The color of longing

by James Callan

The pool was the color of longing, which, admittedly, may differ from person to person, but for Beth, the color was aquamarine. The water was tantalizing, the way it writhed in aggressive, sun-charged squiggles, almost as if alive—tormented even—like electric eels zapped by their own devices. It drew Beth in, all the way to the concrete lip of the deep end. Mesmerized, she stared until blinded.

When Heather called out to her, “Beth! Earth to Beth!” she forced her gaze away from the tendrils of fire, those neon snakes skirting the water that remained in her eyes, even after she closed them, inverting everything to an angry red. Eventually, when the serpents uncoiled from her retina, slithering back into the chlorinated water to ignite the surface of its depth, Beth’s sight returned to her, though nothing looked the same. The dry land around her had become a foreign landscape, an alien world that she felt she no longer belonged to.

“Come into the pool, Beth.”

No command had ever been easier to follow.

“The water feels lovely!”

Beth did not doubt it. She dove into the sapphire pool.

Heather was the better swimmer—she knew six different strokes and was faster than Beth in each one—but this stands to reason; it was Heather’s family that owned the pool. Even so, Beth excelled beyond her friend in other ways—subtle, artistic ways—that reflected an inherent grace in the water. She could hold her breath nearly twice as long as Heather, for instance, and her cannonballs splashed three sun loungers rather than only one. When it came to play, underwater twirls and expression of sub-aquatic dance, Heather was left in Beth’s wake. She wasn’t a jealous girl by nature, but, when watching Beth pirouette in the deep, Heather couldn’t help making comparisons to herself, feeling much like a fish out of water.

In truth, it was Beth who was jealous of Heather. Heather, after all, was the one who had her very own pool. When Beth made the request, going so far as to beg on her knees, her parents laughed at the suggestion of getting one for themselves. “Out of the question,” her father told her. “I don’t know how to swim,” her mother admitted. So, under these sad limitations, Beth would resort to depend on Heather for opportunities to swim, to use her friend’s pool, or, on occasion, the less desirable option: the public facility in town.

In wintertime, when Heather was more likely skiing than swimming, when her swimming pool would remain drained, covered over, and unused for half the long year, Beth became well acquainted with the indoor public pool. There, she honed her swimming strokes—eight in all—and learned to cut the water with hardly any splash as she dove from the edge of the pool and the high dive, when bravery allowed. She didn’t like the boys, who would sometimes watch her with their mischievous grins. She did not appreciate the echo of their teasing in the cavernous, indoor space. Despite these minor misgivings, Beth luxuriated in the all-day access to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the 88,000 cubic feet of aquatic space that allowed her to be who and what she was always meant to be: a maritime creature fit only for the water.

Occasionally, Beth would dwell on preferable venues for her swimming: the sea or a lake, the wide mouth of a river—natural, unchlorinated bodies of water. Beggars cannot be choosers, however, and, as Beth had already discovered by way of trial and error, begging got her nowhere. The public pool would have to do.

The wet tiles beneath her feet seemed icky, even perverse, beneath the soles of her feet and between her toes—Beth preferred hot, coarse concrete to tepid, slick porcelain. Even so, she tolerated the invasive feeling of potential fungal transfer, as well as exposure to communicable illness from sharing the water, despite its ample chlorination. Beth would never trade access to the water for hygienic assurances. It was well understood to her: disease was part of the cost.

People typically carry .14 grams of feces on their bodies at any given time—driven by curiosity, Beth had learned this fact to her horror. It settled her disquiet, however, when she applied the mathematics she had been learning in class, when she worked out that it would take over 3000 swimmers to add a single pound of shit to the 5.5 million pounds of water. In any case, it was all very much worth it; the squelch of warm water that is a perfect home for foot fungus, the shared depths polluted by trace elements of poop. No, it wasn’t her own private pool, but Beth was more than happy to use it. For a time, her routine visits to the public pool suited her as an adequate arrangement.

*

Beth’s frequent thoughts of water developed into obsession, and her constant desire to swim became more complicated over time. Her fixation on pools, on bodies of water, on the aquatic creatures that live in them, exacerbated after she was exposed to certain films that stole her heart, themes and ideas that set her imagination and longing into overdrive. Her parents owned a copy of Splash, which was boring at times, but had scenes with a mermaid, a beautiful blonde, who lived in the cold waters of Cape Cod, a place she had been once before, which made it accessible…and real. Beth watched the film so many times that the old VHS went grainy with repetitious viewing. When The Little Mermaid came to her local cinema, Beth saw it first with her mother, and later that week, again, with her father. She supposed that her parents, having seen the animated movie, would change their mind about getting a pool. Surely, they would understand the benefits of a body of water just beyond their door, the advantage of a girl’s access to both land and sea.

Beth offered an incentive to finalize her pitch: “If we had a pool, I could practice my backstroke. I could become the world’s fastest swimmer. And Dad, you could have my Olympic gold medals and sell them to offset the price of having it built.”

Beth’s father interlaced his hands, leaning forward over the dinner table to hammer in his wisdom. “Olympic gold medals are only coated with gold,” her father told her. “Did you know that? They would fetch a fair price; it’s true. But not enough to cover the expense of a pool. Besides, it’s not even likely you’d qualify for the Olympics, let alone win the gold. It’s good to have aspirations, Honey, but it’s worthwhile to aim for targets within reach. Have you considered being a mother, like your mother?”

Beth had not, though if she did become a mother, she was sure it would be well after she had won her gold medals or had swum to depths deeper than anyone ever had before her. Mothering could wait. Her swimming pool could not.

She turned to her mother. “Mom, everyone should learn how to swim. If we had a pool, I could show you how! Breaststroke or butterfly—I’ll teach you either. It could save your life if you ever stumble off a gunwale.”

Her mother scowled in disfavor. “There will be no talk of guns over dinner,” she warned.

Vexed, Beth shook her head and set down her glass of milk . “A gunwale isn’t a gun, Mom. It’s the side of a fucking boat.”

“Language!” Mother and Father reprimanded their daughter. Then, as one, they added, “No pool!”

*

Sometimes, while at Heather’s, when the season was right, but far more often at the public pool, Beth would practice holding her breath while submerged underwater. Her thoughts were clearest when sitting at the bottom of the pool—her mind’s eye most widely open at the end of her tolerance for suppressed oxygen. In those final seconds of what had been built up to nearly three minutes after months of training, Beth could visualize her thoughts as if they floated before her in the blue water. The blur of chlorinated haze would lift, unveiling her clouded sight, revealing crystal clear images in all their heightened detail. Devoid of oxygen, Beth witnessed wonders—innumerable scales shimmering over slender lengths of silver fish; the opening of gills and their rows of soft tissue like the underside of a mushroom; the glint of intelligence in a porpoise’s eye; the sway of emerald kelp in warm, pulsating currents; the jagged scars of a sperm whale where the squid it hunts had raked its hide. Only when her vision would fade, begin to turn to black, would Beth take the hint, submit to her bodily limitation for air and break the surface with a long, ragged breath. On more than one occasion, the lifeguards on duty had dove into the pool to resuscitate what they thought was a girl who had drowned. Beth, incensed, would push them away, or curse them when they pulled her to the edge of the pool, protesting that they had ruined her chance to beat her record, that she had nearly made it to four full minutes without a single breath.

Although it came with some scrutiny from the staff, and no shortage of name-calling and teasing from the boys and girls who avoided public displays of their own eccentricities, Beth took to modifying her anatomy when at the public pool, to apply certain homemade apparatus to achieve her perfect form. It started with flippers, which she not only wore, but stapled together at the seams where she had pressed them together. With her feet hanging over the lip of the deep end, she’d bind her legs in duct tape, starting at the ankles and working all the way up past her knees. Eventually, she wore tube skirts in the water to help bind her thighs. Beth had acquired dozens of similar, tight-fitting skirts—the fabric of each one in some variation of blue or green, the odd one verging on purple or gray, shades and hues conceivable to the likes of water. One time, wishing to affect a certain elegance that taped-together flippers and tube skirts fell short of achieving, Beth wrapped her legs in silk bed sheets, meandering underwater with what appeared like the fragile sail of a betta fish.

In the end, as Beth’s measures to become aquatic increased to clash with the interests of other patrons, the public pool instated new rules that banned implements in the water beyond a simple list of standard swimwear:

Swimsuit

Goggles

Swim Cap

Inflatable Water Wings (for learners and children)

Kick-boards (upon request)

At home, in bed, Beth slept in tight tube skirts and sleeping bags cinched around her legs. At the public pool, in the water, she shamed other swimmers with her grace and speed, and marveled those who cared to notice the many long minutes she held her breath while sitting at the bottom of the deep end.

*

Beth was a late bloomer, remaining childlike in her behavior and interests, as well as her physical and sexual development. When she was fifteen, she had her first period, while swimming in Heather’s pool. Although she had been educated by well-versed individuals—her mother and friends—the cloud of crimson that trailed her movements was startling, alarming, and graphic, like the aftermath of a shark bite. Heather, for her own part, was a pro in these matters, so used to the monthly inconvenience of menstruation that, for her, wasn’t so much an event as a rhythmic pulse of time, like numbers on a month-long clock. Kindly, she escorted Beth out of the pool and wrapped her in a towel, making sure it wasn’t pale, but dark to conceal any would-be stains. Seating Beth in a sun lounger, Heather ran indoors, returning a few minutes later with a box of period pads and a carton of pomegranate juice.

Heather handed Beth the box, telling her the bathroom was free, and opened the carton of juice before dropping it to splash into the pool. “Oops.” She smiled and winked. As Beth walked away, she realized why Heather had purposefully dropped the carton into the water. Blood-red juice seeped out from the container, mingling with the pink cloud of her body’s own making. In moments, the two foreign substances swirled to become one, and the empty carton that floated to the surface assured Heather’s brothers, who were liable to pass by at any given moment, that it was only spilled fruit juice, the clumsy mistake of their sister and friend. In the meantime, the chlorination worked to disinfect any unwanted fluids, fractions of grams of poop, and thimble-full portions of blood.

It wasn’t a momentous occasion, in itself, even if it did mark the beginning of her womanhood, a long chain of monthly inconveniences that would follow Beth for many decades. But it did strike Beth how tender Heather had been, how motherly her friend had handled the situation, and how skillfully she dissuaded any concerns or discomforts. For the first time, Beth felt kinship with Heather, feelings that went deeper than their commonplace acquaintance, extended beyond her possession of a pool. She felt nurtured, and humbled, and wished to return the favor.

The next time Beth went swimming at Heather's, she brought certain paraphernalia that she typically reserved for the public pool. From the wicker basket of her bike, she unpacked variable items: duct tape and flippers, a silken bed sheet, tube skirts, and two VHS tapes—Splash and The Little Mermaid. Heather was sunbathing by the pool when Beth came upon her, arms spread wide and burdened with many strange items.

“What’s with all the stuff?”

Beth was delighted Heather had asked. “Let me show you. But be prepared,” she warned, “you’ll never be the same!”

And to a degree, Beth may have been right to say so. Heather would never be the same—not entirely. She would never again see Beth in quite the same light. So she watched, half amused, half disturbed, remaining largely uninspired by Beth’s unusual display. In silence, she observed her friend’s odd way of donning her flippers that had been stapled together; the way she had taped her legs all the way to her knees, up to edge of her blue-green tube skirt; how she waddled across the concrete perimeter of the pool before flopping over the edge of the deep end; the unaccountable joy that it seemed to bring her, almost religious in scope; how Beth swirled in the water in a spiral for several awkward minutes while she held her breath; how she had expected Heather would be impressed by it all. When Beth rose up from the bottom of the pool to reward her lungs with a triumphant breath of exhalation, Heather offered a strained smile, clapping slowly before crashing back down to recline upon her sun lounger.

Beth grinned within the pool, happy with herself, and glided over to Heather. Her hair was plastered to her head, a strand of snot stretching from one nostril to her lip. She propped herself up onto the concrete shelf of the pool and wiped her nose with her forearm, scattering droplets of water onto Heather’s bare ankles. Heather flinched at the cold water on her hot skin, at the proximity of the bizarre performer who she thought she knew so well. She withdrew her legs into herself, sitting up and away from Beth, who sniffed and dripped at her feet. Heather looked at her friend with newly-minted senses, up-to-date judgements, and harsh suppositions. Her disdain for Beth came upon her as suddenly and stealthily as a shark attack from beneath a churning surf. Still, there it was, as large and unassuming as a whale. Quietly, Heather recoiled in suppressed revulsion.

“Well, how about that?” Beth had yet to catch on that her friend was unimpressed, even embarrassed, by the off-kilter performance that she innocently shared. “Pretty cool, don’t you think?” Beth continued to smile, oblivious to the shift in atmosphere, the sudden change that overcame Heather.

A silence hung in the air. Above the two young women, the sun shone down from the apex of a perfect blue sky. It was hot—unbearable out of the water—and beads of sweat raised up on Heather’s neck and breasts. Rivulets formed, trickling from her stark white armpits down the slope of her ribcage to fill her navel. “Your belly button is all filled up,” Beth giggled like a little girl. “Filled up with salty water, like the sea.” Heather shifted to her side to allow her navel to drain, to drip down and darken the concrete below her sun lounger. At that moment, she turned bright red, glad to have the hot sun to blame for it.

Heather took a rain check on the latter half of what had been planned to be a day of swimming with Beth, followed by a fun movie night. She told Beth that she felt a little faint, that she probably had too much sun. Beth was disappointed, but like a good friend, she understood, and wished Beth well. Before leaving to bike back home, she left behind the films that she had brought for them to watch together. Heather had seen The Little Mermaid a thousand times, but not since she was ten. She had never heard of Splash, but she read the back of the VHS with the expression of someone holding dog shit right under nose. She waved to Beth at her door and watched her bike down the lane. With a damp tube skirt and silk bed sheets spilling over the the edge of her wicker basket, Beth shrunk in the distance as she pedaled away. When she turned the corner to disappear altogether, Heather took a deep breath, feeling like she hadn’t breathed all afternoon—as if she had been submerged underwater.

Holding up the VHS tapes that had been lent to her, Heather shook her head in disfavor, throwing them to the floor. She sauntered to the kitchen to sneak a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, drank, and picked up the phone. She dialed quickly and was relieved when a familiar voice picked up on the other end.

“Jackie? You won’t believe the afternoon I’ve had. Come over. We can hang. I’ll tell you all about it. We can swim and watch a movie. Gosh, I think you were right all along. About Beth…No, it’s worse than that. Just come over. We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

That afternoon, Heather and Jackie sunbathed and swam until sunset, then, under the stars on their poolside loungers, they gossiped about boys—and Beth. They ordered pizza and drank many beers, analyzing their quirky classmate and dissecting her worth as a peer.

As if aware of these judgements, Beth went to bed with a pit in her stomach. She found it difficult to doze, but when she finally managed, her sleep was burdened with terrible nightmares. She tossed and turned like a fish on the dry, hot sand, dreaming of drowning far away from any water.

*

Years later, during the summer following their high school graduation, Beth accepted Heather's invitation to join her for the weekend at her family's lakeside cabin. Heather's boyfriend, Hunter, drove them, along with Jackie's boyfriend, Marshal, to Gull Lake—a three-hour journey filled with metal music and bad jokes. Jackie was meant to come, too, but when her parents discovered the tattoo that she secretly got—music lyrics permanently scrawled over the small of her back that read: Life is Just a Blast that’s Movin’ Really Fast—they resolved to keep her grounded until she became a legal adult. It was a dramatic way to tell her she was grounded for the weekend—Jackie’s 18th birthday was less than a week away. In any case, Beth had the feeling she was a stand-in, and Marshal, it seemed, wasn't the only one who was disappointed by this change of events.

“I like your outfit,” Marshal complimented Beth, who was wearing a faded The Little Mermaid tee-shirt, a tube skirt over her denim shorts. “It’s really cool,” he told her, stifling a laugh and nudging Hunter.

“Totally.” Hunter craned his neck to look back from the driver’s seat. “Loving the Ronald McDonald look. Super sexy.” Beth had dyed her hair cherry red in emulation of Ariel, the little mermaid herself.

“Be nice, guys.” Heather scolded the boys but, like them, she was laughing.

When they arrived at the lake it was early afternoon, a time the boys referred to as “beer o’clock.” With them, it was always beer o’clock, always Limp Bizkit and Korn—angry men rapping their discontent and screaming for emphasis from a boombox on the dock.

While the day was uncomfortably warm, becoming hotter by the hour, Beth was delighted to discover the lake remained cool, even in mid-July. She was soothed by the shallows, the mud and sediment that swallowed her feet and ankles. She was pacified by the lake’s blue-brown depths as she waded deeper, comforted by its cloying weeds that came up to her armpits. Relief washed over her as she dipped her head beneath the surface, when the water drowned out the guitar riffs and boisterous laughter coming from ashore. Under the dock, she held her breath in the gloom of its shadows, and for several minutes—the length of a song—Beth remained at home in the cold, dark water.

Hours passed before Beth emerged from the water. Her hands and feet were waterlogged, pruned, and macerated. She held them out before the dying light and voiced aloud “These will be my hands when I am old and haggard.” Not for the first time, she wondered why she had been born the way that she was. She asked the wind—what might be God or Mother Earth—then addressed her reflection on the amber-coated water—what might be Neptune, Lord of the Sea—“Why couldn’t I have been born a fish? Why not a dolphin? A whale? A mermaid?”

“Who are you talking to?” Heather called aloud to Beth from the shore.

“Come on,” Hunter beckoned, “it’s beer o’clock!”

On the man-made stretch of sand, a make-shift Florida beach at the edge of a Minnesota lake, empty beer bottles lined a driftwood bonfire. Beth accepted Marshal’s offer of Rolling Rock, drinking her beer slowly—her first of the day. She stared into the center of the fire where several empty bottles had been placed, left to melt down and sag into themselves. The labels had been burned clean from the bottles, which remained smooth, becoming opaque. “Like sea glass,” Beth smiled into the fire.

“What’s that?” Marshal asked Beth, then looked to Hunter and Heather, mouthing covertly: “Crazy bitch.” In his drunken state, he accidentally vocalized the insult in a hoarse whisper. Beth didn’t mind. If her friends were all sane, she reasoned, being crazy was the best alternative.

Hunter removed his shirt in a burst of sudden motion. “Fuck this.” He chugged his beer and threw the bottle far out to splash into the lake. “Let’s go skinny dipping!”

Beth set down her beer beside the dozens of other empty bottles. She watched Hunter, animated into frenzy, as he stripped down to nothing, then Heather, who could barely stand, and Marshal, who was grumbling, but with reluctance also removed his clothes. Naked, on the edge of the dock, they cupped their genitals and howled into the night. Their laughter echoed out over the water. Intoxicated by variable degrees—all of them beyond the wisdom of good judgement—they jumped into the black water of Gull Lake, one by one.

Hunter was the loudest, the most explosive among the trio of swimmers. Without grace, he swam in such a way that suggested an attack upon the water. Beth, who now watched her friends from the edge of the dock, considered how much she could teach them. With playful intent, Hunter became rougher than he knew, dunking Marshal under the water, pulling at Heather by her ankles. He overextended his aggression, underestimated his strength. He hooked his arms under Heather’s armpits while dragging her deeper out into the lake. At some point, her laughter had turned into screams, but it was hard for anyone to take notice—her panic was muffled by the water.

Marshal floated on his back and stared up at the stars, humming a fast-paced song that Beth recognized from the long car ride earlier that day. In the distance, unaware of reality, Hunter thrashed at the surface of Gull Lake, drowning his girlfriend beneath. In silence, Beth witnessed the making of a tragedy, aware of Heather’s plight. So, it came as no surprise to her when, a minute later, Hunter added his own screams to the din, when he shouted out that Heather wasn’t okay, that she was missing under the water.

With the utmost methodical approach, Beth removed her oversized Disney t-shirt. Working her fingers under the waistline of her tube skirt, she unbuttoned her denim shorts and let them fall to slide down beyond her ankles. Adept and utterly sober, Beth curled her toes over the far edge of the dock and, putting her arms together like a spear, dove with the grace and skill of a cormorant. Interlocking her legs at their ankles, her thighs held together in the vice of a tube skirt, Beth propelled herself across the cold water while swimming in the fashion of a mermaid or a dolphin.

*

Finding Heather wasn’t difficult—Beth discovered her friend in no time at all. In the dark, tangled among the lakeweed, her breathless body shone luminous, and her pale limbs, weightless in the water, looked like a small congregation of eels. Fingers of moonlight dipped into the water to caress Heather’s torso, lending definition to her ribcage, carving out narrow valleys of shadow between bony peaks of light. Heather’s naked, streamline body was beautiful—almost marine.

Above the girls, Hunter dove aimlessly in the dark, rising after each frantic search to thrash at the surface of Gull Lake. Behind him, on the dock, Marshal called out, over and over again. The sound of disturbed water filled the night. Hoarse, panicked voices drowned out the ghostly calls of loons. Heather’s name echoed across the lake, receiving no answer.

Far below, Beth allowed herself to sink downward to recline upon the silt and mud. She entwined her limbs in thickets of starry stonewort, holding firmly to great tangles of pondweed. Joining Heather, she resolved to hold her breath.

At length, when her well-practiced lungs reached their tolerance, Beth, in a state of hypoxia, exhaled a chain of moon-rimmed bubbles. They erupted from her bloodless, blue lips like jellyfish racing upward to break the surface of the sea. Beth watched them as they rose, as they ruptured to disperse in the fresh air above. Though reluctant to dispel the beauty of Heather lying still upon the lakebed, she came to terms with her moral judgments, deciding to act on them. Beth writhed free of her botanical bonds before unbinding Heather from hers, and together, they rose up to the surface, where both boys and oxygen awaited them.

The drowning of one’s girlfriend is likely to sober the most inebriated of young men. Such was the case with Hunter, when his fear burned away his buzz like a lit match to an oil-soaked combustible mass, when he saw Beth float to the surface of the lake, unresponsive in Heather’s arms.

“Oh, my god, she’s dead!” Hunter cried.

“No,” Beth assured him, calm as the still, black water in which she waded. “Not yet. She just needs some air. Look, she is beginning to breathe.”

Hunter wiped away his tears, the spittle from his chin, looking at Beth with profound gratitude as she transferred Heather—alive and breathing—into his arms. Marshal, beside himself, threw up into the lake. The three of them stumbled onto the man-made beach, where they coughed and cried and took in long, beholden breaths. Remaining out on the lake, Beth watched her friends, a life-affirming trio silhouetted by a dying fire.

Out in the water, Beth knew she would not drown. In the lake, she was sure she could not die. In any pool, ocean, or stream, she was right at home—right where she belonged. In these bodies of water, each one with their own color of longing, Beth was certain of it: she wouldn’t come to any harm—far from it—she would be reborn, emerge anew. Diving outward, then downward, Beth rejoiced when she did not reach the bottom of Gull Lake. She held her breath and paddled further into the dark, smiling, knowing that soon she was sure to transcend.

Photo of James Callan

BIO: James Callan is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.