Swimming for Sunlight Read online

  Praise for

  SWIMMING FOR SUNLIGHT

  “I loved every page of this beautiful, heartfelt book. Full of compassion, warmth, and charm, Larkin makes a complex story about anxiety and loss and female friendships at all ages feel both effortless and hopeful. I dare you not to hug this book when you finish.”

  —Julie Buxbaum, New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things and What to Say Next

  “I instantly fell in love with this narrator—who’s brave, funny, feisty, tender, and, most of all, relatable. She handles a seismic change in her life with rapier-sharp humor and grace, proving that life’s curveballs can be processed with love and laughter—and the often-underestimated power of the companionship and loyalty of animals. Katie’s next chapter in life takes us on a wild water park ride, addressing losses in her past, the surfacing of a college flame, and a grandmother you’ll wish was your own. Add to this Larkin’s descriptive writing—which sparkles on the page—and you have a gem of a novel.”

  —Lolly Winston, New York Times bestselling author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

  “Allie Larkin knows her characters so well—and loves them so much. Reading Swimming for Sunlight is like visiting a real place, spending time with a real and really good friend.”

  —Rainbow Rowell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park

  “Simply put, we are all Katie Ellis, the narrator of this wonderful book. That’s the power of Swimming for Sunlight by Allie Larkin. We’ve been down. We’ve been hurt. We’ve had our lives flipped upside down. But, somehow, with the help of the people who matter most, we’ve come back stronger. It’s funny, quirky, and as bighearted as a rescue dog. I was all in from page one.”

  —Matthew Norman, author of We’re All Damaged and Domestic Violets

  “Sweet, tender, and real, Allie Larkin’s work is funny, endearing, and simply lovely time and time again.”

  —Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six

  “Populated by vivid characters that include aging ‘mermaids’ and a companion dog so endearing that I, a cat person, was tempted to go find my own Barkimedes, Swimming for Sunlight is a rare thing: an intelligent, compassionate, entertaining tale that satisfies both the heart and the head. I loved this book and everyone in it!”

  —Therese Anne Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Behaved Woman and Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

  “In Swimming for Sunlight, Allie Larkin has written an absorbing, insightful tale of all the people and places in which we find strength. She’s created a world I’d love to live in, full of vividly rendered characters who are as complex and resilient as they are bighearted and funny. There is nothing like a great story, well told; this is Larkin’s specific expertise.”

  —Caroline Angell, author of All the Time in the World

  “A thoughtful, tender story about losing everything and starting all over again, Swimming for Sunlight reminds us of the joy that comes when we open our hearts to unexpected friendships. I fell in love with Allie Larkin’s quirky and endearing characters and found myself thinking about them long after I turned the last page.”

  —Ann Mah, author of The Lost Vintage

  “Poignant and funny, touching and eccentric, Swimming for Sunlight is brimming with heart. A gem of a novel that will charm not only dog lovers, but anyone, anywhere who’s ever felt a twinge of anxiety. In other words, all of us.”

  —Tish Cohen, author of Inside Out Girl and Town House

  “A heartfelt and bittersweet ode to taking the long view of life when we fall short of our own expectations, to choosing courage and hope in the face of disappointment and tragedy. This book was just what my soul needed.”

  —Julia Whelan, author of My Oxford Year

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  For Joan Pedzich.

  Because of apple juice.

  And everything.

  PROLOGUE

  My husband brought a date to our divorce.

  To be fair, she didn’t come in the actual room. And according to Eric she wasn’t a date, she was a friend, but it was still bullshit. He knew it and I knew it and I don’t think either of us wanted it to be that way, but that’s where we were. He was defensive and hurt and mean, and needed to bring his friend along to say, See? You see? Someone loves me. You couldn’t, but someone does. And I was just there. Involuntary processes. Flesh taking up space. Even in that moment, I wanted to be better for him. Give him a better divorce. A satisfying fight, or at least one last burst of kindness to end what we both started with decent intentions. With hope, at least. We didn’t get married out of indifference.

  His friend sat on a bench in the hallway and pressed at the screen of her phone with the pads of her fingers, long fake nails clicking against the glass. I swore I could hear her from the conference room while Eric’s attorney droned on.

  “My client requests a divorce be granted on grounds of Irretrievable Breakdown . . .”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “. . . and maintains neither side is at fault . . .”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “. . . furthermore, we expect the fair and equitable division of assets . . .”

  Clickity. Click. Click. Click.

  I picked at the ragged edge of my thumbnail, bitten down too far, while my attorney, Arnold Troyer: Rochester’s Best Divorce Lawyer, responded in sonorous tones, beads of sweat collecting around his sad little horseshoe of brown hair.

  I’d pictured Eric’s friend many times, imagining a better version of me. Someone more polished, less nervous, who liked listening to Eric curse through Buffalo Bills games on Sunday afternoons, but was otherwise fundamentally the same. I imagined her that way because I wanted to believe if I’d worked a little harder I could’ve fixed things. If what Eric and I had was close enough to almost work, that meant it had been reasonable to try.

  The woman in the hall wasn’t a better version of me. She wasn’t the same species. Probably not the same phylum. Like there was a special kind of spinal column for women who were born to be trophy wives, and it was so much lighter and thinner than everyone else’s. Seeing her made me realize that even if I had worked harder to get better, to be better, to learn the difference between a checkdown and a backward pass, I still wouldn’t have been the right person for Eric, the same way he wasn’t ever going to be the right person for me.

  When we were almost done dividing up assets, Eric’s attorney stated that Eric was seeking full custody of my dog.

  “Wait! Time-out!” I said, jumping to my feet, making a T with my hands.

  “There’s no time-out in divorce, Katie,” Eric said, turning his wrist to check a watch I’d never seen before: big and silver with an unmarked blue face.

  “Whatever. Sidebar,” I said, tugging at Arnold Troyer’s sleeve.

  Arnold grabbed his files and allowed me to drag him to the hallway. Once we were out of earshot from Eric’s bottle blond friend, I took a deep breath and said, “Bark is all I want.”

  “What is Bark?”

  “Barkimedes. My dog. I told you. Eric can have everything else, but I need my dog.”

  “Let’s not be rash,” Arnold said, wiping his nose with a folded paper towe
l he’d pulled from his pocket. “Perhaps, if you’d be willing to share custody—”

  “No! Eric hates Bark. He’s only doing this to pick at me. To prove a point he doesn’t have to prove. I get it. I know why he cheated. I know I was a shit wife. I just want my dog.”

  Arnold thumbed through my file. “Is this dog a purebred? Show dog? Can we assign a cash value?”

  “Does your best friend have a cash value?” I asked, my voice getting froggy as my throat tightened.

  Arnold sighed, mopping at his head with the same paper towel. “I like to tell my clients not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.”

  “I don’t want the forest,” I shouted, and then, surprised by the echo of my voice in the hall, I tried to take it down to a whisper, “or the house, or the stupid blender his mom gave us, or the baby clothes I bought too soon, or the ugly couch he probably screwed her on.” I pointed down the hall to the friend, who was still clicking away on her phone. “I want Bark and I want to start over. And I think it’s all he wants too; it’s just that this—this is the worst part of it.”

  Eric needed to justify himself. The cheater doesn’t get to feel like they’ve been wronged, and that lack of acknowledgment was making him reckless, like a kid coloring on the walls in permanent ink. He cheated. I checked out. Neither of us was right, but I checked out long before he cheated. This was him, embarrassed, hurt, broken, saying, Look at what you made me do! Pay for what you made me do! React to me for fuck’s sake!

  I wiped tears from my chin with my sleeve.

  Arnold reached into his pocket and handed me another paper towel folded into four. I wondered if he sat around at night folding paper towels so he could have them at the ready. Why didn’t he carry tissues or a handkerchief like a normal person?

  Arnold watched me while I blotted my eyes. His face softened. He leaned in close. “Is this really what you want?”

  I nodded. Okay, Eric. I’m reacting. This is the end, and I’m fighting.

  “Alright,” Arnold said, pulling his files to his chest. “Go to the ladies’ room, calm down, splash some water on your face. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.” I blew my nose. It echoed.

  “If I can get you more, I’ll get you more, but if all else fails we take the dog and call it a win.”

  I ran down the hall, the high heels I almost never wore punctuating my retreat. In the bathroom, I ran cold water on my wrists and tried not to picture what it would feel like to hand Bark’s leash over to Eric.

  I loved that dog from the second I saw him on the shelter website. He had a face like a German Shepherd, the bat ears of a Boston Terrier, and fluffy Chow fur that was spotted and dappled like a Border Collie. One of his eyes was the richest caramel brown, and the other was a clear bright blue. I needed desperately to save someone, and there he was—Dog 2357—waiting for rescue.

  I made Eric drive us all the way to Syracuse to adopt him. We got there just in time. Bark was scheduled to be put down the next day.

  Because he was from Syracuse, I thought naming him Barkimedes was hysterical. Eric didn’t get it. He wanted to name him Jeter. Plus, Bark ate the back of the passenger seat in Eric’s brand new BMW when we made a pit stop at a gas station on the way home, so right off the bat, Eric was not a Bark fan. It went downhill from there.

  For all intents and purposes, Bark was my dog. Every morning I sat on the floor next to his bowl of kibble and drank my coffee with his ribs pressed against mine because it was the only way he’d eat his breakfast. I was the one who knew which patches of floor he was afraid of, and that you couldn’t use the stove without first closing him safely in the bedroom with three toys and his favorite blanket, and that when we went to work, he needed the radio tuned to NPR so he could listen to All Things Considered and feel less alone.

  Eric didn’t know these things. He didn’t bother to learn. He didn’t take me seriously when I told him how Bark needed us to act around him. So the one time I left them alone to go to Florida for a funeral, I came back to find shirts shredded, a section of the rug chewed away, and a dog who probably hadn’t eaten in four days, cowering in a corner while a basketball game blared on the radio.

  I had to believe that Eric was only posturing and he wasn’t really going to take my dog. And I had to believe that Arnold Troyer: Rochester’s Best Divorce Lawyer was at least slightly competent.

  I dried my hands and smoothed my hair.

  My phone buzzed.

  A text from my grandmother: Over yet?

  I wrote back: Almost.

  Hallelujah!

  I smiled and typed: Nan! So smug!

  Grab freedom by the balls!

  I laughed and looked in the mirror and stood up straight as if Nan had told me to. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes were starting to swell, but when I walked back down the hallway, I clacked my high heels against the marble floor like a statement.

  Eric’s friend was still sitting on the bench outside the conference room. She had begun to wilt, eyeliner pooling under her eyes.

  Suddenly, I felt sorry for her. If Arnold Troyer did his job, I would walk away with Bark, but she’d still be stuck with a cheater who clipped his toenails at the kitchen table and talked to his mother on the phone every single day.

  “I’m Katie, Eric’s ex,” I said, reaching out my hand to shake hers.

  She didn’t introduce herself, only mumbled hello in a voice that was softer than I expected. Her hand was cold and boney. There were rhinestones glued to her nails.

  “He should be done soon,” I said, and then blurted out, “Nice to meet you.”

  Nice to meet you. And it played in my head when I sat next to Arnold and signed by the X’s. Nice to meet you, woman who facilitated my husband’s escape from what I’d previously thought was a lifelong thing. Woman who left your hair clip in my living room like you were marking your territory. Woman who gave me the push I needed to start over. It’s nice to meet you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “That’s the coffee shop I like,” I said, pointing out the window as I drove. “And that’s where I went to high school.” I turned onto Nan’s palm-tree-lined street of Florida ranch houses, each with a postage stamp yard and a kidney-shaped pool. “Ooh, Mrs. Cohen lost her flamingos!” The healthy flock of plastic birds had dwindled to three, and only one of them wore sunglasses now. “Times have changed, my friend.”

  I looked behind me. Barkimedes had jammed all eighty pounds of himself into the tiny bit of backseat floor space, shoving his head as far as he could under the passenger seat.

  “You’re going to like Nan.” My voice was raw and throaty from narrating the entire trip from Rochester, New York, to Port St. Lucie, Florida, in a futile attempt to keep Bark calm. I’d done some crying too. “Or maybe you won’t like Nan, because it’s you. But I think you should try. Please, Bark?”

  We rounded the bend and there was Nan’s house. The crown of thorns I’d planted by the front path was tall and unwieldy. Dandelions dotted the lawn. I worried these were signs of Nan’s bursitis acting up again. She hadn’t mentioned it on the phone. But that was Nan. She didn’t complain. She tsked and moved on.

  I caught a flash of motion across the picture window in the living room, and slowed the car to get a better look.

  There was a man in Nan’s living room. Not one of her ancient, shrinking neighbors. A large man. Hulking. Standing close enough to the window that I could see the outline of his enormous shoulders through the sheer curtains. And then I couldn’t see him at all. A nervous rabbit heartbeat took over my chest.

  I threw the car into park at the curb, leaving it running for the AC. “I’ll be right back, Bark,” I whispered, ducking out of the driver’s seat, pushing the door closed quietly behind me. The air was too thick, too warm. Crouching low, I tiptoed toward the house. I thought about banging on the window or yelling at the top of my lungs so that man would know I was aware of him. Maybe he would stop, afraid. Run out the back door, leaving Nan sa
fe. But what if my yelling turned things? What if he was peacefully stealing Nan’s valuables, and my yelling pushed him into a hostage situation? Did he have a knife? A gun? I used my sleeve to push the thorny plants out of the way so I could peek in the window.

  He was on top of Nan, pinning her to the floor. I fought the urge to scream. My eyes watered. Thorns snagged my bare legs as I ran to the front door. I wanted to kill him, and in my rage, it felt possible, like those women who lift cars to save their babies.

  I slowly turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping out of my flip-flops so they wouldn’t smack against the tile. That man was so much bigger than me. I needed the element of surprise. Adrenaline spiked in my veins, blood dripped from one of the scratches on my leg. I grabbed the knockoff Ming Dynasty vase of dried flowers by the door, raising it over my head slowly so he wouldn’t catch movement from the corner of his eye. Holding my breath, I snuck toward them.

  When my toes hit the living room carpet, I heard Nan giggle. The man wasn’t forcing himself on her. She wrapped her bare arm around his bulging bicep, her naked knee pressed to his chest.

  I backed from the room, still holding the vase in the air, dried flowers falling to the floor. My heart stuck in nervous rabbit time.

  “Kaitlyn!” Nan called. “What in the world?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m going to go . . . I’m not judging—Good for you, Nan . . . Ooh, vitality and wow . . .”

  “Oh, lord, sweetie! What is wrong with you?”

  I opened my eyes. The muscled man had moved aside. Nan was sitting on the floor dressed in running shorts and a tank top. Instead of her comforting, pillowy folds of flesh, she was lean and wiry. She’d abandoned her yellowed bubbles of permed hair for a short white pixie cut that made her blue eyes shocking and sprightly.

  “Wow,” I said, trying to make sense of this new version of Nan. “You look—”