How a Woman Becomes a Lake

by Marjorie Celona

  He took another sip of bourbon. He cupped his hand around the alexandrite and watched the green gemstone slowly turn red, adjusting to the light. There was a place he could get to—not all the time, just sometimes, alone in his studio—where he could feel the consciousness of the metal he was working with, of the gemstones. But he hadn’t felt that in so very long.

  Where was the moonstone ring now? At the bottom of the lake? In the belly of some prehistoric-looking fish?

  The year he’d met Vera had been the strangest year of his life until now. It had begun with his parents’ death and ended with his marriage. From the heaviness of grief to the sweetness of new love. Vera’s sharp observations, her perfect hands, the way she always had an unlit cigarette in her mouth when she was reading. “This is where I want to be,” she’d said, the afternoon they’d driven around Whale Bay and found themselves looking at a little bungalow with a FOR SALE sign in the yard. Elevated, so that one could see the ocean but not have to bear the brunt of its merciless winds. A part of town where university professors lived, known as The Hill. An outbuilding in the back—this would be his studio. In those early days he could feel her against him, even when she was in another room. When he saw her, he’d run his hands through her long black hair until he reached her waist. The way she paced their living room, clicking her lighter, while she rehearsed her lectures.

  Even their first fight—he had been short with her in the grocery store after she’d chided him for buying bottled salad dressing instead of making it himself—had ended with them doubled over in the parking lot, howling with laughter. “We’ll never go back,” Denny said. “We’ll never go grocery shopping again.”

  And then, of course, the day they’d gone to the pound and returned home with Scout.

  He put the alexandrite ring in his mouth and looked at Lewis, who was still throwing the ball for his dog. He tried to swallow the ring but feared it would lodge in his throat.

  Lewis took the ball from Scout and told him to sit, then lie down, then roll over, before he threw it. “He’s amazing,” he said to Denny. “Did you train him?”

  “Vera,” said Denny, out the side of his mouth. He took the ring from under his tongue, stuck it in his pocket. He hoped Lewis hadn’t noticed.

  “What else?” asked Lewis. “What else can he do?”

  “He’ll play dead,” said Denny, a sudden surge of alcohol like a blast through his consciousness, and he shot Scout with an imaginary gun. “Bang,” he said. The dog rolled onto his back, his tail wagging. Lewis erupted in applause.

  “He’ll do almost anything,” said Denny, and topped up his and Lewis’s glasses. “Scout, walk!” And the dog went up on his haunches, crept across the living room. “Scout, under arrest!” And the dog leapt up on the wall, his paws up, as if he were about to be frisked.

  “Yes,” said Lewis. “Yes!”

  The bourbon rushed through his veins and Denny saw it, clear in his mind—Scout leaping from Vera’s car, after a squirrel perhaps, running onto the frozen lake, and Vera running after him. Their footfalls kicking up snow. The snow balling in clumps on Scout’s legs. Then: skidding onto the ice, paws splayed. Looking back at Vera.

  Why not call him back from the lake’s edge?

  Why not whistle?

  He was a very good dog. Even if he were on the scent of something, Vera could have gotten him to come back to her. She wouldn’t have needed to run after him. She wouldn’t have needed to run out onto the lake.

  “Scout,” said Denny. “Come.” And the dog came immediately, sat by his feet, and looked up at him.

  Had Scout fallen through a patch of thin ice? Had she saved him and then fallen in herself? Maybe. But could he live with the uncertainty? No.

  “Was—” he started. “Was Scout wet when you found him?”

  “What’s that?”

  “New Year’s Day. When you went out to Squire Point. When you found Scout, was his fur wet?”

  Lewis looked at him, then up at the ceiling. He shook his head. “No. I mean, it was snowing but I don’t think so, no.”

  “She wouldn’t have walked onto the ice. She wasn’t stupid—why would she walk out onto a frozen lake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She wouldn’t have done that,” said Denny. “And the little boy—his fingerprints were in her car. Why won’t you listen to me?”

  “I am listening to you.”

  “I don’t mean you. I mean—why aren’t they investigating the boy more thoroughly? Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”

  “We questioned him. Thoroughly.”

  “And it still doesn’t make sense. Why did she suddenly drop the phone?”

  “The boy says Scout jumped out of the car—look—listen, I do believe they did everything—”

  “No,” said Denny. “You don’t believe that. I can tell. I want to talk to him. I want to talk to the boy.”

  “Denny, stop,” said Lewis. “She drowned.”

  Did she? Is that what had happened? Denny thought of the things Lewis had told him about Leo Lucchi, the boy’s father: Such a loser, really. As far as I can tell, guy’s never had a real job. Lives over by the factory—yeah, over there. Lewis had told him how Leo had bruised up his youngest son’s face. He’d even shown him an old mug shot of Leo, even though he wasn’t supposed to.

  “You told me you wanted to be a detective,” he said to Lewis. “Well, be one.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Lewis looked at Denny. He lobbed the ball to Scout again and the dog went shooting after it.

  “Let me talk to the boy.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Lewis. He took another sip of his bourbon. “I mean, for so many reasons I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “Then let me talk to Leo. Get him in a corner.”

  “He left town, Denny,” said Lewis. “Look, I get it, but you’re drunk. You’re not thinking straight.”

  He squinted at Lewis. “You’re also drunk.”

  “I am,” said Lewis. “I am and I shouldn’t be.” He looked down at his uniform. “I’ll be back tomorrow to walk Scout. Get some rest.”

  Denny took another swig of bourbon, and another, until he felt maniacal with power and possibility. Scout was at his feet, tongue out, waiting for him to throw the ball again. Fine, he thought, his chest rising in great heaves, I will find a way to talk to the boy myself. I will find Evelina’s son and I will talk to him. I will ask him what Scout was running after. I will ask why Vera didn’t call his name.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lewis

  Lewis watched Scout noodle around in the backyard, the sky a perfect blue above his head, the sun hot on his skin. He whistled, then pulled a dog biscuit from his pocket and placed it in Scout’s warm mouth. He tried to stop himself from feeling slightly joyful that Denny had asked him to look after Scout for the whole day. He’d told Lewis that his arthritis was so bad that he couldn’t get out of bed, but Lewis suspected he was horribly hung over from yesterday’s bourbon binge. He wondered if he should do more for his friend, beyond looking after his dog. Get him in a support group of some kind. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if Denny was dying—all he needed was better medication for his arthritis, some counselling for his grief and depression, and physical therapy. The body responded physically to emotional pain, Lewis knew that was true.

  For the most part, their friendship was without tension, although yesterday Denny had started sputtering about wanting to track down Leo and his son. Lewis wanted to shake his friend. Snap out of it! Go outside! Get out of bed! Walk your dog! Let’s go! Come on, Denny! Wake up! You didn’t drive your wife to suicide! And no one killed her either!

  The past four months had been some of the most disappointing and frustrating in Lewis’s career. They’d had Leo. They’d had him! They had the rifle. But it hadn’t been fired. And there wa
s no bullet wound in Vera’s body. Her death was ruled a drowning. A tragic accident—her running onto the ice after her dog, perhaps. No connection between Leo and Vera. Bad luck: the death blamed on the harsh winter, which was over. There was no reason why Leo—or Jesse, for that matter—would want to kill the woman. There was no evidence of anything. The detectives had moved on to other cases, other crimes.

  And it was likely she had drowned. Her body had been found, autopsied, and then buried. There were no signs of foul play. The dog could well have run onto the lake. She could have gone after him. Scout had wanted Lewis to go out onto the lake that day. He must have known. If Lewis had ventured out, could he have saved her? He wondered how far under the ice she’d been, as he’d stood and watched from the shore. He wondered how long it took to die.

  It had been so satisfying, for a time, to have a villain, if only for Denny’s sake. Lewis had spent four months hating Leo, praying for justice. Leo had become the devil in Lewis’s mind, especially after Lewis had seen those little boys—the look of terror in their eyes. But now Leo was just some man, some falsely accused man, who had gotten remarried and moved away.

  Now it was back to business as usual. Weeks without a single interesting call. He hadn’t become a police officer to change the world—he wasn’t that naive—but he did believe in his ability to change things on a small scale. For instance, what he was doing now—helping Denny look after Scout, being there for a grieving man. It counted for something.

  He would apply to be a detective this year. His reports were good and thorough—he even carefully filled out reports for throwaway stuff like public urination. He was detail-oriented. He was dependable. Of course, there were other options. Canine unit. He looked down at Scout and smiled. That might be okay. Bomb squad. Or he could get into administration. Sergeant, lieutenant, captain, deputy chief. His whole life stretched out in front of him. It would be a good life.

  “Okay then, boy,” Lewis said to Scout. He tapped his thigh and Scout heeled beside him, pausing to sniff something and then to look up at Lewis. Lewis felt so happy walking the dog down the hill to downtown Whale Bay that he found himself skipping a bit, and Scout picked up his pace in response. They passed the movie theatre, Billy’s Burgers, the grocery store, Marco Polo’s Pizza, a Chinese restaurant, a corner store. The two arrived at Lewis’s apartment so quickly that Lewis decided to walk all the way to the beach, to prolong the feeling. He’d forgotten how wonderful it was to have a dog. His little border terrier had died when Lewis was a teenager, and if he thought about him long enough, his eyes welled with tears.

  “Look at what a great dog this is!” He couldn’t help it—he said it loudly to a woman sitting on a park bench and she looked up at him and laughed. He’d never felt so delighted. He was always a little tired on his days off, after a long stretch of tedious shifts, but today was different. He wouldn’t spend the whole day watching TV, like he usually did.

  “I love you,” he said to the dog, within earshot of the woman still, and heard her laugh behind him. “I love you and I miss you.” He was talking to Scout and his boyhood dog; he could almost see them both, past and present together.

  It was some kind of day. Late afternoon now, and the sky every shade of pink. The light spread out over the ocean. Lewis and Scout walked to the edge of the water and he unclipped the leash and let the dog wade in. Would Scout swim? He would! The wonderful dog paddled toward the pink light, then spun and paddled back to the shore. He did this for some time before Lewis realized the dog wanted him to throw a stick. “Fetch!” he yelped, too loudly, too boisterously, wanting to jump in the air, to run into the waves and splash around with the dog. “Yah, yah, yah!” He threw his hands into the air and spun around. “Yah, yah, yah!” A few people were staring at him, including the woman on the bench, who was walking toward him. “Yah, yah, yah!”

  He felt more alive than he had felt at any other time since moving to Whale Bay. A small place. A place that threatened to make him small. He did not want to be a small person. He had big plans for himself. He would move to the city. He would be a detective. He outstretched his arms, felt the April sun on his face. What a winter! So much snow, followed by so much rain. And now this sudden heat. He wanted to do a handstand, right there, on the beach, and be met with thunderous applause.

  The only being who was as happy as he was in that moment was Scout, who had pulled himself out of the water and was smiling, panting, tail wagging, waiting for the stick to yet again be thrown. “Yah!” Lewis tossed the stick into the ocean and Scout plunged in after it, and Lewis ran in as well—why not?—it was hot as hell out here! Live! He waded up to his knees before he felt the cold and stopped.

  It was too cold. Even such joy couldn’t mask how cold the ocean was. Okay then. He backed out, sorry that he had done such a thing, for his shoes and socks and most of his pants were sopping wet, and it felt as though he were wading through quicksand. Hilarious, though, not a tragedy! He laughed and pulled off his shoes and socks, and rolled his pant legs and sat on the hot sand. The sun was as bright and strange as a nuclear bomb. The world was some sort of fantastical creation, at this moment existing only to delight him and the wonderful dog. “Scout!” he cried and the dog ran toward him and sat by his side. He ran his hands through the dog’s wet fur. He closed his eyes and wished that he and Scout were not in front of the frigid Pacific Ocean, but rather the tepid water of one of the lakes back home. Full of weeds, sure, and speedboats, but he and Scout could swim together, the sun on their backs. He imagined his father waving to them from the shore, his baseball cap resting on his knee. His father would have liked Scout. His father loved dogs, had loved his little border terrier with the same intensity as Lewis. He could still hear his father’s voice in his head. What his father would be saying at this very moment—what his father would have said as Lewis ran into the sea. He could feel his father’s spirit—or something, he wasn’t sure—so strongly, as if the air around him was charged.

  When he opened his eyes, the woman from the park bench was standing above him, a big straw hat obscuring her face.

  “I want to be you,” she said. “I want to be as happy as you so badly right now.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “Do it. Be me.”

  The woman laughed. She patted the dog’s head. “I love you!” she said to Scout. She laughed again and sat next to Lewis on the sand. “I’m not as convincing.”

  “You just met him,” said Lewis. “Give it another few minutes. It was love at first sight for me.”

  They had thrown sticks into the water for Scout for ten minutes before she took off her hat, and Lewis stopped and stared. There she was, standing in front of him, it was definitely her, and why hadn’t he noticed until now? And why hadn’t she?

  “Oh,” Lewis said. “Oh.”

  “What?” said Evelina.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  Evelina shook her head, not knowing, not recognizing.

  “No one ever recognizes me in my plainclothes.”

  He watched Evelina think on this a moment. “Like Superman,” she said.

  “A bit like him, yes,” said Lewis.

  “Oh, god, you’re the cop,” she said. “I mean, the officer. Officer Côté.” She took a step back, as if he might lunge and arrest her.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m actually a nice person.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you are. It’s—the last time I saw you—are you—did they—the woman, I mean—”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, we found her.”

  “Oh, thank god,” said Evelina. “Is she alive?”

  “She drowned.” He watched her face, waiting for something—relief, or happiness, or sorrow—anything. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was so attracted to her that it took everything he had not to take her in his arms. “Where are your boys?” he said.

  “Dmitri
—my youngest,” she said, “is spending spring break with his father.”

  “And you’re not altogether happy about it,” he said, looking at her face.

  “He’s getting remarried,” she said. She looked at her hands. She was wearing a wedding ring, and she saw him looking at it. “I—”

  “What about Jesse?” he asked.

  “He’s—” She gestured over her shoulder, at the little white beach house behind her. “You can see him, actually, from here.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Lewis. He hadn’t realized he was so close to her house. He waved, and the boy waved. He thought of Denny, drunk and drooling, almost rabid. Desperate to have someone to blame. Desperate to talk to the boy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Listen, I should get back.”

  “Of course,” he said, “though—” He paused, trying to figure out a way to prolong their interaction. He knew if his fellow officers saw him with Evelina they would look at him disapprovingly. But the case was closed. There was nothing more to solve. She was a beautiful woman standing in front of him on a beautiful day. He smiled and pointed at his soaking socks and shoes. “I mean, I’m going to be here for a while, until these dry out.”

  “Do you want—” she said, and nodded her head toward her house.

  “I do,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Evelina

  They hosed the sand off Scout together, and she put Lewis’s socks in her dryer and his shoes on her back porch, where they would dry in the last of the evening sun. Jesse was playing with Scout in the yard. She drank a glass of beer and felt something swell within her. She excused herself from the kitchen table, and walked to the bathroom. She wanted another beer, desperately. She wanted to get a little bit drunk. Lewis had found another beer in her fridge and the bottle sat sweating on the table when she returned. She drank it quickly, eager for the euphoric feeling. Would Jesse recognize the policeman? The moment felt dangerous: the lie she and Jesse had told, forever in the air. Wouldn’t it be easier to end things now, before they even got started? Tell him she had something to do and get him to leave? Or would that make her seem guilty of something? Maybe this was the right thing to do—pretend that she and Jesse had nothing to hide. Act normal, act natural. She’d have to find a way to whisper something in Jesse’s ear.