Read Online Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics) by Richard Yates - Free Book Online Page B

their first quarrels (“But that’s silly, John; anybody can learn to swim.” “Okay, okay; I’m silly, then. Let’s shut up about it”). When Tommy was a baby and even until he was five or six, it hadn’t mattered much: he could wade in deep with the boy wriggling and squealing on his shoulders, and he’d greatly enjoyed the trusting grip of small thighs around his neck and fingers in his hair – it had been especially good in heavy ocean surf where nobody really swam anyway and the whole point was to jump and shout in the breakers – but over the past few years, here at the lake, Janice had taught Tommy to swim. She had done it tactfully: if he’d ever asked why Daddy didn’t teach him, she’d probably said that Daddy was too busy or too tired, or that Daddy didn’t really enjoy swimmingas much as other things, like – well, like playing catch.
    The lake was crowded today – people from neighboring bungalows out for a last chance at summer – and that made him less conspicuous as he hung back to fuss over the careful arrangement of blanket and towels and shoes and wristwatches while his wife and son struck out for the white raft that always seemed an impossible distance away. Nobody in a crowd this thick was likely to notice that he waded up to his nostrils before starting to tread water and only then began the desperate flailing and kicking, with tightly held breath, that enabled him at last to reach out and grasp one of the wet chains securing the raft to the steel drums beneath it. Once he had that chain he was all right; he could rest, maneuver for purchase and heave himself up, shedding water and whipping back his hair with a gasp of relief that might have been a victorious athlete’s sigh.
    “Hi,” Janice said as she and Tommy made room for him. There was no way of telling whether they’d watched his journey out here.
    “It’s a little chilly, don’t you think?” she said. “Look, I’m all goose pimples.” He looked, and she was. She lowered her voice. “And it’s so
crowded
. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so many people here before, have you?”
    No; he hadn’t.
    Nor had he ever seen anything quite so lovely as the slim young girl who walked alone among the huddled bodies on the raft at that moment, murmuring “Excuse me” as they moved aside for her. She wore her bikini with a sweet combination of shyness and pride, and when she stood erect at the base of the diving board she seemed unaware of anyone watching. She took three gracefully measured steps, then both arms and one splendid thigh rose up, the thigh came down, the board shuddered underher powerful spring and she was airborne, parting the water with almost no splash at all.
    He expected a pair of heavily muscled arms to reach out and help her back to the raft, but none did: she was alone. She climbed back herself and sat shaking out her long black hair, talking to nobody. Except for a young couple absorbed in each other, the raft was filled either with children or with adults of middle-and post-middle age: bald heads and sagging flesh and varicose veins.
    “Let’s go back in,” Janice said. “I want to put on some clothes and get warm, don’t you?”
    “Okay. You two go on ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.”
    He watched their precise four-beat crawl to the shore, watched them gather up their things and disappear into the bushes; then he gave his whole attention to the girl, who had stood up in readiness for another dive. When she came back from this one he would speak to her. He wouldn’t try to help her onto the raft – that might spoil everything – but it would certainly be easy to sit beside her as she dried off (if they were sitting, she wouldn’t see how short he was; then later when they stood up it might turn out that she wasn’t really very tall), and now as she gravely advanced to the board he allowed his mind to fill with a happy rehearsal of their talk.
    “You know, you’re really very good