Living Dead Girl (17 page)

I step into the
Angel Mine
and find a life jacket that fits me beneath the captain’s chair. I turn the key that’s in the ignition and the motor comes on easily with not so much a roar but with a hum. The running lights flash on around the base of the boat and shroud the marina in an odd orange glow. I look behind me, to where Bruce Duper’s house is, and see a single light on upstairs. There is a figure in the window, like a ghost,
and for a moment I think I see it waving at me, but it is too far away and much too dark. I raise my hand up and wave back anyway, in case whoever it is can see me, or in case it is a ghost and it needs confirmation that I am haunted.

It has not always been the people I have loved who have haunted me—there have been the people I have never known who have also crept into the small spaces. From that day when I told my mother that I was afraid of myself, the apparition of who I could have been has visited me, has sat on the edge of the bed and snickered.
What you could have done
, it says.
The people you could have saved!

I’ve tried to define that failure in me that my mother saw, that difference that caused me to be here, now, on this boat, cutting across a blackened lake on the 22nd day of September. I stare up into the sky and see the moon shining dully through the clouds. It will be the day of the Autumnal Equinox when the sun rises in a few hours, and I know that I will be defined not by what the sun finds, but by what I must locate, what I must discover.

I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out the medication Dr. Lecocq gave me in jail. The pill is small and round, its edges perfected by a machine somewhere in the Midwest, and I swallow it without
any water. This is not the first time I’ve taken medication. The truth is that I never should have stopped, should never have deemed myself healthy. Dr. Loomis put me on Ritalin when I was twelve and again when I was seventeen, and maybe it made me calmer, less afraid, but it never was able to solve the riddles I’ve had—was never able to fill in the black spots of time that I’d lose. This new medication, however, is starting to do the trick again, causing the moments in my life that I’ve stored away to reappear, to come dripping into my mind.

Bruce’s boat runs faster than our old Whaler used to, seems to understand the way the small waves curl, and slides over them with something less than patience. Before I am completely aware, I see that I’m already halfway home. I lay back on the throttle and the boat slows to a crawl. The water looks glassy and sharp. I think about the days Molly and I spent out on the water, the nights we made love, actually created love, in the dank cabin of the Whaler. We would lie there, our bodies intertwined in the dark, listening to nature.

“How do you think we came from the sea?” Molly said once. Her head was on my chest and we hadn’t spoken yet, hadn’t bothered to ruin the silence.

“It’s a long process,” I said. “Single cell life to, you
know, the guy you see at Safeway, was complicated by a billion factors. I think probably it all came down to need. Food, shelter, sex, a combination of everything.” I ran my fingers through Molly’s hair. She hummed softly, like a cat.

“But why?” she said. “Why leave something so beautiful for something so ugly, so malformed, so dangerous? It doesn’t make sense to me, to leave the kind serenity of the water.”

“There are predators everywhere,” I said.

Molly laughed then, this was before she was really sick, and sat up. “This whole thing,” she said, “this whole,
Earth
, thing—you know what I mean? This whole planet is here for what? To serve us? To serve you and me and our unborn babies? Do you think that is why it’s here?”

“I think we’re bacteria on a big rock,” I said.

“That’s not enough of an answer. What if one of your students raises her hand and says, ‘Uh, um, Mr. Luden, could you explain to me why we’re all here and why we exist and why this class is important?’ That bacteria answer isn’t going to fly,
Doctor
.”

“Why is it always a ‘her’ in the hypothetical scenarios?”

“Just answer the question.”

Molly put her head back onto my chest and for a
long time I thought about this question of humanity. I thought about why I was here, why Molly and I were together, why we wanted to populate the world with our progeny, and all I knew was that I’d been trying to answer these questions for my entire life.

“I can’t just give you an answer,” I said. “Philosophers and scientists and preachers and every crazy man on the street has been trying to answer that question since the beginning of time. It’s like trying to define love. All I know is that I was put here to love you, to love whatever children we have, to love our life, to make some kind of difference. And maybe I’ll succeed and maybe I’ll fail, but at least I would have tried, right? Right? Molly?”

It was useless. She was fast asleep.

Now, in the middle of the lake, I think that I should have woken her, should have told her that none of the philosophy mattered. None of the history mattered. All that was important was that we had one another. We could’ve figured out the rest some other night. In the end, I guess I never told Molly how I felt, and that was my fault. It never hurt to tell the truth, no matter how many times I’d lied.

I was here three weeks ago.

I was here two months ago.

I was here a year ago.

I’ve never been far enough away from Molly. I’ve never been close enough to Molly.

I fire the throttle back up and the boat jumps forward.

I am never leaving here.

Chapter 14

T
he truth: I drove to Granite Lake three weeks ago. I had made the drive several times before, winding through the center of Washington State like a coil, stopping in Ellensburg to think about what I was doing, to consider my options. Once getting as far as Chelan, and then turning around, only to make the same trip the next day.

I’d park my rental car at Morgan’s Landing and hike through the woods until I was mere feet from my home. I’d hunker down in the bushes and watch Molly, imagining the cadence of her voice as she talked herself through a painting, smelling her skin on the clothes and towels she hung outside to dry, picking up her litter as I circled the house. And there were times, I will admit, that I found myself staring into
the windows of our home very late at night, imagining myself beneath the sheets where Molly slept.

This time, I knew I would not pause along the road, knew I would not merely sit in the woods and watch our cabin from afar. I’d been invited to celebrate our survival, our defeat, our marriage, our losses. It was the anniversary of Katrina’s death.

“Don’t let Bruce know you’re coming,” Molly whispered. She was calling from inside Bruce’s house. “Just drive around the lake.”

“I couldn’t get a flight, so I’m driving up. I have to come along the backside anyway,” I said. “But why does it matter what Bruce thinks?”

“It’s confusing,” she said. “I don’t think he’d approve of you coming out here after all that has happened.”

“I don’t much care about his opinion.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t suppose you would. But I have to live here, Paul. That means I have to make concessions.”

“You don’t have to live there. You could come back to me.” I believed then as I believe now that our chances to be together were not predicated on any primitive idea of time, that we’d have eternity to work out the beginning and the end of our relationship. That all the tiny, meaningless, hurtful things we’d said to each other over the years could be smoothed over like
marble, until all the rough edges of our life were stains beneath the surface.

“Paul,” she said, her voice still just a whisper, “my life has changed for the better without you. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I feel I should be honest.”

“Yes,” I said, and it was as though time had melted in my hand. “I understand how that could happen. I won’t say anything to anyone about coming there, if that makes you feel better. I’ll put it away in a box and hide it under my bed.”

“That’s fine,” she said, though I hoped I would hear her laugh. It had been so long since I’d heard her unrestrained. “When you get here, we’ll figure it all out, right? We’ll get everything sorted out and it will be a happy day for both of us.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“It will be, Paul,” she said and then, almost as an after thought, “and we’ll be together and that will be happy, too. It will be our own personal day of atonement.”

“I believe that,” I said, but she’d already hung up.

We’d made promises to each other before and had seemingly come up short each time. But, and I knew this with certainty, this would be different. We’d promised to get through our lives without each other,
without our daughter, and we’d succeeded in some way, had managed to live and breathe and we were going to keep on.

I reached the lake at just past eight o’clock on the anniversary of my daughter’s death, and for a long time I just drove, not hoping to see anything or feel anything, but to remember what it was like to be
normal
, to not have celebrations about terrible things. I parked my rented Taurus a half-mile from our house almost from habit and walked through the trees and the shrubs, listening to the forest. And what I remembered about being normal was that I would never have done what I was doing. I’d be in bed, my body curled against Molly’s, my baby asleep in the other room. My biggest concerns would be the lesson plan for my class, the grocery list, the oil change my car needed.

Before I went back to the car, I made a pact with myself that I would never come back to this lake, would stop forcing myself to live in a state of suspended sorrow for a child I couldn’t save and a wife I never wanted to lose. I would learn to love Ginny as I knew she had begun to love me.

But now, as I slow Bruce Duper’s boat to a crawl a hundred yards from our dock, I understand that I was being foolish, that I was sick, that I am sick, that the only assurances I could make then was that my life had
been unpredictable and would continue to be so. I’d made promises that I could never keep again.

I cut the engine and the boat coasts quietly into the slip, cutting through the water like a whisper, a memory, a shadow. I tie her in and jump out. Our old Whaler is sitting just as I found it, the Johnson engine shiny and new.

Of course it wasn’t a locksmith.

Molly probably mentioned to Bruce that the front door kept blowing open, that the latch was old and rusted, and couldn’t he help her out? Couldn’t he come out one afternoon and take a look at it?

Of course he could.

Molly didn’t love Bruce Duper, couldn’t have found him attractive, couldn’t have needed him for anything but convenience.

I’m not thinking straight.

She told me. She told me everything.

“Do you remember the day we bought this pile of junk?” I asked. I was standing on the dock, where I am now, staring at the boat, remembering our life on it. The boat had been waxed and the Evinrude looked clean. “How do you keep it running? I mean, I just don’t see you crawling around the engine. Do you have somebody who takes care of the old girl?”

“Paul,” she said, “let’s not do this now. It’s late and
we’re both tired and this isn’t how I want to start everything out.”

“Then answer the question.”

She sighed, and then a shiver went through her. “It’s Bruce, okay? Does that make you happy? Does that satisfy you?”

“Why would he wax your boat?” I said. “Why would a friend do something like that? Friends don’t do things like that, Molly. Let’s get real.”

“Please, Paul,” she said.

“Do you love him, is that it?” Molly started walking back up to the house. “I’m talking to you,” I said. Molly stopped and then just grinned at me, as if I’d said something funny.

“Why did you even come here?”

“For Katrina,” I said.

“Then let’s not argue about a boat, okay?” She was still grinning. I wanted to run down the length of the dock and sweep her into my arms, place kisses over her mouth, her neck, down her chest and stomach. I wanted to dissolve into her, until we were one person.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I GO AROUND
back and enter the cabin through the kitchen again, just as I did when Ginny and I first got here a few days ago. The kitchen is clean now and I
see that Ginny has scrubbed the sink, mopped the floors, placed fresh flowers in the vase on the table. Stress causes Ginny to clean. When we first began dating, when she was afraid I would be fired for seeing her, when her parents were threatening to cut her off, Ginny came to my apartment and scoured every wall, vacuumed every floor, washed every article of my clothing.

I sit down at the table, and I try to concentrate, try to remember the tricks Dr. Loomis taught me back when I was a child. He told me to focus on the things that troubled me. He told me to break them down into tiny fragments, small enough to fit on the head of the pin, he said, and then separate them. “Imagine your fears are particles of dust,” he said. “Pinpoint each one individually and narrow your mind onto that minuscule piece. And then, Paul, then you can examine it. It is so small it cannot hurt you.”

I’m trying to reorder things. I’m trying to focus on myself, on my past without getting trampled up into it. I’m trying not to be afraid.

We are sitting at the kitchen table. It is still dark outside. Molly says to me, “Do you really believe that these were other children?”

“I do.”

“And they are ours?”

“Of course.”

“But how?”

“Creation is an exact science,” I say. “It was meant to be. It was our destiny. These are our two others, Molly.”

“I can’t believe that,” she says.

No. That isn’t how it happened. Molly never talked like that. It happened like this: I sat down at the kitchen table while Molly filled a kettle with water to boil for tea. I hadn’t been inside our home for over a year, hadn’t been this close to Molly for even longer.

“How often do you think of her?” Molly said. She was standing in front of the stovetop watching the blue flames beneath the kettle.