Flip shakes his head, dunks under the white floats of the lane rope, jerks a thumb in our direction, and announces loudly to the woman in the next lane, “They’re making me move.”
I grab my kickboard, hand Dori hers, and decree our favorite cardiovascular activity, “Kick and kvetch!”
As we chug past Flip, busily resetting his watch, Dori yells out for his benefit, “Hey, Cam! Sorry for breaking up your romance with Mr. Banana Hammock!”
Dori is like my grandmother Bobbi Mac. Not the piercings or tattoos or broken marriage to the lead singer in an Aerosmith tribute band, but her take-no-shit, get-the-party-started vibe. Spunk—Bobbi Mac was big on spunk, something she didn’t think her own daughter, my mom, Rose, had had in sufficient quantity. Spunk is Dori’s middle name. Single-handedly, she almost made being a Parkhaven outcast fun. Dori loved to laugh over which mom had “shit the biggest brick” when she dropped casual asides about her years as a member of the all-girl band Tampaxxx. “Triple-X,” she’d clarify with a lascivious wink. “I guess you know why.”
“So,” Dori asks as we stretch out and churn the water behind us with our fluttering feet. “What are we obsessing about today?”
I share my thoughts on brain infections and barnyard animals.
“Yes? And? So? Aubrey gets a shot.”
“They have a shot for meningitis?”
“Der. Cam, you’re a medico.”
“I’m a lactation consultant.”
“Medico enough for me. You’re supposed to get the shot before you ship your kid off to college. Twyla’s pediatrician told me that.”
At the mention of her daughter’s name, the blotches Dori gets when she’s trying not to cry appear like scarlet storm clouds around her overplucked eyebrows. The white sunscreen lightens them to a pretty pink. Her grip on the kickboard tightens until the spongy material dents beneath her clenched fingers and her flutter-kick turns into an exercise in grim determination that propels her ahead of me. I let her surge forward; Dori always needs a few seconds after her daughter’s name comes up to put her tough-girl front back on.
Twyla moved out over a year ago to “tour” with Dori’s ex and his band, and the only contact they have now is a phone call every few months in which Twyla details all the ways in which Dori was a horrible mother and ruined her life. Then tells her where to send money.
Meanwhile, the inoculation news lets me relax and I frolic through the water, happy as an otter. This carefree state lasts for a lap and a half before the real problem surfaces again and it’s not meningitis. My kicking slows to a near halt.
Dori, recovered, her face again uniformly pale, waits for me to catch up, then, commenting on my look of brooding worry, demands, “What? Tyler Moldenhauer?”
At the mention of Aubrey’s boyfriend’s name, I moan, “A suburban white boy, redneck football hero with no plans for college. If Aubrey’s first serious boyfriend had been Glenn Beck, I could not have been more surprised.”
“Surprises,” Dori repeats wistfully. “So many surprises.”
“When did he take over Aubrey’s life so completely?” I ask, even as I try to figure out when my daughter turned into a stranger. Six months ago? No, it’s been longer than that. In that time, she’s become like a guest forced against her will to live in my house. A guest who would happily pack up and leave and move in with said boyfriend if I pushed her even the tiniest bit. I keep waiting for this evil spell to be broken. That it will be like the flu and one morning she’ll wake up smiling and help me make pancakes and tell me she’ll set the table as soon as she finishes this chapter. That she’ll be my little nine-year-old again, the one who saved up her allowance to make me a memory bracelet for my birthday then snuggled up next to me and told me what each bead strung onto the wire coiled around my wrist meant.
“See this?”
“The turquoise one?”
“That’s for your favorite color and because you love to swim. This little microphone is for you being such a bad singer.”
“I’m a bad singer!?”
“Really bad.”
“This one is beautiful. Is it ivory?”
“No! Do you know where ivory comes from? Elephants! Poachers! It’s just the color of ivory.”
“Right. Oh, look, it’s a tiny baby curled into a ball.”
“That’s for your job and also for me. Inside of you.”
“Aubrey, I love it. I love it so much.”
“So,” Dori continues. “Aubrey’s boyfriend is not who you would have picked out