The Drowning Tree (9 page)

Bea looks at me and I try not to look like I’d feel safer in a crowd. “Actually we thought we’d head across the river and up the Wicomico,” I tell Kyle.

“Excellent. You’ll love seeing the ruins of the water gardens. Just don’t run into any of those submerged statues.…” Kyle’s attention has drifted back to the tourists and from them to the sky over the hills across the river. Although it’s still sunny, clouds have begun to gather above the highlands, just where the Dutch settlers believed an old goblin summoned thunderstorms to plague sailors. “And keep an eye on the weather,” Kyle says. “We may get a storm late in the day.”

By the time we’ve got our gear on and boats in the water it’s after ten. The mouth of the Wicomico is a quarter mile south on the west side of the river. Bea sets a diagonal course across the river. “It’ll only take us about fifteen minutes to cross going with the current,” she calls to me, twisting to look at me over her shoulder.

Not so long
, I tell myself. Although I’ve been practicing in the pool, I’m unprepared for how it feels to be out on the river. Riding low on the
water, I feel as insignificant as the drowning boy in Brueghel’s
Fall of Icarus
. The hills on the opposite shore, which have always looked as worn and comfortable as a broken old couch from my rooftop, now seem to loom over the water like giants. The grinning goblins of Washington Irving’s stories. The Hudson River looks wide as a sea here and, in fact, it is still part of the sea—a tidal estuary all the way up to Troy. The spray that lifts off the whitecaps and washes over my face tastes of salt.

I try to breathe in rhythm with my paddling, and concentrate on how beautiful the river is and not on what it would feel like to find myself hanging upside down in it. That’s what scares me so much about kayaking: the idea of being trapped in the boat, suspended in the water. I haven’t always been this fearful. When I was Bea’s age I’d hop the train tracks and take my dad’s rowboat out into the river. When I first met Neil he said he loved my fearlessness. We went rock climbing across the river in the Shawangunks—or the gunks, as rock climbers call them—and scaled every building on the Penrose campus. We climbed over train trestles and sneaked into abandoned Hudson River mansions, sometimes spending whole nights in the ghostly ruins of Gilded Age splendor. I’m not sure what changed me—whether it was having Bea or watching Neil descend into madness. Sometime during Bea’s first two years of life I lost a tolerance for hanging over the edge.

“Isn’t this great, Mom?” Bea calls back to me, turning her radiant face toward me.

“Beautiful,” I tell her, wishing she’d face forward in her kayak. It makes me nervous to see her swiveling around in the narrow craft. “Absolutely beautiful.”

And it is. Still, I’m glad when we turn into the Wicomico even though it’s harder paddling against the stream’s current. I’m happy to be held on both sides by green banks and more distracted by the creek’s tamer charm than by the wild beauty of the Hudson. There’d been something in that beauty that had made my heart race. Here the meandering curves of the creek soothe. Wild iris and narcissi fringe the gently sloping banks, and water lilies carpet the water’s surface. Even the great blue heron, which is startled into flight by our approach, rises into the air with unhurried grace. Nothing sudden or unexpected will happen here.

As we paddle farther upstream I realize that the tranquil effect of the stream has not been left to nature or chance. The trees that line the banks, trailing their long branches in the water like girls bending over the stream to wash their hair, have been planted there and so have the sedges and reeds, cattails and rushes that fringe the shore. I catch a glimpse of a pale figure crouched beneath a weeping willow and nearly cry out before realizing it’s a marble statue half submerged in the water and covered in moss and creeping ivy.

“Do you see that one?” Bea calls, backpaddling her kayak to stop opposite the statue. I come up beside her and peer into the deep gloom of the willow’s shade. The marble boy is perched on a stone ledge that might have once been on the edge of the bank but is now under a foot of water. His lips just touch the surface of the water, but it must have looked once as if he were staring at his own reflection instead of lowering himself to drink. He’s surrounded by yellow daffodils.

“Narcissus,” I say to Bea. “Look—” I use my paddle to point at another statue sitting a little farther along the bank—a slim girl sitting on a crumpled bit of stone wall, up to her waist in water. Her head is turned toward the self-absorbed boy, an expression of longing in what remains of her ruined face.

“That’s Echo, right?” Bea asks. “She loved Narcissus.”

“That’s right,” I tell Bea, glad that she’s remembered at least a little of the mythological tales I used to read her at bedtime. “But he only loved himself.”

“She should have gotten over him,” Bea says, dipping her paddle into the water to push her boat away from the bank. “No boy’s worth that grief.”

“You can say that again.” I push off from the bank and end up in front of Bea this time, and even though I prefer to have her in front I paddle on ahead of her. I figure that if my fifteen-year-old can show such good sense about romantic entanglement I can summon up a little practical bravery.

As we go upstream the creek becomes narrower and darker. The light-limbed willows cede to the dense foliage of weeping beeches. Several times I’m startled by fragments of statuary submerged just beneath the surface. An arm curving out of the water, like a swimmer in midstroke,
the crested head of a sea serpent and, most disturbingly, a submerged face of a girl looking up through the water with sightless marble eyes. I don’t know if they’ve toppled into the water or Penrose planned it this way—taking the idea of a sunken garden one step further and placing even the statues underwater. Christine would know if she were here.

I’m glad when the creek widens again into a deep pool surrounded by stone walls, carpeted in water lilies, and shaded by the long heavy branches of a giant weeping beech. It’s like entering the apse of a church that’s been glazed in green and yellow glass. Dappled with leaf shadow and light, the water lilies glow like travertine marble. This must be the water lily pool that Penrose depicted in the Lady window. I’m loath to disturb the quiet with my paddling, but when I rest the paddle across my lap I begin to drift backward. I dip my paddle into the water—remembering what Kyle always says:
Just put the water behind you
—and pull myself forward through the curtain of beech branches. For a moment the sunlight is so blinding I can’t see but then I make out the ruins of the old mansion, Astolat: four ruined towers rising above terraced ledges like a castle in a fairy tale. I’ve seen photographs of the mansion before the fire, but I’ve never appreciated how well its setting on the water echoes Tennyson’s poem.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott
. I’m about to share the lines with Bea when I hear a scream, followed by the sound of something slapping the water.

“Bea!” I start paddling on one side to turn the kayak around and nearly tip over.

“Bea!” I call again, barely righting myself.

“Mom, come here, quick—” I hear a sob in her voice, but at least I know she’s above water. I try to concentrate on turning, but even when I’ve gotten the kayak pointed in the right direction I can’t see anything because Bea’s still under the beech tree.

“I’m coming, honey, don’t worry.” I paddle through the thick curtain of branches, moving quicker now that I’m going with the current. I nearly bump into Bea’s boat. She’s backpaddling to keep herself stationary, her eyes fastened on something near the bank. After the bright sunshine it’s hard to see in the tree’s shadow. I paddle closer to the shore and make out, wedged between a half-submerged boulder and stone wall, half
hidden in a thick clump of water lilies, something long and yellow. The underbelly of a kayak.

“Maybe it’s the one stolen from Kyle’s …,” I begin, but then I realize that Bea is sobbing.

“I didn’t mean it when I said that whoever stole the kayak deserved to drown.”

I want to reach out and touch Bea but I’m afraid I’ll tip us both if I get too close. Instead I move carefully toward the capsized vessel. As I do a breeze stirs the beech branches, parting the heavy curtain. A swath of sun cuts through the water between me and the upturned kayak. When I lean over the water I think, for just a moment, that I’m looking into my own reflection. Beneath the water a woman sits in a yellow kayak. Her hair, standing straight up from her scalp, is like a cartoonist’s idea of someone scared out of her wits. Only that’s not it at all. It’s a woman suspended in the water, her long yellow hair swaying in the stream’s current.

“I
S SHE DEAD?”
I
HEAR
B
EA’S VOICE FROM BEHIND ME
. “S
HOULD WE TRY TO GET HER
out of the water?”

I lean a little farther over to get a better look and see a white face, indistinct in the shadows, and a plume of yellow hair rising like smoke … no, not rising … I’m still reading the scene below the water as if it were a reflection of something above the water. In reverse. The woman’s arms, hanging down toward the bottom of the creek, seem to be raised above her head as if she were fending off an attack. One white hand moves languidly in the current as if waving at the passing crowd of fish. Then I notice one of those fish delicately nibbling on the woman’s fingers.

I jerk backward so quickly I nearly tip and have to slap the water with the flat of my paddle to right myself.

“I’m sure she’s dead,” I tell Bea. I’ve angled my boat so that I can look at Bea and, at the same time, block her view of the body. “There’s nothing we can do for her and we probably shouldn’t disturb the position of the body until the police come.”

Bea nods. “It’s one of Kyle’s boats, isn’t it? That means she’s probably been in the water since Sunday, right?”

A sickening thought occurs to me and I look back at the mass of yellow hair swaying in the water. I bend down to look closer and suddenly I have a sense not so much of sinking as of the water rising to engulf me. When I look back up at Bea the sky spins and for a moment it’s as if I’m the one hanging upside down under the water, the branches of the weeping beech like so much seaweed choking my path to the surface.

“Beatrice,” I say, gripping the paddle to keep my voice from shaking, “it would take hours to hike out of here. I think one of us should stay with her … with the body … while the other paddles across the river to the boathouse to call the police.”

“I’ll go,” she says quickly. “I can’t stay here with that. But what about you? Why don’t you come with me?”

I shake my head. As much as I hate the idea of Bea crossing the river alone I know she’s more equipped to do it than I am. And even though it’s clear that the woman trapped under the kayak is beyond help, I can’t give in to my fears and leave her here.

Beatrice must see the pain on my face. Her eyes flick past me to the water lily bed. “Do you know who it is?” she asks.

Our boats have drifted close enough for me to touch Bea’s hand. I reach out and squeeze her cold, callused fingers. “I think it’s Aunt Christine.”

As
SOON AS
B
EA TURNS THE PROW OF HER BOAT DOWNSTREAM SHE’S QUICKLY GONE
, the current taking her under the curtain of beech branches and around the next bend in minutes. It won’t take her long to cross the river and reach the boathouse, I tell myself. Still, the idea of spending another minute precariously perched on top of the water above a drowned body—a drowned body that might be my best friend’s—is almost unbearable.

I scan the shore for a place to beach the kayak, but the banks here
have been reinforced with stone walls that rise steeply from the water’s edge. I paddle downstream, and then upstream, but this stretch of the Wicomico has been corralled between stone, the whole bucolic setting engineered from the water lilies to the weeping beech, from the statues lining the banks and lurking in the water to the sudden view of Astolat when you come out of the beech’s shade.

Augustus Penrose was such a control freak—he had to orchestrate every detail of his surroundings
. It’s Christine’s voice I hear, happily expounding on an article she’d read senior year about our founder.
He was into the whole total design thing from the British Design Reformation. Not only did he draw the plans for his faux-gothic castle, Astolat, he designed its stained-glass windows, its tapestries and furniture—even the china and glassware used to set its tables were designed and manufactured by the Rose Glass Works. He even had to design the gardens himself because he wanted them to look like the water gardens back in England
.

The voice in my head is so alive that I can’t believe that I may never hear it again in life. I paddle back under the beech branches and position my kayak as close as I can to the water lily patch and the overturned kayak, hoping I suppose that I’ll see on closer inspection that this horrific tableau is just one more planned effect. But no, there’s no mistaking the bloated figure beneath the water for a classical statue. And although I can’t tell for sure if the woman suspended beneath the water is Christine, I have a strong feeling it is. What, though, would she have been doing here?