Nightswimming deserves a quiet night - and it was a quiet July night. It was also the last normal night of my life, and really, it was the last night of my life. But I didn't know any of that at the time; instead, I was focused solely on sneaking out of my house with my best friend to take a ride to Waterville for a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's.
Obviously, we were a couple of nineteen-year-olds living our lives on the edge. What can I say? It was a gentler time, 2007, Amber was a newlywed Army wife and I was a pregnant girl on bed rest. At this point Wendy's was still making its spicy chicken sandwiches with actual chicken, not the weird, squishy stuff you find between the buns nowadays, and there was really nothing more appealing to a poor pregnant lady who'd been laying on her side watching infomercials and sucking in dry, air-conditioned air for two weeks.
Amber picked me up in the green 4Runner she'd nearly killed me in a few months earlier when she'd rear-ended someone in traffic. I waited for her in the balmy darkness on my neighbor's porch swing, hoping my parents wouldn't drive by my apartment building and see that my windows were dark and I wasn't in bed.
We drove to Waterville, chatting the entire way. Amber is one of the few people that there is never a lapse in conversation with; my shyness and limited social circle has always been eclipsed by her busy life, so there's never a loss for conversation topics. One thing that has been variably annoying at times during our friendship is that many of our outings end up being Amber-oriented, usually by the addition of various friends and family members and their issues. That night was no exception.
After ordering our sandwiches, double-checked for hairs because Amber mouthed off to the drive-thru attendant (per usual), she sped her truck down back roads and into the middle of nowhere to pick up her aunt. I hadn't had much exposure to her aunt, but I did know that she was having problems with her boyfriend and he'd kicked her out of the house.
Kathy, my best friend's aunt, was a very tall, loud woman, who went on and on about her idiot boyfriend. She also climbed into the back seat of Amber's truck with a disposable plastic cup and a bottle of coffee brandy, asking to be brought to a gas station to buy some milk to mix with it. Now, I wasn't raised in a family of Puritans or anything, but for whatever reason, driving around with a crazy woman nursing a party-cup filled with booze was quite off-putting to me, as well as being very bizarre and kind of alarming.
We drove around for awhile, listening to Kathy ramble on. Eventually she decided that we needed to go swimming. Amber tried to talk her out of it, using me and my should-be-resting fetus as an excuse not to go.
"You're no fun," Kathy told me. "No offense, but this would be much better if you weren't here so we could go swimming."
I wasn't offended, mostly because she was clearly sort of psychotic, and partially because I was starting to agree that my night would also be much better if I wasn't there.
But Kathy kept at me, in that insistent way that drunks have about them. "It's too bad you're pregnant, or else we could really have fun. I want to go swimming, Amber."
Finally, I told Amber that we should just give in and go swimming. We went to a boat landing and waded in the lake, with the truck's headlights as our only source of light. I can't swim, so my time was spent wading around through the muddy silt and sitting on the dock while my friend and her weird aunt swam around like kids would.
A short while later we headed back to through the grassy lawn to the parking lot, climbing in to the truck, grass and dirt clinging to our still-wet legs. Kathy sloshed more milk and coffee brandy into her cup, Amber turned on the CD player to some indie band we'd forget about in a week.
It was a strange turn of events, but overall it had been a peaceful way to spend a hot summer night, rowdy relatives aside. I went into labor with my son the next day, so that was my last child-free excursion, giving me a whole new appreciation of what a "quiet night" really is.
*Just to clarify - sneaking out of the house while on bed rest is a big no-no, and it's something that I would never consider if ever in the same circumstances again.
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