Leo reached into the water and grabbed the woman’s arms, and dug
his knees into the ice.
“I’ve got you, don’t worry,” his father was saying. “Hang on, hang
on,” he said.
“Don’t let go,” the woman yelled at his father. “Please,” she said,
but her voice was unsteady and Jesse could barely make out her words, her mouth full of cold water. His father had the hood of her parka
wadded in one hand and her arm in his other. He slipped forward and
the woman’s head went under again.
When she came back up, as if by a feat of incredible strength she
lunged toward Leo and grabbed his shoulders. “Please,” she said.
“Please.” Her glasses had fallen off and Jesse could see her eyes, which were deep-set and wild, almost bulging. It was too much and he looked away, wished she were still wearing her glasses so he wouldn’t have to see those frightening eyes.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Leo said. He was kneeling at the edge
of the hole, embracing the woman. Her legs were kicking frantically.
She was trying to use Leo as leverage, trying to get one of her legs
back onto the surface of the lake.
“What the hell is wrong with you,” Leo yelled at Jesse. “Help me.
Grab on to her.”
Jesse could see his father’s eyes darkening. His father’s face mor-
phing into that other face. The other face, the other one Jesse knew
so well.
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“I didn’t mean it,” Jesse said. “She wouldn’t leave me alone.” But
his voice was nowhere to be found, and it came out only as a whisper.
He couldn’t make himself move.
“I’ve got you,” Leo said to the woman. “Stop fighting me. Relax
a minute.”
“Help me,” said the woman, “help me.”
Leo whipped his head around to look at Jesse. “Grab her!
Come on!”
The woman was crying, scrambling to keep her hands clasped
around Leo’s shoulders. “My hands, my hands,” she said. She began
to wail. “I can’t hold on.”
“God damn it,” said Leo. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He was looking at the woman but Jesse knew the words were meant
for him.
“My hands,” she said. “My hands are too cold.”
“Don’t let go,” said Leo.
His father’s legs were slipping. He tried different positions but
there was no traction—everywhere he placed his feet, they shot out
from under him. There was nothing to hold onto. No rope to throw.
The woman was thrashing in the water, and she was screaming.
“God damn it. God damn it,” his father was saying, over and over.
“Don’t let go of me,” the woman said. “Help,” she said again.
“Please help me.”
She was clawing at his jacket and Jesse saw that his father was
going to be pul ed down with her, down into the water. His father
gasped, struggled to secure his footing again. He braced himself to lift the woman onto the ice, but soaked with ice-cold water, she out-weighed him.
“Dad! Dad!” Jesse said. “Let go!”
His father was making a horrible wailing sound and Jesse knew
he wouldn’t stop trying to save her. The woman’s lips were turning
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blue and her teeth were chattering. His father’s clothing was wet
and plastered to his body. Jesse grabbed his father’s shoulders and
tried to pull him away from the hole in the ice. He tried to wrench
open his father’s hands. He began to hit his father as hard as he
could, but he saw it was making no difference and so he took hold
of his father for balance and kicked the woman’s arms and hands,
anything he could reach of her, until she let go and plunged into
the water.
“Don’t,” the woman was screaming, and his father threw Jesse
onto the ice with a strength that was almost superhuman, and scram-
bled to grab her again.
“Grab my jacket, grab my hands,” his father yelled. But it didn’t
matter. The woman’s face had changed and she had stopped scream-
ing. Her mouth opened and a gush of water spilled out. She raised
her arms and tipped her head up. She broke through the surface of
the water with her hands one last time, as if she were trying to lift herself out of the lake and fly into the open sky. She opened her
mouth once more, and seconds later she was underwater.
“No,” said his father, and he grabbed for her but she was unre-
sponsive, staring up at him from below the surface. Her arms floated
down to her sides and then she was sinking.
A bubble, then another, then nothing.
Jesse could see her. He could see her face. The woman’s expression
softened. His father backed away from the hole in the ice and together they watched her go.
Jesse and his father knelt at the edge, peering down. At some
point, Jesse realized his father was holding his hand. He waited for
the black water to bubble with life and for the woman’s hand to shoot out and grasp the ice. His father seemed to be waiting, too.
The ice cracked beneath them, and the next thing Jesse knew, he
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edge. The snow had stopped and for the first time that day Jesse did
not feel cold. His father set him on the ground.
All he could hear was the sound of his father breathing.
“Listen,” his father said, bending to Jesse’s level and taking him by the shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot and wild with something that
looked like anger but might have been sorrow. He scanned the lake—
as if the woman might reappear somehow, as if by magic—then
looked back into Jesse’s eyes. “You have your whole life ahead of you.
Do you understand this?”
His father’s voice was unlike any other voice he knew. Jesse strug-
gled not to be affected by it. The very air around his father seemed to shimmer as though it were charged. In the distance, he could see the
woman’s dog by the edge of the lake, but the dog was silent, unmov-
ing, not even panting. Hidden by the birch trees, out of sight.
“None of this happened,” his father was saying. “This did not
happen, do you hear me? Do you understand this now?”
“I understand,” said Jesse. “I understand.”
“You did not meet this woman. You have never seen her. This did
not happen.”
For a moment, Jesse wondered whether he had misremembered
his childhood—had he imagined his father was an out-of-control,
angry monster? No. He could remember his father’s face turning
purple if the phone rang at the wrong time. What had happened to
that man? Who was this person, tears in his eyes, clothes soaking wet, looking at his aging hands?
They were in the parking lot now, though Jesse could not remem-
ber walking there. Had his father carried him up the trail? Had he
closed his eyes, let his head slump against his father’s
shoulder as he was carried to the car?
“No one will ever know.”
His father held the car door open for him. He waited for Jesse to
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get in, then leaned over gently and fastened the seat belt, tugging it a little afterwards to make sure it was secure.
His brother was in the front seat, waiting. The snow was falling
around the car in heavy clumps. His father was digging in the snow
outside the car, looking for something, and it took him some time
before he climbed into the driver’s seat.
Even from the back seat, Jesse could smell the tequila on his
father’s breath. He could hear his father breathing in ragged, choking gasps. He leaned closer to his father because he thought his father
might be speaking—and as he leaned closer he heard that, yes, his
father was saying something. Over and over his father was telling
them, in a voice not much louder than a whisper, that this day had
never happened, that this day had never been.
When they pulled up to his mother’s house, Jesse could see his mother watching from the window. She was holding the phone receiver in
her hand.
They walked toward the house, and he listened to his father tell
his mother that Dmitri had fallen on the ice. Jesse nodded as his
father told her the story, his mother’s eyes on him as he did so.
His mother took Dmitri into the house, and for a moment Jesse
was alone with his father.
His father’s clothes were wet, and he was looking past Jesse into
the house. Jesse could hear his mother asking Dmitri whether his
face hurt, and then the sound of her searching the freezer for an ice pack, telling Dmitri to hold it to his face.
The snow had stopped and the sky cleared above their heads, the
stars finally visible after weeks above the clouds. His father’s car was idling, a plume of exhaust rising from the tailpipe into the night air.
“Dad,” Jesse said. But he couldn’t make himself ask the question.
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He waited for his father to hold him. To take him in his arms and
tell him that he loved him. That they would recover from this. That
everything had an end, even the bad times.
“So long,” his father said to him, and Jesse felt something move
within him, some familiar old ache of disappointment.
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J a n u a r y 1 9 8 7
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C h a p t e r T w e n t y - E i g h t
Lewis
Lewis parked his patrol car and let himself into Denny’s house and
stood in the living room. Scout bolted in and out of the rooms,
searching for Denny. The dog nudged at Lewis’s legs, poked the backs
of his knees with his muzzle.
It was the one-year anniversary of Vera’s disappearance. He felt he
had to stop by. He felt he had to say something, to commemorate it. He didn’t see as much of Denny these days. What he had done—letting
Denny talk to Jesse, no matter that it had led to the truth—had frac-
tured the friendship for both of them.
He had told Denny what had happened to Vera. The whole truth,
not a half-truth, or nothing at all, as he could have done. He went
through the entire story, start to finish.
Denny, he’s a little boy.
A little boy who was terrified of his father.
He has his whole life ahead of him.
The lights were off in the living room and it was so quiet Lewis
could hear the hum of the refrigerator. Scout circled toward the bed-
room then back to Lewis, his tail low and moving back and forth.
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Lewis flicked on the lights. He saw vacuum tracks across the carpet
and a once-overflowing wastepaper basket that was now empty. In
the kitchen, the floor sparkled and the counters shone. Lewis
opened the fridge but it had been emptied of its contents and wiped
clean. No dishes in the sink; all were drying on the rack, the sponge back in its holder. Gone were the piles of newspapers and junk mail
and crusty glasses of orange juice. Gone was the smell of rot and
mildew. He opened the cupboards and saw that all the food had
been thrown out. Only the dishes remained, gleaming.
“Looks great in here!” Lewis called out. The windows washed; the
sills free of dust. Scout’s water dish, often empty, was full of clean, cold water, as if Denny had been expecting them.
At first, Denny had wanted to prosecute Leo. And it was stil a
possibility. But was it worth it? Wouldn’t it do more damage to the
boy in the long run—more damage than had already been done? One
long night, they had argued until four in the morning. Denny had
even raised his fist to Lewis.
They left her there.
“Hey, man! You home?”
Maybe Denny had hired a cleaning service. Or maybe he had
cleaned the place himself. He was on new medication for his arthritis, and it seemed to be working. Perhaps he was coming around. Finally!
Maybe he was going on a diet. Maybe he’d thrown out al his stale
food so he could start over. Maybe he’d finally donated Vera’s things to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or driven them to the dump.
Whatever the case, Lewis surveyed the clean house with a feeling
of pleasure. Denny was finally moving on, and here was the first
sign of it.
Denny! It’s over! Move on with your life! Get up from off the floor
and let us live again! Let us drink and dance! It is over, my friend! Not your grief, not your grief, but the doubt! You are free! We could even Celo_9780735235823_4p_all_r1.indd 236
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be friends again—true friends, nothing between us! It is over! It is
finished! It is the first day of the year! Hooray! Callooh! Callay!
“Where are you, man?”
He stood in Denny’s immaculate kitchen, opened the back door
and let Scout into the yard but the dog was crouched low and didn’t
want to go outside. His police radio crackling was the only sound.
He put his hand on the door frame and called out again. He
scanned the yard but there was no sign of him. The mower had
been returned to its place beside the garage, the electrical cord
coiled into a perfect figure eight. Denny had raked, too, and gath-
ered the leaves in a black garbage bag, which he had leaned against
the house. The yard cleared of its leaves, Lewis saw that there were
flowerbeds, neglected but for a few hostas that would bloom in the
spring, and some blue ornamental grass that was doing quite well.
“You back here?” he called.
Maybe he was in his studio. Lewis had never been in Denny’s stu-
dio, although he had always wanted to see it. What went on back there?
He walked to the little outbuilding—it looked like a shed—and opened
>
the door. The lights were off and he imagined when he flicked them on he would finally see all the equipment Denny had told him about—the
kiln, the centrifuge, the thing Denny called a quench tank, where a
ring finally broke free of its plaster cast and exploded into being. But when he flicked on the lights, the studio was empty. A long rectangular-shaped room lined with workbenches, a couple of stools on wheels. He
knelt and ran his hands over the rough cork floor, in search of some-
thing left behind. A little diamond? He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Nothing but a sliver of some kind of metal. The place swept clean.
The way Denny described his studio, it must have taken days, weeks
maybe. What had he done with all the equipment?
Scout crawled over to Lewis and lay by his feet, panting heavily.
“Okay, boy.” He patted Scout’s head, then scooted his feet out from
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under the dog. He walked outside again and scanned the lawn. A pair
of pruning shears had been left out to rust—Denny must not have
noticed them—and Lewis picked them up and walked toward the
garage.
He put one hand on the door, his other hand on his gun.
“Denny, you in here?” he called out.
He imagined Denny hanging from a rope. He imagined him in
his fancy car, the engine on, his head rolled to one side.
Lewis was rarely nostalgic for his difficult childhood, but he wanted to tell Denny about it now. He wanted to explain why his hands were
shaking and his body had gone numb.
He wanted to tell Denny about the last conversation he’d had with
his father. That long goodbye, a month after he’d moved to Whale Bay.
He wanted to explain to Denny that his father’s craziness had
fractured him, so that he felt his own personality was a glass that
had been dropped from a great height onto a hard floor. He wanted
to explain that the child of a crazy parent spends his whole life trying to fix the world. But that, faced with Denny, who did need fixing, Lewis had felt a kind of calm, a remove, a move toward sanity. He felt how he was supposed to feel. A lightness.
He didn’t need to fix Denny. And so he had performed only the
manageable duties of friendship: walked Scout, occasionally tidied
the house. He hadn’t, as he had done for his father when he was a
child, teenager, and young man, sat up with him all night, or called in sick so he could spend the day with him when he knew he was particularly sad. For the first time in his life, Lewis had put himself and his own needs before Denny’s.
How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC) Page 23