by Nora Carroll
It was only then that I realized that I hadn’t seen Lila; up until that moment, I had assumed that she must be up in the cottage getting dressed. Lila was known to be punctual, and she could have been in Miss Ada’s room, tending to one of our mother’s whims. I was completely ready, dressed for a swim with the picnic basket on my knees. Thomas would reach the dock in a few minutes, and I did not want to miss even a moment of his presence. I set the basket carefully on the gray-painted steps and went inside the cottage, whose interior seemed gloomy after the bright sunlight.
“Lila!” I called up the stairs, loud enough, I hoped, to get her attention, but hoping at the same time not to awaken Miss Ada if she slept.
Hearing no answer, I climbed the stairs and circled over to Lila’s bedroom, which was on the north side of the cottage, the opposite side from mine. I saw that she had laid out her bathing suit and a thick wool sweater on her bed, but she was not there.
Downstairs, I rapped lightly on Miss Ada’s door, and when there was no answer, I cracked the door open slightly and saw Miss Ada’s sleeping form.
Back outside, I scanned the cove. I could no longer see the rowboat, so I knew that Thomas had pulled across and was now out of sight. I felt unsure what to do. If I ran down to the beach to tell Thomas that we were running late, I might miss Lila as she came out from wherever she was. I decided to sit and wait there on the steps a few minutes longer, thinking that if Thomas did not find us, he would moor the boat and come up to the cottage.
I think I first heard a crackling in the underbrush. It wasn’t unknown for a deer to crash out of the woods and find itself blinking in the bright sun of the cottage lawn. When I looked up though, I saw Lila, still clad in the same dress and wrap that she had been wearing at breakfast. She was just emerging from the path in the woods. Though I was right in front of her, she gave no sign of seeing me and she had a very odd look on her face, almost as though she did not even know where she was. I was shocked yet again by her pallor. My sister was clearly not well.
I truly wish that I could say that I gave more thought to my sister’s frail health, but in fact, I could think only of Thomas, who was certainly now looking toward the path up the bluff, wondering when we would emerge.
“Lila,” I said sharply. “Lila, if we’re to swim, you must change immediately. Thomas is already waiting down at the dock.”
“Thomas?” Lila said, as though she scarcely remembered who he was.
“I’ll meet you at the dock,” I said, and, picking up the picnic basket, I hurried down the walk in front of the cottages toward that path that led down to the dock, thinking that if Lila saw me leaving, she would be more inclined to hurry along.
I still remember clearly that combination of joys, the sun warming my hair and heating the wool sweater I was wearing, making me break out in a gentle sweat. The lake so lovely in its blueness and the prospect of Thomas waiting for me, who though I had seen him just the evening before, still seemed like a whole world of newness each time I saw him again.
As I rounded the bend, I caught sight of Thomas—sun shining in a crest on his dark head, one foot balancing on the rowboat’s gunwale—peering up the path at me, shading his eyes from the sun. Then, how long were we there together, passing the time in the warm sun next to the blue lake, waiting for Lila to come?
In truth, I do not know how much time passed, but before I had thought to worry, she came, dressed as I was in a woolen bathing suit with a thick wool sweater covering her almost down to her knees. I was surprised at the thinness of her bare legs, but do not remember noticing anything other than that.
“Hello, Lila,” Thomas called out. “I see you come ready to swim.”
“Are you sure you want to swim?” I said. “I was thinking how lovely it would be to let Thomas row us in the warm sun.”
Lila looked out over the lake toward Hemingway Point and appeared to take measure with her eyes.
“I want to swim, Mamie,” she said listlessly.
What was I thinking that day? How many times have I asked myself that question? So many times, I’ve tried to remember exactly what happened, but my memories come back like a series of images—still photos in an album—that I study to look for hidden shadows. A sunny day, a young girl in love, and a ghost story, getting ready to be told for the first time. What I keep from those moments next to the lake, just before we set out, is not a memory of Lila. It is the image of Thomas, his brown hair catching the sun, his broad knuckles grasping the wooden oars, the soft thick pad of his pink lower lip. Try as I might try and try for all these many years, and I can’t bring to mind an image of Lila. How cruel it seems that in memory she was already gone.
But I do have a photograph, taken by Thomas just before we set out to swim. I do not remember the moment it was taken at all. Lila appears pale, spectral, almost vanishing. In front of her, on the ground, is a dark shadow. Many times, I have studied that shadow in the photograph, wondering how it was that on that day, none of us could see it.
We set off swimming, Lila and I, Thomas rowing beside us. The water was almost unbearably cold, so that my teeth started chattering. The surface of the lake was glassy; there was almost no wind. Every tingle of water made me feel so alive. Each time my arms windmilled through the air, they were stroked by the warmth of the sun, so that quickly I began to warm up. About a hundred yards out, the water was suddenly much colder, a second shock to my system, and also murkier below us. I pulled more rapidly through the water, trying to warm myself.
Lila fell a bit behind. She was the graceful one of us Tretheway girls, and though several years my junior, she had always been able to beat me in tennis and golf and at swimming races. I had always known her to be able to run and swim without tiring, and so when I realized that it was I who had a slight advantage this time, I pulled even faster through the water, finding a rhythm to my breathing, and noticing that the water no longer felt like icy slashes across my legs.
“Come on, Lila!” I called to her, teasing, treading water. But she did not perceptibly change her pace, her slender arms pulling skillfully through the water at a steady, even rhythm.
It is about a quarter mile from the Wequetona dock to Hemingway Point, but you only swim a short way through wide-open water, for the point is a spit of land that reaches out in front of the Wequetona cove. It is always difficult to measure distance when you are in water, and I remember that day that almost from the start, I kept looking out toward the point and thinking that we were almost there.
It is an odd thing about swimming—or I should say it was odd, for I have never been able to stand swimming since that day—but there is something about the rhythm that turns you inside yourself; the noise of breathing, bubble, bubble, bubble, out, out, out, three times, then turn your head and gasp. I would look up periodically to search for the rowboat, the flash of white paint with red trim helping me to stay my course, or sometimes I would look at the white necklace of sand on the point; the land always looked close, but at the same time, it never seemed to get any closer.
I know that we were well past the midpoint when Thomas rowed ahead a bit. I had not until that moment sensed any fatigue, nor thought much about the depth of the water below me, but when I looked up and saw that the rowboat was about a hundred yards ahead, I had a sudden sensation that the lake had become infinitely larger; I looked below me at the dark blue of the water, and noticed again the icelike current that ran just below the surface. Suddenly, my arms began to ache and I feared that it was too far to the point and that I might not be able to make it. Treading water, I measured the distance to the boat with my eyes, wondering whether if I called out, Thomas would hear me. Though the water had been still as glass when we set out, now there was quite a bit of chop. I could not tell if the wind was picking up or if it was just the normal roughness that far into the lake.
“Thomas!” I called, unsure if he could hear me. “Thomas,” I said,
“you’re getting too far ahead.”
I turned away then to look for Lila.
Disoriented, I did not see her. Scanning the open expanse of lake, I saw nothing. I felt panic squeezing my chest. Again, the lake seemed monstrous, enormous, infinitely wide and deep. I began looking about frantically, spinning this way and that, until I had completely lost my bearings and could not figure out even where I should be looking.
Feeling dizzy, I scanned the bluffs on the shoreline, searching for a recognizable landmark. There, I caught sight of the bulk of Journey’s End. Right in my line of sight, about twenty-five yards behind me, came Lila, swimming steadily. Turning back toward the point, I saw that Thomas was closer now—evidently he had heard me and started to circle back. I took off swimming again, pulling myself strongly through the water, wanting to be done with this frigid swim, back on the shore, warming myself in the sun. Thomas turned the boat around again and was rowing steadily in front of me.
For the rest of the swim, I did not speak or look up. I took glimpses every few strokes or so: there was the boat’s red gunwale; the scrubby pine of the point; the flash of Lila’s white arm, keeping pace with me, a few yards behind.
About ten yards out from shore, the water grew warmer again; the silty, rocky bottom grew visible, and the water’s tone turned from deep blue to a pale, murky green. I felt that warm water like a prayer of welcome, and I sprinted the last few yards, tearing my lungs full of air, until it was so shallow I could swim no more, and I stood stumbling on the sharp rocks that cut into my feet—and then running, at once freezing and tired and cold and sun-warmed, propelling myself forward with the sheer joy of the air filling my lungs, the sun shining down, and my beloved there on the beach, holding out my sweater in welcome.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JESS, AGE SEVENTEEN
After it was over, Jess lay in her bed alone. It was still hot and stuffy upstairs in the cottage, although finally that afternoon the weather had broken with a thunderstorm, and the air had cooled. She was running over the events of that day in her mind. Daniel had been coming down to take pictures, thinking that the still air would attract birds to the spring, when he had seen her. Mamie, with a quick look, seemed to know what to do. She folded three snowy-white towels between Jess’s legs, towels that rapidly changed color to crimson. Mamie let Daniel sit with Jess for an instant; she disappeared into her room wearing only a dressing gown and her blue-velvet mules, and somehow reemerged a moment later wearing stockings, pumps, and a spotless pink linen suit. With Jess in the backseat, towels clenched between her legs, Mamie drove quickly to the hospital.
Dr. Coggins was an older man, tall and sinewy, with a crew cut and military posture that reflected his years as a navy doc. Jess recognized him from the Ironton church, where he was a vestry member and often read the Collect, his voice rumbling. His blue eyes, which peered at her over bifocals, were harsh and she could see he judged her unkindly.
“Well,” he said, as he probed deep inside her with his long fingers while pressing down hard on her belly. “You’re a lucky girl,” he said, though his voice was not kind.
“You could have easily bled to death.” He jabbed upward inside her so sharply that it made her draw in her breath.
“Or worse,” he intoned. “You could have actually stayed pregnant. That would have been even worse.”
Jess’s head was starting to clear now. The nurse had come in and removed the IV; the effects of the medication seemed to be wearing off. Finally, he finished her exam and turned his back on her to wash his hands, raising his voice to talk to her over the sound of the rushing water.
“From now on, you two need to stay away from each other. It’s genetic incompatibility that caused this. Cousins are not designed to make babies together. It’s against the laws of nature!” And with that, he strode out the door, leaving Jess on the table staring at the yellowing tiles of the acoustic ceiling. She could hear the steps of the discharge nurse squeaking down the hall toward her.
The ride back to Wequetona was silent. Mamie said nothing—didn’t even look her way. Jess, plastered up against the passenger-side door, stared resolutely out the window, watching the farms and fields go by, the funny broken-down castle walls at the old Loeb estate, and, finally, the gateway to Wequetona, the road past the neighboring cottages, and the broad back of Journey’s End. Her mind was spinning. What was the doctor talking about? What did he mean by cousin? She cast an occasional sideways glance at her grandmother, but Mamie’s eyes stayed firmly fixed on the road.
Cousins? It made no sense. Margaret never talked about the family, nor did Mamie, come to think of it. Jess realized she knew almost nothing—just that Mamie had been married only briefly, to someone named Cleves, and that Margaret had never known her father. But she had no cousins that she had ever heard of, and she had never heard the name Daniel Painter until this summer. She closed her eyes and tried to blot out all of it—the pain and bleeding, the doctor’s words, and even the face of Daniel. It was too much to think about. She was exhausted and felt shattered inside.
Finally, once back at the cottage, Jess blurted out the question.
“Am I related to Daniel Painter?”
For a moment, the question hung in the air between them. Jess studied Mamie’s face. She waited for her grandmother to look puzzled by such an off-the-wall question. Related to Daniel Painter—of course not. What an absurd idea!
But, in a split second, Jess knew the truth. She could see from the look on Mamie’s face, all at once ashen and eager, that her grandmother was planning to tell her something. But instead of answering the question, Mamie put a firm hand on Jess’s arm.
“Not now, dear. Not now,” Mamie said. “Right now, you are in a delicate condition.” Before Jess could think to protest, Mamie had guided her up the stairs, covered her with a cool sheet, and said a no-nonsense “Get some rest.”
In spite of everything that had just happened, Jess fell into a deep sleep. When she opened her eyes, the slanted rays of late-afternoon sun were making a pattern of golden diamonds on the pine-board wall beside her bed. For a moment, she remembered nothing, but then it all came flooding back to her.
When Jess went downstairs, late that afternoon, Mamie had laid out the table for tea: two china teacups with saucers, the blue-and-white sugar bowl, and two carefully polished silver teaspoons. Mamie put a kettle on to boil and sat down at the table, and Jess sat down facing her, feeling her own weariness as she sank into the chair.
“I’ll explain everything,” Mamie said. “But I’ll have to begin at the beginning.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JESS, AGE SEVENTEEN
“I am sure you know,” Mamie began, “that I lost my dear sister in the flower of her youth. The year was 1922. My darling Lila left us, drowned in Pine Lake. As you can imagine, my entire family was devastated.”
Jess had rarely heard her grandmother speak Lila’s name aloud.
“I was several years older than Lila. But she was very beautiful, exceedingly beautiful, and so was the first to marry. Not that I was terribly plain myself, but I had come of age during the war, when all the young men were overseas. Still, I was not to be passed by in love either. The summer that Lila drowned was in all other ways a glorious summer, long, and at times hot. And that summer, it was my turn. I was in love, my dear, with a wonderful man, the most glorious man alive, and Jess, he was in love with me.”
Jess looked at Mamie’s face, her powdery skin lined with age but still soft, and scented faintly with the old-fashioned Sem-pray Jo-ve-nay lotion that she used. Mamie’s eyes had a distant look in them, as though she were seeing past the cottage, past the kitchen, past Jess herself, into another long-distant time.
“Thomas Cleves was his name,” Mamie said. “Captain Cleves. Oh, he was handsome, almost a foot taller than I was, and dark, with black hair and snapping brown eyes. We had known each other for sev
eral years, ever since his family bought a cottage on the other side of the woods. His father was the pastor at the little church in Ironton—they were not rich, but very respectable.
“When the soldiers came back from the war, they seemed so much older, inclined to stand back a little from the rest of us. I felt a funny kinship with them, because I was kind of an old soul too. When my daddy died, my mother almost went out of her mind with grief; she used to ‘go to the country,’ as she put it. She took to her bed, leaving me to manage our household. We lived quite nicely on Sycamore Street. The house was three times bigger than this one, so managing the household was quite a task. I proved quite adept at it, and I thought that my excellent housekeeping skills were as strong an advertisement for my qualities as running around to a lot of movie shows and cotillions, as Lila used to do. For the right sort of man, that is—the serious kind of man that I was looking for.
“And Lila . . . Well, my dear sister was a handful—so lovely, but the oddest ideas sometimes. Certainly, she had no shortage of beaux. She could have married any of a half dozen young men. But Chapin Flagg came along and just grabbed her. She was still a schoolgirl, not even out of her boarding school in Connecticut yet. I begged Mama to think twice before consenting to it.”
“And . . . ?” Jess said, standing up to turn on the kettle, not wanting Mamie to see that she was still feeling woozy and had to steady herself on the edge of the table.
“Well, Mother wouldn’t hear about it. A marriage to the Flagg family, a Wequetona family? She couldn’t see any reason to worry. I supposed she was right, but I had my reservations.”
“Why?” Jess asked. “What was wrong with him?” She could not see where Mamie was going with this story, but she understood that she was going to have to let her grandmother tell it her own way.
“The Flagg family had a great deal of money. But Chapin, he was . . . ” Mamie paused, unsure of how to go on. “He was . . . ” She stopped again. “I wasn’t convinced that he cared about Lila,” she finally said.