They will argue onstage and it will please Etta immensely to do so, to appear in public with the brilliant son of her childhood friend. She will feel proud, as if she had watched him grow up all these years when she was, instead, unaware of his existence, unaware that his mother was still alive and watching Etta’s every move. Later, Byron will explain to Etta why he left the institute he used to work with, and how the out-of-court settlement helped him start a new venture of his own and seed a scholarship fund. And Etta will think, Well done, Covey, look at your son.
They won’t mention Byron’s mother, who helped to make Etta the champion that she is, who first introduced her to open-water swimming. He and his sisters have agreed that their public narratives must never connect them to Coventina Lyncook. Perhaps one day, when they are older, when their children are grown, they say, but Etta suspects that it is only a matter of time before someone who knew Gibbs or Covey recognizes something of them in the faces of Covey’s children. Byron and Marble are all over the Internet now, and the Internet is what the street market back on the island used to be. Sooner or later, you run into everyone.
Etta looks offstage to where Byron’s girlfriend is standing, their son snug in a carrier against her chest. She marvels that they have brought the child all the way to Polynesia from California at this tender age. Modern jet travel corrupts all reason. Etta has never been the image of prudence as an athlete but as a young mother, she was quite careful with the kids, always insisting on keeping them close to home until a certain age. Which suited Patsy just fine.
Etta is swimming for her children now, and for their children, too, not for the records. She uses every chance she can to talk about the health of the oceans. Seafloor damage, runoff, plastics, rising water temperatures, overfishing. She calls for the designation of additional protected zones. But she also takes the time to show the audience old photos of herself as a girl in a swim cap, plus her favorite snapshots of Patsy and the boys when they were little, poking around a tide pool in Wales, their shoes clumped with wet sand. She never forgets to show the joy, to show the love. Because, otherwise, what would be the point of anything?
Survival is not enough. Survival has never been enough.
Funny to think that after more than sixty years of distance swimming, Etta is still a bit nervous about what lies under the water, still hypervigilant of the symphony of life below. But this is what she is fighting for, for the preservation of life in all its vibrant and venomous and toothy mystery.
Her doctor grumbles. She says Etta can’t afford to get stung or cut right now with her immune system being so low. But Etta isn’t aiming to get hurt. She promises she’ll do everything to avoid it, except stay out of the water, of course. This is who she is. This is how she lives.
Etta could say to herself that she has raised two kind and useful children, that she has already done the most important thing a person could do, but she knows that this is not enough for her. When she was just a girl, Etta used to think that she deserved all the good things that came her way. She didn’t see why she should have to dream smaller dreams than other people, just because she was a girl from the islands. That hasn’t changed but with every passing year, she realizes just how fortunate she’s been. Things could have gone very differently for Etta Pringle, and she still has a debt to pay back to the world.
Lin
Marisol brings Lin a glass of iced tea. Lin is back to drinking and eating on his own after his most recent stroke, and he can walk around using only the cane. He leans back against the sofa and watches Etta Pringle on the television news. Bunny Pringle. The girl must be more than seventy years old now, and she’s still doing those harebrained swims.
Lin should have known it would come to this. He should have known the day he saw Bunny and Covey swimming in the midst of that tropical storm back in 1963. Should have realized that if you were capable of going that far, in that kind of water, if you would take that kind of risk, then maybe you weren’t like other people. Probably, there was a lot that you would be willing to do to get what you wanted, that others wouldn’t dare to try.
One summer night in 1965, Bunny heard someone rapping at her bedroom window. Her parents were already asleep. She opened the louvers just enough to peer out and saw Covey standing there in the dark, her mouth wide open in a silent cry. Bunny ran outside.
“What?” Bunny whispered. “What?”
Covey wouldn’t speak. She was trembling. Bunny had never seen her friend like this. This was Coventina Lyncook, after all. The one they’d nicknamed Dolphin. She had swum through squalls, jumped over vipers, ignored the gossip about her parents. Bunny knew that Covey could face anything. Only Covey had not yet told her about Little Man.