When the music starts, we grab our foam dumbbells and wade in. Not Shelly, though. Shelly jumps in feet first. She likes to get it over with quickly. She’s from New York, and New Yorkers are like that.

The rest of us take a more Californian approach, letting the water creep slowly over our thighs, over our softening bellies, up to our bosoms and our multi-colored rash guards. It takes a minute to get used to the temperature. It is still winter after all.

The teacher stands in water up to her waist and calls out for tiny marches, a rhythmic movement meant to bring our heart rates up quickly. Then she says jumping jacks, then she says split kicks. Our hearts are really pumping now.

I push my weights through the water, feeling the pull in my biceps, in my hamstrings. In those tiny muscles between my ribs. I feel it deep inside my shoulders, in the place where tension resides.

Chubby Checker blares from the speakers, singing about the twist, so that’s what we do next. We bring our knees to our chests and then push them out to the side, first left then right. Not Joyce, though. Joyce doesn’t jump. In her fuchsia wetsuit and her perfect silver bob, she prefers to spend the whole class dancing.

On the other side of the pool, Diane lifts her legs and twists. Her son is a paramedic, one of the frontline workers we keep hearing about. Her daughter is having surgery, but not today. Today they are having lunch at a café with sidewalk seating, probably under one of those heater lamps. It is still winter after all.

Rhonda is back to class, finally, after a bout with covid. She’s vaccinated, so it wasn’t that bad. She and Peg are talking about movies, the ones they’ve seen and the ones they haven’t yet. Peg is extra chatty. She seems to miss being around people. Since the pandemic started, all her classes at the community college have been online. She hasn’t met any of her students in person yet.

I try to keep time with the music, but my mind wanders. To the sky, blue and cloudless. To the peppertrees swaying in the breeze. To my daughter two blocks away, sitting in her high school classroom despite another surge in cases, a black surgical mask strapped to her face. In two years’ time she’ll go to college. Who knows what the world will be like then?

The song from Grease comes on, and everybody sings while we jog in place. I don’t care for this song, but it’s better than the one by the Village People. For that, the teacher makes us do the arm motions, which always makes me feel a little foolish. I’m a good twenty years younger than everyone else, but I don’t care. This class is fun, and it’s a good workout. Plus, chlorine kills the virus.

Joyce is still dancing. She looks like she’s at a cocktail party, back when there were still cocktail parties. Her grandchildren just returned to school after a whole year of staying home. She worries. About the kids. About the teachers. She was a teacher once, too. One of her kindergarten students is a doctor now. Emergency room, poor guy.

The teacher asks for tuck jumps. We float our arms out, then pull our legs into our chests, over and over, like we are jumping rope. Beefcakes and Barbie dolls walk past the pool on their way to the weight room and their barre classes, smiling down at us as they go. Look how cute, they say, pointing. Look at the old ladies exercising.

What they don’t know is there’s a lot going on under the surface. Things they can’t see or feel. Things they don’t’ understand. Beneath it all, we are each running our own marathon.

Joyce hangs back while the rest of us paddle to the deep end for mermaid abs. We pull our legs in and push them out to the side as though they were a fin, alternating left and right, then forward and back. The teacher asks if we can feel our obliques working.

Conversations continue, first about the new motion picture museum down on Wilshire, then about which restaurant in the Valley makes the best Caesar salad. I heard on the news that covid deaths are climbing again. Hospitalizations too. I do a quick head count. There are nineteen of us in the pool. Who will be here this time next year? This time next month? We don’t talk much about the pandemic, but it’s always there in the far corners of our minds, somewhere between how to do a flutter kick and the words to “Sugar Sugar.”

We tell the teacher yes, we feel it in our obliques. We feel it in our hips and our thighs and our shoulders and our hamstrings. We feel it all, everything, in the places where tension resides.