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The next day I started applying for jobs. I secretly dreamed of working as an Aquamaid at Aquarena Springs, the quirky resort park on the San Marcos River that featured glass-bottom boat rides and hourly performances by Ralph the Swimming Pig. Dressed in mermaid costumes, the Aquamaids donned oxygen tanks, ate pickles, and drank Dr Pepper underwater before being upstaged by the swimming pig.
Those positions were filled back in May, the woman explained as she took my application.
I interviewed for a job filing catalogue cards at the university library. The alphabetization test was harder than you’d think – cards that at first glance appeared identical, yielded slight variations to be considered, foreign authors had multiple last names, and then there were the “Mc”s and the “Mac”s. But the next day the librarian called to offer me the position.
This is not just a summer job, she explained.
Oh, I know, I replied. I’m taking some time out from school because my parents unexpectedly ran out of money.
For just a moment I was moved by my own lie. I spent the first week sitting at a desk across from my supervisor, Pam, putting cards in order and waiting while she checked them. Finally, I was unleashed on the actual card catalogue. At 8am Pam handed me a stack of cards six inches thick. Lunch. Another six inches. At the end of the day, Pam came around behind me to proof my filing. Once the cards were in their rightful places, I pulled out the little bar and the new cards fell down among the old, all evidence of my day’s work lost in the endless rows of skinny drawers.
The river saved me. It was always close by, cutting as it did through campus. I took my bag lunch there every day, watching the water drift by carrying strings of river weeds and hyacinths. On Saturdays Nick and I walked barefoot into town wearing only our swimsuits and oversized inner tubes over our shoulders. When we got to the park we tossed them onto the water and bounced in like they were easy chairs. Slowly we slipped past elephant ears and a kind of floating bulb we called river radish which I plucked from the water and twisted round, wearing it like a crown. Between the legs of a railroad trestle we paddled our inner tubes, watching out for the San Marcos boys who, wearing shiny cutoffs, jumped from the tracks above, exploding the calm water around us. Then we eased down to the dam, where younger kids wearing wet T-shirts would offer a friendly push. Nick went over the dam first, lost in the flume of water, while I hung back. Then I took a breath and let strange hands nudge me over. With my eyes shut I felt the inner tube fall away beneath me and I held on, the water enveloping everything. The rest of the ride, drifting along a cliffside beneath ancient cypress trees dragging feathery leaves, was quiet. By the time we walked home, lifting the hot black tubes from shoulder to shoulder, we were sweating again but too tired to start over.
The heat was so cruel, we had to make rules. No love-making except first thing in the morning or in the shower. No hot showers. No use of the oven. Most of the time we let the house breathe on its own, every door and window open and curtainless. But after dinner we shut everything and turned on the single window air conditioner in the living room. The chilled air hovered at our knees and the heat clung to the ceiling. Bill positioned two oscillating fans to capture the coolness and Nick made cardboard screens from refrigerator boxes, painting them with his primitive, leaping figures, and arranged them to further direct the air flow. I made Greek yogurt pies which were like cheesecakes with graham cracker crust, filled with a lemony yogurt mixture and honey. We sat in the kitchen sucking yogurt pie, waiting for the coolness to spread through our bodies and meet the coolness hitting our skin.
Except for his reddish mustache, Bill wore only white – white T-shirt, white gym shorts, white socks, white tennis shoes – to purify his inner spirit. Shaking off the excruciating boredom of my job, I started going with him to his yoga class after work. The other students were older than me with names like Butch and Feather. Some of them wore baggy white pants and white T-shirts like Bill. We stretched and posed at the foot of the darkened art history lecture hall, where rows of seats towered above us, hiding our distracting thoughts as they lifted from our relaxing bodies. At the end of class we lay on our towels in the corpse pose and meditated. Once, a tiger, yellow as a marigold, came to visit me. Sometimes someone fell asleep during meditation, which you were not supposed to do. Then, the teacher, a dark man named Xavier, who himself worked in the library silently shelving books, woke them by pinching their big toe. After we meditated, Xavier sang a little song about our hearts being made of pure sunlight. The words sounded like something you would teach nursery-age children, but the solemn way he sang it made it seem profound. Then Bill and I walked home together where Nick was cutting vegetables for a stir-fry.
One lie leads to another, my mother had taught me. But I don’t think Pam was disappointed when I came to her office after three weeks and told her my mother was terribly sick, and I had to leave immediately for Houston to take care of her. Aquarena Springs had called to offer me $1.25 more an hour.
To get to my new job at the park, I had to take the sky ride across the river or the glass-bottom boat. I flew silently over the empty park, above the white swans and ducks sleeping on the banks, over the clear green water. At first I scooped ice cream in the Old West Ice Cream & Candy Shoppe, but soon I was moved to the gift shop to sell seashell night lights and miniature tomahawks, and by summer’s end I was in charge of counting money and balancing the day’s sales.
One night as we lay still beneath the dark blanket of heat, I learned that Nick too had lied. After we went to a party one night, he confessed that right before I arrived for the summer he had slept with a girl named Holly. The daughter of a famous novelist, she’d been at the party that night, wearing a Mexican shirt without a bra. I had listened to her talk about her father whose books I had never read. She wore thick glasses beneath her long hair, so I’d felt a little sorry for her.
Do you love her? I demanded, wrapping myself in the striped sheet and stamping around the mattress.
Of course not, he said, lying naked at my feet.
I looked down to discern the truth in his eyes but his hair was thrown over his face. Across the hall from us, Bill drifted alone on the cool raft of his waterbed. Taking the sheet and my pillow, I made my bed on the scratchy couch in the living room, but instead of sleeping I stared out the window at the squat water-starved trees. The next morning, Bill’s laughter made me cry.
Though Nick and I made up, the summer’s focus shifted. I asked Xavier if he would give me my own yoga set to do each morning.
Let me think on it, he said, bowing his head over his hands.
Several class meetings passed and he said nothing about my request. But one evening I sensed something different about the movements that he led us through. I knew this was my set. Afterwards, he handed me a Xerox copy of the movements.
Do this for 40 days, he explained, and you will have challenged every part of your being.
Mornings, I rose when I heard Bill turn on the shower, and in the living room I inhaled by humming and exhaled by whistling. I rocked on my spine and then sat in mediation for 12 minutes with my watch at my knee. Walking the hills to work, I concentrated on keeping my breath steady and deep in my belly.
In August we celebrated my 20th birthday with a small party. We dragged the kitchen table into the backyard because I thought it would be cooler and more festive. The yogurt pie, studded with candles, glistened beneath the twisting live oaks. The back of the house was even uglier than the front, I decided while I ate my cake. Nick gave me a purple mohair sweater I’d admired in a window but that I knew he would never see me wear. Bill’s present was a black fedora that I cocked at an angle to shield my eyes from the sun.
Each morning my body and brain tried to rebel, but I had taped the directions Xavier had given me on the wall next to my pillow. Finally, on the 26th day of my yoga set I got food poisoning and couldn’t get out of bed. I was relieved to fail. When I recovered, I started over but after that I always found an excuse to miss a day. Besides, the summer was nearly over.
On my last day of work I found myself alphabetizing cheap little bracelets on a plastic jewelry tree in the gift shop: Allison, Ann, Audrey, Barbara, Betty, Beverly … Never lie to get a job, I thought. Create your own coolness. Best friends make best family. And each day, some way or other, try to challenge every part of your being.
Soon I would be back at school in my tiny dorm room where I would write sad love poems in my twin bed about my summer in San Marcos.
Fiction writer Robin Bradford has written for The Austin Chronicle since 1990 and still loves San Marcos.
This article appears in August 21 • 1998 and August 21 • 1998 (Cover).