How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC)

by Marjorie Celona

  room. Evelina had indeed taken Dmitri to the beach—she’d left a

  note for him, a cryptic one, saying they needed to talk. Still, he hid in the bathroom in case Jesse heard him. He shut the door and dialled the phone quickly, his fingers trembling.

  “Need to talk to you,” he said, his hand cupped around the

  phone.

  “Lewis? What’s going on?” the detective said. “Why are you

  whispering?”

  “Can you look at the Gusev file for me,” said Lewis. “Leo’s state-

  ment from his arrest.”

  “Okay,” said the detective. “What do you want to know?”

  “Can you get the file?”

  The detective told Lewis to hold on. It seemed like he sat in that

  small pink bathroom for a very long time. He stared at the tile floor, at Evelina’s hairs curled around the base of the sink. He broke off a piece of toilet paper and fiddled with it. He prayed Evelina wouldn’t come home.

  “You there?”

  “I’m here,” said Lewis. He could hear the sound of the detective

  flipping through the pages, then taking a loud sip of coffee. His foot tapped uncontrollably on the bathroom floor.

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  “Okay,” said the detective. “I’ve got Leo’s statement in front of

  me. What do you want to know?”

  “What parking lot did Leo say he picked his son up from?”

  Finally, after what felt like an interminable amount of time, the

  detective spoke. “Statement says it was the first parking lot.”

  “The first one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” said Lewis. “Okay, one more favour. Get Jesse’s statement

  for me.”

  “Got it right here,” said the detective.

  “Okay. What parking lot did he say his father picked him up at?”

  “All right, hold on,” said the detective, and once more Lewis

  waited. “It doesn’t say. I mean, we didn’t ask him.”

  “Read me his statement.”

  “It says, quote, ‘I got scared and opened the door, and her dog

  jumped out and ran into the woods. She ran after the dog and I never

  saw her again after that. My father came back and he drove us home.’

  End quote.”

  Lewis took a deep breath and stood, pacing the small bathroom.

  He didn’t care anymore whether Evelina came home while he was

  on the phone. All he cared about was why Leo had said he’d picked

  up Jesse from the first parking lot, and why Jesse was saying the

  same thing.

  They were lying.

  For one thing, the first parking lot had no pay phone.

  And he had found Vera’s car at the second parking lot.

  “You there?” said the detective.

  “Yeah,” said Lewis.

  “Well?” said the detective.

  Could Jesse and Leo have gotten the parking lots mixed up in

  their minds? Jesse surely could have. But Leo?

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  “Thanks, man,” said Lewis. “That’s it. That’s all I need.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the detective.

  Lewis hurried to the kitchen and found a piece of scrap paper. He

  drew a big circle. That was the lake. He drew a line to the left—that was the trail leading from the lake to the first parking lot. He drew a line to the right—that was the trail that cut through the campground

  that led to the second parking lot, the one with the pay phone. He

  drew little circles to represent the two parking lots.

  Jesse had said that Vera found him in the woods and took him to

  her car to get warmed up, then she drove him to the other parking lot to look for his father, cal ed the police, then the dog jumped out of her car and she went after him into the woods, then his father came

  back for him and they drove home.

  So for that to make sense Vera must have originally parked in the

  first parking lot, then driven Jesse to the second parking lot, where she had made the call.

  Jesse had said he hadn’t moved when Vera had gone after Scout.

  That he’d waited for his father to pick him up.

  But if that were true, his father would have picked him up from

  the second parking lot.

  It was a small inconsistency. Could be an error of memory. Leo

  had been drinking, after all. And the boy could have gotten confused.

  Or they were lying. Both of them. A boy who was covering for his

  father. A boy who was telling his father’s lie.

  He waited for Evelina at the kitchen table. He heard her key in the

  door, then the sound of her and Dmitri taking off their shoes, thump-

  ing them against the side of the house to shake out the sand. Their

  footfalls as they walked down the hall.

  “Hello?” Evelina called out. “You guys home?”

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  Dmitri reached the kitchen first and ran to Lewis, his arms out-

  stretched. “You’re back!” he cried and crawled into Lewis’s lap. Lewis stroked the boy’s hair, tucked it behind his ears and kissed the top

  of his head. He wished he could prolong this moment forever—this

  sweet moment, holding this little boy, his sandy hair—instead of the

  inevitable future that awaited them. He could still be wrong, couldn’t he? It could all be a misunderstanding.

  “Hey,” he said to Evelina. “Hey. I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” she said. She was wearing a long sweater and shorts, her legs covered in goosebumps. Her feet were tanned, sand between her toes.

  The window was open and a cool breeze blew into the room. “Why

  don’t you go watch TV with your brother,” she said to Dmitri and he

  sprang up, ran into the living room, and was gone.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said. He could see a kind

  of steeliness in her eyes.

  “There’s a problem,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Denny called before we went to the beach.

  He told me what you did to Jesse—”

  “Evelina,” Lewis said. “Evelina, wait—”

  “You should have talked to me,” she said. “You shouldn’t have

  made him go over there—”

  “I know, look, you’re right—I—you’re right, Evelina—”

  “Denny feels terrible,” said Evelina. “He told me he was so sorry.

  He told me it was his idea but as far as I’m concerned you’re the one responsible.”

  “I know, look, I’m sorry—but this isn’t about that,” he said. He

  rose to his feet and took her by the shoulders.

  “What’s it about then,” she said. He could see that she had already

  hardened herself against him. “So,” she spat and shrugged his hands

  off her, “what’s it about then?”

  “It’s about Leo and Jesse,” he said.

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  She reached for the countertop, as if to anchor herself.

  “Listen,” he began. “Listen to me. I think they might both be

  lying—”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “Vera Gusev’s death,” Lewis said. His hands tingled and went

  numb.
His ears rang. He felt the sweat run down his back. Was he

  doing the right thing? There was a part of him that wanted to forget

  it. To move on and forget. But Jesse. He had to do this for Jesse. His face—he couldn’t forget the look on the boy’s face. As if his father

  were going to hunt him down and shoot him on the spot. He under-

  stood why he had felt such a kinship with the boy. They shared a

  secret. They were boys with a secret. They were boys who had to bear

  a terrible secret about their fathers, and who were utterly alone. But Jesse wasn’t alone. Jesse had him. And so he had to save the little boy, even at the expense of what he had with Evelina.

  “I think Leo lied to us,” he said. “And I think Jesse is covering for him. I need to talk to Leo again.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Evelina.

  “Why? I can’t ignore this. If Leo was involved and Jesse is covering

  for him—well, that’s too much to ask a child to bear. Evelina, as his mother—”

  “Lewis,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “I need to talk to Leo. Get him to tell us what really happened.

  Evelina, there’s something he’s not telling us. And it’s killing your son.”

  “No, Lewis.” She reached for his hand. “Don’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Leo didn’t kill that woman,” she said and took a breath.

  “Jesse did.”

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  V e r a

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  Once in the exosphere she is no longer human. The cylindrical mass that she felt herself to be has dissipated, and she emits

  nothing but a soft buzzing sound.

  What effect did she have on the earth? Her death caused six people

  great pain—Denny, her mother and father, Jesse, Leo, and Evelina—

  and she can see the energy from that sorrow rise from the earth like

  water from a geyser. Smaller, imperceptible streams rise from a number of friends and acquaintances, but they dissipate so quickly that it

  astonishes her.

  She watches herself be born, and then she watches her mother’s

  birth, and her grandmother’s, all the way back until the woman she is watching is covered in coarse hair, alone under a dark sky.

  She can see the blue halo that rings the earth, and she can see the

  satellites orbiting. Up here, there is nothing for her to use as a visual reference, though she knows she is moving. There isn’t a ripple of

  anything against her, like her shirt would ripple if she jumped out

  of a plane. The earth appears to be covered in snow, but it is just

  the clouds. If she reached out her hand, she could use the handle

  of the Big Dipper to pull herself higher, higher, even higher.

  Did her death matter, in the grand scheme of things? Which

  actions matter, and which actions don’t? The only thing she knows

  definitively is that acts of kindness go unnoticed, but acts of cruelty do not.

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  Knowing what she knows now, she could have been a good

  mother.

  She understands, now, why people have children.

  It is because we fail as ourselves, all of us fail. But we have a secret plan, a subconscious desire within us to become something astonishing, like the caterpillar that unwittingly becomes a butterfly. And, so, knowing that we will fail as ourselves, what we do instead is make

  something astonishing. We make our children in an effort to remake

  ourselves.

  Before she floated all the way up here, Vera watched Jesse, as though he were her son. His mother doesn’t understand how damaged he is,

  although she is a good woman and Vera has some affection for her. But Vera knows his heart is broken in a way that he will never recover from.

  When you break a child’s heart, their heart is broken forever.

  Remember that, she thinks. Remember that you cannot be a

  good parent—or even a good person—if you have forgotten what it

  was to be a child. If you remember, keep remembering. Do what you

  have to do so that you don’t forget.

  She hopes he isn’t as damaged as she thinks he is. Maybe all little

  boys dream of killing their fathers.

  Long ago, her husband gave away their dog. He cried in the living

  room after Lewis picked up Scout and drove away.

  Scout slept with Jesse instead of her husband. Her old wonderful

  dog slept at the foot of the boy’s single bed so that Jesse had to curl his legs to accommodate him.

  Long ago, Jesse cried in the night. She doesn’t think anyone

  should cry like that.

  What ultimately concerns her is time. Time looks like a record—

  a flat black disc, with the earth in its centre. Not unlike the rings of Saturn. When she wants to, she puts the needle down, and she can

  see whatever it is she wishes to see. She can watch a trilobite move

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  through the waters of Siberia, over five million years ago, and so she does. He emits a kind of clicking sound from his spine.

  But all of that is so many miles below her. Long ago, she left the

  atmosphere. Long ago, she traversed the solar wind and braved

  the heat of the sun. Long ago, she passed the planets and all of their moons. The universe expands as she moves through it, expands faster

  than she is travelling, and so her journey is infinite, and she will

  never reach its end. She feels as though she is floating on the surface of the ocean, buoyed occasionally by the blip of a galaxy, as if going over a wave.

  She has been dead for such a long time. She is dead and gone.

  In the end, all that remains is her work. She held a mirror up to

  the world, and still it did not change.

  And what is there to say about death?

  It hurts physically. It hurts to drown.

  The ice shattered beneath her, like the shards of a mirror, and she

  plunged into the water, black as ink, cold as the edge of the universe.

  Her lungs filled. She could feel the water behind her eyes.

  It took about four minutes for her body to die. As her conscious-

  ness faded, it was not unlike being put under anaesthesia. She had no sense of time passing, and indeed she felt as though she had been

  dying for thousands of years, enough time to float all the way to the edge of the universe, although her death happened in the time it took for the ice to re-form above her head. Once she was gone, she had no

  sense of self, no sense of her body, no sensations of any kind. There was only nothingness. It was peaceful. As it is in the deepest of sleeps, devoid of dreams.

  Above the frozen lake, the clouds were thick and white as lambs-

  wool. Above the clouds, the black sky was lit with stars, the moon

  visible only to a pilot and his passengers on their westbound flight

  across the ocean, travelling back in time.

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  J a n u a r y 1 9 8 6

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  C h a p t e r T w e n t y - S e v e n

  Jesse

  “He told me to stand here.”

  “Who did?”

  “My dad.”

  “Where is your dad now?”

  “Dunno.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “Dunno.”

  “All alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman had on a huge green parka with a fur-rimmed

  hood, black corduroy pants, and hiking boots. She wore glasses with

  thick black circular frames that made her look like an owl, and had

  impossibly long black hair. She did not look like anyone Jesse knew.

  She looked like a city person. Someone who would smoke long ciga-

  rettes. Maybe a spy.

  Her dog—a white and grey dog, a fluffy and wonderful-looking

  dog—ran through the woods behind her, looking up every once in a

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  while to make sure she was still in sight. He wanted to pet the dog

  more than anything.

  “And you don’t know where your dad is?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled for her dog, and he

  ran to her side, nosed her pocket for a treat. She patted his head and clipped on his leash. The woman looked about Jesse’s mother’s

  age, but seemed more confident, more adventurous. He couldn’t

  imagine his mother going for a walk in the woods alone, with a big

  dog, though apparently she used to work on fishing boats.

  “I think I better call someone,” the woman said.

  “He said he’d be back soon,” said Jesse. “Please don’t make me

  move.” He tilted his head upward so no tears would run down his

  face. It was snowing harder, and he opened his mouth and let the

  flakes land on his tongue.

  “A little boy shouldn’t be alone out here. It’s freezing. Why don’t

  you come back to my car and we’ll get you warmed up. Then we can

  come up with a plan.”

  She spoke in the same tone his mother used when she was frus-

  trated with him. He didn’t understand why the woman wanted him

  to move. His father would be right back. He had told him to stay

  here, face this tree, and think about what he had done.

  “We were supposed to stay right here, on the trail,” he said to the

  woman.

  “Who was?”