Drowning Instinct (28 page)

I froze.

I, literally, honestly, froze in mid-stride, one boot above the snow, the other still planted on the ice, my arms squeezed tight against my sides the way a good runner should.

POP.

CRACK!

Then a long grinding groan, like Mitch, inside me, moaning in his ecstasy, a deep-throated sigh that went on and on and on:
OOOooooohhh. . . .

Something came out of my mouth, a high, inarticulate exhalation—and even now I think, yes, that‘s what
I
sounded like when Mitch and I were together, and for the briefest of moments, I was no longer there but defined only by the limit of Mitch‘s arms holding me together, tight tight tight.

Crack. Crack crack.

I was afraid to move. My muscles were quivering. I couldn‘t breathe.

―Jenna.‖ Mitch sounded close. Was he on the ice, too? I was too scared to put my foot down much less turn around. ―Jenna, honey, listen to me, do exactly what I say.‖

―Mitch?‖ A film of cold sweat bathed my face. I closed my eyes and swallowed. I wondered if the icy water would burn. I wondered if I would die fast this time. My voice rose a notch: ―
Miiitch
?‖

―I‘m right here, Jenna. I‘m only fifty feet away. I won‘t leave—‖

―Don‘t leave me, Mitch, don‘t leave me!‖

―I won‘t leave you, sweetheart. I love you; I‘ll never leave you. But you have to listen. Are you listening?‖

―Yes.‖ I was crying—from fear, from love, from relief. ―Yes, I‘m listening.‖

―The ice is too thin. You have to come back the way you came, okay? Come back to me, Jenna, and then we‘ll get off the ice together, all right?‖

―Yes.‖ I swallowed, gasped again as the ice popped. ―Okay.‖

―Put your foot down, honey . . . slow,
slow ...
that‘s it, good girl. Now, Jenna, I want you to lie down.‖

My voice thinned to a wheeze. ―Lie
down
?‖

―Yes. Lie down on your stomach, spread as wide as you can, arms and legs as far as you can, and then you‘ll turn around.‖

―Mitch, I . . .‖ I gulped. ―I don‘t think I can do that.‖

―You have to, honey. Please. It‘s the only way. You have to redistribute your weight so the ice can hold you. Then you‘ll turn around and shimmy back, okay? Come on, you can do it.‖

My trembling knees creaked. The ice popped and groaned. My teeth were chattering. My whole body was shaking as if I would never be warm again, exactly the way Mitch had felt in the abyss at Rubicon Point. But I did what Mitch said: first my knees and then my legs and then I was facedown, spread-eagled in the snow. Now I could see the fissures in the snow, radiating out from my body in all directions. The ice under my belly moaned.

―Good girl,‖ Mitch said. ―Now turn yourself around very, very . . . slow, honey, slow . . . I‘m right here, I‘m not going anywhere, you don‘t have to hur—‖

CRACK.

A moan dribbled from my mouth, but now I was facing back the way I‘d come.

Maybe thirty feet away, Mitch was on his stomach, shucking his coat in slow-motion, rolling carefully from one hip to the other, but the ice beneath him was popping and snapping with every move. With dawning horror, I saw the same starburst of gashes in the snow and realized: the ice was breaking and ripping apart under him, too.

And Mitch was heavier than me.

―Mi-Mi-Mitch,‖ I gasped. ―The
i-ice
.‖

―I know, honey. It‘ll be okay,‖ he said evenly. But I saw his face. I had seen Mitch happy, tender, rapturous, sad, and not five minutes ago, guilty and full of remorse. But I had never, ever seen him scared to death. ―When I throw out my coat, stretch as far as you can and grab hold. Is there any way you can get your boots off?‖

―My b-b-b-b . . . ?‖

―Yes. Your boots are heavy and so is your parka. If you break through, I don‘t know if I‘ll be able to hang on to you.‖ He didn‘t say that I might also drag him under. He didn‘t have to.

I did try to get those boots off, but every time I reached back, the ice complained and Mitch told me to stop. ―But if the ice breaks,‖ I began, ―you won‘t—‖

―I won‘t let go of you, Jenna. I will never let go, I promise,‖ Mitch said. The sun had cleared the trees and was warm on my back, which meant it was also warming the snow and ice. Mitch skimmed his tongue over his upper lip. Sweat was dribbling down his cheeks. ―Okay, honey, we‘ve got to move now. Come on, start back toward me and I‘ll back up with you. We‘ll be—‖
Snap. Pop
. ―We‘ll be on the shore in no time.‖

I did what he said, with my fists knotted in the sleeve of his sheepskin coat, the coat that had kept me safe and warm and held his scent—and which he gave up now for me, without hesitation, just as he always had and always would.

I’m right here. See me, Jenna. I’m right in front of you.

All I see is you, Mitch. All I see is you.

We crabbed on our bellies, shuffling back by inches, but we were going so slowly, too slow! Heavy sunlight pressed our backs and battered the lake and now the ice was talking, a constant rattle and snap and crackle like brittle glass being crushed beneath a hammer. Mitch kept up a steady stream of patter—I was doing fine, fine, we were going to be okay, okay—but his breath was coming faster, and I heard the hum of his fear. We made a torturous ten feet, then twenty, but the shore seemed to recede, and meanwhile, the snow kept fracturing.

Then Mitch moved—and I saw the snow and ice buckle, actually
break
, and lift beneath his right hip.

―Mitch!‖ I choked. ―Mitch,
stop
!‖

―Oh shit.‖ He closed his eyes, let his head drop to the snow. I saw his back move as his breath came in deep, hitching gasps, and when he lifted his face again, I saw him pushing back the panic, grappling for control. He tried easing back on his other hip, but there was an even sharper crack and then something that sounded like dry branches splintering under a heavy boot. Mitch‘s body jerked and then his hips dipped as the ice began to give.

And, suddenly, there was water: dark as blood, seeping across the snow, oozing from the wounds beneath Mitch‘s body, spreading fast.

―Oh God.‖ He looked at me. ―Listen to me, Jenna. When I go through—‖

―No, you‘re
not
—‖

―
When
I go through,‖ he said, ―unless there‘s a shelf, something for me to grab onto so I can hold myself up, you have to let go.‖

―No. No, Mitch, no, I can‘t, I
won’t
!‖

―You
have
to!‖ he shouted and now I realized that what I‘d thought was sweat on his cheeks were tears. ―Jenna, I won‘t be able to let go because I‘ll panic and I won‘t want to let go of the coat, but you
have
to, no matter what I say. Do you understand? I‘m too heavy and you won‘t be able to hold me, honey, not this time. I‘ll just end up killing you, too.‖

―No, Mitch,‖ and I was crying again. ―Mitch, don‘t ask me to do that, I can‘t let you
die
—‖

―Jenna, please, honey, you have to do this, you have to let me g—‖

Suddenly, all around his body, the ice was crumbling to pieces, like a pane of brittle glass. There came a heavy sodden
sploosh
as the fissures widened and the ice tired.

And then the lake
screamed
: a high, grinding squall of rusty hinges, of rotted metal.

Beneath him, the ice broke in a staccato clatter, like the rattle of machine guns:
CRACKCRACKCRACKCRACKCRACK
!

Mitch‘s eyes found me and held on. ―Jenna,‖ he said, and he put everything into that one word. He put in a lifetime.

Then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the thin ice—that frail membrane that buoyed him up and kept him in my world—let go.

A few moments later . . . so did I.

53: a

So.

What else could you possibly want, Bobby-o? You know the rest. You‘re the one who found us. Me. What a picture that must‘ve been.

Well, shall I tell you what it feels like to watch someone you love drown and not be able to do anything to stop it? Do you want to know how long it took, or if the water boiled? Do you want to know if he screamed?

Would it interest you, at all, to know that he
did
try to scramble back onto the ice?

That his hands grabbed and his fingers clawed, but the ice—that treacherous, greedy, teasing ice—kept breaking and breaking and breaking, sketching a path straight for me?

And that when he saw what would happen to
me
, he stopped trying to save himself?

Would you believe that someone could love anyone that much?

Or do you want to know what I said? How I felt? That it might be better to die with him?

Would it help you to hear, Bob, that all of a sudden, he went so still, so silent, that no one would ever have believed that this man was drowning?

Do you want to know what it was like to understand that this was the end? And that there was nothing I could do?

No.

No, I don‘t think I‘ll tell you about that, Bob. I don‘t think I will.

But here‘s the truth, Bobby-o.

I‘m no angel. But if I could have sprouted wings from those grafts on my back and plucked him out of the water, and if I‘d been strong enough to fly us somewhere far, far away, I would have.

But I couldn‘t, and so I didn‘t.

As for the rest?

Brush up on your Shakespeare, Bob. Then we‘ll talk.

I know science. I know that it is possible for someone to survive a cold-water drowning, and they‘ve been working over Mitch for a long, long,
long
time. I think it was Rebecca who once told me that they work longer if they think you‘ve got a good chance of pulling through. I guess that explains me.

But it‘s been awfully quiet these last few hours. Awfully quiet . . . and I am so afraid to really let myself know what that means.

Weird, how I didn‘t quite understand what Mitch was trying to tell me when he said that, but I do now. He felt the way my mother did when those Marines came to the door.

Mitch‘s fear was fed by the same fire that kept me recycling Matt‘s e-mails over and over and over again.

Because if you can just hold off the moment when you must confront reality, time stands still and you can keep pretending that life will continue as you‘ve known it: that nothing—not even something as wonderful and as terrible as love—has broken your world beyond repair.

So I think I‘ll stay here a little while longer. There‘s plenty of time to get off this gurney and open that door and rejoin the rest of you.

There‘s all the time I have left on Earth.

There‘s the rest of my life.

When I do leave this room, I don‘t know what will happen next. My mom‘s in a coma; she might die. Dad . . . I don‘t think he‘ll change, no matter what. Matt is dead. And Mitch—

I just thought of something.

If Mitch is . . . If he‘s really gone, they can use his skin for my mother. If he‘s an organ donor. Knowing Mitch, he would be. They‘ll parcel him out in little pieces, an eye here, a kidney there. So why not his skin? They could flay his body and cocoon her with him. That last living bit of all that he was would help heal my poor mother—and how ironic would that be?

For that matter, my heart is broken. So maybe they‘ll give me his. It‘s something to shoot for.

And maybe, in all that, Bob?

There is forgiveness.

I just remembered Danielle and David. It‘s still Friday. No . . . Saturday? I‘ve lost track. But Monday will roll around soon enough, and Danielle will get her abortion. Or she won‘t. Either they‘ll get in touch with their folks, or Mitch was lying.

But I was on the ice with him, Bobby-o, and you weren‘t. So I don‘t think he was. I think everything Mitch said out there—every word—was the truth.

Every. Word.

You probably want me to regret Mitch. You want me to see that he lied, was some kind of predator; that I‘m a
victim
, like you said. But Mitch was broken, too, in his way and just as much a hostage to his past and his mistakes. Maybe by trying to fix me, he was also healing himself in the only way he knew how.

Oh, I can just hear you now. You and every therapist who ever lived will say that I‘m
rationalizing
, that I‘ve
identified
with a monster, just like those kids do who are kidnapped and live in a cage for twenty years. You‘ll want to see me as
damaged
somehow, and then you‘ll try to cure me. Well, I got news for you, Bobby-o.

Cured
is just a synonym for coming around to your way of thinking.

Cured
is the word you use when I finally agree.

But here‘s the problem with that, Bobby-o. You and the therapists can yammer until you‘re blue in the face, but I just can‘t agree with you and probably never will.

Because Mitch gave me love. He handed me back my life and that doesn‘t make me a victim.

When I close my eyes, Bob, he‘s there, right in front of me, and all I see in the dark is him.

All I see is him.

Oooo, you just knocked, Bobby-o. I know it‘s you. Oh, sure, nurses and doctors knock, but they never wait for an invitation. They just barge on in. I think they hate closed doors. Come to think of it, they‘re a lot like parents that way.

Anyway.

I know you‘re chomping at the bit to get at what‘s in this little machine. Well, Bobby-o, here‘s what I say to that.

These are my memories. They are my feelings, and you can‘t have them. Because you‘ll use them against Mitch, dead or alive, and I can‘t let you do that. Not everything Mitch and I had was a lie, and he saved me, Bob: first when he said I had to let him go, and again when he saw that I would die if he didn‘t stop trying to save himself.

So now it‘s my turn to save him.

You want to crucify Mitch? Find someone else. Because these words are mine, Bobby-o; they are mine.

That‘s not to say that I won‘t give you back your recorder, though.

Just give me a sec while I find that little red button, the one labeled
era
Acknowledgments

Every book is tough. Every relationship, whether it‘s between two people or a writer and her book, is about taking risks. This story was extremely difficult because my intent was to present a situation in which there are no stereotypical predators
or
victims.

Only a very special editor tolerates and champions that kind of ambiguity. Lucky for me, Andrew Karre is of that rare breed and for this, I offer my sincerest thanks.

Jennifer Laughran has proven yet again to be a fabulous advocate and a writer‘s dream-agent. Thank you, Jenn, for getting what this was about and taking the plunge.

For my stalwart husband, David: I could tell you how wonderful and patient you are, and there still wouldn‘t be enough hours in the day.

One last word about this book: Are these damaged people? Absolutely. Are there monsters in these pages? Yes; one, for sure. Yet many relationships are bound as much by hatred as love; growth may come from damage; and reality is complex.

In my experience, the truly evil are few and good people, with the very best of intentions, often make very bad decisions and get in way over their heads before they know it. People drown, quietly, before our eyes, all the time.

About the Author

Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major, and award-winning author of dozens of short stories and novels, including the critically-acclaimed
Draw the Dark
and
Ashes
. Ilsa lives with her family and other furry creatures near a Hebrew cemetery in rural Wisconsin. One thing she loves about the neighbors: They are very quiet and only come around for sugar once in a blue moon.

Visit her online at www.ilsajbick.com.