This is the Water (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

T
his is you, standing in the shower after a workout. In the next shower stall are the woman and the boy in the wheelchair. The boy who says, “Water, water, water.” It is the same conversation they have had many times before. The boy saying, “Water, water, water,” and the woman saying, “Yes, that's right. This is the water.” This is the boy being wheeled out of the shower, his head at an odd angle to the side, his eyes slanted and almost shut, as if he's on the verge of falling asleep. This is you undressing in the locker room with the boy in his wheelchair, wondering if he is looking at you, because it looks as if through his half-closed eyes he is looking your way. He is not a small boy. He is probably a teenage boy, and you dress as quickly as possible, not wanting to be stared at. When Chris walks into the locker room to change her clothes and work out, you don't recognize her. Is it the harsh light, or does her hair look less blond? Less like bright yellow corn silk? She's also thinner, her perfect rear not so perfect anymore. The skin on her tailbone looks pronounced and red, as if just sitting on it hurts. “Hey, Chris,” you say. “How have you been?” “Good,” she says. “Would you help me put Cleo's new suit on? This is her second one. You were right, they deteriorate so quickly. The first one only lasted a few meets before it became see-through in the rear.”

This is Chris and Annie helping Cleo try on her new racing john. This is Chris in the bathroom stall in the locker room, lifting it up over Cleo's rear. This is Cleo asking if it will help if she holds her breath, and this is Chris saying that it just might. This is Mandy, the cleaning lady with the crooked teeth, pushing water into the drain with a mop, listening to Chris and Annie grunt while trying to get the racing john over Cleo's rear. This is Mandy thinking they would have better luck with lard, if they spread it over Cleo so that the suit would glide over her rear. This is Mandy shaking her head at how ridiculous it is that the parents let their daughters try to fit into such tight suits just to swim. Mandy herself doesn't swim, not wanting to fit her body into even a loose suit, a suit for old women with a flouncy skirt to hide thunder thighs and with extra support in the bra cups. She cannot imagine trying to wear the fast skin suits these girls wear. To Mandy, even the girls look strange when they walk in the suits, and she swears when she looks at the wet footprints she mops up from the tiled locker room floor that the girls are walking only on their toes, it being too painful to walk flat-footed in a suit so tight. She often hears the girls after they've raced cry out in pain when they try to pull the straps down off their red and raw shoulders in the shower. This is Mandy shaking her head, wanting to think about something else, wondering if the pickup truck she drives will make it to the lake this weekend. Her husband likes to fish and she goes with him, although she doesn't fish herself. She likes to sit in the boat and hear the call of the loons while her husband lifts and lowers the oars, rowing toward his sweet spot near a far bank.

This is Chris after the suit goes up and over Cleo's rear, slightly panting, and saying, “Come out with me tonight. Just the two of us. We'll see a movie. How about it?”

“Of course,” you say. Things will get better now. Maybe you won't think about Paul. Paul will stop kissing you. He will stop putting his hand up your shirt. Thomas will get better. He will talk to you about you. He will put down the science magazines. He will stop worrying about the lab. He will kiss your lips. Dinah, even Dinah will get better. She will stop spying on you. You will not feel as though the kitchen chair where you sit to eat your breakfast is sucking you down and the only thing stopping you are the armrests you're holding on to. You will not feel that the drain in the shower can sweep you away. You will not feel that the floorboards beneath you will split open and take you down into the ground. You will not feel that the space between your bed and the wall is really a chasm you will never climb back out of once you fall in.

“It fits you perfectly,” you say to Cleo about her suit, and it does. Her breasts are flattened by the tight fit, the straps at the shoulders have no give, and she says already the circulation around her thighs is beginning to feel cut off.

The boy in the locker room who says “water” over and over again now starts yelling. What he's saying is indecipherable. He kicks his legs in his wheelchair, making a loud banging sound. He flails his arms, and when his helper tries to stop him, he hits her in the face. “Shhh, it's all right,” she says to him, but it just makes him yell louder.

This is Mandy driving home in her pickup, turning the radio low, then lower, then finally off, trying to hear if the engine is acting up the way it has in the past, when it has sounded as if some miniature mechanic were already at work on the pipes beneath the hood and clanking them with tools, making a plink, plink, plink sound. This is the loon on the lake where Mandy likes to go with her husband, calling to her mate over the mist covering the water in the morning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T
his is you being picked up by Chris later that night. This is you thinking the boy who says “water” all the time was trying to warn you. The road is slick with a fine coat of rain, and when Chris pushes the car above seventy, she says it feels as if it's hydroplaning.

When you told Thomas that Chris was coming to pick you up to go to a movie he said, “Be careful driving, the roads are slick,” before you left. “A movie! I want to go,” your girls said, but you told them it was not a movie for young girls.

The movie ends late. The two of you talk about it on the ride home, and you do not talk about Paul or the killer. Then Chris stops at a rest stop. It's the same one Bobby Chantal and Kim were killed at.

“Maybe we shouldn't stop here,” you say.

“I'll just be a minute,” Chris says, and walks into the bathroom.

She parks far down the lot, away from the lights that are probably always turned on for safety reasons, and she leaves the keys on in the car so you can still have the heat on. You wonder why she's parked so far away. Why does she want to walk so far? But you don't have time to ask her because she is already opening the door and walking into the restroom. While she's gone you peer out through the side window. You look to see if you can find the place in the woods where, if you were a killer, you would come from to surprise a woman. The woods are dark, though. There is nothing to see close to the restroom but some newly planted trees whose trunks are no thicker than your bare arms and whose leaves in the fluorescent light look pale, and closer to yellow than green. You can feel a strong wind buffeting Chris's car from side to side as if someone were shaking it. You can hear the leaves rustling in the tops of the trees and deep inside the woods, probably skittering along and blowing up from the forest floor. Chris is gone so long you wonder if she really had to go to the bathroom. You wonder if there's a way for the killer to enter the bathroom from behind the rest stop. You wonder if he was already in the rest stop bathroom, waiting for her to come. You look at the wall and door of the rest stop. You try to tell yourself that if something terrible were taking place right now inside of the bathrooms, then the walls and the door and the grass just outside the rest stop would let you know. You would sense it from them, even though they are inanimate. The horror taking place would allow them some kind of a voice.

You jump, of course, when the driver's door swings open. For a second, you can't believe the door was left open and the wind so strong it blew it open wider. But then you see a man get into the car, and you realize that the car door was not left open and it was not the wind at all. The man, with his deeply creased forehead, looks just like the man Chris has painted so many portraits of. He looks so much like his paintings, like he has lifted himself off the canvas, that you expect to smell the smell of the oil paint. You think to scream when the killer slams his door and pushes the button that locks all the doors, but just as you open your mouth he turns around with a knife in his hand. The blade shines, a knife with a blade so big it catches light from all the way across the parking lot where a single lamp is turned on. “Don't,” he says, and you stop, a creaking sound coming out of your mouth now because you can't stop wanting to scream that quickly. He starts the car and you look toward the restrooms. Chris must still be inside them. You call to her, of course. It's raining harder now and the wind must be roaring because the tops of even the sturdy pine trees are bent over, and some maples look as though they could snap.

“Where are we going?” you ask, your voice not sounding like your voice to yourself, but tighter, wound up, as if let loose it would spiral out of control and turn into something almost visible as it shot out of your mouth. This man will not kill me, you think. I will end up killing myself from the inside out. I will die from my fear. You don't receive a reply from the killer. And why would you? Thomas has read to you from his science magazines of studies showing how animals are so different from humans that even if a lion, for example, could speak your language, you would not know what it was saying. You picture the killer as a lion. You think how you shouldn't ask him anything else again. It would be pointless. Maybe this is easier, not talking or begging for your life, because he would not understand anyway. You see you are driving on a back road made of dirt. The killer drives in the center to avoid the sides of the road that are washed out and riddled with holes and bedded with fallen dry pine needles. You think maybe he should drive toward the right side of the road instead, because what if there is an oncoming car? But of course, there will not be an oncoming car. The killer has chosen a road so untraveled he does not worry about which side of the road he is traveling on. The road is all his. There will be no headlights from the other direction. You wonder if there is someone else in the car with you and the killer. You keep hearing panting. You wish the person would stop. After a while, you realize it is you doing the panting. You are so thirsty. Would the killer understand? Surely, even a lion, if a lion could talk, would understand water. Wouldn't it? Thomas, you are sure, would disagree. Thomas would tell you about mind-mapping, how an animal wouldn't have a name for water but might have a visual map in its head of how to get to a watering hole, or it might have a name for how it feels after it drinks water, when it could be ready to chase and bring down an animal in a kill.

You remember how the killer is not one of those killers who does away with the bodies. He does not bother to cut them or bag them or burn them or bury them or sink them or hide them deep in the woods. He leaves them where he kills them, not afraid of leaving fingerprints on them because he is so careful not to leave fingerprints on them. You notice his gloves. They are leather and have stitches on their backs. They are like driving gloves and you are on a drive in the country. You try to see what there is near you in Chris's car. Maybe there is a hammer you can use to protect yourself. Maybe there is an ice scraper, even though it has not been cold enough yet for windshields to completely freeze over in the mornings. You feel with your hands between the seats. You feel what feels like a file folder. You feel papers inside and pick them up. You reach up and turn the light on in Chris's car. “Turn it off,” the killer says, without looking at you. You see how the collar on the back of his polo shirt looks new and stiff. This killer is wearing all new clothes, you think.

“Listen to this,” you say. You have no idea what's written on the papers. You start reading anyway. You read the first line: “I can tell you what she wasn't.” The killer does not ask you again to turn the overhead light off. You keep reading now. It is Paul's story of Bobby Chantal. You wonder if it was between the seats all along, or if it just materialized, or maybe you even conjured it to appear. Whatever the case, you keep reading, and the killer keeps driving.

 

She wasn't my girl. She was just a girl I met at a coffee shop. She didn't wear shorts and a tee shirt, or jeans, or slacks. She wore a nurse's uniform and nurse's shoes and she smelled, ever so slightly, of rubbing alcohol. Her fingertips were dry and her nails clipped short to protect herself, because some patients she had known had gripped her hand so hard and pressed it into a fist so tight that her own nails cut her. She showed me some half-moon scars on the palm of her hand, proving it was true.

When I asked, she said she would go on a ride with me because it was such a nice day. I didn't know then that it would be the last ride she'd ever take. She suggested the place, a rest stop up north, a good drive from where we were.

It sounds strange to say that our first and only date was at a rest stop. It was one she said Vietnam veterans came to because the view from the hill above the rest stop looked just like the hills and lush valleys of the jungle, and they were sent back in time when they saw it. They were happy to go back, she said. Being back, they didn't feel the guilt, because it was as if no time had passed and there hadn't been time to let the guilt soak in. Being back, they had to think about protecting themselves again, and for so long they had been bent on destroying themselves. She made me close my eyes and listen. I heard an owl whose screech sounded like a woman's voice. I smelled what I thought was rice cooking. When I opened my eyes she was kissing me. We were sitting on a picnic table with names carved into the top, and I laid her across those names. She wasn't shy. She guided me into her and up from her body came a smell different from the rubbing alcohol. It was more like the smell of wood smoke mixed with steam. When we were done, she smiled. “Wait for me. I've got to use the restroom,” she said.

I watched her walk down the hill easily. Those nurse's shoes have to be good for walking back and forth across those endless hospital hallways, I thought. She turned around once while she was on the path, and waved up to me. I waved back and then I looked to the hillsides. The sun was going down and the hills looked blue. The air was still warm and hot, though. A fly was intent on buzzing close to my head even though I waved it away several times, so I gave up and imagined I was one of those vets back in Nam. The owl screech this time really did sound like a woman's scream, and when I opened my eyes I expected to see some scene unfolding in front of me where I was with other soldiers in a village, and before us was a woman begging for her life.

You would keep on reading, but the killer stops the car. You look around and realize that there is nothing but trees lining the dirt road. The trees are close together, with no fields or open spaces in sight, and certainly no houses. The killer looks at you. You try not to think of all the women he has killed, but when you look at him you see the face of Bobby Chantal, the same face that you once saw in the paper after Kim's death. You also see Kim's face. “Please, let me go,” you say in a voice that is a whisper. You are so scared.

“Why, when you read so well?” he says. “You must have children. They must have loved the sound of you reading to them when they were little.” He is not looking at you any longer, he is looking down at his knife. “Did you and that friend of yours really think she could catch me?”

“No, no, I had no intention of catching you. I don't want to catch you,” you say, your voice higher now than before. What can you say to make him believe you?

“The story you are reading,” he says. “Who wrote it? Someone you know? You must answer me. I have the knife.” He puts the tip of the knife on your knee, moving it as if he's spelling out small letters or drawing short lines. He is not pressing hard enough to break the cloth of your jeans. He is pressing as if what he is doing he is doing absentmindedly.

“I know him,” you manage to say.

He nods. “Tell me more,” he says.

You are suddenly very cold. With the engine off, you can hear the wind rustle the leaves outside and whip around the car, making it move from side to side.

“There's not much to tell,” you say. “This man, it's the husband of the woman who, who owns this car. The woman who went into the bathroom at the rest stop.”

The killer nods. “I'd like for you to finish the story for me,” he says.

“You can have the story. Take the story. Just let me go. Let me get back to my children.” You hold the papers out toward him. He doesn't take them. He doesn't even look at them.

“It wouldn't be the same,” he says. “Go on reading.” He's been using the tip of his knife on your knee the whole time he's been talking.

You wonder if you could say, No, not unless you throw the knife out the window and keep driving. You want out of the woods. Even if he did let you out of the car, you'd be miles from a major road. He could probably run you down. You are a poor runner. Your legs are not long, your stride is short, your feet always sore from bunions that are red and swollen at night when you take off your shoes and socks, causing Thomas to shake his head and say how awful they look. “You know the rest of the story,” you say. “You were there.”

When he jabs the blade of his knife through the top of your leg you draw your leg up into yourself. The pain is so strong it makes you see colors. You see white and then red and then black. You hope you have blacked out, but you are still feeling the pain. You still hear his voice. It's excited now. “Read it to me,” he says. Then you see his face, sweat beginning to form, showing up first as just a shiny layer of water on his skin, and then pooling in the creases of his forehead. You try to stop the blood with your hand. Everything's running down now—tears running down your face from the pain, the blood running down the sides of your leg and soaking into your jeans, his sweat starting to drip from his temples. “Please, don't kill me,” you say, and you are reminded again of how silly it must sound, as if you were talking to a lion. You think how running now is very much out of the question. You cannot even bend your knee without the colors of pain flashing again before your eyes.

The rest of the story strikes you as not so good. The rest of the story is about Paul finding Bobby Chantal's body and turning her over and seeing her head hanging far over backward, which reminds Paul of an open Pez dispenser, the toy he had as a kid ready to spit out its candy. You bet that if Paul's own students saw that metaphor in workshop, they'd be all over it, pointing out how it was incongruous. How was anything having to do with candy supposed to be compared with the atrocity of Bobby Chantal being murdered so horribly, with so much blood on her body and on her face that in the dark it looked as if she had been burned in a fire, her skin and clothes now char? The story, you realize, cannot save your life at all. The killer doesn't like the story either. He shakes his head. “Who is this guy?” he asks when you're done reading. “Bigwig writing professor,” you say, breathy, because your leg is now throbbing and you're considering ripping your jeans to take the pressure off the wound that's swelling. “Not so good a writer, is he?” says the killer. “He must be good-looking. That's why your friend married him. Just for looks.” You shake your head. You really don't know. “Well, is he good-looking?” the killer asks. You nod.