The Seduction of Water (4 page)

“I’d better catch that train,” he says.

“Yes,” I say, relieved. I think. “I’ll see you next Thursday.”

“Monday,” he corrects me before turning away, “Remember, I’m in your class at Grace now.”

I nod, but he’s already turned around. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he’s really too advanced for that class. He should go into the next level of composition class—I could easily recommend him for it—but I say nothing. I don’t teach the next level.

I watch him walk east on Jane and then turn north on Washington. I think of my father standing in the back drive of the hotel, seeing important guests and dignitaries off in their taxis. He’d always stand and wait until the taxi rounded the bend and disappeared behind the wall of pines that guarded the back of the hotel. When I asked him why he did that, if it was to be polite, he laughed at me. “No,” he told me, “I just like to make sure they’re really gone.”

Chapter Four

Aidan’s fairy tale, as I might have guessed, is an enchanted-prince story. He might have chosen from dozens, all with the same basic plot. A young man of royal lineage and sterling qualities is trapped in a loathsome disguise: a toad, a bear, a beast.
An ex-con.
The princess must see through this surface ugliness to the prince inside to save him and restore him to his true nature and his birthright—prince of all the realm. “Beauty and the Beast” or “The Frog Prince” would do the job, but instead he’s picked “Tam Lin,” a Celtic story of a prince kidnapped by fairies, redeemed by true love.

I toss his essay onto the unread stack on my desk. The paper, damp and rumpled, glows in the faint light that filters in from the street. I haven’t turned my desk lamp on yet. And although I’d planned to retrieve Phoebe Nix’s note from the “submit again” box, I do nothing for a few minutes but look out the window.

My apartment is the corner apartment on the fifth floor. It’s only one room, but it’s in the hexagonal tower at the corner of Jane and West. I’ve got three windows, each facing a different direction. My desk is under the middle window of the tower corner. Sometimes I think I’d get more writing done with a worse view, but it’s the view that’s kept me in this one-room apartment all these years—well, the view and rent control. I look southwest down a long expanse of river into the harbor toward a misty region that I think of as the beginning of the ocean. It’s always been my dream to live within sight of the sea and I’m beginning to suspect that this is as close as I’ll ever get.

Tonight though, in the dark and the rain, the ocean seems far away. I can just make out the oily gleam of the river, rolling dark and heavy like some sea creature carrying the lights of New Jersey on its broad back. The air that seeps under my window smells like stone, like water from a deep well. I notice that the wind, coming from the northwest, is driving the rain in, dampening the pages of my students’ papers. I get up to close the window and my fingers brush against the soft wood of my father’s old humidor. Not yet, I think. I’ll read a few papers first, I bargain with myself, before opening the box. I turn on my lamp, but decide to leave the window open for now, and pick up Aidan’s paper.

TAM LIN

This was a story my gran told me. She was always saying that if we were bad, if we didn’t mind the nuns at school or learn our catechism, the fairies would come and take us away. She said the fairies were fallen angels who weren’t bad enough to be devils but not good enough to stay angels. They liked to steal children so they wouldn’t be lonely, but they could only take you if you’d done something bad. I thought that must have been what happened to my brother Sean who’d died when he was four and I was two but when I asked Ma what Sean had done to be taken she slapped me. It was the only time she ever hit me. Now Dad . . . but that’s another story.

Anyway. My gran still told these stories about being stolen by the fairies and one was about a boy named Tam Lin. My gran said this Tam Lin was a good boy mostly except he didn’t always mind his parents or the nuns at school and sometimes went out exploring in the woods when he should’ve been at school. One day he was out in the woods hunting and he got so tired that he laid himself down under a tree and fell to sleep.

I liked to imagine that part. Falling asleep under a tree. I liked to go into Inwood Park, way back where nobody went. A park ranger once told me that the trees in Inwood Park are the only trees on Manhattan Island that have never been cut. A virgin forest he called it, which seemed kind of funny for a city park where people did all sorts of things that weren’t exactly virgin like. Anyway. I always thought it would be an adventure to stay all night in the park, but I’d have been afraid to fall asleep there.

This Tam Lin fellow, though, one day he was in the woods and he found this old well. He was thirsty so he drank from the well and then he fell asleep. When he woke up he was surrounded by fairies. The queen of the fairies was this old lady who was beautiful but kind of scary looking because her hair was white and she was dressed all in green. She told Tam Lin that the well belonged to the fairies and because he had drunk from it he belonged to the fairies now. She said he should be happy because now he’d get to live forever like the fairies. She gave him a white horse and a green suit (because that’s what fairies wear) and made him go with her.

This part scared me because Gran was always saying that if Dad didn’t stop drinking and hitting us the Social Services lady would come and take us away to a home. Our Social Services lady was very thin and tall and wore her hair pulled back so tight her skin looked shiny—like a balloon right before it pops. I thought she looked a little like the fairy queen would look and I guessed Tam Lin would’ve rather stayed with his folks than go with her even if he would get to live forever.

And then there’s always a catch they don’t tell you about first. Like when you buy cereal for the prize inside and then find out you’ve got to save like ten box tops and send away money to get the prize, which is just some piece of crap plastic anyway. You see, these fairies had to pay a price for getting to live forever. Every seven years, on Halloween, they had to sacrifice a human being. On the next Halloween, Tam Lin was out riding with the fairies and they passed the well where he’d fallen asleep. He was surprised because he hadn’t seen it since he was kidnapped by the fairies and he knew then that he was back in the mortal world. He was just thinking that he’d make a break for it and head for home when one of the other riders got the same idea and broke from the pack. Right away all the fairies fell on the boy in a heap and when they were done all that was left was a pile of bones picked clean.

So you can bet Tam Lin was pretty scared and decided not to try getting away until he had a plan.

Four more Halloweens went by and Tam Lin couldn’t think of anything. He saw that the fairy queen was getting tired of him and he knew he’d be the next to go if he didn’t come up with something. Then, on the sixth Halloween, he kind of straggled behind the other riders and when he passed the well he saw a girl standing there. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost, which you could say she had. A whole troop of them.

Tam Lin got off his horse and went over to the girl. On his way he saw a rose and picked it for her—figuring she’d be less afraid if he gave her a present. He pricked his finger on the thorns, though, and cried out. He was pretty embarrassed that the girl saw him hurt himself, but then she got out her handkerchief and wrapped it around Tam Lin’s hand and made a fuss over him. You see, that’s how she knew he wasn’t really a fairy. Because he bled.

“Come with me,” the girl said, when she’d stopped his bleeding.

But Tam Lin heard the fairy horses returning and knew the fairy queen would kill both of them.

“I can’t,” he told her, “but if you come back here next Halloween maybe you can save me.” Then he told her to bring holy water from the church and dirt from her garden. “When you see me ride past you must pull me from my horse and hold me tight no matter what happens. Then I’ll be free of the fairies and we can get married. But if you don’t save me, the fairies will kill me because it’ll be seven years I’ve been with them.”

The girl looked doubtful, but she said she’d wait for Tam Lin and be at the well next Halloween and then Tam Lin had to go.

I always thought that last year must have been the worst for Tam Lin, wondering whether the girl would come back or had she found someone else or would she be too afraid to keep her promise and knowing if she didn’t he’d be eaten alive by the fairies. It’s like when you’re almost up for parole and you don’t want to screw it up but you kind of relax because you start thinking about being home and that’s when you screw up.

Of course I didn’t know anything about parole back then, but I do now, which I guess is another reason I thought about this story.

Because things worked out for Tam Lin. The girl—Margaret I think her name was—was there at the well and when she saw Tam Lin she pulled him from his horse and held him so tight he half thought she’d choke him. The fairy queen was furious when she saw Tam Lin and the girl.

“Let him go,” she said, “and I’ll give you all the silver in the world.”

“No,” the girl said. “I’ll hold on to my Tam Lin.”

“Oh,” says the fairy queen, “that’s Tam Lin you’re holding, is it?”

And when the girl looked she saw she was holding a huge snake—or it was holding her! Still she didn’t let go.

“Let go,” said the fairy queen, “and I’ll give you all the gold in the world.”

“No,” the girl said. “I’ll hold on to my Tam Lin.”

“Oh,” says the fairy queen, “that’s Tam Lin you’re holding, is it?”

And the snake turned into a lion who roared right in Margaret’s face. Still she didn’t let go.

The fairy queen was so mad then that she tore her white hair from her head and screamed, “I’ll teach you!” and she turned Tam Lin into a burning brand that singed the girl’s skin. Still she held on till she could smell her own skin burning. Then she took out the bottle of holy water she’d brought and sprinkled it in the well and she threw the burning brand in after and there, instead of the burning brand, was Tam Lin, naked, I’m sorry to have to tell you, because the clothes had burned right off him.

So Margaret pulled him out of the well and gave him her cloak. She sprinkled the dirt from her garden in a circle around them and even though the fairy queen screamed and raged there wasn’t a thing she could do. Tam Lin and Margaret went back to her castle (she turned out to be princess) and . . . well, you can imagine the rest.

I think you can figure out too why I picked this story. I’ve been here at Rip Van Winkle for seven years—I was twenty-two when I was convicted—and now I’m up for parole. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of here, but now that I’m going to be free I can’t help thinking about what it’ll be like outside.

I think that sometimes when you get used to a bad thing—like being in prison or getting kidnapped by the fairies—it’s better to live with that bad thing than trying to change it. Because what if you get a chance to change things and you mess up? What if it’s your last chance?

I mean, right now, I feel like I’d do just about anything to keep from coming back here, but I see these guys, they get out and then they’re back on the street in their old neighborhood and they can’t get a decent job because who’s going to take a chance on an ex-con? So they fall in with their old crowd and whatever got them in here in the first place—drugs or guns or stealing cars—and pretty soon they’re back in. And that’s it for them. That’s what their life’s gonna be like from then on. In and out of prison like a revolving door. So I wonder. What’s the point?

But then thinking about Tam Lin has made me feel better. Because Margaret believed in him. She held on to him even when he looked like a snake or a lion. Even when he burned her. She held on tight. So I think maybe someone will believe in me even though I’m an ex-con. Maybe someone will take a chance on me. What do you think, Miss Greenfeder?

I drop Aidan’s paper to the desk as if it were the burning brand in the story, only there’s no well here to douse it. The direct question—my own name—has startled me out of the lulling familiarity of the fairy tale. It’s as if the knight on the cover of the Celtic fairy-tale collection Aidan gave me had turned to me from the green-and-gold cover and winked. I feel as if I am being watched, exposed in this circle of lamplight.

I reach across my desk and switch off the mica-shaded lamp and close the window. Something about Aidan’s story has chilled me. It’s not a story that my mother ever told me, but it reminds me of my mother’s novels. Her books are full of shape-shifters, animals who shed their skins to live among people and beasts whose true human natures are cloaked by false pelts: women who turn into seals and men who sprout wings on their backs. Over the years I’ve tracked down most of the fairy-tale origins of her creatures. It’s the subject of my dissertation: “Skin Deep: Strategies of Dis-clothe-sure and Con-seal-ment in the Fantasy Fiction of K. R. LaFleur.” The creatures who are cursed to shed their skins again and again, never finding their true skin, are clearly derived from the Irish selkie legend. The men cursed to live as swanlike birds are drawn from a combination of sources including The Mabinogion and Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Wild Swans.” I’ve never connected the shape-shifters in her stories, though, to the story of Tam Lin who changes shape three times before he escapes his enchantment.

I should be grateful and excited for this clue Aidan Barry has given me, but still I’m unnerved by his appearance at my apartment. Surely he’d know that his sudden appearance on my doorstep would startle me. It’s definitely inappropriate—aggressive, even. And yet, when I think of how he looked, chilled and wet, waiting for me in the rain, I can’t help but think how vulnerable he seemed. And afraid. The way he describes the perils of parole have truly touched me. It’s as if he’s afraid of his own nature, which he can’t trust not to revert to some primitive throwback. He’s like Tam Lin, asking for someone to hold on to him so he won’t turn back into a beast, or worse, an inanimate thing that burns.

But what can I do for him, what does he expect from me?

Again I have that sense of being watched even though I have turned out the light. I reach up to draw the shade over the window to the left of my desk, but first I scan the street below. From this window, I can see the sidewalk and a narrow strip of the cobblestone gutter lit up by the street lamp on the south side of Jane. A shadow stretches over the sidewalk, but whatever casts that shadow is too close to this side of the street for me to see. I can’t even tell if it’s a shadow cast by a person or by something inanimate, a pile of garbage on the north side of the street, some discarded piece of furniture perhaps. I listen for footsteps, but all I can hear is rain and traffic from the West Side Highway and, faintly in the distance, the Hudson flowing toward the sea.