Breathing Water (30 page)
September 1994
D
evin pulled into the driveway before I had time to put the coffee on. The back of his truck was filled with the things I would keep for him: jars and jars of vegetables, the boxes he couldn't take back with him, his summer clothes.
evin pulled into the driveway before I had time to put the coffee on. The back of his truck was filled with the things I would keep for him: jars and jars of vegetables, the boxes he couldn't take back with him, his summer clothes.
“Morning,” he said, jumping down from the truck.
“Hi,” I said. “Let me get this coffee going and then I'll help you unload.”
“No hurry,” he said and came into the kitchen.
I got the coffee beans from the freezer and plugged in the grinder. Soon the room smelled of fresh coffee, the water gurgling and hissing with promises of wakefulness.
“Oh shit,” Devin said. “I forgot. I brought breakfast.”
He disappeared outside and returned again with a grocery bag.
He set the bag on the table and started to pull things out. A carton of my favorite kind of orange juice, four raspberry muffins, white Styrofoam containers from the diner with steaming yellow eggs and bacon and biscuits inside.
“You didn't forget,” I said. “Why did you do all this?”
“Why not?” he shrugged.
I nodded and poured coffee into two matching mugs.
When he went back out to the truck for a forgotten newspaper I sat down at the table and let myself imagine, for a minute, next summer. I imagined other mornings here. His dark hair over the top of a newspaper, his hand reaching across this Formica for mine. As I spooned the eggs and bacon onto Gussy's plates, I let myself fall into a place I never imagined would belong to me.
After the food was gone, I showed Devin the work I had done in the shed. I had completely emptied it out first, struggled against cobwebs and dead insects and unidentifiable rusted junk. When it was empty, the driveway looked like a yard sale. Then I had set about making a place for the jars. I knew that when winter came I would need to move them inside, but for now this would have to do. We carried the jars carefully to the shed and soon the old bookcases and wooden crates were filled with Devin's glass garden.
Inside, I had done some similar work in the closet. I emptied drawers in the upstairs dresser for his summer clothes. I cleared off shelves to make room for his magic boxes. It didn't take long before the truck was empty and Devin's things were like strange stowaways in the camp.
“I have some work to do today,” Devin said, slumping down on the couch. His legs stretched out nearly to the middle of the room. “But I'd like to see you tonight.”
“Whatcha want to do?” I asked.
“I don't care,” he said and motioned for me to sit beside him.
I curled up into the crook his body made. I could have stayed like that forever. There I could almost forget that he would be gone in less than a week.
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Magoo was better now. He didn't need me to go into town for him anymore, but I kept bringing him books anyway. He spent much of his day outside in an Adirondack chair by the woodpile, reading and puffing on his pipe. Today he was out early, Policeman curled up at his feet.
“Good morning, Mr. Tucker,” I said after Devin drove away.
“Mornin', Effie.”
“I'm staying,” I said. “You'll have a neighbor all year 'round now.”
“Gussy told me.” He smiled and filled his pipe. “You gonna brave the winter here too, huh?”
“Yep,” I said and reached down to pet Police's head.
“You'll be needing some wood.”
“I know. Where do you get yours?”
“Guy named Peterson. Real reasonable. They'll split it for you too.”
“I'll get his number from you,” I said.
“You know your grampa always wanted to stay here through the winter. Course Gussy would never have stood for it. Too isolated for a butterfly like her. But I think he would have been happy here. Every chance he got he'd sneak up here, you know.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Gussy would go to church or to one of her meetings and he'd have the chains on his truck faster than you could say âGormlaith. ' She knew what he was doin'. She's smart as a whip. Sometimes he'd just come up here to walk out on the ice. Swore he could measure how thick it was just by the way it felt under his feet.” Magoo set the book he had been reading down on a stump next to him that served as an outdoor end table. “Winter up here will clear your head. Sure as sugar.”
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There was a chill in the air that day, despite the blue sky and sun. It looked like summer still, but it smelled of early autumn. There was an edge to the air, a crispness that signaled fall.
I held on to the minutes. I held on to them as if I could keep them from passing, like a mother holding on to a child that insists on growing up. And each moment became somehow precious. I missed him already, and he wasn't even gone.
That night he took me on a walk. That's all. He wanted to walk all the way around the lake. He'd never done it before.
The wind off the water made the air cold. As we walked along the dirt road, I wished that I had worn mittens. Now that the summer people were all gone, most of the camps were dark, sealed shut tightly until next summer. Magoo's camp was the only one nearby with the warm orange glow of someone living inside. We hadn't talked about Keisha since the night that Bugs came back. But she was between us, a ghost. It was like those nights when we swam silently next to each other, not speaking, only floating. And each recollection felt like a blow. Like Max wasn't gone at all. Like he was still here too.
“I love it here,” Devin said. “When everyone's gone.”
I nodded in the darkness. Our feet shuffled across the cold dirt road.
“My great-grandfather picked this place because it was so quiet,” I said. “Back then, it was always like this. There were only three or four camps on the entire lake. He probably thought it would stay like that forever. My grampa always said that if he were rich he'd buy up all the land and tear the houses down so that it could be like it used to be.”
“He would have hated New York.” He laughed. “You cold?”
“A little,” I said. He reached for my hand and suddenly it was enveloped in the warmth of him.
The Foresters' camp was dark. The untended dock was dipping into the water. The yard grew wild, grass tickling the edges of the windows. As we walked around the lake, we could have been the only people on earth.
We walked to Devin's empty house. My fingers were numb, my toes cold inside my boots. I shivered when we entered the kitchen and turned on the lights.
“Do you want to build a fire?” I asked. “It's cold enough tonight.”
“I'll go get some wood,” Devin said.
As Devin disappeared into the shed to search for some kindling and logs, I started to ache. At first I thought it might be the cold in my bones, the shivering of marrow. But the longer he was gone, the deeper it went, and I realized that it was only sadness. Only missing.
Later, I fell asleep in front of the fire. Flames leaped across the back of my eyelids. His fingers wound their way through my hair, made circles on my scalp, until the aching stopped and I felt warm again. I woke up once in the middle of the night and thought that I was in Seattle. In the darkness, I could have sworn that rain was beating against the windows. But it was only the sound of flames touching the metal door of the woodstove, the sound of his breaths. When I fell asleep again, I dreamed rain. Dark and warm. I dreamed his coffee hands on my face, raining on my eyelids. I dreamed her hand like chocolate in mine, dreamed the words that might explain to him how she died.
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Tess arrived for Colette and Yari's party before anyone else.
I was taking sheets down from the clothesline. I had Maggie's laundry too. I told her I would take care of the things that she was still too weak to do. I used lavender soap and collected the end of summer in the crisp cotton. I couldn't wait until she buried her face in the clean sheets and smelled this rare scent of sunshine.
“Effie Greer, my dear,” Tess said, skipping to me across the front lawn. I smiled at her knobby knees and cutoff shorts. I smiled at her braids. “Wanna catch some crawdads for supper?”
“Tess,” I said.
“I'm serious.” She smiled. “I've got a trunk full of hot dogs.”
She hugged me, and I could smell the Teaberry gum that only Tess chewed.
“So Colette's getting married. She pregnant?”
“Doubt it,” I said.“Too hard to get en pointe with a big belly.”
“What's he like?” she asked, helping me fold the sheets.
“Yari?”
“Yeh,” she said.
“He's nice,” I said. “He lets Colette boss him around.”
“A match made in heaven.” She smirked. “Let's go swimming,” she said.
“Okay, let me get finished here,” I said and made a tidy pile of sheets in the wicker basket at my feet.
Fall had come early. Usually, leaves stayed green until late September. But as we walked through the woods to the pool, the green of summer foliage was interrupted every so often by the sudden explosion of orange or red. Sunlight streaming through the empty spaces made the color even more brilliant. Like small fires amid all that green.
When we got to the water, Tess untied her shoes, peeled off her socks, and laid them across a smooth gray stone. She unbuttoned her shirt and unzipped her shorts. And then she was inside the water, her beautiful head floating across the top of the water.
I put my clothes next to hers on the rock. Our empty clothes like ghosts. I looked at Tess floating in the water, her body easy and careless. Naked, I climbed up onto a large rock that hung over the pool, a small cliff. Trees shaded this place from the incessant sunshine. I curled my knees to my chest.
Through an opening in the leaves September sun burned on my shoulders as I whispered to the beat of the new drums. The steady cry of the bagpipes, strange melody of blues. Of each bruise. Of each bruise.
Below me, Tess floated in the water, a pale votive. Eyes closed. And while she swam, perhaps mistaking my song at first for the sound of water or wind, I told the story of the first time. Of the first time he bruised my shoulders, in the spring when lilacs bloomed and cherry blossoms exploded in white bursts all over campus. Of the next morning when the floor of my dorm room was covered with the snow of cherry blossoms, sweet and white. Max had left no note, no pleas, just this. How all day his apologies filled my head with the smell of spring. And how when I turned on the hot water and sank into the shallow bathtub, there was no evidence of the night before on my skin. There were no bruises. I told her I thought I only dreamed his fingers. That I only dreamed the violet stains of fingertips. That I only dreamed this color because of the way the lilacs looked that spring against all of that white, white snow.
Tess spread a towel across the flat rock. She motioned for me to join her, and I crawled down from my strange perch and lay next to her under the strange mix of green and red and orange leaves. The sun was warm, but her hand was cold when it found mine.
I closed my eyes and listened to the creek running gently into this warm, still pool. I listened until I heard the low moan of the bagpipes, the low moan of a woman's voice looking for love, and I recalled all of that blue. Of each bruise after that day, of each bruise. I imagined each bruise from the needle, and wondered if he was only trying to become me with each prick. If maybe, after I was gone, he finally felt sorry for everything he had done.
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That afternoon, Colette and Yari arrived. In their wake was my parents' station wagon and Gussy. While Tess and I stretched the badminton net between two trees in the front yard, I watched the strange ritual of my family. My mother scurrying about with bags and Tupperware. My father muttering behind her. Gussy's slow, steady movements, singular and strong. The odd exchanges between Yari and my father, handshakes and awkward hugs, pats on the back. My mother's arms like fleshy vises, insistent embraces. I watched the strange choreography, the familial dance, changed by the years and distance between us. And I felt as though I were waiting in the wings. That I was waiting for some cue to make my own entrance into this peculiar performance.
It came in the form of my mother's waving arm, noticing me finally, sitting with my back against the trunk of the tree.
“Effie,” she hollered. “Come help me with the cake.”
My knees were the knees of a child, rising at the sound of my mother's voice, carrying me to her, my feet dragging behind.
“You bought a cake,” I said in disbelief as I stared at the enormous pink box in the back of the station wagon.
“It's a carrot cake. Cream cheese frosting. Colette's favorite.”
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