Breathing Water (8 page)
I waved as he drove away. I crossed the road and got into my car. I set the flowers on the passenger's seat and turned the key. Nothing. I pumped the gas pedal and tried again. “Shit,” I muttered. Since the meter had broken, this was the third time I'd run out of gas. I slammed the door, opened up the passenger door, and hauled out the aquarium from the backseat. It was heavy, the box of books still inside. I could barely lift it, and I knew I wouldn't make it home. I unloaded the books back into the car and lifted the aquarium again. It was heavy but manageable. My arms were stronger since I had started painting the camp. I dumped the daisies in the aquarium and started to walk home.
By the time I got back to the camp my arms were numb and my hip sore from where the edge of the tank had been banging against my bone. Inside, I went straight to the jelly jar and looked to make sure the tadpoles were still alive. A couple of them had died, but most were still swimming around. I figured I'd deal with the car later. I needed to get the aquarium put together first.
When I finished setting up the aquarium and putting away my treasures, I was tired. My skin was prickly with the heat, and my scalp itched. My hair had grown long and heavy again. When I pulled off my T-shirt to put on my bathing suit, I got tangled up in it. I figured a swim would help cool me off. I wrapped a towel around my waist, but as I was about to head out to the lake, the phone rang.
“I am so pissed at you.”
Tess. Beautiful Tess. Like a pre-Raphaelite painting come to life, but with a tongue sharper than a bitter lover and less forgiving.
“Tess!” I said, unable to hide my excitement despite her condemnation. “I've been so busy, I haven't had a chanceâ”
“You've been back for a whole month and you haven't had a
chance
to call me?” she asked. “I called your new number in Seattle and it was disconnected. I called your mom and she said you were
here.
Damn, Effie.”
chance
to call me?” she asked. “I called your new number in Seattle and it was disconnected. I called your mom and she said you were
here.
Damn, Effie.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Well, are you still going to be there in a couple of weeks?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“I'll see you in two weeks. There's an eight o'clock bus every Friday from Boston. It gets into Quimby at midnight. I'll get a cab to Gormlaith.”
“Midnight?”
“Hey Geezer. It's me, your best friend. And I haven't seen you for two years. Shut up and get ready for me.” She hung up before I had a chance to protest.
Tess and I met in the sandbox at the state college day-care center while our fathers taught history and our mothers took macrame, pottery, and stained-glass classes. We suffered through the torture that was elementary school and high school, and escaped here, to the lake, every summer until we left the cozy nests of our parents' split-level homes. And then we couldn't bear to be apart. We roomed together our first year in college, took the same classes. Kissed the same boys. Until Max.
She was there before Max, and during Max. Like the faint sound of a foghorn, a storm warning. A gentle voice of reason, a faint tap on the shoulder reminding me that something wasn't right anymore about my life. Sometimes the only thing that made sense in the mess of my life then was Tess. Even when I fled to Seattle, I still called her every other week and pretended I'd made a new and better life for myself in the rain. I couldn't remember life without her, but now I was nervous. I hadn't called her because facing Tess meant facing Max.
When we graduated, Tess moved to Boston to work at a publishing company. At first she had to edit cookbooks. She said that every day in the office felt like being in her mother's kitchen: Jell-O molds, casseroles, and things to do in a Crock-Pot. But that was only at the beginning. Now she was editing real books. She had her own office with a sliver view of the Charles River and a brass nameplate. She had an apartment in Cambridge with wood floors and a neighbor who was a masseuse. She was a grown-up.
And I had become a fugitive. She flew out to see me once in Seattle, but I had forgotten by then how to be around other people. We went out to a noisy club on Capitol Hill and ended up staring into our drinks for hours. When she left, I felt I had lost her for good. But it wasn't Tess that was lost; it was me.
I tried to imagine what she would look like. I imagined soft jade-colored suits and pale hose. Delicate heels and hair that belonged to someone on TV. It was funny, her face used to be as familiar as Colette's, as my own reflection, but now I couldn't conjure her face at all. When I closed my eyes I could only see braids traveling down her back and black eyelashes glistening with the tears of a tumble. The knobby knees and bloody bug bites of childhood.
I hung up the phone and went outside. I waded into the water, walking slowly until I couldn't touch the bottom anymore. I let my body relax, rolling over onto my back. I thought of my grandfather smoking his pipe, lying on his back on a bed of water.
I closed my eyes. I let my body move with the small waves, felt myself changing directions. I was becoming disoriented, but I refused to open my eyes. Small fish nibbled at my ankles, but I didn't flinch. I heard someone's lawn mower, Magoo's old cat, Matilda, crying for food or love. But I felt nothing except sun on my face and water, like a cradle, beneath me.
July 1991
T
he first time I see her she is floating on her back in the dark blue water.
he first time I see her she is floating on her back in the dark blue water.
“She's a real little fish.” Mrs. Forester smiles, crossing her arms and gesturing to the girl in the water. I see nothing but a bright pink bathing suit bobbing in the water by the sand dunes.
“Who is she?” I ask and help her spread the vinyl red and white checked tablecloth on the picnic table.
“Fresh Air kid. We try to take one in every summer.” Mrs. Forester runs her hand across the tablecloth, smoothing out the wrinkles. “We had the same girl for a couple of summers in a row, but she's too old now.”
“What's a Fresh Air kid?” I ask.
“That program for city kids? Inner-city kids. She's from Harlem. Or the Bronx. I can never remember. It's all city to me.”
I help her carry the bowls of potato salad and macaroni salad and the plates with wet sweet slices of pink watermelon. Soon, Mr. Forester has lit the grill and people from the surrounding camps start arriving.
“Is your boyfriend coming?” she asks as she molds ground beef into perfect patties.
“No,” I say. “He doesn't feel well. Flu.”
“In the middle of the summer?” she asks.
“Um-hum.”
At home Max is listening to a Red Sox game on Grampa's radio. It is ten-thirty in the morning and he is drinking Bloody Marys. He drove all the way to Hudson's for celery before I woke up. When I rolled out of bed the house smelled rotten. Pungent tomato juice, clams, pepper, and vodka. The glass sitting next to him is empty, the sides coated with thick splotchy red sauce.
When I left him he grabbed at my legs as I passed, carrying the bag full of corn on the cob. “Where are you going?”
“The barbecue starts at two,” I said.
“I'll be there,” he hissed. “With bells on.”
I don't like to leave him in the house alone. I am afraid of the damage he might do. But today I have no choice. Gussy will be here. My mother and father will be here. They come to the Foresters' every Fourth of July.
I sit down at the picnic table and start to peel the husks off the corn. The silky strings tickle my bare legs. I watch the water where the girl is still lying motionless. The Foresters' real children are playing in the water, diving off the dock, splashing each other viciously.
“She's a real loner,” Mrs. Forester says. “Not like Ariana. She was always making up games for our kids to play. Teaching them stuff. But this one hasn't said more than ten words since she got here last week. All she wants to do is float on her back. I think she's afraid of the boys. They can be a little rough. She's so little. She's eleven, but you'd never guess it by looking at her. I'd say seven, eight maybe.”
“What's her name?”
“Keisha, Ky-esha? Damn, I can't pronounce it. We've just been calling her Fish ever since the first time she got in the water. Can you believe it? Her mother didn't even send a suit with her. I gave her one of Stephanie's old one pieces, but it hangs off her. I told her we'd take her to Rich's to get a new one next week.”
I look toward the dock where one of the Forester boys has got Stephanie in a headlock. She is squirming, trying to get away. She is only ten, but she is pudgy and already has breasts larger than mine. There is something terribly pathetic about the Forester kids. They are loud and stupid. Cruel and fat. I feel guilty thinking this way about children, but I can't help myself.
When I have shorn two dozen ears of corn I tell Mrs. Forester that I need to go back to the camp for my bathing suit.
“Can you bring some of those little plastic things to hold the corn with if Gussy has some lying around?” she hollers after me.
“Okay,” I say and trot back toward the camp.
I walk into the camp quietly and look for him. The empty can of juice and the half-empty bottle of vodka are on the kitchen table. A book lies open next to the sink. I start to put it back on the shelf (it is one of Grandpa's leather-bound editions of the Great Works), but carefully mark the page with a slip of paper in case Max truly intends to read it.
I find him passed out on the daybed, the radio still on, the distant sounds of a crowd, the voice of the announcer pacifying and deep. I slip his shoes off and cover him with a blanket. I look at his slightly opened mouth and fluttering eyelids. I go to the bathroom and find the thermometer in the cupboard, a bottle of aspirin, cough syrup. I arrange the medicine next to him on the nightstand. I watch my hand reach for his head, feel his cool skin against the inside of my wrist.
He has the flu.
He has the flu.
“He's got the flu,” I tell my father when he asks where Max is later that afternoon. “When I left he was konked out on the porch wrapped up in a blanket. He's got a fever,” I say, nodding.
“That's a shame,” my mother says, stroking my hair with her fingers. “Maybe we can put a plate together for him and bring it to him later.”
“I'll do that.” I smile.“Hopefully he'll have his appetite back.”
My parents leave before dark because my father has a faculty party to go to. “Take care of Max,” my mother says. “Chicken soup. Lots of liquids.”
Mrs. Forester has extra blankets for everyone who wants to stay for the fireworks. I walk to the water with a thick green blanket, and spread it out on the ground. It is chilly now. I am cold in my T-shirt and long skirt. A lot of people have returned to their camps. Gussy and Grampa are out in the boat to watch the fireworks. They asked me to come along, but I would rather be alone right now.
I lie on my back and stare up at the sky. I close my eyes and imagine that I am floating on the water. I lie still and quiet, barely letting a breath escape from my lips.
“You have pretty hair,” a voice says, startling me.
I open my eyes and sit up quickly. The little girl is sitting next to me on the blanket, touching the tips of my hair.
“Thank you.” I smile.
“My mama makes me cut my hair short cause it gets too nappy. Does your hair hurt when you comb it?”
“Sometimes,” I say.
She keeps touching my hair, but she looks out at the water.
“Aren't you cold?” I ask.
“Nah,” she says. She is still wearing Stephanie's pink bathing suit. It gapes open at the legs and chest. She is small inside the pink Lycra.
“Are you sure you don't want a blanket or something?”
She shakes her head.
“Mrs. Forester says you're here for the summer,” I say.
“Uh-huh.” She nods.
“Do you like it so far?”
She shrugs her shoulders.
“It's hard to make friends here,” I say, thinking of the miserable Forester children.
“Except the other Fresh Air kids. I see them at the park when we go into town,” she says. “They're okay.”
“Are there a lot of them?” I ask and then blush. “I mean, are there a lot of kids in the program?” I imagine a swarm of children, plucked from their own world and plopped down in this strange one of cows and endless fields and white people.
“There's six or so. Mostly boys though.”
“Maybe there will be some other kids at the lake this summer,” I say.
She frowns. “I've seen you,” she says, still playing with the curled ends of my hair.
“You have?” I ask.
“Uh-huh. With that guy,” she says.
“Where?” I ask. My words feel thick in my throat.
“This is a pretty barrette,” she says then, touching one of the barrettes that Gussy gave me for my birthday. It's a silver sliver of a moon.
“I have another one at home,” I say. “Would you like to have this one?”
“Can I?” she asks, her eyes widening. The whites of her eyes are bright against her dark skin, against the dark night. If she were to close her eyes, she might disappear.
“Sure,” I say and undo the barrette. “Come here and I'll put it in your hair.”
She leans toward me and I touch her curly hair. It feels strange in my fingers, softer than I thought it would be. I clip the barrette to a curl. It looks pretty, a moon in her night sky of hair.
“Thank you.” She smiles.
“You're welcome.”
Fireworks explode overhead, splattering the sky with specks of pink and purple and yellow.
Oohs
and
ahhs
echo across the water. She looks at the sky expectantly. It must seem as if the neon of her world has followed her here. That the city lights of her nights have broken through the uneventful skies of this strange place.
Oohs
and
ahhs
echo across the water. She looks at the sky expectantly. It must seem as if the neon of her world has followed her here. That the city lights of her nights have broken through the uneventful skies of this strange place.
She sits with me until Mrs. Forester calls her in.
“Fish?” Her voice breaks the spell of colored lights. “Where is that girl? Fish!”
She finds us, and pulls Keisha up by her arm. “You scared me half to death.”
Keisha looks over her shoulder at me as Mrs. Forester takes her hand and leads her back to their camp.
After the fireworks, I linger by the water, not wanting to go home. But after everyone has left, the air is damp and I am chilly. I walk home, letting my hair fall around my shoulders, letting it cover me like a blanket, hoping that I can disappear this way. I think of her small fingers and wish I could become small again. That I could become a sliver, something that slips through small places. Dark like her so that I could disappear into the night.
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