Black Water (15 page)

it had not
happened yet, she saw herself defi
antly
running in her little white anklet socks on the prickly carpet toes twitchy and
wriggly and someone tall swooping up behind her seizing her beneath the arms
tight and secure gripping her beneath the armpits holding her safe
Who's this!
who's
this!
little
angel-bee '
Lizabeth
!

That was so. She'd come that way. That
was the way she had come.

She saw that. There was no mistake. Yet
at the same time she was explaining to a gathering of people, elders, whose faces
were indistinct through the cracked windshield that it was not what they
thought he had not abandoned her,
he'd
gone to get help for her, that man whose name she could not recall, nor could
she summon back his face though she was certain she would recognize it when she
saw it, he had gone to get help to call an ambulance that was where he'd gone,
he had not abandoned her to die in the black water.

He
had not kicked
her,
he had not fled from her. He had
not forgotten her.

Absurd pink-polished nails, now broken,
torn.
But she would fight.

A
blood-flecked froth in her nostrils, her eyes rolling back in her head
but she would fight.

...
had not abandoned her kicking free of the doomed car swimming desperate to save
his life to shore there lying exhausted vomiting the filthy water which no
power on earth could induce him to return to, rising at last (after how long,
he could not have said: a half-hour? an hour?) to flee on foot limping
ignominiously
one shoe on, one shoe off
a singsong curse
his enemies might one day chant if he could not prevent it, limping and
stumbling back along the marshland road in terror of being discovered by a
passing motorist back to the highway two miles away shivering convulsively his
breath in panicked gasps
What can I do! What can I do! God instruct me what can I
do!
the shrill mad cries of the insects and a nightmare sea of
mosquitoes whining circling his head stinging his flesh that was so tender,
swollen, his bruised forehead, his nose he believed must be broken striking
with such force against the steering wheel, and at the highway he crouched
panting like a dog crouched in hiding in the tall rushes waiting for traffic to
clear so he could run limping across the road to an outdoor telephone booth in
the parking lot of Post Beer & Wine dry-mouthed and numb in the protraction
of visceral panic, the dreamlike protraction of a horror so unspeakable and so
unacceptable it could not be contemplated but only fled, The Senator fleeing on
foot
one shoe on, one shoe off
disheveled as a drunk
and if anyone saw him?
recognized
him?
photographed
him?
and
if God Who
had so long favored him now withdrew His favor?
and
if
this ignominy was the end?
limping
gasping for breath
covered in filthy black muck the end?
and
if he would
not be redeemed one day exalted above his enemies and admirers alike?
and
if never nominated by his party after all, and if never
elected president of the United States after all?
and
if cast down in derision in shame and the mockery of his enemies? for politics
is in its essence as Adams had said
the systematic
organization of hatreds:
either you were organized or you were
not: the terror of it washing over him, sick, sick in his guts, swaying like a
drunk running across the highway though now fully sober and he would remain
sober he believed, he vowed, for the rest of his life and it would be a good
life if only God would favor him now in this hour of anguish
If You would have mercy now
wincing and doubled over
wracked with sudden pain in his bowels as somewhere close by in a municipal
park sparkling rockets shot into the night sky gaily explosive and lurid in
pinwheel colors RED WHITE and BLUE and there trailed in the rockets' wake
ooohs
!
and
ahhhs
!
of childlike admiration, a dog's sudden hysterical yipping and a young man's
furious yell "Shut it!" so it was not gunshot but simply noise of no
consequence and he had a coin in his stiff fingers like a magical talisman,
wallet snug in his pocket and money in wallet intact, in fact hardly dampened
it seemed, he was able to speak calmly requesting directorial assistance
calling the residence of St. John, Derry Road, gratified that he could remember
the name and there on the eighth ring a woman answered and in the background a
din of party voices so she had to ask him to repeat himself, with whom did he
want to speak?—telling her, this stranger who was a lifeline to him as a mere
straw would be to a man submerged in water just covering his head in a slightly
thickened, lowered voice of no discernible accent Ray Annick please, this is
Gerald

Ferguson
calling Ray Annick please and the woman went away and the din of voices and
laughter increased and finally Ray was on the line edgy, apprehensive,
"Yeah? Gerry? What is it?" knowing it must be trouble, for Ferguson
was no friend but a legal associate who would never have called Ray Annick at
such a time unless it was trouble, and The Senator said in his own voice
faltering, desperate, "Ray, it isn't Ferguson, it's me," and Ray said
dumbly,
"You?"
and The Senator said,
"It's me and I'm in bad trouble, there was an accident," and Ray
asked, with the faint falling air of a man reaching out to support himself,
"What? What accident?" and The Senator said, his voice now rising,
"I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do: that girl— she's dead,"
banging his already bruised forehead against the filthy Plexiglas wall of the
telephone booth, so there was an instant's shocked silence and then Ray said,
"Dead-----!" more an inhalation of breath than an expletive, and then
he said, quickly, "Don't tell me over the phone! Just tell me where you
are and I'll come get you," and The Senator was sobbing now, furious and
incredulous and aggrieved, "The girl was drunk, and she got emotional, she
grabbed at the wheel and the car swerved off the road and they'll say
manslaughter, they'll get me for-----" and Ray interrupted, now angrily,
with authority, "Don't! Stop! Just tell me where you are for Christ's
sake, and I'll come get you." And so The Senator did.

The
digital numerals of his Rolex still flashing: 9:55
p.m.

But
none of this Kelly Kelleher knew or could know for it seemed to her that in
fact the accident had not happened yet—for there was the shiny black Toyota
only now turning off the highway onto the desolate rutted road, the bright
romantic moon above, something low and jazzy on the radio and, yes, she knew
this was a mistake, probably a mistake, yes probably they were
lost...
but
lost
was their intention.

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

No:
at the last possible moment coughing and choking she strained to lift her torso
higher, to raise her head higher straining so that the small muscles stood out
from the sinews and bone of her left arm as her fingers gripped what she no
longer quite understood was the steering wheel but knew it was a device to save
her for there was the bubble floating above shrunken now from its original size
but it was there and she was all right hugging a startled Buffy St. John hard,
hard, vowing she loved her like a sister and was sorry she had so deliberately
shut herself off from Buffy these past two or three years telling her it was an
accident, no one to blame.

And,
yet,
had
it happened...? The car speeding
skidding along the road that seemed to have no houses, no traffic only swampy
land stretching for miles everywhere the spiky brown rushes, the swaying tall
grasses, stunted pines, so many strangely lifeless trees—
treetrunks
—
and the harsh percussive rhythm of the insects' cries in their mating as if
sensing how time accelerated, how the moon would shortly topple from the sky
turned upside down and Kelly saw without registering she saw (for she and The
Senator were talking) in a shallow ditch beside the road a broken dinette
table, the front wheel of an English racing bicycle, the headless naked body of
a flesh-pink doll... looking away from the doll not wanting to see the hole
between the shoulders like a bizarre mutilated vagina where the head had been
wrenched off.

You're an American girl you love your
life.

You love your
life,
you believe you have chosen it.

She
was drowning, but she was not going to drown. She was
strong,
she meant to put up a damned good fight.

And
there was his anxious face floating on the other side of the windshield as
again, after she'd come to think he had abandoned her, he was diving for her,
tugging at the door so violently the entire car rocked, and how tall he was,
how warmly bronze his tanned skin, taller than nearly any man Kelly had ever
seen, his wide white smile filled with teeth, those frizzy-wiry hairs on his
arms and his arms were solid, muscular, his right wrist as he'd mentioned
perceptibly thicker than his left from squash, decades of a fierce commitment
to squash, and she touched the expensive white-gold digital watch on the wrist
noting its tightness, the band pinching the flesh. Bemused it seemed by his
state-of-the-art Rolex he said something about subsequent generations having a
new concept of time seeing numerals flash and wink and fly by in contrast to the
past where you looked at the face of a clock and saw the circular route of the
hours as a measurable space to be traveled if only forward.

And his strong fingers crushing hers.
Kelly is it?—Kelly?

That
day that morning she'd been jogging on the beach amid the dunes, wind in her
hair and the sun blazing white and in the frothy surf were sandpipers with
prominently spotted breasts and long thin beaks and those delicate legs
teetering pecking in the wet sand and she'd smiled at them, their curious
scurrying movements, the oblivion of their concentration, feeling her heart
swell
I want to live, I want to live forever!

She
was bargaining yes all right she would trade her right leg, even both her legs
if they thought it necessary, the emergency rescue team, yes amputate, all
right please go ahead, please just do it she would sign the release later, she
promised not to sue.

Artie
Kelleher was the one!—for that was his character, "litigious" as the
family teased him, but Kelly would explain the circumstances, Kelly would take
the blame.

She
was swallowing the black water in quick small mouthfuls reasoning that if she
swallowed it quickly enough she would be simply drinking it, she would be all
right.

What
was that?—for her?—staring in blinking astonishment and elation at what Grandma
had sewed her, a dress in white pucker-cotton printed with tiny strawberries,
she would wear it with her new black patent-leather shoes and the white cotton
anklet socks trimmed in pink.

You
love the life you've lived because it is yours. Because that is the way you
have come.

She
saw them watching her
closely,
she had to hide her
tears, not wanting them to be upset. Not wanting them to know.

Grandma, Mommy, Daddy—I love you.

Yet
strange to her, not altogether pleasant, that they were so young. She had not
remembered them so young.

It
was risky it was the adventure of her young life very likely yes probably a
mistake but she'd leaned forward on her bare straining toes taking the kiss as
if it were her due, for she was the one, she and none other, supplanting all
the others, the young women who would have taken that kiss, from him, from that
man whose name she had forgotten, in just that way.

She
wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.

She'd
never loved any man, she was a good girl but she would love that man if that
would save her.

The
black water was splashing into her mouth, into her nostrils, there was no
avoiding it, filling her lungs, and her heart was beating in quick erratic
lurches laboring to supply oxygen to her fainting brain where she saw so
vividly jagged needles rising like stalagmites—what did it mean? Laughing
ruefully to think how many kisses she'd had tasting of beer?
wine
?
whiskey
?
cigarettes
?
marijuana
?

You
love the life you've lived, there is no other.

You
love the life you've lived, you're an American girl. You believe you have
chosen it.

And
yet: he
was
diving into the black water, diving to
the car, his fingers outspread on the cracked windshield and his hair lifting
in tendrils,
Kelly?—Kelly?
—she saw him mute and
astonished and how many minutes, hours, had passed, how long had she been in
this place she could not know for time would not move forward in this snug
black corner trapped in the twisted metal in the clamp that held her fast. But
she saw him!—there he was!—suddenly above her and swimming down to wrench open
the door at last, the very door that had trapped her, and her heart swelled
with joy and gratitude dangerously close to bursting as her eyes too strained
from their sockets she lifted her arms to him, giving herself up to him so his
strong fingers could close about her wrists and haul her up out of the black
water at last!
at
last! rising together soaring
suddenly so very easily weightless to the surface of the water and she slipped
free of his hands like a defiant child eager to swim by herself now she was
free kick-paddling with enormous relief her numbed legs restored to her as
after a bad dream and with strong rhythmic strokes of her arms in the
Australian crawl she'd been taught at school she bore herself triumphantly to
the air above at last!
at
last! her dilated eyes
seeing the splendid night sky restored to her again as if it had never been
gone and the moon gigantic so shrewdly she thought
If I can see it, I
am still alive
and that simple realization filled her with a
great serene happiness seeing too Mommy and Daddy waiting amid the tall grasses
though she was puzzled that now they were not young in fact but old, older than
she knew, their faces haggard with grief staring in horror as if they had never
seen her before in their lives, Kelly, little '
Lizabeth
,
as if they did not recognize her running there squealing in expectation in joy
in her little white anklet socks raising her arms to be lifted high kicking in
the air as the black water filled her lungs, and she died.