“How old would you say he is?”
“I don’t know. Ten? Eleven, maybe?”
The twins had developed magnificently; they were huge, athletic, dark despite their blondness, exactly the kind of boys I was crazy for when I was a teenager. At nearly sixteen, they still did everything together.
Earlier that year, we made some major renovations to the house and offered them their own rooms. Gregory suggested building an addition to the house to make some extra space. He spent days working on the plans, with an eye to the strict zoning laws in the neighbourhood, but the boys refused outright. So I limited myself to updating the decor. The walls, originally blue, were repainted in grey tones to match their new bedding. A set of deer antlers replaced the colourful bunting, and the carpet adorned with dancing monkeys made way for a thicker new one, with a triangular pattern. But I was proudest of having snagged them authentic Peter Løvig Nielsen desks—two 1958 Boomerang-Schreibtischs in perfect condition.
But the desks didn’t get much use. The boys didn’t spend much time studying. Their academic performance was, in fact, not very good. Their childhood passions, biology, nature, animals, had dwindled. Gregory assured me there was nothing to worry about; I think he hoped that their mediocre grades would make them one day turn to us for jobs at the firm.
At the end of the school year, their marks in English were so weak that their teacher suggested summer courses. They had no command of the basics and in his opinion, if no action was taken, the gap would only widen and they risked failing in their final year.
“It would be a shame to make them miss out on their summer,” I said. “I think they could use a break. I can take care of catching them up—I taught them when they were young, after all. Besides, anyone can teach literature, right?”
Gregory agreed. We remained suspicious of the school system, which had so often misjudged the boys. Gregory would be travelling for a large part of the summer, which had become the norm. He spent nearly half the year on the road. To some extent, it’s what had allowed our relationship to survive over the years where a number of our friends had divorced—among them, Magalie, who had moved to Vancouver some time ago. When Gregory worked on a contract abroad, I followed my own schedule. When he returned, we were glad to see each other. It had taken me some time to accept this system, but I’d come to see it only as a good thing.
That morning, I sat the twins down at the kitchen table and presented them the list of books I wanted them to read over the summer. I decided to start with Alice Munro, because she’d won the Nobel Prize for Literature the previous fall. I’d never read her myself, but I was planning to discover her alongside the boys. Shortly after, they’d left for Robarts Library to borrow the books, and I was now waiting for them to return.
They wasted no time coming home—empty-handed.
“What? You were supposed to go to the library. What did you do?”
“We went diving.”
“You’re diving again?” The notion moved me. They hadn’t dived in nearly four years, since the accident.
I had discovered their interest in diving when they were around eight. I often took them to the pool when they were little and was the one who taught them to swim. It was impossible to sign them up for swimming lessons. I tried once, but they were always escaping the teacher’s supervision and I spent the whole lesson worrying they would drown. I wasn’t a strong swimmer myself, but I was good enough to be able to teach them the basics of the front crawl and breaststroke. They had learned to imitate me and had quickly become better swimmers than I was. Around that time, they started watching YouTube videos and asking me to film them. They didn’t want me in the pool with them; it wasn’t necessary because they were such good swimmers. They wanted me to film them while they swam so that they could perfect their moves, like the professionals.
I had to negotiate permission with the pool staff, because filming generally wasn’t permitted at the pool. I was only allowed to film when they were alone in the water, which meant we started visiting the pool earlier and earlier in the morning. At six o’clock the pool was free, so for a number of months they asked to go swimming before school in order for me to film them. Later, they’d compare their performance to the professionals and would work together to improve. I imagine it was through following links on YouTube that they came across diving videos, because one day they told me they didn’t want to swim anymore; they wanted to dive.
The neighbourhood pool didn’t have a diving board, but the University of Toronto offered children’s diving classes. We signed them up for classes and they were noticed right away. For one thing, their swimming style was impeccable, but most notably, unlike the other children starting out in diving, they had no fear. While the others stood with their feet glued to the edge of the platform, the twins flung themselves into the void without hesitation, indifferent to the pain if they made a flat landing.
After the course’s first session, the instructor approached me to ask whether they would be interested in joining the competitive team. It was a big commitment because the schedules were so demanding. The team trained four weekdays from six to eight in the morning, with tournaments on weekends. But it was a period when Gregory was away, so it was easy for me to adapt to the program.
For over three years, diving consumed their lives. As a result, it consumed mine too.
