Eventually, I couldn’t hold my breath anymore. I gave in. I took in the deepest breath I’ve ever taken, and my lungs filled, and the lights went out. I thought I had died, Grampy. I thought that was it. I started floating down toward the bottom.
But then something pulled on my foot, dragging me back through the tunnel of water, back through the darkness. The person or whatever it was dragged me through until I burst up out of the water on the near side of the tunnel, back where I had started.
I was gasping for air, choking, and someone else was there too, coughing and spitting up water. I reached quickly for my flashlight and saw, Grampy. It was her.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I was almost there.”
“You were dying. If you die, you can’t come back here again. I had to bring you back. You’re no good to me dead.”
I stared at her. “I thought you couldn’t go there. I thought only I could go get whatever it is I’m supposed to get.”
“I can’t. I shouldn’t have gone as far as I did. Getting you out . . .” She paused, coughing long and hard. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
I could tell she was weak and upset with herself.
“Thank you,” I said, erupting into another coughing fit.
“You’re not a very good swimmer, you know that?” Now she sounded angry.
I felt embarrassed. I told her I did the best I could, and I could tell she immediately felt bad for giving me a hard time. She might sound a little harsh at times, but she’s actually quite considerate.
“You need to practice swimming under the water,” she told me. “You don’t have that much farther to go. You can do it.”
We waded back through the water until it was shallow again, barely up to my ankles, and I saw the door appear at the end of my flashlight.
“Let’s go back up,” she said wearily. “We can try another time.”
We began the long, long walk up the stairway, to the top. I was so tired, so worn out, that eventually she had to carry me again, all the way up that long stairway, and I fell asleep in her arms. When I woke up, she was gone, and I was sitting in the dark with no flashlight at the top of the stairs. It was like waking from a dream. I turned the knob and crept into the dark house, through the long hallway, and toward the front door.
That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder, a cold hand. It was a woman’s hand, and the nails were long, and her skin almost glowed white. That’s when I screamed. I tried to run but I fell, and I screamed again.
I crashed through the door, and you were waiting for me.
Reality
Do you still think this is harmless?” I ask Tom. We are sitting beside the small table at the far end of your room. The only light on is the lamp beside the table. The window is open a few inches, and the air has gone chilly, so I lean over and close it.
“I never said Pearl’s behavior is harmless,” Tom says in the same flat voice he had when we first crossed paths with him at the diner. There’s something in me that wants to punch him, to tackle him from his chair and wrestle him to the floor. Would that bring the old Tom back? Would that inject life into his cold eyes?
“You don’t seem to be taking her stories very seriously. Tom, she’s seeing people who aren’t there, going to places that don’t exist, for goodness’ sake!”
He glances over at you to see if my outburst has disturbed you. You have not moved.
“You know that’s why she destroyed Shirley’s rug, right? Why she cut squares into it, etched lines in the wood floor? She was searching for a door, Tom. A door! This person she sees told her there was a door under the carpet, and so she cut it to shreds. Can’t you see how serious this is?”
I run my hands through my hair, and it’s one of those moments where I completely forget about the knot until it’s too late—one of my fingernails catches on the rough edge of it, pulling on it, and an electric line of pain streaks down the side of my neck. I wince, take in a sharp breath, but Tom is sitting to my right. I wonder why he hasn’t said anything about the knot—his determination to pretend it’s not there is starting to make me angry.
“I’ll talk to her again tomorrow.” Tom’s eyes wander to the three books still on the table. He picks the smallest up and leafs through it. “You know, at the end, Shirley said some pretty strange stuff too.”
Shirley. I wish she was here, with her quick smile and light touch. She would have loved you so much. The thought of Shirley wrapping you in a hug brings tears to my eyes, and I wipe them away quickly with the back of my hand. Why did she have to die? Why couldn’t she take care of you after I’m gone?
“At the end?” I ask. “The end? Pearl isn’t at the end, Tom.”
I stare at him, but he refuses to return my gaze.
“We never did talk about the pictures,” I nearly whisper.
“What’s there to talk about, Paul? I took some photos of Mary. What else do you want to hear?”
I give a bitter laugh and shake my head. “Those weren’t just any photographs.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I see the uncertainty in his eyes, the wavering that I expected to find.
“Those were beautiful photos, Tom. You captured Mary in a way that none of Shirley’s photos ever did.”
He doesn’t reply.
“You captured Mary the way I saw her.” I pause. “The way a husband looks at his wife.”
Tom doesn’t reply, and this time he doesn’t stand up and walk out.
I take a deep breath. I stand up, and the chair makes a grating sound on the bare wood. The distance from the table beside the window to your bed feels so far. I stop and look down at you, reach down and feel your forehead. Your hair is soft, and I smooth it behind your ear.
“She’s exhausted,” I say. “There’s no reason for me to sleep in here tonight. I’ll start keeping a close eye on her tomorrow.”
“All the same,” Tom replies, “I think I’ll sleep in here, on the floor.”
“Suit yourself.”
Swimming Underwater
Nearly a week has passed since your last incident. The days all run together, with little to differentiate them. We wake up late, eat brunch, and go out on the lake after Tom comes back from town. He gives you a swim lesson, and I watch with apprehension. I sometimes go into town for lunch, but while Jenny and I have been polite, we do not revisit our last topic of conversation. You and I walk through the woods or go farther out on the lake or, if it’s raining, find something to do in the house. Yesterday we worked on a jigsaw puzzle.
Now I’m sitting on the back ledge of Tom’s boat, watching another swim lesson. I allow my eyes a moment’s rest from you, take in the trees on the bank that seemed to have transformed overnight from an end-of-summer pale green to subtle hues of red and orange and yellow. In another month, maybe even a few weeks, they will all be brown.
“Good job, Pearl,” Tom says, treading water beside you. His voice is steady, even in the exertion.
“Can we work on our underwater swimming again?” you ask.
I continue to be amazed at your commitment to this delusion. It concerns me more than I can explain.
“What about freestyle?” Tom suggests. “That’s usually a good first stroke to learn.”
You shake your head. “I’d really like to swim underwater.”
“Okay,” Tom says. “How do you feel about diving?”
He spends the next hour teaching you to dive off the back of the boat, even convincing me to get in the cold water so I can wait for you. After the first few times, mostly belly flops, you start to get the hang of it. You come up from the water right in front of me, gasping for air, smiling, blinking the lake out of your eyes. You wrap your arms around my neck and laugh, and I would do anything for you in those moments, forgive any misadventure.
“Go back farther,” you say. “I want to see how far I can go under the water.”
So I do, and after the hour is up, with a few tips from Tom, you
are swimming so far underwater that I find myself holding my own breath, waiting for you to come up.
“Nice job!” I cry, laughing out loud when you come up far from the boat.
“One more time!” you say.
“One more, and then we have to get out. I’m freezing.”
You jump from the boat again, slipping into the water like a sewing needle piercing cloth, and in those short moments when you are gone from me, I think of Mary.
Only the Deepest Pools Remain
We eat the quiet lunch of people exhausted after some worthy pursuit, slowly chewing our sandwiches and bananas and drinking hot tea to warm us up. You eat your apple down to the core, nibbling at the sweet fruit that remains around the stem. You keep looking up at Tom and me, smiling a melancholy, knowing smile.
“How about a nap?” I suggest, and you nod, your eyes heavy.
I leave you sleeping in your room and rest on the sofa in the living room. There is no sign of Tom, and the house feels empty, so I stand up, walk into the kitchen, and glance at the garage, but I can’t tell if he’s home or has gone into town.
I wander the house, not looking for anything in particular. There’s a quiet room on the third floor with a small rocking chair in front of a picture window that stares out over the lake. I fall asleep there, warm and mellow.
The day passes slow and heavy, but it is fall, which means the sun is creeping down the western sky by late afternoon. This house seems built for dusk, when the dim light gathers around the heavy curtains and cold, hard floors stretch out under my feet. Everything feels like a quiet daydream. I find my way back to the kitchen, where Tom is gathering a few things for dinner.
“Have you seen Pearl?” he asks.
“No. You?”
He shakes his head. I don’t make eye contact with him. I know what he’s thinking. You’ve run off again.
But when I arrive in your room, you are not missing. You’re asleep in your bed. Light from the dusk comes in at a soft angle, and the books with golden lettering on their spines glow in the radiance of it. There isn’t a cloud in the nearly night sky, and stars have begun peeking through.
I reach down to wake you and can feel a strange heat emanating from your body. “Pearl?” I cup my palm over your forehead, and it’s like a fire has taken residence inside your skin. “Pearl.”
You moan.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper.
I leave you to go find Tom, but when I’m in the hall, the floor buckles under my feet, and when I reach out, the walls melt under my hands. A red curtain drops slowly over my vision. Everything goes black.
When I open my eyes, it takes me a moment to recognize where I am. The books give it away—I’m back in your room, lying on the floor beside your bed. A soft pillow is under my head, and I’m lying on one of those roll-out mats that can serve as a mattress when you’re camping. I push my way out from under the warm blanket and sit up, looking over at you in your bed, where you’re still sleeping. I reach over and touch your forehead. You don’t feel quite as hot.
“I gave her some Tylenol.”
Tom is sitting at the small table at the other end of the room. Behind him, through the window, I can see that night has fallen.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod. “I don’t know what happened.”
He waits a second, as if giving me a chance to tell the truth. “I found you in the hall, passed out.”
I take a deep breath. “Thanks.”
“You’re deteriorating quickly, Paul. Want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. I do not want to talk about it.
When he doesn’t say anything more, I lie back down. My head is still reeling, aching, and there is a pulsing throb going from the area of the knot throughout my entire body. I cannot go on like this for much longer. Soon I will have to ask Tom to take me to the hospital. I will die there. I will have to ask him to watch over you. It’s not that I like this new Tom or what Nysa has become. There are a thousand things I’d choose about who to give you to after I’m gone, and few of those things are here, in Tom or in this house, but the thing is, I don’t have much choice.
I don’t have long.
“If her fever is still this high in the morning, we should take her to the doctor,” Tom suggests in his therapist’s voice, so that it feels less like a suggestion and more like a diagnosis.
“I didn’t think there was a doctor in Nysa.”
“There’s not. It’s about an hour and a half drive.”
I turn my face toward your bed. “Thanks, Tom,” I say, wondering if now is the time I should tell him about my condition, if now is the time to ask him if he would consider taking you in. But I can’t form the words. I close my eyes.
I wake up later, and the table lamp is out. Tom is gone. You are still sleeping. I stand up, legs shaking, and walk over to the window, look out into the bright night—the moon is out, spreading a silver skin on the lake, and the shadows move in a stiff breeze. I can feel the cold outside air pushing in around the edges of the glass.
I pick up The Light Princess from the small table and carry it over to your bed. It’s too dark in the room to read the words, so I turn on the hall light, leave the door open a crack, and read from where you last marked your page.
For the princess kept her room, with the curtains drawn to shut out the dying lake, but she could not shut it out of her mind for a moment. It haunted her imagination so that she felt as if the lake were her soul, drying up within her, first to mud, then to madness and death. She thus brooded over the change, with all its dreadful accompaniments, till she was nearly distracted. As for the prince, she had forgotten him. However much she had enjoyed his company in the water, she did not care for him without it. But she seemed to have forgotten her father and mother too. The lake went on sinking. Small slimy spots began to appear, which glittered steadily amidst the changeful shine of the water. These grew to broad patches of mud, which widened and spread, with rocks here and there, and floundering fishes and crawling eels swarming. The people went everywhere catching these, and looking for anything that might have dropped from the royal boats.
At length the lake was all but gone, only a few of the deepest pools remaining unexhausted.
I fall asleep while I’m reading to you, leaning against the wall beside the door. My eyes are heavier, the evening heavier still. The door drifts closed, and shadows stretch through the room.
The Open Window
When I wake up, my back is killing me. At some point in the night, I must have slipped slowly down the wall, and instead of crawling over to the mat and curling up under the blanket, I simply slept on the hardwood floor. My shoulder aches, my neck is cramped, and I don’t feel rested in the least. It’s so cold in the room. I sit up. Filtered gray light comes in the windows. It is early in the morning on a rainy day.
I stand up and walk over to your bed, checking to see if your fever broke in the night. A bath might be a good idea, and some more of that hot tea Tom is constantly pushing on us. Thinking of Tom, I shake my head. I have to tell him. I have to ask him if you can stay here. No matter the circumstances, I know you could have a good life on these shores.
But when I check your bed, you’re gone.
Of course you are.
That’s why it’s so chilly in the room—the window is open.
When I Knew
How empty the lake felt the day Mary left me, how wide the sky, how alone that point of rock. My kayak drifted over to where the rocky bottom of The Point met the water, and the sound of the boat scraping against the granite was the loneliest sound in the world.
I didn’t know if your grandmother would come back, if we would find her, but I had a deep sense that she was gone forever. That I would not see her again. And in that despair, I wondered if I had the courage to climb The Point and jump headfirst down onto the rocks. Or perhaps sink down into the water and not come up again.
Only one thing kept me in the boat, ca
used me to lift my oar and paddle back to the cabin: your father, John. That tiny baby who I thought was probably crying back in the cabin, crying for milk, crying for his mother. That’s why I chose to live that day.
During the next two or three days, the whole town flocked to the lake, and I didn’t care if they did it out of curiosity or a morbid fascination with the idea of a missing person or because they genuinely wanted to help—the more people there, I figured, the better chance of finding Mary. But always there was this belief in me that she wouldn’t be found.
On one of those nights, Tom and Shirley and I sat in the cabin waiting for news. All of our parents were there, and one of them was holding John. He kept crying, so I took him and walked down the dock and stared into the darkness. I didn’t know how to tell him that his mom wasn’t coming back. He was still just over a week old, after all.
The early fall air was heavy, and the water was so still. Out on the lake I could see flashlights sweeping back and forth, at least twenty of them, like tiny, lost lighthouses. I wanted to call to them all, tell them it wasn’t any use. But as I stood there and watched, John stopped crying and started making these little cooing sounds. The stars wavered in the humid air, and that’s when I heard it.
Someone was shouting, but not in anger. It sounded like a wounded animal—a very large, dangerous animal that everyone would want to steer clear of. The cabin door was open, and inside I could see Mary’s father, barely able to stand up. He went from shouting to moaning like a woman in labor, and I knew the grief was too much for him. That’s when I did something really foolish.
I placed John down on the dock, on his back, and when I was no longer holding him, he started crying again, that sort of naked bleating that newborns will do, shrill and inconsolable. I climbed into my kayak, took him from the dock, and held him on my lap, and with one hand I half-heartedly pushed us out into the water.
The Weight of Memory Page 22