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She had a life insurance policy through the university worth fifty
thousand dollars—the detectives had told him this; he hadn’t known.
He would make a call, get the money. Donate it. Start a scholarship
fund in her name. For women. For women filmmakers. Or use it to
pay funeral expenses. A funeral! Who wanted to do that? Not him.
He found her address book and stared at the phone numbers. Her
parents. Her colleagues at the university. Her friends from childhood, from high school, from college. The neighbours. He would have to
call them all.
Would her parents want a funeral? Probably. He didn’t want to
have any part of it. Now that Vera was dead, he never wanted to see her parents again. They’d come to Whale Bay right after she dis appeared, had spent a week in a motel glaring at him, suspecting, before the
police told them to go home and try to get back to their lives.
“Okay,” Denny said. He gathered her clothes in his arms and set
them in a pile in the living room. It took five trips back and forth
from the dresser and closet, her socks rolled into balls, the one lace thong she never wore, her bras, a few pairs of stockings, her leather jacket, so many blazers—navy-blue and black blazers—expertly tailored white button-down blouses, black pants, black patent loafers, her “power suits,” as she called them, the long grey lab coat she wore when she
developed film, stil wrapped in its dry cleaner’s plastic, ready for the new semester. Her old pairs of glasses. He put them on, looked at
the living room with blurry eyes. He wished he could find something
of hers that was unwashed. But the laundry basket was full of only his clothes. It was one of her habits: to do a load of laundry every day.
She said she couldn’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, was ashamed of it. He searched for a sock fallen behind the dresser, a once-worn
blouse put back in the closet. There was nothing but the scent of
detergent. He had used her towel from that morning, before he’d realized it was all he would have left of her. It stank now of mould.
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“Okay,” he said again. He didn’t feel anything until he pulled a
bathing suit from the back of her dresser drawer and held it up—it
was red, with a built-in bra and full skirt, the tag still on. It had cost eighty dollars. She had never worn it. There was a paper liner in the crotch. The bathing suit seemed embarrassingly feminine to him.
Vera didn’t even own a pair of heels. When had she bought it? They
never went swimming. It seemed purchased for a special occasion—a
vacation, something someone would wear on a cruise ship. It was
old-fashioned—sort of sexy, he supposed, except for the full skirt. He tried to picture her in it.
What was hers and what was his? Should he gather the expensive
Le Creuset cookware and set that in the living room, too? Defeated,
he walked into their shared office and brought her files into the
living room, her medical records, her high-school poetry, her photo-
graphs. Her cameras. All the lenses. The little brushes to clean them.
The stink of the developing solution. Endless black canisters of
undeveloped film. Reels and reels of experimental films she’d made
on Super 8 as a college student. Then, of course, Mirror—the biggest moment of her career—and the fan mail she had collected in an
accordion file. She had peaked. That was what she told him late at
night when she couldn’t sleep. It’ll be downhill from here, she said, an unlit cigarette in her hand.
“Okay, okay, okay.”
He slept with the red bathing suit. Slept with it wrapped around his
arms, woke in the night and threaded his hands through the leg holes, then up through the straps, until his arms were bound. He twisted his limbs out of it and pressed the cool fabric against his face. In a fever dream, he walked to the bathroom, shut the door, stood naked in
front of the full-length mirror, and stepped into the suit. He got it up Celo_9780735235823_4p_all_r1.indd 123
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to his thighs before the fabric wouldn’t give anymore. His body was
pale, slack, his penis a snail.
He found one of her hairs, snakelike, hidden in the bathtub
grout, and ran it across his mouth. He wondered if she would find
his actions absurd. What she would make of him in their dark bath-
room, a woman’s bathing suit around his thighs, threading her hair
through his teeth like dental floss.
He found another strand in the drain of the bathtub. He laid the
strands out, side by side. One was seventeen inches long. He wrapped
them around his finger, thought he’d make a ring out of it.
Where did you want to go, Vera? Were you going with me, or
were you going alone?
“Taking Scout to Squire, be back in a bit,” she’d said, or maybe she
hadn’t—or she had and he’d slept through it. He could hear the words
in his mind. She never thought twice about walking in the woods. She
bristled whenever Denny showed any kind of concern. She didn’t even
like it when he held open a door. For god’s sake, she would say.
I had things I wanted to talk to you about, Vera. There were
things I didn’t know about you. Little things. Little mysteries I
wanted to clear up. I wanted to ask you but—you can never be that
direct with people, you know? You can’t ask people the questions you
truly want to ask. Vera? Who did you wish I was? Who did you wish
you were? What are the ways in which I disappointed you? What were the ways in which you disappointed yourself? Why did you look at
me the way you did, eyes not exactly full of love?
Until this moment he had not questioned what happened after
death. He had never thought about it before, not even when his par-
ents had died.
Naked once more, the bathing suit slung over his shoulder, he lay
on the pile of clothing and emptied her cosmetic bag onto the floor,
pushed the circular containers of eye shadow around the carpet with
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his finger as though they were toy cars. Scout watched him from the
doorway of the bedroom, his tail twitching like a rattlesnake.
It was three in the morning. He flipped through their record col-
lection and pulled her favourite records from their sleeves, put them on the turntable. David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel.
He closed his eyes and remembered her dancing to Culture Club
the year she’d gone as Boy George for Halloween. She was so reserved
with everyone except him.
He tried to find a place inside of him where he didn’t miss her. He
held his hands to his chest, willing the pain in his knuckles to sub-
side. Could he find a place within himself where he was, in fact, a
tiny bit relieved that she was gone? Relieved that the fighting was over with, the guilt that the marriage was failing. Relieved that he could be himself, without judgment. He shook his head, disgusted.
Why was it so hard to cry? All he felt was hollowed out, emptied,
cold. He crawled into bed, patted the space b
eside him until Scout
curled into it, and he held his dog.
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C h a p t e r S e v e n t e e n
Dmitri
He was not to eat inside his father’s car. He was not to touch any-
thing with his sticky hands. He was not to talk too much or too
loudly. These had been the rules in Whale Bay, and these were the
rules now, in San Garcia.
Holly was a wild driver. Her knuckles were white. She kept put-
ting on the blinker, trying to change lanes, then chickening out, Leo swearing. She seemed to be terrible at shifting gears.
Dmitri pressed his back against the seat and breathed in. His
father looked thin. He hadn’t shaved and his face was bruised on one
side. He wore light blue slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt with a bolo tie, his hair slicked back with gel. Black loafers that to Dmitri looked like slippers, big sunglasses like the ones policemen
wore on television. The streets were lined with palm trees. Dmitri had never seen them before, except in cartoons. A whole week in San
Garcia! Dmitri wanted to shout it to the world.
Holly, too, was skinnier. He could see the veins underneath the
skin of her forearms, thick as earthworms. Little strands of hair poked out from her armpits like spider legs. She wore a long, pale blue dress Celo_9780735235823_4p_all_r1.indd 126
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with a thin red belt. Dmitri thought she would have worn a big white
wedding dress, his father a tuxedo. His mother had packed Dmitri
nothing fancy, and Leo had exploded when he searched the suitcase,
finding only shorts, a pair of swim trunks, and a T-shirt with a bear on it. He’s six, his mother had said. I’m not buying him a suit.
That was yesterday morning, the morning they’d left for San
Garcia. His mother and father stood in front of the white beach house, arguing, his father’s car idling. His mother told his father that Jesse wouldn’t be coming along. Dmitri and Holly were already in the car.
Dmitri could see Jesse watching it all from inside the house. He’s not going with you.
Was it because his father hated Jesse now? Was it because his
father loved only him?
Fine. His father had stormed away from his mother, punched the air, and then they’d driven away.
Dmitri wondered what Jesse was doing now, whether he was
upset that he was at home with their mother, or whether that was the
better place to be. He couldn’t deny it, though: he felt better, safer, without Jesse around. If Jesse were in the back seat with him, he
might reach over, quick, before anyone could see, and pinch his arm.
He did things like that. A little shove, a little push, when no one was looking: the only evidence, the invisible heat of pain.
“Just trying to toughen you up,” he’d say, laughing, then grip
Dmitri’s forearm in both his hands and twist the skin in opposite
directions.
But what was worse? The burn itself or the horror of having his
father rush in, after hearing Dmitri yelp. Having to watch it.
Sometimes his father stuck his tongue out while it was happening,
like a person concentrating hard.
Jesse never cried afterwards. He would walk stiffly back into their
shared bedroom and turn his back to Dmitri, and Dmitri knew to
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keep quiet, to not speak until Jesse was done with whatever it was he was doing, often just staring at the wall, whispering, or rocking on his heels.
It hadn’t happened since his father had left. And since that day
at the lake, Jesse hadn’t pinched or shoved him at all. One night he’d even heard Jesse whisper I love you in the night. He’d reminded their mother to pack Dmitri’s bear. He’d hugged Dmitri goodbye. Dmitri
didn’t think those things had ever happened before.
“Take this exit,” his father said to Holly, and tapped the dash-
board with his finger.
Both Holly and his father were sunburnt. The back of his father’s
neck looked as though it were covered in bubble wrap. Dmitri wanted
to pick off the dead skin and flick it out the window. A wild driver, yeah, but nervous. She didn’t turn her head to look at his father when he spoke. She didn’t turn her head to look at him in the back seat like his mother did when she drove.
Holly missed the exit—Leo grabbed the wheel and tried to veer
them onto the ramp but at the last minute let go. “For fuck sakes,” he said. Dmitri’s suitcase and backpack rattled around in the trunk like dice. His father had driven for twelve hours straight yesterday, then they’d all spent the night in a smelly motel with no air conditioning.
At dawn, his father and Holly had dressed in their fancy clothes, and just as the sun came up, they were on the road again.
His father took off his sunglasses and rested them on his knee.
He looked back at Dmitri. He had two black eyes, in addition to the
bruise on his cheek.
“A misunderstanding, that’s all,” his father told him. “Nothing to
worry about.”
Dmitri’s heart was beating like a wild thing and he wet himself.
His father had pissed into an empty water bottle at one point this
morning, but hadn’t offered Dmitri a turn.
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The air was hot, so hot, inside the car.
“Do you live here now?” Dmitri’s voice was so high-pitched that
he winced. He’d have to toughen up a little now that he was in a real city. Maybe they’d all get murdered!
“For now,” said Leo. “For now.”
“I’m hungry, Daddy,” said Dmitri.
They drove through a fast-food joint that Dmitri had never heard
of, and his father leaned over Holly and ordered in Spanish. It sounded more natural on his lips than English. His father seemed to have
adopted a new personality. Even his posture was different, more
relaxed, than when he was in Whale Bay. Dmitri liked this new dad,
this relaxed dad. He hoped this new dad would stick around.
“This’ll fill you up,” the new dad said and handed Dmitri a choc-
olate milkshake.
Dmitri sucked on the milkshake until his hands got cold. He
wondered whether it would be okay to put the cup on the floor of the
car. Likely not—even this new relaxed dad had delivered a terse lec-
ture about keeping the car clean. Dmitri held the cold milkshake
between his pee-soaked thighs.
They drove for twenty minutes before Leo announced, “One
last stop,” and ordered Holly to park in front of a children’s clothing store.
“Come on,” Leo said to Dmitri. The store was dark and smelled
of dogs. It was a second-hand clothing store. A woman sat behind
the till, doing a crossword puzzle. She did not speak to them. Leo
walked up and down the aisles, then grabbed a couple of collared
shirts and a pair of tan pants. “Take off your clothes,” said Leo.
“Here?” Dmitri stammered. He scanned the store for a change
room but didn’t see one.
“Quit farting around,” his father said, and yanked Dmitri’s T-shirt
over his head so that it caught on his ears. Dmitri put on one of the Celo_9780735235823_4p_all_
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shirts and his father nodded and then handed him the pants. Here?
He was supposed to stand in his underwear here? In front of the
woman? He looked toward the entrance to see if Holly was coming,
but he couldn’t see her, just the front of the car. He stumbled out of his pee-soaked pants and put on the ones his father was holding,
though he could see that the waistband had a suspicious stain.
“There,” said Leo, kicking Dmitri’s old pants underneath the rack
of clothing. “Now let’s go.”
“Oh,” Holly said as they approached the car. “Look how smart.”
Dmitri couldn’t remember if his father had paid the woman, and
wondered if his father didn’t have to pay for things in San Garcia. But more than anything, he felt relieved that his father had not noticed
that he’d peed.
“I’ll drive,” said his father, and then they were peeling out of the
parking lot.
It seemed to Dmitri that they drove for a long, long time. The
landscape looked like desert. The car was hot, hotter still from his
father’s cigarette smoke. The big white tent appeared suddenly. Dmitri watched it grow larger and larger as they drove toward it. The road
was crowded with traffic.
“You know Holly’s going to become my wife today, don’t you,
Dmitri,” his father asked.
Dmitri nodded, though he wasn’t sure he did know this.
“That means she’s your stepmother.”
Holly turned to look at him as Leo spoke.
“You’ll treat her with respect.”
“I will, Daddy.”
“That’s my boy.”
Holly continued to look at him. He was frightened of her, though
he could not say for certain why.
What was it that stopped him from being able to ask why they
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were in a rush or where they were going? It seemed other children
didn’t have trouble asking their parents questions. It seemed other
children didn’t have the sorts of problems he had. Something had
happened to his family. Too much silence in the house. He sensed
he shouldn’t talk to his mother or Jesse very much. He sensed he
shouldn’t talk much at all. He didn’t like living so close to the ocean.
How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC) Page 13
