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I'm in a pool at the Careeb Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Getting here was my first trip

on an airplane. A 747 with a smoke-filled piano bar at the back of the plane. Can you imagine?

Coach class air travel in the early 1970s. My father has been dead for just four months.

His suicide is a secret I'm not supposed to know about. I think of this trip as something

of a consolation prize. My mother's used some of the modest life insurance money to take

us out of Queens and out of our day-to-day lives. For a little over a week, I think it

was 10 days. My older sister, younger brother, and me. It's 1971. I'm 12 years old.

The hotel's pool is vast, not quite kidney-shaped. It's a casual ovoid and mostly empty. I stay

close to the steps at the shallow end. I can't swim. I can hardly float. I have nothing

for buoyancy. I'm scrawny. Any body fat I may have is hiding. I've had swimming lessons

at summer camp, but apparently haven't learned much. I'm practicing floating on my back

or trying to. Over and over again, I lean back, kick my feet off the floor of the pool,

hover for a second at the surface, but then my concave chest collapses. I sink like a

rock and come up sputtering. My flailing routine, sinking, almost drowning, catch my breath,

...