Free Breathing Water by T. Greenwood Page B

I peered down through the top and realized that the water was teeming with polliwogs. I ran into the kitchen and set the jar on the windowsill next to the nest. I would need to get an aquarium if I wanted them to grow up. I picked up the jar again and looked inside. There must have been twenty or thirty of them.
    I should have told Magoo thanks, but his chain saw was too loud for him to have heard me hollering through the open window.
    I forgot about painting and drove into town looking for yard sales. I figured I could probably find an aquarium if I looked hard enough. When I hit the pavement and the houses grew closer and closer together, I realized I hadn’t been into town for almost three weeks. I never thought that my small hometown would feel like a metropolis, but today, with the main street closed off for the farmer’s market and people milling about everywhere, Quimby could have been Seattle for all of the traffic and noise. I decided to pick up a paper and have breakfast at the Miss Quimby Diner before I set out on my search.
    When I walked into the diner, I could feel eyes on me like black flies. Glances swarming. The difference, I supposed, between this place and the city is that there is no such thing as anonymity here. And it had been way too long for me to blend in anymore. Faces were familiar, most I knew from high school. Faces grown longer, more tired. Eyes widened by time. Lips drawn. I kept my head down, some sort of Hester Prynne I imagined.
    â€œHi, Effie.” The waitress smiled. My eyes darted quickly to her name tag. Maggie.
    â€œHi, Maggie.” I smiled. I recognized her.
    â€œCoffee?” she asked, but she was already pouring the thick black diner coffee into the small white coffee mug.
    â€œThank you,” I said and watched her hands. Her nails were painted carefully, that shade of red I’ve always associated with being grown up. And I wondered, was it possible that she was my age? This girl, Maggie, who used to sit next to me in biology in the ninth grade, drawing endless circles on the brown paper cover of her textbook. Softly snoring during the dreary films of spiders spinning their intricate webs.
    â€œDid you and that guy, what was his name? Mac? Max?”
    I nodded.
    â€œDid you get married?” she asked and took her notepad and pen from her apron pocket.
    I shook my head.
    â€œOh, I’m sorry.” She blushed. “It’s just you too looked so cute together when you used to come in here on Sundays. I was sure you’d be married by now.”
    â€œNope,” I said and sipped the hot coffee. It burned my tongue, but I wouldn’t swallow it. If my tongue became ignited, I wouldn’t have to speak.
    â€œProbably better off without him anyways.” She smiled. “Dog?”
    â€œHuh?” I ask.
    â€œWas he a dog? You know, good-for-nothing. Good for one thing maybe.” She winked. “I’m just foolin’ with you.”
    After she handed me the laminated menu, I watched her walk away. I tried to imagine how Max and I must have looked to her. It amazed me that she remembered us that way. I remembered Sundays as silent. The long drive into town, Max bleary-eyed and sober. The newspaper a wall between us. The bitter grapefruit and cold silver spoon. Max’s plate spilling syrup and strawberries. Texas-style French toast, batter dipped and deep-fried. Ice cream. This sweet decadence of his nauseating me. How must this have looked to Maggie? I didn’t seem to recollect her ever looking at us longingly, the way I used to catch myself peering at couples with interlaced arms and that gentle contentment of being together. I didn’t remember ever feeling envied. I only remembered the white of vanilla ice cream on Max’s stubbly chin and the sting of citrus in that place inside my mouth where I bit the skin away to remind myself that I wasn’t dreaming. That all of this was real. That I was still