Night Swimmer
By Elizabeth Obermeyer
October 15, 2022
October 15, 2022
The headlights cut through the night like blades. Out here there is only darkness, only stillness.
It’s the same every night.
The car hesitates at the top of the hill as if the driver is unsure whether to make the final descent into the beach area. Every night that small hesitation, that hiccup in the otherwise consistent flow of the vehicle along the twisted and crumbling road. He can picture it. Here, the road dips off to the side, threatening to send the few cars that travel it rolling into the ditch. There, a pothole big enough to break an axle if you didn’t know exactly where it was.
This driver knows the road; that has always impressed him, continues to impress him. She drives it like she’s driven it her whole life and perhaps she has. Perhaps when this was a place to live, a sought-after community. Back when the beach was a draw and people danced there on soft summer evenings. He watches from his back door, timing the approach of the car when he sees it. He knows it’s her, she is the only one he ever sees anymore. Everyone else has gone.
He knows it takes her exactly six and a half minutes from the moment he sees the headlights shining along the road until she makes the turn to the beach parking area. Tonight, though, it’s different. At seven minutes she is still driving along the road, the headlights moving slowly in the night. At seven and a half, the hesitation at the top of the hill feels interminable and he holds his breath. After nearly eight minutes there is sudden darkness, and the car disappears from his view.
She has made this trip countless times bouncing over the ragged road, but this night, she drives more slowly, more cautiously. She slows right down for the pothole instead of swerving around it. At the stretch of road that has crumbled where speed has its risks, she slows to a crawl. She has all the time in the world. She knows she hesitates at the top of the hill; she can’t help it. She enjoys the feeling of teetering on the edge and waiting for the descent, a familiar rollercoaster. This time as she crests, she cuts the headlights and the engine and glides down silently, slowly turning into her usual parking spot between the willow trees and rolling to a stop at the beach’s edge.
She can feel the wind buffeting the little car and through the open windows she can smell the lake, the familiar scents of lingering algae and dead fish. The same for the past seventy plus years. Sand blows around and she can already feel the water making itself known to her, even though she can’t yet see it.
The letter lies unopened on the passenger seat beside her old plaid cooler bag. The long white envelope glows in the moonlight and she frowns as she glances at the typed name. No matter how many times she asked them to address her differently she was still Mrs. B. Embry. Nothing about that name represented her, it never had. Even the initial, B wasn’t hers. Fifty-five years she’d been living like that without an identity of her own. Even with him gone. Gone now six years, and what a relief. Or, wait now, is it seven?
She knows the contents of the letter without opening it. She might open it but then again, she probably won’t. It’s what she’d expected all along, and anyway, what’s the point? What’s the point of anything.
She’d said that out loud, hadn’t she, here in the dark, in her little car, without realizing it. She did a lot without realizing it, that was the problem. Shouting out like that, and then there were the walks into the kitchen for…something. If only she could remember what. The water bill left unpaid for months until they’d shut it off, but then the gas bill, paid four times in the same week and they’d called her, hadn’t they? She’d told them it was a banking error.
She knew. She’d known for some time.
What had happened? His heart leaps in his chest. Car trouble? He didn’t think so. It is a newer model, from what he can tell when he trains the binoculars on it. But nearly eight minutes. And at the top of the hill nothing. No engine, no lights. The car all but disappeared into the night.
Startled, he moves to turn the doorknob and run right outside, but quickly he remembers his role. He is an observer, merely. So he waits. His heart thumps in his chest and he holds his breath imagining all sorts of horrors until he finally hears the slam of a car door. She is ok. He lets his breath out slowly, shakily. She shouldn’t do that to him. He wasn’t angry, really, it was just… Did she know he watched her? Impossible. He was certain of that. He keeps out of sight. And besides, she has her purpose, as he does. Just a blip, then. Still though, he thinks, something feels off.
Now she exits the little car, hauling her bag from the passenger seat. The letter flutters to the floor. Good. Let it stay there. No news is good news.
The night is cool and windy. Late October, with a full moon shining on the lake, its beams dancing on the undulating waves, the foamy white of their crests enhanced by the stark white moonlight. She stands by her little car watching the waves as they crash and pound the shore. It makes her shiver. The sheer power of the lake had always humbled her. The lake, the wind, the waves; her holy trinity. How fitting she should end up with a night like this.
She remembers, now, summers past and the way her hair had whipped around her face as she ran along the beach and into the waves, letting them crash against her chest or turning her back to them and riding them onto the shore. She recalls, too, the way the wind would pull the words from her mouth and carry them along the beach through the summer air. What became of these half-finished sentences and conversations as they left her? Did her voice appear in another part of the lake, perhaps. Did snippets of conversation dash from one bay to another on the wind? Hundreds of stories and confessions, bits of gossip all mixed up somewhere together like a cruel game of telephone. It was astounding what she would shout into the wind, knowing she couldn’t be heard by anyone. Who was with her? In her memories she was always alone, but there had to be someone.
Quickly, she sheds her sneakers and slips into her water shoes as she pulls her dress over her head and stuffs it in the bag. She shivers in the night air, the breeze tickling the back of her neck with its fingers. She rubs her arms as she makes her way to the lake, leaving the bag with her clothes on a large rock, visible in the moonlight.
At the water’s edge she tucks her hair into her bathing cap and windmills her arms to loosen up, then gently bends to touch her toes three times. Always three times. It makes her smile, this ritual, the one she’s done for more than sixty years. No starting gun here, no 400m relay, no 200m butterfly, no flip to turn, kick out, push off the wall, nothing like that. But she’s never stopped. Swimming was like breathing. Is like breathing.
Three big breaths and now she is striding out and into the lake, the lake that raised her, the lake that taught her more than anything or anyone ever had. The lake of her youth. The lake of her life.
He paces around the little cottage, mindful of the furniture in the near darkness. Too much light would give him away, so he moves in the dark with only the light of the moon as his guide. Tonight is different, he decides. There is something wrong and he can’t put his finger on it. She had been coming every night for the past year and a half; she hadn’t missed more than a handful of nights. Even in winter she came, and how he marvelled at her stamina. Her ability to bob in the freezing water for a time, and then those strong, steady strokes out and back. He’d been ready with blankets and hot tea should he have needed to rush to her aid, but she never required his assistance. Tonight it isn’t too cold at all, and yet he worries. It was the car, the darkness of the car as it approached. And then of course there is the wind. She’d swam in waves before, but something just didn’t add up. Tonight was going to have to be the night he introduced himself. As a precaution, of course. Let her know he was there for her. She’d appreciate that, he knew. Let her know she isn’t alone. You couldn’t blame him for that, could you? Order, routine. He knows all about those and when they deviate, trouble follows. Yes, yes indeed. Tonight, it made sense.
She can’t truly measure distance in the lake, but she knows how many strokes will take her 100 metres. And so, she counts. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breath. A mantra. She keeps her eye on the point across the bay. A solar farm with lights that guide her out, and the lone dim light in the cottage just up from the beach to guide her back to shore.
She knows the man in the cottage watches her as she swims, and she doesn’t mind. He’s young, she thinks. Well, younger than her, but who the hell isn’t? She knows he tries to stay out of sight, but she can always see him moving about his darkened living room. At first she’d found it odd. Why not wave, come down to say hello? Goodness knows he must be starved for company out here in ruins of the community that used to exist. But after the first few times she ignored it. He’s harmless, no doubt. Still, she is grateful now that they never did connect.
After about twenty minutes of out and back, she trudges to the shore and stands dripping in her suit, warmer now with her muscles stretched. She opens the passenger side door, unzips her cooler bag, and pulls out her evening’s provisions. A small container of cheese and crackers, and a thermos of ice-cold gin, into which she drops three fat olives from a small jar. She raises the thermos to the lake and drinks deeply, the gin cutting into her throat and warming her insides. She takes a deep breath, feeling the effects of the liquor and digs deeper into the cooler bag. Her hand grasps a blue plastic bottle. Pulling it free, she pops the top and tips three white tablets onto the dashboard. How beautiful they look, luminous in the moonlight. She stares at them briefly, then crushes them into powder with the lid of the thermos and scrapes the powder into the gin.
How will he do it? He decides he needs to speak with her, this night just isn’t right, and he can’t shake the feeling. He watches her like he usually does, watches her usual swim routine: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle. He’d looked up the swimming strokes on the internet to be more informed. She even does the little flips the swimmers on TV do, even though she doesn’t have a wall. He is astounded at her strength, her ability to keep going. She had to be at last seventy-five, perhaps older. He paces around the little living room, gathering himself, making his plan.
He sees her back at the car now, wrapped in her towel and having her nightly snack. Soon she’ll be drying off her feet, putting on her shoes, her dress, and then driving home again, and he’ll have missed his chance. Seeing her now though, maybe he’d been mistaken. Maybe there is nothing wrong, maybe he’d overreacted. He watches as she pulls the lid off the container and finds a chunk of cheese and a cracker. He watches her drink deeply from the thermos and with her fingers fish something out of it to pop into her mouth. He watches her chew then upend the contents of the thermos into her mouth, wipe her lips with the back of her hand and screw the lid back on. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. He really is being silly. He puts the binoculars down for a second to think and misses her slump beside the car briefly before stumbling once again toward the water.
The water embraces her like an old friend, and she bobs about for a few minutes, finding her bearings. Her arms and legs feel heavy, and the waves push back, harder now it seems. Has the wind picked up? She can barely see the shore and it is a challenge to make her limbs move in sync. She smiles. This is what they’d told her would happen when she’d asked around. Friends in her building, at the pool. Old ladies, most of them, a few men. Did they know anyone who’d done it? Silent nods and offered hands of comfort. Several, she’d come to understand. She’d initially been shocked, but the shock had led to resignation and determination. They’d listened to her and helped her. Just don’t let us know, they’d said, and she’d promised.
Now she gives up trying to swim and instead floats on her back, gazing up at the moon in its white blurriness, the stars, the millions and billions of them gazing back down at her. The words come to her as she floats, those half-spoken conversations on the wind, still out here after all this time. She feels the calmness of the lake embracing her as she bobs, sculling with hands and legs like lead until her head begins to droop and the wind words become louder.
Someone is shouting now. Just before she closes her eyes she sees a man, his hair whipping around his head, his words disappearing into the wind as quickly as he tries to say them, and he is running down the embankment toward the beach and the empty lake.
It’s the same every night.
The car hesitates at the top of the hill as if the driver is unsure whether to make the final descent into the beach area. Every night that small hesitation, that hiccup in the otherwise consistent flow of the vehicle along the twisted and crumbling road. He can picture it. Here, the road dips off to the side, threatening to send the few cars that travel it rolling into the ditch. There, a pothole big enough to break an axle if you didn’t know exactly where it was.
This driver knows the road; that has always impressed him, continues to impress him. She drives it like she’s driven it her whole life and perhaps she has. Perhaps when this was a place to live, a sought-after community. Back when the beach was a draw and people danced there on soft summer evenings. He watches from his back door, timing the approach of the car when he sees it. He knows it’s her, she is the only one he ever sees anymore. Everyone else has gone.
He knows it takes her exactly six and a half minutes from the moment he sees the headlights shining along the road until she makes the turn to the beach parking area. Tonight, though, it’s different. At seven minutes she is still driving along the road, the headlights moving slowly in the night. At seven and a half, the hesitation at the top of the hill feels interminable and he holds his breath. After nearly eight minutes there is sudden darkness, and the car disappears from his view.
She has made this trip countless times bouncing over the ragged road, but this night, she drives more slowly, more cautiously. She slows right down for the pothole instead of swerving around it. At the stretch of road that has crumbled where speed has its risks, she slows to a crawl. She has all the time in the world. She knows she hesitates at the top of the hill; she can’t help it. She enjoys the feeling of teetering on the edge and waiting for the descent, a familiar rollercoaster. This time as she crests, she cuts the headlights and the engine and glides down silently, slowly turning into her usual parking spot between the willow trees and rolling to a stop at the beach’s edge.
She can feel the wind buffeting the little car and through the open windows she can smell the lake, the familiar scents of lingering algae and dead fish. The same for the past seventy plus years. Sand blows around and she can already feel the water making itself known to her, even though she can’t yet see it.
The letter lies unopened on the passenger seat beside her old plaid cooler bag. The long white envelope glows in the moonlight and she frowns as she glances at the typed name. No matter how many times she asked them to address her differently she was still Mrs. B. Embry. Nothing about that name represented her, it never had. Even the initial, B wasn’t hers. Fifty-five years she’d been living like that without an identity of her own. Even with him gone. Gone now six years, and what a relief. Or, wait now, is it seven?
She knows the contents of the letter without opening it. She might open it but then again, she probably won’t. It’s what she’d expected all along, and anyway, what’s the point? What’s the point of anything.
She’d said that out loud, hadn’t she, here in the dark, in her little car, without realizing it. She did a lot without realizing it, that was the problem. Shouting out like that, and then there were the walks into the kitchen for…something. If only she could remember what. The water bill left unpaid for months until they’d shut it off, but then the gas bill, paid four times in the same week and they’d called her, hadn’t they? She’d told them it was a banking error.
She knew. She’d known for some time.
What had happened? His heart leaps in his chest. Car trouble? He didn’t think so. It is a newer model, from what he can tell when he trains the binoculars on it. But nearly eight minutes. And at the top of the hill nothing. No engine, no lights. The car all but disappeared into the night.
Startled, he moves to turn the doorknob and run right outside, but quickly he remembers his role. He is an observer, merely. So he waits. His heart thumps in his chest and he holds his breath imagining all sorts of horrors until he finally hears the slam of a car door. She is ok. He lets his breath out slowly, shakily. She shouldn’t do that to him. He wasn’t angry, really, it was just… Did she know he watched her? Impossible. He was certain of that. He keeps out of sight. And besides, she has her purpose, as he does. Just a blip, then. Still though, he thinks, something feels off.
Now she exits the little car, hauling her bag from the passenger seat. The letter flutters to the floor. Good. Let it stay there. No news is good news.
The night is cool and windy. Late October, with a full moon shining on the lake, its beams dancing on the undulating waves, the foamy white of their crests enhanced by the stark white moonlight. She stands by her little car watching the waves as they crash and pound the shore. It makes her shiver. The sheer power of the lake had always humbled her. The lake, the wind, the waves; her holy trinity. How fitting she should end up with a night like this.
She remembers, now, summers past and the way her hair had whipped around her face as she ran along the beach and into the waves, letting them crash against her chest or turning her back to them and riding them onto the shore. She recalls, too, the way the wind would pull the words from her mouth and carry them along the beach through the summer air. What became of these half-finished sentences and conversations as they left her? Did her voice appear in another part of the lake, perhaps. Did snippets of conversation dash from one bay to another on the wind? Hundreds of stories and confessions, bits of gossip all mixed up somewhere together like a cruel game of telephone. It was astounding what she would shout into the wind, knowing she couldn’t be heard by anyone. Who was with her? In her memories she was always alone, but there had to be someone.
Quickly, she sheds her sneakers and slips into her water shoes as she pulls her dress over her head and stuffs it in the bag. She shivers in the night air, the breeze tickling the back of her neck with its fingers. She rubs her arms as she makes her way to the lake, leaving the bag with her clothes on a large rock, visible in the moonlight.
At the water’s edge she tucks her hair into her bathing cap and windmills her arms to loosen up, then gently bends to touch her toes three times. Always three times. It makes her smile, this ritual, the one she’s done for more than sixty years. No starting gun here, no 400m relay, no 200m butterfly, no flip to turn, kick out, push off the wall, nothing like that. But she’s never stopped. Swimming was like breathing. Is like breathing.
Three big breaths and now she is striding out and into the lake, the lake that raised her, the lake that taught her more than anything or anyone ever had. The lake of her youth. The lake of her life.
He paces around the little cottage, mindful of the furniture in the near darkness. Too much light would give him away, so he moves in the dark with only the light of the moon as his guide. Tonight is different, he decides. There is something wrong and he can’t put his finger on it. She had been coming every night for the past year and a half; she hadn’t missed more than a handful of nights. Even in winter she came, and how he marvelled at her stamina. Her ability to bob in the freezing water for a time, and then those strong, steady strokes out and back. He’d been ready with blankets and hot tea should he have needed to rush to her aid, but she never required his assistance. Tonight it isn’t too cold at all, and yet he worries. It was the car, the darkness of the car as it approached. And then of course there is the wind. She’d swam in waves before, but something just didn’t add up. Tonight was going to have to be the night he introduced himself. As a precaution, of course. Let her know he was there for her. She’d appreciate that, he knew. Let her know she isn’t alone. You couldn’t blame him for that, could you? Order, routine. He knows all about those and when they deviate, trouble follows. Yes, yes indeed. Tonight, it made sense.
She can’t truly measure distance in the lake, but she knows how many strokes will take her 100 metres. And so, she counts. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breath. A mantra. She keeps her eye on the point across the bay. A solar farm with lights that guide her out, and the lone dim light in the cottage just up from the beach to guide her back to shore.
She knows the man in the cottage watches her as she swims, and she doesn’t mind. He’s young, she thinks. Well, younger than her, but who the hell isn’t? She knows he tries to stay out of sight, but she can always see him moving about his darkened living room. At first she’d found it odd. Why not wave, come down to say hello? Goodness knows he must be starved for company out here in ruins of the community that used to exist. But after the first few times she ignored it. He’s harmless, no doubt. Still, she is grateful now that they never did connect.
After about twenty minutes of out and back, she trudges to the shore and stands dripping in her suit, warmer now with her muscles stretched. She opens the passenger side door, unzips her cooler bag, and pulls out her evening’s provisions. A small container of cheese and crackers, and a thermos of ice-cold gin, into which she drops three fat olives from a small jar. She raises the thermos to the lake and drinks deeply, the gin cutting into her throat and warming her insides. She takes a deep breath, feeling the effects of the liquor and digs deeper into the cooler bag. Her hand grasps a blue plastic bottle. Pulling it free, she pops the top and tips three white tablets onto the dashboard. How beautiful they look, luminous in the moonlight. She stares at them briefly, then crushes them into powder with the lid of the thermos and scrapes the powder into the gin.
How will he do it? He decides he needs to speak with her, this night just isn’t right, and he can’t shake the feeling. He watches her like he usually does, watches her usual swim routine: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle. He’d looked up the swimming strokes on the internet to be more informed. She even does the little flips the swimmers on TV do, even though she doesn’t have a wall. He is astounded at her strength, her ability to keep going. She had to be at last seventy-five, perhaps older. He paces around the little living room, gathering himself, making his plan.
He sees her back at the car now, wrapped in her towel and having her nightly snack. Soon she’ll be drying off her feet, putting on her shoes, her dress, and then driving home again, and he’ll have missed his chance. Seeing her now though, maybe he’d been mistaken. Maybe there is nothing wrong, maybe he’d overreacted. He watches as she pulls the lid off the container and finds a chunk of cheese and a cracker. He watches her drink deeply from the thermos and with her fingers fish something out of it to pop into her mouth. He watches her chew then upend the contents of the thermos into her mouth, wipe her lips with the back of her hand and screw the lid back on. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. He really is being silly. He puts the binoculars down for a second to think and misses her slump beside the car briefly before stumbling once again toward the water.
The water embraces her like an old friend, and she bobs about for a few minutes, finding her bearings. Her arms and legs feel heavy, and the waves push back, harder now it seems. Has the wind picked up? She can barely see the shore and it is a challenge to make her limbs move in sync. She smiles. This is what they’d told her would happen when she’d asked around. Friends in her building, at the pool. Old ladies, most of them, a few men. Did they know anyone who’d done it? Silent nods and offered hands of comfort. Several, she’d come to understand. She’d initially been shocked, but the shock had led to resignation and determination. They’d listened to her and helped her. Just don’t let us know, they’d said, and she’d promised.
Now she gives up trying to swim and instead floats on her back, gazing up at the moon in its white blurriness, the stars, the millions and billions of them gazing back down at her. The words come to her as she floats, those half-spoken conversations on the wind, still out here after all this time. She feels the calmness of the lake embracing her as she bobs, sculling with hands and legs like lead until her head begins to droop and the wind words become louder.
Someone is shouting now. Just before she closes her eyes she sees a man, his hair whipping around his head, his words disappearing into the wind as quickly as he tries to say them, and he is running down the embankment toward the beach and the empty lake.
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Elizabeth is an older person and newish writer living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
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