Breathing Water (29 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

Tags: #General Fiction

BOOK: Breathing Water
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“Hi, Rose,” I said.
Alice jumped down off the tractor and came running to the porch. She hugged my legs and the last bit of her Popsicle fell into the dirt.
“Hi, pumkin,” I said, bending down to Alice. “You are a
mess
.”
“She's had a very busy day,” Rose said, freeing the burr from Jezebel's tresses. “We canned some tomatoes, watched
Sesame Street
and
Days of Our Lives,
helped Jezebel with her new puppies.”
“You suppose your mom's gonna let you have a puppy?” I asked Alice. She beamed at me and then shrugged.
“We're working on her.” Rose winked. “I'm gonna work on you too. Come with me.”
Alice took me by the hand and led me to a closet inside the house. There were blankets on the floor and five wriggling pups. They squeaked like toys when we came close and then Jezebel was pushing between my legs to get to them. She turned around several times and then heaved her weight down onto the floor, somehow avoiding them. And then they were all fighting for milk, all scrambling and burying their faces in her belly.
“You almost got me,” I said. I thought for a fleeting moment, then, of having a dog. Of waking up each morning and reaching for the leash hanging on the back of the closet door. Of taking her to the water and letting her swim. “Almost.”
Alice crawled into the passenger's side of the Bug and fastened her seat belt.
“Any luck finding Bugs?” I asked Rose.
“Course not. He's probably back in Florida by now. We've got a restraining order. Like that'll make a difference.”
“We're going to stay with her tonight. She'll be fine,” I said softly.
“I know she will, honey. It's Alice I'm worried about.”
I got in the car next to Alice. “See you later,” I said, waving to Rose. She stood on her porch and kept waving until we couldn't see her anymore.
“We'll go get your mom in just a little bit,” I said.
Alice nodded. She reached onto the dashboard and picked up a wilted flower I had forgotten there. Something I picked from the side of the road in town.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She shook her head and twirled the brown stem around her fingers.
“Thirsty?”
She smiled.
“You want a shake?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled. She still had all of her baby teeth. They were small and white, separated by huge spaces.
There is greasy spoon drive-in on the way from Rose's house to the lake. Sometimes I took Alice to get vanilla shakes. I knew she liked them, and Maggie didn't mind, but mostly it was for me. I loved the way they served the trays right to your car, attaching the metal handles of the tray to your window. I loved pouring the thick sweet shakes from the big silver canisters into paper cups. Usually I got one and split it with Alice. And we didn't drive away until it was all gone. Today, I let the cold shake numb my hands and tongue. Let everything freeze, until I couldn't feel anything anymore.
 
We brought Maggie three jars of tomatoes. Alice motioned for us to stop at the grocery store and ran directly to the chip aisle where she reached for a giant bag of salt and vinegar chips, Maggie's favorite. In the hospital parking lot, Devin stayed in the car with Alice, who was dressed up in her favorite blue dress and her cowboy boots. She had six different plastic bunny barrettes in her hair.
Maggie was packing her things when I got to her room. She took the cards down from the corkboard and laid them across her nightgowns and slippers. “My grandmother sent a sympathy card,” she said, waving a pastel greeting card. “Her eyesight either sucks or she thinks I'm dead.”
“I'm glad you're coming home,” I said.
“Me too. If I had to watch another episode of
Little House on the Prairie,
I would have
wanted
to be dead,” she said, motioning to her roommate, an elderly woman who stared intently at the TV suspended from the ceiling across the room.
As we walked down the cool hallway to the elevators, I could hear her wince a bit with each step.
“I'm buying the camp from Gussy,” I said as the doors opened. “I'm staying at Gormlaith.”
She smiled and we stepped into the elevator. When the doors closed and we were alone, she reached out for my hand. The plaster cast was rough and thick around her fingers. “Effie?”
“Yeh?”
“I thought he killed me this time. I thought I was dead.”
 
Alice wouldn't let go of Maggie's legs. Not when she crawled out of the backseat of the Bug and ran to us in the parking lot, and not later when we got to Maggie's house and started making dinner for them. She held on and Maggie let her. It must have hurt terribly, the way she clung to her. But Maggie walked slowly to accommodate the child attached to her. And finally, we made them both sit down and we brought the TV trays into the living room so that Maggie wouldn't have to get up again.
Alice fell asleep as soon as the sun went down. Devin carried her to her room like a little bag of laundry.
“Will you stay with her awhile to make sure she stays asleep?” Maggie asked.
“No problem,” Devin said and winked at her. His footsteps were heavy on the floor.
“Can we go outside for a bit? I've been cooped up for over a week now,” Maggie asked.
“Sure. Do you need some help?”
“Nah, I'm fine. Just grab that pillow for my butt,” she said.
I helped her ease her body into the rocking chair, careful to arrange the pillow so that her body was protected from the sharp wicker.
We sat for a long time watching the water. It was a quiet night, a lot of the summer people had started to return to their suburbs and cities.
“What did she say?” Maggie asked, her voice small and scared.
“Alice?” I asked.
She nodded.
“She said he was killing you,” I said, staring at her hands.
“He was so gentle,” she said, closing her eyes. “With me. After that night when I burned him. He promised he would never hurt me again, that he would never do anything to hurt us. He stopped going out so much. He would do these things for me, things he never used to do. Like doing the dishes, like making my coffee in the morning. Like putting the toilet seat back down.”
A bird flew across the water, dipping in, looking for food.
“It took me completely by surprise,” she said. “It was like he snapped. He wasn't even drunk. I was hanging clothes on the line and somebody called. Some guy from work or something. He was inside watching a basketball game and the phone rang. He must've missed something, a big shot or something. Because the next thing I know he's standing in the doorway holding the phone, screaming at me. All I could think was I hope no one's on the other end. I hope nobody is listening to this. I had clothespins in my mouth, wet sheets in my hands, and he's standing there screaming at me about the phone call. So the first thing I think to do is to get it all inside, you know what I mean? I put down the laundry and walked toward him, trying to get him to go back inside. Alice was in the backyard, playing in the sandbox. She didn't need to listen to this crap. She was singing, I remember. That bus song, you know the one . . .” Maggie opened her eyes and hummed a little. “The wheels on the bus go round and round . . . something she learned at day care. One of those annoying kid's songs.”
I tried to imagine Alice singing, sifting sand and singing about the wheels of a bus.
“And it worked. We got inside and he calmed down. By the time I got whoever it was off the phone, he was watching the game again, like nothing ever happened. I even forgot about it. Funny how I used to be able to do that.” Maggie laughed. “But he went out drinking that night. I told him to go have fun. I wanted some time alone. That was back when Alice would still take a bath. I gave her a bath, and the water looked so nice, I decided to take one myself. I ran the nicest bath, water so hot it turned my legs red. I used some of her Mr. Bubble even. I felt like I was in one of those Calgon commercials. You know, peaceful. Happy.
“He got home just after I got in the tub. I heard the door open and close and I remember feeling relieved. He couldn't be that drunk. He'd come home early. I even felt a little excited when I heard him coming up the stairs. Like I did when we first lived together. Like when we first got married and used to walk around naked just because we could.
“But as soon as he opened the door, I knew he wasn't right. He was mumbling about my ‘boyfriend' at work, if he'd come to see me, if that's why I was taking a bath. And before I even had a chance to think of something to say to calm him down, he was pushing me under the water. He didn't even roll up his sleeves. He just shoved me under and held me there until I could feel the water filling up my lungs. I kept kicking at the edge of the tub, but he was too strong.
“And then he let go. I sort of floated up and thought that maybe I was dead, but there was soap in my eyes and water in my ears and nose. And Alice was standing there watching us. She was rubbing her eyes the way that kids do, the way that just about breaks your heart. And she was watching her daddy kill me. And when she opened her mouth up to scream, there was nothing there. Not a single sound came out. And that scared me more than anything that Bugs could ever do to me.”
“He took her voice,” I said. “He took it.”
“I wish he were dead, Effie. This won't stop until he's dead.”
On the back of my eyelids, Max sat crouched in the corner of his apartment, urine-yellow surgical tubing wrapped around his arm. I imagined the way his body must have rushed with the familiar feeling of artificial bliss. Of the way he might not have known that anything was going wrong. The nausea a small price to pay for this joy. Love, love, love relaxing his body until it made his heart explode. Did his chest fill with the fleshy shards of his heart? Did his lungs expand until they burst like a child's balloon? Or did everything just stop?
Moonlight struggled through the leaves above us, making a small cathedral of trees. I felt my heart quickening.
“Maggie?”
“Yeh?”
“His sister
is
the one who drowned, you know,” I whispered.
“Shit,” she said.
I closed my eyes for a moment, concentrated on the way the cool air felt on my skin.
The sound of drums filled my ears like water. “I was there that night.”
“At the lake?” she asked.
“I made him mad. I made him mad enough to hit me. I
wanted
him to hit me. I thought that if he hit me hard enough it would be real. Then I could leave.” I pulled my knees to my chest and rocked gently. “When I drove to Gussy's I kept running my tongue across the cut in my lip. It was like evidence, you know? Like the only way I could justify leaving. I kept opening up the cut.”
Maggie looked straight ahead at the lake.
“I shouldn't have left,” I said.
“No,” she said shaking her head.
I nodded. “Max was the one who found her. He was out there too.” The drums pounded in my ears, the low moan of bagpipes, of a woman's cry. “After I left, he went out in the boat.”
Maggie shivered.
“She went swimming every night. I was the only one who knew that. Sometimes we'd swim for hours out there. Just her and me. We didn't even talk, we just floated. It was quiet. Sometimes I'd think about swimming with her all day. I couldn't wait sometimes for him to fall asleep so I could be with her out there on the water. I was supposed to be there that night. I promised her I would be there.”
I could feel tears running into the corners of my mouth.
“He must have thought her body was a rock. He was drunk. Confused in the dark, probably.” I touched Maggie's hand to feel her bones. To feel the hard frame of her beneath her skin. “It was my fault.”
“Effie,” she said, her voice low and stern.
I stared at my hands.
“Look at me, Effie,” she said.
I lifted my head. Tears were running, searing my skin in hot rivers.
“I let Bugs come back too. That time I told you about. I let him come back into my house.” She stopped rocking and leaned forward. “I used to blame myself for what he did to Alice. But it was
his
fault. He's the one.”
It was so quiet, I could almost hear my own heart beating.
“Devin doesn't know,” I said.
“He can't hurt you anymore, Effie. He can't hurt anybody else either. And it won't do anybody any good to bring him back from the dead now.” Maggie leaned forward, touching my face with her broken fingers. “It's all over. I would give the world for that.”

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