Swimmer
- Tamara Shaffer
- 7 hours ago
- 14 min read
A short story by Tamara Shaffer
Millie stared at the fingerprint on the mirror. Hers. It had to be; she lived alone. She’d always lived alone. When she stood on her wooden stepstool to bring her 4’10” reflection high enough to inspect, the ridged smudge nearly obliterated her right eye. She reached up to wipe it and almost lost her balance. “Shit!” she screamed to no one, then caught herself and resumed primping. It was getting late.
The phone rang. By the time she got down from her perch and walked toward the high-pitched signal as fast as her short legs would take her, she was breathless.
“Are you dressed? How does it look?” Her friend of one year, Sarah, shot the questions at her uninterrupted, knowing Millie was getting dolled up for her doctor appointment and referring to the new outfit her aged friend had charged the day before. Millie appeared to be overusing her newly acquired VISA card, but Sarah understood her need to look good, even at eighty-five, and especially when she was visiting her doctor.
“I look so beautiful I don’t know what to do,” Millie bellowed, causing Sarah to pull the receiver away from her ear. Once she recovered from the auditory blast, she moved the phone back onto the side of her face and asked if she should come up to have a look. “Yes, I’m all dressed,” Millie told her. “Now I’m working on my goddamn hair—it’s doing what it wants to do.”
There had been an early-morning sale the previous day. Despite being nearly trampled in the department store rush, Millie was pleased with her latest extravaganza—a pair of indigo pants with a white shirt and a vest with sparkling, swirling silver lines and various coordinating blues—azure, royal, and one unusual shade that brought out her eyes, according to Sarah, when she arrived and critiqued the acquisition.
“So wadda ‘ya think?” Millie asked, posing like a pin-up girl, then suddenly popping a chocolate cream from a box on the dresser into her mouth. “Why do you let me eat these things?” she demanded, her words nearly indiscernible as she chewed the glutinous delight.
“Like I could stop you,” Sarah answered, turning her around to inspect the rear view and flipping her friend’s collar up playfully. “You look perfect. Now don’t get chocolate on this stunning creation. Dr. Binder’ll fall out of love with you if you show up with brown spots on your sleeves.”
Millie was convinced that her doctor loved her—not just like a patient—really loved her, romantically. It began, according to her, with hands lingering longer than might have been necessary on various parts of her anatomy. Nothing openly erotic—just shoulders, thighs, and the prolonged probe of her scoliosis, which had crooked her tiny body into a corkscrew from the waist up. How many times can he run his fingers over the hump and explain the condition? she’d wondered—at first, before the kisses—“He did kiss me a few times,” she had told Sarah, and by that she was convinced….
“Who can explain it?” she had asked aloud, after telling Sarah the unlikely story that she and her doctor shared something special. “I’m this shriveled-up old lady, and he’s a young, good-looking man—married, too, if you please.” Her voice was animated. “I do know,” she added dreamily, “that we are in love.”
Sarah had once accompanied Millie on one of her visits to the doctor’s office, where his wife served as manager and was sitting behind the desk taking calls and greeting patients. She was a slightly overweight brunette with long, stringy hair that begged to be styled. “She’s a plain-Jane, all right,” Millie said out of the side of her mouth, once she’d checked in and the two women were directed to the waiting area.
“Be careful,” admonished Sarah quietly, “she’ll hear you.”
“Who gives a shit?”
Sarah laughed. She often noted how the behaviors of women were classified differently according to their ages at the time. Profanity, aggressiveness toward anyone—except a mugger or a rapist perhaps—were totally unacceptable at twenty, viewed with disdain at forty, then somehow cute at sixty, adorable as a baby’s coo at eighty. Spunky rather than unladylike, prompting knowing smiles and amused head-shakes by men and women alike. Although she laughed at Millie’s brash behavior, she knew that at forty, she might not have liked the woman so much.
Millie insisted on classifying Sarah as a girlfriend, despite the thirty-year gap in their ages. “None of that mother-daughter crap,” was her standard counter to assumptions concerning their relationship.
Sarah agreed. “I might be a lot younger than you,” she commented to Millie once when the subject came up, “but I’m over the hill, too. Men don’t flirt with me anymore. They just get up and offer me a seat on the bus. That makes us the same age.”
They’d met in the laundry room of the apartment building in which they lived four floors from each other. They’d both headed for the same washer, the only empty one, and thus begun a conversation that continued long enough for Sarah to wait while Millie used the lone machine and emptied it out for her newfound friend. Their acquaintance might not have flourished had they not run into each other the following week.
“Oh, you again,” Millie joked. “What did I do to deserve this?”
“You’re just lucky,” Sarah countered, tossing a pile of soaked clothes into a dryer. “I beat you to the machines this time.”
“So, how’s the new-old boyfriend?” Millie asked, referring to the sad saga that was Sarah’s love life, a bit of which she’d shared at their first meeting.
“Not so good,” Sarah answered, “the jerk stood me up.”
The jerk was a man Sarah hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years, someone she’d been terribly attracted to but who couldn’t manage to keep a date—way back then. When she recently ran into him on the street near her apartment and he expressed an interest in seeing her again, she assumed he’d matured enough to be reliable. No such luck.
“Screw him,” Millie said, tearing off a fabric softener sheet with great force.
“I’ve already done that, I’m afraid,” Sarah confessed. “I wouldn’t give in to him the first time around—hey, aren’t we supposed to get smarter as we get older?”
“Smart has nothing to do with it,” Millie said, heading toward a dryer with a handful of wet underwear. “Neither does age. I’m older than dirt, and there’s this one guy, a real loser. If he asked me today to go to bed with him, I’d say, ‘sure.’” She tossed the items into the yawning machine and turned toward Sarah, finger in the air. “Just the same, you should have made him wait—at least until he showed up and took you someplace nice.” With that she slammed the dryer door, as though for emphasis, again prompting Sarah to laugh at her forcefulness.
The two had tea in Millie’s apartment. Sarah revealed details about her failed marriage. Millie described a life of being single and not wanting anyone to live with her. Sarah wondered whether she might be in the paradoxical position of needing her aloneness but not quite happy with it.
“It’s too bad you don’t have a dog or a cat,” Sarah suggested to her friend.
“I know you get a lot of enjoyment out of your little beasts,” Millie said, referring to Sarah’s two cats, “but if I had an animal anywhere around me, I’d kill it.” This was the part of Millie that Sarah begrudged. How can any kind, reasonable person even suggest hurting an animal? she wondered, but said only, “That wouldn’t be good, because furry creatures feel pain just like we do.” Millie said nothing, tossing her younger friend a look that read, you’re silly.
Silly or not, there was a chemistry between the two women and a meeting of the minds. Sarah accommodated Millie’s need for space. She nestled close enough to provide nonintrusive company, billowing outward and away like a curtain blowing in the wind, then back again, close enough to entertain and commiserate but far enough to counter Sarah’s way of losing herself in her acquaintances, male or female—symbiotic, she believed—not knowing just where she left off and they began.
They had both addressed their respective issues with Dr. Azzizi, a psychologist. Sarah first and then Millie, referred to him by Sarah herself.
“He pulls his chair up close to me and stares right in my face,” Millie reported when Sarah asked how her therapy was going. “It makes me mad as hell.”
“That’s to address your difficulty being close,” Sarah surmised out loud. “When it stops making you mad, you’ll know you’re cured.”
Sarah felt she had pegged her friend’s psyche correctly, but she couldn’t figure out the Dr. Binder connection. She was torn between not wanting to discredit Millie while also believing that no normal thirty-one-year-old man would find an eighty-something woman attractive. In any case, she never let on that she had doubts about their alleged lovefest each time Millie paid him a visit. “It’s your only intimacy,” was all she offered. She had no theory as to the doctor’s part in the affair.
She paused and looked down at her friend intently. “You really do need a pet, you know.”
Millie shot her another “you’re silly” look. "Your damn shrink thinks it’s a great idea, too,” she grumbled. “I shouldn’t have even told him about your little hair-brained scheme.”
They settled on a fish.
Sarah knew that minimal care was important—for Millie and for herself; if the venture failed, she would end up hosting their little purchase in her own apartment. They discussed the new union over dinner in Greek Town. “It’ll be the new you,” Sarah beamed, raising her voice in mock bluster, “social butterfly, caretaker, champion of the dependent!”
“Don’t get carried away,” Millie snapped, “I’m not Mother Teresa yet.”
Not Mother Theresa perhaps, but by the time they set out for the pet store to make the selection, Sarah believed that one inconspicuous organism with negligible needs and her own supervision might be safe under her cantankerous friend’s care.
“I think you should stick with a goldfish,” Sarah suggested, as they looked around the pet shop at the extensive collection of aquatic creatures in eye-catching colors. The clerk who assisted them seemed to at least partially grasp the importance of low maintenance for this customer. “You can start with one, maybe get another one later on…”
That’s when Millie shot Sarah another one of those looks. “Yeah, right,” she muttered, causing the clerk to look embarrassed and to withhold any further commentary as he quickly wrapped the fish and its accoutrements and said nothing more.
“What will you name him—or her?” Sarah asked on the bus ride home.
“Well, it would be nice to know if the little bundle of joy is a boy or a girl,” Millie screeched, a bit too loud for Sarah’s social comfort. The clerk had told them that males have white spots, but they’re not discernible until the fish is about a year old.
“Shh,” Sarah urged, placing a reproving hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “You can pick a name that fits either sex—like Terry, or Sandy—”
“But with a ‘y’ or an ‘i’?” Millie interrupted without bothering to turn down the volume. “There’s still a conflict.”
“Well,” Sarah began thoughtfully, “there’s always ‘Pat’ or even ‘Sam,’ which for a girl could be short for ‘Patricia’ or ‘Samantha’—no one would know.”
Millie was silent for a moment. “Never mind,” she boomed. “I’ll just say it’s a ‘he.’ It’s not gonna procreate.”
Sarah looked around at passengers staring at them. “I’m glad we got that settled,” she said quietly, “even if it is the sexist male default.” That concept went right over Millie’s head, and neither of them spoke again, until setting up the clear bowl in her apartment and dumping the little creature into it.
“There,” Sarah said, pointing both index fingers frontward. “He’ll be your little companion. All he’ll need is some food and fresh water.”
Millie stared at the bowl for a moment. “Is that all he’s gonna do—swim around in circles? He’s making me dizzy.”
“That’s what fish do,” Sarah answered. She was becoming worried that this new therapeutic relationship was doomed before it started. She opened the door to leave and closed it again upon hearing Millie’s sudden outburst.
“SWIMMER!”
Sarah looked at her curiously.
“Swimmer,” Millie repeated, throwing up her hands in a gesture that suggested perfect logic. “That’s his name.”
“Okay,” Sarah replied, grateful for the show of enthusiasm, “‘Swimmer’ it is.”
Millie moved closer to the bowl and stared for a moment. “He looks really bored. Maybe I should sing to him or something.”
Sarah smiled as she walked toward the elevators. Mission accomplished. And, for a while her optimism continued.
The day after Millie visited her special doctor in her new outfit, the two women ran into each other in the lobby of their building. “How did the good doctor like your spiffy getup?” Sarah asked. Her voice trailed off when she noticed Millie’s sullen expression.
“He’s leaving.” Her voice was monotone, laced with panic.
“Leaving?” Sarah leaned down toward her short friend. “Leaving where? And going where?”
“This city,” Millie managed, choking back a sob, “and going to another one.” When Sarah continued to be confused, Millie’s tone turned severe. “Dr. Binder—that damn wife of his always wanted to live where it’s warm.”
He’d been gone a month when the itching began. Right under her scoliosis, the curve near her waistline—a two-by-two-inch patch, nothing apparent to the naked eye—that sent her to the emergency room late one evening. “They don’t know what it is,” she told Sarah. “Can you see anything there?”
Sarah didn’t.
Sarah also didn’t hear the loud, pounding noise that Millie swore emanated from inside her apartment walls. She described it to the office manager as incessant and disturbing to her sleep and daytime tranquility.
“Stand right here. Tell me if you hear anything.”
Sarah, positioned as Millie directed, assumed her most diligent look of concentration and listened intently, wishing she would hear the reported noises to validate what was obviously her friend’s delusion—almost willed the sounds to happen. She heard only silence.
“Well, to hell with that,” Millie said with a wave of her hand. “Come over and sit down.”
They had tea. Millie complained again of the itching, the noises, and teared up when she mentioned how she could never see her real doctor again. She then made a startling remark: “Swimmer seems to be coming to the edge of the tank more often since I’ve been feeling sad.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
Millie’s phone call and the news that she’d been taken by ambulance to the emergency room were a shock to Sarah, and left her with the job of feeding Swimmer. During her visits to the hospital each evening, she listened to the day’s medical test horrors and never quite understood what was really wrong.
“Swimmer misses you,” Sarah told her.
And once Millie was home, she seemed better, better enough to accompany Sarah to an art fair, where she bought a few new items for her already elaborate apartment.
Millie spoke of Bart, her dead brother’s son—the one she spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with in the ‘burbs—and his great concern for her welfare. “He’s loaded,” Millie crowed. “He’s going to pay for me to live in ‘The Bristol.’” Millie was referring to the snazzy assisted living facility in their neighborhood: “You’ll be able to visit me all the time,” she said, adding, “I just have to make sure I can take Swimmer.”
Sarah took a tour of the place on Bart’s behalf, providing Millie with a bevy of brochures outlining its amenities to the tune of three times her monthly Social Security check—brochures Millie was to pass on to her devoted nephew. Sarah didn’t have the heart to press the issue, but after several weeks went by and dear nephew Bart’s follow-up was not forthcoming, she deduced there would be no Bristol. Sarah hoped that the support wouldn’t be needed, as Millie seemed better again—for a while.
One morning, the telephone rang early in the day.
“He’s belly up! Dead in the water!”
It took Sarah a moment to grasp who was calling and the meaning of her words.
“Swimmer?”
“No, Elvis—he died again.”
Sarah ignored the sarcasm. “What happened?”
“How should I know?” Millie answered with the sob-fighting voice Sarah had grown to recognize. “He’s floating, just floating….” Her voice trailed off.
“I’ll be right up.” Sarah donned her slippers as Millie finished the sentence. The door opened before she could knock and a silent Millie led her toward the bowl that held the stiff, drifting gold creature.
“He was fine last night.” Millie choked the words out, prompting Sarah to lead her to a chair and hand her a tissue.
The two women performed a funeral of sorts, Sarah saying a few words over the rigid yellow body wrapped tenderly in a piece of toilet paper, before it was flushed away forever and Millie stated dourly, “Never again.”
Her nursing home stay was for five weeks, in the facility down the street, the one paid for by Medicaid, where the smell of death permeated the atmosphere and the aides wore drab green uniforms and smoked outside during their breaks. Patients were four to a room—no privacy, no furnishings from Macy’s or Monet paintings like at The Bristol, or in Millie’s living room at home.
Sarah searched from floor to floor and found her friend, nearly unrecognizable, in a hospital gown rather than her customary bright attire, her usually coiffed hair lying flat against her tiny skull. Sitting listless and silent in the chair in the hallway outside her room, she stared into space as Sarah chattered, attempting to engage her friend and draw her out of her lethargy.
The day Millie turned eighty-six Sarah delivered a bottle of her favorite body lotion.
“Happy birthday,” she beamed, holding the ribboned gift in one hand and a bottle of sparkling apple juice in the other. The attendants bustled about, echoing Sarah’s wishes and gathering two glasses for the celebration.
“Here’s to many more,” Sarah proposed in her birthday toast, raising her glass and clinking it onto the one held unenthusiastically by her friend, who remained unresponsive even while Sarah rubbed the lotion into her hands and lower arms, except to mutter, “I don’t want any more.”
“She broke a hip,” the receptionist at the nursing home told her. “She fell out of bed.”
Not good news, from what Sarah had always heard—broken hip, death knell. They’d sent Millie to a different hospital. Getting there involved two long bus rides.
She found her friend dwarfed by the huge bed, her tiny hip wrapped in an oversized bandage. Her lips barely moved when Sarah spooned bites of dinner into them, as though in slow motion. It was silent, this final visit.
“Her family came and got her stuff,” said the building manager, “about a week ago.” No word from the caring nephew, no funeral notification; only confirmation from the nursing home administrator that Millie had passed away.
The apartment where the two friends had shared tea and attended to Swimmer was now occupied by a non-English-speaking Russian woman, hopefully enjoying the stylish blue and gray tiled foyer, oak bathroom vanity and pewter light fixture, all left on Millie’s unpaid VISA card.
Sarah sat opposite Dr. Azzizi a few days later.
“I should have left her the way she was.” She while she shared her guilt about her friend’s death. “She was doing just fine until I came along with my relationship BS. All those attachments did was bring her grief.”
Dr. Azizzi said nothing for a moment. When Sarah’s tears subsided, he spoke in his most comforting voice. “Do you think those attachments might have brought her some measure of joy?”
“Well, maybe,” she conceded reluctantly, “but they’re the reason she’s dead right now.”
“That’s a big load for you to take on.” Sarah was silent while he continued. “I’m thinking maybe her final days were her best days—because of those attachments. Which she wouldn’t have acquired – and enjoyed – if you hadn’t come along.”
Sarah left the session mulling over the doctor’s perspective, as well as the age-old question: Is it better to have loved and lost or to never have loved at all? She knew first-hand how risky love could be, how every relationship, no matter how much joy it produced, was in peril.
Her walk home took her past the medical office where she’d accompanied the lovelorn patient. She noticed that it displayed a new list of physicians’ names. No doubt the good doctor wasn’t aware of Millie’s demise.
The jangle of the cell in her purse startled her out of her musing. She rummaged for the device, hoping it was the man she’d met while shopping the day before. Pleasantly surprised when his number appeared on the screen, she found herself wondering whether Millie would have approved.
Tamara Shaffer’s short stories and articles have been published in newspapers and literary journals including Phoebe, Serving House, Six Hens, The Pedestal, and Woman’s World magazine. She is also the author of Murder Gone Cold, a book about the 1957 unsolved murders of two sisters in Chicago (2006). She is retired and lives in Chicago.
Images:
Goldfish ascending by SLNC
Goldfish close-up by Zhengtao Tang
Goldfish from above by Esahk Gurung
If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a tip or becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.