Felicity shrugs.
“Have you ever been to a fair?”
Felicity shakes her head and says, “What’s a fair?”
Oh, this poor kid.What’s a fair?Nicola tells her all about it. Rides,and bunnies, and llamas and alpacas. Music shows all day and night. Dock-diving dogs, and a lumberjack show where real lumberjacks with arms the size of Felicity’s whole body chop wood as fast as they can. And the food! Cotton candy, and key lime pie on a stick dipped in chocolate, and foot-long hot dogs, and mini doughnuts so small you can eat twelve of them, and pizza on a stick. Also corn dogs on a stick, and pork belly on a stick, and cheesecake on a stick (so many foods on so many sticks!).
“Twelvedoughnuts,” says Felicity incredulously. “Don’t you get a bellyache?”
“Of course you do,” says Nicola. “But it wouldn’t be the state fair if it didn’t give you a bellyache. All of the food tastes so good, but none of it is good for you.”
Felicity nods solemnly, taking this in. They both stare at the poster, the vivid colors (the phraseCHEESE CURDSin bright yellow somehow jumping out of the bottom left, and suddenly nothing sounds as good to Nicola as a red-and-white-checked paper basket full of them). Felicity stares for so long it seems as if the molecules have reordered themselves. It seems as if now that she understands the poster the world has new meaning.
“Okay,” says Nicola finally, feeling a twinge of guilt that they’re in here at all. “We need to make sure we play enough. Your daddy won’t be gone that long.”
Wrong. It isn’t an hour and a half, and it isn’t two—it’s more like three and a half hours, but Nicola doesn’t mind. She loves this day. They play for a really long time in Felicity’s room, where she has rows and rows of dress-up clothes. Dolls and books galore. When they’re finished there, they change into bathing suits and go out to the pool. Felicity digs in a wicker bin and pulls out a contraption that she begins strapping around herself.
Felicity calls this contraption her “bubble” even though to Nicola’s eye there’s nothing bubble-like about it; it’s three rectangles of foam that land on Felicity’s mid-back like a skydiving parachutepack. It keeps her safe, though; in the pool she bobs around like a cork, while Nicola stretches out on one of the foam floats, listening to Felicity’s voice, high and bright, singing some song about a turtle and a frog.
She’s got two eyes on Felicity, and then she’s got one eye, and then, for just a slice of a fraction of a second the sun gets to her, and the light motion of the float gets to her, and, really, it’s hardly any time at all that her eyelids flutter and she’s got no eyes on Felicity, because then the song about the turtle and the frog stops, and she opens her eyes, and the bubble is floating all on its own.
Nicola is off that floatso fast, every lifeguarding lesson, every day swimming on the lake coming back to her, and she’s underwater, grabbing Felicity and bringing her to the edge of the pool, holding fast and tight to her little body, saying, “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, whathappened,Felicity?”
Felicity’s big blue eyes are brimming over. “I took off my bubble.”
Deep breath. It’s okay, everyone is okay. “Why’d you take off your bubble?”
“I wanted to see if I could swim yet.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She tries to keep her voice steady, but she can hear it wavering.
“Don’t tell Daddy I took it off,” whispers Felicity. “I’m sorry.” She looks so bereft, and so fragile, and so huggable. Ergo, Nicola hugs her.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I won’t tell. But don’t do that again, all right? Don’t take off your bubble again unless a grown-up is right there, and a grown-up says it’s okay.”
Nicola doesn’t let herself think about it, doesn’t allow her mind to gothere. But later, at the end of the summer, when she isn’t there to do any saving, she does remember this day, the way they dodged a bullet. She thinks about how you can be above water one second and underneath it the next.
Once Nicola’s blood pressure lowers to a reasonable level, theydry off with fluffy pool towels, change back into their clothes, visit the bathroom, find a carton of organic strawberries in the refrigerator. “Cut off the green part,” Felicity instructs, climbing on a small step stool to bring herself up to counter level, so Nicola does, she cuts off the green part, because what can she say, for a three-year-old Felicity presents as quite the girl boss, and Nicola doesn’t feel qualified to disobey. After the snack comes a brief lull. Is David ever coming back?
“Let’s play a game,” she suggests. “Do you have any games?”
“Playroom,” Felicity says, pointing down one of the endless wide hallways. Nicola didn’t even know about the playroom! She follows Felicity into a white, white room with acres of cubbies. In the cubbies are pastel baskets, and inside Nicola sees art supplies, many of them not opened, and board books, and a tiny globe whose continents light up in different colors when you touch it. Nicola wants to trade places with Felicity, like immediately. She’s about to set up Chutes and Ladders when suddenly David is there, leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded, watching them and smiling.
“Hey!” says Nicola. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m sneaky.”
“Daddy!” Felicity runs to him and hugs his leg.
“How was your appointment?” Nicola asks. She puts extra weight on the wordappointment.
“What?” He looks startled. “Oh, good. It was good. Fine, you know. Good.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Spring House. You been there yet?” (Is he slurring?)
She shakes her head. “Out of my price range.”
