There are three legends about my dad. In the first, which comes from the West, he stands tall in white socks and blue jeans, making sandwiches for an excursion to a baseball game. With one hand he steadies a log of American cheese over a slicer, the other hand cupped and ready to catch the slices. Every time a piece comes out mangled or incomplete, he stuffs it into his mouth, like a dog that will eat anything.

In the second, he is extremely small, a vaguely Frenchified figure, with bad hair and tobacco-stained teeth. No more than one hundred pounds, no taller than five-foot two. In this one he is even smaller than me, his smallest offspring. Of the four of us he trusts me the most, to open his bedroom windows in the morning and prevent my older sisters from fact-checking him in the evening.

But in the last one, the true one, my dad takes me, his eldest son, to the beach in bad weather, to participate in what he calls an exercise in drowning. A drowning exercise, he tells me, is a realistic depiction of a death, in this case with every detail copied over from drowning.

But you’ll have to be willing to get your suit wet, he says, grinning. By this he means the one I got for my late bar mitzvah, when I was fourteen. Do you still have it? he says. You should still have it: I bought it for you.

I still have that suit, dad, I say, but it will become clear to both of us it no longer fits me.

He waves his hand dismissively. Just wear what you can of it, he says, and follow me.

I follow him. The water is cold. He walks five paces ahead of me. His suit fits him perfectly. Me, on the other hand, my blazer barely covers my back, causing me to pinch back my shoulder-blades, and the slacks barely come up above my knees. I was a late bloomer, and here I feel how much I’ve grown since fourteen.

When the water touches my dad’s penis he shrieks.

Isn’t it wonderful? he says. He waits for the same thing to happen to me.

And now the skies are darkened by clouds. A breeze is kicking up. The water is deeper than we can stand in, but it is still calm and measurable.

I look at my dad treading water, looking up toward where the sun is covered by clouds.

I ask my dad, Is this the part where we depict the drowning?

And he turns to me and says, Have you seen your mother lately? 

And I say, Why do you ask?

And he says, No reason.

And I say, Well obviously there’s a reason.

And he, still treading water, his suit now wet and tight around his biceps, says, No. There’s no reason.

We stay there treading water for a few moments, not quite able to see one another. Then I, treading water with difficulty because my suit restricts my movement, say, You always do this passive aggressive thing.

And he says, What passive aggressive thing?

And I, blowing the water away from my mouth, say, If you have something you want to say, just say it.

And he, somewhat out of breath, says, It’s nothing. Just she owes me some money still, for the vehicle.

There it is, I say. Now why couldn’t you have just said that?

By the way, he says, do you still have the title to the vehicle?

I think I have it somewhere, I say. In a bin somewhere.

You think? he says, just his face above the water now.

Yeah, I say. In a bin somewhere.

He starts laughing with rage.

See there’s the problem. You can’t just think. You have to be sure. Because remember, that vehicle belongs to me, not your mother. And without the title to it, I’m fucked. You fucked me.

We tread water for a long time here, and I feel myself getting irritated by my suit, and angered by my dad’s banal inquiries. The water is rising above my head, and in the pocket of my bar mitzvah suit, I feel a mass of what must be a hundred individual receipts, purchases my dad made for me at the time of my bar mitzvah, which I was incapable of making myself at fourteen.

Just my dad’s mouth and nose protrude above the surface of the water now. The water was still before, but now, with all our treading and the wind, it is looking choppy.

His mouth says: Have you called your grandmother yet? You know she likes to hear from you on her birthday.

No, I say. Her birthday is in two days still.

Just his mouth is left now. The mouth says: But you know she likes to hear from you on the day before her birthday.

And the day before the day before her birthday.

With this, I reach for the receipts in my bar mitzvah suit pocket. In the last possible movement before the both of us are swallowed under, I stuff the mass of them into my dad’s mouth, as far as I can down toward his throat.  

Here we leave aside all conversation and depict the drowning, with every detail copied over precisely. Side by side, we clamber for the surface with doggie-paddling arms. Occasionally our heads bob over and we shout for the help we know will never come. We flail helplessly, as if all understanding of swimming has finally left us, and we become like children again as we sense death is approaching. We look up. First we open our eyes wide in terror, and let the water into them. Then finally the relief, as we open ourselves up to the cool water, and welcome back a prehistoric form of breathing.

When it’s done, we crawl out of the water together on our bellies. My suit, now stiff from the cold water, prevents me from standing up without him helping me. He pulls me up and pats me on the back.

You did good, he says, and smiles at me, black ink stains on his teeth from the receipts. He hands me back the wad of receipts.

Now don’t lose those, he says. Keep them somewhere safe, where you will remember them.

So I stuff them back in my bar mitzvah pocket, where I’m sure they will always be.

These are things other people say about me. Dad legends are often full of exercises, though they won’t always use drowning. It would feel too contrived, too much like an obligation. Instead, it will be riding a bicycle or whistling. Though ultimately beneficial, these exercises are received by the public with hostility.

I don’t think I’ll be the last son to participate in a drowning.