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Authors: T. Greenwood

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BOOK: Breathing Water

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“Look at you two,” Maggie said, grabbing a napkin from the holder on the table and wiping Alice's face.

“You're going to wipe her mouth right off her face,” I said.

“Look out or I'll get you too,” Maggie cackled.

“What are you so playful about tonight, Effie?” Gussy asked, drizzling some of her homemade honey mustard dressing on her salad.

“I'm not playful.” I laughed.

Gussy left before the sun went down. She hated to drive at night. Her vision had gotten so much worse over the years. I watched the road until I couldn't see her headlights anymore and then went back into the living room where Alice had fallen asleep on the couch. She could have been a kitten, she was so small. Maggie was stroking her hair. When I came in, she stood up and walked quietly out to the porch.

“All right. What's going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you've had the same stupid expression on your face since you came back from the grocery store. It's a guy, isn't it?”

I blushed. I hadn't felt like this since junior high. “I met him in the grocery store. I've seen him before. At Hudson's. But today, he found my wallet.”

“Slow down,” Maggie said, putting her hand on my knee to steady its shaking.

“He winked at me.”

“Well, what are you going to do?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Are you going to call him?” Maggie pulled her legs up under her like a kid and stared at me expectantly.

My heart dropped. “I can't,” I said.

“Can't? I haven't seen nobody coming around here to take you out. Unless you're hiding a boyfriend under your bed.”

“I haven't . . . I haven't seen anybody,” I started, trembling a little. My throat constricted. My palms were sweating. “Since Max.”

“So? You guys split.
Years
ago from what you've told me.”

“You don't understand,” I said, my voice quaking and louder than I intended.

“Don't you think it's about time you move on?”

“He's dead,” I whispered.

“Who?” Maggie asked.

“Max. He died in May.”

“Oh honey,” Maggie said, moving next to me on the edge of the daybed. “I didn't know. How did he die?”

I stared at the lake. I could smell a storm in the air. There were whitecaps on the waves that were crashing against the dock. “Heroin.” The word tasted like liquor on my tongue. Like liquid fire.

“Jesus,” Maggie said and put her arm around me. I leaned into the scratchy warmth of her sweater. “I thought Alice was the only one who wasn't talking.”

After Maggie carried Alice to the car, using one of Gussy's extra umbrellas to shield her from the rain coming down in hard pellets, I returned to the porch where the oil lamp made the room smell even more like a storm. Where the rain tapping at the glass sounded like a late-night visitor's knock, tentative but steady.

I decided to sleep there that night, to watch the storm shielded only by glass. I brought the quilts down from the loft and changed into a pair of Grampa's old flannel pajamas that Gussy kept for company. I hoped that they would smell like him, but they only smelled like mothballs and cedar. I closed my eyes and waited for thunder. When lightning flashed bright behind my closed eyelids, I thought
heroin, heroin, heroin.
An incantation or a prayer.

July 1991

B
lue bruise. I discover the blossom on the inside of my thigh and clench my legs together in shame even though I am alone. I am naked and bruised, and I can't breathe anymore. When Max finally fell asleep, I untangled myself from his legs and slipped through the fleshy noose of his arm. I crept quietly down the stairs into the living room.

Now, in the bathroom mirror, I turn to the side and stare at the sliver that is me. No soft curves. No yielding belly, slightly rounded. No breasts, no gentle curve of the spine. Everything is sharp. I am wearing an armor of bone. My hand moves from the pointy tip of my nose, down to the hollow of my throat, to the sharp hangers of my collarbone. I trace the faint blue of his fingerprints on my ribs. It is as if he dipped his fingers in India ink before he touched me. I cup my pelvic bone, touch the old bruises consistent from his bones.
This is drowning.

I am so cold I can barely keep my teeth from chattering. I go to the closet and find one of Grampa's old coats and a pair of Gussy's rubber boots. The wool is scratchy against my bare skin, the rubber cold and clammy on my feet.

I don't turn on any lights. I don't make any noise. After the back door closes silently behind me I think for a moment that I could get away. I could, in only minutes, go to someone's door and say,
Help me.
In only moments I could be dialing a phone. Sitting in the backseat of my parents' old station wagon, Gussy's car, Tess's truck driving away from Max. I could (in less than an hour) begin to unravel the threads of the stories I've woven to keep myself safe.

But as my thoughts travel down the dirt road past Magoo's, as I dream-knock on a stranger's door, as I imagine arms around me as I unravel, my feet will not move. I stand by the door of the camp, naked beneath my grandfather's moth-eaten coat, and know that I will not leave. Because the neighbors are sleeping. Because I would never be able to articulate this never-place I have fallen into. And because I can't imagine how I could stare at the back of my mother's neck as they drove me home. How I would be able to watch the red of my mother's shame ascending, flushing the soft skin of her neck and the tender edges of her ears despite herself.

I am not cold anymore. I walk to the road and decide to walk around the lake. It will only take an hour or so. Max will still be sleeping when I get back. The lights are all out at the surrounding camps. Only a few scattered Chinese lanterns strung on weather-beaten porches glow in pink and orange and blue. The air is thick, and a small breeze winds its way through my bare legs. I can feel sharp stones through the bottom of Gussy's rubber boots.

The Foresters' camp is two camps down from Magoo's. When I was little, it was only a one- or two-room cottage. But over the years it has grown, a room at a time with each new addition to the family. There was even an extra bedroom added for the yearly Fresh Air kid. It looks like a child's toy house, like a string of Legos put together in no particular order. To get to the bathroom from the kitchen you need to travel the length of three bedrooms, a living room, and a glass breezeway.

A flagstone path winds down from one of the porches to the water's edge. The broad wooden dock is straight and purposeful, anchored by invisible weights under the water. Every summer Mr. Forester paints it a different color. This summer it is bright red. It stretches out for almost a hundred feet, like a red carpet leading out to the middle of the lake.

I walk through the wet grass, my feet protected from the dampness but not from the cold. I am certain that the Foresters are sleeping. There are no reading lights or candles in the windows. I can almost hear the sounds of them sleeping. I wrap my arms around myself and step onto the dock. It sways beneath me, and my knees buckle instinctively. I walk slowly toward the end of the dock, balancing as if I were on a tightrope instead of a floating bridge. I kneel down and put my fingers in the water. It is cold, still. I feel the chill all the way up my arm. When I look up again, I see her pink bathing suit.

She is only about ten feet away, close enough that I can see the slight curve of her belly, her unruly hair heavy with the water. The ridiculous bathing suit threatening to slip away. I am paralyzed. I watch her silently, and after a few moments my heart begins to quicken. I am suddenly startled by the child lying motionless in the water. She has not stirred, has not moved.

I stand and begin to pull Grampa's coat from my body. The night air finds my naked skin quickly and I shudder. I slip my arm from the heavy sleeve without moving my eyes from her. If she were to suddenly sink I could lose her.

Her name rises in my throat. But just as I am about to call out to her, her feet flutter. There is a splash of water and she is propelled backward, farther away. My body sighs. And then I begin to panic. I quickly slip my arm back into the sleeve of Grampa's coat and watch to make sure that her eyes have not opened. I feel guilty, as if I have stumbled into my parents' bedroom or a stranger's house uninvited. I stand up slowly and walk as quickly and quietly as I can back to land. When I am on solid ground again, I can still feel the sway of the water beneath me.

And later, after I have put Grampa's coat and Gussy's boots back into the closet, after I lie down next to Max and his arms lock around me again, I can feel the water underneath me, my body rocking with its subtle motion.

July 1994

T
ess came in the middle of the night. She snuck inside the camp and sat down on the edge of the couch where I had fallen asleep despite the half pot of coffee I drank with dinner to try to stay awake to greet her.

“Boo,” she said.

Blurry-eyed and half-asleep, finding words that made sense took a minute as I pulled myself out of the strange thick dreaming. “Tess!” I said, amazed by how thrilled I was to see her, to smell the familiar scent of her shampoo.

“Get up!” she said, tugging at my shoulder. “We've got stuff to do.”

I sat up and made room for her on the couch.

“First, hug me,” she said, and I reached for her. This embrace was so familiar I began to ache.

“Now, apologize for not calling me,” she said, punching my arm a little too hard.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I am.”

None of what I expected had happened to Tess. No stuffy suits and stockings. She had on a pair of overalls I recognized from college. A black T-shirt that said
Fuck You
in tiny red letters. Her hair ran loose down her back like oil, only a small rhinestone barrette keeping it out of her face, unchanged by worry or pain in all these years.

There was a place deep in the woods behind Gussy and Grampa's camp that I had almost forgotten until now. But the next morning, as Tess led me by the hand through the velvet foliage, I recollected other mornings when Tess and I escaped. Said that we were going fishing, berry picking, elsewhere.

The woods smelled thick and green. The early morning sun was beginning to leak through the green ceiling. The ground was soft and yielding beneath my feet. I loved the small pricks of branches, the gentle reminders of burrs.

Tess let go of my hand but didn't go too far ahead. Her steps were steady, certain, and it felt like the first time.

It was quiet, only the songs of invisible birds, the strange music of waking in the still green. Tess's braid swung against her back like a tail. I half expected her to be transformed in this half-light. That she would disappear behind a tree and emerge as some sort of horse, her legs thick and strong. Muscles taut. I nearly tripped over a tangle of roots, and then I saw the clearing.

Sun spilled through like a spotlight illuminating the pool, reflecting off the blue surface making mirrors. I shielded my eyes and watched Tess skipping over rocks, now more nymph than horse, to get to the other side. She stood on a large flat stone and unhooked her overalls. She peeled off her
Fuck You
T-shirt.

She was wearing a holey bra and grandma underwear. I started to laugh.

She pointed at me, “Not a word. I'm on vacation.”

And then she slipped out of those too and into the water. I watched her descend, her skin golden and flawless. Her hips were soft and round. Her small breasts floated to the surface of the water, and her hair glistened.

“You coming in?” she asked, splashing some water at me.

“Sure,” I said. My throat constricted.

The first time.
We were children. Skinned knees, spider arms and legs. I stared at the pink blossoms on her chest, at my own like a boy's. She didn't notice the thin wisps of hair like angel's wings between her legs. And when she dove from the flat rock into the pool, I felt longing deeper than water. Thicker than leaves.

The last time.
I undressed slowly. I remember the feeling of soft denim moving slowly down my legs. I remember the tight neck of my T-shirt against the skin of my forehead, the moment when my hair was trapped. And then I remember the way she breathed. I remember the way her hand flew to her throat, like a timid bird. I didn't dive into the water. I only stood and let her look at the places he had ruined. But when her head began to shake, I stared at her body, blueless, bruiseless, and gold. I felt that longing again. Something greener and deeper than these woods.

Tess has always been the person I wanted to be.

Now, I was again afraid to show her the places he had destroyed. I removed my clothes and pretended that I wasn't small. I breathed the thick summer morning sky and let my lungs fill my body. I was certain that she could see them expanding through the transparent place that was my chest. My ribs were like a fragile cage. I pulled my hair forward to hide the places where bone had begun to threaten flesh. Bruises from the inside this time. Tess closed her eyes.

The water, warmed by the rare spot of sun, covered my body quickly. I expected that the water, like a funhouse mirror, would make me appear whole instead of broken. But through the gray, my legs disappeared altogether.

We swam like this until the sun moved behind a tree. I scurried out of the water when she wasn't looking, and we didn't say a word as we walked through the woods back to the camp.

“I suck at this game,” she said, trading in all of her wooden letters for new ones.

“Shut up,” I said. “You got thirty-six points for the last one. Triple word score.”

Tess contemplated her new letters. “Is
aloneness
a word?”

“Alone-ness?”
I asked.

“Yeh. Like loneliness, but good. Like the state of being alone. As opposed to the state of being lonely?”

“You only have six letters,” I said.

“I know.” she said and made
escape
out of
cape.
“Fifteen points. Double word score.”

“What about
aloneness?”
I asked.

“Oh, I was just asking.” She winked.

“I'm not
alone,”
I said. Suddenly I wished that I had told her earlier about Maggie. If I told her now, it would just seem like I made it up.

“I know,” she said. “I didn't say you were.”

“I mean it, Tess. Damn, I'm not some sort of hermit up here.” I reached for the box cover and stared at the directions so I wouldn't have to look at her.

“Do you ever miss Max, Effie?” she asked, staring me down behind the box cover.

“No,” I said.

“You don't have to pretend for me, Effie.”

“I'm not pretending,” I said.“I don't miss him. I don't want to talk about him.”

She reached out for my wrist, and I pulled my hand away.

“You're different.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“When you were still with him, at least it felt like you were
here.
”

“What do you mean?” I challenged. I stared at her eyes, which were small and certain. Brown and deep set.

“I mean, I feel like you're a sliver. Like you are a piece of Effie. At least when you were still with Max you knew you were alive. Damaged, and I hate to sound like a goddamn sociology textbook,
abused,
but alive.” Her expression was purposeful. “But now that he's not leaving handprints on you, you're fading away.”

I couldn't look at her eyes anymore. The game we played as children I always lost. When you look at something for too long, too closely, it stops looking like what it is. And her eyes didn't look like eyes anymore. She didn't look like Tess.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. It was easy to lie to Tess, because eventually she would stop fighting. Eventually, she would nod her head and agree. When she saw how much I needed her to believe, no matter how absurd the lie, she would nod and punch me in the arm. She would nod and her skin would come in contact with my skin and she would pretend for me.

“Max is gone. And I am here. And I am happy,” I said. Each sentence like a strange mantra to keep from drowning in this warm sunlit pool of Tess.

“I don't believe you,” she said.

I willed her to stop.

“It's been three years, Effie.”

I wasn't ready for this.

“You're wasting away for nothing. He's dead.”

“Stop,” I said softly, tears rolling hot down my cheeks.

“I miss you, Effie. I miss you so much. I want you to come back to me. I thought that when he was finally gone I could have you back.” She grabbed my wrists, enclosed them in her hands. “It's not fair. To
me.”

“I'm fine,” I said, pulling my hands away and wiping furiously to remove the evidence of my tears. “I swear. I'm getting better. I am.”

I struggled to catch her eyes again, but she was already nodding. Giving me what I thought I needed. “I'm sorry, Effie. I know you are. I didn't mean it.”

Tess has always had the power to convince me that I am telling the truth. If I told her that I drank stars, she would make me believe they tasted like cheap champagne. It's why I love Tess, and why I hate her sometimes too.

Tess and I slept curled around each other like children. I could feel the faint prickle of the hair on her bare legs. The smell of her perfume clung to her T-shirt. It was three o'clock in the morning, and I couldn't sleep. Tess and I never fought, but the conversation earlier kept running through my head. Tess and I had only really argued once. In twenty years, we had raised our voices, our fists, only one time.

The summer Billy Moffett and I discovered making out and destroying household appliances, Tess went to summer camp. She made the decision before school got out, and broke the news to me as we walked home, our backpacks heavy with locker contents, our steps light with summer.

Art camp. In the White Mountains. Colette had gone there every summer since she was six years old. Every August we made the three-hour trip to watch her dance in the amphitheater, and then took her back home. It seemed then that it took forever to get to the campus, anticipation nagging me like bug bites. As much as we bickered and picked at each other, I always missed Colette when she went away to camp. I would sit in the seats after the theater emptied out, while Colette gathered flowers from all the friends she'd made that summer. I would watch them in their diaphanous skirts, fussing over Colette's blisters or torn toe shoe ribbons. By the time she finally noticed me, the anticipation was all leaked out of me. The ride home was even longer than the ride there. Colette would sit in the backseat with me, her head leaning against the window, her eyes closed. She pretended that she was tired, but I knew she was pouting. Coming home for Colette was always the worst part of the summer.

“You don't even dance,” I whined to Tess, throwing my heavy bag to the ground so I could tie my shoe.

“I'm going there to study poetry. Writing. They have all sorts of programsâdrama, musicâ” she started, defensively.

“What do you know about poetry?” I demanded. “You haven't written a single poem in your whole life.”

“Shows how well you know me,” she said and kept walking.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked, scurrying to catch up to her.

“What it means is that there are things about me that nobody, not even
you,
knows.”

She only wrote one letter that summer, a poem. I don't remember what it said. I do remember that I read it out loud to Billy, and we both laughed, and then I threw it into the fire we'd made out of a bunch of old doors we'd found in the woods. When the fire burned out, we picked up the brass numbers, still too hot to touch with bare hands, and put them in our pockets like prizes.

Since Colette was in college, we didn't make the trek to see her perform at the end of the summer. And because I was so busy with Billy, I almost forgot that it was time for Tess to come home. It took her three days after she got back to call. It was my birthday, and she wanted to come see me. I told her I had plans.

When Billy and I got back from the double feature at the drive-in, Tess was sitting on the front steps to the camp. Her parents' car wasn't there, so I figured she must have gotten dropped off.

“I'll just go back home,” Billy said. “She looks pissed off.”

“She is,” I said. “But don't go. That's what she wants.”

I opened up his father's station wagon door and closed it softly so I wouldn't wake up my parents.

“Hi,” I said. I took Billy's hand and said, “Tess, this is Billy.”

“I
know,”
she said. “We had homeroom together in seventh grade.”

“Hey,” Billy nodded.

Tess put her hands on her hips. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen, I gotta get back home,” Billy said, his hands stuck deep in the pockets of his jeans.

I looked at Tess and then Billy. “Let me walk you to your car.”