The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  Something gold catches my eye. Gold in the lake?

  I stride into the water and then push off from the bottom in a surface dive. I pull the water toward me until I reach the swirling gold and pull Madeline up by her tiny torso. I flip onto my back to kick us back to shore, arm tucked around her chest. There is screaming from the beach, but silence from the little girl.

  Chapter 29

  Maeve

  It’s hard, sometimes, not to hate the customers.

  They don’t see you, for one thing. Most of them. Their eyes are on their purchases, their wallets, their money, their kids, and even more these days, their cell phones. I used to fold my arms and wait for a customer to finish talking before I would ring up their items, instead of being made to feel like an intruder on this critically important phone call they can’t stop having for five seconds, long enough to meet my eye and hear me say, “Have a good day.”

  But after I spent too many transactions standing there like a servant waiting for orders and endured too many disgusted sneers when they finally caught on to what I was waiting for, I gave up my one-woman crusade and just took my revenge out in little ways, like stacking their tin cans on top of their bread.

  Holidays are the worst. Lots of people work holidays, people with important jobs, like doctors and police officers, saving our lives no matter how much fun everyone else is having. But for me and all the other service-industry types, we live to serve someone else’s fun.

  I can’t count how many years it’s been since I’ve seen fireworks. For that matter, even been to the beach, though I can see it from my front door.

  “That’ll be $12.32,” I tell the woman who has come in for sunscreen. She snorts at the price tag, then at me. I argue in my head, I’ve got overhead, you know, and bills to pay.

  Today would be a great day for the beach, nice and warm, a breeze to keep you from sweating too hard. The water has warmed up at last, enough to make a swim merely bracing instead of heart-attack cold.

  My hands fly over the keys on auto pilot, the customers blurring together.

  I remember Robert on a hot day like this, just twenty-three years old, hair coffee black, with that crooked smile.

  We’d stolen away to Crescent Beach, an isolated sliver of sand that only the locals could find because it was hidden down a winding path of streets with no signs to indicate its presence.

  My mother knew I was going to see Robert and ordered me to put something on my shoulders. It was 1975, but the sexual revolution mattered not at all to Mrs. Callahan, and I was not going out with bare shoulders to meet the likes of him.

  I still had the sweater draped over me, cape-fashion, staring up at Robert in the sun, as we paused during a walk on the beach. I was dizzy with the heat and with his nearness.

  “Baby, look at you. It’s too hot for that sweater.” Robert looked down at me, eclipsing the sun, which shone so bright around him I could barely see his face. With one thumb, he nudged the sweater off my shoulder. I made to pick it up, but with the slightest pressure, he stopped me.

  “It’s only sand,” he said. “It’ll wash.”

  I felt no cooler. I’d barely eaten after fighting with my mother about going out at all. The emptiness in my stomach spread to my limbs, to my head, and I felt like all my air was gone and I really needed to sit down . . .

  Next thing I knew, I was stretched out on cool sand under a stand of trees at the far edge of the beach, something cold and wet on my forehead. Robert was lying next to me, shirtless, one arm supporting my head like a pillow. He must have used his shirt to stroke my head with cool water. I snuck a look around to see if anyone was nearby enough to see us.

  “You scared me half to death,” Robert said, but he was smiling and not looking very scared. “You okay?”

  I sipped the shady air and tried to play it cool, like the sophisticated woman a man like him should have, not some swoony kid. I tried to sit up, but Robert pressed me gently back down, to rest, he said.

  “I just got too hot, too hungry,” I said. “No big deal . . .”

  “I didn’t know that, though.” He gave me that sideways grin of his. “For all I knew, you were afflicted with a rare teenage heart attack.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “No, I’m serious. I thought, This girl could die right here and I never made love to her.”

  I put my hand to my chest, my heart stopping, then barreling off like a sprinter at the starting gun. He slowly withdrew his supporting arm from under my head until I was lying properly flat. I might have fainted again, if I’d been standing.

  He kissed me. We’d kissed before, even engaged in some light petting, but we’d never been horizontal, in broad daylight, with an item of clothing already removed. I pushed against his chest, just gently, thinking we were going too far, but he just kissed harder, and I kissed back myself, turning that push into my own caress.

  Then I felt his hand on my breast, and I gasped, scrambling backward away from him like a crab.

  Robert gulped hard but made no move to come after me or coax me back. “I’m sorry. You’re just . . . You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Maeve Callahan?” His voice was raspy.

  He was going to break up with me and return to his worldly girls who would make love to him anywhere, anytime. I hated my virtue suddenly, so out of place and even freakish, and what good did it do me after all?

  He looked down at the sand, and then back up to me, his face solemn. “Well then, I have no choice in the matter.”

  He scooted forward on the sand in a seated position and took my hand. I was losing him. The love would never go away, though; I believed that. It was far too powerful to simply wink out like a candle flame.

  “Maeve, my good girl, marry me.”

  “What?”

  His eyes twinkled. “You heard what. Marry me. I love you, I want you, I don’t want anybody else, and we’re old enough. I believe that means I should marry you.”

  My breath caught in my throat, so I could only nod, and when he folded me close, I soaked his bare chest with my tears.

  I made him promise to buy me an engagement ring and told him we’d keep our engagement secret until he did—that way maybe it would look better to my parents. And it might have stayed secret, but one of the times I fought with my mother over him, when she insisted he was a Don Juan and had other girls on the side and would dump me any minute, I screamed, “He’s going to marry me!”

  My mother’s face contorted into an exaggerated wounded expression and stayed that way until she died and the mortician rearranged her face.

  Robert’s father eventually paid for the ring, which Robert swore to pay him back for. I don’t believe he ever did. I loved him too much to care about any old ring, or who paid for it, though I admit the town gossip was hard to hear.

  It was gossip that made me start wearing it inside my shirt, come to think of it. I overheard someone in Clawson’s Drugs talking about how they saw me in the store still wearing my ring, “pining after her runaway husband, so sad.”

  I wasn’t pining. I’m not pining, now. But is it so wrong to have a little hope?

  Carla jostles me out of my daydream by asking for a Lotto ticket. “Easy Pick,” she says, dropping her huge satchel on the counter.

  At dusk, the customers stop coming in. By now they’re all arrayed on blankets on the beach or maybe on condominium balconies. Anna is at the Becker house. Is she talking to Will? I wonder. Or hanging out with Amy? Likely not Amy; she’d be too close to Paul. I hope she’s having a little fun. At least she’s outside the store. She’s been getting too comfortable here.

  I prop open the Nee Nance front door and face the lake, standing in the doorway. The dusk is cool and there’s a light breeze, like a sigh of relief that the heat of July has burned away. From here I can just about see the rows of heads facing the water.

  Robert and I used to alternate taking Anna to the beach on the Fourth of July, to stake out a good spot. Then, as soon as customers stoppe
d streaming in, the other one of us would sprint to the lake and search the towels for redheaded Anna. Our little girl would hold her ears closed against the bangs, but her face would be bright with joy at the burning sparks lighting up the sky.

  Then, when Robert left, I had to stay and run things. Sally would sometimes help, but even back then, the register drawer was a mess when she was done with it. I just couldn’t close the store during those pre-dusk hours, though. I made too much money. Sometimes Anna would go with a friend; sometimes she’d stay with me and, like I’m doing right now, we’d stand in the doorway and watch from here, though the downtown buildings obscure some of the display. Then we’d step back through the door and talk about how everyone else had to fight traffic; weren’t we lucky to already be home?

  Lucky us.

  Then she got to be a teenager and fell in love with Will, and his parents, too, for that matter, and she spent nearly every holiday with them.

  I tried not to mind, because she was enjoying herself, at least.

  The crowd cheers as the first lights spark to life. Somewhere, a sound system is playing Sousa marches. Next year Robert could be with me again, and we’ll be rid of this lousy store, watching the fireworks in some quaint northern town before retreating to our own actual house.

  Inside, between bangs, I hear the Nee Nance phone ring. I ignore it and it stops. Minutes later it starts up again, and this time I run to it.

  Chapter 30

  Anna

  I’m on my hands and knees whispering Hail Mary, full of grace . . .

  I started CPR, but a doctor from the crowd rushed to her, elbowing me aside. Now I crouch, shivering, whispering the only prayer I can think of as he grunts over Maddie, still and white on the sand. The party crowd stands in a gaping horseshoe around us, their faces forming a wall of shock: all mouths open, hands over their faces.

  Over the doctor’s noises and the relentless splashing of the lake, I try to silence my own ragged breathing to listen for sounds from that little girl.

  Hail Mary, full of grace . . .

  And then sounds come. A cough, then more coughing, and a vomiting sound, and a wail that’s heartbreaking and beautiful because it’s human and alive. I drop my head on the sand and breathe: Thank you.

  Now I hear pounding on the wooden stairs, fast and uneven; they’re skipping several steps. I look up to see Beck, wild in his running, his parents behind with blankets, all their faces pulled tight with fear.

  I pull up to my feet, my body aching with cold and effort and tension.

  The wailing continues from Madeline as the adults bundle her and Beck cradles her, soothing, yet crying himself. I can see him shaking, even at a distance, and watching him I feel just a taste of his fear, and I feel faint with it.

  Beck and his family move up the steps still urgently, but now smoothly and with care. A siren grows louder as it nears the top of the hill.

  Beck and his parents have gone to the hospital, where they must have called Samantha, and here in a guest bed in the Becker house, I clench my eyes tight against imagining what it would be like to get that call.

  Beck’s sister, Tabitha, finally noticed me, shivering on the sand. She thanked me in such a formal and serious way it was hard to imagine she was once the dorky kid in spectacles we all called Tabby Cat. She attended to my practical needs by leading me to the guest room with an adjacent shower, sink, and bathrobes. As always, it was stocked with soap and shampoo, in both manly, spicy scents and girly, fruity stuff. This is a family who attends to details. How do they miss a little girl walking into a lake?

  Of course, I missed it, too. Some lifeguard I turned out to be.

  I pull the bathrobe closer on my body, hugging a pillow and staring at the dark window, trying not to think about all the times Beck and I had sex in this room when his parents were out of the house. It felt risky doing it at home, but it wasn’t, really, not with the door locked, and the house was so big that by the time someone walked throug the huge, creaky front door and came upstairs, there was ample time to scramble our clothes back on and dash out into public spaces again.

  Tabitha tossed my clothes in the dryer and promised to bring them back, but that was ages ago. Also, I don’t know where my purse is, which has my car keys in it. I’ve been forgotten in all the commotion. I can go traipsing through the house in a bathrobe and a smile or hope someone remembers me.

  I’m too tired to go home anyway right now.

  I can’t stop picturing Madeline’s face. She didn’t look asleep or romantically unconscious the way people do on TV. She just looked dead.

  How long had I been staring at the water before I saw her? Had she been on the beach when I first came down?

  I see her limp whiteness in my memory again and sit up, gulping water from the glass on the nightstand. Then I stagger to the bathroom and retch the water into the white marble sink.

  The party was cancelled, but the city-operated fireworks carried on, and now, partyers out there are setting off firecrackers and sparklers, and the pops and bangs filter in here. Don’t they understand a near tragedy has taken place? Of course not. But there are always tragedies, somewhere.

  I flip off the lamplight. Surely the Beckers won’t mind if I rest a little while longer.

  “Anna?”

  I fumble until I find a nightstand, a lamp. The room comes into view and it all hits me: Madeline, the water . . .

  Beck.

  He’s standing just inside the door, looking like he hasn’t slept in a week.

  “Is she okay?”

  He closes the door and comes fully into the room. I sit up and swing my legs out of the bed.

  “Yes, thank God. The doctors think she’s going to be fine, but they’re keeping her overnight. Sam is with her now; she must have been doing a hundred miles an hour all the way from Indiana.”

  I glance at a digital clock on the nightstand, which reads 1:37 a.m. “Oh, Jesus. I’m so sorry to still be here. I was just resting . . .”

  “Don’t be sorry. My God, if there’s anything . . . I mean, a place to rest for a few hours is the least of what we could offer you, considering.”

  Beck sits on the other side of the double bed. His hair stands up, probably from being raked through with his fingers. Stubble is growing in, and his eyes are watery and shot through with cracks of red.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” he says, looking down into his lap. “I could have sworn I saw her just a minute before, and the whole family was there, and I thought we were, I mean, I thought someone was watching . . .”

  He chokes on the words and pushes his palms into his eyes, curling himself over.

  I cinch my robe tighter and arrange the neck for maximum coverage and join him on the other side of the bed. I put one arm around him, feeling him tremble. I squeeze tight, trying to stop the shaking.

  He gulps out, “What if you hadn’t . . .”

  “But I did. She’s okay. Don’t do this to yourself. No one can watch a child every minute.”

  “Samantha does. She would have. She . . .” He gasps and lets the air out in a shuddery exhale. “She said it’s all my fault.”

  With this, he turns to me, staring into my eyes for a moment. Then he leans forward, resting his forehead on mine. He closes his eyes.

  For a moment or two, we stay like that, just silent. Then he moves his hands to my shoulders. He pulls me forward, so gently it seems that I imagined it, until his lips press down on mine.

  We push aside each other’s clothing with the practiced ease. I allow myself to tip back on the bed with him, almost weeping that his touch is tender as it ever was.

  The shame creeps up on me, like lengthening late-day shadows.

  My limbs entwine with his, in that old familiar way they have, like there are Beck-shaped grooves on my calves, arms. We haven’t yet spoken.

  I’m suddenly uncomfortable, despite the pleasing warmth of Beck’s body and its familiar contours.

  I jerk myself straight u
p.

  “This was a terrible mistake.” My quiet words seem to blare across the silence. I yank on the robe and my hands shake like an old drunk’s as I fumble with the tie. “Get dressed,” I hiss at Beck. “Get up.”

  Beck pulls himself upright but makes no move toward his clothes.

  “Beck, please! What if your sister remembers I’m in here? She was supposed to bring back my clothes.”

  “She’s not here. No one’s home but Mom and Dad, and they’re asleep.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She was going to stop at the hospital, then go to her boyfriend’s house.”

  “Beck, for the love of God, put your clothes on; smooth the bed. I’m going to have a panic attack. I’m going to jump out this window unless we look presentable in the next forty-five seconds.”

  Beck sighs and gathers his clothes, stepping past me into the adjoining bathroom. I make the bed again, smooth it taut, then remember I’d been sleeping in it. I climb back in, wrinkle up one side, and get back out again.

  Now Beck emerges, still looking like hell but dressed, his face unnaturally flushed. Now, his presence can be explained. He could be just saying thank you.

  I drop onto a bench at the end of the bed, my head in my hands. “This is by far the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  “It wasn’t just you.” Beck’s voice is effortful and gravelly.

  “I’m sure that will make your wife feel a whole lot better.”

  “She’s not going to find out. I’m certainly not going to tell her.”

  “I should have known better.”

  “So should I.”

  “Well, yes, now that you mention it.” I glare at him through a tangled curl. He joins me on the bench. “What the hell was that for?”

  “It’s not working out with Sam, I told you that. The fight before she left for Indiana was a little more serious than I let on. We are—well, we were, at least—going to be separating.”

  “That doesn’t make this okay.” He puts his hand on my knee, and I walk away from him to the window. All I can see outside is blackness. The lake is indistinguishable from the sky. “And you can’t separate now. Not like this.”