Black Water (8 page)

Grandpa Ross when he was dying his
flesh shriveling back from the bone but his eyes alert as always, kindly
brimming with love for her whom he knew as, never "Kelly," but
"Lizzie," his dearest grandchild of the several grandchildren for
whom he had been a conduit into the world told her as if imparting a worrisome
secret,
The way you make your life, the love you put into
it—that's God.

She was alone,
he had been with her, and he was
gone
and now she was alone but
he has gone to get help of course.

In her shock not knowing at first where
she was, what tight-clamped place this was, what darkness, not knowing what had
happened because it had happened so abruptly like a scene blurred with speed
glimpsed from a rushing window and there was blood in her eyes, her eyes were
wide open staring and sightless, her head pounding violently where the bone was
cracked, she knew the bone was cracked believing that it would be through this
fissure the
black water would pour to
extinguish her life unless she could find a way to escape unless
he will be back to help me of course.

In
fact he was comforting her, smiling, frowning concerned and solicitous touching
her shoulder with his fingertips.
Don't doubt me,
Kelly.
Never.

He
knew her
name,
he had called her by name. He had
looked at her with love so she knew.

He
was her friend. He was no one she knew but he was her
friend,
that
she knew. In another minute she would remember
his name.

It
was a car that had trapped her, she was jammed somehow in the front seat of a
car but the space was very small because the roof and the dashboard and the
door beside her had buckled inward pinning her legs and crushing her right
kneecap held as if in a vise and her ribs on that side were broken but the pain
seemed to be held in suspension like a thought not yet fully acknowledged
scarcely any sensation at all so she knew she would be all right so long as she
could lift her head free of the seeping black water that smelled of raw sewage
and was cold, colder than you could imagine on such a warm midsummer night.

She
would manage to breathe even while swallowing water, there was a way to do it,
snorting water out of her nose, thrashing her head from side to side then
leaning as far as her strength would allow her away from the smashed door, her
left shoulder was broken perhaps, she would not think of it now for in the
hospital they would take care of her, they had saved her friend once, her
friend from school the girl whose name she could not remember except to know
that Kelly was not that girl, she was calling
Help, help me!—here
—confused
because where was up? where was the sky?—he'd been desperate to get free using
her very body to lever himself out the door overhead where no door should be,
forcing the door open against the weight of whatever it was that pressed it
down and squeezing his big-boned body through that space that seemed scarcely
large enough for Kelly Kelleher herself to squeeze through but he was strong he
was frantic kicking and scrambling like a great upright maddened fish knowing
to save itself by instinct.

And
what did she have of him, my God what prize did her silly fingers clutch, her
broken nails she'd taken time to polish the night before, using Buffy's polish,
what was it for God's sake—a shoe?

An empty shoe?

But
no: there is only one direction, and he would come to her from that direction.
She knew.

*
* *

Except,
she knew also that the car, submerged, how many feet below the surface of the
water she couldn't guess, it might be only a few inches in fact, with a part of
her brain that remained pragmatic, pitiless she knew that though the car
retained air, a bubble, or bubbles, of air, it would fill by degrees, it could
not
not
fill, thin trickles of water pushing through
myriad holes, fissures, cracks like the webbed cracks in the windshield, by
degrees the water level would rise, must rise, since the car was totally submerged,
she'd heard of accident victims surviving in submerged cars for as many as five
hours and then rescued and she would be rescued if she was patient if she did
not panic but by degrees the filthy black water would rise to fill her mouth,
her throat, her lungs though she could not see it nor could she hear it
trickling, seeping, draining beyond the blow to her head, the roaring in her
ears, spasms of coughing and choking that seized her, black muck to be spat up.

Except
had he not promised her?—he had.

Except
had he not held her, kissed her
?—
he had.

Penetrated
her dry, alarmed mouth with his enormous tongue?—he had.

No
pain!
no
pain!
she
swore she
felt no pain, she would give in to no pain, they'd praised her so brave '
Lizabeth
, brave little girl when her eye had been bandaged
and that was her truest self, he would see, as soon as he helped her free she
would save herself, she was a strong swimmer.
I'm here.

Twice weekly,
T
uesdays and
T
hursdays even in
summer, Kelly Kelleher made the arduous
drive in her secondhand Mazda from her condominium up behind Beacon Hill,
Boston, out to Roxbury, where in an ill-ventilated community services center
she taught, or made the spirited effort of teaching, black adult illiterates to
read primer texts. Her classes began at 7
p.m
. and ended, sometimes trailed
ambiguously off, at 8:30
p.m
. Asked what
progress she and her several students were making Kelly would say, with a
smile, "Some!"

Kelly was a volunteer of only a few
months
in the National Literacy Foundation of
America program and she felt both enthusiasm and zeal for what she
did .
..
yet
a priggish
self-righteousness too, a Caucasian condescension mingled with a very real and
visceral fear of physical threat, harm, not within the community services center
itself but in the streets surrounding, in desolate Roxbury and along the
debris-strewn expressway, in the vulnerability of her white skin.

This
ambivalence so qualified her experience in Roxbury that she had yet to tell her
parents about it by midsummer, and rarely mentioned it to her friends.

Nor
did she mention it to The Senator during their several conversations that day
at Buffy's... not knowing why, exactly... perhaps hoping to seem, not the
zealous
volunteer type
with whom The Senator like
any successful politician was contemptuously familiar, but another
type
altogether.

What's a volunteer, especially a lady
volunteer?

Someone who knows she can't sell it.

As the black water drained into the
space that contained her snug as any womb.

Except:
Buffy had been sweet giving her the little-sister's room as they called it, the
south-

east-corner
room of the five-bedroom Cape Cod on Derry Road, how many times had Kelly
Kelleher been a guest there, a room with a chaste white-organdy brass bed and
spare Shaker-inspired furniture and braided rugs and that floral wallpaper
predominantly the hue of strawberries so like Grandma Ross's favorite room in
the big old house in Greenwich, and with trembling fingers Kelly had washed her
warm face, took time to rinse her sun-dazed eyes, brushed her hair in swift
brisk excited strokes smiling at herself in the bathroom mirror thinking,
It's wild, it can't happen.

But,
yes. Kelly Kelleher was the one.

At
first The Senator was speaking generally, to everyone. Tall and broad-shouldered
and vehement and ruddy with pleasure at being where he was, this place,
beautiful Grayling Island of which he'd known virtually nothing, he'd visited
Maine infrequently since they summered on the Cape mainly, his family place on
the Cape, bent upon ignoring how the Cape had changed over the years, so
developed, overpopulated... "Some facts of life, things closest around
you, you sometimes don't want to
see."

But
The Senator's tone was expansive, gregarious. This was a happy occasion, an
attractive, younger crowd, he had the air of a man determined to enjoy himself.

He
and Ray Annick: the two older men, you might say: determined to enjoy
themselves.

Actually,
the first thing The Senator did after greeting his hostess was to draw Ray
Annick off to confer with him, out of earshot of the others; then he asked
Bufly
could he freshen up, use Ray's shaving kit—he hadn't
shaved, he said, since six o'clock that morning in Washington.

He
changed out of his inappropriately formal white cotton long-sleeved shirt into
a short-sleeved navy blue polo shirt open at the collar, the knit sleeves tight
on his fleshy biceps.
In the shallow V of the collar, a
bristle of steely-gray hairs.

He
was wearing pale seersucker trousers. That crisp summery puckered look.

And
beige canvas crepe-soled sporty shoes, L. L. Bean.

So
there were drinks, on the breezy terrace, many voices simultaneously, and The
Senator easy, friendly, unself-conscious among them though his posture and a
certain focusing of speech, a moderation of tone suggested
I realize you are memorizing me, but don't for that reason dislike me
as they spoke of the outrage of the recent Supreme Court decisions, the
ideologically sanctioned selfishness and cruelty of a wealthy society, how
systematic the dismantling of the gains of the civil rights movement, the
retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the end of an era.

The
Senator sighed, grimaced, seemed about to say something further, but changed
his mind.

At
Buffy's, always there were distractions.
New guests arriving,
the prospect of an impromptu tennis tournament.

Shaking
Kelly Kelleher's small-boned hand, squeezing. "Kelly, is it? Callie?
Kelly."

She'd
laughed.
Liking the sound of her schoolgirl name on a U.S.
senator's lips.

He wasn't as I'd imagined
him,
he turned out to be really warm, really nice, not at
all condescending—

Shaping the precise words that would
encapsulate, in her memory, in her recounting of memory to friends, perhaps Mr.
Spader himself who had known The Senator years ago but was distant from him
now.