Denny
April took everyone by surprise. And now that the ceaseless winter was over, Lewis sat across from Denny, in Denny’s living room. The hot, dry air hung between the two men.
“She drowned,” Lewis said. “There’s no evidence of foul play.”
All this time, Denny had concocted a reality in which Vera had run off—to Berlin, maybe, or to Rome. He could imagine it: her being so angry after New Year’s Eve that she had fled. Leaving him—he could fathom it, although it would have taken a heart full of hate for her to leave her dog behind. Maybe a heart full of hate was what she had for him. Even that was a better reality than the reality that she had drowned and died. Better to imagine that Vera was making films in Berlin. One day, maybe they would reconcile. He would write her a long, beautiful letter. He would get on a plane. He would roam the streets. Haben Sie diese Frau gesehen? Have you seen this woman? Have you seen this woman who used to be my wife?
The only secret he had kept from Vera was the ugly truth that he had loved one of his ex-girlfriends with a fiery, more intense passion. It didn’t matter—the relationship had flopped and he never yearned to be back within its confines—but it was a small, polished stone of betrayal that he carried in his heart. Had Vera known? Had she known in the way that someone you don’t like always knows you don’t like them?
He watched a news van parking across the street. He nodded toward the stack of newspapers and hate mail he was keeping in the corner in case Vera returned. He wanted to show it to her—he wanted to show her how wrong people could be. Every time the paper ran a story about Vera’s disappearance, they reprinted the same picture of him—hunched over, getting into a police car with Lewis and one of the detectives. He knew that for some people, he would forever be guilty, no matter what had happened or why.
“What do I do now?” said Denny.
“You don’t have to do anything,” said Lewis. “Not right now.”
Denny looked at Lewis, this man who had become his caretaker. For the past four months, Lewis had come over every day to walk Scout. He called it “community policing.” He said it was as much a part of his job as writing traffic tickets. At the end of January, a bottle of bourbon between them, they’d watched the Challenger explode.
“May I see her?” Denny asked.
Lewis hesitated. “There is very little to see,” he said.
He imagined Vera in the palm of his hand, the size of a worry doll. “I’m sorry,” he said to Lewis. “I’d like to be alone.”
* * *
—
He hadn’t cried yet—that would come later—but already he could feel a hollowness opening up inside of him. People would tell him he could start again. People would suggest he start dating. Though it felt impossible to him at this very moment, he had loved women before Vera, so surely it was possible to love again.
He flipped through the phone book until he came to Evelina Lucchi’s name. He had stared at it many nights, fingers poised to dial the phone. He rehearsed what he would say. Are you sure? Are you sure you didn’t know my Vera? Evelina’s ex-husband, Leo Lucchi, was unlisted. He imagined somehow calling him anyway. Are you sure you didn’t drown my wife?
What was he supposed to do right now, standing here in his living room? How was he supposed to get through the next hour? And the next?
He wanted to gather all of Vera’s things in the middle of the living room and lie down on top of them. He wanted to gather as much of her as he could in one small space, and then surround himself, as though he were building a nest. He would build a nest of her in the middle of the room and sleep in its centre until he was ready to let her go.
He walked into the kitchen and looked at the mess he had created in the months Vera had been gone. At first he’d tried to keep it clean, thinking she’d turn up at any minute. But his old habits had come back hard, and there were two weeks’ worth of dishes on the countertops; the dishtowels hadn’t been washed for weeks; and, he noticed, the fridge door was ajar. Vera had been on his case about that. You have to shut it hard, Denny. Don’t let it close on its own. We’ll get a new one soon. Until then, please. Standing in front of him with her arms crossed, her eyes shifting around the room to find some other transgression: a ring left on the coffee table by his icy glass of bourbon; a sock that had missed the hamper and ended up on the floor.
He should have gone with her. He poked his stomach. If he’d gone on the walk around the lake with Vera, he might still have her; he might not have this gut. The mail landed with a thud on his living room floor.
He supposed he would sell her car. Was it wrong to think of that so soon? Did it mean he didn’t miss her enough? Did it mean he wasn’t grieving the way a person was supposed to?
She had a life insurance policy through the university worth fifty thousand dollars—the detectives had told him this; he hadn’t known. He would make a call, get the money. Donate it. Start a scholarship fund in her name. For women. For women filmmakers. Or use it to pay funeral expenses. A funeral! Who wanted to do that? Not him.
He found her address book and stared at the phone numbers. Her parents. Her colleagues at the university. Her friends from childhood, from high school, from college. The neighbours. He would have to call them all.
Would her parents want a funeral? Probably. He didn’t want to have any part of it. Now that Vera was dead, he never wanted to see her parents again. They’d come to Whale Bay right after she disappeared, had spent a week in a motel glaring at him, suspecting, before the police told them to go home and try to get back to their lives.
“Okay,” Denny said. He gathered her clothes in his arms and set them in a pile in the living room. It took five trips back and forth from the dresser and closet, her socks rolled into balls, the one lace thong she never wore, her bras, a few pairs of stockings, her leather jacket, so many blazers—navy-blue and black blazers—expertly tailored white button-down blouses, black pants, black patent loafers, her “power suits,” as she called them, the long grey lab coat she wore when she developed film, still wrapped in its dry cleaner’s plastic, ready for the new semester. Her old pairs of glasses. He put them on, looked at the living room with blurry eyes. He wished he could find something of hers that was unwashed. But the laundry basket was full of only his clothes. It was one of her habits: to do a load of laundry every day. She said she couldn’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, was ashamed of it. He searched for a sock fallen behind the dresser, a once-worn blouse put back in the closet. There was nothing but the scent of detergent. He had used her towel from that morning, before he’d realized it was all he would have left of her. It stank now of mould.
“Okay,” he said again. He didn’t feel anything until he pulled a bathing suit from the back of her dresser drawer and held it up—it was red, with a built-in bra and full skirt, the tag still on. It had cost eighty dollars. She had never worn it. There was a paper liner in the crotch. The bathing suit seemed embarrassingly feminine to him. Vera didn’t even own a pair of heels. When had she bought it? They never went swimming. It seemed purchased for a special occasion—a vacation, something someone would wear on a cruise ship. It was old-fashioned—sort of sexy, he supposed, except for the full skirt. He tried to picture her in it.
What was hers and what was his? Should he gather the expensive Le Creuset cookware and set that in the living room, too? Defeated, he walked into their shared office and brought her files into the living room, her medical records, her high-school poetry, her photographs. Her cameras. All the lenses. The little brushes to clean them. The stink of the developing solution. Endless black canisters of undeveloped film. Reels and reels of experimental films she’d made on Super 8 as a college student. Then, of course, Mirror—the biggest moment of her career—and the fan mail she had collected in an accordion file. She had peaked. That was what she told him late at night when she couldn’t sleep. It’ll be downhill from here, she said, an u
nlit cigarette in her hand.
“Okay, okay, okay.”
* * *
—
He slept with the red bathing suit. Slept with it wrapped around his arms, woke in the night and threaded his hands through the leg holes, then up through the straps, until his arms were bound. He twisted his limbs out of it and pressed the cool fabric against his face. In a fever dream, he walked to the bathroom, shut the door, stood naked in front of the full-length mirror, and stepped into the suit. He got it up to his thighs before the fabric wouldn’t give anymore. His body was pale, slack, his penis a snail.
He found one of her hairs, snakelike, hidden in the bathtub grout, and ran it across his mouth. He wondered if she would find his actions absurd. What she would make of him in their dark bathroom, a woman’s bathing suit around his thighs, threading her hair through his teeth like dental floss.
He found another strand in the drain of the bathtub. He laid the strands out, side by side. One was seventeen inches long. He wrapped them around his finger, thought he’d make a ring out of it.
Where did you want to go, Vera? Were you going with me, or were you going alone?
“Taking Scout to Squire, be back in a bit,” she’d said, or maybe she hadn’t—or she had and he’d slept through it. He could hear the words in his mind. She never thought twice about walking in the woods. She bristled whenever Denny showed any kind of concern. She didn’t even like it when he held open a door. For god’s sake, she would say.
I had things I wanted to talk to you about, Vera. There were things I didn’t know about you. Little things. Little mysteries I wanted to clear up. I wanted to ask you but—you can never be that direct with people, you know? You can’t ask people the questions you truly want to ask. Vera? Who did you wish I was? Who did you wish you were? What are the ways in which I disappointed you? What were the ways in which you disappointed yourself? Why did you look at me the way you did, eyes not exactly full of love?
Until this moment he had not questioned what happened after death. He had never thought about it before, not even when his parents had died.
Naked once more, the bathing suit slung over his shoulder, he lay on the pile of clothing and emptied her cosmetic bag onto the floor, pushed the circular containers of eye shadow around the carpet with his finger as though they were toy cars. Scout watched him from the doorway of the bedroom, his tail twitching like a rattlesnake.
It was three in the morning. He flipped through their record collection and pulled her favourite records from their sleeves, put them on the turntable. David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel.
He closed his eyes and remembered her dancing to Culture Club the year she’d gone as Boy George for Halloween. She was so reserved with everyone except him.
He tried to find a place inside of him where he didn’t miss her. He held his hands to his chest, willing the pain in his knuckles to subside. Could he find a place within himself where he was, in fact, a tiny bit relieved that she was gone? Relieved that the fighting was over with, the guilt that the marriage was failing. Relieved that he could be himself, without judgment. He shook his head, disgusted.
Why was it so hard to cry? All he felt was hollowed out, emptied, cold. He crawled into bed, patted the space beside him until Scout curled into it, and he held his dog.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dmitri
He was not to eat inside his father’s car. He was not to touch anything with his sticky hands. He was not to talk too much or too loudly. These had been the rules in Whale Bay, and these were the rules now, in San Garcia.
Holly was a wild driver. Her knuckles were white. She kept putting on the blinker, trying to change lanes, then chickening out, Leo swearing. She seemed to be terrible at shifting gears.
Dmitri pressed his back against the seat and breathed in. His father looked thin. He hadn’t shaved and his face was bruised on one side. He wore light blue slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt with a bolo tie, his hair slicked back with gel. Black loafers that to Dmitri looked like slippers, big sunglasses like the ones policemen wore on television. The streets were lined with palm trees. Dmitri had never seen them before, except in cartoons. A whole week in San Garcia! Dmitri wanted to shout it to the world.
Holly, too, was skinnier. He could see the veins underneath the skin of her forearms, thick as earthworms. Little strands of hair poked out from her armpits like spider legs. She wore a long, pale blue dress with a thin red belt. Dmitri thought she would have worn a big white wedding dress, his father a tuxedo. His mother had packed Dmitri nothing fancy, and Leo had exploded when he searched the suitcase, finding only shorts, a pair of swim trunks, and a T-shirt with a bear on it. He’s six, his mother had said. I’m not buying him a suit.
That was yesterday morning, the morning they’d left for San Garcia. His mother and father stood in front of the white beach house, arguing, his father’s car idling. His mother told his father that Jesse wouldn’t be coming along. Dmitri and Holly were already in the car. Dmitri could see Jesse watching it all from inside the house. He’s not going with you.
Was it because his father hated Jesse now? Was it because his father loved only him?
Fine. His father had stormed away from his mother, punched the air, and then they’d driven away.
Dmitri wondered what Jesse was doing now, whether he was upset that he was at home with their mother, or whether that was the better place to be. He couldn’t deny it, though: he felt better, safer, without Jesse around. If Jesse were in the back seat with him, he might reach over, quick, before anyone could see, and pinch his arm. He did things like that. A little shove, a little push, when no one was looking: the only evidence, the invisible heat of pain.
“Just trying to toughen you up,” he’d say, laughing, then grip Dmitri’s forearm in both his hands and twist the skin in opposite directions.
But what was worse? The burn itself or the horror of having his father rush in, after hearing Dmitri yelp. Having to watch it. Sometimes his father stuck his tongue out while it was happening, like a person concentrating hard.
Jesse never cried afterwards. He would walk stiffly back into their shared bedroom and turn his back to Dmitri, and Dmitri knew to keep quiet, to not speak until Jesse was done with whatever it was he was doing, often just staring at the wall, whispering, or rocking on his heels.
It hadn’t happened since his father had left. And since that day at the lake, Jesse hadn’t pinched or shoved him at all. One night he’d even heard Jesse whisper I love you in the night. He’d reminded their mother to pack Dmitri’s bear. He’d hugged Dmitri goodbye. Dmitri didn’t think those things had ever happened before.
“Take this exit,” his father said to Holly, and tapped the dashboard with his finger.
Both Holly and his father were sunburnt. The back of his father’s neck looked as though it were covered in bubble wrap. Dmitri wanted to pick off the dead skin and flick it out the window. A wild driver, yeah, but nervous. She didn’t turn her head to look at his father when he spoke. She didn’t turn her head to look at him in the back seat like his mother did when she drove.
Holly missed the exit—Leo grabbed the wheel and tried to veer them onto the ramp but at the last minute let go. “For fuck sakes,” he said. Dmitri’s suitcase and backpack rattled around in the trunk like dice. His father had driven for twelve hours straight yesterday, then they’d all spent the night in a smelly motel with no air conditioning. At dawn, his father and Holly had dressed in their fancy clothes, and just as the sun came up, they were on the road again.
His father took off his sunglasses and rested them on his knee. He looked back at Dmitri. He had two black eyes, in addition to the bruise on his cheek.
“A misunderstanding, that’s all,” his father told him. “Nothing to worry about.”
Dmitri’s heart was beating like a wild thing and he wet himself. His father h
ad pissed into an empty water bottle at one point this morning, but hadn’t offered Dmitri a turn.
The air was hot, so hot, inside the car.
“Do you live here now?” Dmitri’s voice was so high-pitched that he winced. He’d have to toughen up a little now that he was in a real city. Maybe they’d all get murdered!
“For now,” said Leo. “For now.”
“I’m hungry, Daddy,” said Dmitri.
They drove through a fast-food joint that Dmitri had never heard of, and his father leaned over Holly and ordered in Spanish. It sounded more natural on his lips than English. His father seemed to have adopted a new personality. Even his posture was different, more relaxed, than when he was in Whale Bay. Dmitri liked this new dad, this relaxed dad. He hoped this new dad would stick around.
“This’ll fill you up,” the new dad said and handed Dmitri a chocolate milkshake.
Dmitri sucked on the milkshake until his hands got cold. He wondered whether it would be okay to put the cup on the floor of the car. Likely not—even this new relaxed dad had delivered a terse lecture about keeping the car clean. Dmitri held the cold milkshake between his pee-soaked thighs.
They drove for twenty minutes before Leo announced, “One last stop,” and ordered Holly to park in front of a children’s clothing store.
“Come on,” Leo said to Dmitri. The store was dark and smelled of dogs. It was a second-hand clothing store. A woman sat behind the till, doing a crossword puzzle. She did not speak to them. Leo walked up and down the aisles, then grabbed a couple of collared shirts and a pair of tan pants. “Take off your clothes,” said Leo.
“Here?” Dmitri stammered. He scanned the store for a change room but didn’t see one.
“Quit farting around,” his father said, and yanked Dmitri’s T-shirt over his head so that it caught on his ears. Dmitri put on one of the shirts and his father nodded and then handed him the pants. Here? He was supposed to stand in his underwear here? In front of the woman? He looked toward the entrance to see if Holly was coming, but he couldn’t see her, just the front of the car. He stumbled out of his pee-soaked pants and put on the ones his father was holding, though he could see that the waistband had a suspicious stain.
How a Woman Becomes a Lake Page 11