Chris Riley
A LAP FOR JENNY
Jenny always brought the best out of her dad, Miles. At a campsite near Phoenix, Arizona, he had learned how to cook-up a fantastic plate of beans and rice using nothing but a Coleman camp-grill and an old, stale jar of 5-spice. And when Jenny would sit in her chair, as the sun went down swinging into Apache Lake with a brilliant explosion of pinks, yellows, and oranges, her eyes would find nothing in the way worth staring at other than her dad, as he stood there stirring their supper, grinning like a fool.
Then, long after the sun had been extinguished, and the numerous critters of any campsite found across America came crawling out of their holes, scrounging for scraps, Miles would fire up the lantern hung on a pole above his chair, and read out-loud some J.K. Rowling, or Lemony Snickets, or any other book which caught his eye from the used book store in town.
Some nights they’d roast marshmallows for dessert, set them in a bowl to cool off with a few chocolate chips, then spoon them out as needed. But a peanut-butter and honey sandwich was always Jenny’s favorite. Miles had discovered that if you pour the honey onto both pieces of bread, then walk away and clean the dishes, or empty the trash, or get their beds ready, that when you came back to complete the sandwich afterward, that honey would have crystallized into the pores of the bread, and created the most divine, sweetest crunch ever. It was also one of the few things Jenny could eat without much help from her dad, which allowed him to continue reading.
On Sundays, now and then, they still went to church. Even though Miles had a bone to pick with God, he kept this to himself while he loaded Jenny into the R.V., helped her into her blue dress, put on some khaki slacks and a nice shirt for himself, then slowly drove off to town. And when they got there, it was never too difficult for Miles to set aside his reservations about the Lord. Jenny was only ten years old, so all she saw were smiling faces looking down at her while her dad pushed her chair across the lobby floor. She only observed the fine paintings and colorful array of flowers, or the pretty clothes, jewelry, hair, and other fashions worn by the women there. And Jenny only heard the smooth voice of a nice young man as he preached the gospel, while Miles sat next to her flipping pages in the bible, asking in a low voice how she was doing, if she was thirsty, or had to go to the bathroom. Jenny always brought the best out of her dad.
ϖ
They’d landed a great deal on a used Winnebago at the car lot south of Phoenix, and Miles had a good long laugh after he had bought it, joking to Jenny that “No one ever traveled south of Phoenix—not by camper, at least.” Miles himself was only thirty-five years old, which is meant to say that he had actually never even operated a vehicle of that size before. It was truly an intimidating piece of machinery, and had his knuckles fading white over the steering wheel on more than one occasion.
Their first trip out of town was only a test-run for them with that Winnebago. How well could Miles handle its behemoth size out upon the open road? Was there enough room to accommodate an indefinite lifestyle for the two of them? Could they at some point come to call that camper their home? Eventually Miles figured it all out—it was only an R.V. for crying out loud—and they both smiled when Jenny proposed that they should name her “Winnie.”
Things weren’t always like that for the two of them—their nomadic lifestyle. Before Miles sold their house to pay for their life out upon the road, and within various campgrounds, they lived in a nice piece of suburbia just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Jenny had her own room, painted pink and white, with purple polka dots here and there, and several posters of Tinker Bell hung across the walls, just to remind her dad how ornery she could be. They spent the whole day after her ninth birthday painting and decorating that room. At her party, a few girls snickered over the Sesame Street motif which had encompassed the vast majority of Jenny’s bedroom. Apparently Elmo and Big Bird were no longer in style. And even though what was “in” were a handful of teeny-bopper stage princes (as Miles had coined the term), the sight of a Justin Bieber standing under a spotlight, body frozen in the contortion of some silly dance-move while he smiled at Jenny, never quite sat well with Miles. So they compromised with Tinker Bell.
But the poster that stayed on Jenny’s wall, and the one that none of her friends would even dare critique (unless of course, they did so in an approving manner), was a poster titled Just One More Lap. Captured in a tense moment of a women’s fifty meter swim race, the image—which hung on the wall just above Jenny’s feet—was that of a woman up for air, elbow bent to the sky in a classic freestyle position, and her black goggles pressed into her face, which had been frozen in a fierce gesture of determination.
Miles had bought that poster for Jenny the day after she cried herself to sleep in his arms on the couch. Jenny was a swimmer. She swam on a community kid’s team, and loved the sport with a passion like none other. She knew all the names of the current swim stars. All the Olympic medalists. Jenny was ten, and Miles couldn’t help but struggle over his thoughts that ten-year olds shouldn’t hold such high expectations upon themselves—the way she did with her swimming. His idea of a ten-year old was a child who worried more about finishing their supper so that they may have their dessert, rather than trimming two seconds off their best race time by the end of next week. But again, Jenny was a swimmer. And as her dad eventually came to realize, the sport of swimming, an activity that ultimately lent itself to ravenous appetites for food, along with a seemingly rested mind, which in turn lent itself to a good night’s sleep and better grades at school, was also something much more than just a sport for those who participated in it. And although Miles couldn’t quite grasp the passion Jenny had for that activity, he certainly witnessed it when she would come home from practice and devour both her supper and dessert, pour through her homework like Einstein on a case of Redbulls, then crash into her pillow later in the night. With results like that, and being the kind of parent he was, Miles couldn’t help but then feel her passion, on those nights when Jenny sat on his lap in front of the television, crying over the fact that she had lost two seconds in the pool earlier that day. Gone for good, like the diamond off a ring.
ϖ
“She needs to focus on her grades, Miles.”
“Yeah, I know. But she’s getting good grades. And she’s only ten, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m just saying...don’t let her swimming get in the way. Grades are what matter most.”
There would always be two seconds of dead conversation between Miles and his older sister Melinda, whenever he’d tell her about one of Jenny’s swim meets. Swimming had never been his sport, and obviously not Melinda’s either, but for Jenny’s mother, Gloria—most certainly.
Just like Jenny, Gloria picked up swimming when she was a child, and she kept it with her for life. She swam the butterfly straight through four years of college, and on the day she graduated, on that very night, before she went to bed, Gloria stopped by the campus pool for one last swim. One last attempt to trim two seconds off her best time. And years later, on a crash-course weekend of relaxation at Ojo Caliente, half-submerged in a hot spring under the night sky, she laughed, and told Miles about that last swim of hers in college.
Miles had just stared back at her. In his mind, the thought of swimming right up and through your very last day of college was akin to swimming right past the finish line of a race, yet blindly continuing onward, smacking water like you had only just begun.
“Well, did you beat your best time,” he’d finally asked. “Of course I did,” Gloria replied, in what Miles had presumed was a lie.
After they had been married, had Jenny, and even while they were going through their divorce shortly after Jenny’s fifth birthday, Gloria kept an un-broken ritual of stopping by the gym after work for three-thousand yards in the pool. Three-thousand yards, every night.
Melinda, Mile’s sister, called it “Type-A Syndrome.” She’d recognized it the first day she met Gloria, at a coffee house in downtown Phoenix, near Gloria’s office. They had met for lunch while Melinda was driving home to Flagstaff one afternoon, after her daughter’s dance competition in Tucson.
“So how long have you known my brother again?” Melinda had asked, coffee raised to her lips.
“Two years now,” replied Gloria, eyes to her watch.
“Wow. And where did you guys meet?”
“Right here.”
Much of those years with Gloria were a journey through denial for Miles. Looking back on it now, he would say he knew all along that their marriage was nothing short of a doomed prospect. He would say that they were too different to make things work. She had always been a Type A, and at that time, he was more like a Type C. Even a D. But nevertheless, Miles was certainly slapped broad-side when Gloria finally called it quits. He was hit hard, because Gloria was done with everything. The roles of being a wife and a mother had come to press that woman beyond strain. Meet the needs of her husband, give attention to her daughter, get things done at the office. It had all been just too much for Gloria.
Where’s she gonna go, Daddy? Why doesn’t she wanna live with us anymore?
And those were the nights that almost proved to be too much for Miles.
ϖ
Apache Lake had the best camp-sites in the whole state of Arizona, by far. “Just look at that sky, Jenny! Ever see colors like that before? Not me.”
The RVs had a spot on the eastern side of the lake where they all parked, which incidentally offered a stunning sunset just about every night of the year. Most of the time, the days would end in a cloudless horizon of crimson fire, with the sun dipping into the lake and leaving behind a vast purple sky. “Like a painting, Jenny,” Miles would say, as he cooked their dinner. “But even better.” And every night, they would sit in their chairs and watch the sun go down while they ate their dessert, and Miles would read to Jenny, and eventually she would fall asleep in her chair with a smile on her face; after which, her dad would carry her into the RV, and tuck her into her bed.
The lake itself was the perfect temperature for at least half the year. Usually at about one o’clock in the afternoon, when the fish were done biting for a few hours, Miles would help Jenny into her bathing suit, and then the two of them would sit in the water, knee-deep, and just cool off. They would laugh as they watched fingerlings swim up and peck at their toes. Occasionally, Miles would sprinkle bread crumbs onto the surface, and then the water would boil with excitement, stirring a laugh or two out of him and Jenny.
“We used to swim here,” Jenny said one day, her hand awkwardly stretching through the water.
Two seconds of a dead conversation; it had taken Miles back to the past. Back to Melinda and Gloria. Back to their house outside Phoenix, and into Jenny’s bedroom. Back to the swim meets, where his daughter would burn through the competition like they were nothing but fingerlings, and she was a full-grown trout.
Every year on July 1st, there’s an open water swim race held in Apache Lake. Stretching 1.6 miles, the course spans across a section of water along the lake’s southern shores. And at the end of the race, upon a sandy beach near the eastern corner of the lake, where all the RVs park, there’s always a mountain of eggs and hash browns, and a river of orange juice just waiting to be conquered by the swimmers after they come trudging out of the water.
Jenny had only swam that race once, when she was nine years old, but Miles and Gloria were both there for her, standing corkscrewed on the eastern shore next to the make-shift cook station, as they looked out upon the horizon. Jenny, and the few other kids from her team who attended the race, swam on the far perimeter of the course, while their coach slowly trolled next to them in a kayak. Although fiercely anxious for his daughter on that day, the two things which stood out in Miles’ mind during the race, other than him being grateful that Jenny’s coach was out there in the water with her, was the incessant hum of a generator as it slaved to keep the cook station operational, and the sense of admiration he had for his ex-wife. Gloria could’ve done a whole bunch of things on that Saturday morning. She could’ve crossed off a dozen chores from the list he knew she kept hung from her refrigerator. Or, Gloria could’ve been right there next to Jenny, swimming a mixture of breast-stroke and freestyle, even back-stroke, while her daughter cruised along toward the finish line. But because Gloria simply stood and waited next to Miles, her arms crossed around her chest in the eighty-degree early morning dawn, her teeth chewing a hole right through her bottom lip, and her eyes lingering upon the glassy surface of the lake’s horizon, barely cognizant of Miles’ presence, he smiled, knowing that Gloria was offering to their daughter the biggest slice of generosity he had ever seen given from that woman. And although Miles never did figure out why there was a generator hooked-up to a propane kitchen on the day of that race, he was quick enough to ask a passerby to snap a picture of him and Gloria, their bodies standing next to, yet askance from each other, as they waited for their daughter to come climbing out of that beautiful, Apache Lake.
“Daddy...I used to swim here.”
“I know, dear. I was there.”
ϖ
They were hit by a drunk driver on the evening of February 17th. Coming home from dinner, in the middle of bursting laughter as Miles had Jenny on the brink of peeing her pants with his imitation of her school’s principal, all of a sudden; wham! Broadside, right into her door.
A few weeks later, the doctors confessed to Miles that no, she’ll never be able to walk again. And no, she’ll never be able to use her hands very well either, as she had suffered severe brain-damage from the collision—among other things. The doctors even went so far as to say that they weren’t even sure how long Jenny would live, so acutely distinct was the possibility that she could at some point in time suffer from multiple organ failure.
And of course, no, Jenny certainly wouldn’t be swimming in any pool, or lake for that matter, ever again. The doctors skipped that last bit, but that’s only because Miles hadn’t asked the question.
The months following the accident were the worst for Miles. Everything about his daughter had been crushed. Everything. Yet there she was, still alive, sitting in a wheel chair, tears rolling down her face endlessly throughout the day, and not a damn thing he could do about it. Her friends had come by a few times, for a brief visit, but it wasn’t long before they too had had enough. And after they would hug her, and kiss her cheek, and tell her she’ll be alright before they would then leave, Jenny would always break down into a great sob once that front door shut.
Gloria was around most certainly, for those first few months after the accident. But eventually, her visits also grew further in frequency, and shorter in duration. It pained her deeply to see her daughter in such a state, yet there was only one way in which Gloria knew how to deal with her grief. Miles had known this, and that’s probably why he never bothered to make a big fuss over it with the woman. He knew there wasn’t much he could do, other than to just be there for Jenny. But as he sat in the kitchen one early morning, sipping coffee, flipping through a stack of bills, thinking about having to go back to work in a few weeks while Jenny rolled into a special day class at her school for the first time—and with that, his mind torturing him about a possible day when her teacher would call him from the classroom to say that Jenny had just passed away while watching The Lion King—Miles then realized that he had been squeezing his coffee cup. Under the weight of a thousand uncertainties, all wrapped around his little daughter, Miles found himself reenacting a gesture he thought only existed in the pages of literature, or the screens of Hollywood, as a tool for providing to the entertained nothing but a dramatic effect. He had been squeezing his coffee cup.
Their house sold at asking price, two weeks after Miles finally realized how his ex-wife had felt on that day she told him to “sign here”. Miles had reached his end.
ϖ
“You can’t be serious?” said Melinda.
“Damn right I’m serious.”
“Well what about money?”
“What about it?”
“How are you going to survive, Miles? And what about Jenny...and her school?” His earlobe throbbed. Like it had been injected with a bunch of hot air, and was searching for a way out of that conversation, pressing between his head and the phone, hoping to float way up into the sky.
“I’ll figure it out Melinda... Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”
And after almost an entire year had passed, Miles did figure it out. He figured out how to drive that Winnebago, and how to level it off at a campsite, then hook it up and empty its sewage bin. Miles figured out how to make a fire that roared so high, you could see the reflections of its flames as they danced on the water thirty feet away. And under a sky bleeding colors of a hearth, he learned how to make that famous bean and rice concoction him and Jenny were particularly fond of. Miles even figured out how to get a rock to skip a dozen times over the surface of the lake, before it would then collapse into the water, never to be seen again. Miles figured it all out.
Gloria called him crazy, but she never once complained.
ϖ
“I swam here Daddy. And I was fast on that day.”
“I know, dear.”
“...I miss it...”
Jenny turned her head and looked at Miles, her blue eyes gleaming with tears while the soft ripples of the lake gently hugged her waist. A crooked smile—her best one yet since the day of the accident—spread across her freckled face as she then said, “Just one more lap... Remember?” And then her voice bubbled away with thin laughter.
Miles found himself looking away from his daughter, shielding his own tears from her sight, when he then spotted a man floating out in the water, fishing pole in hand.
ϖ
“It’s called a float-tube, Jenny,” he said one day, as Miles opened up the box he had just bought at a sporting-store.
“A float-tube?”
“Fishermen swim out into the lake using these,” he then said, as he pulled out the pair of black fins from within the box. “And when they get to a good spot in the lake, they just sit there, and fish.” He laughed. “It’s perfect, Jenny, don’t you see?”
She just stared back at her dad.
“No, it’s perfect Jenny. The open water race is in a few weeks, and with this float-tube, we can swim it, Jenny!”
Now she finally caught on to what her dad had been talking about. Jenny was now eleven years old; still just a kid, who had been shoved into a state of crippled, disrepair, owner of a future deemed hopeless by even the most positive of minds. Yet the thought of her sitting in a float-tube while her dad kicked her along, pushing her through a crowd of swimmers over the waters of Apache Lake, made all the sense in the world to her.
“The race is in two weeks, sweetie!” And then they both laughed.
ϖ
The night before the July 1st, open water swim race of Apache Lake, Miles cooked-up a special casserole he named Nacho Bean Stew. “Need lots of energy for tomorrow!” he said, as he stirred in the ingredients: Mashed pinto beans, a little hot sauce and corn, sour-cream, shredded cheddar, and the crumbled pieces of tortilla chips found at the bottom of the bag, all cooked, and mixed together. “For dessert, I’ll make us instant brownies. How’s that sound?”
They ate micro-waved brownies with whipped cream layered on top, and stared out into the lake as the sun went down, while Jenny rambled on to her dad about how he should swim the race tomorrow. How he should kick real hard in the beginning, and get out to the side where they won’t get kicked themselves, or slapped by all the other swimmers. She said they should bring extra goggles too, just in case he lost his. “That could happen, Daddy, and you don’t want that to happen, it would be sad, and hard for you. I’ll keep an extra pair just in case.” They didn’t have an extra pair for him, but Miles smiled anyway.
ϖ
“Time to get up, sleepy-head.” Miles bounced out of his sheets at the sound of his alarm clock. Despite the ensuing silence over the phone the night before, Gloria had agreed to show up and cheer them on during the race. He gave a great yawn, followed by a warm smile as he then said, “Let’s go Jenny. Today’s our big day...”
ϖ
Gloria and Miles hugged each other that morning for the first time since their divorce. They braced each other, their bodies in a shiver, threatening to collapse, while they stood inside the Winnebago. And during this moment, out through the kitchen window, and from a distance, Miles caught a glimpse of an angry, Apache Lake, as hundreds of swimmers tore into it, punching and kicking its gleaming surface with a wild passion.
ϖ
On the evening of June 30th, every year, local residents flock upon the southern shores of Apache Lake, where they pitch tents and set up camp-grills in preparation for the big race the following morning. They cook hot dogs and roast marshmallows as they joke and make talk in the warm evening breeze, and under a vast, desert sky.
Some of these people plan on swimming the race themselves, and are excited, perhaps even a little anxious if it’s their first time with such an event. But for most of the people, the evening is simply a chance to steal away from what they know as the rat-race of society. It’s the promise of owning a moment of relaxation as can often be found within the embracement of nature. And also, something of less importance, trivial yet inspiring at the same time, and within the minds of everyone who comes to this lake on this evening, is the opportunity to see a certain man on the following day. A man who, after thirty years, has managed to make a name for himself among the local residents, as well as the swimming community as a whole.
He shows up every year, thinned grey-hair and neatly-trimmed beard, riding a mountain bike down a dirt trail that spills out upon the southern shore of the lake, where all the swimmers have gathered. Reporters from local papers and even national magazines take their first snap-shots of the man, as he locks his bike up against the rusted pole that a tin trashcan hangs from. They ask him a hundred questions across the fifty-feet of sand he walks across, on his way down to the beach, just minutes before the race begins, while his eyes crease upon staring to the golden, eastern horizon. Peeking out from the waistline of the backside of his spandex swimsuit, are the white straps of the extra pair of goggles he always brings with him. He’s never said a word to anybody on that lake, after all those years, and nobody knows who he is, where he lives, or where he even comes from. But everyone knows what this man does, once the race comes to an end.
He isn’t the fastest swimmer by any means, and once the race begins, the mystery of him disappears along with his body into the massive school of swimmers, who then crash into the crisp, morning waters of Apache Lake. But an hour later, on the eastern shore that contains a camp kitchen, a ton of eggs and hash browns, orange juice, and hundreds of loud people with cameras in hand, all eyes peer toward the water once those first swimmers come climbing out. A short time after this moment, someone usually hollers upon spotting this man as he breaks away from the line of other swimmers heading for the finish line. This is the image that has been captured and placed numerous times within various newspapers and magazines pertaining to swimming, and even athletic endurance: the mysterious old man, who upon arriving at the finish line of a 1.6 mile open water race, blindly continues onwards, smacking water like he had only just begun.
Several hours later, there’s always a few dozen people standing near his mountain bike, waiting for him to come out of the water. The man swims a full lap around Apache Lake, every year. Just one lap. And in the end, when he’s done, he still doesn’t answer any questions. Just hops on his mountain bike and rides away.
He’s known simply as, “The Swimmer.”
Chris Riley lives near Sacramento, CA, vowing one day to move back to the Pacific Northwest. He has had over 100 short stories and essays published in various magazines and journals. He is the author of The Sinking Of The Angie Piper, and The Broken Pines (forthcoming).