The Nearest Heart

The decision is made the way practical decisions are made in the Hartwell-Calloway house: someone says the thing out loud, the other person says yes, and it is done. In this case: July is here, the pool at the park has been open for three weeks, and they do not own swimsuits. Emmy had one packed somewhere that was lost, and another that suffered an elastic blowout, rendering it comically useless. Julie had one from several years back, but it unfortunately only covered her bottom half, rendering it (now) incomplete.

This information on lack of swimwear is stated by Emmy on a Tuesday morning as a fact rather than an emergency, and Juliet receives it the way she receives practical information — completely, and with the immediate secondary question: what is required?

"We go back to Corrections," Emmy says.

"Obviously," Juliet says. "I'll need to do some preparation."

Emmy, who selected a bra in four minutes in May, considers the phrase some preparation. "How much preparation?"

"It's swimwear," Juliet says. "For a 34D cup." She looks at Emmy. "You wouldn't understand."

This is entirely true. Emmy does not argue. It amuses Emmy that Juliet does understand.

#

The preparation, it emerges, has been going on for approximately five days.

By the time they are standing in the swimwear section of Corrections on a Thursday in July — the same back-right corner they clocked in May, now fully operational in the heat — Juliet has identified the specific challenges she is working against and has criteria. Emmy, who knows this, listens to the criteria being stated to the fitting room assistant with the particular patience of someone who has been married since August and has learned the texture of Juliet approaching a research problem. The fitting room assistant is, mercifully, a different assistant than helped them previously. But she is quickly becoming overwhelmed at the level of detail and specificity that one Mrs. Hartwell-Calloway is relaying to her. Juliet is not the kind of woman who feels she needs to talk down to people, in fact her tone is much more deferential to the perceived expertise of the assistant, but Juliet is the kind of woman who wants to make sure she is understood. The other Mrs. Hartwell-Calloway is much easier to please, but also much easier to fit.

The challenges, as Juliet explains them: support, which requires either underwire or equivalent structure; cup fit, which for a 34D is frequently wrong in both directions; strap placement, which affects where the suit sits; fabric composition, which affects both chlorine resistance and UV protection; and the aesthetic dimension, which she considers secondary but which, for what it's worth, she does have opinions about.

The fitting room assistant — efficiently — takes notes, and provides options.

Emmy finds a bikini.

This takes nine minutes, including the time she spends considering a coral two-piece and deciding she prefers the warm navy. It fits correctly. She looks at herself in the changing room mirror for approximately thirty seconds. Views from all angles. Checks price. Considers amount of sunscreen needed. She is done.

She sits outside Juliet's fitting room and occupies herself with her phone.

#

Inside: the sounds of systematic evaluation.

Juliet has requested five options from her preliminary research, two more based on what the assistant has recommended, and one because the fabric composition appealed. Eight suits. Each tried on completely, assessed according to the criteria, noted. A small notebook is utilized to keep track of important variables. Two eliminated immediately — the support is wrong. One more eliminated on the cup fit. The remaining five assessed in order.

The conversation that drifts through the fitting room curtain is Juliet thinking out loud, which is how Juliet works through problems: not in performance of the thinking, but as a function of the process. The assistant checks in from time to time, ferrying and fetching options and sizes.

And so the litany goes. The underwire sits at the right angle on the third. The halter provides the equivalent structure on the fifth. The fabric on the third is better. The color on the fifth is better, but this is secondary.

"The third," Emmy says.

Silence from behind the curtain.

"You said the underwire sits correctly and the fabric composition is optimal," Emmy says.

"I'm still working through the halter variable."

"The halter is second best and the fabric is worse. Third."

A pause that is specifically Juliet completing an analysis that was already heading toward the same result. A part of her is somewhat shocked that upon her own words alone, no visuals, Emmy has made the same determination. Then she realizes that this merely shows what a good thinker-out-loud she is.

"Third," Juliet agrees.

They gather their new swimsuits, thank the grateful-to-be-finished assistant, consider the glassware they absolutely did not need then and do not need now, and head for the cash register.

#

They go home to change properly before the pool, which is ten minutes from the house and requires coverups for the walk. This is a July afternoon — the particular heat of July in a town that has been warming since May — and the bedroom in the afternoon light is bright and warm when they lay the suits on the bed and change.

Juliet puts on the third one. She has her back to the mirror while she adjusts the underwire — a process she approaches with the same careful attention she brings to everything — and when she turns, she does what she always does: she assesses.

The suit is technically correct. Underwire at the proper angle. Cup fit within acceptable parameters. Strap placement supporting the weight without digging. Fabric composition appropriate for extended UV exposure and chlorine. The color is a deep teal that she selected third on the aesthetic criteria and which she will acknowledge, privately, is not a poor choice.

She begins the enumeration of these points out loud, because she has been thinking them through since the fitting room and they have not yet been fully articulated to another person.

Emmy, who has put on the warm navy bikini and is standing at the mirror, leans up against her wife and lets her talk. This is not patience exactly — it is the specific quality of someone who is listening to Juliet explain her research findings and simultaneously tracking the fact that Juliet is standing there in a well-fitting teal swimsuit and the findings are not the most interesting thing in the room.

She is about to say something about this.

She does not get there.

"Emmy," Juliet says, mid-technical assessment, and her voice shifts — the 90% that is still Julian's precise register, but the 10% doing something with it that Julian would have held back. "Stop."

Emmy stops.

Juliet looks at her, top to bottom, in the mirror and from the side angle. Not the technical assessing look. The other one.

"Before you find a way to make this about my suit," Juliet says, with the particular quality of someone who has arrived at a destination they have thought about carefully and is now simply being there — "yours is the one worth discussing." She does not look away. "The navy is exact for you. The cut is correct. And you are—" the fractional pause, the Julian 90% making way for the Juliet 10% to do what it has decided to do — "extremely beautiful, my Emerald. I want you to know that I see that. Clearly. Daily. And right now… especially."

Emmy stands at the mirror and receives this.

It is not what she was expecting. She was expecting to be the one who said it. She has been the one who says it, generally, in the architecture of their particular warmth — Emmy the one who makes her feelings externally visible, Juliet the one who receives and returns them in the precise Juliet register. This is Juliet going first. This is Juliet looking at her and saying the thing with full precision and full intention and not waiting for Emmy to create the conditions for it.

Emmy's face does something she doesn't manage.

"Oh, Jules," she says. The air leaving her mouth in a way some may describe as smitten.

"Yes," Juliet says. The very small smile. "Coverups on. We should go."

"We should," Emmy agrees. She doesn't move immediately. "We're coming back to this."

"Yes, clearly," Juliet says with a knowing glance. "We are." She picks up her coverup with the specific efficiency of someone who has just said something and means to follow through on it, and that is that.

#

The outdoor pool in July has the particular quality of somewhere that belongs to everyone and to no one in particular — the families with the complicated logistics of multiple children and sunscreen, the older couple who comes every summer and has claimed their corner, the teenagers performing elaborate indifference to each other, the small ones in the shallow end doing what small ones do in shallow ends: existing in the water with complete commitment, as if this has always been and will always be their natural environment. As a child, Julian had come here with his parents, although very few concrete memories survive to the present day. It is a warm and happy place, though, and one that Juliet and Emmy both think they should try to make it to more than once every few years. They did purchase new swimwear specifically for it, perhaps that will be a motivator.

The sun on Juliet's shoulders is a specific pleasure that she notes without comment. She had calculated the UV factor correctly. This is not a surprise. The warmth is still good. Juliet's mind may excel at cold calculations, but she is quickly finding she's a sun girl at heart.

They find two chairs in the afternoon light. Emmy has her sunglasses and her book and the particular quality of someone who has come to the pool as a genuine destination rather than a transit point. Juliet has her sunglasses and, on reflection, decides the book can wait.

The afternoon passes in the way good July afternoons pass: slowly and completely. Emmy reads and Juliet thinks and the pool does what pools do around them. Periodically they get up and get in the pool, stand and talk with one another, and then retreat to their chairs to bake the water off. They talk about the everything and nothing you talk about at pools, in full display amongst your community peers. They observe couples, children, families, and the lone wolves who just want some time alone that isn't really alone.

At some point Emmy is watching the shallow end.

It is not a deliberate watching — she has looked up from her book and her attention has drifted to the children there, two of them, perhaps four and six, doing what four- and six-year-olds do in shallow pools: something that is either a game or an argument or both simultaneously, with the absolute commitment of people who have decided this moment is the most important moment that has ever occurred. The four-year-old is attempting something. The six-year-old is supervising. Neither is succeeding in the traditional sense.

Emmy watches them with the quality of attention she brings to things she cares about.

"I'd want two, I think," she says, idly.

She is not looking at Juliet when she says it. She is watching the shallow end, where the argument-game has reached some kind of provisional resolution and both children have turned to something new with equal commitment. The words came out while she was watching, in the slightly-distanced way that thoughts sometimes become speech when you're watching something and thinking something and the thinking becomes too large for interior space.

She continues watching the pool.

Juliet, beside her, is quiet. The kind of quiet that is not absence.

The afternoon continues. The sun on the water, the particular sounds of a July pool, the four-year-old and the six-year-old now apparently collaborating on something that requires a great deal of splashing. Emmy goes back to her book. Juliet watches the sky.

They do not discuss what was said. They don't need to. Emmy said it into the air and it landed where it landed and Juliet filed it in the specific place where things are kept until they are ready to be opened.

#

Coming home in the early evening: the coverups back on, the walk through the neighborhood in the golden slant of July at six o'clock, the pool bags filled with sunscreen, books, hair ties, and other essentials swinging and the particular ease of two people who have had a good afternoon and know it. The green door. The small step — fixed, no catch. Inside.

The suits go back on the towels in the bathroom. Emmy is in the doorway and Juliet is right behind her and the promise made at the mirror hours ago is still fully in effect, and they both know it, and the evening has more than enough time. Juliet leads Emmy to the bed, in a pre-dinner detour that may extend past dinner hours.

What follows is the specific and excellent consequence of July and the pool and a teal swimsuit and a warm navy bikini and Juliet looking at Emmy in the mirror and saying you are extremely beautiful, my Emerald with complete intention and full precision, and Emmy having thought about it the entire walk home.

Later: the July evening through the bedroom window. The garden in the late light. Both of them with the particular ease of people who have delivered on a promise and find the delivery has exceeded the advance billing.

"The third one was right," Emmy says, at some point.

"I know," Juliet says.

"I'm just saying. My methodology—"

"Emmy."

"The underwire—"

"Emmy."

Emmy smiles at the ceiling. Juliet's hand finds her bare waist. The evening does its July work outside.

* * *