The Blue Girl (19 page)

My mother and I turn to look at each other. She squeezes my hand and whispers for me to say it.

That's right
, I call out to him.
Ethan's
O.K
. now. Ethan's
O.K
. And then,
Blue girl is
O.K
. now, Ethan
.

He pauses for a minute and stands there. The girl's blue skin glows against the white glare of the sun. He laughs his cartoon laugh and then stops, and when he does, he opens his arms and lets her go.

Irene

I
SIT ON THE PORCH WITH THE WINDOWS OPEN AND SING
along with the trees. I am not sure that what I hear is singing, exactly, but singing is what it seems to be, and singing is what I do. I sing in a voice so soft I can hardly hear my own words or feel my breath that presses down in my chest. I sit with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and try hard to listen, as my mother had always told me, and to let my voice carry on.

If you listen hard enough, Irene
, my mother used to say when I was a girl not much younger than Audrey,
you will hear all of the songs, every one
.

I try to remember the words she taught me, the songs she sang to me when I was a little girl afraid to sleep in a bed too large, when I wanted to be something other than my own frightened self. What was it that frightened me back then, when we lived in this town by the lake, when the woods were not so dark, the lake
shining, the summer people not coming in yet to crowd all that had been ours? Had I heard another girl in the night, another girl who coughed and turned blue from wanting? Had I known then, as a child, that I would live in this town with a girl who would do too much saving and a boy too young for dreams and a husband who played meaningless games? Had I actually known all of that back then, that one day I would be this kind of woman?

Perhaps I had. Perhaps I had known all of it then. Perhaps we all know what will become of us, that one day we will have children who do not or cannot follow what we say, that what seems broken is in fact strongest. Perhaps we know then that one day we will have to release what we are tired of feeding and caring for, when the song of the trees is all we can hope to hear.

I lie down on the couch and let the breeze from the windows blow all around me and think of the girl sinking down into the water with her eyes closed, not open as they'd been all the other times she had been saved.

She was so tired, Mom, is all
, Audrey said the night Ethan let her go into the lake.
She was just so very, very tired
.

I didn't know whether Audrey meant the blue girl or herself, or both of them. After all that had happened, I could not bring myself to ask.

The girl had disappeared into the water that glittered in the sun, and Rebecca had led Ethan back to the shore and wrapped him in blankets from the trunk of the car. As he shivered and rocked, Buck knelt down beside him and wrapped his arms around this eighteen-year-old boy who will never grow up. He told Buck in a quiet voice that Ethan was
O.K
. now, Ethan was going to be
O.K
., and Ethan leaned his head against Buck's and kept it there.

That night, I thought about our last night out in the woods with the girl, how the old woman wiped the girl's face with a cloth soaked in water from the lake and told us not to come to her again.

We were only trying to help
, we said.
Can't you see?
We were good mothers, most of the time, we said, even if we had been distracted while we made the pies and fed the girl. Why couldn't the old woman see that it pained us to see the girl in such a state? Surely she must have known that we meant the girl no harm.

Your children came
, the old woman said, as she sopped up more lake water with the cloth and wiped the girl's mouth and forehead.
Only you and only at night is what I said
. The smell of the lake water had filled the room.
At night she cries while you are in your homes baking. How can you not hear the crying? How can you not listen? She gets out of the bed from all the waiting to throw herself in, and only I am here to stop her
.

The droplets rained down into the basin and sent out tiny ripples that spread slowly, rings of water moving ever so slowly across the surface until they collided and burst all at once.

Maybe now it is time
, the old woman said.

Time for what?
Libby asked, but the old woman did not answer.

The girl moved in the bed, the covers rustling, and turned to look at me from the pillow.

Irene
, Magda said, and then Libby, too.
Look. She wants Irene
.

The old woman slapped the cloth into my hand and clomped into the outer room where she began pacing. All night long she paced, murmuring to herself and moving her hands in the pockets of her apron. Every few circles she stopped and peered in, then shook her head and began pacing again.

I spent a long time looking at the girl before pressing the cloth against her forehead, down over her cheeks, her mouth that had stopped dribbling moon pie filling. Magda moved the lamp from the dresser next to the girl's bed, and together we stood over her, trying to look as closely as we could at the skin that appeared to become bluer as the night wore on.

I looked at her and searched my mind for the palette of colors I wished I had in front of me. I wished I could
paint her there, with the light throwing itself over her dark shoulders and pulsating throat. I thought that if I were to spend the rest of my life trying to mix the precise color of her skin, and if I were to tell this story to Audrey or Buck or their children someday, I would never find the right word to say how blue she really was. A dark turquoise, deeper than any indigo. The violet swirl of the sky just before dark or of ink spilled and left to dry. It was as if her skin was waging a battle against its own blueness, and was losing.

She settled back against the pillows and sighed, a sigh filled with longing and phlegm. The edges of her lips were crusted over with what appeared to be purple scabs. I blotted them, first with the cloth and then with my finger.

When I touched her lips, I nearly flinched from the heat. I raised my hand in a kind of offering and then pressed the back of it to her forehead, her cheeks. Her skin nearly crackled with fever.

Are you sick?
I whispered, not wanting the old woman to hear.
Do you feel sick?

The girl's eyes closed. She nodded, her head moving up and down, up and down.

What had the children fed her?
I wondered as I stood beside the bed. Perhaps the old woman was right. Perhaps they were responsible for the froth of white filling and the girl's
fevered skin. Whatever they gave her had come from us, from Magda and Libby and me. Maybe all of our secrets had finally taken a toll on this girl who had come from the lake one day only to eventually drown for good. Had we done nothing but keep her alive for our own sake, and not for hers?

All night we took turns giving her sips of water. Magda and Libby made several trips down the road to the lake. Magda cupped the water in her hands and let the drops fall over the girl's closed eyes and open mouth while Libby passed the washcloth up and down her arms, arms so dark that there were no visible veins. Finally, when her skin seemed to cool, and she no longer held her mouth open for water to sip, we got in to our cars and drove home without saying good-bye.

It was not really a surprise when the phone rang with the news that Ethan was gone. This is the kind of distraction the girl brought into our lives, and so that night, after Ethan opened his arms and let her sink down into the lake, I wondered what kind of person I may have become that I would call such a thing relief.

It is very late as I close the windows against the sounds of the trees. I have grown tired of listening, tired of trying to please my mother who wanted me to have a life of singing,
tired of the blue girl who lived among the trees and ate our moon pies again and again. Last night, as the sun was setting, we watched the old woman disappear into the trees without a word. We kissed each other's cheeks and hugged each of the children, even Ethan, who hates hands and touch, even he leaned in, with his arms stiff, and allowed each of us to embrace him. I pulled away in the station wagon, the first to go. By the time we reached home, Buck had fallen asleep in the backseat. Audrey lifted him in her arms and carried him to his bedroom while I followed with freshly washed blankets, and pressed my face into his hair, which still smelled like the lake.

I just want to go to bed, Mom
, Audrey said,
even though I know you want to talk
.

Yes, of course
, I said.
Talking can wait. You haven't slept in so long
.

I watched as she peeled off the jeans and socks she'd worn in the lake in her last attempt to save the girl. I watched as she pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes, then listened for the rhythmic breathing and slight whistle through her nose that always indicated she was in a deep sleep, ever since she was a baby. It was that whistle that had made me think of singing, that whistle that kept me sitting on the porch, singing in a low voice while I wondered about the girl who had sunk down into the water, down deeper than any of us will ever go.

After I close the windows on the porch and get onto the cot in the guestroom, where I have been sleeping ever since Colin first convinced himself the television would explode, I realize I have not checked on Colin since the morning, when the phone calls began, telling us Ethan had gone missing. Colin had spoken to me that morning. He hadn't in weeks, not in sentences, not with the kind of meaning that happens between husbands and wives, even in marriages strained by children, illness, or the distraction of baking. When Audrey explained to him that we had to leave right away, he actually seemed to understand, though not at first.

Please, Dad
, she said,
put down your ball and listen for a minute. Ethan's helpless. He gets locked in his bedroom at night, and he got out. He can't be let out alone
.

I remember Colin turning to me and saying,
What a terrible thing it must be for him to be locked up like that
.

I hadn't answered then, but I think I can now. I pad into the living room and find Colin just sitting, holding his Nerf ball. He is not playing a game. He is looking first at the television and then at the ball and then back at the television again.

The boy is all right
, I say. I sit down next to him on the sofa. He does not try to move away from me.
This morning you said how hard it must be, and you are right, Colin. It is hard
.

He lays the ball down in the space between us.

Yes
, he says.
It is
.

Six months later, I discover that Colin is gone. It is spring, that time when we are still just a town that happens to have a lake, a town that will change with the arrival of the summer people who take up residence in the cottages along the lakeshore and bring with them children in matching bathing suits and sand toys and chairs and towels. I tell no one. Audrey has only begun to sleep again, and she and Caroline and Rebecca laugh during the evenings in Audrey's room. Every Thursday Buck and I drive to Libby's, where he and Ethan sit and watch cartoons. Libby's husband works late most nights, and she takes comfort in the bits of dreams she has begun to have again. Sometimes she even tells them to me. Rebecca and Greg continue to meet, but never on Magda's porch.