Drowning Instinct (16 page)

Over a third mug of coffee:

Mr. Anderson asked about my parents, Meryl, Meryl‘s farm, what it was like to paddle around Lake Superior. ―I‘ve always wanted to do that,‖ he said, toying with a sugar packet. ―When I moved out here, I meant to make the drive, but things always got in the way.‖

―Where did you live before?‖

―Kenosha. I wasn‘t supposed to be a teacher. My dad‘s company was down there.

They manufactured electroless nickel, the stuff they use to coat hard drives, automotive differentials. I was supposed to take over right out of grad school. I did, for about three years. As soon as my old man retired from the board of directors, I sold the damn thing and made more money than God.‖ He chuckled. ―I thought my father was going to have a stroke, but I got the last laugh: money and my freedom. Well, most of it. I would never be young again, but . . . I guess you could say I got back at him for yanking me out of Stanford.‖

No adult had ever talked to me so frankly before. ―You couldn‘t have stayed? At Stanford, I mean?‖

―Sure, but I didn‘t think I could at the time.‖ He tossed the sugar packet back into its little wicker basket. ―That‘s one thing you learn as you get older. Parents expect they‘ll have the same influence when you‘re thirty as when you‘re ten. Some parents, the good ones, are able to let go. Others don‘t like becoming obsolete and do their best to convince you that you can‘t get along without them. That‘s where I made my mistake. I was afraid, pure and simple. I bought into my dad‘s idea that I couldn‘t make it without his help. True, things have worked out okay. Anyone looking would think I have this perfect, fairy-tale life: money, land, a lovely house, a great wife. But all that‘s surface stuff. It‘s like watching someone on the water who you think is fine because there‘s no fuss, no screaming, when, really, the guy‘s about twenty seconds away from drowning.‖

―But if you‘re rich,‖ I said, ―you could do anything.‖

―It‘s not that simple.‖

―Why not?‖

―For one thing, you can‘t turn back the clock. For another, we‘re not talking just me anymore. I‘ve got a wife and responsibilities. There comes a point, Jenna, where you have to let some things die.‖ He shrugged. ―Anyway, that‘s where I figure I can help people younger than me avoid my mistakes.‖

I wanted to ask him how many he‘d made, other than abandoning his dreams of becoming a marine mammalogist. I thought I had an idea. And now I knew something else, Bob: despite everything he had—in spite of his wonderful wife—Mr. Anderson was unhappy. He had regrets, things he wished he could do over. I wondered if that included getting married.

He straightened out of his slouch. ―Enough about me. What are your plans for the rest of the day? Other than doing your English thing.‖

―Nothing,‖ I said.

―Terrific.‖ He grinned. ―How do you feel about glass?‖

Glass turned out to be rooms and rooms of paperweights, different shapes, different sizes, some antique and others contemporary, in a riot of colors. The museum was in Neenah, housed in a limestone Tudor mansion squatting on a tiny peninsula off the northwest shore of Lake Winnebago, not far from Appleton. I‘d never been past Fond du Lac, which was down south, and I‘d certainly never heard of a museum devoted to nothing but paperweights. An informational display at the entrance said the museum had over three thousand, more than six hundred from this one lady whose husband was filthy rich or something and so had all this money to throw at his wife who‘d been obsessed with paperweights since she was a kid.

Most of the glass
was
beautiful and the art of how you made a paperweight was pretty interesting. Mr. Anderson found me staring at a rectangular weight perched on a lone pedestal. Suspended in the glass, honeybees hovered over four clusters of multicolored flowers. The flowers floated in the glass, their roots trailing in graceful swirls. The bees were so lifelike their hind legs bulged with yellow pollen sacs. But there was something odd about the roots and when I looked more closely, I realized why.

―They‘re people,‖ I said to Mr. Anderson. ―The way he‘s positioned the legs and arms, they look like roots, but they‘re really...
bodies
.‖ (I hadn‘t wanted to say
naked
, but they were: a confusion of swelling breasts, round buttocks, large bellies, and, well.... Come on, you don‘t need me to draw you a map, right, Bobby?) ―Like that painter who does all those people tangled together.‖

―Hieronymus Bosch? Hunh. I never thought about that before but now that you mention it....‖ Mr. Anderson smiled. ―You have a good eye, Jenna.‖

Afterward, we browsed the gift shop but didn‘t linger long. They did have a paperweight by that artist who did the root people, but it was something astronomical, like over three thousand
dollars
. Besides, I felt a little weird shopping with Mr. Anderson. Like it was
too
close, if you know what I mean. But it was also exciting. People who liked each other shared things: what they enjoyed doing, their interests, stuff like that.

Mr. Anderson treated me to lunch a half hour south in Oshkosh at a restaurant with its own microbrewery and about two dozen slips where boaters could dock and come ashore. On nice days, you could eat outside at picnic tables alongside the water, but it was late in the season and very cold for October. The picnic tables were stacked, the umbrellas folded and only a few boats trolled back and forth on the slate-gray water. Mr. Anderson eyed the tables and then scrutinized my jacket (which was nowhere near warm enough, not if you also counted the breeze lifting off the water). ―Here,‖ he said, shucking out of his coat and holding it out to me. ―Put this on.‖

―I...I...I can‘t...‖ I didn‘t know what to do.

―Take it. Come on. I‘ve got a sweatshirt in the car. The turtleneck‘s Under Armour, so I‘ll be fine. We‘ll pretend we‘re skiing.‖

Uhm . . . okay. Considering that I‘d
never
been skiing and didn‘t have a clue what he was talking about . . . But I let him push the coat into my hands. It was the same sheepskin he‘d worn the night he saved me from Dr. Kirby, and while he was jogging out to his car, I put my nose to the collar and inhaled. It had a...a
man’s
smell. Like if I closed my eyes and had just that scent to go on, I would know that the only man I would see when I opened my eyes again would be him. I can‘t explain it any better than that.

When I slid my hands into the pockets, I found folded slips of paper, three nickels, seven pennies, and a half-dollar piece in the left—and a small Swiss Army knife in the right.

At that, I felt a little prick of guilt. He must be missing the kissing knife, which I always carried in my knapsack now, like a good luck charm. Probably he wondered what the hell had happened to that knife.

Or maybe ...

Maybe he
did
know; had put two and two together, how that knife had disappeared the first and only morning I‘d been in the back room—but had decided
not
to do anything about it. To let it go. To let
me
keep the knife. Kind of like a present, I guess. It was a nice thing to imagine, anyway.

We huddled at a table in a splotch of sunlight but out of the wind, and had burgers.

I‘m sure the waitress thought we were insane and maybe we were, but I felt free and decadent, like this is what adults did. When we were done, we just sat and watched the water. There was a drawbridge just off the slips. A bell began to clang, and then the bridge split as some kind of big white boat approached.

Mr. Anderson had his feet up on his bench. His chin rested on the points of his knees as he stared at the boat floating by. ―I used to boat all the time,‖ he said, a little dreamily. ―A walkaround.‖ A brief glance my way. ―The kind Quint had in
Jaws
. Kathy never liked it, just never got into it, but I‘d be on the water for hours, sometimes a few days. Fishing sometimes, but I was just as happy not. When I was in California, I used to dive. I even dove Lake Tahoe once, this place called Rubicon Point. I‘d never seen anything like that. The wall‘s very steep, goes straight down eight hundred feet, so far you can‘t dive to the bottom. The water‘s green at the surface and then it gets colder and bluer as you descend and you‘re still feeling okay, like what‘s the big deal, just a bunch of rocks.

Only right around seventy feet, the bottom just goes away.‖ His hands pulled apart, carving out an expanding cloud. ―Just . . .
gone
. There‘s no bottom and you‘re floating over this abyss. For a minute, you think you‘re going to fall. There‘s an anvil of water above and water below, and you‘re just
there
. Then you follow the great wall, this massive jumble of boulders and vertical rock, straight down. You go deeper and deeper and it gets colder and colder until you‘re at a hundred and ten feet, and it‘s below forty and the light‘s completely grayed out, and you can‘t believe you‘ll ever be warm again.‖

His back was to me. His voice was hushed. I barely breathed. I waited.

He finally let go of a long, sad sigh. ―Lake Michigan is too cold, too dark, and has too many wrecks. I never got into that kind of diving, never saw the point of gawking at all that death. The only wreck I ever did was in Belize, about a hundred feet down, but only because I wanted to see the continental shelf. I remember looking off to my left and seeing how the white sand bottom went on for a ways and then it just stopped. Like you‘d come to the edge of the world. The ocean beyond wasn‘t even blue. It was
black
. We were following a guide rope and pretty far back because the currents at the shelf will sweep you away if you‘re not careful. There, you really
will
fall into the abyss.‖

―It sounds scary,‖ I said.

―It is. Most things worth effort like that are, but what‘s the point of never taking chances? I don‘t know if I could stand living my whole life afraid. I‘ll tell you what did scare me at first, though: night diving. The idea of voluntarily slipping into the dark was really spooky. But it‘s . . . magic. At night, when you swim, the water sparkles with these bright green flashes, like stars, from these bioluminescent organisms. Cold fire, divers call it.‖ His tone turned wistful. ―It‘s like visiting another galaxy.‖

He sounded, I thought, like Alexis. I wanted to tell him that if he missed that and had the money, he should just go. I should‘ve said that he should do what made him happy.

But what came out was: ―You make it sound like something I‘d like to do someday.‖

He turned to stare at me. ―Maybe we will,‖ he said.

I don‘t remember what else we talked about. But we sat together in the cold for almost two more hours: him in his sweatshirt, me wrapped in a warm coat that smelled of him. We were out there long enough that when I looked up, the waitress was eyeing us through the restaurant‘s tinted windows.

Like
we
were the ones in glass rather than the other way around.

31: a

Mr. Anderson dropped me back at the McMansion a little before 7 P.M. The kitchen‘s handset display said I‘d missed two calls, both from numbers I recognized.

First message:
Jenna? It’s Evan. I, uh, I got your message and . . . well, I could be
wrong, but I’m not aware that we’re doing anything more for Nate. So . . .
(Pause.)
I don’t
know what he’s talking about. Unless he and your mom . . .
(Pause.)
I’ll give his publicist a
call and see what the story is. Just . . . this isn’t worth bothering your mom about. Okay?

Bye, honey.

Second message:
Hi, sweetie, it’s your mom. Listen, we’ve decided to come back
Saturday night. I know you don’t mind. What teenager wouldn’t kill for a week off from
their parents?
(Pause.)
Anyway, have a good week. Love you.

Click. Dial tone.

Mom was right, too: I didn‘t mind. I didn‘t care.

At. All.

I tuned my radio to a station Mr. Anderson liked, the one we‘d listened to in his car.

They were playing a Bach fugue. I thought about how Mr. Anderson might be listening to the same thing at this very moment. So we were kind of enjoying the music together, even if we weren‘t in the same room, and that felt good.

As I listened, I unfolded the papers I‘d palmed from his pocket. He‘d written them in real ink—with a fountain pen, I thought. There was something about the shape of the letters that reminded me of calligraphy and was so different from his familiar scrawl which I‘d seen a hundred times on the blackboard or graded papers. It was somehow intimate and thrilling to imagine him forming each letter with exquisite care. One was obviously a grocery list: eggs, strawberries, milk, flour, everything he‘d need for pancakes. Which meant he‘d been thinking of me when he wrote it. That felt . . . private and special, like this was a note only I would understand.

The other note was very brief: a single letter and then a word.

J
.

And:
lover
.

I read it twice over but knew there was no mistake. You‘d have to be brain-dead not to get it.

I was
J
. And
lover
was ...

This was about me, Bob.

It was about me.

32: a

By Friday, it felt as if Mr. Anderson and I had been together for months instead of only a few days. We had a routine going: run in the mornings, then a shower and breakfast.

(Mr. Anderson said we should stay away from Adelaide‘s—not because we were doing anything wrong, but who needed the headaches?) I didn‘t mind. Making food together felt homey, like I belonged. He showed me how to make omelets and I showed him bangers and mash. We talked a lot, mainly about him, his family. He didn‘t ask a lot of questions about where I‘d been last year or what Psycho-Dad had meant, and that was good because it was like we had this unspoken agreement. If I wanted to talk, I could. If I didn‘t, fine.

On the other hand, there was stuff about him we didn‘t touch—his marriage, his wife. I really wanted to know and then again, I really didn‘t because, honestly? Talking about her would remind him that he probably didn‘t need a friend like me.

Afterward, we‘d go to a museum and then lunch and then either another museum or maybe we‘d go for a walk and then have coffee and pastries—like they did in Europe, Mr.

Anderson said. When he was a kid, his family went all over, and what he remembered most was how people there took their time and enjoyed life. In between his junior and senior years in college, his father had let him spend an entire summer in Italy, probably to make up for yanking him out of Stanford. Mr. Anderson said the best part of the day was late afternoon when you could sit at a little café in a piazza just about anywhere and have a grappa or cup of coffee and pastry and people-watch, maybe make up stories about them.

Like Mr. Anderson would spot a guy and think that maybe he was waiting for his girlfriend because he kept checking his watch. He said he could tell which couples were going to stay together because of how close they sat and if they ate off each other‘s plate, which he said you only did when you really trusted someone. He really paid attention to things like that.

After coffee, we might go back to his house and walk around the lake, which I really liked because it was so peaceful, like the lake and his house and land were a whole other world for just the two of us. I loved how the landscape changed at dusk, the woods and fields graying out, the air smelling suddenly sharp and wet and cold enough so it was only natural for us to walk closer together, our arms unexpectedly brushing in a way that made it hard to breathe. The world would fade; the chatter of the birds drop away; and the day—and what I was in the light—slide toward night.

Who we were fell away, too, until we were like shades, ghosts of the people we‘d been. Sometimes we stood on the opposite shore and looked back at his house, its windows fired with yellow light so it glittered on the mirror of the water.

And once Mr. Anderson said, very softly, ―It‘s like looking at another country from very far away.‖

I wasn‘t sure what he meant, but he sounded sad again, like the day he talked about how people can drown and you would never know by looking because things seem fine. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, let him know I was there to help. Of course, I didn‘t.

But I loved it all, everything, every moment. I loved that Mr. Anderson always had fresh towels for me and gave me one of his old robes. He always let me shower first. Then, while he cleaned up, I would wrap myself in that robe and lie on the bed in the guest room and listen to the distant rush and thrum of the water. Sometimes I let myself imagine what he might look like, his muscles and bronzed skin wet and glistening. I never quite let myself form a
whole
picture, if you know what I mean. But . . . almost. Enough that the robe felt almost unbearable against my skin. Enough that I imagined walking into his bathroom and letting the robe slip from my shoulders and then, somehow, he would see me and only stand there and let me look at him as the water flowed around his body and there was a mirror and my skin was flawless and white, no scars, no grafts and then I would step under the water with him and then . . .

And then, for a few seconds—in my mind—I was almost beautiful.

Of course, I would never do that. It could never happen anyway and besides, it would be wrong. He was married. He had a wife and, maybe, a baby. Mr. Anderson was my friend. I tried to tell myself that he cared about me the way a teacher would who was going out of his way to make the crazy kid feel good about herself. Such a friendship didn‘t come around very often. I had to be careful not to wreck this.

Still, every night, I unfolded that scrap of paper and reread the words Mr. Anderson had written that gave the lie, and I wondered if he was awake in a tangle of sheets, staring up at shadows, thinking of me.