In the River Darkness (23 page)

After Nicolas had finally gone, I started mechanically gathering the rose petals from the sofa. I put the bouquet in the garbage can, and the crystal vase back in its cabinet. The greasy fingerprints on the glass were easy to wipe away. As if they had never existed.

I had to throw up. Then I took a shower. A petal was still stuck to my left thigh. It was wilted and had brown spots. I turned the shower on harder, and then it was gone. I let the water beat down on me for a long time. It mixed with my tears. It was as if I were being washed away.

Like a piece of driftwood.

I’ve never talked about this with anyone. Not with my parents, not with my girlfriends. And not with you.

In part, it was my fault what happened to me. Yeah, I got mixed up with the wrong guy. But that happens to other girls, too. Why did this crap throw me so completely for a loop? It was as if I had somehow lost my grip.

At first, I tried to just go on like I had been before. But pretty soon I figured out that wouldn’t work. Something had changed, something deep inside me. When I looked in the mirror, I was astonished that I still looked just like I always had. As if nothing at all had happened.

But I wanted it to be visible! I had seen through the adult world now: a world filled with nothing but glittering illusions but no love. There was just sex—people using each other and then throwing them away again. I withdrew as if I were in mourning. I didn’t let anyone get near me anymore.

But then you came along, Alex.

You didn’t let anything scare you off. Somehow you managed to sneak into my heart. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that it was nothing serious between us, that I had everything under control.

But when you said you wanted to sleep with me, that’s when I noticed I had been fooling myself. I got just plain scared. That’s why I threw that line at you: “I kissed your brother.”

That wasn’t a lie. But it was only a fragment of the truth, one I knew would distort the whole picture like a shard of a broken mirror.

Yes, Jay and I kissed each other. A single time . . . no idea why, it just happened. I don’t want anything from Jay. He’s just a good friend to me. Unfortunately, I repaid him in a rotten way. I used your little brother to get to you. And all of it just to protect myself—I sacrificed both of you for that. Sacrificed you.

And I had sworn to you with a blood oath that I wouldn’t leave you.

I did it anyway . . . and the worst part of it is that I left you alone without a single word of explanation! Like your mother. Just like that.

Yes, I knew that would get to you more than everything else. That’s exactly why I did it. So much for trust and being there for each other. With that, I went against every aspect of our blood oath. I betrayed everyone. You, Jay. And myself.

I’ve come to understand that in the past few weeks, while I sat in my room and watched the shadow of my cherry tree as it slowly wandered across the white walls. The cool, clear white used to soothe me—purity, protection. No photos. No memories.

Now, when I try to stare holes into the whiteness, all I see is cold and emptiness. I cheated myself out of us. Out of everything that grew in me last year and everything that might still have been.

I screwed it up, the part about us. I’m sorry, Alex. I’m so very sorry.

Do you remember when we met each other? You said that I always run away. You were right, Alex. I ran away, especially from myself and my feelings. And from you. But I don’t want to run away anymore like a miserable coward!

I don’t want to have a stone for a heart.

The rest I’d like to tell you in person, and I hope . . .

I hope.

I love you,

Mia

“You got mail,” my father said, pointing to a letter lying on the kitchen table. It was from Mia! What could she have to tell me that was important enough for her to write me a letter? I had a burning desire to tear the envelope open right then and there—but not with my dad sitting there.

I could feel his eyes on me, watching me without letting on. As if I might suddenly turn into a lifeless block of ice if he didn’t watch out.

“How are you doing, son?” he asked.

Good grief, I was okay! I was still alive, wasn’t I? “Already feeling fine again, thanks,” I mumbled and bit into an apple. Lots of vitamins—that was supposed to help me recover as fast as possible. I was so sick of Grandma hovering around me constantly like a mother hen! When she found out I had gotten out of bed against her orders, she would make my life miserable. But I just couldn’t stand being in bed anymore.

Lying around doing nothing wasn’t good for me. In the quiet of my room, my thoughts rioted . . . those thoughts that had made me wake with a start, bathed in sweat, every night since the big scare.

The more I tried to ignore them, the deeper they ate their way into my brain, like a tumor, until they filled every nook and cranny of my head. Until just the one question burned in me . . .

Should I really ask my dad? I was afraid of the answer. A moment longer I hesitated, then it burst out of me: “When . . . when I was in the hole in the ice, I heard something. It seemed like someone was calling me. A woman.”

Dad didn’t say anything. My heart pounded like crazy, but there was no going back now. I just
had
to know!

“Mom isn’t a photographer traveling around to different foreign countries, is she?” I asked quietly, and couldn’t keep my voice from trembling. “She’s dead. That’s what happened.”

My father didn’t speak for a long while. He didn’t look at me when he finally started to talk. “Yes. Katarina drowned in the river eleven years ago.”

The sun still cast rings on the floor. Our kitchen looked just the way it had before. How was that possible, now that everything had changed in an instant? Now that I was finally sure. To hear Dad say aloud what I had hardly dared to think was a shock. It was as if his words, the sadness in his eyes, made it an irreversible reality: my mother was dead.

Now I could feel it with my fingertips like the grain of the wood of the kitchen table. I could smell it like the mellow, sweetness of Grandma’s winter apples. Suddenly, I perceived everything around me with exceptional clarity. But at the same time, nothing seemed to fit together anymore. The apples. The rings of sunlight. Death.

“I . . . I don’t understand. What happened to Mom?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, what did happen?” my father sighed. He continued to sit and brood. I was just about to repeat my question when he finally started talking again: “The night that it happened, I woke up. The bed was empty next to me. Katarina was missing, and you kids, too.”

Dad balled his hands into fists and opened them again, as if he were trying in vain to hold on to something precious that was running through his fingers like water. “The sight of your empty beds still haunts my dreams. I called, but no one answered. I searched the entire house but I couldn’t find you. And then I found the letter. Katarina had written me that she couldn’t stand it anymore. That she was going away and wanted to be free forever. And that she would take you with her. Finally, I ran like a crazy person, ran down to the edge of the river. It was a bright late summer night. An enormous full moon hung over the river, so low it seemed like you could touch it. Its cold light shone on the dark water and in your wide-open eyes. So I had found my little boys again, cowering together in the reeds. You were drenched to the bone, you and your brother. I tried to find out what had happened. You didn’t make a sound the entire time, but Jay answered my questions. ‘Mama went swimming,’ he said. ‘She wanted us to go in the water with her. But Skip said the water is too cold, and we don’t want to . . .’”

I shuddered. I bit my teeth together to keep them from chattering. My father didn’t notice; he continued the story.

“I brought you two into the house. Then I called Iris—someone had to stay with you. As soon as she arrived, I ran back outside to look for Katarina. I rowed the boat out on the river. I called for her, hoping desperately for an answer, even though reason told me that she was dead.

“Finally I found her. Drowned. She had gotten caught in the tangled roots of a weeping willow. I brought her to your island and rocked her in my arms until dawn. I was out of my mind with grief, but at some point, I grasped that she wouldn’t come to life again. I . . . I didn’t know what I should do. And I was afraid. Afraid of what people would say. That they would blame me for Katarina’s death. Everyone in town knew we had problems and that we had fought more bitterly than ever that day. That I had hit Katarina. . . . The thought that someone might take you two away from me nearly made me lose my mind.

“I got Iris and we sat next to Katarina and grieved and thought about what we should do. She was scared, too, and she felt partially responsible for her daughter’s death. So we buried Katarina on the island. In town, I told everyone that she had left us.”

“But why all the lies? Why did you tell us for years and years that she was still alive?” I was about to hit him.

Dad couldn’t look me in the eyes. “It was easier with Jay. He never asked about Katarina again. But you . . . you seemed to have completely forgotten that night at the river. Again and again, you drilled us: where did Mama go, and when was she coming back? How do you tell two little boys that their mother is never coming back? That she’s dead? I just couldn’t do it. And in the end, that’s why I told you the tales about her travels.”

My father looked at his hands lying in front of him on the table: big and powerless, like fish lying out to dry. There was dirt under his fingernails.

“Your grandmother warned me from the very beginning. ‘There are no merciful lies, Eric,’ she always preached. ‘Only lies.’ But I didn’t listen to her. Maybe because I wanted so badly to believe them myself. I wanted to believe Katarina was strolling along a beach in a foreign country and not lying dead and buried in the ground.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” I contradicted hotly. “If Mom is really dead, then who sent me all those photographs?”

“Katarina had a close friend named Ruth, who had worked with her in the photography studio. They had always dreamed of traveling to exotic places together. Ruth did become a photojournalist. Although she was on the road a lot, the two of them stayed in touch until Katarina died. Ruth was very upset about her death. Apart from your grandmother, she was the only one I told the truth. ‘You can come to me any time you need help, Eric,’ she offered. And when you constantly demanded to know why your mother didn’t write to you . . .”

“You asked Ruth to do it.”

“Exactly. Ruth was happy to do it. It probably made her feel like she could do something for Katarina. And I thought, what could be the harm? You were so happy every time you got mail.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to ruin that for you. You were just a kid! I thought you could handle the truth better when you were a little older. ‘Next year I’ll talk to them,’ I swore again and again. But instead of getting easier, it got even harder over time. And every time I found a new excuse to avoid speaking up.

“Until this year, your grandmother insisted that this game finally had to end. ‘Alexander is almost an adult now!’ she said. I knew she was right. So I called Ruth and asked her not to send anymore pictures. But I didn’t manage to talk with you boys. After all these years . . . I just didn’t know where to start. I guess the whole thing snowballed out of control,” he confessed. “I’m sorry, Alexander.”

“I think some part of me has always sensed that she’s dead,” I said slowly. “The traveling, the photos—that was a beautiful dream that I held on to. But I guess you have to wake up sometime, right?”

“Yes. At some point you have to wake up, even if it hurts.”

I swallowed, and forced out the words that were eating me up inside, burning a hole in my soul: “Do you think . . . do you think Katarina . . . Mom . . . wanted to kill us?” My voice sounded unfamiliar in my own ears, frail and thin like a child’s.

“I’ve asked myself that question so many times,” Dad finally responded. “Even after all these years, I don’t have an answer to it. I can’t tell you. I wasn’t there.”

Despite the sunshine streaming through the kitchen windows, I was cold. I was freezing—still stuck in that hole in the ice. “The only thing I can remember is this image of her standing knee-deep in the water of the river and waving at us to come to her,” I whispered haltingly. “Then nothing else.”

For a short moment, my father placed his hand on mine and squeezed it. “Maybe it’s better if some things are left in the dark and forgotten,” he said gently. “Your grandmother always thought it was a blessing God granted you two.”

We sat in the kitchen together for a while longer, not saying anything, and listened to the plastic fish sing for us. And it didn’t matter at all that we were crying.

One day recently, Mia appeared at our front door with her cello. My brother led her up to his room, and they stayed there for a long time. Mia made the cello sing for him. Her singing heart.

No, I didn’t eavesdrop on them on purpose! But the deep tones resonated in the brittle bones of our house. I stood downstairs in the foyer and could feel them when I put my hand on the banister.

That’s how everything had begun: with this sound that drew me to Mia’s window, into a new and different life. The music was like melting snow on my face. And although I knew it wasn’t meant for me, I had to smile.