Swimming Pool
by Kate Brown
My glasses fog up every time I go to collect her from the pool. I'll never get used to glasses. When my sight got suddenly worse the day she was born, I didn't tell anyone. As she turned from baby to child, my love for her grew, and my world got smaller, foggier.
When Peter and I ate out, I would say "I'll have what you're having." I'd never done this before, but we went to restaurants so rarely now we had a child, I thought he might not notice. He did. The next Saturday morning he told me we were going on an adventure. He took me to the new opticians in the centre of town. "She's a glasses virgin," he told the assistant. "I'm scared," I mumbled, almost to myself. After an hour and a half, I couldn't chose between bright red, bold frames and black, oblong chic. The assistant was irritated, but Peter was calm, guiding me through the process. I tried to remember whether he'd been this way when we first had sex. I didn't think so.
In the end, I went for black, for sophistication, but red took a hold. When our daughter started school, I dressed her in red. My own mother had coloured me brightly, and even though I grew up to wear blue in resistance, I followed her path. Sometimes mothers are right, I reasoned. And maybe I was, because my daughter was quite untouched.
If I cannot sleep, which is often, I try to imagine reaching through a wall made of dust, isolated particles unable to join together and keep me out. I reach through to touch his hand, to envelop her hand in our two. There is only my hand, holding hers. We are alone. You cannot dress your love in red.
The smell of chlorine, now, the minute I step out of the revolving door into the lobby, it contains his death. It is everywhere. My steamed-up glasses, when he's not here to tease me for my vanity, nature's final cockeyed joke.
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Author's Note
Published in The Linnet's Wings Spring 2010
Other stories by Kate Brown
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oh this is wrenching, so carefully wrought.
Wonderful writing. The first paragraph is amazing. I love, the way colors are emotional forces, significant to the narrator in a way that the reader begins to understand, just barely. I like what is not said. There is so much here.
very tender and tragic.
This is beautiful.
Powerful. Expertly written. One to copy, tuck away, and read again and again until some of your talent rubs off.
I love this, the exploration of relationships in it, how quietly philosophical it is, whatever it is that's going on under the surface.
Red's a good, strong colour. It's unafraid.
*
Outstanding - Much to like here. Especially like: "If I cannot sleep, which is often, I try to imagine reaching through a wall made of dust, isolated particles unable to join together and keep me out. I reach through to touch his hand, to envelop her hand in our two. There is only my hand, holding hers. We are alone. You cannot dress your love in red."
Powerful story. So much here and it all works.
Beautiful piece.
There is sadness throughout this story, despite the mother's optimistic and colorful bent for her child, and the ending felt dim and dusty as her failing sight and losses
*
Brilliant.
A kind of Nick Roeg quality--
Star.
wonderfully tender piece, kate. made me sad. i like how the camera zooms in on the scene in the shop and then back out and then back in again for the final scene. great writing.
This is so very lovely, Kate. I love all of it but especially this:
"If I cannot sleep, which is often, I try to imagine reaching through a wall made of dust, isolated particles unable to join together and keep me out. I reach through to touch his hand, to envelop her hand in our two. There is only my hand, holding hers. We are alone. You cannot dress your love in red."
The pacing and tone here are perfect. So measured, so _not_ overwrought. The details of the glasses, the linking of the daughter to the husband to the mother to the pool... It all works so well. By the time the reader gets to the end, she can hardly stand the pain. This in particular breaks my heart:
"If I cannot sleep, which is often, I try to imagine reaching through a wall made of dust, isolated particles unable to join together and keep me out. I reach through to touch his hand, to envelop her hand in our two. There is only my hand, holding hers. We are alone. You cannot dress your love in red."
Beautiful story-telling.
Not sure I'll be able to smell chlorine without thinking of this story. Fantastic stuff.
I've really enjoyed reading and subsequently thinking about this story – how the strength of her relationships have focused her attention and compressed her world. That rings so true. And it's all so beautifully told.
I read this in The Linnet's Wings but I'm so glad you posted it up here again. It's heart-rending on so many levels. Beautiful writing, Kate.
Excellent story!
This is quite perfect.
The voice in this piece is permeated with a sense of desperation and loss that drifts through the words and scenes like the fog that obscures her glasses in the first line.
Bravo!