What We Do
by Gail Gauthier
“The youngest kids’ swimming lessons always take place during the hottest part of the day,” Jess says while rubbing sunscreen on Chloe. She’s working on that little girl’s legs as if she’s the only thing standing between her and an early death. Oh, no one does sunscreen like ol’ Jess.
Erin sits next to her in a sand chair and doesn’t take her eyes off her two kids in the water with a group around an instructor. “The older kids have the early lessons so they can go off to day camps. And the little ones don’t mind the heat. They’re happy to be here.” She’s an authority on what makes kids happy.
“I’m not happy to be here,” I toss out.
It’s not as if my Noah is going to learn to swim there. He still won’t even put his face into the water. Yet I am trapped standing behind Jess and Erin, looking out over the lake with all the other mothers. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
This is not what I do. Nothing to respond to. Nothing to fix. Just existing.
The lake is small, and, except for this stretch of standard beach at one end that the town must be hustling to maintain, it’s surrounded by trees growing so close to the water’s edge that they nearly block the camps behind them. Anyone in them has no idea what’s happening here.
Which is nothing. Nothing is happening here.
A group of women not far from us is deeply into a discussion of either cellulite or property values. I can barely hear them over the splashing, the shouts, the shrill squeals from the kids and the low hum coming from their mothers. Some people leave and others arrive, but nothing changes the quality of the sound hovering over the sand.
Suddenly, one of the women next to us jumps up off a blanket and starts to shout. “Kelly! Get back here! You’re too far out!”
I notice that beyond her, several women are turned away, looking at something farther down the beach.
“I called the doctor’s office,” Jess is saying, her eyes darting back and forth between Chloe playing in the wet sand and her older child in a lesson. “But it was quarter to twelve, and they had closed for lunch. By one o’clock, Chloe was tearing around the house and begging to go outdoors. By four-thirty, she was vomiting again. By four-thirty, the doctor’s office was closed for the day.”
“I hate doctors,” Erin says.
Who doesn’t? I think as I watch Noah for a moment and hope that one day he will be able to just swim well enough to save himself, if—
Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone bend forward in her chair with her head turned away from me, looking at something.
What does she see? What do they all see? Is something happening here after all?
Jess and Erin have gone silent.
“Do you know that man over there?” one of them asks the other.
I see him now. He’s overdressed for the lake, as if he’d stopped by unexpectedly, on impulse. Is he somebody’s husband? A dad who took a moment from work to come see his child learn to swim? No. I can tell from the hush and the tension around me.
One teenage lifeguard sits on his high chair, oblivious. The other lifeguards are in the water, occupied with swimming lessons.
And there I am with no weapon.
A woman gets to her feet and turns so she is facing the stranger who is slowly walking toward us, his attention on what’s happening in the water. Another does the same. Erin has to struggle to get out of her sand chair, but she’s holding a children’s plastic shovel, one of the long, heavy ones, when she does. Jess gets up, too. Everyone on the beach rises up in twos and threes. Someone takes a step forward. Someone else raises a foot so she can start moving, too.
All those women fall into formation, as if that is what they do.
The man pauses for an instant. He doesn’t actually take his gaze from the children he’d been watching to look at us, but it’s clear he knows we’re there. He slowly turns to walk away from the beach, across the lawn in back of us, toward the parking lot.
I take Erin’s shovel from her and tell her to take care of my Noah. Then I head toward the parking lot, too.
This is what I do.
The man I’m following looks over his shoulder just long enough to see me and starts to run.
Gail Gauthier writes short- and long-form fiction, as well as humor and essays. Her work has been published at Literary Mama, Bending Genres, The Horn Book, and The Millions, and her humor pieces have appeared at The Belladonna Comedy, Slackjaw, Jane Austen’s Wastebasket, Frazzled, and other sites. Her eight children’s books, including an ALA Notable Book and two Junior Library Guild selections, were published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Photo by Samantha Fortney on Unsplash