All the Water in the World

by Karen Raney

  I switched off the light. After a minute I got up. I could hear the clock ticking. I muffled it with a second sweater and returned it to its drawer. I turned over and back, sat up for water, lay down again. But when I closed my eyes, it was not Antonio I saw but his sons, living their promising, hurtful lives. Maddy would never know them. They made no difference to her now. Through her, they were part of me.

  31

  We went to this amazing concert. Do you like Chopin? It’s so sad! In a good way. I used to play Chopin on the piano. Maybe that’s why I still love it. You know what we were saying about being a loner? One place I like to be alone is listening to classical music. Or do I? It’s complicated. I want company but at the same time I want to be on my own. More and more. Sometimes I don’t even want to see Jack. Or Fiona and Vicky. Don’t worry, I am fine! Just saying.

  Alison bought toffee peanuts from the stand on the Millennium Bridge and we paused between the single chimney of Tate Modern and the dome of St. Paul’s. The cathedral had seemed flat and unreal on our walk from the station, where it was hemmed in by offices and restaurants. From here it inflated magisterially to fill the space behind us.

  “This is kind of like the Mall,” I said, “halfway between the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill.”

  “No, it’s really not,” said Alison.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “What I love is the way everything’s jammed together. Oh, look, there’s Starbucks . . . there’s Yo! Sushi . . . there’s your four-hundred-year-old cathedral. It’s like stumbling on the White House when you go to wash your car.”

  “We’ve got more space than they do,” I said. On both banks of the river, old and new jostled together without design. “Besides, DC was a planned city. London just happened.” Beneath the railing, chrome supports flared out like the wings of a plane. How did it hold us up? No one knew. We trusted our lives to invisible engineering. When Maddy was born, the machinery of her tiny body alarmed me. Shouldn’t I understand how she was put together, how she worked? Shouldn’t I be in charge of inhaling her air and pumping her blood, keeping everything on track? “Do you know about this bridge?” I asked Alison. “There was some fault. It wobbled when people walked on it. They had to close it the next day.”

  “Resonance,” she said. “Oscillation. I remember from high school physics. There was this bridge that twisted around in the wind and fell into Puget Sound.”

  “Was there? I’m not up on my bridge disasters.”

  “No one died. Only a dog called Tubby.” She paused. “They used to call me that.” But she was smiling, her hair whipped across her eyes by the wind. Her cup gave off the sickly smell of burnt sugar. “It’s going so fast! Only four days left.”

  “Glad we came?”

  She would not look at me, nodding instead at the empty decks of a pleasure boat sliding under the bridge. Alison had never been out of the country before, not even to Canada. She had risen to the challenge of this visit as I’d hoped she would. She’d helped me with the interviews at the Whitechapel Gallery and the Serpentine. Her research was thorough and she had a talent for offbeat questions that cut straight to the point. Today, at the Tate Modern, she was going to take the lead.

  “Maddy would have loved it here,” I said. After a moment: “I hate that phrase! Would have.” The grammar whispered that Maddy was no more, I’d had all I was ever going to have of Maddy. Now there was only what I chose to do with the idea of her.

  “Is there a better way of saying it?”

  “How do I know what she would have loved? She might have detested London. Would have has nothing to do with her. It’s all about me.”

  Ahead of us, the chimney of the old power station reared up. Art and tourism filled it now, but the building still spoke of harsher things. Antonio was out there somewhere, south of the river. The idea of him was a bruise, a humiliation, after our meeting, and at the same time it was a warm current buoying me up, prompting me to say things about Maddy out loud. Did Antonio ever go to art museums? When I knew him, he’d been very absorbed by his research; his associates had been other doctoral students, serious young scientists intent on deciphering the codes of life. He’d shown little curiosity about museum studies. He’d thought it was a frivolous subject, or that’s the impression I’d had. Maybe in the larger scheme of things it was.

  Behind us a man muttered into his cell phone: “. . . it’s ridiculous how much comes in and goes out . . .”

  I held up a finger. “Did you hear that?” Of course she hadn’t heard it. Only one person at a time hears these scraps of passing speech. Since Maddy’s death, they had increased in frequency and bizarreness to the point where they seemed like messages.

  Turning back to the railing, I said: “I met Antonio yesterday when you were in Norwich.”

  Alison accepted the change of subject without comment. I knew she would not help me. She would let me flail and drown in my own words.

  “It was strange.”

  “Was he shocked to hear about Maddy?”

  “He was upset. We talked about, you know, way back when.”

  Alison crunched her peanuts.

  “We remember it completely differently,” I said, “what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  In a gush of self-pity: “He thought I was going to have an abortion! He says I told him I was.”

  She thought for a moment. “Did you?”

  “I might have.” My eyes watered in the wind. “If I did, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Well, he’s the one who knocked you up. Women always get the blame.”

  “He says he kept calling me and coming by, but I refused to see him.”

  “Why would he keep calling and coming by?”

  “He might have changed his mind.”

  “About . . . ?”

  “Yes! We could have been together after all.”

  She turned her gaze to the far shore, where the low tide lapped at spots of bright plastic among the stones. “Are you sure about that?”

  “It was my fault, Alison! I really think it was my fault Maddy didn’t grow up with her father. How am I supposed to live with that?”

  “That’s assuming you stayed together. It could have gone wrong any time along the way.”

  I had not entertained this possibility. “He has children now,” I said. “Boys.”

  “Of course he does! And a trophy wife, I bet.”

  “Should I try to meet them?”

  She retorted: “How would I know!”

  I came to my senses and seized her arm. “I’m sorry, Alison. I’m so sorry. Forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Come on. We’ll be late.” We set off against the flow of oncoming bridge walkers. “Remember, you’re in charge of this interview. I’m taking a backseat. Do you have your questions ready?”

  “In my head.”

  “In your head? If I were you, I’d take along some notes. Just in case.”

  “Who did you say was in charge?”

  “You are. You are.” I halted. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “That woman in the blue coat. She said: ‘The point at which I’m getting all my organs stolen, I can’t afford to . . .’ ”

  Alison laughed. “Do you always eavesdrop on people?”

  “What do you suppose she can’t afford to do?”

  “Ask her. I’ll ask!”

  The woman shook her head at this odd American and her cup of peanuts. I could see Alison did not mind in the least making a fool of herself. She returned in high spirits. “The nerve! She wouldn’t tell me.”

  • • •

  The curator of public programs rose and touched her fingertips to the table. “I’m afraid I have to go. Sadly. I’ll leave you in Ian’s capable hands. I hope you’ve come away with something useful?”

  Alison switched off the recorder and together we stood. I did not want to stop. I wanted to weigh up the merits of thematic hangs and nonstatutory learning
while Gillian sparred with her Scottish colleague. I’d kept to my word and let Alison run the interview. She had done it masterfully, without notes, her blunt questions conveying not rudeness but genuine curiosity that provoked them both into thinking aloud.

  “We’ll be putting together a report,” I said. “Maybe a journal article.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Gillian. “It’s a great shame you can’t be here for our opening.”

  “The Past in the Present,” Ian said in his deadpan brogue. “Misrepresentation comes in many forms. Omission. Idealization. Nostalgia . . .” He too was reluctant to bring this to an end. He had a sucked-in, bony face, with cushions for lips and all the color drained upward into his vivid hair. You wouldn’t find either of these characters back home, with their offhand wit, their folksy dental work, their refusal of style that was, in its way, stylish. “We want to show the past is something to be tampered with. Defrosted, as it waire.”

  “Shame you can’t join us,” said Gillian.

  “The show’s been curated by educators,” he went on. “It’s the longtime quarrel—”

  “Tension,” she said. “I’ve really got to go.”

  “Tension between curating and educating. Curators came up with the conceptual framework. And then the educators explained it to Mrs. Bloggs.”

  “Mrs. who?” asked Alison.

  “The lowly public. Usually in the basement.”

  “Why not Mr. Bloggs?”

  “Oh, Mr. Bloggs too!” Gillian assured her. “And all the little Bloggs.” She offered me her cool fingers. “You’ll be gone by the fifteenth?”

  I glanced at Alison. Her eyes were alive. “Maybe we could stay. We’d love to.”

  “You’d be welcome,” said Ian warmly. “Very welcome indeed.”

  • • •

  On the escalator, I murmured, “When did you prepare all that? You’re a natural.”

  “This isn’t a vacation, you know.”

  We would have preferred to go slowly and stop often, but Ian’s long stride pulled us through the displays—Structure and Clarity, Poetry and Dream, Transformed Visions—before delivering us to the sloping floor of the Turbine Hall, part warehouse, part mall. We followed him through the arch to a windowless area, where giant slanted buttresses held up the ceiling. The walls were a moonscape of pocked, stained, and riveted concrete.

  “The Tanks are through those doors. Where they used to store the oil for the power station. The only gallery space in Europe dedicated to performance and installation.”

  “Can we go in?” Alison wanted to know.

  “Well . . . no. They’re open when there’s a show on. And during private views. In 2013 they’ll be shut while we convert the Switch House.”

  “I’d really like to see,” said Alison.

  Ian toyed with the staff card hung on a lanyard around his neck. He considered us for a moment before ambling over to have a word with the security guard, who led the way to one of the black doors and turned his key in the central dial.

  “Thanks ever so much,” said Ian. “We’ll only be a minute. You won’t tale on me, will you?”

  In his haste to get us through, Ian’s hand touched my back, and then the door swung shut and the darkness was complete. There was nothing to breathe, only the stifling, metallic odor. Flare of a light: Ian’s phone. He passed the beam over the perimeter of the tank. Cylindrical in shape. Three or four times a person’s height. Surface covered with a rusty iron grid. The tank had been emptied and turned to other uses, but it was still hostile to human trespass.

  I let Alison ask the questions. But what kind of participation . . . ? Who is it for . . . ? Why no light from above . . . ? What about the oil . . . ? That curious and confident voice she’d used for the interview hardly sounded like hers. And Ian’s monotone: “Not exactly white cube but not black box either . . . You had to take a lie detector test . . . Tania Bruguera. Surplus Value. William Kentridge. Three sixty, eight channel. Shadow boxing meets the Russian avant-garde . . . North Sea possibly. Africa possibly . . .”

  All that oil, enduring year after year in the airless dark.

  “Still seeping through the walls . . .” droned Ian. “Art in Action. A space for the short-lived. . . .”

  Impossible to breathe deeply.

  “Spectacle in place of fossil fuels . . .”

  Around me fizzed lights of my own making. I bowed my head. Currents sparked and fused on the sides of the tunnel, rushing to enclose me. A hand gripped my arm, more hands were on me; the door was shoved open, light roared in, and soon I was outdoors seated on a bench under the puffy chrome supports of the bridge and Alison was scrolling down my contacts to find Robin’s number.

  “I needed some air,” I said. “There was no air.”

  She peered into my face. “Do you have diabetes or something? Should I call an ambulance?”

  “Low blood pressure. My mother has it. Maddy had it. We’re all prone to fainting.”

  She pressed the phone to my ear. “Pay attention! It’s ringing.”

  “Went to voicemail,” I said, curious to see Alison so agitated. “He must be at the lake. The signal is terrible up there.”

  I tried to stand. She yanked me back and left her hand there, a reassuring weight on my arm. Somewhere out of sight, a flute was playing.

  “Ian disappeared in a hurry. How embarrassing! I don’t know what it was about that place.”

  “It was amazing,” she murmured. “I didn’t want to leave.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m fine now. Did I scare you?”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  The melody threaded through the branches of the caged trees and hung above the river, silvery and medieval and haunting.

  “Should we try to stay for the opening?” I asked.

  “What, a whole ’nother week? Wouldn’t we be pushing our luck? Claire didn’t want me to come with you in the first place.”

  “I wanted you to come.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe you’ll want to do your master’s now.”

  Her face closed up again. “Who knows? Maybe.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to go to the opening?”

  She gave me a straight look. “You want to stay to see your ex again, don’t you?”

  “Antonio?” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t stick around for him.”

  “No,” said Alison after a minute. “I think I have to get home.”

  • • •

  I extended my ticket for a week, telling Claire, “I owe you big-time . . .” I dropped Antonio an email to let him know my change of plans, and received an equally brief response. Maybe we could meet again before I returned.

  “You sound different,” said Robin on the phone.

  “Claire asked me to stay. Next time you’re coming with me.”

  “Aren’t you homesick?”

  “It’s just another week.”

  “I miss you . . .” he said hopefully. “Are you seeing Antonio again?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondered.”

  “He’s very busy. What’s been going on there? I couldn’t get through. Are we still having Christmas at the lake?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “It’s going to be as hard as the anniversary.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you run into Norma and Tanner?” I said. “From the yellow house?”

  “Just a sec . . . thought I had a call coming in. No. Yes,” he said. “Norma’s been over a couple of times.”

  “She has? She didn’t mention it.”

  “Why would she mention it?”

  “We’ve been texting.”

  “What happened was, her workmen cut through a cable. From there to the peninsula no one had power for over a day. She came looking for advice.”

  “Yes, she told me. Nice, isn’t she?”

  “Very. Haven’t met the husband yet. He seems to leave everything to her.”

  �
�Different?” I asked suddenly. “How do I sound different?”

  “Hyped up. You’re not snorting cocaine, by any chance?”

  “Ha! No, being over here is making me feel better. No one knows me.”

  “Well, do what you need to do, Eve.”

  “So you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not!”

  “I’ll come back now, if you want,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly.” He had recovered his good humor. “Are you getting by with your English?”

  “They’ve understood me so far.”

  “Two countries divided by the same language.”

  “Who said that? Churchill?”

  “Wilde, maybe. Sounds like him. My favorite deathbed quote: “ ‘Either that wallpaper goes or I do.’ ”

  “Robin . . .”

  “Sorry!” he said tenderly. “I’m an idiot. Sorry.”

  • • •

  Reluctantly Alison accepted my offer to see her off. On the Piccadilly line to Heathrow, we hardly spoke. She was wearing an old sweatshirt she liked to sleep in, and had spoiled the soft shape of her haircut by pinning the sides. I read my paper. She kept her eyes on the other passengers and retrieved my suitcase when it slid down the aisle of the train.

  At a restaurant in the departure lounge, I said: “I’m going to miss you.”

  A hint of sarcasm: “You are?” She looked up from her bored study of the menu, glasses flashing. “The coast is clear now.”

  I ignored that. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” A pointless question, deserving of a shrug. I tried again. “What did you like best about London?”

  Alison’s face with the hair pulled back was as round and foreign as the moon. “Can’t remember, offhand. I’ll make a list if you need to justify your expenses.”

  I let the craving take me over, for Maddy’s lovely face, Maddy’s curious eyes, Maddy’s wit and goodwill. She would be laughing at the toddler at the next table grinding egg into his hair. She would ask what she’d been like at that age. I would repeat the stories she knew by heart. We would link arms on our way out. My yearning for her was monstrous and bodily and doomed. I was in two realities at once: with Maddy, and with this graceless stranger.