Blue Water (2 page)

Hey, you,
she'd always say, as if she'd been expecting me, and she'd give her long, blond ponytail a flip. She'd ask after Toby and my parents: I'd ask after her mom, her sisters. By then, the older man was long dead; Cindy Ann had remarried and divorced, married, divorced again. Through it all, however, she'd kept his name, as well as the house, which stood less than a mile from our own: a mansion, a showplace, the sort of home that people, even strangers from Milwaukee, drove to Fox Harbor to see. After I could drive again, I always took the southern route into town, so I wouldn't have to pass it, but Rex made a point of driving that way as he went to work in the morning and, again, as he came home at night. He reported that the shades were always up, the lights always on, as if Cindy Ann were inviting anybody to look inside and see how
her
life
hadn't changed since the accident. A fat Angora cat snoozed in the bay window; roses bloomed in the greenhouse; an American flag fluttered from a mount at the side of the garage. Evenings, you could see the blue light of the TV, and the bent, blond head of Cindy Ann as she dished out the evening meal. And, too—more than once—the outline of a wine bottle, a slender long-necked glass. Rex was certain that Cindy Ann was still drinking. Still getting into her car in the morning, regardless of how much she'd had the night before, what time she'd gone to bed.

“I hope she chokes on it,” he said, sitting down to our own empty table. “Christ.” He pushed his plate away.

“Stop driving past her house,” I said, “if it bothers you so much.”

But I didn't mean it, not really. The truth was that I, too, savored each detail Rex excised from Cindy Ann's life with a surgeon's care: the new pink bicycle that appeared in the driveway; a second cat, another Angora, napping on top of the newly repaired Suburban; the small, pale face in an upstairs window, looking out at Rex until he drove away. Just as he'd feared, the delayed Breathalyzer had worked in Cindy Ann's favor. At the arraignment, Cindy Ann pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter; jail time was suspended in exchange for community service, driving school, and twelve months of counseling for substance abuse. As far as Rex and I were concerned, she'd gotten away with murder. And, judging from letters to the editor that ran in the parish bulletin, in the
Harbor Pilot,
in the county paper published in Sheboygan, nearly everyone in Fox Harbor agreed.

Excepting Cindy Ann's two sisters, of course. They were quick to counter with letters of their own; this was to be expected. What we did not expect was that the worst of these letters, the most hurtful,
would come from Mallory herself. It could hardly be supposed, Mallory wrote, that Cindy Ann set out to harm anybody. Yes, she'd had too much to drink the night before, but who hasn't woken up with a hangover, taken two aspirin, jumped in the car? Who, after all, hasn't made a mistake?

And then—

Sallow-faced Mallory Donaldson, with her animal rights petitions, her aggressive vegetarianism—the result, we all supposed, of growing up on a farm that raised veal. Summers, she traveled around the Midwest, selling handmade jewelry at flea markets and craft fairs. Winters, she washed dishes at the Cup and Cruller, dressed in flannel shirts and shit-kicker boots, a man's synthetic cap pulled low over her forehead. Yet, Toby had fallen in love with her. They'd been together for almost two years. Every now and then, they'd even babysat for Evan.

“I can't take sides on this,” Toby said, after the letter appeared. “Not against her. Not against you.”

Everything, now, seemed poisoned. Pointless. Mornings, I'd
wake up, stare out the window at the naked, gray shoreline, littered with fat chunks of ice.

What, I thought, do I do next?

The sun coming up and going down again. The clock tick-ticking on the wall.

 

Shortly after Cindy Ann's sentencing, I wrote my letter of resignation to Lakeview Accounting. “Take a little more time to decide,” Lindsey pleaded, filling all the tape on our answering machine. “Let's talk over lunch, okay? C'mon, I'll meet you at the Shanty, my treat.”

But I didn't want to have lunch with Lindsey. And I'd already made up my mind. I was going to do something else, something different, though I didn't know what that might be. I thought about starting a business. I thought about going back to school. I even thought about working for Toby at the fish store, the way I'd done in high school: keeping his books, doing his taxes, helping him with the charter fishing trips he ran on summer weekends aboard his boat, the
Michigan Jack
. But since Mallory's letter, I'd kept my distance—from the fish store and, now that I was driving again, from Toby, too—and, at any rate, I wanted to move forward in my life, not step back into the past.

My mother invited me to Florida. “A change of scene,” she said. She'd stopped asking if I'd seen Toby lately; like my father, she'd decided to ignore the rupture between us. After years spent building Hauskindler Stone and Brick, they'd sold out to a Chicago-based firm. Now they devoted the same fierce attention to retirement that, once, they'd devoted to the family business. Throughout my childhood, they'd worked twelve-hour days, leaving Toby—ten years my senior—to fix my supper, help with homework, read to me, tuck
me into bed. He'd been more like a parent to me than a brother. More like a parent than my parents had been. Until recently, I'd never felt this as a loss.

“Rex could come, too,” my mother said. “We'd take good care of you.”

I told her I'd think it over.

But Rex was a partner at his firm; he couldn't take time now, after all he'd already missed. And I was afraid to leave him on his own, picking at frozen dinners, flipping through channel after channel on TV. Shortly after the criminal verdict, we'd filed a civil suit against Cindy Ann, as well as the city of Fox Harbor, the police department, Officer Randy Metz. This triggered a new round of letters to the editor, fresh arguments at the Cup and Cruller, where everyone, Rex said, fell silent now when he stopped in for his usual to-go. Because this time, he'd hired Arnie Babcock, a friend of a friend, an attorney who was known far and wide for exacting extraordinary damages. In the past, Rex and I had both referred to attorneys like Arnie as ambulance chasers, opportunists who lined their pockets with other people's grief. Now, Rex called Arnie a genius, and the first time I'd looked into his broad, handsome face, I, too, found myself feeling as if we'd finally found someone who cared about us, who'd fight for us, someone who understood.

Cindy Ann Kreisler, Arnie said, had robbed our home like the worst kind of thief. We couldn't ask an eye for an eye, but we could demand her assets, teach her to regret what she'd done. Of course, Arnie understood this wasn't about money; still, why should Cindy Ann continue to enjoy a comfortable life while we, the innocent party, were left suffering, uncompensated, forgotten? We could donate any funds we received to charity. Or, perhaps, start a scholarship in Evan's name. Only then would we find some kind of closure.
We'd finally begin to let go. We'd come to accept what had happened at the intersection of the Point Road and County C, where Evan's teachers and classmates had erected a small, white cross.

At last, I thought, we were getting somewhere. We had a plan in place. There would finally be justice, resolution, just the way Arnie promised.

And yet, instead of feeling better, Rex and I only felt worse. Night after night, he muttered, twisted, unable to fall asleep, while I sat reading the same page of the same book over and over again. That none of Cindy Ann's three girls had been injured! It was just so unbelievable, Rex said, so ironic, so goddamn unfair. Even if she lost her house—and she would, Arnie had promised us that—she'd have those girls long after she'd forgotten about us, and she would forget, Rex was sure of this, he dealt with people like Cindy Ann all the time. She was a drunk, she'd had those girls by different fathers, she probably hadn't even wanted the last one anyway. On and on he went, rising to pace between the bed and the big bay window overlooking the lake. Rex, who was so gentle, so elegantly soft-spoken. Rex, who'd worked as a public defender for his first five years out of law school, protecting the rights of murderers and rapists, drug dealers and thieves. Not that I didn't understand. In fact, I agreed with everything he said. Mornings, I woke with an ache in my throat, a sourness in my stomach, that had nothing to do with Evan. The truth was that, with each passing month, he was harder to remember, harder to see. I felt as if I were grasping at the color of water, the color of the wind or the sky.

And this only made me angrier. My mind returned, again and again, to Cindy Ann, to what she'd done. When I passed Evan's room, the closed door like a fist, I thought about how Cindy Ann had destroyed us. When I saw other people's children, I promised
myself that someday, Cindy Ann would pay. When I managed to get myself to mass, I always lit a candle for Evan, but as I knelt before the flickering light, my prayers were for vengeance, my words red with blood. I imagined choking Cindy Ann, beating her with my fists. I had dreams in which I walked up to her front door with a gun. I constructed scenes in which she begged my forgiveness, even as I turned my face away.

I would never have guessed myself capable of hating another human being the way I hated Cindy Ann Kreisler: virulently, violently. How can I explain the sheer cathartic power of such rage? Whenever I gave myself over to its spell, I felt nothing but that one, pure thing. The nuances of sorrow, of guilt, of grief, burned away like so much kindling. I was terrible in my anger: strong, and fierce, and righteous. I could have led an army. I could have marched for days without food, bootless, euphoric, mile after mile.

“Maybe you could get some kind of counseling,” Lindsey said, when, at last, I joined her at the Shanty, sliding into my usual seat at our usual table overlooking the harbor. My fish fry had arrived, but I couldn't touch a bite of it. Until then, Lindsey had been doing her best to hold up both ends of the conversation, chattering about her husband, Barton, the golfing lessons he'd gotten her for Christmas. Bart was an avid golfer, and he was always trying to interest Lindsey in the sport. Usually this amused me, but today I just stared out the dirty windows, wishing I hadn't agreed to come, wishing Lindsey would do something about the gray, puffy coat and piano keyboard scarf she'd been wearing for the past ten years.

“Why should
I
get counseling?” I snapped. “I haven't done anything wrong.”

“It's
counseling,
” Lindsey said. “Not punishment. I just think it might help you feel better—”

“Feel
better
?” I said. “When the person who murdered my child is walking around, free as air? When
we
have to face the rest of our lives in this
prison,
this—”

I was too angry to finish.

“I'm sorry,” Lindsey said, quietly. “It was just a suggestion.” She began looking for her keys, digging around in her oversize purse. “I hate to see you suffering, that's all.”

 

Early in May, on our first warm day of the year, I saw Cindy Ann and her oldest girl, Amy, in the grocery store. Five months had passed since the accident. There they were, standing in front of the dairy case, picking out a carton of ice cream.
Ice cream
. It seemed inexcusable, unbearable, that they should indulge themselves in such pleasures, that they should enjoy themselves, in any way, ever again. I took a step toward them, and with that, Cindy Ann saw me. There was nothing in her face, not sorrow, not guilt or fear. She simply stared at me, hands at her sides, waiting for whatever it was I might say.

“You—” I began, the word squeezed from my throat, and then I was running out of the store, into the parking lot, the asphalt spinning beneath me. I got into my car, another Taurus—it still smelled of its awful newness—and sat for a moment, gasping, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. I could see the double doors leading in and out of the store; Cindy Ann would emerge at any minute now, Amy beside her, the ice-cream carton swinging in its plastic bag. All I'd have to do was wait until she entered the crosswalk, and then—

I blinked. I was sweating hard. There was still no sign of Cindy Ann. I pulled out of the parking space slowly, cautiously, making
sure to signal when I reached the end of the row.

That night, I did not tell Rex that I'd fantasized about running Cindy Ann Kreisler down with my car. Instead, I told him about the ice cream, about the way Cindy Ann had looked at me: without remorse, blankly, indifferently.

“Oh, she'll be remorseful all right,” Rex said. “Her days are numbered, believe me.”

Arnie had hired a private investigator to find out if she was, in fact, still drinking; if she ever raised her voice to her kids; if she drove within the speed limit. This guy was the best, Arnie'd worked with him before, and if Cindy Ann so much as sneezed, we were going to find out about it. By the time Arnie was done with her, Rex promised, she'd wish that
she'd
died in the crash.

And I said: “That isn't good enough.”

And Rex said, “Nothing could be.”

The ugliness of those words. I stared down at my hands, horrified, as if they were not my own. At that moment, I began to suspect the truth: we would never be satisfied. We might tear the flesh from Cindy Ann's limbs with our teeth, strip by bloody strip, and still, it would be insufficient. In the end, we'd be animals, worse than animals. I thought about how I'd felt, sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store, my hands gripping the wheel like talons. I thought about how, whenever I tried to remember my son, I wound up thinking of Cindy Ann's daughters instead, hating them simply for drawing breath. I thought about Randy Metz, the way he'd looked at me in court.