Black Water (3 page)

Kelly-,
a name that suits you.

Yes? Why?—her hair whipping in the
wind.

Green eyes?—they
are
green aren't they?

How tall he was, how
physical his presence.
And that dimpled grin, the big chunky white teeth. He made a playful swipe at
lifting Kelly Kelleher's dark sunglasses to squint at her eyes and, adroitly,
Kelly fell in with the gesture lifting the glasses herself meeting his frank
examining gaze (blue: the blue of washed glass) but only for a moment.

And his grin wavered, just perceptibly.
As
if, for that moment, he was
doubting
himself: his manly power.

Murmuring,
as if in apology, even as, by so doing, he was flattering Kelly the more, Yes,
green—
lovely.

In
fact Kelly Kelleher's eyes were rather more gray than green: pebble-colored,
she thought them. Of no distinction except they were wide-spaced, large,
attractive, "normal."
But the lashes so pale,
brittle, thin.
Unless she used mascara, which she disliked, the lashes
were scarcely visible.

In
fact Kelly Kelleher's eyes had once been a source of great vexation and anguish
to her parents, thus to her. Until the operation when things were set right.

From
birth, Kelly had had an imbalance in her eye muscles, the name for the defect
(you could not escape the fact, it
was
a
defect)
strabismus,
meaning that, in Kelly's case,
the muscles of the left were weaker than the muscles of the right. Unknowing,
then, the child had been seeing for the first two confused years of her life
not a single image registered in her brain as normal people do but two images
(each further confused by a multiplicity of details)
unharmoniously
and always unpredictably overlapping, the left-eye image often floating about,
un-moored; so instinctively the child compensated by focusing upon the stronger
right-eye image, thus the left eye wandered the more like a minnow in the
eyeball until it seemed (to the anxious elder Kellehers, Artie and Madelyn poor
Daddy and Mommy peering into their baby's eyes repeatedly for the first
twenty-four months of her life, waggling fingers in front of her nose asking
questions trying to keep the worry, the alarm, at times the impatience out of
their voices—poor Daddy especially for "abnormalities" really upset
him, no doubt it was a family trait, laughingly defensively acknowledged: an
emphasis upon physical health, physical well-being and attractiveness,
normality
) that Kelly was impishly and stubbornly gazing at
all times to the left, over your head, beyond your range of vision, even as,
with her "good" right eye she was looking you direct in the face as
requested.

One
of the doctors said exercise, a strict regimen, another of the doctors said an
operation as soon as possible, in some cases the child doesn't outgrow it and
in the interim the weaker eye may become permanently atrophied, and Mommy and
Grandma Ross (Mommy's mommy) wanted the exercises, give the exercises a chance,
and there was a nice therapist, a young woman, wearing eyeglasses herself
optimistic about correcting Kelly's problem but weeks passed, months, Daddy could
scarcely bear to look at his darling little girl sometimes, he loved her so,
wanted to spare her hurt, harm, any sort of discomfort, and what irony, Artie
Kelleher complained, laughing, angry, throwing his arms open wide as if to
invite, as in a TV program the talk-show host so invites, an audience of
anonymous millions to share in his bemusement, yes in his resentment too, his
bafflement—what irony, things are going boom!
boom
!
boom
!
in
my business, like riding
an escalator to the top floor, expansive-economy times these early years of the
1960s in building, construction, investments, you name it it's going up, what
irony, my business life is absolutely great and my private life, my
life-at-home—
I can't control!

Speaking
reasonably trying not to raise his voice (for, sometimes, Kelly was within
earshot) so Mommy tried to respond in the same way though her voice trembling,
hands trembling, you would not notice perhaps except for the beauty of her
hands and her rings: the diamond cluster, the jade in its antique gold setting:
as Daddy pointed out he was simply looking ahead, suppose the exercises don't
work, it certainly doesn't seem that the exercises are working does it, all
right use your imagination Madelyn look ahead to when she goes to school, you know
damned well the other kids will tease her, they'll think she's a freak or
something, do
you
want that?
is
that what
you
want?
so
Mommy
burst into tears, No!
no
!
of
course not!
no
!
why
do you
say such things to me!

So
one day, it was a weekday but Artie Kelleher took the morning off, the elder
Kellehers drove their little girl into the city, a forty-minute trip from the
suburban village of Gowanda Heights, Westchester County, New York, and there in
Beth Israel Hospital on leafy East End Avenue, there, at last, Elizabeth Anne
Kelleher's "bad" eye was corrected by surgery, and recovery was
swift, if not precisely painless as promised; and forever afterward the eye,
the eyes, the girl, were, as all outer signs indicated, normal.

"
—
lost, senator?
this road is
so—"

"I said don't worry,
Kelly!"—a sidelong glance, a tight smile puckering the corners of
blood-veined eyes—"we'll get there, and we'll get there on time."

As liquid sloshed over the rim of the
plastic cup and onto Kelly Kelleher's leg before she could prevent it.

The Senator had been among the three
leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988; out of
political prudence he had withdrawn his name, released his
delegates
in favor of his old friend the Massachusetts governor.

In
turn, Dukakis had asked The Senator to be his running mate on the Democratic
ticket. The Senator had politely declined.

Of
course, there was always the next presidential election, even the election
beyond that.
The Senator, no longer young, was certainly not
old: eleven years younger than George Bush.

A
man in the prime of his career
—you might say.

Kelly
Kelleher envisioned herself working for The Senator's presidential campaign. First,
though, she would work for his nomination at the Democratic national
convention. In the intimacy of the bouncing Toyota, her senses glazed by the
day's excitement, it was possible for Kelly Kelleher, who rarely indulged in
fantasies, to give herself up to this one.

The
evening before, as if anticipating this adventure, Kelly had taken time, when
so rarely she took time, to file and polish her fingernails.
A
pale pink-coral-bronze.
Subdued, tasteful.
To match her lipstick.

"There's
only one direction," The Senator was saying, smiling, with the air of one
delivering a self-evident truth, "—on an island."

Kelly
laughed. Not knowing exactly why.

* * *

They
were new acquaintances despite their intimacy in the speeding car. Virtual
strangers despite the stealth with which they'd slipped away together.

So
Kelly Kelleher had no name to call the driver of the Toyota, no name that
sprang naturally and spontaneously to her lips as the black water flooded over
the crumpled hood of the car, washed over the cracked windshield, over the
roof, a sudden profound
darkening
as if the swamp had lurched up to
claim them.

And
the radio was out at once. The music to which neither had been listening was
gone as if it had never been.

New acquaintances since approximately
two o'clock that afternoon.
By chance
meeting at the oceanfront cottage on Derry Road, property of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar
St. John of Old Lyme, Connecticut, who were not at the cottage at the time of
the party; the hostess was Kelly's friend Buffy St. John with whom she'd roomed
at Brown—Buffy, Kelly's closest friend.

Like
Kelly Kelleher, Buffy St. John was twenty-six years old, and she too worked for
a magazine published in Boston; but the magazine for which Buffy worked,
Boston After Hours,
was significantly different from the
magazine for which Kelly worked,
Citizens' Inquiry,
and it might be said that Buffy was the more worldly of the two young women,
the more experienced, the more "adventurous." Buffy painted her
nails, finger-and toenails both, arresting shades of green, blue, and purple;
and the condoms she carried in her several purses were frequently replenished.

Vehemently,
as if her own integrity had been challenged, Buffy St. John would deny
speculation that The Senator, a married man, and Kelly Kelleher had been lovers
at the time of the accident; or even, before that day, acquaintances. Buffy
would swear to it, Ray Annick would swear to it, The Senator and Kelly Kelleher
had only just met that day, at the Fourth of July gathering.

Not
lovers. Not friends, really. Simply new acquaintances
who
seemed, judging by the evidence, to have taken to each other.

As
others who knew Kelly Kelleher would vehemently insist: she and The Senator had
not known each other before that day for of course Kelly would have told us.

Kelly
Kelleher wasn't the kind of young woman to be deceptive.
To
cultivate secrets.

We know her, we
knew her.
She simply was not the type.

So
they were new acquaintances, which is very close to being strangers.

You
would not choose to drown, to die, in such a way, trapped together in a sinking
car, with a stranger.

Neither
were they professionally associated, though it might be said that they shared
certain political beliefs, liberal passions. Kelly Kelleher was not employed in
any way nor had she ever been so employed by The Senator, his staff, his
campaign organizers. It was true, certainly, she'd worked since graduation from
college for an old acquaintance of The Senator's, a former political associate
from the 1960s, Bobby Kennedy's whirlwind campaign, heady nostalgic days of
power, purpose, authority, hope,
youth
in the
Democratic Party—when, disastrous as things were, in Vietnam, at home, you did
not expect them to worsen.

Kelly
Kelleher had been not quite four years old at the time of Bobby Kennedy's
assassination in June 1968. In all frankness, she remembered nothing of the
tragedy. In any case her employer Carl Spader had a saying:
You're in politics, you're an optimist.

You're
no longer an
optimist,
you're no longer in politics.

You're
no longer an optimist, you're dead.

In
fact they had listened briefly to the car radio, at the very start of the
drive, on bumpy Derry Road turning onto Post Road (a two-lane blacktop highway,
one of the Island's few paved roads) and there came suddenly on Kelly's right a
badly weathered signpost listing a half-dozen
place-names which Kelly had not been
able to see distinctly, nor had The Senator, though between them there was the
vague impression—