In the River Darkness (5 page)

“Do it again!” Alina laughed.

But even that couldn’t silence it, that sound that still resonated in me. For three days already. It penetrated the water concert like a sudden beam of light on a rainy day.

The sun fought its way in front of the clouds and made the world fragment into a thousand drops. A kingfisher flew above the river, a flapping blue streak. The island appeared in front of us.

The weather cleared up,
and the sky turned blue as I came home again. Lights were on in the kitchen, winking at me invitingly through the twilight. I peered through the window to scout out the situation.

Uh, oh, there would be trouble! Apparently, I had already missed dinner. There was Skip, helping Grandma with the dishes. He washed. She dried.

It was strange to watch them . . . my family . . . without me. Alone with my brother, Grandma allowed herself to look older. In the yellow glow of the kitchen light, she seemed almost as fragile as the porcelain plates she dried, carefully, each with the same spare motions.

She was saying something to my brother; I saw her mouth open and close approvingly. Although I couldn’t hear the words, I understood her meaning:
good boy.

Grandma never said anything like that to me. I was “chaos personified,” a “stray dog,” a “daydreamer. Like your mother.” Configurations of letters that didn’t touch me. Words, just words. The only bad part was
how
she said them. They sounded like mortal sins, while her lips became a line as thin as a pencil.

I leaned my forehead on the cool pane of glass and felt the vibration of Grandma’s words in my head:
good boy, good boy.

But Skip didn’t hear it at all, I think, even though he was standing right next to her. I watched him. His hands dutifully scrubbed the dishes, one glass after the other. His glance moved in my direction, but his eyes didn’t see me. Even though I was standing only a few steps from the window, they saw right through me, through the river lying in the twilight and our town behind it . . . at something far, far away from here.

He always had that expression on his face when he looked at the photographs.

He only came to when Grandma spoke to him again. Slowly, like a swimmer surfacing out of deep water. He smiled, nodded an answer, and then his face fell as he noticed me standing at the window.

Unfortunately, Grandma discovered me, too. She tore open the kitchen window. The light carved deep folds in her face, like in the antiquated woodcut of two praying hands that hung over her bed. Yellow light fell on my face and blinded me.

“. . . sneaking around the house like a thief . . .” Grandma scolded. “Come inside this instant, Jay!” Resistance was futile. Crouched on a stool in the kitchen, I let Grandma rub my hair dry with a kitchen towel while Skip slipped away, grinning.

“You could have caught your death outside in the rain . . . would have served you right! You’ve been out on the river again, haven’t you? How often have I told you that you shouldn’t go there, that it’s dangerous?”

I thought about it briefly. “At least three times this week,” I said, and raised my shoulders, ducking another round of her tirade.

But Grandma just shook her head and grumbled, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” Then she asked, “Were you at least wearing your chain?”

I nodded and pulled the narrow silver chain with the cross hanging from it out of the collar of my shirt. Grandma touched the tiny Jesus with a finger. “Our savior certainly has his hands full protecting you,” she sighed.

She sounded tired, and somehow that sound was worse than her angry voice. “Go get washed, Jay, you’ve got dirt on your face.” She stroked my cheek with her worn-out hand and murmured, “What on earth am I supposed to do with you, child?”

I studied my own hands with the dirty bands under the fingernails and didn’t have an answer for her.

We ran out of chocolate-covered raisins. That’s why I was on my way to that tiny excuse of a grocery story instead of sitting at my observation post at the window.

I didn’t like to admit it, but in the past few weeks observing the neighbors’ house had become almost a compulsion, like watching one of those soap operas that you absolutely have to see the next episode of. Except it was so much more boring. And at the same time much more interesting . . .

When people were actually out in the yard, I couldn’t even understand what they were talking about. Nothing more spectacular happened than Alex watering the flowers, or his brother setting off toward the river occasionally. Nonetheless—or maybe because of it—I was glued to the window. I put words in their mouths and untamable, dangerous passions in their hearts. I wrote the screenplay of their destinies: The grandmother was having an affair with the mailman; the boys’ mother—a person who might have played that role in real life hadn’t been spotted over there so far—had filed for divorce because her husband was an alcoholic.

A hundred times I had sworn to myself I would stop it. But I just couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop thinking what might be going on in their heads, filling out the contours of the family life that was playing out no more than three hundred feet away from me and yet was completely different from mine.

The stray dog, which was already waiting for me at the bridge, trotted along behind me when I came by on my chocolate-covered raisin mission. I shouldn’t have fed it the other day; now I’d always have this mutt hanging on my heels.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to follow me?” I asked, and stood still. The dog stopped in its tracks. It eyed me attentively from a distance and wiggled its left ear.

“You don’t belong to anyone, do you? No one wants to have you?” I continued, in a nasty mood due to prolonged chocolate withdrawal. “No wonder, you’re certainly nothing to look at!”

“Wuff,” the dog replied defiantly, as if to say “You, too!”

I continued. Occasionally, I turned around to see if the stupid dog was still following me. It was. That made me happy, somehow. Silly, I know, but I felt like we had something in common. If nothing else, we both liked chocolate-covered raisins.

When I got to the store, the distance between us had shrunk to a few feet. “Wait here, dog,” I said. My hairy companion yawned, as if to let me know, maybe I’ll do it but maybe not. Depends on whether or not I feel like it.

As I stood in the checkout line, I saw it still sitting outside at the curb.

With three packages of chocolate-covered raisins in my pockets, I left the store—and almost ran into her. The grandmother! She wore one of her inevitable housecoats, shuffling along the street with her cane in one hand and a giant shopping bag in the other.

It was a surreal sensation, as if you suddenly bumped into someone who only exists in your imagination and not in your run-of-the-mill, ordinary life. Sort of like running into Johnny Depp in a jogging suit at the gas station.

While I was still staring after her with a mixture of shame and fascination, one of the handles of her plastic shopping bag suddenly tore. Rice spilled over the sidewalk. A milk container burst and streams of white trickled over the asphalt. Vegetables tumbled every which way; a pepper rolled almost to my feet.

The dog made the best of this opportunity and took off with a bag of sausages in its mouth. “Hey, dog! Drop it!” I yelled after it. Of course, it didn’t listen.

The grandmother didn’t curse, like any normal person might have done. She bent over to gather her things, a gnarled branch bending. I thought I heard a brittle crackling and could already imagine the headlines:
Old Woman Breaks in Two While Gathering Vegetables—Teenager Watches Without Lifting a Finger.

There wasn’t anyone on the street except me. I guess there was no way around doing my duty as a citizen, my good deed for the day. On my knees, I chased rolling peppers, and I must have picked up a hundred little teabags off the ground.

“Um . . . here,” I said, the pockets of my jacket stuffed with carrots and my arms full of yogurt containers. Unfortunately, the old woman didn’t make a move to take the things from me.

“Should I help you carry everything home?” I asked reluctantly. I had no desire to meet her, let alone to carry her shopping bags. I wanted to continue observing her from the safe distance of my room. But if I hadn’t asked, I would have felt like a socially impaired idiot the rest of the day and that would have been even worse.

Her blue eyes bored into mine, taking in my baggy velvet pants, the big earrings, my carefully made-up face with dark eyelids. I was sweating and had the feeling my makeup might melt away under her gaze.

“You’re the girl from next door, aren’t you?”

“Hmmm,” I answered.

The grandmother snorted and made a movement with her head that you might interpret as a nod. “Then we’re going the same way anyhow!” With those words, she hobbled away with her tapping cane. I panted behind her.

The way home had never seemed so long. We didn’t exchange a single word the entire way. When we finally arrived, I was so exhausted that I hardly noticed the dark entry hall we passed through when we stepped into the house. I just had vague impressions of photographs, lots and lots of large photographs of animals, with close-ups of dragonflies, beetles, and other creepy, crawly things.

I stumbled into a kitchen, where I helped the old woman put away the mountain of groceries in an ancient refrigerator. “Now I’ll make us both a cold drink. . . . What’s your name, young lady?”

“Mia.”

“Iris Wagner.” Her handshake was astonishingly strong. “You can call me Iris. Go sit down in the living room,” the old woman ordered. As I left the kitchen, I could hear her mumbling to herself, “Mia, how can anyone name their child such a thing.”

Alone in the living room, my eyes immediately scanned the room with curiosity: typical boring, flowery wallpaper, furniture with chipped edges. Everything seemed used, but neat and orderly. Above the table hung a cross—and next to it a plastic fish!

I didn’t know exactly how I had imagined the inside of the house, but certainly not like this. It was more eccentric and much more lived in than in my soap opera fantasy. More real, with all the knickknacks and cactuses on the windowsills. It wasn’t scenery for a play, but a house, where real people lived.

A family photo on the wall caught my attention. It was one of those posed studio pictures, with everyone smiling tensely at the camera, and featured a couple with two children.

The man I recognized as a younger, good-looking version of Mr. Stonebrook. He stood behind a young woman—a girl—with long, light hair, and he had a smile on his face that seemed to alternate between pride and bashfulness. The toddler sitting on the woman’s lap I recognized right away because of the two different-colored eyes. The older boy stood next to them with his hand on his mother’s arm. His expression was oddly serious, much too grown up for a child. Alex.

But it was the woman whose look touched me somehow. Maybe because she seemed to still be so young, hardly older than me. It was weird to imagine already being a mother. But what was it. . . . I stepped closer to the picture. A tiny, hidden smile played around the corners of her mouth that didn’t seem to fit with her good wife and mother role, as if she wanted to toss back her long hair and laugh in the photographer’s face mockingly because he didn’t understand a thing. Or as if she just wanted to jump and get out of that faded photograph . . .