Blue Water (16 page)

For a moment, no one said anything. Sea sounds swelled to fill the gap. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Miriam move between the citronella torches, arm raised like a sickle, smothering each small flame.

“Hey, it's okay,” Jeanie said. “Life sucks and then you die.”

“Not always,” Audrey said. “No.”

“Right,” Jeanie said. “Sometimes you just die.”

And Bernadette said, “It's a shame that he died before you had a chance to forgive him.”

Once again, nobody spoke.

“Why should she have to forgive anybody?” I said, and now I couldn't keep the anger from my voice.

Bernadette met my gaze. “I didn't say she had to.”

“Well, I'm glad he's dead,” Jeanie said. “I'm glad his kids don't get to have him.”

“But it wasn't their fault,” Audrey said.

“Like it was mine?” Jeanie said. She nodded at me. “That's
what's so shitty about your kid dying like he did. Because
her
kids didn't. That's just so wrong. There should be, like, a law or something.”

“An eye for an eye,” Pam said, nodding. “It's there in the Bible for a reason.”

“That's right,” Gaylee said.

“And so the world goes blind,” Audrey said.

“Only the assholes,” Jeanie said.

“I used to feel that way,” Bernadette said. “After Leon was born. After we realized the extent of his brain damage. If you'd told me then that Dr. Matt would be a friend, I'd have said—well, I don't know what I would have said. I certainly couldn't have imagined it.”

I grew so dizzy I thought I might faint. “Why?” I said. “What did he have to do with it?”

She was looking at her hands. “He was the doctor on call. The doctor who delivered Leon. I thought I told you this.”

“You didn't,” I said.

“You told me,” Audrey said.

“I don't even think about it much anymore,” Bernadette said. Then she sighed. “Matt was addicted to narcotics. He'd been fired from hospitals in three different states. We didn't know that, of course. Our regular OB was on vacation, so when I went into labor, Matt got called.” She was still looking at her hands, the delicate map of each palm. “Matt misread the ultrasound. He got belligerent when the nurses tried to correct him. He was dropping things, cursing. It was a nightmare.”

“He dropped Leon?” I said, horrified.

“No,” Bernadette said. “But Leon was over ten pounds, and it took—well, he was injured, we both were injured.” Again she
sighed. “When I woke up, I was told my baby wouldn't live, that he wouldn't ever know us if he did.”

“But certainly,” I said, stiffly, “you
did
something about what happened. You prosecuted—Matt.”

“Well, of course we did,” Bernadette said, her voice suddenly sharp. “What do you think? We'd just let him go on hurting people?”

“So what happened to him?” Jeanie said.

Bernadette shrugged. “Not much. He lost his license. There was an insurance settlement. He had to go through rehab. At the hearing, he just sat there with his attorney. He didn't even look at us.”

I said, cautiously, “That's how it was with Cindy Ann.”

“Six months passed and then he wrote to us, this truly awful letter. He said he thought about Leon every day, and how depressed he was, and I wrote back and said, We think about him every day, too, we're depressed, too, because we're the ones taking care of him, trying to figure out a life for him. I mean, I was just livid. But he kept writing and I kept writing and, eventually, we took Leon to see him. This was a few months before we moved aboard
Rubicon
. He wrote out a list of all the equipment we'd need, all the medicines and their dosages. It's funny, but Leon really liked him from the first. We visit Matt every summer, now, whenever we go back to New Bern.”

Pam said, “If I had a kid, and someone did something like this, I'd visit him, too. On the day he went to the electric chair. I'd be there to pull the switch.”

“He didn't kill Leon.”

“He might as well have.”

Bernadette's head snapped forward. “That's not for you to say.”

“He killed the person Leon was supposed to be. I mean, what kind of life is he going to have? How will he feel when he's a grown man and you still have to wipe his butt?”

“Quality of life—” Audrey began, indignant, but Bernadette put a hand on her arm.

“No,” she said. “Let's say Matt did kill Leon. Let's say Leon died when he was born. Let's say that we're in, I don't know, Florida, and there's a jury and judge who will actually sentence Dr. Matt to death. Then what?” Bernadette said.

“Zzzt,” Jeanie said.

“You bet,” Gaylee said, in that same, soft voice.

Bernadette shook her head. “I could pull that switch myself. It wouldn't make any difference.”

“But of course it would,” Gaylee said. “It does. It did.” She lifted her chin. “I had a child, too, you know. She was waiting for the bus at the end of the drive. Three men pulled up in a car. I was watching from the window, from the window of
our home,
but by the time I got outside they'd taken her.”

Even Jeanie sat motionless, cigarette burning like a hard, red eye.

“Two of them were juveniles,” Gaylee said, “but the oldest, he was nineteen. We had to petition the court, but I got to be there when he died. I would have given the injection myself, if they'd let me do it.” She was standing now, bending over Bernadette as if she meant to kiss her on the mouth. “Tell me I should forgive what they did to her. How they dumped what was left of her when they were done. How they joked about it. Bragged about it.”

“Honey,” said a voice no one recognized, melodious and calm. I looked up to see Miriam, her eyes fixed on Gaylee. Behind her stood the derelict yacht that was their home. “That's enough, now.
Let's go.”

“She was thirteen years old,” Gaylee said. “She was thirteen.”

Strings of Christmas lights slashed the darkness.

“Honey,” Miriam said.

“Tell me you wouldn't fall down on your knees and pray for those bastards to die.”

“I can't tell you what I would do,” Bernadette said, “any more than you can tell me.”

“I could tell you,” Jeanie said.

“Me, too,” I said.

You could not have distinguished our voices.

“Let's go,” Miriam said again, and she guided Gaylee away from us, past the last glowing barrel, toward the entrance to the yacht. As they stepped up onto the makeshift porch, the Christmas lights vanished, swiftly, soundlessly. In the unexpected dimness, Jeanie and Pam rose, too. Pam cocked her head at me as if to say
You coming?

“I'm going to tell you something,” Jeanie said to Bernadette. “You're deluding yourself.”

“Perhaps,” Bernadette said.

“Either that, or you're full of shit.”

“Perhaps,” she said again.

I stayed behind with Bernadette. For a long time, neither of us spoke. My head ached. My eyes burned. My stomach was a sour ball of fire.

“I'm sorry,” Bernadette said, “about your son.”

I touched her arm, the way she might have touched mine. “I'm sorry about what Dr. Matt did to Leon.”

“He almost killed me, too, you know. I can't have any more children.” She made an odd, rueful face, as if she'd broken something meaningless and small: a cup, a glass figurine. “But I just couldn't
hate him anymore.”

“But you do,” I said. “Of course, you do. Anybody would.”

“I forgive him, Meggie,” she said. “I forgave him years ago.”

“Well, what if he hadn't been sorry?” I said, and I thought of Gaylee's daughter. I thought of Jeanie, alone in the world. I thought of Cindy Ann at her kitchen table, drinking wine, breathing air, while Evan's body rotted in the ground.

“He wasn't sorry,” Bernadette said. “He never apologized, not once. To this day, he insists it was all an accident, a misunderstanding involving procedure. I forgive him for that, too.
I
forgive him.
Me
. This has nothing to do with him.”

My teeth were chattering wildly. “Jeanie was right,” I said. “You are deluding yourself. No one can forgive something like that.”

Bernadette's face in the moonlight: pale. Her hair, in its braids, a corona of fire. Behind her, a flurry of stars filled the sky. “Hasn't anyone ever forgiven you,” she said, “for something you shouldn't have done? Something you failed to do?”

She could have been painted on velvet. She could have been a vision, described in a papyrus scroll. She could have been looking into my heart and reading every last thing ever written there.

“Not like that,” I said.

“Are you certain?” she said.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Got up. Walked away.

i
magine a woman stumbling along a
solitary trail, the eastern horizon dark as glass, overgrown branches beating at her like sharp, balled fists. The pain at the back of her head like the most insistent cliché: a pounding, a drumming, a hammering with ice picks. She is positively aching with righteousness and rage, yet, already, the first few tendrils of regret have begun to emerge like quiet assassins, like slim, venomous snakes. She wonders what it was, exactly, that has made her so blindingly angry. Bernadette's capacity for forgiveness? The idea of forgiveness itself?

You're deluding yourself
. Even if this were true—and it is, there is no doubt in her mind on that point—why should it matter? What difference can it make? Why does it feel like a personal attack?

Somehow, she's passed the turnoff to the marina; the path dead-ends at the back of one of the new condominium developments. There are shrink-wrapped blocks of cream-colored tile, bags of concrete, a stack of small, kidney-shaped swimming pools. Cursing her mistake, she cuts between the skeletal frames until she reaches the water. From there, she follows the shoreline back to the marina, picking her way along the rocky strip of beach until, at last, she
emerges from behind the restaurant, startling a couple kissing passionately by the pool. They stare at her as if she is an apparition. Her feet are cut, bleeding. They stick to the wooden slats as she steps up onto the pier. It is only when she reaches the dinghy dock that she understands she's been hoping, all along, that she might still catch up with Bernadette. Say something. Say anything.

But
Rubicon
's dinghy is gone.

By now, it is well after midnight, closing in on dawn. Still, the marina is wide awake. People stand in their cockpits, drinking, talking, listening to music. Halogen beams shoot like dealership spotlights from the tall tuna towers of the sport-fishing boats, and the air is thick with the odor of grilled fish, barbecue, the musty odor of rum. The fish smell makes the woman's mouth water unpleasantly; she sits down at the edge of the pier, feet dangling, waiting for the feeling to pass. Out in the cove, mast lights wink like fireflies. She can just make out
Chelone
's, taller than the others, brighter. By now, Rex's poker game is over, and she hopes he has gone to bed instead of sitting up, waiting, worrying. The last thing she wants to do is face him, explain what has just happened, admit that she's thrown a fat, knotted rope into their past. By tomorrow evening, the truth will have boarded every last boat in the Cove. They will no longer be anonymous.

For the first time since their arrival, they will find themselves alone.

Christ, her head is aching. The soles of her feet sting horribly, and
there's an unexplained burning—like a ringing in her ears—at the back of her neck, across her shoulders, down one arm. The burning seems to be expanding. Perhaps, she thinks, it's the stories she's heard, all that rage taking root beneath her skin, traveling like a dark, fierce vine: Jeanie's story, Gaylee's story, Bernadette's, her own. For a moment, she tries to imagine Gaylee's daughter, forever thirteen, holding Evan by the hand; she places Jeanie's parents beside them, like dolls, watching over them both in a place of warmth and light. Here, too, she glimpses the man with his cancer, the shadows of the three young men in the car. The lion lain down with the lamb. How she longs to believe in something like this, but she does not. Cannot. There will never be closure, she sees that now. There will never be explanations. People hurt each other and are hurt in turn. Children pass through like seasons. Lightning bolts fall from the sky.

How can one live in a world like this, and then keep on living, after it happens? The violent act, the car crash. The murderous illness, the shrill disappointment. The terrorist act, the war, the plague, the tornado that snatches your house and leaves your neighbor's standing, down to the potted plants on the porch, the swing set, everything intact. Such random abominations! The woman's headache grips the back of her skull like an external force, something cold-blooded, evil, and for a moment, she thinks about how easy it would be to simply fall forward off the pier, slip into the shimmering silence of the water. Her body would be found, of course. An accident, people would say.

But, no. The woman stands up.

I, Megan Van Dorn, force myself to stand.

There's a wobbling ladder attached to the pier and I ease myself down, step by step. The dinghy floats just a few feet away like a faithful horse: round-bellied, patient. Hours seem to pass before I'm able to
coordinate my hands with my body, twist around to grasp the line, pull the bow in close. By now, the sky is turning pink. My skin is catching fire. Stepping into the dinghy, I cry out, then simply cry, for the cut bottoms of my feet have landed in three inches of salt water, spilled oil, gasoline. I can't get the engine going. It takes dozens of pulls on the chain before I realize I've forgotten to pump the gas line; then, when the motor catches, I twist the throttle in the wrong direction, wind up choking it dead. It's this headache, I tell myself, longing for aspirin, a glass of cool water. It's this sunburn consuming my shoulders and chest. The dinghy pulls away, then jerks into a curve; I've forgotten to untie the line, which I should have done from the pier. In the end, I pry it off the bow cleat, abandon it, dangling, in the water.

Back to the boat. It's all that I want: a drink of water, the dark salon. I'm halfway to the channel when I realize, with a start, that I can't see
Chelone,
can't find her anywhere. What the hell, I think, what the
fuck
. Circling the Cove, again and again, and though I recognize the boats I see—
Extravagance, Flyboy, Great Blue, Donovan's Dream
—I can't make sense of the way they are arranged, can't find my way to where I know
Chelone
must be. Cutting short around
Gator Bait,
I foul the propeller on her anchor chain, just as the first ray of morning sun spits its poison light across the cove. What the hell's the matter with me? Where is the goddamn boat? I'm drifting now, the engine dead, the propeller quite possibly broken, when, suddenly, I understand.

I'm not hungover. I'm intoxicated.

Still
intoxicated.

I am driving drunk.

 

I'd driven drunk only once before, for roughly half a mile, on the
night of my sixteenth birthday. It was the end of May. It was closing on the end of the school year. Somebody's grandparents had a summer cottage. Somebody decided we should all break in, throw a party there—who would ever know? Somehow the whole thing evolved into a birthday party, my birthday party. Sweet sixteen. Girls who'd never spoken to me before mouthed
Happy Birthday
as they passed in the halls; boys whispered,
What do you want for your birthday?
in low, delicious voices. Word of the party spread to kids as far away as Horton, and by the time Friday rolled around, you could feel the momentum building like a rogue wave, feeding on its own widening power. In the school parking lot, kids opened the trunks of their cars to reveal kegs, stacks of wine coolers. Somebody scaled the gymnasium wall and hung a shiny banner that proclaimed
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
! Somebody wrote
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
in whipped cream across the windshield of the principal's car.

“I don't like the idea of you driving alone,” my mother said. “I mean, honey, you only got your license today.”

She and my father had made it a point to be home for dinner that night. Toby had shown up as well. We'd ordered a pizza from the new Pizza Hut, which we ate at the dining room table, good cloth napkins draped across our knees. A yellow cake from the bakery. Neatly wrapped gifts, which my mother had chosen: a cardigan, earrings, a gift certificate for books and cassettes. Of course, she had to photograph me opening each one, Toby smirking in the background, making rabbit ears over my head. Everything had been perfect until I'd asked to borrow the car. At lunchtime, I'd walked downtown and passed my driver's test. Now, as my mother gaped in surprise, I held out my newly minted license, a poker-faced player who reveals the winning hand.

“I won't be alone,” I said. “I'm picking up Stacy.”

“At least,” Toby said, scooping frosting off my plate, “if you loan Meggie the car, you know she'll be with a safe driver.”

“How can a fifteen-, excuse me,
sixteen
-year-old be a safe driver?”

“Beats me,” Toby said. “But she is.”

I looked at my plate, flushed, pleased. Toby, in fact, had taught me to drive, taking me out with my learner's permit, making me parallel park, again and again, beside a stack of hay bales at the mill.

My mother sighed. “Where is it you and Stacy want to go?” she asked, resigned, and for a moment, I had a change of heart. Nowhere, I wanted to say. I was only kidding, Mom, relax. How easy it would be to skip the party altogether, stay home, watch the videos she'd rented for us all. But I said nothing. It was my sixteenth birthday. You couldn't stay home on your sixteenth birthday, no matter how much you liked being with your family, especially when there was a party going on, the sort of party where everyone who was anyone planned to be. And even if there'd been no party, I would have found another reason to slap my license down on the table, too casually, saying,
So, can I borrow the car?
I wanted my parents to believe that I was capable of having a life beyond them, that they didn't know me as completely as they'd thought.

“We're meeting some friends at Dairy Castle,” I said. This wasn't exactly a lie. We'd arranged to collect Stacy's boyfriend there, along with some of his friends, before heading on to the party.

“Take my car, then,” my father said. It was the first time he'd spoken. “It's heavier. You'll be safer.”

Across the table, Toby grinned. “Good idea.”

My mother's car was a Mustang, a two-door with some zip. My
father drove a Pontiac nearly as old as I was. Sitting behind the wheel was like piloting a ship. “Thank you,” I said. “I'll be home by one.”

In the past, my curfew had always been midnight. My mother opened her mouth, then closed it. My father sighed but did not object.

When I stepped outside, Toby followed, walked me over to the remodeled barn where my parents kept their cars. The night was cold and clear, and we could see, in the distance, the lights of the Schultzes' clapboard house. Our split-level ranch house stood on ten acres, part of a subdivision still known around town as “the old Brightsman farmstead.” In the ditches, in the ponds, in the puddles scattered like coins across the flooded lawn, millions of peepers were singing.

“I don't suppose you and Stacy know anything about a big party on the lake,” Toby said. He opened the door for me with the exaggerated gestures of a gentleman. “Somebody's birthday, from what I hear.”

I got behind the wheel. “Can't be much of a party,” I said, sweetly, “if old folks like you know about it.”

He poked my shoulder. “If you wind up drinking, don't try to drive. Call me and I'll get you. No questions asked.”

“Nobody's going to be drinking,” I said.

“Cowboy,” Toby said. “I'm ugly, not stupid.”

“No, you're just stupid,” I said, but it didn't come out right. I hated it when Toby joked about his looks, because, of course, he wasn't really joking at all. He'd rested his hand on the edge of the window; suddenly, I reached up, placed my hand over his.

“I'll be fine,” I said.

Quickly Toby moved his hand away—embarrassed, I think, as I
was. But the comforting flicker of warmth stayed between us. Earlier, as I'd risen from the table, my mother had risen, too. She'd nodded, helplessly, saying,
Well
. And my father had said,
Sixteen years
. And I'd understood how much they loved me, how difficult it was to let me go.

I'd never driven my father's car before; now I discovered I could barely see over the wheel. Backing down our long, curved driveway, I felt the way I'd felt at nine, trying on my mother's high-heeled shoes. Still, I was grateful for the Pontiac's wide seats and deep wheel wells when Stacy and I arrived at the DC. Eleven kids were waiting on the curb. Two couples volunteered for the trunk, while the rest sat, stacked, on one another's laps. The underside of the Pontiac scraped, sparking, as we pulled away. I drove too slowly, cautiously. I was terrified I'd get pulled over.

“Speed up a little,” said a voice in my ear. Literally. It was Cindy Ann Donaldson. I realized it was her thigh squashing mine, her foot I kicked whenever I braked. “If you drive too slow, you draw attention to yourself. That's what my stepdad told me when I first got my license.”

I nodded. This sounded reasonable.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” she said. She was the first person to say it.

“Thanks,” I said, dully. The hell with appearances. I was wishing with all my heart that I'd stayed home.

By the time we found the party, it was after ten o'clock. Cars lined the dirt road leading to the cottage; more cars were scattered every which way on the lawn, underneath the trees. There was nowhere left to park that wasn't ankle-deep in mud, so I turned around and dropped people off, remembering, at the last minute, to release the necking couples from the trunk.

“You could park down at the beach,” Cindy Ann said.

“I guess I'll have to,” I said.

“Want me to come with you? I don't mind. I'm not big on parties, to tell you the truth.”

I looked at Stacy's retreating back, her boyfriend's arm slung around her shoulder.

“Sure.”

Eventually, we wound up at the state park, nearly two miles away. Even before we got out of the car, we could hear the singing of the peepers; as we walked, the sound seemed to shimmer in the air. By now, I was feeling sorry for myself. It was my sixteenth birthday, after all, and here I was, abandoned by my friends. A cold, damp wind blew off the lake; I buttoned my jean jacket up to my chin, my mood plummeting along with the temperature. Unlike Stacy, I didn't have a boyfriend. I wasn't particularly talented. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Cindy Ann glanced at me, but I kept my gaze on the ground. The last thing I needed was to start crying, which was exactly what I was about to do. And it would be worse than crying in front of a total stranger, because, even though we hadn't exchanged twenty words since grade school, I knew Cindy Ann, and she knew me, the way people know each other in towns like Fox Harbor. I knew that she worked at Dairy Castle. I knew that her family farmed veal. I knew that she had a retarded brother, and that she was good with him, good to her sisters, who were younger than she was by several years.