Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  “Thanks very much, Bart,” but he had hung up.

  Madden waited on the back porch, listening.

  Far down in the darkness, the throaty thrumming of the frogs met with the rushing of running water.

  All about his thin figure, dirty streams dripped from the roof to mingle with puddles at his cold feet, to slip on down over the slanting yard, to join larger tributaries that splashed their way through the thorny shrubbery of the ravine to feed at last with violent churning into the shrouded riverbed far below.

  From in front, Madden heard wet brakes grip to a splashing stop. Shivering, he turned inside.

  The two men sat across from one another in the living room, two men who knew each other best of all in the world. There was only a pale-moth glow from the kitchen. They spoke, and they did not speak, and from time to time Bart laughed and sipped from the brandy snifter in his lap.

  “…But then they threw the next game to the motherin’ Angels,” Bart was saying.

  “Yes,” said Madden.

  Bart rose and ambled to the black picture window.

  Abruptly Madden was aware that his brother had stopped talking.

  Madden stared with him. He saw his brother frown. Do you feel it too? he thought. Vaguely illumined beneath the street lamp was Bart’s car, leaning against the curb, weathering the storm. Idly, Madden had a vision of the rain pouring off the metal top, streaming over the rolled-up windows and down into the innards of the door, where the handle and lock mechanism were.

  “Jimbo. God damn it.”

  Madden watched him. “What’s wrong?”

  Bart drained his glass. “I don’t wanna say it. I don’t even know I’m right. Or if I oughta say it.”

  “It’s all right—I can talk about Darla. Probably it would do me good.” He massaged his face, trying to relax. “I know I have to face — ”

  “No. That’s not what I’m talking about.” Bart pivoted from the window and the rain. “Listen to me, kid. Do you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Something, about this house, this town. I don’t know how to say it. But can’t you feel it?” Bart glared into the empty brandy glass.

  “Something like what?” Madden lounged back into the cushion, ready to listen. Now, thought Madden, this is the way. It won’t prove a thing unless he says it first.

  “Damn,” breathed Bart. He turned back to the night and lit a cigarette. “Maybe I’m going off the deep end. Look. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Something about this house. I don’t know. The way it smells now, the way the chairs creak when I sit down, the color of the light, for God’s sake, like the room is underwater or something. And all since she moved in.” The cigarette reflection burned in the window. “Naw. Man, you’re the one needs to talk at a time like this. I’m supposed to cheer you.”

  “So you’re cheerin’. Shoot.”

  “Look, it’s just that—haven’t you noticed anything, well, different about the place since Lorie and her kids moved in? That it isn’t really yours anymore? I mean, it’s like every person has a rhythm, a pattern to his everyday life. You go into a man’s bedroom, it smells like him, the bed bends a certain way when you sit on it, because it’s been shaped to fit every angle and bulge just right over the years. And you go into the kitchen, the way the dishes are piled up in the sink tells you more about the guy than a look at his diary, if you know what I mean. It’s like the house soaks up what you are, the way you feel about life, and everything in the house gets to feeling the same way, too. And not only the place, but the woman he marries: she seems to fit right in, fit him, and the house…and that’s part of it, too, Jimbo. She’s—and I know I’m steppin’ way over the bounds on this, but dammit, man, she’s not you, you know? Let me ask: don’t you notice anything unusual about Lorie?”

  Madden shut his eyes impatiently. “She’s an unusually attractive woman, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No. But then I promised myself not to bring up any of this with you, at least not for a long time…

  “But it isn’t just this house. Hell, we both grew up in Greenworth, I knew every turn in the river like the lines on my hand years before the government moved in. And it’s changed now, somehow. First, it was just the way the trees started growing crooked along the banks, but lately the whole town seems, I don’t know, funny. The way the air smells, the paint on the houses…I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: if I were blindfolded and left here, I’d never in a year guess this was the same town we grew up in.”

  Outside, the moon slipped for a moment through a pocket of clouds, washing Bart’s face fishlike-pale by the window.

  “Bart. What is it?”

  “I wish I could be sure, kid. Maybe you should forget it. I pray to God I could. Jim, do you know how many storms like this we’ve had in Greenworth in the last twenty-five years?”

  Madden stirred.

  “I’ll tell you: three, before two years ago. And not one raised the river more than a few inches. But in two years, five big ones. Here.” Bart spilled his coat pocket onto the coffee table. “What the hell—I spent yesterday in the library looking things up, I don’t know what for. Something made me do it. But God, I’ve gotta show you.”

  Madden reached to the lamp.

  Little white slips of paper fluttered in Bart’s hands. For the first time in his life Madden saw his brother trembling.

  “God!” he laughed nervously. “Help me, will you, Jim? Here are the pieces to a crazy jigsaw, it doesn’t make any sense, but something in the back of my head keeps me from getting any sleep lately. Here, look, read it all and then tell me I’m nuts and send me home, but do something!”

  “‘Deaths by drowning, County Beach: this year and last, total 31. Previous two years’ total, 9.’ What’s this for?”

  “Don’t stop now.” Bart fumbled at the liquor cabinet.

  “‘Total rainfall in inches, adjacent counties last year, up 300%.’”

  “See! It’s spreading.”

  Another slip of paper. “‘New residents in Greenworth, past 24 months: Broadbent, Mr. and Mrs. C. L.; Marber, G.; Nottingham, Mr. and Mrs. Frank R….’” Madden leaned forward intently.

  “There’s two dozen more.”

  He scrutinized his brother’s now twisted face. “So?”

  “So? So you’re right, they’re nothing separately, but put them all together—Let me ask you: Lorie never told you where she moved from when she came here, did she?”

  “Now that you bring it up, no. But what—?”

  “Listen to this. Last night I got out the phone book and dialed these new listings. Twenty-one are married couples. And every woman — ” Bart emptied his glass. “Every woman is in the Women’s Guild.”

  Ice water poured into Madden’s stomach. “So?”

  Bart jerked forth a folded clipping. “This was in the Gazette when one finally moved in twenty months ago.”

  Madden fingered the newspaper photo of “Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hallendorf, newly established real estate broker and his lovely bride.”

  “Use this.” A pocket magnifier hit the coffee table.

  She was lovely. There in the enlarged dots was a face that was—“I don’t see — ”

  Bart’s shaking finger jabbed at the indistinct eyes, the mouth.

  At first he didn’t see it. Just that her eyes were softly, lethargically lidded.

  Bart snatched a framed photograph from the bookcase and tossed it to his lap.

  And there.

  There were two sets of lidded eyes, two wide, smooth, peculiar smiles, side by side. They might have been sisters.

  Madden groped. At the bottom of his consciousness, the pressure was rising now and he felt his finger giving way in the dike.

  “Jim,” grunted Bart. “I called the Community Center this evening. They never heard of it. There is no Women’s Guild!

  “And now. Just one more question. I hate to remind you, b
oy, but you’ve got to have all the pieces in front of you.” Bart leaned over him, breath coming fast and pungent. “Tell me again how it was your little girl died.”

  Madden bit his knuckle. “Man, I don’t know what you’re driving at. Please — ”

  “Just say it!”

  “She…she, you know. She drowned—in the—bottom of the tub.” He fought up out of the chair.

  Both men faced each other, white-faced.

  “Goddam,” breathed Bart, turning back to the darkness. “Goddam me for saying it.”

  Walking in the wet, Madden knew at last that he could leave the house behind and give himself up to the storm. Slimy, tangled brush grabbed at his sopping clothes, but he did not think of it and slid down the ravine to the churning riverbed. In the glistening night he saw the swelling rush muddying over collapsing banks, and he remembered the first and worst storm, two seasons ago: how the ravine filled steadily to the brim, spilling up over the backyard; and then, weeks later, how the yard blossomed alive with all manner of new, unnamed wild plants and shoots and bloomed-faced flowers. And how he suddenly awoke one night to discover the moldering ravine an amphitheater of swollen hordes of singing insect life, a thundering of bullfrogs, a sweltering din of mosquitoes, a screeching chorus of crickets. Latent with life, pollen and cyst and egg had been carried by the water and given birth at long last.

  Madden stretched through the wet growth to the river’s edge. Facts and meanings swirled and eddied within him.

  He saw the fresh water flowing on past, headed for the sea.

  A paper boat or a leaf could float the five miles to the turbines, and beyond to the sea. But only something living could do the opposite.

  Suddenly, as if by a signal, frog and insect ceased their noise.

  In the new silence, above the rain, Madden heard a car door slam.

  He began tearing savagely at the shrubbery. His hair and chin dripped and his clothes were torn and caked with mud below the waist, but he did not think of these things as he climbed his way to the porch.

  He smeared a wet trail across the kitchen.

  Lorelei came through the unlighted living room.

  “Why James, I thought you’d be in bed. And your clothes, why — ”

  “Wh-where have you been?” He shivered.

  She reached to touch his clothes. He jumped back.

  He saw that her clothing, too, was dripping. Much more than from a run from the car.

  “Why, James — ”

  “Get away! Who are you?”

  The sound of giggling.

  He ran to the bathroom door. He kicked it in.

  Grinning in the stark white porcelain bathtub were the twins, Tad and Ray. They splashed and curled eel-like appendages up over the edge.

  “What is this?” muttered Madden, blinded by the light. “What are you boys bathing for at…?” Then he saw their smooth, shining skins glistening in the water in a strange new way.

  So this is the way Darla came upon them that day, he thought. So that was why, that was why. So now I have no choice….

  He fell upon them, pushing their small heads under the water until bubbles floated up.

  They came up grinning.

  “So you know,” she said.

  He turned.

  The bright, white tiles around him.

  Lorelei, dripping, came toward him, holding out her arms as if to embrace him. An alien scaliness glittered anew along her neck, her boneless arms.

  Behind him, the little ones giggled.

  Madden stepped back before she could touch him. His legs met the tub and he tumbled backwards, seeing in a flash the bright walls and ceiling.

  There was a resounding splash and then violent churning. And giggling.

  And the sound of the rain outside.

  WINGS MADE FROM WATER

  by John Palisano

  Her face turns to dust

  when it’s touched.

  In a moment

  water blooms gray

  from her remains.

  Disintegration.

  Countless particles

  bloom and fill.

  Everything white, then slate

  until it’s all washed away

  once more, once more…

  and again, the water is still.

  “Danny!” A woman’s voice called, but it was not his mother.

  Aunt Franny, he thought. I’m not in Berkeley. I’m in San Quinlan. He stretched and blinked several times; his nightmare grew distant. Soon, the crushing fear he’d felt while asleep would be rewritten and forgotten. Even so, his hands shook––still rattled from the awful vision.

  Remnants from my dream.

  He made his way from his upstairs room, smelling the pine and the incense of the cabin house. Then he smelled the water. The San Quinlan River streamed only a few hundred feet away. Much of the structures were built close to the water. Probably too close. Unclaimed woods cradled the town’s eastern border, the terrain rocky and prone to flooding.

  The river smells clean and dirty. He remembered saying that to his father during a visit when he was younger. His father had laughed. “The river carries soot and minerals—all sorts of things,” he’d said. “That’s a pretty spot-on observation.” They’d continued toward Saint Jude’s. The church anchored San Quinlan Street, which was raised above the river, with an endless network of stone walkways, walls, and bridges, all defying nature. Everything seemed small-scale. Even the fire engine looked shorter, but back-heavy from its portable water tank.

  “It’s a pretty place for vacations,” he’d said to his father. “But I like being in the city better.”

  “You’ll probably feel different when you’re older,” his father had said. They sat on a stone bench a few yards from Saint Jude’s. People mingled on the church’s bright green lawn. “You going to be okay?”

  “Sure,” Danny said. He barely remembered his cousin. Chloe was ten years older, after all.

  As they approached, no one paid them any mind. His father rushed them inside. He overheard someone say, “How can they do this? There’s not even anything inside the coffin.”

  Danny sat between his parents on the pew. He saw a picture of his cousin, blown up poster-sized and framed, standing on top of a shiny oak coffin. What did that woman mean there was nothing inside the coffin? Is Chloe not inside?

  He looked over the printed program and followed the service. He didn’t know what most of the speeches were. Most quoted scripture. He kept looking at her name on the front: Chloe Chase Lyman. The picture was the same as the one on the coffin. She smiled from half of her face, and he kept trying to figure out her hair color. It’s a darker blonde than mine, like ash colored, but not all the way through. I always thought her blonde hair was as bright as the sun.

  Her eyes, though, he’d remembered perfectly. They sparkled like a bright blue ocean. He remembered her laughing when they were kids. Come catch me, little Danny boy!

  The service ended. Danny’s parents stood in line and hugged and kissed his Uncle Luke and Aunt Franny. Later, they’d meet them at the big Italian restaurant at the center of town––Domingo’s. Danny thought it was strange that people went out to eat, and that so many were laughing after a funeral. His aunt and uncle weren’t there.

  They went back to Berkeley. Their lives continued. He hadn’t thought about his aunt and uncle in years. He didn’t feel connected to his parents, either, as he grew up. Their religion didn’t feel like his. He couldn’t relate. He got angry. He kept it inside, though. They never forced it upon him. You’ll find faith when you’re ready.

  Danny could still feel the softness of Eric Stanley’s face beneath his fist. It’d surprised him, because Eric was much bigger than him and talked as though he were as tall as a giant. “To hell with your parents and their stupid Jesus freak stuff,” he’d shouted. It’d been enough. Only Danny could rebel against his parents, after all. Not this guy, an outsider, who had nasty words for everything Danny did the entir
e year.

  It’d been enough, and without a sound, when Eric closed in, his mouth still spouting and yammering, Danny clocked him.

  Eric made a surprised step back before falling in a heap, cradling his bleeding, broken nose and cheek. Danny pictured the kid how he’d look when he got older, a brief and imagined premonition.

  The rest was a blur.

  —Why did you hit him?

  —I didn’t mean to.

  —You’re angry.

  —They’re always bothering me.

  —We can’t have you in this school doing this.

  —I’m being suspended.

  —Indefinitely.

  —My parent’s paid…

  —You broke a cardinal rule.

  His parents, later. Their concerned expressions, both sitting on his bed as he lay.

  —We won’t be able to recover from this.

  —We know this isn’t you.

  —You need to take this time and find yourself.

  —I know who I am. I was just pushed. How come he isn’t being punished? He started this.

  —God has a plan. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair.

  —Your father and I are taking a job for six months.

  —We’re going to need to make up the money for this.

  —Okay.

  —It’s in the Philippines. You’re going to stay with Aunt Franny and Uncle Luke.

  —I barely know them.

  —Just through the summer. We’ll figure this out when we come back.

  He pictured the car ride, his suitcase and backpack riding in the seat next to him. They’re worse with the religion than Mom and Dad.

  Danny remembered the moment after his dad hugged Uncle Luke. “Thank you.” The look of disappointment. His father tried to hide it.

  Remnants.

  “Our Father, please provide a circle of protection around our home, and around our family today. And thank you for your ever-guiding presence in our lives,” Uncle Luke said. They’d linked hands around the oak table.

  “Amen,” Danny said, relieved to let go and eat. The steel-cut oatmeal, orange juice, and toast were magnificent. “You cook like no one’s business,” he said.