At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  “Hey, Shirley,” she called.

  “Hi, Annie!” Shirley answered back without breaking the rhythm of her motions.

  Her landlady’s energy fields had to be balanced, rain or shine. It was mostly rain here. That’s just what it did from September to June. Annie still wasn’t used to it. She thought of home, still parched and waiting for some life-giving moisture. Oh, the flowers would bloom, the bees would bob out in search of nectar, but the blossoms would be fewer, the pickings slimmer. By midsummer what few flowers there were would be dying on the stalk. By September the ground would be cracked and parched, the grass seared brown. She looked around her at the moist greenery and had a hard time believing that the other world existed. But it did. It was there, and they were there, even if she was not with them, and for a moment she longed to warm her aching bones in the sun of home. She shook her head. California was sunny and warm. She could find what she was looking for there.

  At least it wasn’t raining today, she consoled herself. But she had known it was misty even without looking out to confirm it. This morning she had heard a foghorn down on the water. It had a low mournful sound. It had reminded her of the train whistle she had heard each night as a girl. It had passed through the station every evening, and Annie could hear the lonely sound soar upward and travel from the ridge to the room where she slept. The horn sounded again now, long, low, ominous, and she realized something quite suddenly. They were warnings, both of them. The train whistle didn’t blow to greet the stationmaster. It was a warning. Stay clear, it cautioned. Get off the tracks. Something is coming, and it’s bigger than you. And the ships, when they blew the deep shuddering blasts, were warning the other boats. Keep away. Don’t cross my path, or you’ll soon feel the cold ocean over your head.

  She shuddered. The feeling that she was being warned surged through her, but she told herself she wasn’t afraid. She told herself she had entered a place where there was nothing left to be taken, and though she supposed that should have produced a fearlessness in her, she quavered for a moment, wondering if there were yet mistakes that could be made and things that could be lost.

  She took one last look at Shirley, then stepped inside. She was suddenly chilly. She wished Kirby hadn’t insisted she stick to the original plan and take the week off. “Give it a rest,” her editor had said last night when she’d called to tell him she was back. “Besides,” he had put in, “I know what you’re going to tell me, and I don’t feel like having my weekend ruined. I’ll see you Monday.”

  She felt restless and empty, a horrid combination. She hated days off as much as she did the weekends. There was so much empty time and so little to fill it. It’s time to change all that, she told herself again severely. It’s time to move on, and just looking around her made her realize how long she had put off the inevitable and obvious. This was where she lived, she thought bleakly, latching the sliding door. This was her life, this blank room with cast-off furniture. She laid it against the rich textured background of her past and shook her head with disbelief. But it was all she had needed, and for years—over five, to be specific—all she had wanted.

  It would make packing easy. She owned the clothes in the closet and a Ford F10 truck, because the day she left Sam, it was parked in the driveway with the key in the ignition. To drive the other car she would have had to go into the house and look for the keys, and she couldn’t have done that. Not because she was making a grand exit—there’d been no one there to see it—but simply because she had to leave right then. She had to get away. She had to be gone from there, to put as much distance between herself and that huge crashing wall of pain as she could.

  When she’d arrived in Seattle, she had checked into a cheap motel and slept for three days straight. When she finally awoke, she bought food at a corner grocery, washed her clothes at the coin-operated Laundromat beside a family who spoke only Spanish. She’d drawn out a thousand dollars from the checking account and paid the deposit and first month’s rent on this small apartment, giving her money to friendly, garrulous Shirley, the owner. After a week or two she also found a job through Shirley, who thought it was the universe responding to Annie’s need. What were the odds that a woman with a master’s degree in journalism would end up in her apartment? For Shirley was in charge of the Classified department at The Seattle Times—a mighty step up from the job Shirley procured for her, journalism degrees notwithstanding. Annie’s first job at the Times, the one she had accepted without argument or question, had been writing obituaries, and it had seemed right, somehow, since death was her companion, the silvery cold arm around her shoulders. If she and death were not friendly, they were at least used to each other.

  Every day she had taken the bucketful of facts they delivered with the creased, worn picture of the deceased, and her imagination had gone to work. Who was she really? she would ask the surprised family. What did he look like when he was young? What were her dreams and ambitions? What did he do that was extraordinary? What did she bring to this world that can never be replaced? Almost to a one, they had loved talking to her, although their conversations were almost always tearful. They would sob, grateful someone had given them a chance to say the loved one’s name one more time, to tell the precious thing about them. “He was a wonderful teacher.” “He raised beautiful roses.” “I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.”

  She collected her facts, then sat at her desk and wrote about people who were dead, and she never, ever paused to think or feel anything that first year beyond the dull, flat throb that was always there. She worked and she ate and she slept, and when that seemed to not be enough any longer, she went to the Seattle Public Library and checked out books by the armload, but always the same kind of books. Books that took place long ago, far away. Books that ended right. She read them and imagined herself going to sleep and waking up in those old-time worlds, thinking somehow that her pain would have been easier to endure in the quietness of those days, that grief would be more easily borne in the soft glow of lamplight.

  Old things comforted her. Once a week or so she would go to the antique store she passed on her way home. She would walk through those musty-smelling aisles and imagine she lived in another time, in a place where her pain could not follow her. She imagined herself churning butter, carrying water from the well, sweeping bare wooden floors with a homemade broom, walking rocky paths in high buttoned shoes. She knew no sorrow would follow her there, and oh, how she wished she could find a portal that would take her away.

  After a month or so she had called home to tell them she was still alive but carefully planning her calls for times when she knew no one would answer the telephone. She had called Sam first, not particular about the time because she knew he would not be there no matter when she called. “I’m safe,” she’d told the machine, her heart still thumping to hear his voice on the message. She’d called Sam’s mother, Mary, on Sunday morning when she was sure to be at church, again leaving a message. She had called Papa, and that had been the hardest. She had spoken to him at his office, not caring to risk a tart lecture from Diane. He had been kind, which had been infinitely harder than if he’d been angry. “You know I love you, darling. Come on back home whenever you’re ready.”

  She had not spoken to anyone else. She had not had the heart for it. It had hurt too much, and hurt was something she could not receive any more of.

  So she went about the daily duties she’d appointed for herself, ritually, without deviation. She rose every morning, put on her clothes, combed and braided her hair, and went to her job, sweater tied around her waist, lunch sack clutched in her hand—peanut butter sandwich, apple, can of diet soda—some book of long ago under her arm. She went down to the basement of the Times building to her small corner desk, to the piles of other people’s lives. No one cared what she wore or what she thought or who she was or who she had been or what had happened to her, and there was comfort in that anonymity.

  Papa had come to visit her after six months or
so. She still remembered the uncharacteristic soberness, almost grief in his eyes when he had seen her and her dismal apartment. He had brought a little cheer with him, along with carefully edited news of home. He had stayed four days, all he could spare away from his practice. He had cajoled her into cooking for him, and for just a moment she had caught a glimpse of the person she had been, but then he left and the image disappeared.

  She had gone on. Years had passed, and finally she began to feel something stirring inside. She’d noticed it with a sense of alarm, as if a dangerous animal had begun to prowl its cage. The first time it happened she’d been walking down the street, had looked into a shop window and seen a beautiful blue dress. It reminded her of the one she’d worn to Sam’s graduation, and for a brief moment she’d wanted to go inside and try it on. She’d walked on quickly, frowning, clutching her book and her lunch as if they could somehow protect her from these stirrings.

  At the same time the powers at the Times had noticed her stories. She began getting comments and praise, and they had offered her a promotion, and in spite of the fact that part of her still wanted to burrow down in the cool, dark basement and be ignored, she had taken it. She was good at her work. She found stories everywhere she looked, for she saw beyond the events to the real people and to the forces behind them. It wasn’t just an automobile accident, a business failure, a stock market slump, a layoff. These were all slices in the screen that separated people from reality. It was as if, for most of their lives, people lived in a gauzy, diaphanous world, a hazy, filmy curtain between them and the stark pain of life and death. But once in a while the veil tore. That was where the pain was. That was also where the story was, and she was good at peering through the tear and writing about what she saw. It was familiar territory.

  Her features had appeared regularly in the Times, and then the wire service picked up her story and she won the prize. Now she felt another change stirring. Suddenly the small apartment seemed too small, too familiar, and she was feeling something she hadn’t felt in years. Loneliness. She wanted something permanent. Something real. Something hers, for she had never really felt this was home. Somehow she had felt obliged to live with her bags half packed, her status somewhere between visitor and permanent alien. She supposed it was natural, considering. But it was time to move on. She would do it. She was ready. Max Kroll had assured her the job at the Los Angeles Times was hers if she wanted it. And she wanted it. She was finally ready to stop roaming, to step into this new life that was being offered.

  She made a pot of coffee and poured herself a cup, sipping it slowly. She looked at the telephone, went toward it, picked up the receiver, pressed the button to play her saved messages and felt like a drunk uncorking a bottle. She didn’t know why she was doing it again. It was hardly comforting, but even if his words were hard, there was his voice, tucked away. A part of him that was familiar, controllable, that she could call forth whenever she wanted.

  “Annie, it’s Sam.” His voice, resonant and deep, felt like a dash of cold water on an exposed nerve. It sent her adrenaline surging, and she didn’t know what prompted her to torture herself again other than a desire to inflict self punishment.

  “I’ll be there again this year,” he said. “One more time,” and she heard again that mixture of weariness and ominous finality.

  She closed her eyes now and could see his dark hair brushed away from his high fine forehead, his symmetrical features, his warm skin, and his startling blue eyes. She could see the quick flash of his smile, his even white teeth. She could feel the smooth linen of the tablecloth under her hand, could hear the low murmur of the voices of the other diners, could hear the clink of silver on china.

  She thought of what Kirby had said when she had told him she would probably be leaving. Kirby, her editor, and the closest thing she had to a friend. He included her in Christmas and Thanksgiving celebrations, but then again, he also included half the newspaper staff. Shirley was a friend. Mrs. Larsen, Adrienne. They were friends. After a fashion. But these were loose ties, easily made and easily unraveled. She had no fast tethers here. Kirby understood, of course.

  “I never thought we could keep you forever,” he had said. “I just hope you know what you want. Are you headed in the right direction?” he had pressed.

  She had murmured something and darted her eyes away, but she still felt the surge of emotion his question had provoked. Are you headed in the right direction? It echoed again, still unanswered.

  She set the telephone back in its cradle. She went to the front door and took in the paper. Her story about the school in the homeless shelter ran on page one of the local section. She sipped her coffee and read it, her critical eye seeing where she could have done better, seeing again the children’s musty clothes, their matted hair, but every now and then a flash of humor, a glimpse of wit, a flicker of the rocky endurance that kept them alive.

  She put the paper away, washed her coffee cup. She showered and dressed, putting on jeans and a cotton sweater, and for lack of anything else to do, she took out her knitting. She sat down and began, but she felt the lonely chill again and thought of the warmth of Essie’s shop. So she put her needles and yarn in her bag and left, locking the door carefully behind her.

  She liked sitting in the corner of the yarn shop, talking to the other women, especially in winter. She liked their company, the comforting sound of their voices. She liked the patter of the rain on the plate-glass window, the spicy smell of the orange spice tea Essie bought from the Pike Place Market and served, a hot, oily concoction that burned the tongue and cleared the sinuses.

  She walked to her car, drove to Essie’s shop, found a place to park on the narrow street. She got out and walked toward it. She turned the handle on the glass-fronted door and heard the bell jingle. Inside it smelled of cloves and cinnamon, and a murmur of women’s voices sang softly.

  “Hello, doll!” Essie greeted her, as always.

  “Hello, Essie,” she answered back and smiled. It wasn’t hard to do. She was a kind woman, Essie was, and beautiful with her calm brown eyes, rounded face and dimples, dark hair with a dramatic streak of gray, swept up into a bun. Annie had asked her once what her full name was. “Estella,” she had answered. “It means star,” and Annie thought that was a good and right name for her.

  She took a moment and looked around her. The walls were covered with shelves and cubbyholes, each one stuffed with jewel-toned balls and skeins, twisted hanks of wool, cotton, linen, and silk. There were hand-painted brilliant twists that looked like rainbows brought to earth. There were nubby knobs of chunky wool that looked as if they’d been shorn straight from the sheep, then spun and wound and delivered. They were rough and raw, smooth and sparkly, colors of every sort. Plums with whispers of dark blue, teals that hinted at secret green, deep reds that held echoes of shady corals, braided skeins of midnight tinged with amethyst. She drank them in like wine, and her mind was filled with their infinite combinations and possibilities.

  They could startle or comfort, bring a chuckle or a whisper of awe. They could be crocheted or knitted or woven, colors mingled and twisted in and around to form a pattern. Her stepmother had taught her to weave and knit and spin, and she still remembered sitting in the huge front room of her father’s house, the wheel bigger than she was, pushing the treadle up and down with a gentle rhythm. Her wheel was back in North Carolina, her loom warped and ready in that place from which she had left so long ago. They were gone from her, but she had two needles, and she could still make something that hadn’t been there before. It comforted her when she did. It felt ancient and connected her to things she had no other tie to.

  “Come in and sit down,” Essie invited and gestured toward the women sitting around the low table, sipping and knitting and chatting. A few looked up and greeted her. She answered them back and gave them brief smiles. They were all shapes and sizes, these women, and all ages. Two were college girls, two were very old, and two were probably near her own age. Their fi
ngers flew. She took a seat in the corner and pulled out her work, a pair of thick nubby socks for Shirley to wear under her Birkenstocks next fall.

  She stayed most of the day. The others packed up and left one by one. Around two the rain began, a soft patter on the window. She finished the socks and chose a soft plum-colored merino wool for a scarf for Mrs. Larsen. She set it on the counter and waited while Essie rang up her purchase.

  Annie noticed Essie’s necklace. She wore a mustard seed, and Annie remembered that she herself had owned one at one time. Papa had given it to her on her thirteenth birthday. She stared at it, that miniscule fragment of faith encased in glass. Rather than reminding her of truth and hope, it seemed a cold picture of her own heart, and she felt a moment of longing. She had not always been like this.

  “How do you keep hold of your faith, Essie? When the curtain tears.” The sound of her own voice blurting out that question shocked her. She felt her face grow warm with embarrassment, but Essie didn’t seem put out in the least. She calmly put the receipt in the sack, handed it to Annie, then considered for a moment.

  “The curtain . . . ?”

  Annie shrugged and tried to explain. “I used to never see evil and pain. It was hidden away from me.”

  “But then the curtain tore,” Essie murmured softly, and Annie nodded, her throat tight.

  “Your question joins two realms that don’t shake hands,” Essie said, and Annie frowned, trying to understand.