Twenty years ago, Vivian Silver abandoned her dreams of travel to marry the mysterious Jeb Wheeler, seduced both by his unnerving charm and his acres of untamed New Hampshire land. The hand-built house and swimming pond become the center of the universe for their entire family. Lila, their youngest, is consumed with love for her two older brothers, Aaron and Jack, and remains blind to the simmering tension between them. For beneath the surface of their idyllic setting lies a depth of explosive feeling that none of them can control.
Into this heated atmosphere glides Aaron’s girlfriend, Suzanne, whose presence is threatening, exciting; Lila thrills to the ominous quality of Aaron’s absolute adoration for this young woman. Before her visit is over, Suzanne will unleash the forces of rage between Aaron and Jack, compelling one brother to commit an act against the other that can never be taken back. A decade later, living in New York, Lila still searches for Aaron, who disappeared that night, and Suzanne, whose mystique still exerts a hold on her memory. For Lila to move past her family’ s tragedy, she must piece together what happened that fateful weekend–and recover the things lost down by the water–before she can at last let them go.
A stunning literary novel that captures the lingering effects of longing and loss, Swimming is by turns a gripping family story, a heartbreaking coming of age journey, and a suspenseful psychological investigation into the meaning and limits of fidelity, identity, and intimacy.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Joanna Hershon's A Dual Inheritance.
Release date:
November 11, 2009
Publisher:
Ballantine Books
Print pages:
384
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There is no such thing as silence in the woods. Vivian Silver trusted this, as she followed the man she'd met only hours ago down the pine-dark path of his property. She watched his lean figure and became hypnotized by his uneven gait, the majesty of his long narrow back. He hadn't once turned around to make sure that she'd kept up, and this did not surprise her. Just as she knew that there was no such thing as silence in the woods, she also somehow trusted that as carefully as she was watching him, he was listening even more carefully for her quick footfalls and the high-pitched swish of her navy blue windbreaker. She could feel him listening, and that was good enough.
She walked on and heard skitters of invisible creatures, the wind through the thinning pines. There was a sense of clarity that accompanied the quiet, and this was something Vivian already knew to look for in a man. When one held back from her, she couldn't help but pay attention. The path finally opened up into a clearing, and because the sun had just set, the land-his land-was the darkest of greens, a shade brought on by October in New Hampshire when the day holds on to the richness of color even when light is gone.
There in the distance, just as he'd promised, was a pond.
She couldn't quite see the water. He was blocking her view with his body, but she could smell the wet sand and fallen leaves, the swampy, reedy darkness. And although it was unquestionably autumn, Vivian could feel the brazen heat of summer, the lovely shock of a dive. She could also hear the slice of blades on ice, the scrape and shriek of skating. On sensing this body of water, she briefly forgot why she was here. Then a distinct shift took place inside of her as he placed his hand-as if he'd done so countless times-under her long tangled hair. He still hadn't said a word. Here was a feeling both thrilling and disappointing, as if someone had just informed her that the world was about to end. Her neck was cold and his hand was warm. It was the first time they had touched.
Vivian was saving money to sail away to Spain. She was substitute teaching and writing poetry while staying with her brother Aaron. That night Aaron sent her to Cal's Bar, where he knew the bartender. Aaron knew a lot of bartenders for someone who didn't drink. He knew everybody in Portsmouth. Only months later, having decided not to go to Canada, he would die a reluctant private in a Vietnam helicopter accident; the funeral in their Massachusetts hometown would be so crowded that his pregnant sister wouldn't recognize half of the people there. Her first son would be his namesake. She would name him Aaron and pray, like any mother, that he would not die young.
But she knew none of this that evening, when she sat alone at Cal's Bar, drinking a bottle of beer. She had been aware of Jeb Wheeler's presence since he'd walked through the door in worn jeans, a workshirt, and a red down vest. She guessed he was at least thirty-five. He was very tall and thin with a long crooked nose, full lips, and arresting green eyes. It was his eyes that she noticed first. There was something wrong with them. She tried not to stare as he sat down beside her and ordered a rare hamburger. She tried not to stare but soon became acutely aware that he was the one who was staring. And he wasn't shy about it either.
"Hello," he said.
"Oh, hi." She smiled and looked into his eyes that were strange. As one moved normally in the socket, the other stayed quite still. While his pupils were the same light green color and were framed by the same long dark lashes, the left eye appeared to be made of glass. It was foreign and would stay foreign. She'd never quite get used to it.
"I've never been here," she said, just to say something.
But he wasn't like that. He kept on looking at her and smiling. Finally he said, "Well, I'm glad you're here now."
She told him what there was to tell about herself, how she'd graduated from college and was leaving for Spain in the springtime. She tried to keep it brief and ended up drinking her beer too quickly. He didn't ask many questions and the ones he did ask were blunt: Why Spain? What will you do for money once you're there? Have you noticed my eye yet?
He had lived in New York City and worked as a chemist. In a slightly suspect explanation of how he'd ended up here- looking like a lumberjack or possibly a carpenter-Vivian learned that he had sold something, a patent of sorts, and that he had quit his job.
"What do you do now?" she asked, leaning into him, not completely aware she was doing so. She could smell woodsmoke on his clothes, the faint toxic smell of varnish.
"Well," he said, smiling, as if he somehow wasn't quite sure what to say, "I bought land. I bought some fine land, and I've been building myself a house."
"Where is it?" Vivian asked. She pictured herself on top of him on a spare iron bed, being cold and even lonely and asking him to build a fire. She didn't bother trying to stop fantasizing. She knew herself better than that.
"It's about forty-five minutes from here," he said, and raised his eyebrows. "Kind of out there." He gave her a look as if to say, I dare you. When he was through with his burger, they left together. He opened the passenger door of his truck for her.
He said, "You don't need to worry; I'm not very dangerous." Until that moment, the thought hadn't crossed her mind.
And now they were in a forest clearing between his half-built house and the pond. Pine needles covered the loamy ground, and sycamores framed the sky. They weren't looking at each other. As he moved his hand very gently along the back of her pale neck, she found she was straining to see the pond- over his shoulder, beyond the trees-as if to see the black-green water would be to inhabit the sense of certainty that she knew water created. But from where she stood, the water was not much more than a ghost in the trees watching and assessing this union.
Vivian reached out to touch him, letting him know right away where she stood. Under the down vest, his denim shirt was hot. She rested her hand there as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"Beautiful," she finally said. The trees moved so slightly. The sky was full of stars.
"You are," he told her, and, taking her pale face in his two rough hands, he kissed her.
A kiss can be as minuscule as a moth or the tiny flame it craves, a torn fingernail or an eyelash; and yet a kiss can be huge. It can be as expansive and dangerous as this one was. It can be the origin of a family. They kissed softly and tenderly at first, and then things got rougher. As the clear sky became clearer and darker, they grabbed hold of each other's clothing. They kissed hard, almost bitterly, as if they resented their mutual attraction.
They were both impatient people. They'd wage battles against impatience all their lives, but not tonight. Tonight they did exactly what they wanted.
They didn't even make it to the house. Without any debate, she lay down on the cold damp grass. She wasn't taking birth control pills and he didn't use a rubber, and-as if it were a dream and she was using dream logic-she found she knew exactly what she was doing without any fear of consequences.
Vivian watched for the pond over his shoulder but couldn't see a thing; the promise of a pond sat under the moon and stared at her boldly, watching her gasp for breath. She thought of Spain with a kind of nostalgia: it seemed smaller than before and awfully far away. She said goodbye to Cordoba and Sevilla, adios to flamenco and paella. He breathed in her ear and she kissed his long, stubbled neck. "I can't believe we just did that," he told her. But she knew that he was lying.
"Let me show you the house," Jeb said, after gently taking her hand in his and heading for the path. When he kissed her again, she felt a surge of greed and strained to see the water. "What?" he asked.
He was close to her, leaning down to see her face. She could smell the varnish and the brackish smell of his sweat. It was purely carnal and she backed away from him-head tilted, coy-as if she had a secret.
"What?" he repeated.
She retreated some more-a come-and-catch-me set of eyes, an attempt at a wicked smile. The water was so close just beyond the stand of trees and weeds, and-with a toss of her hair, having barely a notion of what she was doing-she ran.
As she expected, he did not run after her. Vivian was now free to get as near to the water as possible, to trample over the fallen wet reeds and feel her boots sink into the sand. The wind blew and the pond came to her, slowly lapped at her boot toes in a lazy, ancient rhythm. The moon shone down in a harsh slant, casting the pond as particularly separate from the soil and the trees and from her. She felt younger out here in this untamed space, and-as if she were being watched, as if the pond itself were judging her-she stood up straighter as she surveyed the landscape. She took a deep clean breath.
Jagged rocks began a few yards to her left. Smooth slabs framed the water, flat as if they'd been carefully beaten down. Dried-out grass stood tall, interspersed with endless weeds.
She wouldn't have changed a thing.
The pond wore its surroundings like careless attire, as if to protect its luminous beauty. Its surface shimmered, innocent of the forest's tall shadows or the mountains' cranky terrain. The water divulged nothing, and she couldn't help but bend down and touch it with her fingertips. It felt brutally cold, and she put her fingers in her mouth at once, sucking back some comfort from herself. Vivian gazed at the water and there it was-her reflected self, round as an infant but twice the size. Then, quick as lightning, the distorted shape was gone as a dark cloud shrouded the moon. Here was where she would make her life. Over years to come she would swim and sunbathe, take walks with Jeb and the children, take time alone with her thoughts. She would eat potluck meals here, engaging in terrific conversations with neighbors who would move away. And later in life, after drinking too much, she would come straight to the slabs of rock by the water's edge and she would sit-her mouth parted, too tired for wonder-staring at the water for hours.
This was where her future would unfold. Later she'd say she knew it right then and without a single doubt. She would tell her sons and daughter that she just knew it, the same way she knew that Spain was only a single country on so many maps of the world.
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