Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 32 of 32

Chapter 32: Lane One

I got dressed in the bathhouse office.

It was the only room in the building with a door that locked and a mirror that didn't make you look drowned.

My mother pinned my hair. Joanie stood guard at the door with her whistle.

The dress was plain white cotton, to the knee.

It was nothing I'd mind getting wet.

"You could have had silk," my mother said, with three pins in her mouth.

"I had silk once. Somebody told a story while I was wearing it."

She took the pins out and kissed the top of my head instead.

At ten my phone buzzed on the desk.

Santo.

"Last chance to get on a plane."

I picked it up and typed with my thumb.

"I have a hundred and forty kids at eleven."

The dots came up at once.

"Then I'll see you at eleven."

I laughed out loud. My mother told me to hold still.

Through the office window I could hear the bleachers filling.

You can't keep a hundred and forty kids quiet. Nobody tried.

Every one of them wore a green cap.

Joanie had made it a rule, and for once nobody argued.

Behind them sat their parents, and the grandmother in her church hat, and the bus driver in a suit that didn't close.

The old man with the cane and his wife, in her flowered cap, because she'd been told to wear a hat.

The bookish capo, with the rings in a little box on his knee and his ledger under his arm, out of habit.

Six capos and their wives, in a row, looking at the cracked blue tile like they'd never seen a public pool before.

The gardener sat in the front row in a clean brown cardigan, buttoned right for once.

He had a tomato in his pocket for luck.

At eleven Joanie blew the whistle.

The bleachers went silent.

I'd never heard a hundred and forty kids go quiet at the same time. I didn't know it was possible.

My mother took my arm.

She was in pale blue, not black. The first time I'd seen her out of black in a year.

"Ready?" she said.

"I've been ready since June."

"Don't be smart on your wedding day."

She walked me out of the office and down the long wet deck, along the edge of the pool.

The kids stood up as we passed. Nobody told them to.

Some of them held up signs they'd made.

One said DON'T FALL IN, with FALL crossed out and JUMP written over it.

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