Dead in the Water

by Annelise Ryan

  “I need to change Juliana’s diaper and grab some supplies from the house,” I tell Sylvie. “Is there anything you want from your place?”

  Sylvie is sulking, her pout creating an aura of wrinkles around her mouth. She shakes her head and sighs.

  “Wait here, then. I’ll be right back.”

  It takes me fifteen minutes to get Juliana’s diaper changed, her bag packed, and remove the infant seat from Izzy’s car and install it in the backseat of mine. My phone rings just as I get behind the wheel, and I hope it’s information about Izzy. But when I look at the caller ID, I see it’s Hurley.

  “Hey,” I say, answering the call. “I’m heading for the house now. I’ve got Juliana and Sylvie with me.”

  “Any word yet on Izzy?”

  “No. They’ve flown him to Madison and they’ll take him straight to the cath lab. He was stable when he left, but it’s very serious. Dom just left to head to Madison. His number is the emergency contact and he promised he would call as soon as he heard anything.”

  “I’ve got Matthew here and he’s acting hungry. I really need to go back to the station to get some things done. Emily’s here for the moment, but she has a volleyball game she needs to get to by seven-thirty. Are you going to be able to stay here?”

  “I’m good for the rest of the night,” I tell him. “Hal is back in town and he’s the one on call, so the evening is mine.”

  “I’m going to head out then,” he says. “Call me as soon as you hear anything.”

  “I will.”

  It takes me all of ten minutes to drive to the house—our house, I force myself to think, though in my mind it has always been Hurley’s house—and Juliana falls asleep in the back. Sylvie stays quiet, too, and I’m tempted just to keep driving around for a while so I can enjoy the silence.

  Unloading everyone from the car is a bit of an ordeal between hauling Juliana and all of the stuff I brought for her into the house and helping Sylvie with her walker. As we enter the living room, I look beyond it into the kitchen and see Emily seated at the table with Matthew, coloring. Hoover, the seventy-pound retriever mix I rescued from a grocery store parking lot three years ago—though he was only half his current size back then—is at Matthew’s feet, his favorite spot to be since Matthew drops a lot of food.

  “Hey,” Emily says, looking up at us. “Hi, Sylvie.”

  Matthew stops his scribbling, drops his crayon, clambers down from his chair, and runs into the living room. “Mama!” he says with a happy smile that makes my heart melt. He wraps his arms around one of my legs and clings for a few seconds; then he lets one arm loose so he can plug a thumb into his mouth.

  “Let go, Matthew,” I say. “Let’s move into the kitchen.”

  Matthew shakes his head and says the first word he ever spoke and the one he seems to use most these days. “No.” Then he unplugs his thumb long enough to raise his hand and open and close his fist. “Me up.”

  “I have Juliana right now. Let’s go into the kitchen and then you can come up when I put Juliana down, okay?”

  Matthew again shakes his head. “No.” Then his free arm joins the other one, wrapping around my leg. I try to shake him off, but he tightens his grip and starts to cry. Emily walks over and tries to pry him loose. Matthew adores his big sister—a feeling that is mutual, and normally he’s more than content to substitute her for me—but he’s having none of it at the moment.

  “It’s okay,” I say with a sigh. I walk into the kitchen with Matthew clinging to my leg so tightly that with every other step he’s lifted off the floor. I’m forced to move slowly enough that Sylvie manages to beat me. I set Juliana on the table in her seat, and then I bend down and scoop my son up, giving him a big hug. He wraps his tiny arms around my neck, a feeling I can never get enough of, and I hold him tight and close for as long as he’ll tolerate it. It isn’t long. After a few seconds, he lets me go, leans back in my arms, and looks at my face. Before I realize what he’s doing, he sticks a finger up my nose. “Mama nose,” he says with a big smile.

  Emily bursts out laughing. “Sorry,” she says between guffaws. “That’s my fault. I was teaching him body parts right before we started coloring.”

  Sylvie drops heavily into a chair at the table and I give her a worried look. She’s no spring chicken and her list of ailments would make a good primer for a medical intern. “Are you okay, Sylvie?”

  “I could use something to drink,” she grumbles.

  Emily says, “I’ll get it. Would you like a soda, or some juice, or some water?”

  Sylvie shoots me a sly look and says, “Actually, I was hoping for something a little stronger.”

  I’m about to caution her and remind her of how alcohol can interfere with a lot of different medications—and I’ve seen Sylvie’s pill bottles lined up like soldiers on the kitchen counter of her cottage, so I know she’s on a lot of them—but I stop myself. She’s been through a lot today, and she may have to go through a lot more before the day is done. What’s one little tipple going to hurt?

  “What’s your poison?” I ask her.

  “I wouldn’t mind a shot of vodka.”

  “Do you want anything in it, or just straight?”

  “Straight is good.”

  I walk over to the fridge and take a small bottle of vodka out of the freezer. Hurley likes it this way, and, apparently, Sylvie does, too. “Ooh, ya!” she says, clapping her hands. “This is the best way.”

  I pour her two fingers of vodka, and as I’m about to recap the bottle, she reaches out and grabs my arm, nodding toward the glass. “You can have seconds if you want,” I tell her. “Let’s start with this.” She looks like she’s about to protest, but my cell phone rings. I set down the vodka bottle and take out my phone. When I look at the caller ID, my announcement shuts her up. “It’s Dom.”

  Still holding Matthew in one arm, I answer the call with my free hand and listen as Dom fills me in. “The doctor just called. I’m not at the hospital yet, but I should be in about twenty minutes. They said Izzy is out of the cath lab and stable, and should be back in his room in half an hour or so.”

  “That’s great,” I say, giving Sylvie a thumbs-up with the hand I have cradled around Matthew’s bottom. Matthew is pulling at the ear I don’t have to the phone and saying, “Ear . . . ear.”

  “The doctor said they had to do a stint in two of his arteries,” Dom says, sounding a little puzzled.

  “It’s a ‘stent,’” I say, correcting him as Matthew jabs a finger in my ear. “It’s a tiny mesh tube they insert in the artery and then expand to keep the artery open and reestablish the blood flow.”

  “Oh, okay. I was wondering what it meant.” He laughs, a small nervous titter. “I had this image in my head of some tiny little man inside Izzy’s artery scraping away stuff on the sides of it and then going home to his tiny wife and telling her he had to do a stint inside someone’s heart.”

  Poor Dom. I can tell he’s a bundle of nerves, and anxious about facing Izzy now that we know he’s okay. “Well, you were partly right,” I say. “Tell Izzy we’re all thinking about him. And when he feels up to it, maybe he can give his mom a call. I have her here at my house.”

  Sylvie narrows her eyes at me and then slugs back half her vodka.

  “Will do,” Dom says. “Thanks for everything, Mattie.”

  “You’re more than welcome. Spend the night there if you want. I have things covered here.”

  When I disconnect the call, I fill Sylvie in on what Dom said as best I can because Matthew has moved on to my mouth and he keeps poking a finger into it, a finger that tastes like earwax. I expect Sylvie to be happy or relieved by the news, but instead she looks annoyed. As soon as I’m done with my update—delivered in between Matthew’s repeated “mouf . . . mouf,” comments, I discover why.

  “You don’t need anyone to tell my boy to call me,” she grumbles. “Izthak is a good son. He knows to call his mom.”

  “I’m sure he does, Sylvie,
but he’s going to be under the influence of some sedating drugs for a while, so he might not be thinking straight.”

  Sylvie harrumphs, finishes off her vodka, grabs the bottle, and pours herself another shot.

  I hand Matthew off to Emily and he starts trying to pick her nose while I drag out the menu from a pizza delivery place in town and prepare to order dinner. “What do you like on a pizza?” I ask Sylvie.

  She makes a face. “I cannot eat da pizza,” she says. “My digestion!” She waves a hand around her chest and grimaces. “I get the agita.”

  “Okay, then, what would you like?”

  “A nice home-cooked meal,” she says, giving me a Captain Obvious look.

  I’m about to tell her I don’t have the time, but decide instead to give her most of what she’s asking for. I’ll cook, but I doubt it’s the meal she’s hoping for.

  Juliana seems content for the moment, so I ask Emily to keep an eye on Matthew for a bit while I fix us all something to eat.

  “I’m happy to watch him for a little while, but I have to be at my volleyball game in forty-five minutes,” she says.

  I had forgotten about her game. Emily is old enough to drive now, but she only recently got her learner’s permit and she can’t drive by herself yet. That means I have to take her. Unless . . .

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to ride your bike to the gym,” I say. “Either your father or I will come pick you up when you’re done.”

  “I can do that,” she says, shrugging. Then she scoops Matthew up and hauls him into the living room.

  Sylvie sits at the table, watching me as I prepare our meal. When she sees what I’m making, she harrumphs her displeasure; by the time I set the table and serve up the food—macaroni and cheese from a box, hot dogs, and corn—she looks apoplectic.

  “Eat it or starve,” I tell her, giving her a look to let her know I’m not in the mood for any more kibitzing. “It’s what Matthew will eat, it’s home-cooked, and it’s all bland enough to agree with your digestion.”

  We gather around the table and everyone, including Sylvie, eats. Hoover, who hasn’t budged from his spot beneath the table, waits patiently for Matthew to drop some tidbits, which he inevitably does. Emily scarfs her food down because she has to leave, and after telling me when her game will finish, she heads out to the garage and her bike.

  “Be careful,” I tell her.

  “I will.”

  “And wear your helmet.”

  “Do I have to? It messes up my hair so much.”

  “Brains spilling out of your skull messes your hair up, too. Wear the helmet.”

  She rolls her eyes but gives me no more argument. I’m almost certain she’ll put the helmet on long enough to ride out of eyesight of the house, at which point she’ll take it off.

  Izzy calls a little before seven-thirty. He sounds groggy, but relaxed. His chat with his mother is a brief one, and either it was enough to placate her, or her constant clucking, harrumphing, and eye-rolling at me has worn her out because she remains pleasant, cooperative, and nonjudgmental for the rest of the evening. I call Hurley to update him on Izzy’s status and he tells me he’ll be home late because of the time he lost picking up Matthew and taking him home, probably after eleven, and not to worry about dinner for him. “I’ll grab a sandwich or something on the road.”

  At nine-thirty, I get everyone into the hearse and drive to the school gym to pick up Emily, who is flush with success after her team won all three games. I load her bike into the back of the hearse, and as we drive Sylvie home, Emily treats us to some of her personal highlights from the games, including a game-winning spike at the net and three ace serves.

  Entering Sylvie’s cottage fills me with a momentary sense of nostalgia as I remember the time I spent here. So many momentous events in my life happened here, including Matthew’s birth. We stay awhile and I let Sylvie hold and feed Juliana a bottle, an act that transforms her into a doting, happy grandmother for half an hour. As she’s burping Juliana over her shoulder, Matthew walks up to Sylvie, lifts her blouse, jabs a finger into her navel, and proudly says, “Tummy!”

  Sylvie lets out a loud “Oy!” and just then Juliana spits up on her shoulder. I take it as my cue that it’s time to go home.

  With Sylvie safely tucked in for the night, I drive the rest of us home. Matthew falls asleep during the ride and stays asleep as I carry him into the house, change him into his jammies, and put him to bed. His bedroom at one time was Hurley’s office, but there are only three bedrooms in the house, so Hurley’s current office space is a laptop he sets up on the kitchen table when he has work to do.

  Matthew recently graduated to a big-boy bed, right after Hurley and I awoke one morning to find him nestled between us in our bed. In our early-morning fog, we spent a little time trying to figure out which one of us had gotten up, fetched him, and brought him into our bed while sleepwalking, but we eventually figured out the little monkey had managed to climb out of his crib on his own. This was confirmed later that night when I put him to bed and went to the bathroom, only to have him open the door and join me moments later. After five more attempts to put him to bed, all of which were accompanied by toddler tantrum meltdowns, he finally fell asleep. The next day, I went out and bought him a big-boy bed.

  I haven’t taken down his crib yet and I settle Juliana into it. I let Hoover out to do his business, check the food and water bowls for him and our two cats, Tux and Rubbish, neither of which has put in an appearance yet this evening. After cleaning up the kitchen and doing a load of laundry, I inform Emily—who’s watching a rerun on TV of America’s Next Top Model—that I’m heading up to bed. Upstairs in the bed I share with Hurley, I finally find the cats, both of them stretched out on our bedspread. I take another quick shower—one more attempt to wash away the lingering death molecules—and sink into bed exhausted.

  I take a moment to call my sister, update her on what’s going on, and ask her if she can take care of both Matthew and Juliana tomorrow. She readily agrees, saying she’ll watch the kids for as long as we need.

  As I disconnect the call and set the phone on the table next to my bed, I say a silent prayer of thanks for my sister. Then I’m on to other thoughts. It’s been a busy, emotional day and my mind is spinning, whirling with thoughts of Izzy, Carolyn Abernathy, and my crazy, exhausting life. I half expect to lie awake for hours, but both my mind and my body manage to shut down in short order. I enjoy a dreamless, heavy sleep—“the sleep of the dead,” my mother used to call it, though the term seems cruelly inappropriate to me now.

  CHAPTER 9

  I awake the next morning to find Hurley snoring beside me, Rubbish curled up behind his knees. This is a hard-won position for the cat because Hurley not only doesn’t like cats, he’s afraid of them, though getting him to admit that is like pulling teeth. Over time Tux and Rubbish have won him over—not that he likes cats, or even likes these particular cats, but rather he has learned to tolerate them. The cats are drawn to him, of course. That seems to be a curious quirk of cats: wanting to be with the people who don’t want to be with them. I’m not sure if the attention Tux and Rubbish give Hurley is meant to make him feel loved and appreciated, or to torture him. Anyone who’s ever seen a cat toy with a live rodent knows they have a mean streak in them, so it could be either.

  I feared my cats might end up being a deal breaker when it came to Hurley and me moving in together. The first few weeks were touch and go: Hurley acting like the cats were deadly criminals who were stalking him night and day, while the cats strolled around acting as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Tux handled the move better than Rubbish did, probably because he’s been moved before. I inherited him from a murder victim, because Tux had nowhere else to go. Rubbish, as his name implies, was rescued from a garbage Dumpster when he was a kitten. Understandably, he tends to be the clingier of the two and I think he suffers from abandonment issues. When I moved him into Hurley’s house, he hunkered down under o
ur bed for three days straight, refusing to come out. I put his food and a litter box under there with him, and Hurley slept on the couch for three nights, convinced the cat would surface in the middle of the night and try to rip his throat out. Eventually Rubbish came out of hiding, and he and Hurley reached a détente of sorts. Both cats sneak up onto our bed, but only if Hurley isn’t in the bed, or after he’s sound asleep. If he comes into the room when they’re there, they run. And if they’re sleeping on the bed when Hurley wakes up, they hightail it out of the room.

  I glance at the clock, see it’s just after five, and wonder if Juliana awakened at some point during the night and I slept through it. I throw back the sheet, grab my cell phone from the nightstand, climb out of bed, and put on my robe, dropping my phone into the pocket. I tiptoe out of the room, stepping over Hoover, who is lying across the threshold. Hoover wags his tail a few times, creating a loud thump, thump, thump. I bend down and give him a scratch behind his ears, followed by a pat on his rump to silence the tail.

  When I get to Matthew’s room, I see he’s sound asleep, lying sideways in his bed with his feet through the safety railing. Juliana, however, is awake, lying on her back, contentedly playing with her toes. When she sees me, her face breaks into a smile and she thrashes her arms and legs with glee. I whisper, “Good morning, pretty girl,” and go about changing her diaper. Once I have that done, I pick her up and tiptoe out of the room, hoping Matthew will sleep a little longer.

  Just as I step out into the hallway, my cell rings. I fumble to switch Juliana to my other arm and take the phone out of my pocket, hoping to answer it before the sound wakens everyone, but my efforts are wasted. Matthew stirs, stretches, and opens his eyes just as I answer the call.

  “Dom?” I say, seeing his name on the screen a second before I answer. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything here is fine,” he says, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m calling because I know Juliana typically wakes around this time every morning and I figured you’d be up.”