Water Within, Water Without

by Sarah Josephine Pennington

The Belles were floating in the pool the day the rain started. They watched streams of water run down the glass walls of the natatorium. Outside the tree—a fir to Mabel’s horror, hardly an appropriate tree for a pool—bent and swayed. That the Belles were in the pool that day wasn't unusual. The Belles were in the pool most days—or rather some of the Belles were there every day and many were there most days and all of them were there at least one day a week. The pool was what brought the Belles together. The pool was what sustained them.

In the pool the Belles were sixteen again, floating on noodles and making eyes at the men who came to use the Jacuzzi in the corner. Sometimes the Belles were nine, their pale feet fluttering as they kicked and treaded water, though they never splashed each other lest the water ruin the fresh updos they’d gotten at the salon that morning. The shallow therapy pool, which most of the Belles preferred to the lap pool with its diving boards and Ironmen-in-training, was heated and the saltwater eased the aching in their arthritic joints. The water made their movements freer.

The Belles had been around for nearly as long as the pool itself. They started as two, Anna and Joan, then gradually expanded their numbers as more women became pool regulars, as they retired or their husbands died or their children graduated, giving them hours to themselves for the first time in their lives. It’s not uncommon for women to start new lives when the bounds of their old are removed. Many women turn to pottery or oil painting or Zumba. Others take safaris or become cruise-ship regulars. Some of the Belles did those things, too. Most of them were in one book club or another; a couple played Bunco. A few volunteered, doing taxes in the spring or ushering for the Broadway plays that came through town on tour. What made a Belle a Belle, though, was the water and their commitment to and worship of it.

Joan’s husband had coined the name shortly after Joan had joined the pool. “My Diving Belle,” he called her, though he couldn’t remember what a diving bell was. It didn’t matter to Joan. The name sounded sweet on his tongue, and Joan had loved it though she’d never dived.

When Anna and Joan met, the Belles were born. They had started attending Aqua Aerobics and Aqua Zumba the same week, after Joan retired and Anna’s youngest child moved into his freshman dorm. Slowly they gathered more members, more women who found a home in the water, more women who built new a world with friends and exercise and strong core muscles.

Lately the Belles hadn’t added any more members, but the time was coming that they probably should. Some of the Belles had been together for seventeen years; most more than a decade. It was hard to add to a group so storied. Pam thought they should invite Erin to join, but the consensus was she was too young, too flighty. She’d seemed a good candidate when she joined the gym—at the pool five days out of seven while she was recovering from a wreck that left her hip shattered—but once she’d graduated from using her walker she’d started working out on land, lifting weights and jogging around the track, something the Belles rarely did. No, the water was their world, and as the storm raged outside they were content floating while they waited for Aqua Tai Chi to begin. Water beneath, water above, water inside their very veins.

Julia asked the group, “Have you gotten your groceries?” and a chorus of nods answered.

Pam said, “Al Roker’s been talking about this storm for weeks, it seems. Only a fool would wait.” Pam knew Edith hadn’t been to Kroger in weeks, and she looked her way after she made her pronouncement.

“I’m just worried about tomorrow. They’re supposed to have that festival at the waterfront.” Hannah wrung her hands.

“No way, not happening,” Anna said. Anna always seemed to know what would come.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go in this weather. It’s only a matter of time til the river crests. I just feel awful for all those gays, all the crepe paper on their floats. It’s sad their weekend might be ruined.” Hannah had lesbians for neighbors and was an outspoken ally. Edith had once seen Hannah holding hands with another woman as they left a downtown restaurant, but it wasn’t any of her business so she’d never told the Belles. Besides, Edith could never imagine having a husband again—hers had always needed something, never knew where anything was in the house, couldn’t even start the washer. It was like living with an overgrown child, a Peter Pan without the sense of adventure. Maybe Hannah had the right idea: Become a lesbian. Find a nice woman happy to dress up for a night out on the town. Women their age knew how to take care of themselves.

The Belles could have been sponsored by Land’s End. Nearly every Belle had a Land’s End suit in a dark color, shades of blue or black or plum. The thriftier Belles would buy them from Kohl’s with coupons and Kohl’s Cash. Others would get them from the local swim supply, where they never went on sale but were stocked year-round, perfect for the Belle whose suit had gotten snagged in the washer. Membership in the Belles didn’t require a certain type of suit, but it’s hard to find a suit that will hold up to five days of use a week and that’s modest enough to make waxing optional. The vainer Belles swore by the designs with tummy control panels, others swore by the styles with underwire. Pam bought the suits with pockets for the falsies she used since her double mastectomy. From above they looked like a team of synchronized swimmers, their matching suits forming a gradient of dark colors, their eyes lined with kohl and cheeks rouged with powder or exertion as they jogged from one end of the pool to the other.

Few of the Belles looked fit at first glance in their modest one pieces, their hair piled high and lipstick on their lips, but all of them outperformed the men who’d occasionally crash a class during Ironman recovery week. The Belles had cores of steel hidden beneath their soft curves.

During Aqua Motion, Edith sighed. “I’m just tired of this rain. It makes my knee swell.”

The Belles nodded in agreement.

“But not in the water,” Anna said.

“No, never in the water,” they agreed.

By Tuesday there were puddles in the parking lot growing wide and deep. Hannah and Pam carpooled with Edith so they could all park in the accessible section. Anna said one of the other regulars, not a Belle, had ruined her suede shoes leaving Monday night. Pam said only a fool wore suede in the rain. The Belles hurried into the building, their hair protected by plastic rain bonnets.

Thursday came with Aqua Barre. Pam told the Belles Al Roker was calling it the storm of the century. Alice started quietly singing, “Al and Pam, Sitting in a Tree,” and the Belles broke out in giggles. Edith, who relished the feeling of being teacher’s pet, a holdover from her school days, pretended she didn’t hear as she continued with her careful pliés, her spine straight and long, her breath careful and measured. The Belles lifted their legs quickly as the teacher sounded her loud “uh-UP.”

By Friday some of the staff were absent, but the pool schedule kept on, regular as always. The aquatics teachers weren’t Belles, but they knew the Belles would be there rain or shine. The teachers also knew the Belles were fast to complain. To keep their jobs they taught endless rounds of Tai Chi or Pilates or Zumba or Water Wellness in the humid air of the natatorium with pool noodles and buoys and ankle weights, and the Belles attended all the sessions, taking their classes seriously as they bobbed and floated in the pool with their fingers encircled with diamond rings and their ears studded with pearls.

Most of the Belles lived near the pool so they weren’t concerned about traveling in the weather. The neighborhood was full of senior condos and retirement villages, perfect planned communities for empty nesters and widows tired of dusting bedrooms long-abandoned by grown children with homes of their own.

Hannah said if cataracts and glaucoma hadn’t stopped her from driving to Florida last year, she’d be damned if Al Roker’s storm would keep her from her workout. The Belles howled with laughter. The other Belles always waited ’til Hannah had left before carefully pulling out of the parking lot. Her driving was a worry and a punch line.

The rain kept on, day and night, night and day. Alice talked of Noah and floods. Joan kept her phone on the ledge of the pool, worried and fearful for her daughter who refused to leave her low-lying house, the one with the river view she insisted was worth the chance of flood.

The parking lot turned into another pool complex, a sheen of oil over the watery surfaces, and the Belles learned to navigate around the puddles that had turned into pools in miniature. They drew their rain bonnets tight over their hair and wore bread bags over their socks, keeping their feet warm and dry on their way to and from the pool.

The staff became sparse as the rain continued. Edith found the supply closet and started arriving early to test the water’s pH, adding chemicals by following the instructions on the bags. Julia stayed after class and washed the towels; Anna folded whatever was dry. The Belles took care of the pool as it had taken care of them.

The Belles tsked and fretted as Joan shared how her daughter had been evacuated by the Red Cross on an inflatable raft. “She is fine, the grandchildren are fine,” Joan said as she led the cooldown after Aqua Zumba. The Belles had the pool to themselves now, the last holdouts after the staff had abandoned the building. They wondered how many of the staff had been airlifted from their homes to the safety of dry land.

Pam wondered how there was so much water on earth. Al Roker moved from calling it a hundred-year flood to a thousand-year flood, but the Belles knew it was more than that, Biblical in scale, cataclysmic, apocalyptic. After all, the Belles knew water, knew the way it moved, the way waves built in the pool, starting small and breaking into large swells as the Belles did ski legs and jumping jacks. To be a Belle was to understand the water.

When the Belles turned on the radio they heard Joel Osteen beg his listeners to repent, to see that it was the end times, to send him money to fuel his jet so he could fly to dry land. Edith wondered if her prepper son felt vindicated, proven right that times were changing, life was impossible. She hoped he’d left his homestead, didn’t want to think about the thousands he wasted digging bunkers and filling them with old army rations. She was sure his tubs of mac and cheese and dehydrated potatoes would float away soon, if they hadn’t already.

The Belles moved into the gym, sleeping on mats in the second-floor yoga studio. They made dinner from protein powder and shelf-stable meals pilfered from the weight-loss clinic on the first floor. They all agreed the enchiladas were fine, but Julia said the mushroom risotto tasted like someone else had eaten it first.

The rain kept on. Al Roker cried on air, his tears mixing with the water puddling in his New York studio. In Texas Joel Osteen had finally gone quiet. Alice guessed he’d figured out a way to keep his jet constantly in flight, that he’d given up on the sodden land, left his followers to fend for themselves. Hannah hoped he’d finally found God, finally used his millions to help others, finally learned to step out of the spotlight. Anna hoped he’d drowned.

The day the water took them, the Belles were ready. They stood on the pool deck, clad in their Land’s End best, water shoes on their feet and hair in plastic bonnets. The wind howled, pushing and pulling the fir outside ’til it ripped free from the soil. The Belles watched as the tree, that damn evergreen that was never the right choice for an aquatics center, beat a hole into the glass and let the floodwaters in. As the Belles floated out into the world on their pool noodles, they fluttered their feet, kept their cores straight and strong, and chanted “uh-UP” to let the others know when to lift their legs as they moved over the wreckage of the world that was now theirs.