We’ve set our kids down in front of Disney’s Moana four dozen times over the years to have some time to talk.
“Are you worried about the kids?” I ask.
I leave my boys every day for work, including one weekend a month. I don’t need a break from them the way she does, but Aimee’s excitement was contagious when she convinced me to come without them. Now, looking at this water that the boys would love to be splashing in, I’m having doubts. I already spend too much time away from them.
Aimee flips from her breaststroke onto her back with her arms in an exaggerated windmill motion. “I’m literally floating. Do I look like I’m worried about the kids?”
I shake my head with a cackle. “You most certainly do not.”
Aimee grins from the water, the golden-hour glow lighting her skin. She bobs up and down with the gentle waves. I glance back at the house and clear my throat.
The front and the back of the house are completely different styles, I notice. The front has textured white clapboard siding, with small, identical windows, whereas the back of the house is wood planks, painted blueish gray. The entire center section has glass windows. Two wings spread out from the center with Juliet balconies dotting each side, like a boutique hotel. It gives the house character I didn’t expect. Original. Not cookie-cutter construction. I’m impressed with Margot’s selection.
A scream shatters the quiet.
“Something is wrapped around my leg,” Aimee shrieks, then screams again.
Heart hammering, I step off the grass onto the dock.
“Is it still there?” I ask.
Maybe it was seaweed. Aimee has the tendency to overreact.
“Yes, it’s still there. I can feel it.” Aimee swims over and grips the floating dock for balance. I can’t see anything from this angle as she inspects her leg.
“Oh my God, it’s an eel,” she says.
Aimee scrambles to climb onto the floating dock, to no avail. She can’t get a solid grip. She pushes up as hard as she can, but her palms slip and she plunges back into the water.
“You have to swim to the shore,” I shout. I can no longer see the top of her head. She’s disappeared under the water. I cup my hands around my mouth. “Aimee, can you hear me? There’s no ladder; you can’t get up here.”
I wait but I see nothing. The water is too green and murky. Visibility can’t be more than a few inches past the surface. As the seconds pass, the pressure mounts. It’s vital to get someone drowning out of the water immediately. I kick off my shoes.
I’m about to dive in when Aimee breaks through the surface, gasping. “Help me!”
Aimee reaches out and I wrap both my hands around her thin wrist.
“Push your feet against the side of the dock,” I say.
“Farah, hurry. There’s more. They’re all over me.” Her voice is laced with panic. A calm washes over me, as it does every time I deliver a baby.
“Listen.” My doctor voice echoes off the water. “Brace yourself and use your legs to help me pull you up.”
Aimee leans back and wedges her toes in between the planks on the side of the floating dock. I crouch down and grab her second hand. Together we leverage our leg muscles to launch her up to safety.
She lays her cheek on the warm wood, her breath ragged. I drop down to sit in front of her.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Aimee nods and stands, inspecting her thigh. Green slimy reeds cling to her shapely legs.
“Looks like you got caught in some vegetation,” I say.
A splash ripples through the water next to the dock.
“Do you see that?” Aimee points.
Sure enough, a black eel serpentines away under the surface.
“Gross,” I exclaim.
“That’s not the type of snake in the pants I was hoping for on this trip, if you know what I mean.” She laughs.
I shake my head. Aimee loves a crass joke.
After her first two girls, Aimee specifically, greedily, asked me to confirm that she had to wait the six weeks her doctor recommended to have sex again. But after the third, she didn’t ask at all. All she talked about was how the baby was having a hard time latching and she’d never had any nursing issues with the other two.
Weeks later over a second bottle of wine while Aimee had her shirt open, a mechanical pump attached to both breasts so she could “pump and dump,” I learned she and Adam hadn’t had sex since the baby was born. But that was six or seven months ago, and the baby was no longer feeding at night so I’d assumed Aimee would’ve rectified that situation.
“Still?” I ask.
“Yup,” she says.
Normally I’d ask questions. Doctor questions. Do you have any pain? Are you struggling with desire? Or friend questions, like Is that his choice or yours? But what comes to my mind are inappropriate questions. What’s changed, Aimee? Is it the same thing I feel?
Aimee leans back to shake the water out of her hair and I lose the nerve to ask anything at all. I can’t stop looking at her. Her flushed cheeks. Her long neck. Her shirt is wet and it sticks to her body. Her nipples stand erect, and instead of ignoring this normal female response to cold, I imagine leaning down and putting my mouth over one of them and closing it, tasting her in my mouth.
The vision comes in a flash that feels real but not at all, the way one pictures jumping off a balcony when looking down from a great height. This, I realize, is an apt visual metaphor for seducing my married best friend while being very married myself, to an elected official no less. I’d probably come out in better shape after launching myself from a balcony.
