Ponder

Ponder
By Jared T. Fischer

The story went that a middle-aged woman named Vivian Hiver one day washed up on the bank of the reservoir in horrific fashion. Landers, the fifteen-year-old griot, to whom the boys looked for a story when they smoked at Burdick Park in Baltimore, told of the drenched and bloated corpse in a one-piece bathing suit, her face a slain Medusa.

Landers prefaced his account by admitting that he didn’t know everything, but that he was able to piece some things together from information he had gathered from the news and his times hanging with kids at Loch Raven Reservoir. What he didn’t say was that he had also imagined some points to fill in the blanks.

Apparently, back in the day, in her early twenties, Vivian had competed in the Atlanta Summer Olympics in synchronized swimming. Leading up to that milestone, during televised performances, the commentators would always praise the agility of her pale, curvaceous legs as they snipped like scissors, barely disturbing the calm of the teal water. But what was ten times more intriguing, more lovable, was how perfectly she harmonized with her duet partner Carol Bayer on land and in the sun-heated ripples of the Olympic-size pool. More than a few fans intuited that the young women were lovers, enjoying something more than a professional relationship. After each winning finish, they would hold moist, amphibious hands and lean in for kisses that made them such an adorable pair.

But on the big day, when under that gold medal Atlanta sun they accepted silver medals for the United States, their comportment had changed. There was no “team love” vibe about them, and on the podium they kept an arm’s length between them so as not to touch. No one could have imagined the bickering, the jealous, bitter fights that played out between them in hotel rooms in the big cities that hosted the swimming meets before that Olympic finale.

“Why do they always lavish so much fucking praise on your legs?” Carol Bayer exploded, flinging and crashing the remote right into the face of the sportscaster who on the hotel room’s depressing big-screen had just described Vivian’s legs as those of a “scissor queen” during the instant replay that, Carol thought, showed her doing just as much. This squabble happened in Columbus.

“They don’t really. They like both of us. Didn’t you hear CBS saying just the other day that they couldn’t wait to see our nimble feet soar like gulls above a crystal sea?” Vivian countered to build up Carol. It was useless.

“You know damn well which of us CBS favors!”

“Stop it! I won’t be able to perform with you like this.”

“Who the fuck cares, soloist! I should have continued on with Nancy, who didn’t make me feel like a whale.”

“Carol, Nancy could not swim to save her ass, and you know it.”

Fat Ted, thirteen, wearing a big red Mario Bros. sweatshirt and slouched on a rubber swing in front of three of the other boys in the park, had asked Landers if anybody at the hotel had heard them beefing and carrying on like that. Maybe a few nearby guests, Landers supposed, had heard the battle (sort of an underwater sound through the walls, he imagined), or maybe housekeeping had found some broken glasses, the bashed TV and devastated mattresses. But no one said or did anything. The fight was pretty well closeted. And nobody else outside the hotels would ever know because the duo kept up their Sports Illustrated luster with stellar performances all along the way to Atlanta.

Then came the Olympics. Landers attributed the duet’s silver (not gold) medal win to the couple’s unfortunate partial ability to squash whatever jealousies and violent frustrations had buoyed up between them. The sculls, eggbeaters, positions and lifts of their technical routine were performed fine enough but with the slightest appearance of repressed hostility that bubbled up and worked to loosen their cherished, swanlike synchronicity. “The judges caught those bubbles,” Landers confessed, arousing snickers from the boys.

“You sure they weren’t farts that got in the way?” Fat Ted helped out.

Redemption came about with the couple’s free routine, which was undeniably a “wild ride for water ballet” (to quote the CBS commentators). Their strong arms treaded water with force in the round shape of gigantic apples. To the German opera music, their frenzied legs and arms then lanced and speared above the water and under it, with not one splash. The flamingo, the ballet leg, and the knight, the side “Y” and the side fishtail. They were close, comfortable and lockstep. Carol performed lifts that would have hurt Hercules. The whole thing seemed desperate but fresh and provocative: “like geese or ducks fucking on the water before a bunch of Inner Harbor tourists,” Landers embellished.

“A wild ride for water ballet!” repeated Fat Ted, and one boy, Carl, spit so as not to blush. Carl, fourteen, had strict parents who made him attend all kinds of functions at the Lutheran church and disallowed TV. He often had on some embarrassing “Christian Soldier” T-shirt. But despite all that, he lit up at the mention or sight of anything remotely sexual. He would spring alert instantly and then try to hide it.

“But that bit of tension in the technical routine cost the win,” Landers recapped. The China team had won. Then at the podium during the award ceremony, Vivian and Carol did not kiss like the times before. Instead, they looked out, not ever at each other, their eyes wide and blank as the foreign anthem blared. Carol could barely repress a frown and Vivian held her little mouth open.

Their first Olympics turned out to be their last. By the next U.S. National Championships, a frenzied discord had rendered the women completely laughable—an endless charade of dolphin-like one-upmanship.

Then again in the hotel rooms and at home in Baltimore, despite every sentence Vivian tried to formulate to rekindle the synergy that had made them stars, Carol pushed away, blew up, shredded Hiver’s words and threw them back in her chlorine-stiffened hair.

Nancy Graves was the name that kept bouncing on the diving board of Carol’s beautiful tongue. A miniature Nancy treaded water in her emerald eyes, and that more than anything pained Vivian to the point where she could not cry.

Michael Landers hypothesized that the brutal breakup of the famed duet weighed on Hiver’s heart with oppressive force, even fifteen or so years after Carol swam off surprisingly not with Nancy but a young unknown named Mariana Black-Blake.

“Did those two compete?” asked Fat Ted.

“Nah. They ran away to Pittsburgh and only swam for fun at a YMCA. They were more into bike trips and road trips, and for money they had nonprofit office jobs.”

“Lame.”

However, while Vivian also abandoned all competition after that embarrassing mess at the National Championships, she still cherished water as her natural element, a Pisces through and through. She moved from the city to Loch Raven in Baltimore County and took up residence in a neighborhood of historic log cabins, with access to a considerable, placid pond and the reservoir.

The pines of the woods in the sun and in the winter the smoke of the chimneys made for the best aromatherapy in all the world.

By thirty-six, Vivian had eased into a new path in life. She excelled as a private swimming instructor, focusing specifically on blind young girls and girls with disabilities. Fulfillment came from floating their trusting, exuberant little torsos in the chilled ponds and reservoir, guiding frenetic arms, legs and stubs, teaching the blind to splash and smile.

Hiver established such good relationships with the families of these girls that she barely had to stock her own kitchen cabinets. Monday dinners were with the Adams clan in their cozy cabin on the hill. Their five-year-old daughter Theresa, blind, at first swam abortively like a mouse dropped in a mug of beer. But she had fine long oars for arms and panicky legs whose energy was good once Vivian taught her the proper ways to kick. It felt remarkably good and calm to guide another body toward a goal: not the long dreamed of medals and fame of an Olympics, but just a little personal control over the elements of life, especially in a life begun with a disability.

The other house she liked was that of the Jones family. Their cabin was large and old, with a dark bark façade. It was the closest to the reservoir but had a pond behind it as well. They loved Vivian. Mr. and Mrs. Jones always equipped little strawberry-haired Amelia, seven, with fabulous pecan and rhubarb pies to give her instructor; however, the desserts often soaked up a little too much water by the time they made it into Hiver’s hands.

Amelia obsessed over ducks and water. While her home had the pond in back and a pool, Amelia liked best the reservoir because of the many loud ducks and geese. She walked there daily to be with them, chasing them here and there. She was autistic, and she was certain she was a duck. She always wore yellow tops and shorts, quacked, strode by the reservoir and watched all the ducks. She even wore a little orange paper bill on her nose. She complained to her parents constantly that she wanted to swim with the ducks. That is why her parents wanted her to take lessons with Vivian.

Amelia had an older brother Marvin, who was a middle school footballer. He was a big tough boy who loved his sister to death. He watched her be the duck. He helped her make her bill, and he went with her many times to the reservoir. The coaches at school had him playing quarterback provisionally, and his dad wanted the kid’s arm to be legendary.

Mr. Jones went out back with Marvin daily and had him throw longer and longer passes. He had him lift weights, jog and crunch, and eat big meals of spaghetti and meatballs. But the whole time Marvin could not wait for the woods and running off with Amelia to the ducks. It was like getting away from some military training program.

That was how Marvin got in the habit of watching Amelia take her swimming lessons with Vivian. Vivian was not exactly like his dad. Vivian was simple and calm and kind of sad (he didn’t know why). Vivian waited for Amelia to kick and then guided her legs, body and arms, very hands-on, toward natural movement.

He sat close on the pine-covered grounds and threw little stones into the pond and the reservoir when they swam there. He watched the ducks glide by. And he watched Vivian in her one-piece, a dignified teacher with wet curls. Marvin heard her simple voice echo calmly all over the water and against the trees. She was not like his dad. She was guiding his little duck sister.

He looked at both of them and wanted to swim. Vivian sensed it each time she looked at him. Then she said one day, “You can swim.”

“No. I can’t,” he said.

“I’ll teach you.”

“No.”

But then he went in with her and Amelia a week later, and as Vivian smoothed Amelia’s wild strokes and started her on the doggy paddle, she also saw what Marvin was doing, flailing around at the shallow end, and she worked with him.

His body was so strong, with a chest of fine muscles and smooth hams for thighs, but it was also nervous, as if it were trapped in the water by an invisible cage. His long arms kept warm though the water ran cold throughout the reservoir. Vivian was able to get him to breaststroke and even float on his back. He was a quick learner.

He always wanted to try new things, whereas Amelia demanded to do the same thing: her “duck glide”. Therefore, when Vivian got Marvin through all the basic strokes and the treading, she one day, just to be imaginative and offer something new, started him on some of the moves she missed from her synchronized swimming days with Carol.

It came back and she enjoyed it coming back. At thirteen, Marvin was powerful and intuitive in ways similar to how Carol was. But uniquely he was able to go somewhat limp, wait, observe and take directions; his joyous if nervous young body kept up, treading to learn avidly in relation to the woman’s master teaching. Marvin did not once butt in with anything he thought he already knew. There was not any sort of hostility between them, and they became like old friends.

When Marvin decided he wanted to practice synchronized swimming, Vivian’s face warmed and she agreed it was right. They started meeting every other day at the reservoir at 3:30 p.m., and they performed jointly, with devotion to the movement, perfectly at ease in the shared space of the water.

She taught him eggbeaters and sculls, lifts and layouts. They did them each time, and Amelia swam close to them to watch and quack like a duck. Ducks were always around at the pond and the reservoir; they watched in their way from a distance.

Marvin kept the football going the whole time, but he seemed distracted to his father. He could not wait to get away.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mr. Jones asked. “Throw the ball like you want to be quarterback. This shit don’t happen without effort. Come on!”

Marvin’s mind was elsewhere. Eating spaghetti and meatballs with no appetite, he thought about how Vivian would not be barking commands the next time they met. He had no idea what she might show him next. Last it was the crane. She had even started telling him stories from her career.

The next day, Amelia was swimming with the ducks again and swimming up to them in her little cap and without her bill; she had left it on the bank.

Vivian was at the reservoir with the kids trying to teach Marvin one or two more things before the sun went down. That was when Mr. Jones startled all three of them.

For a week, Vivian had been working with Marvin on a technical routine, and this was the day that she had said they could do a free routine. She had brought a boombox, and she allowed Marvin to pick the music. He had picked Madonna’s “Ray of Light”. And they were doing a free routine together, scissoring and spinning and kicking all above the purple water as the sun lowered toward the spear- and arrow-like pines.


Mr. Jones opened his eyes and saw his quarterback upside down in the water before flipping to lift Vivian into the air like a beach ball on the nose of a dolphin. He flipped shit in his mind and then calmed into an angry, hateful grinding of his teeth.

“I do not want my son swimming in this cold when he has football and homework he better do. This is the last time I will find either of my children swimming with you here.”

Vivian froze without freezing and heard Marvin complain and rush away from his dad into the trees where the towels were, and she heard Amelia say something about the ducks being disturbed, but that all faded away like when the volume is lowered on a boombox or like when cops show up at a party and you somehow hear less of the music even though it is still pumping.

Vivian got out and turned off the Madonna. She toweled off without looking too much at Mr. Jones, although she looked at him at least once. She thought about Carol off with Mariana on a bike trip, and she felt ripped away from everything. She felt the water on her back.

Marvin came back dressed as if he were ready for football practice and he said to his dad, “Don’t discontinue Amelia’s swimming. Don’t do it. She loves the ducks and she will always come here, and she needs to know how to swim.”

“I don’t know. But I know I don’t ever expect to catch you here again synchronized swimming like a damned clown when you got football. Who the hell wouldn’t laugh at you right now?”

Vivian said nothing and toweled off and went into the trees.

“But I like swimming too,” complained Marvin.

“Some quarterback!”

Mr. Jones started heading back home.

Vivian imagined what it must feel like when a little kid gets stuck to the drain of a pool. In her chest, her heart felt sucked and emptied and drowned.

Landers did not know anything else. Questions stormed through his mind. He did not feel comfortable making anything else up.

Fat Ted was still laughing about something. But some of the others, including Landers, had grim looks on their faces.

He did not know.

Fuck it. It was all mostly archived gossip and old news reports. Perversions of pond and reservoir: a pitiful deluge of accusations, speculation.

He smoked with his buddies, and they didn't ask questions afterwards.

The sun had gone down. One of the boys, Samson, had coughed out, “You should write a book, yo.”

The boys walked the park, smoked again and went their separate ways. Landers thought about the dumbness of talk, and he shit on the idea of a book.

Landers thought he wasn't ready to tell stories such as the one he just delivered off-the-cuff, especially when he didn't know much of the middle or what really led to the gruesome end. He didn’t trust his imagination. He was paranoid about it. The woman died slimy wet, a legendary loss not fully mourned in this town. The mystery of Hiver was abysmal, though he had jazzed up what he knew. Shit to shoot in the park with his buddies. But he also felt bad.