Breathing Water (2 page)

I would first like to thank my agent, Christy Fletcher, and my editor, Joe Veltre, for their enthusiasm about this novel and for their thoughtful insights and suggestions during the revision process. I would also like to thank Erika Fad for her patience and helpfulness.

I am deeply indebted to the following people for their ceaseless encouragement and incredible faith. Without them, this book would neither exist nor matter: Lon deMatties, Warren Doody, Janet Dunphy-Brown, Ann-Britt Malden, Howard Mosher, Nicole Norum, Ron Ross, Samantha Ruckman, Esther Stewart, Beya Stewart, and my many wonderful teachers.

I offer thanks to my grandparentsâDon Craig, Eunice Craig, and Clifford Greenwoodâfor their love and support. To my sister, Ceilidh Greenwood, for her generosity and humor.

To my parents, Paul and Cyndy, for believing.

And to Patrick, for listening.

P
ROLOGUE

D
o not ask me for haunted. Do not ever ask me for haunted, because I will give you haunted and you will never be the same. I will turn a nursery rhyme room into a prison of rhythmic sighs. Of mice screaming and clocks that will not stop their tick-tock, tick-tock. The closed eyes of dolls and animals will not open here, not even if you try to pry them awake with gentle, pleading fingers. I will make the record skip; the arm won't lift from the only song that has ever made you sad.

I will tear each blade of grass from the green velvet of your memory, leaving only the empty stems of dandelions gone to seed. I will burn the wooden castles of your remembrance, set the forest where all of your remaining dreams reside on fire. The branches you swung from will be nothing more than steaming bones in the cold morning air.

I will hold the baby bird that you brought back to life with an eye dropper of your breath. I will be careful with its wings, of its softly beating chest. I will hold it in the palm of my hand, close my fingers gently around its wings. I will close my fingers so gently you will think that you are safe. But then, quite suddenly, I will squeeze my fist tightly around its quickening heart. Squeeze until beak crumbles, until bones crack. And this will be the one thing that you can't forgive.

I know now what you will and will not tolerate. I know from watching you, from inflicting pain, that you are capable of great forgiveness. You forgive without waiting for apologies. You forgive tremendous cruelty, each cruelty, until this one. I am certain of this. I will make you trust, and then I will crush the bones of your credulity.

Do not ask me for haunted, do not ever ask me for haunted. Because I will give you haunted and you will never be the same. You may think that exorcism is as easy as words, but it's far more complicated than that, much more dangerous and ultimately unkind. Do not ask me for haunted, don't ever ask me to recollect, because the collected remains I will give you will be more real to you than I am.

Lake Gormlaith, Vermont

August 1991

B
lue night. I am standing at the edge of the lake, shivering in my summer dress when they pull her body out of the water. I am shivering and tearing at my cuticles when they lay her on the moon-drenched, indigo grass. At the edge of the lake, I tremble with cold as I watch Max's shadow pulling the boat out of the water and hear the scream of the wooden bottom scraping against the rocks.

A woman who lives in the small cabin nearest to the landing covers the girl's small, dark body with a blanket the color of morning sky. There are about five of us standing close to her now, closer to her than most of us have dared to go before. But now we circle her with our own bodies, as if to shield her from harm.

Mrs. Forester, her caretaker for the summer, is still standing waist-deep in the water, holding the hem of her white cotton nightgown. I can hear a low moan coming from somewhere deep inside of her. The sound of an animal. The sound of loss and pleading. The moon makes her almost transparent as she stares toward the center of the calm lake. She too is shivering in the cold, her body shaking. She wraps her arms around herself and continues to moan. Mr. Forester ignores this and kneels down next to the dead girl.

As Max ties the boat to a rotten tree stump at the shore, I stare at the strange pink of the girl's upturned palms. She could be asking for something with this gesture. Answers, perhaps. To be left alone now. I look at the girl's small face, still full of color, and envy this. I envy the way she seems to sleep, warm and quiet beneath the blanket of light. I envy her, because I am colder than the water, colder than the air. I am colder than the dead girl whose mother thought she was sending her somewhere safe.

No one speaks as Mr. Forester covers her face with the blanket. And when her small face, her strange dark face is covered, I am tempted to pull the blanket back. I am tempted to pull the blanket from her and carry her away from this place. To take her somewhere she belongs. But there is no such place. Not here. And so instead, I find my fingers pulling the satin edge of the blanket further so that her hair, beaded with glistening drops of water, is covered too.

Mr. Forester stands up slowly, his knees creaking. When he sees his wife still standing in the lake, he walks toward her, wading into the lily-laced water. When he reaches her, she seems not to notice that he is there. She is rocking and moaning in her transparent nightgown. He puts his arm across her shoulders and waits patiently until she collapses in his hands.

After the dust from the cars and ambulances has settled, I find Max's old leather suitcase in the musty closet in the loft. After someone has called her mother in New York, I fold his shirts, gather his shoes. After he has calmly lied to the police, who wanted to know where he found her and why he was in the middle of the lake in the middle of the night, I decide.

I come down the precarious stairs from the loft into the dark living room. I walk through the darkness and into the kitchen, where I set the suitcase by the back door. When I return to the living room, I see him sitting in the corner on the dusty wooden floor. The air still smells of basil and garlic from dinner.

“Go,” I say. It is all I can manage.

He doesn't look at me and he doesn't speak. Slowly, he begins to bang his head against the wall, each strike leaving the wet imprint of his hair. I look away from him to the window. The moon is full and bright, reflecting and trembling on the dark surface of the lake. All of the voices from this night have faded; even the crickets, usually restless, are quiet. The only sound is the water lapping the rocks at the edge of the lake and the rhythmic banging of bone on wood.

“Please,” I plead.

He stands up slowly, still stumbling and stinking of too much drink. His jeans are damp, his bare feet caked with mud from the lake. He reaches toward me.

I walk to the kitchen and push the screen door open, my arm shaking.

“No more,” I say.

He comes closer then, and my shoulders shrink in remembrance of all the other times. My spine recollects and recoils.

“If you touch me, I'll kill you,” I say. “I swear to God I will.”

He pulls me toward him. I can feel him both asking and demanding that my body give in to him. When my shoulders remain stiff, when I fail to yield, he shoves me away. I stumble with the force of his push and the screen door slams shut. I put my hands on my hips to steady myself, and I feel quite suddenly like a stubborn child. He veers past me toward the door. He pushes it open and lets it slam behind him. He grabs awkwardly at the suitcase, knocking it over, and then kicks it clumsily into the driveway.

“Stop,” I say, and my eyes feel wide and strange.

He turns toward me and then comes close enough to the door that separates us for me to smell the stink of drink on his breath.

“You know it's not all my fault,” he says, pointing his thick finger close to my chest. “Weren't the Foresters supposed to be watching her?”

I feel the fire, warming me, filling me with remarkable heat.

“How was I supposed to know she'd be out there?” he asks, his voice softening in the still night. His chin is quivering. He opens the door.

My heart thuds softly, and I start to feel sick. He seems vulnerable now, incapable of causing harm. His eyes plead and promise. I imagine him pleading with his mother to
Stop, stop.
I imagine the cigarette burns in the palms of his hands, the stigmata of his mother's cruelty. And I reach out to touch him; I watch my hand in disbelief. His shoulder trembles under my touch.

“And where the hell were you?” he asks, his voice growing louder and louder. “If you hadn't decided to run off to your grandmother,
Oh save me, Gussy, from my horrible life,
then maybe I wouldn't have been out there in the first place.” The softness of his face and his voice is gone now, and my hand returns to my side. Now I can only think of myself pleading with him to
Stop, stop.

“I hate you,” I whisper. “I hate you, hate you.”

“You can't pretend that I'm the only one at fault. You think that if you send me away that I'll be gone. You think you can put this, this night, away into a pretty little box, shove it under your bed, and forget what's inside. But you're wrong. Because you were there with me, Effie. You were inside my head when I went out there. You were there too. And you won't get away with this.” He cups my chin in his palm and looks at me with disgust. “You won't get away.”

He slams the screen door again and walks to the car. When I hear the engine start, roaring with his anger and impatience, I shut the storm door and hook the ridiculous latch. He has already broken it once this summer. I lean all of my weight against the door and listen for the sound of the tires crushing gravel and grass. The radio pierces the quiet night. The motor hums, and I wait.

But suddenly the car door slams again. I hear his heavy footsteps coming back. Closer and closer. I hear him breathing on the other side of the door. I will the lock to hold. I close my eyes.

“I love you, Effie. I'm sorry. It was an accident. You know that.”

I put my hands over my ears, listening to the blood thudding dully at my temples and in my chest. I wait for him to push. I listen and wait. Any moment now, I know he will push and send me flying backward into the sharp corner of the stove or the cupboard. I wait for glass to break, for something, anything, to shatter.

It could be hours that I lean against the door, listening to my heart and his breath through the wood. It could be minutes. But then, suddenly the engine roars again and the headlights sweep through the windows. The yellow beams touch the bookcase, the worn fabric of the love seat, and my clenched hands. And then the light is gone.

I move away from the door; my shoulders are cramped. I walk slowly through the dark kitchen and living room, quietly up the stairs to the loft. I almost slip as I reach the landing, feeling in the darkness for the mattress. I sit down on the edge of the bed and stare out the window at the road that has taken him away, at the road that could bring him back. The sheets still smell of his sweat. I stand up then and tear the pillowcases off the pillows and the sheets off the bed. The hems are strewn with Gussy's embroidered sunflowers. My chest aches as I stuff them in the cedar chest, and I can't stop shivering as I lie down on the bare mattress.

I try to rest, to slow the fluttering of my heart. I try to imagine something else: that I am not here. Not now. But every time I close my eyes I see her limp body on the grass. On the back of my eyelids, I see all of the faces white with moon, staring at the girl like a discarded toy underneath the late summer sky. And I see Max walking calmly back to the camp with the policeman, his hands gesturing toward the place in the lake. His false heroism as transparent to me as water, but an answer the police find easier than the truth. I watch them scribble his words onto their pads, ink turning his explanation into indelible history. He has always had the ability to make people believe. No questions. I see his hands steadily pouring coffee. I see hands reaching for me, promising tenderness, and then fingers threatening to tighten and not let go.

And so I keep my eyes open and stare out the window at the lake until the sky fills with light, and I listen for the sounds of his return.

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