Breathing Water

LAKE GORMLAITH, VERMONT
August 1991

===Blue 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, wadding 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 arms 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 walked through the darkness and into the kitchen where I set the suitcase by the back door. When I returned 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 towards the door. He pushes it open and let it slam behind him. He grabs awkwardly 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 around 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 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.