The Little Friend

The way across was easy. On the return trip, through the chill blue tiger-stripes of light, everything thickened and ground down to slow motion—some kid’s arm floating past, dreamy and corpse-white; some kid’s leg, tiny white bubbles clinging to the leg hairs standing on end and rolling away with a slow, foamy kick as her blood crashed hard in her temples, and washed back, and crashed hard and washed back and crashed again, like ocean waves pounding on the beach. Up above—hard to imagine it—life clattered on in brilliant color, at high temperature and speed. Kids shouting, feet slapping on hot pavement, kids huddled with soggy towels around their shoulders and slurping on blue Popsicles the color of pool water. Bomb Pops, they were called. Bomb Pops. They were the fad, the favorite treat that year. Shivering penguins on the cold case at the concession stand. Blue lips … blue tongues … shivers and shivers and chattering teeth, cold …

She burst through the surface with a deafening crack, as if through a pane of glass; the water was shallow but not quite shallow enough for her to stand in and she hopped about on tiptoe, gasping, as Pemberton—who’d been observing with interest—hit the water smoothly and glided out to her.

Before she knew what was happening, he scooped her expertly off her feet and all of a sudden her ear was against his chest and she was looking up at the nicotine-yellow undersides of his teeth. His tawny smell—adult, foreign, and, to Harriet, not wholly pleasant—was sharp even over the pool chemicals.

Harriet rolled out of his arms and they fell away from each other—Pemberton on his back, with a solid thwack that threw up a sheet of water as Harriet splashed to the side and clambered up, rather ostentatiously, in her yellow-and-black-striped bathing suit that (Libby said) made her look like a bumblebee.

“What? Don’t you like to be picked up?”

His tone was lordly, affectionate, as if she was a kitten who’d scratched him. Harriet scowled and kicked a spray of water into his face.

Pem ducked. “What’s the matter?” he said teasingly. He knew very well—irritatingly well—how handsome he was, with his superior smile and his marigold-colored hair streaming out behind him in the blue water, like the laughing merman in Edie’s illustrated Tennyson:

Who would be

A merman bold

Sitting alone

Singing alone

Under the sea

With a crown of gold?

“Hmmn?” Pemberton let go her ankle and splashed her, lightly, then shook his head so that the drops flew. “Where’s my money?”

“What money?” said Harriet, startled.

“I taught you how to hyperventilate, didn’t I? Just like they tell scuba divers to do in those expensive courses.”

“Yes, but that’s all you told me. I practice holding my breath every day.”

Pem drew back, looking pained. “I thought we had a deal, Harriet.”

“No we don’t!” said Harriet, who couldn’t bear to be teased.

Pem laughed. “Forget it. I ought to be paying you for lessons. Listen—” he dipped his head in the water, then bobbed up again—“is your sister still bummed out about that cat?”

“I guess. Why?” said Harriet, rather suspiciously. Pem’s interest in Allison made no sense to her.

“She ought to get a dog. Dogs can learn tricks but you can’t teach a cat to do anything. They don’t give a shit.”

“Neither does she.”

Pemberton laughed. “Well then, I think a puppy is just what she needs,” he said. “There’s a notice in the clubhouse about some chow-chow puppies for sale.”

“She’d rather have a cat.”

“Has she ever had a dog?”

“No.”

“Well, then. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. Cats look like they know what’s going on, but all they do is sit around and stare.”

“Not Weenie. He was a genius.”

“Sure he was.”

“No, really. He understood every word we said. And he tried to talk to us. Allison worked with him all the time. He did the best he could but his mouth was just too different and the sounds didn’t come out right.”

“I bet they didn’t,” said Pemberton, rolling over to float on his back. His eyes were the same bright blue as the pool water.

“He did learn a few words.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like ‘nose.’ ”

“Nose? That’s a weird word to teach him,” said Pemberton idly, looking up at the sky, his yellow hair spread out like a fan on the surface of the water.

“She wanted to start with names of things, things she could point to. Like Miss Sullivan with Helen Keller. She’d touch Weenie’s nose, and say: ‘Nose! That’s your nose! You’ve got a nose!’ Then she’d touch her own nose. Then his again. Back and forth.”

“She must not have had much to do.”

“Well, she didn’t really. They’d sit there all afternoon. And after a while all Allison had to do was touch her nose and Weenie would reach up like this with his paw and touch his own nose and—I’m not kidding,” she said, over Pemberton’s loud derision—“no, really, he would make a weird little meow like he was trying to say ‘nose.’ ”