by Alix Ohlin
At the top of the monument, looking over the city, Judith thought that it had lost its fairy-tale charm and now was foreboding and sinister. In her mind she again saw Lucas’s pale face, the one in her dream, floating in space.
But he’s not in space, she thought suddenly. He’s in water. The water of Leith: the words came to her and she supposed she’d read them in the guidebook, though it wasn’t something they’d ever discussed going to. Muscling through the crowd, she tugged on Jason’s sleeve and saw, in a heartbreakingly clear second as he was turning around, that he hoped it was Lucas tugging at him, and that when he realized it was her, he felt not just disappointment but hatred, because she’d extended a moment of hope and just as quickly extinguished it.
“I’m going to look for him down by the water,” she said.
“What water? Where?”
“The water of Leith walkway.”
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling, Jason. I can meet you back at the hotel.”
“A feeling?” He tugged on her sleeve in turn but his touch wasn’t gentle and surely couldn’t be mistaken for a child’s. “What do you know? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Jason,” she sighed. Next to him Molly was shrinking against his leg, as close as another limb. She was fading, this once-bright girl. How much more could she take? “I had a dream on the plane. I didn’t tell you about it. I saw Lucas in some water.”
“You’re telling me about a dream?” Jason said, his face twisted, agonized. “Judith, my child’s missing and I don’t know where he is or how to find him and you’re telling me about some dream?”
“I’m trying to help, Jason, I promise.”
“I don’t see how rambling on about this is helpful at all.” Underneath this was everything he didn’t say: that she didn’t know what she was talking about, she didn’t know his children, that she was overstepping herself.
Instinctively she backed away, as though he might strike her, a fear she could tell incensed him even more. “I’ll just meet you at the hotel later, okay?” she muttered, and quickly walked off, blinking tears from her eyes.
· · ·
By asking directions she was able to find her way to the water, a stream that wound, through various neighborhoods, to the harbor town of Leith. A little wooden sign attached to a stick—something she might, in another mood, have found quaint—pointed the direction and gave the distance. Seeing it, her heart sank. There were miles of path to cover.
But what else was there to do but look? She began to walk, peering, with every step, into the water. Each mossy black stone or floating piece of litter drew her careful inspection. The path changed, as she went, from stone to dirt and back again, rising up to cross city streets, then submerging itself again. Tourists and dog-walkers gave her a wary berth, but her attention didn’t waver. The long green tendrils of trees were reflected palely in the water. She saw no fish, no life at all.
After around an hour she became distantly aware that a man behind her was observing her every move. Now that she noticed him, she realized he’d been there for quite a while. She wasn’t afraid of him, only annoyed to be distracted. Without hesitating, she spun around and said, “What do you want?”
He was in his late twenties and wearing a nondescript outfit: brown corduroys, blue shirt, darker blue windbreaker. His pale face had a ruddy, windswept look, and he only lifted his eyebrows, apparently unruffled.
“Good afternoon, madam,” he said. “My name is Lieutenant John McCrary.”
“You’re a policeman,” she said. She was pleased: another pair of eyes to help. “I’m looking for my son. You can help if you want.”
McCrary fell in step beside her. After a few quiet minutes he said, “I understand he’s in fact your stepson?”
His tone was so soft that she almost missed the accusation in it. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “His parents are divorced. His mother’s on her way to Edinburgh, flying in from New York.”
“And you’ve come to look for him here, because …”
Judith sighed. They were wasting time. “Because I have a hunch. You’ve heard of a hunch?” She stopped and spread her palms in appeal. “Anyway, it’s just good to do something.” She could hear herself trying to sound reasonable, convincing, despite the subtle tremor in her voice.
“This hunch you have,” McCrary said, still softly, “where did it come from?”
She saw, then, what he meant: that only the guilty have secret knowledge of any crime. Standing before him, with the damp air cooling her cheeks, she felt his indictment join Jason’s and Molly’s. A mother might have an intuition, but the stepmother could only be the villain. That’s how fairy tales go.
“If I could tell you where it came from,” she told him, “it wouldn’t be a hunch. Anyway, believe whatever you want. Follow me if you have to. I really don’t care.”
Another hour passed with she and McCrary walking together, a walk that in another context might have been romantic—the low-hanging branches, the glimmer of birdsong, the old buildings hunkering over the water. She experienced these things as quick flashes, whenever she momentarily turned away from the water to rest her eyes. McCrary said nothing, though she felt him watching her, and it angered her that he wasn’t paying more attention to the water.
She thought she saw Lucas, but it was a soda can, or a seagull. She thought she saw him, but he wasn’t there.
It was three o’clock when they reached the harbor at Leith at the end of the walk. She could go no farther. In front of her was the sea. She hadn’t found him; he was out there somewhere all alone, and she had failed. She stood staring at the spot where the gray water met the gray sky. The wind was cold and her tears stung her face and her heart ached for him.
She stood there for so long that McCrary, apparently, lost patience. She sat down on a rock and, glancing up, noticed that he was gone. Though she’d resented his accusing presence, she felt abandoned by his departure. Now she, too, was alone. Somewhere in the city, Jason and Molly were probably still walking the streets, the closes and mews, calling Lucas’s name.
Then she saw him.
In the gray water his dark blue sweatshirt looked like a rock or a wave. It was the movement of his hair across his cheeks that caught her eye, an image that recalled, exactly, the dream she’d had on the plane.
He was in the water below a pier, where a kid could easily have fallen off while looking down. Without thinking, she threw herself in and swam out to him. It took her longer than she expected and she was already tired by the time she got close to him. Catching him was yet another difficulty; she was calling his name but couldn’t tell if he heard her.
Then she was wrapping him in her arms and heading back to shore. She didn’t know if he was conscious, or even alive. His arms and legs were stiff and she could barely make any progress, holding him with one arm and paddling with the other. She swallowed some water and lost a contact lens, the world now a blur of waves. She could no longer see land and seemed to be caught in a current, or was she almost there? She had one hand beneath his sweatshirt and his bare back didn’t feel human; cold, inert, it barely felt like anything at all.
She swallowed more water and was choking and couldn’t breathe when miraculously, his arms circled around her. He was strong and holding on, and with both hands free she knew they’d make it. She knew, too, that the dream she’d had on the plane had been only part of the premonition, that the stretcher also figured in it: a stretcher that could carry Lucas home again, to health, to safety, to his father and sister and mother.
McCrary, who’d gone off to find a restroom and a sandwich, and who swore to his superiors that he’d been gone for less than fifteen minutes, discovered them on the beach. Lucas was crying and shivering. Judith wasn’t breathing. She’d worked one arm inside the sleeve of his sweatshirt, apparently and correctly believing that this would bind them together. Trained in CPR, the policeman did his best, but couldn’t
revive her; the ambulance came, but not in time.
“I was lost,” Lucas said, “and I kept getting more lost no matter what I did.”
He’d only walked off for a couple of minutes; he was upset about something, he couldn’t even remember what. He was afraid they’d be mad at him for walking away. And he was too afraid to talk to strangers, because he’d always been told not to. Then he was both tired and confused. He’d spent the night huddled in an alley, crouched inside his sweatshirt.
His father asked him question after question: Where did you go next? Why didn’t you ask a policeman? And he asked one question over and over again: How did she find you?
The boy had no answer. Only nine, he didn’t have the words to explain any of this mystery, how it had happened or what it meant, what it was like for him to be there in the water, blind and frenzied and drowning, and for the woman to somehow come to him, as if out of nowhere, and carry him ashore.
The Idea Man
Beth met Fowler at a party of sensible adults. She was divorced, her children were in grade school, and she had started to collect antique milk glass. She’d inherited a few pieces from her aunt and was now adding to the collection, rows of pale, frilly jars and gravy boats on her kitchen shelves. Why collect glass? Because it was there. It provided the only available momentum in a life that was losing speed. The party was full of other divorced people, eyeballing what they might be forced to settle for the second time around. When Fowler came in, the energy in the room crackled. He was wearing black jeans, a dirty white button-down shirt, and a sweater vest. His hair was long and tangled. He was very tall and too thin, as if he’d been starved or rack-stretched.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said to the room at large. “You’re not going to believe what happened to me on the way over here.”
It was the best entrance anyone had made all night, and Beth inched toward him. He seemed eager for his audience yet uncomfortable with it, and he kept staring at the floor while telling his story.
“I’m walking down Fifth Street,” he said, “and these guys come out of nowhere, these two young kids. They start yelling at me, right? They’re calling me a faggot. They’re telling me to get my gay ass out of their neighborhood. They’re telling me that gays deserve to be punished by God.”
“Wow,” a woman next to Beth whispered, as if starstruck.
“And the worst thing about it,” Fowler went on, “is that my first reaction—as if it mattered—was to tell them I’m not gay. Not that they cared. They threw me down on the ground, punched me in the face, took my wallet, and finally they ran away. I lay in a puddle for fifteen minutes before I could get up.”
He finished his drink and held it out for replenishment. People crowded around him and patted him on the back, then stood back when he winced. A man with a crew cut said, “Hey, wait a minute.” Beth had been talking to this guy earlier. He was a newspaper editor and had an appetite for fact. “How come there’s no marks on your face?” he said. “How come you’re not even dirty—or wet?”
“I cleaned myself up a bit,” Fowler said.
“Did you call the police?”
“No, I just came over here,” Fowler said.
“Why didn’t you call the police? I mean, that’s a pretty serious thing to have happen.”
“I didn’t want them involved.”
There was a pause in which everyone’s credulity evaporated. The newspaper guy squinted and said, “Did this even really happen?”
“Of course it happened,” Fowler said.
“I think you’re making the whole thing up.”
It wasn’t that much of a challenge but Fowler shriveled in the face of it. His tall, thin frame curled in on itself, disappearing like paper on fire. “You’re right,” he said. “I made it all up. I went to a dark place inside myself. I apologize.”
Beth looked around the room. No one seemed that surprised.
“Fowler,” the newspaper guy muttered, shaking his head.
Beth got Fowler another drink. He took it and looked deeply into her eyes, then seemed to shudder. “What’s the matter with you, exactly?” she said.
“It’s under investigation,” he said, “by a task force of analysts, scientists, the legislature, and my ex-girlfriends. I’ll let you know when they release their findings. Excuse me.” He walked out of the room. Ten minutes later he came back, wiping his mouth. “When I’m upset I throw up,” he said.
Fowler told her he was an ethnomusicologist, studying the performance practices of a tribe in Africa. She pictured drums and tribal costumes. Fowler told her that the tribe’s language was remarkably clean of diphthongs. She didn’t know how this compared to the Western diphthong situation, and didn’t want to ask because she was afraid the explanation might be overlong. Instead she asked him if he wanted another drink.
“More than I can say,” Fowler said.
When she returned he was being questioned by a woman in a cashmere poncho. They were discussing Plato’s cave. Fowler said, “I used to live in a cave. In South Jersey.” Then he winked at Beth.
The woman looked perplexed. “I just thought you might know something,” she said, and left.
“I’m the idea man,” Fowler explained modestly. “I’m the intellectual go-to guy.”
“I think it’s your vest,” Beth told him.
“What ideas do you want from me?” Fowler asked her.
“Tell me what a diphthong is,” she said. “I learned it once but I’ve forgotten.”
“You combine two sounds together to make a new one,” he said.
“That’s it?”
“In a nutshell,” he said. He drained the third drink and looked into her eyes again. He wasn’t distracted or looking over her shoulder at the other possibilities, and this she liked.
“Do you want to come over to my house tomorrow night?”
Fowler nodded. He seemed accustomed to sudden invitations.
“All right,” Beth said, writing down her address. “Don’t get beat up on the way over.”
The kids were at their father’s and she served beer and Indian food, using several complicated recipes that required the purchase of special spices. Fowler ate little and didn’t say much, either. The mood was cordially awkward. Then the kids came home unexpectedly, having forgotten their backpacks and homework, and refused to leave. They were forever leaving their possessions in the wrong place and screwing up the custody schedule. It was their way of participating in the chaos of the divorce, proving that they, too, could cause upheaval. They settled themselves around the table, eating the food Fowler was ignoring. Sometimes she felt this was her finest parental achievement—that her kids weren’t picky eaters.
Megan, who was younger, sat next to Fowler and touched his long, wavy hair. Mike, who was older, sat on the other side of the table and talked to him. She’d thought they’d be jealous, resistant, freaked out that a strange man was in the house. Instead they took to Fowler immediately. They seemed to think of him as a stray animal she’d brought home. He talked to them about the music of Africa, which he’d refused, or been too shy, to discuss with her.
“Here’s a charming tribal folktale I’ll share with you,” he told them, and they watched him with their heads balanced on their chins. Why they were sitting at the table instead of watching TV, Beth couldn’t figure out. Fowler had that effect on people. They wanted to hear what he had to say.
The story he told was about a snake that ate a goat that ate a lion, or maybe it was a lion that ate the goat—she missed parts of it while clearing and washing the dishes. The children listened seriously. Later, after he’d gone, Megan asked whether Fowler was homesick. Further questioning revealed that she thought he was from Africa.
Maybe she wasn’t wrong. Fowler did seem to live in Africa in his mind, which was where most of his living went on. The functions of his body were secondary. On their third date—the children again at their father’s, having sworn to take all their possessions with them—Beth led
Fowler into her room and to what had once been the marital bed. He allowed her to touch him, passively watching her, his body responding, then crawled on top of her and again looked deeply into her eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “I’m so into you.” Without a doubt he was sincere. Then it was over, and he put his clothes back on and took a book out of his bag.
Her friends thought Fowler was a hobby she’d taken up, like volunteer work or a subscription to the opera—something to broaden her horizons, post-divorce. They didn’t disapprove but didn’t expect it to last long, either. Nor did her children take him seriously as a father figure. They tugged at his sleeves and sat on his lap and told Beth when he needed more water or wine. Once the two of them were playing in their bedroom and Beth, passing by in the hallway, heard them arguing over some project that kept collapsing and needed to be rebuilt. She peeked in the door: they had their old jars of colored putty out and were trying to sculpt a Play-Doh cave. Fowler had told them it was the most perfect place in the world.
But she thought she might be in love with Fowler. She looked forward to his coming over, and when he was gone she waited for him to come back. Her body fat felt curvaceous; she slept better at night. She told her children jokes she knew they wouldn’t understand. She bought a new dress, not minding that Fowler would neither notice nor care. She began clipping articles out of the newspaper for him, stories she thought he might find interesting. A man driving through the city had set his pants on fire while lighting a cigarette in his car; things escalated and somehow the whole car exploded. “We’re investigating the pants,” a police officer was quoted as saying.
“Maybe he was a liar,” Fowler said, as she’d known he would, and she smiled.