Black Water (14 page)

To avoid the appearance of impropriety.
The appearance of extramarital scandal.

It's
a changed world from the one you knew, Mother. I wish you would accept that.

I
wish you would let me alone!

Carrying
a beer as she'd passed through the kitchen where Ray Annick was on the
telephone speaking in a low, angry voice, the words
asshole, fuck,
fucking
punctuating his customarily fastidious speech, Kelly was
startled for here was a man so unlike the genial smiling man romantically
attentive to Buffy St. John all that day, so unlike the man courteous and
sweetly attentive to Kelly Kelleher, and she saw that his eyes (which were
puffy, glazed—he'd been drinking all afternoon and the tennis games had humbled
him) followed her as she passed a few yards from him, as a cat's eyes follow
movement with an instinctive impersonal predatory interest; yet, as soon as she
passed beyond his immediate field of vision he ceased to see her, ceased to
register her existence.

"Look,
I fucking
told
you—we'll take this up on Monday.
For Christ's sake!"

Kelly Kelleher teetering on one leg,
swiftly changing out of her white spandex swimsuit.
Purchased at
Lord &
Taylor, midsummer sale, the
previous Saturday.

Swiftly
changing into a summer knit shift, pale lemony stripes, cut up high on the
shoulders revealing her lovely smooth bare shoulders, that shoulder, that
tingling area of skin, he'd touched with his tongue.

Had
that really happened, Kelly Kelleher wondered.

Would
it happen
again.
Again.

You love your life because it's yours.

The wind in the tall broom-headed
rushes, those rushes that looked so like human figures.
Blond, swaying.
At the periphery of
vision.

The
wind, the cold easterly wind off the

Atlantic.
Shivering rippling water like pale flame striking the beach,
pounding the beach.
Buffy said that the highest dunes they were looking
at were seventy feet high, and how weird they were, the dunes where the pitch
pines can't keep them from migrating, roaming loose over the Island like actual
waves of the ocean with their own crests and troughs and it's been measured
that they move west to east at the rate of between ten and fifteen feet a year,
over Derry Road so it has to be cleaned off, right through the snow fences and
over the beach grass—"It's beautiful here but, you know," shivering,
wincing, "—it has nothing to do with human wishes."

And
now it was short choppy waves she was hearing against the slanted roof of this
room—snug and safe beneath the covers, Grandma's crocheted quilt with the
pandas around the border.

You love your life. You're ready.

She
had not wanted to say yes. But she'd wanted to say yes.

Yes
to the ferry, to Boothbay Harbor. The Boothbay Marriott, it was.

Beyond
Boothbay, beyond the fifth of July
... ?

Kelly
Kelleher would make the man love her. She knew how.

Surprising
herself
with this thought, and its vehemence.
You're ready.

In the car, she'd turned the radio
dial, heard the reedy synthesized music all sound-tissue, no skeleton.
How touching, The Senator a man of fifty-five felt such nostalgia for a youth
so long ago!

Saying
yes though she'd seen how The Senator had been drinking. At first he'd been
prudent drinking white wine, Perrier water, low-calorie beer then he'd switched
to the stronger stuff, he and Ray Annick: the two older men at the party.

Older men.
Yes and they did think of themselves that way, you could tell.

It
was the Fourth of July. A meaningless holiday now but one Americans all
celebrate, or almost all Americans celebrate.
Rockets' red
glare, bombs bursting in air.

Which
is how you know, isn't it—the flag is still there.

Turning
onto the unpaved road, impatient, exuberant, the Toyota skidding in the sandy
ruts but under control, The Senator was a practiced driver, quite enjoying the
drive, the very impatience impelling it, the haste of their flight. Perhaps
lost
was their intention?

After
a quick drink or two Kelly Kelleher had confessed to The Senator that she'd
written her senior honors thesis on him at Brown, and instead of being annoyed,
or embarrassed, or bored, The Senator had beamed with pleasure.

"You
don't say! Why—I hope it was worth it!"

"Of
course it was worth it, Senator."

They
talked, they were talking animatedly, and others listened, Kelly Kelleher and
The Senator,
taken with each other
as the phrase goes.
Kelly heard herself tell The Senator what it was most about his ideas that
excited her: his proposal to establish neighborhood liaison offices, especially
in impoverished urban areas, so that citizens could communicate more directly
with their elected officials; his proposals for day-care centers, free medical
facilities, remedial education program; his support of the arts, community
theater in particular. Passionately Kelly Kelleher spoke, and, with the
mesmerized air of one staring, not at an individual, but at a vast audience,
passionately The Senator listened.
Had his words ever sounded
quite so good to him, so reasonable and convincing?—so melodic, lyric,
inspired?
Kelly was reminded irreverently of a cynicism of Charles de
Gaulle's frequently quoted by Carl Spader:
Since a politician
never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Kelly
broke off suddenly, self-consciously. "Senator, I'm sorry—you must have
heard this sort of thing thousands of times."

And
The Senator said, courteously, altogether seriously, "Yes, Kelly,
perhaps—but never from
you."

In the near distance, at a neighbor's,
the rackety noise of firecrackers.
High overhead the flapping of the St. John family's shimmering American flag.

As the black water filled her lungs,
and she died.

No:
it was time for the feast: borne by the wind a delicious smell of grilling meat
over which Ray Annick in a comical cook's hat and apron presided, swaying-drunk
but funnily capable: slabs of marinated tuna, chicken pieces swabbed with
Tex-Mex sauce, raw red patties of ground sirloin the size of pancakes. Corn on
the cob, buckets of potato salad and coleslaw and bean salad and curried rice,
quarts of Haagen-Dazs passed around with spoons. What appetite they had,
especially the younger men! The Senator too ate ravenously, yet fastidiously,
wiping his mouth with a paper napkin after nearly every bite.

Kelly,
though so hungry she was lightheaded, shaky, found it difficult to eat. She
raised her fork to her mouth,
then
lowered it again.
Though there were numerous others among Buffy's guests who would have liked to
speak with The Senator, The Senator insisted upon focusing his attention upon
Kelly Kelleher; as if, as in the most improbable of fairy tales, the man had
made this impromptu trip to Grayling Island expressly to see
her.

Heat
stung pleasurably in Kelly Kelleher's cheeks. It crossed her mind that Carl
Spader would be most impressed, yes and frankly jealous, to hear about this
meeting.

The
Senator winced as a string of firecrackers exploded next door.

Kelly
thought
,
He fears being shot— assassination.

What
a novelty, to be so public a figure one fears
being assassinated!

The
Senator said, "I really don't like the Fourth of July, I guess. Since I
was a little boy I've associated it with the turning point of summer. Half
through,
and now moving toward fall." He spoke with a
curious bemused melancholy air, wiping his mouth. There was catsup on his
napkin like smears of lipstick.

Kelly
said, "You must have to do a lot of official things, on holidays, don't
you?—most of the time? Give speeches, accept awards—"

The
Senator shrugged indifferently. "It's a lonely life, hearing your own
voice in your ears so much."

"Lonely!"
Kelly laughed.

But
The Senator was saying, speaking quickly as if confiding in her, and not
wanting her to interrupt, "It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral
thing—how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they
aren't genuine, but because they
are
;
because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'—and so
damned little in the world has changed because of them." He paused, taking
a large swallow of his drink. The tension in his jaws did in fact suggest
anger. "You hate yourself for your putative 'celebrity': for the very
reason others adore you."

And
this too flattered Kelly Kelleher enormously for it seemed, didn't it, that, in
speaking of such things, of such
others
,
The Senator was excluding Kelly Kelleher from censure.

He
was separated from his
wife,
his children were
grown—her age, at least. Where was the harm?

She
was explaining to her parents that they had only kissed, a single time. Where
was the harm?

G-----
had
given her an infection of the genital-urinary tract but it was not one of the
serious infections, it was not one of the unspeakable infections, it had
disappeared months ago thanks to an antibiotic regimen. Where was the harm?

That
morning, she'd bathed luxuriously in
a peppermint
-green
sudsy water, carbonated bath tablets, "
ActiBath
,"
which Buffy had insisted she try.

They'd
driven to town, to Grayling Harbor on the western side of the island, to stock
up for the party. Harbor Liquor,
The
Fish Mart, Tina
Maria Gourmet Foods, La
Boulangerie
. In front of La
Boulangerie
a shiny new Ford jeep was parked and on its
rear bumper was the sticker
there
are no pockets in a shroud.

Distractedly,
Buffy told Kelly as they were emerging from one or another of the stores, laden
with expensive purchases, "
Y'know
—I don't know
anyone who has died of AIDS since January first. I just realized."

Driving
back to the cottage Buffy mentioned casually that Ray Annick had invited The
Senator up for the party. But it wasn't the first time Ray had invited the
man—"I don't expect him, really.
I
don't."

"Here?
He's invited here?" Kelly asked.

"Yes,
but I'd die if he showed up."

Also
for the carbonated bubble-bath Buffy had pressed upon Kelly a new Spirit Music
CD, "Dolphin Dreams." The sound was a soothing blend of dolphin song
and choral voices, for the reduction of stress; but Kelly had not played it.

They'd
missed the 7:30
p.m
. ferry but they were not going to miss the 8:20
p.m
.
ferry. The Senator seemed annoyed, impatient.
Staring at his
watch, which was a digital watch, the numerals flashing like nerve tics.
During their final hour at the party The Senator's mood shifted. He was not so
coherent in his speech as he'd been, nor so fluent with repartee; he regarded
Kelly Kelleher with that look familiar to her yet indefinable—a masculine
proprietary look, edged with anxiety, indignation.

As
they were leaving The Senator asked Kelly did she want one for the road, and
Kelly said no, and The Senator said, would she take one for him, please?—apart
from his own, that is, which he was carrying. At first Kelly thought he might
be joking, but he wasn't: he had a newly freshened vodka-and-tonic in hand, and
he wanted Kelly to bring a second. Kelly hesitated, but only for a moment.

Buffy
caught up with Kelly in the driveway, squeezed her hand, whispered in her ear,
"Call me, sweetie!
Anytime tomorrow."

Meaning
that it had not happened yet for there stood Buffy in the driveway staring
after them her hand raised in a wan farewell.