The Color of Water in July

by Nora Carroll

  May and I liked to play cribbage together, in the afternoon.

  We were at the Lewis cottage, The Rafters, facing each other at the card table, in the lovely glassed-in solarium that stays so nice and warm in the afternoons. I was wearing gray wool slacks and that pink raw-silk blazer with the three-quarter-length sleeves, and May was in her turquoise silk that I have always liked, the one that brings out the blue in her eyes. May winters in Palm Beach, and is quite frankly not careful enough about the sun, being, I think, more wrinkled than is necessary for a woman of her age, but she is still lovely, and ever so careful about herself. I appreciate that. Nothing is more repellent than an older lady who lets herself go.

  “I never knew that Jess was so fond of canoeing,” May said. She was peering at me, the way she does, tipping her head back, since her eyelids are a little droopy. I caught right away the sharp look in her eyes.

  “Canoeing,” I said, careful. “Oh yes, lovely way to spend time.”

  “And isn’t it lovely that she’s getting on so well with the Painter boy.” Just like May, she took a moment to peer out the window, so that I could gather myself before she turned back to look at me. I had never told my dear friend the whole story, but she knew, as a friend does, that Thomas had broken my heart.

  “Such a bright girl, and she’s going to medical school,” I said to May, and we were done with it.

  It was a second shock when I saw that they were in love. You know what it was like to see them together? Like heat and white lightning, that’s what. They gave off so much heat I thought they’d light the house on fire. A force of nature—you’d think you’d finally get old and forget about it, but you don’t. I remember with Thomas I used to think about spontaneous combustion a lot, and it was just like that with them. Daniel Painter had a fire inside him. They did not know that an old white-haired lady could see that flame, but there was nothing wrong with my eyesight, and see it I could.

  So I settled down to wait. I waited and waited for Jess to come upon me. It was only a matter of time before they discovered the family connection. I looked deep inside myself to try to open that fathomless spot that was locked up tight. The spot that had got locked up so many years ago that I thought it was permanently sealed, grown over like a scar with a keloid on it. I was almost eighty years old, and I had not revisited that spot in so long that I liked to pretend it wasn’t there anymore.

  I promised myself that I would unlock the secrets of my heart. I would tell her when she asked. But the problem was, there was only one person alive who knew the whole story, and it wasn’t me.

  So I decided to write him a letter. I sat down at my writing desk, and looked out toward Hemingway Point, out toward the same view that I had looked at every day of every summer since that summer, and which still looked the same as ever, a narrow strip of beach, a few scrubby pines. I sat there at my desk, and I penned that letter. When I look back, and the good Lord knows it’s true, that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I wrote the letter, and after all those years, I asked for an explanation. But I asked that the letter be addressed to Jess—not to me—because there are some things in life that we may be better off not having to know.

  The letter came back, in due time, and it sat there on my desk, the square blue envelope, staring at me, reproaching me. I steeled myself for the moment I would hand it to her. I waited for her to come to me. It wouldn’t take long for the two young people to put two and two together, and then she would come to me and ask me to explain.

  There was only one problem. Something an old lady didn’t count on. Jess never asked. Those two were not thinking one blessed thing about the past. I felt like the past was right before them, all around them, the time between then and now no more than a few blinks of an eye, the events of long ago still crowding up into the present—but they couldn’t see it at all. I guess I started to think that maybe no harm would come of their association. Maybe the events of the past no longer mattered at all.

  It was a shock like being doused with cold water when I realized that Jess might have gotten herself in trouble. Naively, I had assumed that Margaret would have taught her how to take precautions, but it seemed she had not. Nowadays, they have these little kits you can buy in the pharmacy and you test yourself right at home. I had seen advertisements for such things in the ladies’ magazines, and Jess, not like her to be careless, left the printed instructions splayed out across the back of the bathroom sink for all to see. I was upstairs in the pink bathroom putting in some fresh rolls of toilet paper, and in spite of myself I saw it. I did not know what result she had gotten, but I knew that she needed to see a doctor right away. I was, more than anything else, furious at Margaret. I was an old lady. Far too old to have to think about this kind of thing. What with the time change, there was no way to call Jess’s mother right then. I resolved to phone Margaret the next morning.

  Call me superstitious, but there is something not right in Northern Michigan when it is unseasonably hot. It had started to warm up that very evening, the evening I spoke to Jess and tried to tactfully suggest that she needed to see a doctor. By the following morning, it was stifling. I awoke early when I heard the screen door bang. I knew that Jess had gone out. I tried for a while to go back to sleep, but it was impossible. So I got up, put on my lace dressing gown and slippers, picked up a Reader’s Digest, and tried to read.

  I’m not sure how much time passed. I was sitting at my little table looking out over the lake. Since the day was very hot, the lake was the color of cement, and the sky above was a flat pale yellow. I picked up the phone several times to try to call Margaret, but all I got was a message telling me that all the lines were occupied in the country I was trying to reach. So I worked my way through the Reader’s Digest, steadily and without much interest, feeling old and tired, unready to face a hot and difficult day with my granddaughter, who was suddenly causing so much trouble.

  I had just placed the receiver in its cradle for the third time, still unable to reach Margaret, and was staring out the window, momentarily idle, when I saw a sight that frightened me so much that I became completely disoriented.

  There, out of that hot, lifeless landscape, burst two figures in a pose that was already indelibly burned into my brain, and for a second it seemed as if the worst day of my entire life was being played out again. For the second time in my life, I saw the same horrifying scene—a young man, dark haired and painfully handsome, carrying slumped in his arms a blond girl, limp and wan, her legs stained crimson with blood.

  I tried to calm myself, not to panic, to take a moment to compose myself and get dressed and ready to take her into town. Unlike Lila, Jess was alert, and talking, and she didn’t seem to be in imminent danger, but I was terrified that at any moment she would stop breathing, right in front of my eyes. Neither one of them knew that I lost hold of myself completely in the hospital, blathering to the doctor, crying and wailing—she’s lost her baby, she’s bleeding to death and her baby is lost. Neither one of them knows that I was forced to sit there with a blood-pressure cuff on while a stout, bossy nurse asked me, Do you know your name, do you know what day it is, do you know where you live? They gave me some sugar water to drink, and then a tranquilizer, and then finally let me back into the waiting room. When Doc Coggins came out to tell me that she had a miscarriage, he asked me if it was true that they were first cousins—he thought Daniel’s mother was the daughter of Thomas Cleves, Pastor Cleves’s son. I hesitated, thinking of Jess, of Daniel, of the love that burned between them, like the love that had once burned between me and my beloved.

  But if Margaret was my daughter, then they were first cousins—to deny it was to deny the story upon which I had built my entire life. Because in the end, we didn’t have much besides my story; it was the shaky foundation upon which we had built our family. Margaret Lila Tretheway Cleves was my daughter, and Jess was my granddaughter. That made Jess and Daniel cousins, and their
love had nowhere else to go except down into sacrificial flames.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  Doc Coggins shook his head. “Those two need to stay away from each other. Mother Nature never intended for cousins to mate. It causes genetic issues.”

  Once again, I couldn’t find a path out, couldn’t see the road back. My story stayed locked up inside me. And Jess left me, ran away. She had no choice, I know, because her love for Daniel was so hot it was ready to burn. One week later, she flew off to Texas. I paid her bills, but she never came back to see me, and I never pressed her on it. She didn’t know I had betrayed her, but I did.

  It isn’t until now, as I lie in the clean and sterile confines of Coventry Manor, where finally the last of my things have been stripped away, alone in a bed with a call button and a motor in it, rustling on stiff sheets that worry my skin—now that I see that Journey’s End must go to her. I doubt it is possible for her to go back, as it seems impossible for all of us. That’s what I’ve learned, in this long life of mine, above anything. That what’s past is past. But still, the cottage sits up on the bluff proudly, full of Tretheway things, the final keeper of secrets, and now I pass it on to Jess to unravel. The message is there for her if she wants to read it. If it’s too late, then so be it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JESS, AGE THIRTY-THREE

  There had been a path here. Once, Jess had known it as well as she had known the sound of her own beating heart. But now it was gone, no trace of it, and she was stumbling as she walked, tripping on branches and ducking under thorny overhangs. She wanted to see the place—even though, properly speaking, it wasn’t there anymore. Even the pathway to get there was gone. The underbrush was so dense here that the lake was scarcely visible, just winking at her now and then, intense electric blue glowing through the green.

  It hadn’t been so hard after all. She had just taken the bound packet out of her suitcase and slit the tape open with a knife.

  Documents: Journey’s End. She couldn’t believe she had sealed the package up so tight, just that very morning. Sealed it up without looking more carefully at the packet of letters from Chapin Flagg she had found in her grandmother’s desk. She had that quality, selective blindness, when she just didn’t look straight at things she didn’t want to see. Kind of like that book of poetry that was still unopened, the cover itself already more than she could bear. The letter that Jess now held in her hand was so unassuming-looking: it was a square blue envelope, with a San Francisco return address. The letters CEF were engraved on the back flap in a flowery script.

  It had never been opened.

  Of course, she thought now, brushing a pine branch out of the way, looking for footing down the steep slope, she should have turned the letter over, to look at the front of the envelope, where the name of the sender and addressee were written. She should have looked at it before she had packed it away without reading it. At some level, she had known that, but Jess was slowly coming to comprehend that about herself, that sometimes she could just slide things out of the way, sealed up tight with packing tape, unread and therefore unknown.

  She was getting close to the water’s edge now. She scanned the unassuming surface, looking for a landmark to orient her. Then, she saw it—the flat rock, now looking ordinary, mostly submerged under the murky greenish water near the shore. There was no beach here, not anymore. What used to be beach was completely submerged, the water up just past the tree line; already here, she could feel the thick, peaty ground squelching under her shoes.

  She backed up a few paces, to where the ground was dry again, and found a place to perch, on a mossy fallen log. It felt damp under her bottom and craggy with broken-off twigs. A couple of gnats buzzed around her face. She batted at them with the letter (still not looking at it), scanning the surface of the water, measuring with her eyes the distance from where the flat rock was. She was certain she could see something. Certain there had to be something, bubbles on the surface, like little breaths of life, hinting at the cold troubled waters below.

  Spirit waters.

  But there was nothing. The waterline was at least fifteen feet above where the sinking sand had been, and the surface of the water lay smooth and untroubled, reflecting back the color of the surrounding woods.

  Here was the one place in Wequetona that had completely changed, that had become unrecognizable. Jess shifted her bottom on the uncomfortable log. She glanced once more at the placid surface of the lake.

  Slowly, she turned the letter over and saw what she knew she had seen already—that the letter was addressed in an elegant, old-fashioned cursive, that it bore a sixteen-year-old postmark from San Francisco, and that the letter was addressed to her. If Margaret wasn’t Mamie’s baby, if she was really Lila’s, then there was one person who might have known the truth: Lila’s husband, Chapin Flagg. Now, it turns out that he had tried to get in touch with her. Why hadn’t Mamie given her the letter? Why had she kept it all these years? She must have known that there was a chance that, one day, Jess would find it.

  There was a strong wind blowing across the lake. She tipped her chin up, letting the wind blow across her face; with her eyes closed like that, it gave her goose bumps and made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Even now, it bit into her—that roaring sound that filled her ears. It was and would ever be the sound of helplessness.

  She could still feel the facts of that long-ago day imprinted on her body—the way the thin paper covering kept slipping off her bare knees, the cold metal stirrups biting into the tender arches of her feet, her breasts so swollen that she kept her arms crossed tight across them, as though she could make herself invisible, unseen.

  You are genetically incompatible with the baby’s father. That’s what the doctor had said.

  Jess was lying there, legs up, bottom exposed, head turned to the side, like she wasn’t even there. They were doing things to her, squirting her belly with gel, wheeling in something that looked liked a TV screen; she could see it, kind of, out of the corner of her eye. She craned her neck trying to see, but the nurse told her to hold still, please. She injected a cloudy liquid into the IV bag; moments later, Jess felt her head go cottony, and it seemed she was floating above the bed.

  It was harder to follow what the doctor and nurse were saying, now that her head felt like it was wrapped in cotton. But still she tried as if it were a matter of life or death. She heard them saying words, but she couldn’t piece them together properly. She tried to speak, but they ignored her.

  A heartbeat.

  Maybe there were two sacs.

  Seven-week size.

  This one looks okay.

  See that little flicker.

  A heartbeat. A heartbeat. A heartbeat.

  Then, there was Doc Coggins’s face bending over her, breathing on her; his breath was hot and smelled antiseptic.

  Hearing for the first time the words that would tear her apart.

  Your cousin.

  Your cousin.

  You were pregnant with twins. You lost one of them.

  Better to take care of the other one now. You can’t have a baby with your cousin. It would be . . .

  It would be a freak.

  The room seemed to be spinning around her. The face of the doctor and nurse zoomed in and out of her vision. She saw all kinds of images mixed up, swirling around her then.

  Cousin. Cousin. Cousin. Cousin. Twisted, distorted monsters with yellow eyes and two heads.

  There was Doc Coggins, bending toward her again. Saying, “I’m going to take care of it for you.”

  Jess tried to ask: There is a heartbeat? A heartbeat? A heartbeat?

  “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt. It will all be over in a minute,” the doctor said.

  “It’s for the best,” the nurse said.

  Jess imagined herself getting up and running away, but she was so di
zzy, and she was strapped down by the IV. She just lay there, cotton-heady, nakedly dressed in paper. Staring up at the ceiling. She was afraid, and she did not know what else to do, so she nodded her head, just once, to say “Okay.”

  Just once, she turned her head toward him. She looked up at Doc Coggins, his height, and the blinding white of his lab coat. Then, she turned to face the wall again.

  After that, a horrible sucking sound. A roaring in her ears, and then, the machine switched off, and nothing more than a deadly deafening silence.

  Jess was halfway through her second year of the premedical curriculum at the University of Texas, an excellent student, near the top of her class, when she went into the stacks and checked out Williams Obstetrics. She looked up twin gestations, early miscarriage, and the procedure called suction and curettage. The next day, she went to her advisor and dropped out of the premedical program, changing her major to French. Since that day, she had never looked back.

  Jess still did not know, truly, if she had done the right thing that day in the hospital emergency room. She knew that she was too drugged, confused, and surprised to be able to make a decision at the time. She wished someone had been with her, someone to hold her hand and help her understand the consequences of her decision. But the one thing that bothered her more than anything was that she had never told Daniel the truth. They had parted seventeen years ago with a confession on the tip of her tongue. And not confessing, she had also never forgiven herself.

  Now, she had to confront the possibility that she and Daniel were never cousins in the first place. If Margaret was Lila’s daughter . . .