Jake by Audrey Couloumbis Page A

lockers.”
    So I flapped around in the shallow end for a while. I noticed there’s a bar running along the side of the pool. I held on to the bar and pulled myself along to the deep end.
    Not to the deepest part of the deep end, but definitely where I could’ve drowned if I lost hold of the bar. Well, except that there was a lifeguard watching.
    I didn’t feel like I was in danger, just that I didn’t want to embarrass myself by needing to be rescued, or even helped. I didn’t want to embarrass Granddad either.
    After he swam the pool about nine more times, he slowed down and swam over to me. “That’s it,” he said. “Get comfortable with it.”
    “I don’t need to learn to swim,” I said, pulling myself along. I was headed back for the shallow end.
    “Nah, nobody falls out of boats much anymore. Or into rivers. That sort of thing used to happen more often in the old days,” he said. Then he laughed and said, “When I was a boy.”
    “I know those aren’t the old days.”
    “Oh, they are,” he said. “Don’t kid yourself. The way things are going, you won’t get as old as me before people will be calling today ‘the old days.’ ”
    That didn’t sound too good.
    He’d moved around in front of me and then stopped. I stopped pulling so I wouldn’t bump into him. I flapped my feet around a little, like a swimmer does. I kept a tight grip on the bar. “Why didn’t you ever come visit us?”
    Granddad looked around the pool for a minute.
    “At first I missed your father too much. And even before that, I’d forgotten how good it feels to be needed,” he said. “Not that your mother ever needed me.”
    He looked embarrassed, same as when he was talking to his dog through a door. “I know that doesn’t sound like much of a reason.”
    I got this feeling, like when his dog didn’t want to stay in the apartment alone. Like I had to say
something
. “Our cat died last year,” I said. “Mom and I miss her too much to get another one.”
    “Well. Probably you ought to give another cat a chance.”
    “We do. About every month we go to the poundand look, especially at the kittens.” Looking at the kittens was Mom’s idea. It made me miss our cat more. “We don’t feel like getting one.”
    “You
will
want one someday,” he said. “It will just come over you.”
    “I guess.”
    What came over me at the pound, though, was wanting my old cat. I didn’t want some new cat doing the things my cat didn’t get to do anymore, like stick her paw in the fish tank. Or lie in the sun behind Mom’s plants. Or curl up on my pillow. Even if it did make me sneeze.
    The feeling I had, and really I knew it was thinking about my cat that did it, I wanted some peace and quiet while I messed around in the pool. I didn’t want to miss my cat. Or Mom, even for a little while. Not that I was going to say so. It feels rotten, missing them.
    “It’s different with me, though,” Granddad said after we’d had maybe a minute of peace and quiet. “You’re not a kitten. You’re my grandson. I’m your only grandparent.”
    I didn’t mean to make him feel rotten too. I tried to let him off the hook. “It’s not all your fault. We could have visited you, I guess.”
    “It’s not your mother’s fault,” he said.
    I didn’t think so either. “She works long hours,” I said. Because I wanted him to feel good, I added, “Probably she did need you, now and again.” I realized then that might be the wrong thing to say. “Not that you should feel bad. Aunt Ginny and Suzie are usually around. There’s Mrs. Buttermark too.”
    Granddad was kind of standing in the water, not even treading, staring into space across the pool. Then I realized, he
was
standing in the water. I wasn’t in what could technically be called the deep end anymore.
    But I didn’t like that staring.
    I mean, there’s times when my mom is translating and she stares off, trying out different words in her head. Then there’s times when