How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC)

by Marjorie Celona

  the sea. He could feel his father’s spirit—or something, he wasn’t

  sure—so strongly, as if the air around him was charged.

  When he opened his eyes, the woman from the park bench was

  standing above him, a big straw hat obscuring her face.

  “I want to be you,” she said. “I want to be as happy as you so

  badly right now.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “Do it. Be me.”

  The woman laughed. She patted the dog’s head. “I love you!” she

  said to Scout. She laughed again and sat next to Lewis on the sand.

  “I’m not as convincing.”

  “You just met him,” said Lewis. “Give it another few minutes. It

  was love at first sight for me.”

  They had thrown sticks into the water for Scout for ten minutes

  before she took off her hat, and Lewis stopped and stared. There she

  was, standing in front of him, it was definitely her, and why hadn’t he noticed until now? And why hadn’t she?

  “Oh,” Lewis said. “Oh.”

  “What?” said Evelina.

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  “It’s you,” he said.

  Evelina shook her head, not knowing, not recognizing.

  “No one ever recognizes me in my plainclothes.”

  He watched Evelina think on this a moment. “Like Superman,”

  she said.

  “A bit like him, yes,” said Lewis.

  “Oh, god, you’re the cop,” she said. “I mean, the officer. Officer

  Côté.” She took a step back, as if he might lunge and arrest her.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m actually a nice person.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you are. It’s—the last time I saw

  you—are you—did they—the woman, I mean—”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, we found her.”

  “Oh, thank god,” said Evelina. “Is she alive?”

  “She drowned.” He watched her face, waiting for something—

  relief, or happiness, or sorrow—anything. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was so attracted to her that it took everything he had not to

  take her in his arms. “Where are your boys?” he said.

  “Dmitri—my youngest,” she said, “is spending spring break with

  his father.”

  “And you’re not altogether happy about it,” he said, looking at her

  face.

  “He’s getting remarried,” she said. She looked at her hands. She

  was wearing a wedding ring, and she saw him looking at it. “I—”

  “What about Jesse?” he asked.

  “He’s—” She gestured over her shoulder, at the little white beach

  house behind her. “You can see him, actually, from here.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Lewis. He hadn’t realized he was so close to her

  house. He waved, and the boy waved. He thought of Denny, drunk

  and drooling, almost rabid. Desperate to have someone to blame.

  Desperate to talk to the boy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Listen, I should get back.”

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  marjorie celona

  “Of course,” he said, “though—” He paused, trying to figure out

  a way to prolong their interaction. He knew if his fellow officers saw him with Evelina they would look at him disapprovingly. But the case

  was closed. There was nothing more to solve. She was a beautiful

  woman standing in front of him on a beautiful day. He smiled and

  pointed at his soaking socks and shoes. “I mean, I’m going to be here for a while, until these dry out.”

  “Do you want—” she said, and nodded her head toward her

  house.

  “I do,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

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  C h a p t e r T w e n t y

  Evelina

  They hosed the sand off Scout together, and she put Lewis’s socks

  in her dryer and his shoes on her back porch, where they would

  dry in the last of the evening sun. Jesse was playing with Scout in the yard. She drank a glass of beer and felt something swell within her.

  She excused herself from the kitchen table, and walked to the bath-

  room. She wanted another beer, desperately. She wanted to get a little bit drunk. Lewis had found another beer in her fridge and the bottle

  sat sweating on the table when she returned. She drank it quickly,

  eager for the euphoric feeling. Would Jesse recognize the policeman?

  The moment felt dangerous: the lie she and Jesse had told, forever in the air. Wouldn’t it be easier to end things now, before they even got started? Tell him she had something to do and get him to leave? Or

  would that make her seem guilty of something? Maybe this was the

  right thing to do—pretend that she and Jesse had nothing to hide.

  Act normal, act natural. She’d have to find a way to whisper some-

  thing in Jesse’s ear.

  Lewis leaned toward her, and she felt the heat from his body. He

  put his hand on her arm.

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  “Is it okay that you’re here?” she asked.

  “Is it okay that I’m socializing with you, is that what you’re ask-

  ing?”

  “Yes. Is it okay?”

  “She drowned,” he said. “The case is closed.”

  It was the closest she had been to another person, aside from her

  sons, in so long that she ached. Her flirtation with the clerk had

  fizzled and she bought her lottery tickets at the grocery store now.

  She couldn’t bear to face the clerk. She hated that she kept having

  this thought: maybe he’s a nice enough man, a Christian-enough

  man, to want me even as I am now. It was confusing to her, too, that

  how she felt inside did not correspond to what she saw in the mir-

  ror. She looked fine! Lovely, even. Where was the madwoman she

  imagined herself to be, hair matted, obese and slobbering, limping,

  moaning, her ankles swollen and bruised, clawing her body along

  the street with overgrown fingernails? Vera had drowned. That was

  what the news said; that was what Lewis said. A casualty of the bliz-

  zard. A tragic accident. All kinds of safety warnings were issued

  about the dangers of frozen lakes. The thinness of the ice. There was talk of installing a safety railing, or at the very least putting up a warning sign.

  Still, Evelina looked for something in the eyes of the policeman

  standing across from her, his hand on her arm—some note of suspi-

  cion, but he was only smiling, hungry, she could tell, for her.

  She wanted to take the policeman into her bedroom.

  Her children were her most magical creations; she couldn’t deny it.

  But here she was, in her kitchen with this strange and handsome man,

  slightly drunk—on the cusp of the night going somewhere—and the look in his eyes took her back to her former life and that ache for

  greater possibility. She would never rein in her children, she vowed.

  She would encourage them to do everything. Everything. She’d hated

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  being young to a certain extent. But but but. How had she become a
>
  person who derived pleasure from scratch-and-win cards? No more

  fucking cards. She wanted to ram her head into the table until it

  cracked open, then lob her brain across the room like a softball. No

  more fucking cards. It was time to start over. It was time to get past the failure of her marriage to Leo and begin again. Maybe she could

  be an artist of some kind. Fine. Tomorrow she would go out and buy

  a sketchbook. She would take an art class. No more fucking cards!

  “My apartment has a roof deck,” Lewis said, breaking away from

  her, though still so close that she could feel his breath on her lips.

  “We could get Chinese food? Watch the sun go down over the water?”

  “Yes,” said Evelina. “Yes.”

  She found enough batteries to get her little boom box working,

  and she and Lewis went through her shoeboxes of cassette tapes, try-

  ing to agree on what to take to his apartment. She missed this kind of silliness—changing her taste in music to suit Lewis’s, flipping past

  any embarrassing cassettes and lingering on the ones that made her

  seem like a person worth knowing (Marvin Gaye, Dr. Buzzard’s

  Original Savannah Band, Anita Baker), blaming any truly ridiculous

  cassettes (the soundtrack to Cats!) on her sons.

  He lived only a few blocks from her, and so they walked together,

  Jesse trailing behind, holding the dog’s leash. Jesse seemed to not recognize the policeman. Maybe she would see where the night went

  before she told him. Told him what? To lie forever? She shook her

  head. Couldn’t she enjoy herself for one night?

  Lewis was her height, maybe even an inch shorter. Leo had been

  so much taller than she was—but it was pleasant to walk with a man

  and be at eye level. Broad-shouldered—more so than Leo, in fact—

  long purposeful strides and beautiful hands. Such nice straight white teeth. Never a smoker probably. Tanned skin. Smooth. God, he was

  young. How much younger? She would have to find a way to ask.

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  “How long have you been a police officer?” she asked.

  “Three years,” he said.

  “You look young,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound like some-

  one’s mother.

  The air was warm and pleasant on her skin. She had slicked her

  hair behind her ears and put on the peacock feather earrings, changed into a long summer dress under the guise of having sand on her

  clothes from their time at the beach with the dog. She was on a date.

  Her shoulder brushed against his as they walked. She glanced at Jesse, hoping that what she was doing wasn’t a sort of cruelty.

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  C h a p t e r T w e n t y - O n e

  Lewis

  Lewis liked Buddy Miles and so it was Evelina’s copy of Them

  Changes that shot out of the boom box as they sat on the roof of Lewis’s apartment building, Scout sprawled out behind them, Jesse

  watching television in Lewis’s living room. Lewis rooted through his

  container with chopsticks and tossed Scout mouthfuls of beef. He

  wanted to ask Evelina about Leo.

  It was complicated, what he was feeling: an undeniable desire for

  Evelina, but also his loyalty to Denny, and a gnawing sensation that

  whatever he was doing with Evelina might be wrong—morally, eth-

  ically, professionally—in every way. He reached for another beer,

  desperate to dull the feeling and enjoy the evening. They had for-

  gotten to bring up a bottle opener and he felt his heart lift a little at the opportunity to show off for Evelina. He took another bottle in

  his hand and used it as leverage against the first. The top popped off dramatically and Evelina clapped her hands.

  “That’s fantastic,” she said. “Leo used to do it with his teeth. Your method is much more civilized.”

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  “I care too much about my teeth,” he said. He offered her the

  opened beer. He was pleased she had brought up Leo. He could ask

  her about him. He could be on a date and stil pry a bit, yes? For

  Denny’s sake? For his own curiosity?

  But Evelina was curious about the thing everyone was curious

  about. What was it like to do his job?

  “I mean,” he said, “on a busy day I go from call to call. I don’t

  even have time to eat.” The truth was, he’d only had a handful of days like this.

  “Calls for what?” she asked.

  He paused a second. “Trespassing to assault to death,” he said. He

  watched her for a reaction but she only nodded. “You clear your calls, you write your reports.”

  She leaned toward him and looked at his waist. He wasn’t sure

  what she was looking for. “Do you have a gun on you right now?”

  “Oh,” he laughed. “Yeah. Look, what if I run into someone I’ve

  arrested before? Someone who has a grudge? In the grocery store or

  something? I’m not taking that chance.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” she said, but she looked perplexed. He

  guessed she had never held a gun before.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s like being a hunter.”

  He felt someone’s eyes on him and looked over his shoulder to see

  Jesse, hands scrunched in his pockets. The sun had disappeared and

  the air was cooling, the sky deepening blue.

  “Hey there,” he said.

  The boy blinked at him, then asked in a nervous voice whether he

  could do the trick with the beer bottle again. Lewis felt a pang in his stomach. He wondered whether the boy recognized him. He couldn’t

  tell. He hadn’t seen Jesse since January, and Lewis had been in uni-

  form then.

  “Of course,” said Lewis. “Here, I’ll show you how.” He glanced at

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  Evelina to make sure this was okay, then placed a beer bottle in

  Jesse’s hands. “Now hold this tight, and don’t let it move.” The boy

  gripped the bottle with intensity. “Now what I’m going to do is put

  the cap of my bottle under the cap of your bottle,” Lewis said, and

  then, in one fluid motion, as if by magic, the cap flew off and landed by Scout’s paw.

  “Holy shit!” the boy said, and Lewis looked to Evelina to see if she

  would scold him for swearing, but she only laughed.

  “Still hungry?” Lewis held out his container of chow mein, and

  Jesse took it, sat cross-legged by Scout.

  “What is this?” he said.

  “Chow mein,” said Lewis. “Noodles.”

  “Never had it before,” Jesse said. He looked at the chopsticks,

  frowned, then started shovelling the noodles into his mouth with his

  hands.

  “Manners, Jesse,” said Evelina, but the boy ignored her. Now that

  it was dusk, a few mosquitoes began to buzz around them. Evelina

  slapped the back of Lewis’s head and he slapped her ankle, and Jesse

  flicked one off Scout’s ear. Lewis told Evelina to close her eyes and he ran his hand softly over her face. “There was one on your cheek,” he lied. “It keeps moving.”

  “Where are you from?” Evelina asked. She
had beautiful arms.

  The muscles of her forearms tensed as she reached for her bottle of

  beer. A long, elegant neck. He watched her throat as she drank from

  her beer. Her collarbone. Her jaw. She must be a decade older than

  him, but she was a masterpiece.

  “Wisconsin,” he said. How dull that sounded. How uninteresting—

  how normal—he must seem to her. A young, baby-faced cop from

  the Midwest. She probably thought nothing bad had ever happened

  to him.

  “Your parents?” she asked. “Are they still there?”

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  It had been so long since he’d been on a date—if that’s what this

  was—that he’d forgotten about this part. The part where he had to

  explain the inexplicable—why he was who he was, and how he’d

  ended up that way.

  “My mother,” he started, for this was the relatively easy part, “died when I was young.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Only in his worst moments did he let himself go down the dark

  path of what his life would have been like if he had been raised by

  both his mother and father. He had hidden the pain of his mother’s

  death in the deepest part of himself, where it was impossible to reach.

  A freak car accident. No one’s fault. No one to be angry with. His

  father had climbed into bed after the accident, pulled the red plaid

  blanket over his body, turned his back to Lewis. The unbearable

  silence that had followed.

  “Your dad?” she asked.

  Lewis looked at Jesse to see if he was listening, but the boy was

  focused on his food. “He died three years ago.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “A month after I moved to Whale Bay,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s better not to say anything,” he said. “I mean, there isn’t any-

  thing to say.” He reached for her hand, and she took it.

  “Are you close to your parents?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “They moved to the city, to be closer to my

  sister and her children.” She paused and looked at him. “None of

  them approved of Leo.”

  He knew he was supposed to ask her more about her own family

  now—or maybe even Leo—but his throat felt stuffed with sand. He