The Progress of Love

point, why would she ask what that was, why didn’t she just dive into the water and swim to it? She didn’t swim; she ran all the way around the edge of the pool. But by that time Andrew was over the fence. So many things seemed not quite plausible—Cynthia’s behavior, then the lifeguard’s—and now I had the impressionthat Andrew jumped with one bound over this fence, which seemed about seven feet high. He must have climbed it very quickly, getting a grip on the wire.
    I could not jump or climb it, so I ran to the entrance, where there was a sort of lattice gate, locked. It was not very high, and I did pull myself over it. I ran through the cement corridors, through the disinfectant pool for your feet, and came out on the edge of the pool.
    The drama was over.
    Andrew had got to Meg first, and had pulled her out of the water. He just had to reach over and grab her, because she was swimming somehow, with her head underwater—she was moving toward the edge of the pool. He was carrying her now, and the lifeguard was trotting along behind. Cynthia had climbed out of the water and was running to meet them. The only person aloof from the situation was the boyfriend, who had stayed on the bench at the shallow end, drinking a milkshake. He smiled at me, and I thought that unfeeling of him, even though the danger was past. He may have meant it kindly. I noticed that he had not turned the radio off, just down.
    Meg had not swallowed any water. She hadn’t even scared herself. Her hair was plastered to her head and her eyes were wide open, golden with amazement.
    “I was getting the comb,” she said. “I didn’t know it was deep.”
    Andrew said, “She was swimming! She was swimming by herself. I saw her bathing suit in the water and then I saw her swimming.”
    “She nearly drowned,” Cynthia said. “Didn’t she? Meg nearly drowned.”
    “I don’t know how it could have happened,” said the lifeguard. “One moment she was there, and the next she wasn’t.”
    What had happened was that Meg had climbed out of the water at the shallow end and run along the edge of the pool toward the deep end. She saw a comb that somebody had dropped lying on the bottom. She crouched down and reached in to pick it up,quite deceived about the depth of the water. She went over the edge and slipped into the pool, making such a light splash that nobody heard—not the lifeguard, who was kissing her boyfriend, or Cynthia, who was watching them. That must have been the moment under the trees when I thought, Where are the children? It must have been the same moment. At that moment, Meg was slipping, surprised, into the treacherously clear blue water.
    “It’s okay,” I said to the lifeguard, who was nearly crying. “She can move pretty fast.” (Though that wasn’t what we usually said about Meg at all. We said she thought everything over and took her time.)
    “You swam, Meg,” said Cynthia, in a congratulatory way. (She told us about the kissing later.)
    “I didn’t know it was deep,” Meg said. “I didn’t drown.”
    We had lunch at a take-out place, eating hamburgers and fries at a picnic table not far from the highway. In my excitement, I forgot to get Meg a plain hamburger, and had to scrape off the relish and mustard with plastic spoons, then wipe the meat with a paper napkin, before she would eat it. I took advantage of the trash can there to clean out the car. Then we resumed driving east, with the car windows open in front. Cynthia and Meg fell asleep in the back seat.
    Andrew and I talked quietly about what had happened. Suppose I hadn’t had the impulse just at that moment to check on the children? Suppose we had gone uptown to get drinks, as we had thought of doing? How had Andrew got over the fence? Did he jump or climb? (He couldn’t remember.) How had he reached Meg so quickly? And think of the lifeguard not watching. And Cynthia, taken up with the kissing. Not seeing anything else. Not seeing Meg drop over the edge.
    Disappeared.
    But she swam. She held her breath and came up swimming.
    What a chain of lucky links.
    That was all we spoke about—luck. But I was compelled to picture the opposite. At this moment, we could have been filling out forms. Meg removed from us, Meg’s body being prepared forshipment. To Vancouver—where we had never noticed such a thing as a graveyard—or to Ontario? The scribbled drawings she had made this morning would still be in the back seat of the car. How could