“You don’t know how to build a pool.”
“I know how water moves,” he said. “That’s ninety percent of it.”
It took him nearly two summers.
He dug the hole with a rented backhoe and a shovel. He poured the concrete himself, with his brother Gus and three men from his office who he paid in beer and barbecue. He laid every single brick around the edge by hand, kneeling on a folded towel, with a string line and a level. He built the flower beds beside it. He built a little waterfall at one end out of river rocks he hauled home one at a time in the trunk of our station wagon.
When it was done, he stood at the edge in his swim trunks with his hands on his hips and looked at it for a long time.
His palms were covered in blisters. Some had popped. Some were still raw.
“Worth every blister,” he said.
Then he did a cannonball into the deep end, and Phoebe screamed with joy, and the splash soaked me to the skin.
Every birthday party happened in that pool. Every Fourth of July barbecue. Every graduation. Our son Danny learned to swim there. Phoebe got engaged there, on a summer night in 2009, when her boyfriend dropped to one knee on the diving board and nearly fell in.
Our grandchildren learned to swim there too. Chuck taught every single one of them. He’d stand in the shallow end with his arms out and say, “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.” And they’d trust him, and let go of the edge, and kick.
Chuck died five years ago. A stroke. He was out in the backyard on a Saturday morning, kneeling by the pool, scrubbing the waterline.
I found him there.
I’m not going to talk about that part.
After the funeral, people kept telling me I should sell the house. Too big for one person. Too much upkeep. That pool must be so much work, Abby.
I didn’t sell. 