Flat Water Tuesday (27 page)

Somewhere I had a team photo from those days, a copy of which was on the boathouse wall beside a hundred similar pictures. Wadsworth, Perry, myself and Connor standing in a row with Ruth sitting cross-legged in front of us wearing her sunglasses. All of us unsmiling. Wraiths looking out into time. Killers.

21.

Connor’s time was a second and a half ahead of mine. He beat me by one stroke, exactly one stroke. I had to keep wiping my eyes after the test to see him. We were both hunched over our machines. I don’t think I passed out but for a moment the world was just a stranger. Connor got up with me and we walked upstairs to the cold boats to get our stuff. Neither of us looked at the other rowers or at Ruth conferring with Channing.

I tried to talk a few times, but my throat was ragged. We walked through the wet snow with heavy feet for what seemed like a long, long time. It was very cold and as I walked I realized I was thin enough so that the air seemed to blow right through me. Connor was looking up, over the fields, almost to the sky while he walked. He finally broke the silence. “That was a spur of the moment idea. I wanted to see if I could keep up with you.” When I didn’t say anything in reply he just carried on talking. “You moved the rating all over the place. We both lost time because you did that. You should have ignored me.”

“I couldn’t.” My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of new silver nails.

“You should have expected that I’d try to follow you. In any case you did really well. We both did. I’m not sure why you’re so pissed. You’re obviously going to be chosen for the first boat so quit being such a sore loser. One stroke, man, there was nothing in it.”

It was getting properly, industrially dark. All the kids from the sports buildings were heading back now, bundled up, hats on, backpacks and gym bags swinging; lines of ragged soldiers returning from the front. Through the big windows in the field house you could see the rows of lights up above the basketball courts still shining lonely and bright. A few of the squash players came by, batting snowballs at each other. Connor stepped out of their way to scrutinize me. “You just can’t help it, can you? You have to compete.”

“That’s right. Especially against you.”

We walked the rest of the way to the school in silence. Before we reached the Rowing Cottage, Connor turned to me and said, “That last second was the best I had. I couldn’t have beaten you by any more.”

“But you wanted me to think you could. You were just making a point.”

“Sure. So what? It’s called winning, Carrey. You know the score. I’m not going to apologize. You want to beat me so badly, fine. Bring it on. But don’t have a fit when you lose.”

“You want to know what gets me?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t even need to impress anybody. You don’t even need it.”

“I’m always amazed when you say ridiculous things like that. What are you saying? I should have let you win? You’re the one with something to prove here, Rob. I have nothing to prove. I just want to win for the sake of it. And because it gives me a buzz to beat you. That’s all. It’s easier to have simple reasons for doing things.”

“Let me tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

A sudden wave of dizziness and nausea washed over me and I turned away from him, sure I was going to throw up. But I just needed to breathe. I walked over to the shore through snow that had been scoured here, only ankle deep and crusty. I examined the ice on the river, which was discolored and brown from the wind. “Get down here, Connor.”

“Look, Rob, I’ll admit it. If you had popped up the rating a few strokes I would never have beaten you. I would have followed too late.”

“I think we could make the run across the river.”

“What?” He looked nonplussed for a second, then slid down to me. “No way. I mean, it’s a noble thought, but the middle isn’t solid.”

“What do you know about snow? I’m the one from Niccalsetti. I grew up dealing with blizzards. It doesn’t even snow in Cape Cod.”

“It does. And I grew up here, Carrey. That’s moving water out there.” He laughed. “Look, Rob, good effort, I swear. But I’m telling you…”

“When running on thin ice, Connor, your safety lies in speed.”

“There’s no point in it.”

“There’s a lot of point in it.” But I would have found it difficult to articulate just why I wanted to do something so reckless all of a sudden. All I do know is that the impulse was overwhelming. I took a few more steps toward the water and slipped on the slick surface of the snowy embankment. I regained my footing on an exposed grassy area. The river smelled of cold and vegetation and frozen earth. The wind whipped across the ice and bit through our clothes.

Connor looked at me and wiped his eyes. “How far would you say it is to the other side?”

“A hundred feet.”

“Wrong. A hundred and twelve at this point. The whole river averages that until the bend, when you get another fifty feet.”

“So a hundred and twelve feet. That’s nothing. That’s a sprint.”

“You can’t even see the other side.”

“You
can
see the other side.
I
can see it.”

The other shore was a smudge rising out of the line of snow that was the river. The middle was what worried me—what might lie under only a few inches of snow and ice. I stood very still, holding my breath. Connor was right. I could feel the movement of the water beneath the ice, immense and relentless.

But I still started running.

I got fifteen feet across, making strong strides, snow swirling around me like a cloud. I ran blindly and it was slow going. Connor shouted out to me, swore, started following—I could hear his footfalls behind me—though he wouldn’t catch me. As I neared the dark middle of the river I allowed myself to think I’d make the other side in thirty seconds; it was a long, steeper shore there.

I fell as I tried to charge forward, away from Connor. I had only a few moments to register that the snow was wet and heavy. I’m not sure if I slipped or if my foot broke through to the river and I was thrown down. But I crashed into the ice and snow hard, banged my forehead with enough force so that my breath was choked out of me. I pushed myself back to my hands and knees and felt blood starting to flow down my face, warm against the frigid cold and wet. I shook my head like a dog and tried to rise back up to my feet. A spatter pattern appeared as if by magic, the redness of my blood shocking in all that white. The wind screamed.

And ice just collapsed around me. There was no sound.

At first I thought that I couldn’t have been swallowed into nothing so quickly. I opened my eyes to a murky light. I was not cold and I pushed my hands out in front of me like a man wandering in the dark. My feet did not touch bottom and I felt the water running through my fingers. It seemed oddly warm and quiet. I was not swimming so much as waving my arms. I kicked and my feet felt leaden.

This must have been what Wendy experienced, I thought. It wasn’t such an awful way to die; like stepping through an unexpected door. I closed my eyes and only then felt the cold, as if I was being pulled apart. I felt myself smiling. The sheer ridiculousness of my situation was not lost on me.

Connor got my hair first, yanked hard, and the pain woke me from that black doze. I shouted out in the water and it sounded like a burp of bubbles. Then he had my neck and a bunch of clothing at my shoulder. He was in the water, hunched over me, had just followed me in. I felt the rush of water on my face as he kicked us upward. We broke through, both exhaling in the frozen wind, the cold on my hands and feet and neck so awful that I howled. Connor pushed me to the side of the ice. I rested against it and the ice gave, then gave again and, horribly, again, until finally it was firm. I felt an irresistible urge to rest for just a few more minutes. Slip back through that door.

I opened my eyes and blood flowed into them. Connor was mouthing something next to me. He dragged himself halfway out of the water and then pulled me as I started to sink again, yanking my sodden sweatshirt up my chest. Then I was lying on the ice, choking and vomiting. I tried to move on my own steam. I cannot remember how he horsed me away from the hole in the river, or how we made it to the school’s embankment. I slid trying to get up to the road and hit the ground hard enough to believe that I might not get up. Then I fell back through that silent door again. My last inconceivable thought was that if I returned I’d owe Connor Payne for saving my life.

*   *   *

The dream was so real it was like going back in time and re-living it all. About a week after Wendy died, the phone rang in the house at 2:30
A.M.
I waited for one of my parents to pick up but when no one did, I hauled my ass out of bed and walked down the upstairs hallway to the phone in Wendy’s room. I was sitting there on the bed that we hadn’t even stripped yet, feeling like Wendy was going to walk in any minute and ask me what I was doing there, thinking I could still smell her.

“Hello?”

It was a cop. I could hear radios and people yelling at each other in the background. I heard a woman repeating, “I don’t know
nothing
about that. I told you people, I don’t know
nothing
about that.” It was a heavy accent from South Niccalsetti and everytime she said it, her voice rose a level, as if saying it loud enough might make them believe her.

“Is this the Robert F. Carrey residence?” The cop sounded bored.

“Yeah. That’s us.”

“We have a Mr. Robert Carrey down here. Picked him up on a DWI on the Skendal Parkway. He’s sleeping it off downstairs.”

“Robert Carrey’s my dad. You must mean
Tom
Carrey, my brother?” I looked out into the night for my dad’s truck but it wasn’t parked in front of the garage, which didn’t mean anything because he usually locked it up at night. Snow had fallen and settled over the drive like a baby’s blanket.

“He gave us this telephone number. I have his wallet and ID here. He was driving a Ford pickup, New York State tags.” He read the number and it sounded close enough.

“That’s my father. He doesn’t drink.”

“He did tonight.”

“Is he all right?”

“Driving erratically and refused to pull over when he was flashed. Didn’t resist arrest but failed the Breathalyzer. Failed big-time.”

“Where is he?”

“We charged him. His driving record was clean. Couldn’t leave him on the street. The truck’s out on the Parkway now, somebody’s been sent to tow her.”

“Did you grab the tools out of the back of that truck?”

“You going to come and get the guy or what, kid?”

“I’ll come get him.”

“Bring him some clothes. The officer who brought him in had to clear his air passages on the way in.”

“Just don’t touch him.”

“Nobody’s touching him. Precinct fifteen downtown, all right? You got that?”

“Don’t touch him.”

He hung up.

I got a Niccalsetti Senior High gym bag from my closet and went to my folks’ bedroom. My mother was curled up like a kid on her side of the bed. She’d been lying there like that for most of the week, drugged into semiconsciousness by the strong tranquilizers she had been prescribed. I listened to her breathing while I went through my father’s bureau, grabbing his freshly folded and pressed clothes in the dark. Their window shade was still open and the blue moonlight spilled over the bed. I quickly checked Tom’s room. Empty, of course. We’d hardly seen him since the funeral. I prayed he hadn’t taken my mom’s car.

Downstairs I pulled on my father’s leather site coat with the big pockets sewn on the outside for tools, the shoulders all worn down. It smelled strongly of him and coffee and sawdust and pine sap. I shoved my bare feet into my boots and walked out the front door into the cold and ice and rock salt and down to my mother’s station wagon. Tom hadn’t taken it, thank God. He’d obviously walked to the bars and wouldn’t be home for at least another hour. I drove downtown at about a hundred miles an hour, skidding on the new snow even on Main Street, and when I got to the station house it was all lit up, and there was a line of those humped Crown Vics the cops use outside, all snowed on so they looked like sleeping animals.

The place wasn’t as busy as I thought it would be. There was a desk at the top of the stairs and a bench where two guys in puffy yellow ascent jackets were sitting and looking at the wall like they were thinking about taking it down. It smelled just like the waiting room in the bus station, like bored people waiting to go from one place they hated to some other place they liked even less. The night officer saw me and came up to the desk and I was surprised to see it wasn’t like at the drugstore where the pharmacist is always a little higher than you. He looked me up and down and rubbed his face expectantly.

“I’m here to pick up Robert Carrey.”

“All right. I think I just called you. Must have woken you up.”

“Yeah.”

“You bring his clothes?” I shoved the bag on the table and remembered I hadn’t even brought him a comb or soap. The cop took the duffel bag off the counter, clutching it in a ball in his hands. “Your father’s just filling out some forms. He’s going to pay a fine and the judge will probably suspend his license later. He wants to change. I’ll come back and get you in a minute.”

He went through a door to the side that closed slowly with a heavy click. I stood in the lights for a second and then leaned against the counter. I could feel the guys on the bench watching me and when I turned around I caught the eyes of the smaller one who looked straight at me and then away, grinning hard at the wall. He was missing one of his teeth. He could have been my age, he could have been twice my age. His friend looked right through me. I shifted my feet in the brown puddle of melted slush on the floor. I was sixteen years old and I was bailing my dad out of the Niccasletti drunk tank.

More like ten minutes later, the cop came back through the door and opened the flap on the counter for me. It flopped open with a dead, dull wooden sound. “C’mon.”

I followed him into a longer hallway. There was another desk back there and a bunch of glassed-in offices. At the end of the hallway was a door that looked like part of a fence and another long bench. My father was standing in front of a metal desk alongside another cop. He was wearing the clothes I had brought him and had splashed his face with water somewhere and plastered his hair down so it looked stiff and stood up from the hard skin stretched over his scalp. His hair was dripping down his sweatshirt. The cop next to him was a big guy who wasn’t smiling. He had tightly curled, red, sheepskin hair and he was holding my father’s hand over an ink pad. He glanced up and looked me over with his shifty cop eyes.