The Color of Water in July (16 page)

“I’m messing this up, aren’t I?” Russ said. “I’m putting my goddamn foot in it. Jess, I . . . ” He set his plate aside and fell down on his knees in front of her, in a mock-dramatic gesture of pleading.

“The deal’s off.”

“Wait a minute,” Russ said from the porch floor. “I haven’t even said what the deal is yet . . . ”

“Phelps Whitmire is not going to buy this cottage. Over my dead body. That’s final.”

“Oh,” Russ said. Looking baffled. Standing up. “You mean, it’s about
him
?”

“That prick,” Jess said, standing up, downing the dregs in her wineglass, and picking up her plate. And with that, she pulled open the porch door and went inside, leaving Russ on the porch, mystified, brushing the dust off the knees of his pants. She could see him considering following her in, but he must have seen the look on her face, so he retreated into the kitchen. Jess returned to the porch alone. She spent the remainder of the evening staring out at the lake, until she saw the bedroom light go on and then turn off again.

“I need paper!” Russ was hollering from the bedroom. Jess could hear the thunk of drawers being pulled open and shut a little too roughly. “Every drawer in this goddamn house is full. Isn’t there any paper around here?

Jess was standing in front of the grainy mirror combing her hair.
Thunk
. A tight door was slammed shut. Jess felt herself wince, just slightly. This was Margaret’s routine, the anger at little things accompanied by thunks. It was the thing about Russ that she liked the least.
Thunk.
Jess winced again.

“I need printer paper!” Russ called out in the general direction of the bathroom. “I’m going to run into town.”

Jess stood gazing at her reflection. When Jess had gone inside to bed the night before, she was thinking that Russ would ask her what was going on, but he was already asleep. She was so frustrated—just when she thought she was going to get enough money to set aside a little nest egg for her mother’s retirement, it turned out that the man holding the checkbook was the one person to whom she would never agree to sell. Phelps Whitmire? Maybe he could politely forget that he had mauled her at the beach picnic, but she couldn’t. No indeed, that memory was still fresh in her mind.

Jess pulled the string attached to the single-bulb light fixture in the outmoded bathroom, and walked through the dressing area back into Mamie’s room, where she noticed that Russ had left every drawer in Mamie’s writing desk ajar. She bent over to close them, hating the unfinished business that half-closed drawers implied. With his rooting around, Russ had left a jumble of stationery boxes tilting at odd angles, and Jess could not get them to fit back in the drawer without taking everything out to square them again. She opened the boxes of stationery. A small jewelry-sized box contained stamps of various denominations nesting on a bed of smooth cotton. Next under that was a box of note cards, with an engraved sketch of the cottage on them. The third box contained simple Crane’s stationery, engraved
MTC
, pearl gray, with matching envelopes, which Jess recognized from countless letters from Mamie to her over the years. She used to cherish those letters during her childhood. Always the same paper and envelope, the same neat and even hand, the same news of Mamie, shopping at Neiman’s, Red Cross luncheon, dinner at the country club. Just plain news, ordinary things. Margaret, in contrast, always dashed off notes—lunch with Mobutu, attended an execution, momentous happenings, great world events—that did not touch Jess like the notes from Mamie: lunch with two sorority sisters, a foursome of golf, played bridge.

Jess took out a couple of sheets of the fine paper stock. There were only a few sheets left in the box, and underneath, she saw what appeared to be a small bundle of letters in envelopes. The one on top was a squat blue envelope that looked fairly new. Clearly, the pile contained letters that were quite old; some of the envelopes at the bottom of the pile were brittle and yellow. Jess could feel that her heart was beating faster as she regarded this hidden pile of carefully hoarded letters. She felt sure that they must be love letters; they
must
be letters from Thomas Cleves. She studied the flowery engraved monogram on the back flap of the blue envelope, having trouble discerning the letters. She pulled a brittle envelope from the bottom of the pile and, with some difficulty, extracted a yellowed onionskin paper. The ink was faded and difficult to read, but she could see the date was 1920-something; the exact year was smudged, and the signature, very ornate, read
Chapin Flagg
. Jess took the packet of envelopes and laid it on the top of the desk, closing up the now-empty stationery box and nesting it just so with the other boxes so that the small drawer closed smoothly. A part of her realized that this was a useless gesture. The cottage and its contents were going to be sold soon. She might just as well have taken the boxes and pitched them into the trash.

Her disappointment over the author of the letters was palpable. So palpable that she realized now that this was what she had been looking for all along, what she had secretly been looking for as she had gone through all of Mamie’s receipts and bookkeeping and other papers. Something, anything, about her missing grandfather.

Jess picked up the little packet of letters again, glancing at the first letter that she had opened. She vaguely dreaded Russ’s return—she was relieved that he had gone out for a while. She flashed on the image of Russ down on his knees on the floor in front of her the night before, with two small, perfectly round blotches of spaghetti sauce on his blue shirt, just over his heart.
I’m not ready for this
, Jess thought. Holding the letters, she flopped onto the bed, propping her head on a small chintz pillow, and began to try to read the first letter, the oldest letter in fact. Curious, she noted that it had been mailed from Berlin.

My dearest Mamie,

I did indeed receive your letter. Germany is in fact accessible by post, and though in fact “terribly far away” from where you are, those of us who are here do not feel far away at all, but rather feel that this is quite a nice close-by place.

Indeed, Mamie, if you are looking for a keeper of secrets, you have come to the right person. I fear that I keep secrets better than I thought I did, for I never realized that people did not actually see the truths that were staring them directly in the face.

I am greatly grieved about your sister, Lila, and hold a terrible heaviness in my heart about whatever may have been my part.

Money is no problem, and I dispatch what seems an ample sum forthwith, but please let me know if more would better do the trick.

I offer my congratulations on your becoming a mother. My own role, shall we call it avuncular, I consider to be quite an honor. Let us hope that we will both be equal to the task.

Your humble servant,

Chapin Flagg

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

M
AMIE

Thomas said that he could see Lila all along, that he watched her even as we kissed, as she made her steady progress in toward shore. I have racked my brain a thousand times to ask myself if I was thinking about Lila then. Thomas’s embrace was the warmth of the sun, and I felt as though the cold blue lake were a thousand hours behind.

But it was Thomas who was facing the lake, who broke from the embrace and stepped toward her, running through the shallow water even with his shoes and trousers on. I never saw Lila and so could only imagine how he saw her stand up for a moment, there a few feet out from shore, and then topple, face-first, into the water, as though pushed by an unseen divine hand. It couldn’t have been more than a split second that it took me to spin around, could it have? But I saw her first as she floated there, head on the surface, feet bobbing down, then Thomas grabbed her by the shoulder and heaved her up over his back, wading out of the water. That sight I will never forget. My sister slung over Thomas’s white-shirted shoulder like a fatted calf, her wet hair hanging down in green strands almost to Thomas’s knees.

What I remember is how she lay there, body clumsy and awkward as though it had been thrown there, mindless of the sharp rocks that studded the narrow beach. Thomas gave me terse instructions in a voice I had never heard before, and I followed them. Each task, in its concreteness, reminding me that I was in fact awake and not dreaming. I got the thick wool blankets from the boat and laid them across her. He bent over her, his cheeks close to her nose. No breath, he said. He took his wide fingers and placed them on the V-shaped groove of her neck. A heartbeat, he said, just barely, it beats.

I remember I was thinking that he was going to save her. He seemed to know how to go in and find the shadow of life there in the valley of death. I saw him marking the beats of her slow pulse with his fingers. I saw him placing his lips upon hers and blowing. Thomas, I thought, had enough vitality in him to share. I expected that at any moment she would flutter her eyes open and bloom with color again, like Sleeping Beauty in an illustrated color plate.

There was no mistaking though that something was terribly wrong with Lila. That seems silly, doesn’t it? There she lay motionless on the beach, not breathing, no sign of life. But her color, even now I cannot think of it without shuddering. She was not the color of a person at all. Her skin was whiter than a bleached, clean-picked bone. Her lips were the blue that lurks in the deepest recesses of the lake. I stood by, motionless, frozen, numb, and watched Thomas caring for her so tenderly, like a lover. Still, at that moment, trusting entirely that he would fix her, breathe life into her, just as surely as the Holy Spirit had breathed life into the Virgin Mary’s womb.

When he stood up though, nothing had changed. Thomas’s lips were a soft warm pink, the beach was a sun-warmed ribbon of rocks and sand, and across it lay Lila’s blue body, at rag-doll angles, motionless, lifeless, and cold.

“I don’t understand,” Thomas said. “She was standing . . . right there in the shallow water . . . Did you see her? Did you see her, Mamie?”

“Is she . . . is she drowned then?” Shocked that I could ask the question, shocked that this horror could stand right alongside an ordinary day.

“No, it’s impossible. She couldn’t have drowned . . . I saw her standing right there, in the shallow water. I thought . . . I thought she had just tripped on a rock and stumbled . . . It makes no sense.”

“So she’s alive,” I said joyously, falling on my knees beside her, daring to touch her for the first time. I pressed my lips across her forehead. Never will I forget what that felt like. It was just like bending over to kiss a block of granite, a stone.

“No, Mamie, she’s dead,” he said, so gentle, like he was saying any old thing, like he was passing the time of day.

Only then did I hear a strange sound on the beach: someone was screaming, yes, that was it . . . someone was screaming. I was shivering so hard I could barely stand up. I could feel my knees knocking underneath me, about to give way. Thomas picked up one of the thick wool blankets, picked it up right off Lila’s lifeless body, wrapping it tightly around me. He pushed on my shoulder firmly, almost rough.

“Sit down,” he said. “And stop screaming. Please, oh please, Mamie, try to stay calm. We’ve got to get her back into the boat.”

I looked up at Thomas, standing there. His clothes were wet, his shirt on one shoulder stained a pale pink.

“Sit, Mamie, and try to warm yourself. I’m going to carry her into the boat.”

He bent over to pick her up, not cradling her in his arms but lifting her up under her armpits, as though he was preparing to drag her.

“Thomas, don’t!” I cried out, but still he lifted her, upright in front of him, her head slumping downward, her legs flopping, and he started to back toward the boat, her bare feet just clearing the ground.

It was then that I saw it, something, hanging out from under her bathing dress, so strange-looking that it caught my eye—and then I saw it all at once, first the thick white jelly of the rope with a chewed-off-looking end, then the trickle of pink streaming down her leg—

All of a sudden, something hideous slithered down her bare, lifeless leg and fell onto the sandy beach. I know that I then shrieked again. I thought I saw a jellyfish, all silvery across the top and angry dark brown underneath; for a fleeting second, I thought I understood—she had been stung by a horrible poison fish and . . .

“Oh dear God no!” Thomas had stopped and caught sight of the thing. “Mamie!” he said. “Do as I say. Look away, Mamie, look away.”

There have been two times in my life that I have been a party to formulating a tale that was not true. Both of those times were during the same few days in May, so many years ago. How many times have I prayed to God to tell me if it was right to keep my secret, and down on my knees I have only heard the Lord’s voice come back as silence. I have always taken that silence as an affirmation, and if I did not hear that silence right, then only God in his infinite wisdom will know.

Thomas speared the vile thing with a stick and tossed it up into the woods. Then, he dragged my poor sister’s lifeless body and put it into the boat. I still remember how it looked, when he reached over and grabbed her two legs, lifting them over the gunwale; they fell into the boat’s bottom with a thud.

His strokes were rapid; it took only a few minutes for us to traverse the short distance back to the Wequetona dock. Then he was gone, sprinting up the stairs carrying her body, shouting:

“God help us, Doc. Lewis, get the doctor, for the love of God.”

After that, it was only the sound of the clubhouse bells that filled my head—clanging, clanging the emergency call.