The Crone
Mary Rechner I met the crone in the locker room of the community center. I say met, but we never spoke. I looked at her, and she at me, when she lifted her head. I never saw her in the pool. Only in the open stall showers or standing at the sinks, water gushing, a towel tucked around her jutting hips, grey hair stuck to her dinosaur back. Bent at the waist, she was a right angle, except for her breasts dangling like udders, or when she lifted her head, pits for eyes, skin lustrous, unwrinkled, as if she drank olive oil. I was in my thirties, boys three and four, writing stories in the morning before they woke up, before going to work. My thighs kind of fat, my stomach a bump even before I had kids, breasts even flatter now, post nursing. I was strong, muscle and stamina, my brain stunted by constant interruption and all the things about myself I still refused to see. My title was now my name. My boys were verbal yet baby chub, one bisque, one peach. After the pool, we all smelled like bleach. The pool had lanes I never had a chance to swim in, a river, a whirlpool, waves. A deep end. A hot tub. Two slides, small one whale-shaped, the other gigantic, snakelike, an enclosed curvaceous chute. No preschool; it was some holiday. We’d moved far from our families, west coast green and dripping with rain. Man and woman. Husband and wife. Two boys. We had freedom and loneliness, flip-flopped work and childcare, fended for ourselves.