Dead Man's Float

by Beth Sherman

My father never wanted me to swim in case I drowned. At the beach, he hovered as I constructed elaborate sandcastles erased by the tide. The ocean glittered, snarling like a beast stalking its prey. Once, I tried a back float in the community pool, his hands cupping my body, lifting me clean out of the chlorine so I floated on air. Let go, I wanted to tell him, imagining the plunge to the bottom, cradled in blue. But I saw fear in his eyes and couldn’t even master the dog paddle. At sleep away camp, the counselors tried to teach me, following the usual progression—blow bubbles, turn head, windmill arms, flutter kick, let go of the edge. By then, I dreaded swimming as my father surely intended, hated that drowning sensation when water surged up my nose, the frantic struggle to breathe.

Decades later, dying of leukemia, he showed me a faded photo of his younger self with a woman who wasn’t my mother and a daughter who wasn’t me. Instantly I knew. That girl, a child with solemn eyes and postcard-perfect curls, had swum out too far one day, in a lake somewhere in Wisconsin where my father once lived. I pictured her drifting like a lost mermaid, fish wriggling through the sockets of her eyes. No, my father said, as I held a cup of ice chips to his lips. Car accident. He was driving. One careless moment: fumbling with the radio, taking his eyes off the road. A lifetime of regrets. Be safe, he whispered, although I think we both knew that was as likely as me gliding through rough waters, swimming straight and true.

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BETH SHERMAN is the author of HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE (Ad Hoc Fiction). She has had more than 250 stories published in literary journals and has also written five mystery novels. 

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