding, I searched for something familiar: the pink tile from the upstairs bathroom or perhaps the laundry room cabinets my father had built. Nothing.

Feeling defeated, I jumped down from the dumpster and walked towards the pit. Next to the deep hole, lying on its side like a fallen horse, was the old weeping willow tree, root ball exposed. Something glinted under the tangle of snake-like roots. That’s when I found Audrey’s Magic 8-Ball.

What are you doing?

I snapped