This is the Water (24 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

T
he meet this weekend is a home meet and you have signed up to time. Your girls are in many individual events because the coach has decided there will be no relays, which, by the official rules, lets the swimmers swim in more events. You are thankful for this because it means there will be plenty of individual races to watch your girls in. What's new are energy drinks in the form of a gel, and your girls, of course, want you to buy some for the meet. You sit in on the required timers' meeting before the race begins. You have heard the talk that is given at this meeting maybe a hundred times before, but still you are required to attend the meeting and listen. The assistant coach, when describing the stopwatch to parents who have never timed before, likes to tell them that the right button starts and stops the watch, the left button clears the watch, and the middle button will blow the whole place up. New parents always laugh at this joke and you smile, not wanting to send the message that you think the joke is tired, not wanting to offend the assistant coach, who you are sure is paid very little and puts in long hours. The assistant coach then describes the other timing device, the plunger. One of the parents asks what the plunger looks like, and the assistant coach says, “It looks like a detonator,” and suddenly you are wondering how something as mundane as a home swim meet for school-age children keeps having references to explosions. You are relieved when the topic turns to rubber-ducky prizes for heat winners, and how the timers will not be responsible for distributing the prizes because a heat-winner volunteer will keep track of that.

Paul is timing also, only you're not in his lane. He waves to you when he sees you at the meeting, and you smile and nod, and you make yourself not reach up to your hair and smooth it down, even though you can see out of the top corner of your eye that it's messy, because you are no longer in the business of making yourself attractive for him, you are in the business of every day making sure you save your daughter's life. The kissing and the touching you did with Paul are no longer important. So many things are in the past now, even your brother and his blood and his brains on his carpet are gone. No longer will the thoughts of him seem to suck you down into crevices in your house, through floorboards and chair seats.

You are in a lane with Dinah, and when her daughter swims in your lane Dinah screams, “Go, Baby, go!” and stands on the gutter, her toes in her sandals almost dipping into the pool water. You think how Dinah, if the killer ever threatened her daughter, would probably never let him get near her daughter. You think how you should be a little bit more Dinah, a little tougher, a little louder, a little more almost in the water with your daughter, pushing her along. Dinah, thankfully, is not talking to you about Paul or anything else except the meet. Her daughter has a chance to qualify for age groups at this meet, and that's all she's concerned with. She has agreed to work the plunger, and you write down the times. You are in an end lane, where, in a heat, the slower swimmers are placed, and these swimmers are not as good as others at making streamlined dives, so as an end-lane timer, you are wetter than the middle-lane timers from being splashed so many times by near belly flops and sloppy entries. The pages on the clipboard where you record the times are also very wet, and even the pencil is hard to write with. A Gunga Din, at least that's what you call them—volunteers who pass out plastic water bottles to the timers and officials who can't step away from their posts—comes by with a water bottle. You always need water to drink when timing because the air in the pool is hot and makes you thirsty. You store the bottle under the block, and hope that a swimmer doesn't accidentally kick it into the water.

Dinah's daughter, Jessie, competes in her one-hundred breast, and while she swims, Dinah yells, “Go, Baby, go!” Dinah is yelling, “Finish it! Finish it!” so loudly when her daughter is approaching the wall that you're momentarily deaf in one ear. Jessie's time is fast enough to take her to age groups, the next division. Dinah leaves her post as a timer screaming, “You did it!” and runs to hug her daughter when her daughter comes out of the pool. When Dinah runs back to your side to start the timer for the next race, her front is soaking wet from the hug, and she's so red in the face you worry she's going to collapse.

Alex pokes you from behind. “I'm in heat ten, lane five,” she says. You give her the thumbs-up as she walks off to her lane. When she races you don't watch the swimmer racing in your lane, you watch only Alex, whose entry is tight, whose splash is so light it could be that of a wishing rock thrown into a pond. You start to yell like Dinah yells when Alex comes to do a flip by your end. “Go, Ba—” you yell, catching yourself just in time before you say, “Go, Baby, go!” like Dinah. You yell at the top of your lungs now, because there is another swimmer gaining on your Alex. You can't remember having yelled this loud before. You think how maybe you should have yelled like this when the killer had you in the car, that if you had yelled this loud, it wouldn't have mattered how loud the wind was, or how far away you were from a house. Someone surely would have heard you. You think you are yelling this loud to make up for all the yelling you didn't do with the killer. It feels good to yell so loud. You think it's even making your arms feel better. You can't feel the intense itching. After your daughter wins her heat and you raise both your hands in the air, one holding the clipboard, the other holding the pencil, you feel a hand on your back. You think it's your other daughter, Sofia, come to tell you which heat and lane her next race is in, but when you turn around you see that it's the assistant coach. “Annie, as a timer, it's actually not acceptable to yell so loud for your children,” he says. You apologize to him, and when he leaves Dinah says, “Fuck him. Yell all you want to. I'd like to see in the parent handbooks where it says you can't cheer for your own kid. All the money we spend, all the time we spend volunteering—yell till your lungs burst, Annie. Can you believe we made it to age groups? I didn't think Jessie was going to do it there for a second. If she had taken one more stroke, instead of gliding into the wall, we wouldn't have made it. Oh, and sorry about Paul. I can see he's back with his wife. That must be rough for you, but you look like you're holding up just fine. You're lucky you have Thomas. He's a great guy.” You nod. You can't believe Dinah is telling you this. Is she that ecstatic about her daughter making it into age groups? I guess she is, you think. “Hey, after the meet, why don't you and the girls join us at the sushi place?” she says. You stammer, “Thanks, but I have to get back and let the dog out. Maybe another time.”

When you ask the girls in the car ride home how well they think they did, your youngest says, “Mom, what were you doing all that yelling for while I was racing? I thought I was doing something wrong and you wanted me to get out. I thought I was in the wrong race or something, you were yelling so loud.”

“Sorry,” you say, and then, “Hey, I thought you said you could never hear people when they cheered for you.”

“I'd have to be dead not to hear you in that race!” she says, and you almost wince when she says the word dead. You wish she hadn't, because suddenly you picture her dead, her throat slit, and you holding her in your arms, trying to support her head to keep it from falling off all the way.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

T
here are times when you feel like telling Thomas what the killer said. It is like something you've been carrying around that you finally need help with. It is the load of logs in your arms that you're carrying in from the woodpile for the woodstove but just can't make it to the door with, and you know at any second you're just going to have to let them drop to the frozen ground. “Thomas?” you say when he's reading, but he doesn't look up, and you realize you are purposefully trying to get his attention at a time when he's reading, and when you know he won't look up, because deep down you don't really want him to reply. You really don't want to tell him about the killer for fear he'll get up from where he is, go to the gun cabinet, pull out that well-oiled rifle, and go to that school you know the killer works at because you saw his picture in the paper standing by the sheep, and you are afraid Thomas will follow the killer home and shoot him dead, and then Thomas will go to jail for the rest of his life because there's no evidence against the killer, and you cannot have Thomas go to jail. Who would do algebra with your daughters and teach them how two negatives make a positive? Who would cut and chop and split and stack the logs for the fire in the winter? You think maybe there's a way of planting evidence. Maybe you could somehow obtain from Kim's mother an item of Kim's clothing, a strand of hair from her hairbrush, or a swim cap she wore. You could plant the evidence in the killer's house. You imagine this conversation with Kim's mother—“Uh, I was wondering if I could have Kim's old swim cap”—and you lower your head. You do not want to put a woman whose daughter was murdered through this conversation.

This is the night. The dog coming upstairs and lying down at your door. This is Thomas breathing loudly in his sleep. This is Anna Karenina, calling on her friend Princess Betsy, who also has had affairs, but even Princess Betsy won't see her, and Anna is snubbed. This is Vronksy telling Anna not to be seen in public. This is Anna, bereft over Vronksy's coolness toward her, flirting with Levin just to feel better. This is you feeling like Anna, really feeling as if you are she for a moment. This is Anna, believing that Vronsky doesn't love her anymore, that he'll follow his mother's wishes and marry a high-society lady, and this is Anna miserable, thinking the only way to free herself from the torment is to end her life. This is you saying, “Don't do it, Anna,” in your room in the night with no one listening but maybe the shapes you see in the knots in the wood. This is the Russian freight train. You cannot stop the train from feeling beneath its wheels the flesh of a woman so sad, broken on the gleaming tracks. This is the moon shining into the room, lighting up the glass gun case and the rifles and guns standing upright inside of it. These are the barrels and triggers of the rifles and guns looking shiny and wet. This is you sighing so loudly that a small sound comes out from inside of your throat. This is moonlight falling on Thomas's forehead, making it shine like the barrels of the guns.

When you see Paul at the next practice he is alone. In the foyer he walks up to you. He touches your shoulder. “Annie, how are you doing?” he says. He tilts his head slightly to the side, and looks long into your eyes, as if he wants you to know that his question is a question full of meaning. You want to step away from him. You wish he would remove his hand. How strange, you think to yourself, that he is repugnant to you now but wasn't a while back, when he was being selfish and not wanting to go to the police with any information about Bobby Chantal. You cannot believe that now you are the one who is being selfish, who could prevent more murders if only you went to the police and told them what you know. When you first told Paul to go to the police you said it like it would be an easy thing for him to do, when obviously it would have been so hard to do. You only realize this now that you are faced with losing your daughter. You have a fear of even being near a police station, because maybe the killer is watching you and maybe he thinks you are about to turn him in. You answer Paul. “Fine,” you say, and turn away from him and get ready to swim.

In the locker room you see the older girls from the team, the ones who now drive themselves to and from practice. One of them could easily be the killer's next victim. They are all lively and quick to smile at one another. They laugh easily about things you would laugh at too, and sometimes when you're in the locker room, you smile just listening to them joke with one another while you change into your swimsuit.

 

T
his is the coach at a parents' meeting after practice telling you and other parents that swimming is not about the times. This is you thinking, Then what's it about, when every time there's a meet that's all it's about? The expensive timing board up on the wall with the flashing lights that displays swimmers' lanes and times, the expensive timing console and touchpads hung at the ends of lane lines during a meet, the plungers used, the timers using stopwatches, the heat sheets listing seed times and times to beat to advance up into age groups and zones, the announcer, pausing in between races to let everyone know who broke the pool record—these all tell you it's only about the times. It's not as if ribbons and medals are awarded to girls or boys with the prettiest fly, the strongest breast kick, the most elegant backstroke. Ribbons and medals are only given to the kid who touches the wall first. You know you are supposed to embrace the team philosophy. You know you are supposed to realize that it's about the kids challenging themselves and being disciplined and learning to work with others on the team, but it's like saying the involvement of the United States in the Middle East is about human rights and not about oil. Of course it's about oil. You are having one of those moments when you wonder if you are the only one who sees these things clearly. You wonder if the other parents sitting in the room with you, the one with the fashionable scarf maybe, or the one with the dry cough, think it's not about the times.

When Paul comes into the meeting late, you put your purse down on the seat next to you so he won't want to sit down beside you. But he wants to anyway. He smiles and says, “May I?” and you have no choice but to move your purse and put it back on your lap. While the meeting is in progress, you can hear the loud voices of kids yelling to one another during practice, because the door to the room leads right out onto the pool deck. You can hear the coaches blowing whistles and, as always, the splashing of water. You can feel the hot air from the pool deck seeping in under the space at the bottom of the door, and your poison ivy, which has not yet healed, begins to itch.

Throughout the meeting, Paul tries to talk to you. You want to seem polite. You don't want to be rude and talk to the person sitting next to you while the director of the facility is telling you what a wonderful place this is. You like listening to how it is a wonderful place. You wish Paul would be quiet. You like hearing that all of the money you spend every year to keep your daughters on the team goes toward a facility to which no other in your part of the country can compare. You like hearing that because our facility is so nice, we host all the meets, and because we host all the big meets, we don't have to get in the car and travel for miles to a lesser pool, an overly chlorinated, poorly lit hothouse of a pool with only four lanes, for example. We don't have to travel and spend the money on hotels as often as other teams. We don't have to have our kids jumping off the walls in the hotel and not being able to have a restful night's sleep before a big race the next day. Our kids race better in their home pool, you are told. Their times are faster. They're more comfortable. They know exactly when to extend their hand for a backstroke touch and not waste time taking another stroke because they know the position of the backstroke flags in their home pool. The director is trying to make you feel better about having to work all the time at the home meets. Even when your daughters are not racing in some of the sessions, you are expected to help work. On top of that work, there are still positions to fill. Who will be head coordinators? Who will educate the parents? Who will contact the press, the local papers, and let them know there is a meet coming up they should cover? Who will organize the swimathons and car washes? Who will make the pots of chili for the room where the coaches and officials can go to grab something to eat while they're working on deck all day during a meet? Who will make sure the team is social and has dinners together? Who will make sure the granola bars are well stocked at the concessions? Who will decide what to do with all the money the granola bars make? Who will learn how to run the timing console and download the updates, and know how to connect all the wires from the touchpads to the console? Who will put the stickers on the ribbons with the right names and times? This is so much nothingness that you are transfixed. You have even forgotten for a moment that Paul is sitting next to you, nudging you, saying, “Did you hear what I said?” And then you hear. It's all about Bobby Chantal, and you want to get up and leave. Bobby Chantal is like an anchor on your neck you'd like to let drop.

This is the director, looking right at you when Paul is trying to talk to you. This is Paul whispering in your ear, “You're not going to believe this, but the exhumation already took place. Sure enough, they found my DNA on her, or in her, I should say. They found a bunch of hairs and one of them was mine. My lawyer tells me I'll do fine if I have to testify in front of a jury, though. I've got an honest face, he says.”

“Didn't you tell him about the red Corvair? About the license plate?”

“Sure, but like I said, those leads were so old they meant nothing.”

You leave the meeting early, not wanting to have to listen to Paul anymore. You were hoping there would be some other evidence on Bobby Chantal that would incriminate the killer.

You pass by the swimmers practicing diving off the blocks, their splashes coming up and getting you wet. In the foyer, waiting for your daughters, you feel the need to scratch at your arms again. You lift up your sleeves and examine them. A lifeguard walks by. You see him so often you both smile at each other, even though you don't know his name. He stops when he sees the blisters on your arm. “Oooh, that looks bad. Poison ivy?” You nod. “That's been going around here. A guy who swims here has it in the same place. He says he got it from sheep!”

You cannot believe what he just said. The killer has been swimming here?

“When does he swim?” you ask.

“He comes at night, after swim practice. He should be here soon. Why?”

“Maybe I know him—does he have black hair? About so high? A wrinkled, wide forehead?”

“That's the guy. You know him?”

You look at the clock on the wall behind the front desk. “What's taking my girls so long? I better go check on them,” you say to the lifeguard. “See you later.” You walk off to the locker room so that you don't have to answer the lifeguard's question about you knowing the killer.

Your girls can't understand why you're having them leave the facility through the side door. You have never left that way before. It doesn't lead out to the parking lot. It leads to a side yard where metal ventilation ducts stick out from the lawn. Of course, you are hoping to avoid seeing the killer or, more precisely, having the killer see your girls. Your girls are rosy cheeked from having just swum. Your girls smell like flowery shampoo and almond lotion, and the usual faint tinge of chlorine. The killer would be drawn to your girls. Who wouldn't be? They chatter happily about their workout. They talk bathing suits. They say the racing suits long in the leg are meant to shave time off in distance, but not in sprints. For sprints you need a cut-out leg for the sake of mobility, especially for a breaststroke kick. You look left and right once you're outside the facility. Maybe the killer is waiting for you out here in the dark. Suddenly, your poison ivy itches violently. Maybe it senses how near the killer might be. You get to the car without being seen, or so you hope. You're tempted to tell the girls to scrunch down in their seats, to keep their heads from being seen through the windows. Anything to keep the killer at bay.

 

D
riving home, you're speeding. On the turns of the dark, backcountry road, the car feels as if it's going to tip over. “What's the rush?” your girls say. If you had let them read with the light on they wouldn't have noticed, but you have not let them turn the light on, afraid someone will be able to see them. “It's late and you have homework to do,” you tell the girls. “Right, so race us home, risking our lives, so we can do it,” Sofia says, and you can almost feel her rolling her eyes in the passenger seat next to you. You can almost hear the click her eyeballs make as they turn in their sockets. Listen, I'm saving you from getting your throat cut, you want to tell her, and wipe the sarcasm off her face, but of course you don't. You look straight out onto the road. There is the house that has been burning a brush fire all day, the smoke rising up high and thick behind it, making it look as if the house is on fire. There are the glowing eyes of a raccoon. There are the outlines of horses on the hillside, some owner having not yet put them in their stalls for the night. There are dark clouds speeding by, small ones with one end that tapers into thin strips like a tail, so that the clouds look like rats scurrying by in the sky.

This is the news on the radio. Another woman, a girl still, really, only seventeen, was killed at another rest stop a few exits south. Her throat slashed with a knife. This is you turning the radio off quickly. “Enough, this is enough,” you think.

This is Chris in her house, watching the news and listening to the story about the seventeen-year-old girl being killed. She puts her head in her hands. When Paul comes in and hears the news too, she lifts her head and looks at him and says, “I almost wish you were Bobby's killer. Then at least these killings wouldn't still be happening.” Paul takes Chris in his arms and they hold each other until Cleo walks in and says, “I guess you're not divorcing. I was kind of hoping you would. I wanted to choose the other house I'd be living in. I was thinking Dad could buy a farm with a pony, a trampoline, and an outdoor swimming pool, with a slide of course.”