This is the Water (7 page)

They stopped the car at the rest stop parking lot and hiked up a short path to the lookout; as they walked, he held her hand. At the top they sat on a picnic table. She told him to close his eyes and imagine he was in Nam, even though he'd never been there. At first it was difficult. A woodpecker was pecking a beech tree nearby, as rhythmically as if he were pounding nails, but then somehow the noise faded, and when he opened his eyes again, he really was in Nam. He could almost make out helicopters flying over the ridgeline, and huts with straw roofs, and thin threads of smoke rose from the ground that he could imagine were from cook fires. “Unbelievable,” he said to Bobby. They stayed sitting on the picnic table until dark, and then he kissed her. She drew him down on her as she lay flat on the table as if it were a bed. And well, Paul says, one thing led to another. Afterward, she excused herself and said she was going to use the rest stop bathroom. “I don't think she ever made it through the door,” Paul says. While he waited, he could see the black outlines of the mountains, and he imagined again that he was a soldier in Nam, only now it was night and the enemy was all around. At first when he heard a scream he figured that he had let himself imagine for too long that he really was in Nam and that what he had heard was just an owl screeching in a nearby tree and not a human screaming for his or her life. When Bobby didn't come back, and the owl never called again, he went down the path toward the restroom to check on her. When he found her she was facedown, the white of her hospital dress easy to see in the light coming from the entrance to the restroom and making it look as if her dress were glowing. He called her name, but there was no answer. He turned her over by her shoulder, and the front of her white hospital dress was anything but white now. It was stained with blood and dirt, and even her face and her forehead were covered in a mixture of blood and clods of dirt and bits of grass. He felt for a pulse, but there was none. There was no point in even calling an ambulance. He could see, as he held her, that her neck had been slit. He looked in the parking lot, but there were no other cars aside from his. He ran around the back of the restroom and along the edge of the woods, but no one was there either.

While standing at the edge of the woods, and looking into the darkness, he realized that if he called the police, he would become a prime suspect. They would check for signs of rape. They would want to know how he knew her. How was it that he had just met her that evening and then she was killed? “It was not like I could help them with the case,” Paul says. “I hadn't seen or heard anybody. I figured the best thing, the least complicated thing, was for me to get out of there, so I left. I took off. I left her there all covered in blood.” Paul puts his hands over his face in the dark hotel room. You feel like maybe you missed something. Wasn't it just a second ago that the both of you were laughing about a silly college anecdote you were telling him about the time you ate brownies and didn't know they were laced with pot, and you had never even smoked pot, and you were so hungry and ate so many that it was as if you were tripping and the EMTs had to come and calm you down and then everyone on campus the next day knew what had happened. Wasn't it just a second ago you were feeling overwhelmed by his body leaning over yours? Weren't you just thinking about him touching you?

And now he is talking about unimaginable things, horrible things, blood and rape and a throat being slit. It feels as though you are being sucked down into that evil abyss you always seem to fall into whenever you think about your brother and his suicide. You are standing now. You are heading out the door. You feel a strong urge to check on your daughters, no, to be with them, to hold them. How reassuring it will be to have them in your arms and smell the shampoo in their hair and the faint smell of chlorine that lingers no matter how many times they shower after swimming. When Paul stands and grabs your arm as you are going, you almost let out a scream, but he lets go, so you stop. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I've never told anyone before. I should have guessed your first reaction would be to run away.”

“Turn on the light,” you say, and Paul mutters, “Sure,” and flicks the wall switch. You are relieved to see it is still him. You had the strange feeling that after telling that terrifying story, he would have changed. You would be looking at someone with a disfigured face, someone totally unrecognizable, but he is the same. Handsome, and tall, his gray eyes looking into yours, obviously wanting very much for you to understand him, and to stay. “Don't go yet. The girls are fine,” he says. And, as if on cue, the girls' laughter is heard again through the wall of the hotel room, confirming that they are fine, if not better. Then he reaches up and touches your face, moving some hair away from your eyes. You back away when he does. “I'm sorry. I have to go,” you say, and you do, entering the hallway at the same time the ice machine makes a crashing sound while emptying its ice into its bin.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
his is you in your hotel bed waking up from a dream where Paul and you are having sex, and you not believing you just had that dream, not after the story he told you about Bobby Chantal and how he left her and never told anyone he was there at the scene of the crime. You realize as you get up from the bed and go to the bathroom, not turning the light on so as not to wake your girls, that it doesn't matter what Paul might have done so long ago when he was so young, you still like him. It would even be tempting right now to go knock on his hotel room door, because he was just inside of you in your dream, and you feel like you're humming down there. Thank goodness, you think, Cleo is sharing a room with him, otherwise you just might really find yourself knocking on his door.

 

T
his is the rest stop on the highway. This is the grass on the lawn. It remembers the feel of Bobby Chantal's body, how hard she fell and smashed its slender blades, releasing a just-cut smell the way a going-over with the blades of a lawn mower would. This is the light above the restroom entrance. It remembers lighting up the face of the man who held the knife to Bobby Chantal's throat. This is the metal doorknob on the restroom door. It remembers reflecting the murderer's face, and every time someone comes and uses the restroom, the doorknob wishes it could show that person the murderer's face again so that the man, who was never caught, would be caught.

 

W
hen Dinah says to you the next morning, “I saw that you and Cleo's dad stayed up late talking last night,” you're not sure if you should respond or not.

Do you say, “Why, yes, and talking's not all we did—we also fucked our brains out,” to shut her up, or do you remember Dinah is another swim-team parent and if the coaches expect the swimmers to be civil to each other, then you should be civil to Dinah as well? Do you just smile at Dinah and let her think what she wants about you staying up late talking to Paul in his hotel room, or do you say nothing because her husband's going deaf and she's overweight and you feel sorry for her? Do you say, “He's an interesting guy,” letting her know you're defending yourself, and letting her know that maybe she too should have been staying up late talking to Paul? Do you say, “It wasn't really that late,” and then launch into a conversation about how terrible the waffles are at the free buffet breakfast? Do you talk about Dinah's daughter instead, because you know that Dinah loves talking about her daughter's racing and that she would talk to you for the next thirty minutes about her daughter if you gave her the chance? Do you decide you couldn't possibly listen to Dinah talk that long about her daughter? Does a part of you feel good that someone noticed you and Paul becoming close, and does that make it somehow clear that Paul likes you as much as you like him? Instead, do you fix your eyes on your daughters, who are already on deck for their afternoon events and take note of how they look? i.e., do they look alert, are their backs straight, are they arranging the straps of their racing suits so that no bit of material interferes and increases their time, are they standing playing ninjas or giving other girls back rubs, or are they curled up in a corner with a book? Do you jump when your own cell phone rings even though you've had the same ring for years and you shouldn't be surprised by it? Do you answer, in front of Dinah, knowing it's Thomas, as if you know it's Thomas, or do you answer as if you don't know who it is and say, “Hello,” and not, “What's going on?” which is what you would usually say to Thomas when you know it's him calling? Do you tell Thomas the meet is going fine, that everyone slept as well as could be expected in the hotel room that felt more like a fish tank because the windows didn't open? Do you tell him the waffles tasted like cardboard, that one girl, from a team you don't know, lost a tooth while biting into one of the hotel's lousy, hard bagels? Do you let Thomas tell you all about the history book he is reading that he keeps saying is the world's best history book because it explores history not through the usual lens of religion or wars, but through agriculture? Did you know, he has told you, that during the Industrial Revolution, the natives living in the Amazon jungle were eating a healthier diet than we were? Do you let Thomas tell you more about how the Chinese depleted their soils and couldn't grow crops, and that the primitive Andeans, in comparison, were better farmers and knew to place troughs of water around their raised garden beds because the water regulated the temperature and extended their growing season by months? Or do you just tell Thomas the girls are about to race and you have to get off the phone even when the girls are not quite up in the bull pen yet, where they will wait to be sorted into their lanes, which would really, essentially, basically, be lying to Thomas? Do you prepare answers for Thomas asking you about the meet so far, about who is attending and which parents showed up? Do you prepare to tell him Cleo showed up, but fail to mention the fact that just Paul came with her and that you and Paul stayed up late talking about things that you and Thomas either never talked about with each other, or talked about together long ago, before Thomas became the head of the lab at work? Do you think how you should be prepared to tell him you don't blame him for the distance that has grown between you, that either you're both to blame, or it's not worth the blame?

What you end up asking Thomas about is the wood. How many logs has he cut through? He gives you an answer that makes you picture your house, the log pile he stands over and cuts with his chainsaw, wearing his protective chainsaw chaps that are mesh and meant to stop the moving blade. They were bought at a discount and when he brought them home you knew why they were on sale. They are bright orange with dark spots on them and look to you like the animal-skin clothes the cartoon characters in
The Flintstones
wore, and you were afraid for him then, thinking how could anything that silly-looking prevent a life-threatening slice to a femoral artery? He says he is at the point in his history book where the author is discussing the Potato Famine, and you say what about the Potato Famine, and he says oh my god, the Potato Famine, but you never get to hear why the Potato Famine was anything other than what you knew from school, a blight that starved so many in Ireland, because now the national anthem has started up, and this time it's not canned music, but a bunch of girls from the team, including your youngest, who is singing off-key into the mike. Of course, it's a hundred times better than the canned music because it's your daughter, Alex, and you can hear her voice amongst the others—it's out of tune, and you love it, and wonder if you pull out your little video camera now to tape her will it be unpatriotic, and do you care? And you wonder why some put their hand over their heart when the anthem is played and why some just put their hands behind their back and why you yourself put your hand over your heart when you're not in the least inclined to show patriotism. You're certainly not inclined to show patriotism by having troops go off to war, and you start wondering how strange it is to live in a world where so much of what other people do and what your government's doing is something you wouldn't do at all, and it makes the living you're doing seem as if it isn't living at all, at least not in the big sense, only in a small sense, in the way the goose you have at home lives, knowing only what's in the immediate area, not thinking beyond the fox by the pond and the hawk up above. You wish you could think of the bigger picture sometimes, how to come up with a solution to poverty, the dilemma of thinning ozone, the inevitable threat of worldwide drought, and not always be concerned whether the swim towels you washed can come completely dry in a forty-minute cycle or do they need sixty. Not always concerned whether the swimsuit you bought online could have been purchased for less on a different site. Not always concerned that if you hadn't let your daughter go to the public library a week ago during story time when all the preschoolers were entering the building, then she wouldn't have caught a cold and had to miss three swim practices in a row, possibly causing her not to be at the height of her conditioning now. Not always concerned about the fact that Thomas never touches you, and that maybe it really doesn't matter. Like you said, there's no blame, there's just the next morning with his body taking up your side of the bed, and you being pushed closer to the edge of the bed, where there's a gap almost wide enough for your body to fall through, and if it did you'd hit cobwebs, dead flies, balls of dog hair, and books you started but never finished, and maybe you'd be sucked down even farther, into that void where the horrors of everyday life swim around in some primordial stew you could never pull yourself up and out of.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
his is weeks later. This is how the summer has been passing, with you thinking about Paul, and taking the girls to swim practice, and sometimes seeing Paul at the facility and talking with him, and Thomas still not touching you, and you thinking about Paul even more. This is the air filled with the scent of the knee-high grown mint. This is your stream, lower now than in the spring, bordered by baneberry and pink lady-slipper, the flowers past bloom but the leaves full. This is your road in front of your house hardly visible through the hanging vines of the Spanish moss tree and the leaves of the tupelo and the old hemlock blocking the view and the sounds of passing cars. These are the storm clouds gathering from the south, sitting over the pond heavy with algae the color of forsythia and thick with tadpoles about to grow legs, turning the surface water dark gray.

This is you at a wedding, taking pictures of the bride, trying not to take a picture when she's swatting at the mosquitoes feasting on her bare arms. This is you remembering your own wedding with Thomas, when he grabbed you by the arm right before you said the vows, holding up his index finger to everyone seated, letting them know he just wanted a moment. Then he took you back behind the barn on the property where you were married. “What? What?” you said, wanting to know what was going on and seeing your white shoes disappearing into grass that hadn't been mowed because no one expected anyone from the wedding party to be walking around there next to the old barn boards, a rusted tractor, and the rock foundation. What was wrong? Did he want to stop the wedding? He kissed you there. It was a long kiss, as if he had all the time in the world, and there weren't one hundred people waiting for the both of you and wondering what had happened. When he was done, he said, “That's the real kiss I want to give you. It won't be the same in front of all of those people. Remember this kiss when we're old and gray,” he said, and then he grabbed your hand again and the two of you ran back up to where the judge was and you stood in front of him. Everyone seated cheered then. You knew you were married at that moment, saying the vows wasn't even necessary. Now this is you thinking how one of the grooms looks like your brother. He's got the same eyes that appear half asleep. The groom is probably high, you think, and then of course you start thinking about your brother, and about how he shot himself, about how the blood . . . You can feel yourself slipping into thinking about him. It's almost as if you're ducking in through a door with a sign on the front that says “Dead Brother Door.” You are relieved when you realize there's a way not to think about him. All you have to do is think about Paul instead. This is you looking at the road every few seconds, thinking you'll see Paul driving by because the wedding is not far from Paul and Chris's house. This is you missing the chance to take a photo of the groom having his lapel straightened by his mother because you are too busy looking at the road. This is you also missing the chance to take a photo of the bride hugging all three of her bridesmaids at once—they're huddled together like teammates about to break into a cheer—because you think you actually do see Paul at the wedding, with his ponytail hanging down, and with his back facing you as he's getting a drink. You know it would be highly coincidental if he were at this wedding, but just maybe he is. You run up to him, and then almost drop your camera when he turns around and is somebody else, somebody with large nostrils and a deeply receding hairline. He doesn't have the thick hair Paul has, or the fine aquiline nose. This is you later, leaving the wedding in the dark while the father of the bride sets off celebratory fireworks in a field. You consider driving to Paul and Chris's just to look in the window and see if he's there, but when you look down at yourself, in the glow of an especially large display of palm and willow fireworks with bursting light that falls in tendrils, you see that your dress is rumpled, your sandaled feet covered in bits of grass wet with dew, and your hair is hanging in strands about your face like drooping antennae. This is you deciding that if you did drive to his house, on the pretense of saying hello to Chris, and he was there by himself, you'd be too embarrassed about the way you look to talk to him. You wouldn't even get out of the car. You'd drive away and he'd think you were stalking him, which, of course, you probably would be.

This is you the next day thinking you'd like to think that it was the hot summer lightning you just drove through on the way to practice that's giving you the urge to reach out and help Chris, but odds are it isn't. It's not like the lightning struck you or the car. The only things hitting your car were the giant marble-sized balls of hail. The lightning was only close enough to make you and your daughters' fingers feel tingly at their ends for a while. When you arrive at the practice, your fingers still a bit tingly, and your shoes wet, you realize you should help Chris. Your realization comes in the form of some kind of energy. Maybe it's a form of “friend energy.” Your mind telling you that what is more important than your obsession with Paul is your new friendship with Chris. After all, she's in the same boat you are right now—a sinking one with a husband who's half there—and she can probably understand what you're going through. You've been feeling horribly guilty when you see Chris at the facility. You feel so guilty you haven't even talked to her the last few practices. You've collected your girls in the lobby and run out the door, hoping you wouldn't even see her in the parking lot. Today you will change. You will get Chris involved in her daughter's swim life. It will get her mind off her delusion that her husband is cheating on her. Over and over again you have seen mothers and fathers who can rattle off the times of their daughters and sons, and know exactly what they need to break in order to move up the ladder, and enter age groups, zones, sectionals, and even nationals. Those parents, like Dinah, even know the times of other people's kids. Those parents go to every single meet and outfit their vans with mattresses and in pitch-black predawn carry their sleeping children out to the car bundled in blankets so that they won't have to lose any sleep and have their fitness compromised when they swim their races. Those parents don't have time to fight or quarrel or accuse each other. Those parents, maybe those parents are really smart, you think, and then you think for a moment that maybe you should be one of those parents too, but then you dismiss that thought quickly, knowing that you can barely remember your locker combination, or your age, or the birthdates of your children, so how could you possibly remember both your daughters' times and the times they need to beat? How could you possibly lift your children out of bed and put them in the car while they're sleeping? You aren't strong enough, and your oldest girl is already taller than you are. Christ, she's menstruating already, and you know that Thomas won't get up in the morning to help carry them, he would laugh at the idea of you being so serious about swimming. “To what end?” he would say. And both of you have agreed that the worst thing you can imagine is having to go to college for swimming, having to maintain a scholarship and good grades and swim every morning when you could be staying up late working with a group of friends in the library, having sex, or going to keg parties. You picture Thomas laughing, throwing his head back while he laughs at you for turning into an über swim mom, which is what every swim mom has the potential to become the longer her children are on the team, and the closer her children are to reaching an age when they could get into college with a swim scholarship.

The place to start is with the swimsuit, of course. That is what Cleo wants, a racing suit. The racing suit means that she is serious. She is hungry to win. On your computer at practice, you show Chris all the racing suits to choose from. Some are low drag and some change flow conditions along the swimmer's body. Some have fabric splices that allow for greater flexibility, some are neck to knee, some are johns, some are tanks, some are thin straps, some are wide, some are scoop backs, cross backs, V-2 backs, wing backs, super backs, fly backs, spider backs, diamond backs, butterfly backs, extreme backs, and max backs. Some have maximum compression aiding in blood flow and improving stability, some have minimal permeability, some have undergone a technical heating process to produce an ultra-smooth, lightweight surface, some have flatlock stitching, some are hydrophobic, some are coated with Teflon, some . . . “What?” Chris says. “Teflon?” and then she groans and tells you how a few years ago she threw out all her old Teflon-coated pans because she could see the coating was scraping off each time she used the spatula to turn food in the pan, and she realized the coating was ending up in their mouths. “Now you're asking me to have my daughter race in Teflon?” Chris asks.

“I know, who would think anything associated with heavy metal pans could make your daughter swim faster, but it does,” you say.

“And what's this about hydrophobic suits?” Chris asks. “Isn't hydrophobia associated with rabies?” You tell her you don't think it's the same thing. Hydrophobia in this case is what you want. It repels the water, lessening the resistance. In the end, Chris finds a john she likes for Cleo and they order it for overnight shipping. There's another swim meet in a week, and it is important for Cleo to wear the suit during practice to see how it feels, so there won't be any surprises when she has to wear it all day.

You wish, for a moment, you were swimming instead of technical suit shopping with Chris. You watched a video at home on how to perfect the fly, and you want to practice bringing your hands up earlier in the recovery. You have always dragged your hands far behind yourself, as if waiting for someone to grab on to them and keep you from completing your stroke. Who? Maybe someone who could convince you that all the swimming you are doing is pointless, that maybe you should be trying to get your daughters to pay more attention to improving their own swimming since they are the ones with potential and not you, or maybe you should be at home instead or out in the world trying to make a difference. A difference to what, you don't know. You aren't one to volunteer in your town or work at the food shelf or be a driver for the meals-on-wheels program. You prefer to stay at home when you can. When it is a warm day and the clouds are far away from each other, you go outside and lie on a blanket and feel the sun on your face. You aren't thinking about making a difference in the world when you're lying on a blanket under the sun. You are mostly thinking about the kind of bug that is trying to land on your face. Is it a deerfly? A mosquito? A stray hair from your own head mimicking a bug as it blows in the breeze? And what about that bird blocking your sun for a moment? Is it a raven? A crow? And what is the difference?