The pump replacement took a day on its own. The old pump, which had served for twelve years, was disconnected, lifted out, and set aside on the deck like a retired piece of equipment that had earned its rest. The new pump was installed, tested, and run briefly, and Tom showed me the pressure readings and explained what they should be in normal operation. I recorded the readings in the house ledger, next to the invoice, because a reading written down at installation is worth more than a memory of one six months later. Doug came the next day, looked at the new pump, nodded once, and said it was a good unit. I valued his opinion, because he was the man who would maintain it.
When the replastering was finished, the pool was a different color than it had been: not dramatically different, but cleaner, paler, more even, the way a freshly painted room is the same room and yet not quite. I walked the perimeter slowly, checking the coping, the tile, and the steps, and I found one small rough patch near the shallow end. I pointed it out to Tom without apology, and he had it smoothed before the crew left. That is the correct order of things: notice, state, correct, confirm. I signed the completion certificate, paid the balance by check, and filed both documents with the original contract from twelve years earlier. The file for the pool was now thicker by two invoices, and it was complete in a way that had nothing to do with Sandra and everything to do with maintenance.
That evening I stood at the kitchen window and looked at the empty, replastered pool. It was clean and dry and ready, and it smelled faintly of new plaster and stone. The gate was locked. The code was known to two people. The work was inspected and paid for. Spring had given me a decision to make, and I had made it in the ordinary way: by scheduling the work, inspecting it, and filing the paper. The refill would come next, and I was ready for it, not because the past year had been forgotten, but because it had been filed, and a filed thing no longer needs to be carried in the hand.
The refill began on a clear morning in late April, with the hose running from the house tap and the crew's larger fill line already in place. Tom had told me it would take most of the day, and that the water would rise slowly enough to watch, which was true. I spent the morning in the kitchen, working at the table where I could see the pool through the window, and I went out every hour to look at the level. At first the water covered only the main drain, a dark circle in the pale new plaster. Then it reached the shallow-end steps, one tread at a time, and the tile border began to disappear from the bottom upward, as if the pool were remembering its shape.
By midday the deep end was more than half full, and the water had taken on its proper color: not the flat blue of a brochure, but a deeper, moving blue that changed with the clouds. I stood on the deck at the shallow end and watched the surface settle after each ripple. The smell was different from the drained pool's smell. The drained pool had smelled faintly of chlorine and wet stone and something mineral and clean, like the ghost of water. The refilling pool smelled of fresh water and new plaster, and of nothing else. It was a clean smell, without history in it, and I was glad of that.
Doug came that afternoon, not to clean but to check the new pump under load and to test the water. He carried his kit in one hand and his notebook in the other, and he worked through his routine without hurry: pressure, flow, chlorine, pH, alkalinity. He wrote each reading down and showed me the page when he finished. The numbers were within range, he said, and the pump was running as it should. He would return on Tuesday, as always, to begin the season's regular service. I thanked him, and he nodded, and we stood for a moment looking at the water, which had nearly reached the skimmers by then.
When the crew left and the house was quiet again, I waited until the water was still and the level was correct. Then I changed into my swimsuit, took a towel to the deck, and walked to the shallow-end steps alone. There was no ceremony in this. I did not speak to the pool or to myself. I stepped down into the water, which was cold in the way April water always is, and I stood there for a moment with the water at my waist, feeling the new plaster smooth under my feet. Then I pushed off and swam to the deep end, where the water was nine feet deep and the light moved across the bottom in clean, shifting patterns.