Sometimes you sit by the window at five o’clock in the morning, watching the ashy light extinguish the stars. There’s a whispering in your head too soft to understand: fragments of an old song, a half-remembered conversation? You strain to hear and the silence settles in.
Life is very long, you think. Not remembering where the line has come from, not knowing how to paint it.
HOLD
IT BEGINS WITH THE LAKE. There’s that sense of skimming sun-danced surface, my hands slapping and scooping heavy water, my legs churning beneath me. Stop fighting it, they say, and you’ll float. I take a deep breath in. My lungs fill like birthday balloons and I let myself fall forward. Hold and float, hold. My limbs lift and drift as weightless as white weeds, and my blood fizzes with oxygen. Hold. The sun seeps in through eyes sealed shut and I believe. I believe as my muscles uncoil and my bones soften. I believe as the happiness bubbles out of my mouth and my head fills with summer. It’s true. I can float like this forever. Breathe deep and hold. A disturbance then. My legs feel it first, that tendril of cold uncurling from the blackness beneath, sure as a snake, bringing a shadow with it. It ripples across my belly and winds into my mind. Nothing, it whispers, this lake holds nothing. My eyes snap open. The deep gapes below me, immense and empty, waiting. Equilibrium prickles and totters and I fall awake, breathless, my lungs remembering the dark and my hands clutching for him. Hush now, he’ll say with his caramel voice pulling me to surface, and his brown eyes smiling next to mine.
Of course, this does not happen.
A panic attack, they say, a night terror and nothing more. A normal reaction to loss. The body deals with grief even when the mind cannot.
“That lake,” they said back in the summer I turned eight, back when I was learning to swim in cold water. “That’s a true mountain lake. Deep, you know? The sun only warms the surface, the bottom stays dark as winter. Takes some kind of disturbance, a passing boat or a seasonal wind, and that chill seeps right up. You know you can drown in that current? And the water’s so cold you’ll stay down forever.”
It was true. I remember the accidents every summer. Dread passed through the crowd like a shadow over sun. The lake would empty while the ambulance waited, the driver eyeing up the teenage girls knotted together and shivering in their bikinis despite the heat. A fence of adult legs would ring the casualty and I would be pulled away. Once I saw a white-faced boy spew water, once I saw a covered stretcher. Sometimes nothing but clusters of people stilled and silent, all eyes turned towards the lake.
Sonya had her own version of the lake. She showed me her painting, symmetrical, the fold line dripping with dark. I thought I was looking at a butterfly, with each side a mirror image of the other.
“It looks very beautiful.” I did not want to offend. “But you’re supposed to use bright colours and you forgot to put on antennae. Butterflies use their antennae to feel where the wind blows.” I wanted Sonya to know I was smart for my age.
“You’re looking at it the wrong way,” she said and turned the paper on its side.
“The lake,” she said, “The lake holds another world. Do you see? Down down down.” She ran her finger through the wet paint. “You gotta go down. You gotta break through the cold, and you’ll come up the other side. Guaranteed.”
I looked at her painting again. Sky, land, midnight blue water, all done in broad brush strokes. A dark line in the middle and then the same, in reverse. Lake, land, sky. Dark blots danced on both sandy shores, repeating upside down and through the water.
“Then what?” I said. “What’s on the other side?”
“The world you want,” Sonya told me, “Like here, but better.”
I could not disagree. Sonya was nine, a year older than me, and lived in a lakeside trailer. All year, not just for the holidays.
We were renting the double-wide down the road from Sonya that summer. Our trailer had a den and a hot tub. Theirs had peeling panels and curtains drawn tight at all times of the day. “I doubt they have air conditioning,” said my mom, “but there’s a girl about your age living inside.” I was sent with a jar of homemade jam in hand.
“My mom’s still sleeping,” Sonya said when she answered the door. She cocked a hip against the frame and stared at me. Her cutoffs were too short, and I could see the heart pattern on her underwear where it showed through the holes.
She took the jam from me and popped the lid. A finger rude and wild poked its way into the jar, swirling and lifting a gob of strawberry to her mouth. I gawped at her feet. They were dirty and bare.
“Carl’s at the lake. We can look at his stuff,” she said. “If you’re quiet.” She licked her finger and turned her back. I followed her inside.
Her room was dusty dark and smelled stale. She plopped herself on the bed and leaned over the side. Her t-shirt rode up, exposing a knobby spine. She pulled out a cardboard box and undid the flaps.
A record album cover, a man staring bare-chested on the front. His hair tousled cherubic, his arms spread and ending where wings would begin. We stared at this for some time.
“Jim.” said Sonya as she slipped record from gauzy cover, “Carl says he’s the Truth.”
His voice droned and insinuated from the speakers as Sonya pulled things from the box. Each was named and solemnly passed to me. Rollies: a tiny red envelope with little square papers inside. I crinkled these between my fingers, and they were as pretty and as ephemeral as butterfly wings. Joss: a powdery dark stick that left a sweet residue on my skin. And finally Miss March: a grownup lady spread bare naked on glossy paper. Sonya placed her across from the album cover with the angel man on it. The two sets of nipples stared at each other.
The bottom of the box was filled with bottle caps, of all colours and all providences, shining like treasure. Sonya picked up the bluest of these and pressed them into her eye sockets. Blinded, she grinned at me. I chose a gold one, and a silver. Sonya’s smile faded behind her blanked out eyes.
“You can’t see any more when you’re dead,” she said, “They put coins on your eyelids to keep them shut.”
I clutched at my chest, my eyes rolling and my tongue thrust out. Heart attack, cartoon style. Then I realised that Sonya couldn’t see me.
“Pretend we’re dead,” she was saying, “that we are somewhere else.”
Head to head we lay, bottle caps floated on closed eye lids. The corrugated edges dug into my skin but I would not say anything to Sonya. Dead was serious and silent, and needed a sense of ceremony. I tried to think of nothing but I saw my face in the water unafraid, my breath measured and calm.
“My dad’s teaching me the dead man’s float,” I said.
“Carl swims,” said Sonya, “He can dive and stay down forever. He knows how to breathe underwater.”
We practised holding our breath, that day and the rest. Hold and float, hold. The black dots would dance in front of our eyes like drifting debris. Hold.
We swam on the living room rug, the sofa a far flung island. Sometimes there were sharks, sometimes there were cramps and near drowning. Sonya was competent. She knew the lifeguard hold and the kiss of life, she knew the words to comfort the victim. Hush now you’re all right, breathe deep, you’re gonna live. Guaranteed.
Sonya’s mom stayed in her bedroom at the end of the hall. Sometimes she would emerge blinking in her bathrobe, propelled towards kitchen by the glass in her hand. Sonya and I would stop whatever we were doing to listen. The crank of freezer door shoved open, the crack of tray and clink of ice cube. Then the little pause as if considering, but always the same decision made, always the thud of cupboard door and the bottle upended and sloshed. After this, the slow shuffle back to the bedroom.
“Keep it down, wouldja?” her mother would say as she passed, “You know I work night shift. There’s cheese, there’s mayo. Make yourselves a sandwich.”
Sonya would look at me and mouth the words and I would try not to laugh, my heart twisting a little. The cheese was crusted with green fuzz.
We made sandwiches of margarine and sugar instead.
Carl was often at the lake, but sometimes he was around. He was a teenager, which made him like one of us, but better. He was interested in grown-up things. He had a guitar and car, he strummed one and washed the other. He had brown eyes that crinkled when he smoked, he had hair that flopped over his face. We hid in the bushes beside the trailer and we watched him. He sprayed and polished car metal, the sinews of his back muscles rising.
“He has a girlfriend,” said Sonya, “They do things, in his bedroom with the door shut.”
“We could go into his bedroom. Maybe when he’s at the lake?” My belly twisted at the prospect and I felt like I needed to pee.
“No,” said Sonya. “We don’t go into his bedroom. He’d know.”
She threw a pinecone at Carl. It hit the car but he turned anyway, grinning, hose in hand like a lance. He swung his hips to the music playing on the radio, he two-stepped and boogied and the hose came nearer, spewing water. We shrieked and ran. Carl always came close but he would never quite get us.
Caramel Carl. I said his name over and over again when I was sure no one could hear, letting it dissolve like toffee on my tongue. I could smell the smoke from his cigarettes and hear the ripple of his guitar floating above us when we swam the carpet. He looked just like his photo over the fireplace, bare-chested and squinting against the sun, bronze-eyed and golden-haired. Sometimes Carl was around; I could sense him even when he was out of sight. But sometimes he was at the lake.
Sonya and I played Underwater World when Carl was away. We held our breath until the air wavered before us, until we fell backwards onto the sofa. Sonya said that if you did it right, you’d see everything you wanted, you would see heaven. I couldn’t ignore the pounding in my head or the bursting in my lungs, I had to draw breath.
“What did you see?” Sonya’s face was blotched with red.
I lied. I told Sonya I saw a field full of ponies with long wavy manes.
Sonya would not say what she saw.
That summer drifted on. On weekends, my parents packed the picnic bag and we spent all day at the lake. One such day, I asked to bring Sonya. I thought she would like to swim for real.
My parents exchanged looks over my head.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said my mom.
“Not this time,” agreed my father, “you have to realise.”
I didn’t know what I had to realise, but I didn’t ask. I was eight and I knew realising was part of being smart for my age.
The lake was busy on weekends. The sun slapped down, the campfires crackled and wafted their holiday smell of wood smoke. The skinny boys cannonballed off the dock as the pedal boats went by, the swim-capped old ladies did the slow and stately breast stroke. The inner tubes bobbed and drifted in the distance, their passengers lolling shut-eyed and sun-soaked. The teenagers drank stolen beer on the shore, they danced slow and close to their tinny transistor music, and their laughter carried over water. I looked for Carl but could not see him there with the others.
I missed Sonya. But I was learning to survive in cold water.
“The lake will hold you,” said my mom. “So long as you let it.”
“Why is it called the dead man’s float?” I wanted to know.
“Because you just let go. You don’t try to swim, to save yourself,” said my dad, “You just float as long as you have to. Until you are found.”
I let my face fall into the water and the heat and noise faded, the depths opened under me and I was not afraid. Hold and float. I bobbed light as a cork on warm current.
I told Sonya I could float forever and she asked if I’d seen all the way to the bottom.
“The middle of the lake, that’s the deepest part,” she said, “That’s where the teenagers go. You can’t see all the way down so you have to imagine it. Below the warm water, below where the fish swim and where the weeds are, and right into the dark. Bottom. Break through that, you’ll come out the other side. Carl says they play music all day and all of the night, they dance there and never get tired. Do you see?”
Carl was at the lake. We played his records and we swung our hips, screeching the words. Sonya’s mom came out of her bedroom.
“Wouldja gimme a break?” she said, raspy in her bathrobe, “Crappy music, no melody. That guy needs a voice lesson. Right after he gets his hair cut.”
Sonya looked at me and I answered back, emboldened.
“It’s Jim,” I said, “Carl says he’s the Truth.”
Sonya’s mom froze. Her shadowed eyes fixed on me.
“Carl’s gone,” she said, “He’s gone, he’s not coming back. Stop this bullshit, you hear me?”
Her breath stank of skin scraped raw and sharp-sting iodine. Her hand rose and I flinched, I could feel the cold water slap of it already. She glared at me and hit Sonya instead.
Sonya sat in her bedroom later, her cheek red. I held my breath and waited for her to speak.
“She thinks he’s still under the lake,” she said, her eyes steady on mine, “She doesn’t know he’s here too.”
Sonya was gone by the next summer. My parents opened the windows to air out our trailer and told me it was for the best. Both Sonya and her mother needed to get away from the lake.
I could do the front crawl as well as the dead man’s float that summer. I could swim to my father far away on his floating tube, I could glide over warm current like there was nothing underneath.
I was building my own version of the lake by then. The lake was as solid and friendly as a bowl of jelly. It was a summertime pleasure and could do no harm. Then came the hot day in August.
I remember slipping over surface with my hands scooping warm water and my head turning in rhythm. In and out the measured breath, hold and float, hold. A disturbance, a displacement of water, and a cold current wound around my kicking legs.
Then came the impact, sharp and sudden.
The world turned over then and I was flailing. Up turned down, the safety of light appeared and disappeared between my kicking feet. The cold seeped in and the dark spread. I saw a set of hands reaching, impossibly far up and shadowed against a circle of sun, but the more I kicked the further I fell. Then a glow, sensed deep below, and the push of another’s hands solid and real beneath me. I swear I heard music as I shot up to the light. I know the guitar chords washed from some place far beneath. I broke the surface and my father grabbed me.
“Damn pedal boats,” he said, “There should be a law.”
The years passed, the lakeside trailers were replaced with condos and my parents began to take their holidays in Florida. I met my own brown-eyed man. He made my head float and my blood fizz, his voice hushed my fears and his eyes crinkled when he laughed. The brown eyes remained while the rest of him fell away. I held his hands between the treatments, I fed him soup and shakes and swabbed his mouth with water towards the end. I did whatever I could to hold him to me but I could not.
I sleep alone in my marriage bed and I dream of swimming in the lake. The warm surface is an illusion and the dark always looms beneath. I panic. I forget how to breathe and I begin to sink through the layers. I wake with the cold current clutching my belly and my limbs flailing, and I realise that the lake holds nothing.
Sometimes I think I am looking at it the wrong way. I think of the faith needed to float and I hear Sonya telling me to turn it on its side and look again. Do you see? The darkness is only a smudged line between two halves of light, the figures dance perfectly mirrored in this world and the other. Do you see? He’s at the lake, he’s here too and you can see him perfectly when you need to. Hold. You’ll break through the dark, you’ll float, guaranteed. Hush now and hold.
Hold.
LOST BOYS
“GWENNIE? YOU WANNA COME OUT? Nice night out here.”
I can tell my brother’s been crying. There’s a thickness to his voice that isn’t entirely the beer. I look at Prentiss. He’s laid out on the kitchen rug, sof
tly panting, and of no help at all.
“Gwendolyn?”
I nudge the dog with my toe. “Prentiss. Porch, now.”
His tail thumps, once, twice. Prentiss was brought home from the animal shelter to take care of my brother, but he won’t get up unless there’s a good reason. Sloppy drunks and careless crumbs are his bottom line.
“Where’s Tom tonight?” I call.
“Dunno. Something about parts, a deadline.”
“And the Twinbros?” I can never remember their names.
“Didn’t show up.”
“Curly?” I’m desperate enough to ask.
“Lying low for a while. Until that thing with the bikers blows over.”
Typical. That leaves me. “Prentiss, come. Now. There might be cookies.”
Prentiss huffs and rolls onto his feet, follows me out the screen door. I settle into one of the lawn chairs and glance at my brother.
He’s staring at the night sky. The moonlight draws out his fine nose and the curve of his cheek, and something snags in my memory. A jar of instant coffee and a triangle punched in a can of evaporated milk, the good mugs out on a tray and the voice of some long ago neighbour prattling to our mother, Oh what a shame your boy’s the pretty one. Prentiss noses my lap. I palm him a cookie and he settles between us. My brother is perfectly still; no ruffling the dog’s head, no stroking the floppy ears. I wonder if he’s off his meds again.
“What’s wrong, Jimmy?”
My brother snuffles and wipes a hand across his nose, lets out a long breath. “I keep thinking about them, the lost boys. I don’t get it. I mean, I get the car accidents, I understand being thrown from a vehicle, landing in a ditch maybe. And a bear eating the remains. I get how that could happen. Or somebody up to no good, foul play, like. But those lost boys? They wouldn’t go down without a fight. They’d struggle. There’d be signs of whatever happened, the accident or bear or gang killing. There’d be something left, right? For forensics.” He swipes a hand across his face again. “So why don’t they tell us? Why don’t they say?”
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