Black Water (10 page)

As the black water splashed over her
mouth.

Except
by a sudden exertion of strength she would not have known she'd had after the
initial dazed trauma she was able to lift herself partway free of whatever it
was clamping her knee, and now there was her foot, her right foot entirely
without sensation, as it was invisible to her as if it did not exist and
perhaps it was severed... except if so she would have bled to death by now she
reasoned, so much time had passed.

Still,
she could neither move the toes of that foot nor feel them and even the
physiological concepts of
toes, foot
had become confused in her mind
so quickly she stopped thinking about them: she was an optimist.

Kelly imagines she's
so cynical, so wise to the ways of the world
her friends teased her fondly,
Oh
but we know better!
unable to resist teasing her about the
Dukakis debacle, and her stubborn loyalty to Carl Spader, who treated her like
a typist, once at a party she'd overheard Jane Freiberg telling a man
Yes that's Kelly Kelleher let me introduce you she's so really sweet once
you get past the
—and she'd turned away quickly not wanting to
hear the rest of Jane's words.

So
rude, people talking of her while she was within earshot.
While
she was alive.

Her friends speaking of her so.
How did they dare!

Kelly?—beautiful.

A voice jarringly close
in her ear. But she saw no face.

Nor
could she remember his name exactly except to know that he was laboring to get
to her, swimming against the swift choppy current his hair lifting in tendrils
from his pale anguished face, he was reaching for the door handle, his fingers
groping for the door handle that would release her if she had faith if she did
not give in to fear to panic to terror to Death.

Here.
I'm here.

Somehow
it had happened she was lying upside down across what she understood to be the
ceiling of the wrecked car, the roof was now resting rocking as if shuddering
against the invisible
creekbed
, and close above her
cramping her was the cushioned seat to which in some way she was still attached
too, a strap across her shoulder, across her neck
failure of the
spinal cord to fracture as the prisoner falls so that the prisoner slowly
suffocates
but it was her right leg that was caught fast in the
twisted metal: her foot paralyzed, numb, as empty of sensation as if it were a
rock: severed?
or
still attached?

But
no, she must not think of that. She was an optimist.

She
realized then that she had vomited on herself without knowing when, reasoning
swiftly that such a purging was beneficent clearing her stomach so that there
would be less poison to pump out of it, this water that was not water of the
sort with which she was familiar, transparent, faintly blue, clear and
delicious not that sort of water but an evil muck-water, thick, viscous,
tasting of sewage, gasoline, oil.

Here? Help me—.

Holding
herself up out of the seeping water by sheer tremulous force gripping the steering
wheel, whimpering like a child with the effort understanding
If I can keep my head up, my mouth clear
she would be able
to suck at the air bubble floating above her irradiated by moonlight.

That
bright flat moon! Proof, so long as she could see it, that she was still alive.

We'll get there Kelly
And
we'll get there on time.

She
knew, she understood, they were counting on her.
He
was counting on her.

There
would be an ambulance.
A siren.
The
red light spinning wildly bouncing careening through the marshland.

The
girl named Lisa, the girl with a twin sister, who had tried to kill herself
swallowing thirty-eight barbiturate tablets. They'd come to get her and pumped
her stomach out and saved her and all the girls whispered in awe of her
afterward her absence in classes and in the dining hall so conspicuous.

That
girl, though a twin, a sister, was
not
Kelly
Kelleher.

Kelly Kelleher who, after G-----,
vowed she would never take her life for all life is precious.

And
so it was a matter of her strength, her will.
The
concentration of her soul.
Not to give in. Not to weaken. The black
water was rising by choppy degrees to splash over her chin, her mouth, but
If I can keep my head up
it was a matter of knowing what to
do and doing it.

Why
had she hesitated to say they were lost, why hadn't she told him to turn the
car around, to reverse their course, oh please!—but she had not dared offend
him.

The
black water was her fault, she knew. You just don't want to offend them.
Even the nice ones.

He
was
nice. Even knowing they were so closely watching,
memorizing him, certain of his remarks, his jokes. The way, in the spontaneous
heat of a tennis volley, he gripped his jaws tight, bared his teeth.

You come to despise your own words in
your ears... your "celebrity."

And how unexpectedly sweet he'd been to
her.
Kelly Kelleher. So radiant and assured
there on the beach, wearing her new glamorously dark sunglasses the lenses
scientifically treated to eliminate ultraviolet rays, and she knew she looked
good, she was not a beautiful girl but sometimes you know, it's your time and
you know, no happiness quite like that happiness.

You're
an American girl: you know.

Yes
she'd gained back a good deal of the weight. No her hair was no longer coming
out in distressing handfuls, it was gleaming again, glossy, her mother would be
relieved. A bitter childish thing to have wished G----- dead but
Of course I
don't feel that way any longer, I think of you as a friend.

Still
she had hesitated not wanting to utter aloud the word
lost,
had her own mother not warned her no man will
tolerate being made a fool of by any woman no matter how truthfully she speaks
no matter how he loves her.

And
then suddenly it was all right: the air bubble had stabilized.

So
strangely shaped, luminous it seemed to her, her blinded eyes, bobbing against
the seats now suspended from the ceiling but
it has stopped
leaking away
she was certain, she would hold it fast to her
sucking lips sucking like an infant's lips until help came to save her.

Almost sternly, reproachfully he was
saying,
"—the Gulf
War has given your generation a tragic idea of war and of diplomacy: the
delusion that war is relatively easy, and diplomacy
is
war, the most expedient of
options."

And though she was flattered, how could
she fail to be flattered by a famous man addressing her so earnestly, and
paying so little attention to the others, quickly she said, "There is no
such thing as 'my' generation, Senator. We're divided by race, class, education,
politics—even sexual self-definition. The only thing that links us is
our—separateness."

The
Senator considered this remark, thoughtfully.

The
Senator nodded, thoughtfully.
And smiled.

"Well,
then! I stand corrected, eh?"

Smiling at her.
Frankly staring.
What was the girl's name?—it was
clear to all that indeed The Senator was impressed with the attractive
articulate friend of the girl with whom Ray Annick was currently sleeping.

And
how raw and beautiful this northern shore of Grayling Island—the smell of the
salt air, the bright fresh open ocean, the saw-toothed and precipitous
white-capped waves so beautiful this world you want to sink your teeth into it,
thrust yourself up to the hilt in it, oh Christ.

Kelly,
kelly
!
—she heard her name being called
from above,
Kelly!
now
on all
sides of her, loud, jarring, her name rippling through the black water.

Here,
I'm here.
Here.

As the water splashed and churned about
her mouth, foul-tasting water not water, like no water she knew. But she was
holding her head as high as she could, her neck trembling with the effort. She
had pushed her face, her mouth, into a pocket of waning air in a space she
could not have named except vaguely to indicate that it was beyond the
passenger's seat of the cap
sized vehicle,
beneath the glove compartment?—a space where her knees had been when she'd been
sitting.
Her knees, her feet.

Except she could no longer think of
what the space was really.
She had not the
words, nor the logic by which they were joined.

Nor
had she the word for
air
just knowing, sensing, that her sucking
pursed lips must not lose it.

As
the moonlit patch of light swelled, and ebbed, and swelled, and ebbed, she had
no name for what was
light
, not even
life.

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

No:
she was watching the men playing tennis. She, Felicia
Ch'en
,
Stacey Miles, amid the prickly wild rose above the St. Johns' handsome court,
Kelly fingering the rose petals, stroking the thorns, sinking her nails into
the fleshy red berries, a nervous mannerism, one of her bad habits, hard to
break because it was barely conscious, watching the energetic play, watching
him. Stacey said, laughing, "The main difference is, I mean you can see it
so clearly, their
muscles.
Look at their
legs."

The
Senator was the tallest man on the court since Lucius from M.I.T. disguised his
height playing out of a deep canny crouch, the young women admired, applauded,
took snap-shots, drifted away and returned and it
was
fascinating how a man will reveal his truest self, or so it seems, on the
tennis court competing with other men, serious doubles is the real test, a
risky enterprise. The Senator and his lawyer-friend Ray Annick gamely and
good-naturedly teamed up, their opponents young enough to be their sons,
as a man ages the legs go first
but the shrewd player knows
to conserve his limited energy and to force others to expend theirs. The
Senator moved with territorial ease on the court, the manner of one who has
played tennis since boyhood, years of instruction thus wicked shots to the rear
of his opponents' court, amazing shots that barely skimmed the net, serves
executed with machinelike precision placed seemingly where willed, and, yes,
Kelly and the other spectators were impressed, they were admiring, noting how
gentlemanly The Senator was calling certain of his opponents' balls
in
when they looked clearly
out.