Chill Waters (2 page)

She would surprise him, take him out to dinnersomeplace dimly lit, soft music playing in the background. It had been awhile since they’d enjoyed a romantic evening together. Been a while since there’d been anything between them but the arguments and the silences.

Filled with new resolve, wearing her slate blue dress and matching shoes, she dabbed Chanel No. 5 behind her ears and drove downtown to Greg’s office building.

She had the car door open, had stepped one blue-shoed foot onto the sunny pavement when she saw them coming out of the building. She’d never set eyes on Administrative Assistant, Lisa Richard, (part of the package that came with Greg’s new title of Sales Manager,) but she knew it was her. Rachael took in the model slim figure in the cream-colored suit, the honey-blonde hair that swayed seductively as the two descended the stone steps together. Greg’s hand was possessively at her waist, Lisa smiling up at him.

Rachael didn’t realize that she too was smiling, until she felt it set like a fool’s mask on her face. Feeling suddenly old and ridiculous in the matching dress and shoes, she retreated inside the car and sped off, panicked that they would see her shame at catching them.

Only a few nights before, she’d summoned the courage to ask him if there was someone else. He denied it, told her she was
crazy,
that she needed to see a shrink. Then he slammed out of the house, an excuse, she knew now, to run to Lisa.

A horn blared, jarring Rachael back to the present. A yellow jeep filled with teenagers, hair flying in the wind, roared past.

Keep your mind on your driving, Rachael.

Up ahead, a store with a gas pump out front, and a
Coca-Cola
sign above the door lured her with the promise of a cold drink and a washroom. She flipped on her left signal light, waited as a truckload of precariously swaying logs rumbled past, then pulled off the road into the small parking lot, gravel crunching under her wheels.

After a visit to the washroom, she entered the store. The bell above the door tinkled airily, evoking a memory of penny candy and black licorice. Inside, it was cool and smelled faintly of apples.

The tall woman behind the counter made a final swipe at the display case, then set the rag aside. With her Germanic features, iron-grey hair cut in a blunt style, ending just below her ears, she reminded Rachael of some aging movie star, Garbo, perhaps. Or Deitrich.

Classical music floated from the small radio on the counter. “May I help you?”

“I hope so.” Rachael’s own effort at a smile made her feel as if her facial muscles had atrophied. But it was a relief to stretch her limbs, to luxuriate in the pleasant coolness of the shop. “I seem to be lost. I’ve been trying to find Bay Road without much success. It leadsor at least it used to leaddown to Jenny’s Cove. I visited there as a girl. Itit all looks so different now.”

The woman nodded in silent agreement. “Did you come through St. Clair?”

“Yes.”

“Gracious old town, isn’t it? Settled by Loyalists in the late 1700’s, you know. Now, of course, it’s a popular tourist spot. Seems every year a new craft shop or art gallery opens up. Pretty in summer, with all the boats dotting the bay.”

“Yes,” Rachael said, not really up to discussion about the merits of tourism in St. Clair, or lack thereof.

“Plenty of budding photographers about. The older Gothic style homes with their widow’s walks are a great subject of interest. Many a wife would stand on those widow walks hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband’s ship on the horizon. Of course you know all this if you visited here as a girl. Can I offer you a cold drink?” she asked, coming out from behind the counter, her skirt shifting about her ankles as she moved. “You look a bit pale, my dear, if you don’t mind my saying so. It is humid, to be sure.” Getting a lime-colored fruit drink from the cooler, she unscrewed the top, dropped in a draw, and handed it to Rachael. “Have you been on the road long?”

“A while,” she replied noncommittally. “How much do I owe…?”

She raised her hand in protest. “My treat.” The firmness in her warm, deep voice left no room for argument. “Not much business now. It’s nice to have someone drop in, even if it
is
just to ask directions.”

As Rachael gratefully sipped the cold, tangy drink, the woman turned her gaze to the storefront window. “It has indeed changed,” she said wistfully. When she turned back to Rachael there was a knowing sympathetic smile on her lips. “People and places do have a way of doing that, don’t they?”

On the surface, an innocent enough remark, Rachael supposed, the sort of thing people said. But it unnerved her, just the same. As did those intense blue eyes that seemed to see into her very soul
. Something of the Gypsy about her. Something ageless.

“But back to those directions. Bay Road is right where it always was, you passed it about a quarter of a mile back. The Reverend Willie Long’s house used to be on that corner, but both he and it are long gone now. Replaced by a welding shop. I don’t mean Willie was replaced by a welding shop,” she chuckled. “Only the house.”

Just then a Siamese cat slinked around a partly open door of a back room, blinked sleepily at Rachael out of eyes as blue as its mistresses’. Then it sat on its haunches, looking remarkably like a sculpture of itself and studied her.

“What a beautiful cat,” Rachael said. She’d always had an affinity with animals, but made no move to pet this one, who was presently regarding her with haughty eyes.

“That’s Cleopatra. Cleo for short. Doesn’t keep her humble, though.” She smiled indulgently at Cleo, then turned her attention on Rachael. “You know,” she frowned, “you remind me of someone. I can’t think who. You did say you lived here as a girl?” As the last word trailed off, Rachael saw a shadow of fear cross the woman’s features, her smile waver.

“Is something wrong?” Rachael asked.

“No. It’s nothing.”

She’s lying. She looks as if she just saw a ghost. Except that it’s me she’s looking at. “
Only visited,” Rachael said in answer to her question, suddenly anxious to be on her way, beyond the scrutiny of those piercing blue eyes. But the woman had been kind; she owed her courtesy. “I spent a few summers at Jenny’s Cove with my grandmother,” she offered. “It was a long time ago.” Another lifetime, she thought. “Not so surprising that it would look different. I don’t know what I expected.” Her laugh sounded hollow in her own ears.

Placing the empty bottle in the crate on the scrubbed-wood floor, Rachael started for the door.

In a move that seemed almost supernatural, the storekeeper was suddenly in front of her, holding the door for her. The scent of wild roses cut through the apple smell.

Rachael moved past the woman, down the steps. “I do remember now seeing that welding shop on the corner,” she said over her shoulder. “Thank you again.”

“I knew some of the people around here back then,” the woman said after her. Rachael had no choice but to turn around. The storekeeper looked as if she was trying to work out some complex problem in her mind, but the fear still lingered in her eyes. “I’m Iris Brandt, by the way.”

Rachael knew she was expected to respond with her own name. When she didn’t, the woman added in an ominous tone, “Most of the summer people are gone now.”

Three

Backtracking to the welding shop, a squat structure with dark green corrugated siding, Rachael turned onto Bay Road.

Just past the welding shop was a tarpaper shack with a couple of junk cars and a blue half-ton in the yard. The mailbox was nailed to a post at the end of the drive, the name
N. Prichard
printed on the side in red childlike letters.

The dusty, white Cavalier bumped along the narrow tree-lined road, groaning with the need of new shocks, forcing Rachael to slow down.

Fall was still more than a week away, but already the leaves were turning color. As a child, she used to imagine tiny elves skipping down this road with pots of paint, brushing the leaves with scarlets and golds. She’d even made up a poem about it. Not much she didn’t pay poetic tribute to back then.

The road was narrower than she remembered, trees hemming her in, forming a lacy canopy overhead, moving her in and out of shadow. The salty mist of the ocean wafted through the open window.

Gradually, the trees on her right thinned, revealing shimmering patches of blue, stirring old memories, buried emotions.

She passed a summerhouse, remembered the childrena boy and girl—who lived there one summer. Towheads both, they would wave to her as she flew past the house on her bicycle. Now the windows were boarded over, the porch leaning drunkenly, overgrown with weeds and shrubbery. She passed a few more cabins and cottages along the stretch of road, a couple recalled, most not.

At last the bay burst into full view. The rocky shore sprawled past, broken here and there by smooth sandy beaches. Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, Rachael pulled off to the side of the road, switched off the engine and got out of the car.

She walked to the grassy bank and gazed out at mossy islands rising out of the bay like the backs of grey whales. On the farthest island, the pulsing light from the lighthouse guided the safe passage of sailors as it had done for more than a hundred years.

Enduring. Steadfast. Unlike her marriage. Her life. She fought back a fresh welling of tears, angry with herself. Surprised there were any tears left.

Once, she’d been downtown and looked up to see a man staring at her and realized the tears were streaming down her face. She couldn’t seem to stop them. Another time, she actually started running as if she might outrun the pain.
Well, enough of that. Enough.

She turned away and went back to the car.

She was about to open the door when suddenly the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. As if someone were watching her. She looked around.

But she saw no one.

Four

The house appeared before her so suddenly that she gaped, the sight of it as startling as turning a corner and coming face to face with someone you’d believed long dead. As if on some level she had not expected it to be there at all, its existence only in her memory, and in some faded, yellowing snapshots.

But there it wastall windows overlooking the bay, small open front porch where she had so often sat reading, or scribbling in her notebook.

As the road had seemed narrower, so the house appeared smaller, the way places often do when you revisit them years later. Once white shingles were weathered now, but nothing a coat of paint wouldn’t fix. If it had been in A-1 shape, she wouldn’t have gotten it at the price she had.

Rachael parked in the drive. As she made her way up the sloping path to the house, the salty breeze from the bay brushed her face like the hand of an old friend. Gazing wistfully up at the eaves of the house, she smiled to herself, wondering if that old gutter still held any of the rubber balls she’d lost to it over the years. But surely there’d been other children who’d played her solitary game since then. “…Claimsies, clapsies, rollies, crossies…recited softly, almost hearing the phantom ball thump against the house.

A house she had bought sight unseen, deciding the instant she saw it up for sale in the paper. She knew a lot could happen to a house in over a quarter of a century, but she also knew that somehow it would be all right. The house had called out to her. Or perhaps she had called out to it.

She’d telephoned Greg at his office. Give me a quarter of what our place is worth’, she’d said, and I’ll sign it over to you. To his credit, he tried not to show his eagerness in complying, but Greg knew a deal when he heard one. He brought her a certified check that same afternoon, and the appropriate papers to sign. She was surprised he’d been able to have them drawn up so quickly.

“You’re in no mental state to make major decisions like this,” her friend, Betty had said, when they had lunch at the mall a few days later. “That’s why insurance people like to negotiate right after a house fire. You can be sure if Allan threw me over for some tramp, I’d take the son-of-bitch for all he was worth.”

Of course, Allan would never betray Betty. He adored her. Rachael had a bitter, jealous moment, followed by shame. Betty was her friend. She deserved her happiness.

Fitting one of the two keys the real estate woman had given her into the lock, she turned it. The door creaked open, and Rachael stepped over the threshold into another lifetime.

The shadowy livingroom smelled dank and musty. Yellowing newspapers hung over the two long windows facing the bay, held by bits of crumbling masking tape. The one nearest her was askew, letting in a shaft of sunlight that revealed dust motes in the air.

She stood very still, listening.
For what, Rachael? No one is here. No one is coming to greet you.

Even the room’s dim light couldn’t disguise the battered furniture, the worn tweed carpeting, the tired brown couch flush against one wall. Rachael flicked on the wall light-switch, bathing the room in light.