The Lovers by Vendela Vida

shouting at the same time was exhausting. She switched to the breaststroke so she could speak more easily.
    “Where in the U.S.?” said the woman. She pronounced the letters U and S carefully, as though spelling a word for a child.
    “Near New York,” Yvonne said. She was tired of explaining Vermont.
    “Oh,” said the woman. “I was near to there. My daughter, she lives in Vermont.”
    “That’s where I’m from!” said Yvonne. It was strangely welcoming to find a woman hanging laundry on the otherside of the world who knew something about where Yvonne lived. She felt as though the woman could picture the mismatched greens of Yvonne’s living room couch and chairs, the coatrack that stood in her entryway like a leafless tree.
    “Please,” said the woman, “you must come on the boat. Please, I invite you to have a glass of tea with ice.”
    Yvonne had no choice but to accept. What would be her excuse not to? That someone was waiting for her on the beach? Once she returned to her towel, she would be alone, as the woman in white would be able to see.
    Yvonne swam to the boat. The aluminum ladder was warm on her hands, and Yvonne could hear the water dripping from her swimsuit onto the rungs as she lifted herself up. The woman was waiting for her, a plush white towel in her hands, and she wrapped it around Yvonne as if she were a champion swimmer finishing a record-breaking heat. From afar the woman’s trim figure had lent her the air of someone much younger, but up close Yvonne saw that she could be sixty-five, maybe seventy.
    “Thank you,” Yvonne said. Now that she was out of the water, she tasted the salt on her lips.
    “I am Deniz,” said the woman. Her teeth were the texture of wood, but her eyes were wet and bright.
    “Deniz, I am Yvonne.”
    They smiled at each other. Yvonne liked her immediately.
    “Please, I introduce you to my husband,” Deniz said. “Galip.” Galip was standing by a table at the stern of the boat, pouring iced tea from a pitcher into a glass. He had a thickgray beard and wore a black bandanna around his bushy hair. His wrinkled white linen shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and his white shorts reached his knees. He was a stout man with powerful legs, and seemed aware of his fitness, his roguish appeal. A pair of Oakley sunglasses hung around his neck.
    “Nice to meet you,” said Yvonne.
    Galip nodded and handed her the glass of iced tea. It was clear he did not understand English.
    “Please, sit down,” Deniz said.
    “I don’t want to interrupt your lunch.”
    “You don’t. Captain Galip eats in one hour. I don’t eat after twelve,” said Deniz. She paused, waiting for Yvonne to comment. She clarified: “We do boat charter all year and I cook very good food. So I don’t like to get fat, I stop eat at twelve.”
    Two crewmen, no more than eighteen years old and also dressed in white, appeared behind Deniz. She turned to them and barked something in Turkish. Her voice was suddenly unpleasant, the consonants of her words scraping against each other like a zipper. The boys scampered toward the front of the boat.
    Deniz turned back to Yvonne and smiled sweetly but without apology. “Where you live in Vermont?”
    “Burlington,” Yvonne said.
    “I see,” Deniz said. “My daughter, she live in the capital.”
    “Montpelier.”
    Deniz nodded. “She marries a doctor for the back.”
    “A chiropractor?”
    “Yes. He is a nice man. He needs to give me a grandson or granddaughter—I don’t care what it is. He just needs to give me one. Do you have a family?” She had a habit of smiling at the end of each question.
    “I have two children,” Yvonne said. “Yes. Twins.”
    Deniz made an exclamation, the Turkish version, it seemed, of wow . She translated for Captain Galip and he made the same exclamation. For her entire life as a mother, Yvonne had been getting credit for something over which she had no control. Twins ran in her family.
    “What do they