The Rope: An Anna Pigeon Novel (30 page)

In Jenny’s fist was the front of Anna’s shirt. When Anna had drawn her arms around her, Jenny took a fistful of cotton to fortify an embrace she knew was going to get more difficult to maintain as the minutes clicked by. It wasn’t strength or courage that kept her holding tightly to her friend but the inability to unclench her fingers.

Too confused to know which way was up, Jenny waited, unafraid, in limbo. The air she’d drawn in as they sank carried her back to the surface. Her lungs sucked in the oxygen greedily. Jenny was oddly indifferent, as if the bellows pumped in a body not her own.

She had thought Anna was completely submerged. She wasn’t. Her chest was rising and falling under Jenny’s knuckles. Had she been able, she would have wrapped the smaller woman in her arms. When she could no longer move her legs sufficiently to keep them afloat, she promised herself, that’s what she would do.

Wild and racing, lasers slashed the slot walls, cutting out ribbons of darkness that fell into the darker waters. Hypothermia was disorienting, Jenny knew that. Hallucinations hadn’t been mentioned. Not that it meant anything. Not that Jenny could hold on to the thought or care.

A deep, ragged voice jangled through the stillness. “Anna! Can you hear me? Anna! Jenny! Answer me!”

The shouting seemed part of the death Jenny and Anna were sharing. When it penetrated the area of her brain still operable, and she realized the cavalry had finally arrived, Jenny tried to call out. Her jaws would not open, not at all, not one millimeter.

A splash. The cavalry had dived in.

Hope generated enough strength that Jenny kicked, keeping them above water a few more seconds. A blow landed on her upturned face. Bone and muscles, paralyzed with cold, clanged a death knell and she sank like a stone, Anna’s shirt still caught in her fingers.

Her hair snagged on something; there was no pain, just pressure as she was dragged. Jenny’s face came clear of the water. Her head rested on something warm; above her were stars. Slow as a dream, she began drifting on her back. An arm was across her chest. A lifeguard had jumped into the pool. Rescue had come.
Salvation,
she wanted to tell Anna.

Though her mind did not remember the lifesaving moves, her body did. From a source not her own, strength flowed into her arm, enough so that she could draw Anna onto her breast. She hoped Anna’s nose and mouth were above water, and that there were not now three dead children in the deep end.

Stars slowed, then stopped. No. She had slowed, then stopped.

“Okay, Jenny, this is going to be a bit crude, but you’re about one angle from an ice cube. I’m putting a rope around you.”

A light shone down from above. A beam like from the star to the baby Jesus in his cradle. In its vague glow she watched a bright yellow rope in dark brown hands pass under her arms and across her back.

“I’m going to tie this off, okay? When it’s tied, I’ll take Anna. Don’t you worry. Hey, guy! Throw me down the PFD.”

“Martin.”

“Yeah, Martin. There’s two there by the rock. Throw one down.” Warm hands threaded the rope over her rib cage, pushing it between her and Anna. Jenny tried to take it and make it go around both of them, but the hand that wasn’t clenched in Anna’s shirtfront was of no more use than a club.

The lifeguard who was saving them kept on talking. The words were too quick to catch, but the tone was comforting. Then he began pulling at Anna, digging at Jenny’s fingers to free them from the shirt. Anna was being taken from her arms. Jenny fought in her mind, screamed in her mind. Her hands let go without her permission, her arms fell away, traitors.

“It’s okay, Jenny. Don’t fight me.” It was wrong to fight the lifeguard. Jenny used to know that. She watched him buckle Anna into an orange Mae West. Then the lifeguard went away and left them in the cold water. Anna bobbed gently out of the erratic circle of light. Jenny waited to slide under. The rope didn’t let it happen.

“Jim. Hallelujah,” burbled up from somewhere. “Tie off that second line and throw it to me.”

Time passed. Jenny’s eyes closed, her mind went away. Grunting, like that of a pig in labor, enticed her to open them again. Nothing remained of her but eyes and mind. Her body was a quiet invisible thing she could not feel. Perhaps she was dead and watched, as spirits are said to, hovering above the operating table while the body dies, only to swoop back down when the body is shocked back to life.

Anna, clownish in the orange life vest and white face, bobbed back into the spotlight.
Send in the clowns
 … Jenny heard Joni singing. No. Not Joni. It was from a Broadway musical.

Anna would like that.

As if Jenny’s thought were her cue, Anna floated across the watery stage until she bumped up against the rock. There she struggled, not like a woman, but like a fish on a line, then up she went.
Like Lazarus from the tomb,
Jenny’s mind said. Like an unlucky trout from a pool, like a woman lynched by a mob. And up. And gone.

Now only she and two corpses remained in the deep end, said the mind that had been Jenny’s, herself and the dead men who had tricked them into going for a swim in Ted Bundy’s backyard pool.

The sow in labor increased her grunting.

Jenny’s old body sent a message that the world was changing, and not for the better. The lungs she’d been using were squeezed so tightly air had little space for going in or coming out. Her head fell forward until she could see the faint light of the night sky on her breasts. They’d bobbed up out of the inky briny deeps.
Good breasts
.
Buoyant boobs.

In a scattering of male voices, grunting redoubled. Jenny watched with disinterest as her belly and thighs, knees and feet rose out of the black water.

Hands closed on her upper arms, “Gently, gently,” someone was saying. “Very gently. We don’t want to shock her into a worse state. Easy does it. Got her? Okay, on three. One, two, three.” Jenny levitated, flying upward like magic; then strong arms were supporting her and hard light was striping across the rock, illuminating three pairs of feet, one in boat shoes, one bare, one in flip-flops.

“Jim?” Jenny asked.

“It’s Jim. I’m here. Let’s get you warm, okay? Don’t you worry about anything, Jenny. We’re going to warm you right up.”

“Anna.” Jenny tried to look around. Jim’s arms not only supported but imprisoned her.

“Anna’s fine,” Jim said. “That burrito over there is her.” He turned his body so Jenny could see what he was talking about.

Anna Pigeon was wrapped up in silver blankets. Nothing showed but her face. Jenny took comfort in the face. Had Anna been dead, the face would have been covered.

“Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” Jim said.

“What clothes?” another man asked.

Regis. It was Regis. “Hey,” Jenny whispered.

“Martin, thanks a million. We’re going to need to get the boats out of here…”

“No problem, man. I’m moving the Jet Ski. Let me know how they do, okay?” The flip-flops flip-flopped out of the light.

Strong, warm, flesh-and-blood arms and warm night air restored Jenny sufficiently that she progressed from feeling nothing to shivering violently. Jim sat her down on a rock, unhooked her bra, and slid it off her arms. With a pair of scissors from his orange emergency medical pack he cut off her panties.

“A shame,” said Regis. “Nice outfit, Jenny.” She tried for a smile. Chattering teeth turned it into a grimace. Handling her as if she were made of glass, Jim wrapped her in a silver blanket designed to maximize body heat, then sat her on his lap, his arms around her while Regis lifted Anna and carried her to his speedboat.

“Hot drinks to come,” Jim promised. “Can you walk? I won’t let go of you.”

Jenny found she could walk, after a fashion, and with the support of Jim’s beefy left arm around her waist. Moving slowly, trailing silver like a fairy—or a snail—they got to the bottom of the giant steps, across her boat, still nosed in at the blockage, and into Regis’s red-red cigarette boat rafted off its stern. Jim’s patrol boat was third in line.

Anna, in her cocoon, was lying on the padded bench that spanned the stern of Regis’s boat. Jim settled Jenny next to her. Carefully lifting Anna’s head, he pillowed it on Jenny’s thigh. “Keep each other warm,” he said and, “Gently, gently.”

The trip back to Dangling Rope was a blur. Jenny held Anna, trying her best to protect her from jarring and wind. As Regis slowed at the
NO WAKE
sign marking the Rope’s docking area, Anna struggled to a sitting position, fighting to free herself from the bundling of the heat blanket. Jenny helped her up but pulled the blanket back around her bare shoulders. “Your skin is still cold to the touch,” she said.

“I’m hot,” Anna said.

“No, you’re not. You just feel hot.”

For a wonder Anna didn’t fight her. Jim Levitt pulled his boat in beside the red speedboat. Between him and Regis, the women were handed to the dock. Anna was buckled into the first ATV, and Regis drove it down the quay. Jim helped Jenny into the passenger side of the second and slid behind the wheel.

The ten feet from the ATVs to the duplex Anna managed on her own two feet, though Regis helped her keep her balance. Anna had progressed from numb to shivering, and both she and Jenny tottered like fragile crones afraid of slipping and falling.

Regis argued they should be taken to the hospital in Wahweap. Jim said no, the long boat ride would do more harm than the hospital would do good. He left the swamp cooler off and opened the door to the porch so warm night air could come into the duplex. Jenny knew she should be helping but couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do, so she held on to Anna as Jim escorted them to her room.

While Jenny sat on the edge of her bed watching, he helped Anna into a long-sleeved flannel shirt, a pair of her soft sweatpants, and socks. A man stripping her, a man manipulating her naked body: Jenny wanted to tell her it was okay, it wasn’t like the jar. Anna kept her eyes on Jenny’s face. “He’s taking the thorn out of my paw,” she said, and Jenny relaxed.

The cuts on Anna’s thigh were drained of color, the cold and blood aging them into scars at least until the blood returned. Jim saw them and looked over at Jenny, brows raised in a question.

She pretended she didn’t notice. Once Jim had settled Anna beneath the covers, sitting, back against the wall, he helped Jenny to put on her flannel pajamas and socks, then tucked her in beside Anna.

It was then Jenny remembered. “Jim, there are dead bodies where we were. Two. That’s why I went in. Men.”

“Men. Two. Dead,” Anna whispered a confirmation.

“You sure they were dead?” Jim asked Jenny, his voice low and pleasant.
Gently, gently.

“Dead. Drowned probably, but way dead,” she said.

“I’ll deal with it. You just work on getting warm.”

Regis was standing in the door to the room holding mugs of warm weak tea with sugar. His face twitched at the news of the bodies. Tea slopped onto the floor.

“What’s this about bodies?” he asked in a strangled voice.

“Later,” Jim said warningly and left the room. Jenny heard him calling someone on the radio. A few minutes later he returned with four chemical heat packs and tucked them to either side of her and Anna’s stomachs.

They were finishing their second mugs of tea when a decidedly disgruntled Bethy arrived to insist Regis come home. He looked at his wet-hen spouse with shark eyes, carp eyes, eyes flat and dead.

Jenny shook off the mood that brought those images to mind. Anna was nodding off. Jenny yawned widely. Jim tucked the covers around them as if they were children, turned off the light, and left. Anna, no longer shivering, pressed close. Jenny curled around her back, spooning her with living, healing warmth.

Anna fell asleep first snoring softly, a sound as amiable as the purr of a cat.

For a while Jenny lay awake, just existing in the warmth and the flannel sheets.

As first dates went, this wasn’t the worst she’d had.

THIRTY-SIX

A sound, a shift of the light, or the pressure of another mind awakened Anna. Someone was in the room. When she’d been with Zach she had slept the sleep of the innocent—or the dead. Sirens, subway trains, shrieking couples in the next-door apartment: Nothing woke her. Being able to sleep through anything had been a standing joke. “Was there war?” “Yes, you must have slept through it.” “Thanksgiving Day parade?” “Slept through it.”

In her new incarnation, if a tree fell in the forest, and there was no one there to hear it, it woke her. If God saw every little sparrow that fell, the thump of their tiny bodies on the earth woke her.

Jenny had risen early. Though she’d tried to be quiet, it woke Anna. The shower, the toilet flushing, the screen door opening and closing, woke her. Someone alien was in the room. It woke her.

On her side, covers thrown off, knees pulled up, arms hugging the pillow, Anna lay with her face to the wall, her back to the door. Another thing she would move to the category of things she used to do.

“Who is in here?” she asked without moving. Rolling over in the tangle of tossed covers would expose her soft white underbelly. A foot shifted on the dingy worn carpet. Quick as a cat, Anna sat up, back against the wall, hands up to ward off a blow.

Bethy was standing next to the bed, leaning over slightly as if she’d been interrupted in the act of kissing a child good night. She was dressed for work in NPS uniform shorts and short-sleeved shirt. Fabric pulled across her breasts, and the tailored shirt gapped between the buttons. Her face was one no child should see before going to sleep, suffused with blood and anger.

“What do you want?” Anna asked.

“Stay. Away. From.
My.
Husband.” She made each word separate and distinct, like commands to a bad dog.

“I don’t have designs on Regis,” Anna said truthfully. As alarming as this woman-scorned apparition was, it simply could not compete with the closet full of horrors Anna’d accrued since leaving New York for Page, Arizona. She felt no fear, merely confusion and annoyance.

“Oh. Right. You’re queer now. I forgot.” Bethy’s voice dipped and rose in a parody of high-school-girl sarcasm. “This is Jenny’s room, isn’t it? You’re one of those lesbo dykes like Jenny Gorman. A carpet sweeper.”