— I’m hungry a little bit.
— Wait till we get to the raft. Then you can have a peach and put your feet in the water, yeah?
— Okay. How about in the canoe?
— To eat in the canoe, or put your feet in the water?
— To eat.
— Okay.
— Okay, Daniel said.
At the launch, Heike threw her pack into the boat, then hauled him up into her arms and swung him over the side.
— Now let’s see if I can make this thing go, she said. She tapped at the gunwale with her paddle.
Daniel unzipped the pack and pulled out two peaches. He weighed them back and forth in his hands.
— That one is for you because it’s a Mommy peach, he said, letting her peach roll back into the open pack. This one is mine because it’s a Superman peach.
Heike didn’t question this. She paddled out of the shallows and down to where the stream met the lake, and then followed the shoreline, stroking smoothly but switching sides a little more often, she thought, than you should really need to. The canoe waggled its way along like a duck on land. It was a longer trip than she remembered, the shore maybe thirty feet to the east of them and a little island clouding the view to the west.
Daniel pointed.
— Who lives here?
— No one does, Heike said. The water is for everyone. Anyone can come.
It was hot, and she searched ahead for a break in the tall grass at the shore. Could they have passed the entrance to the pond without noticing?
— But someone used to live here, Daniel said.
— How do you know that?
— Because you said there’s a house. And the raft. Someone built the raft for kids to jump off. So there was kids, Daniel said. This satisfied him, and he took a bite of peach.
A new stream opened out into the lake, and Heike manoeuvred the canoe around the bend and dipped the paddle deeper to propel it up against the current. Surely this had to be right. A little way upstream, the channel widened out into a pool, lax and clogged with river plants, and the current stilled. Daniel leaned against the edge of the canoe, trailing one hand in the water. It was a brief moment of shade, and she let them drift, pulling the paddle up and resting it across the boat and closing her eyes.
— I have a friend, Daniel said. He’s a tadpole. I have a tadpole friend. He’s on me, Mami. See? He’s just little and nice.
Heike peered at him with one eye to make sure he wasn’t leaning too far over the water. From behind her came the quick, repeating splish of the swallows, beaks and wingtips nicking the water’s plain surface again and again. Daniel thumbed at something on the back of his hand.
— Mami?
She shut her eyes again. His voice rose higher:
— It won’t get off! Mami! My tadpole won’t get off!
Heike jumped forward, upsetting the paddle and grabbing it just before it slipped into the water.
— Here, give me your hand. Give, now, she said. Daniel.
She pinched the leech with her thumb and forefinger, tugging it sharply up, then flicked it back into the stream. A little droplet of blood sprang up on Daniel’s hand.
— Put your hand in the water, she said.
— No! What if it gets on me again?
— You have to wash your hand. Heike grabbed his wrist and crawled forward, careful to keep hold of her paddle, then swished his hand in the wet two or three times before letting go.
— Now, she said. You see? All done.
Daniel took his hand back and glowered at her.
— Oh, you don’t have to be so sulky, Heike said. You put your hand in his home! Maybe he was trying to be friends.
Daniel touched the sore place on his hand, and the little dot of blood thinned and widened.
— He wasn’t a tadpole friend, he said. Then, putting the trauma behind him: Will we go in the house?
— No, Liebchen. It’s not our house. No one lives there anymore.
She took the paddle in both hands and steered out to where she could see that the stream opened up wide again. The sun felt all new. Heike squinted into it. There was a younger bank of reeds ahead, the green tips barely breaking the water’s surface, and hidden just beyond that, she saw the raft.
— I found it, Daniel said.
2.
Heike pulled the canoe up against the side of the raft and held it steady, hooking the tip of the paddle into the notch between two slats of wood.
— Go on, now. She nodded to Daniel and then gave a flick of the chin, gesturing for him to climb out. Give me the peach. She took a hand off the paddle and held it out, the boat wavering slightly.
Daniel took three bites in succession, then tossed the pit overboard.
— It’s gone, he said. Heike brought the canoe tight against the side again, both hands back on the grip, and Daniel clambered up onto the raft, his fingers digging into the boards. There was a mooring line attached to the stern deck behind her and Heike laced the yellow rope through a metal ring on the raft, cinched it, and tied it off before getting out herself.
— Alright, now look what’s in the bag for you.
Daniel drew the zipper down and brought out three more peaches, lining them up in a row; then a knit blanket, two towels in tight rolls, and two canning jars, one full of lemonade and the other stacked with almond cookies, thin and uniform and lacy-edged. He’d managed to wiggle out of the life jacket without unclipping any of the buckles, and it sat upright on the raft, boy-shaped.
Heike shook the blanket out into a loose square.
— The corner is wet. Did the jar leak?
Daniel rolled the jar of lemonade between his hands.
— It’s still full, he said. Swish-wish-wish.
— Give it here and I give you a drink.
— How about a cookie?
— Okay, then give me that one.
Heike popped the lid and passed a cookie to Daniel, and then, after a moment’s pause, a second one. One for each hand. A little wave of pleasure rolling through her as she offered the treats: Eric often so strict about sugar, what they should or shouldn’t eat. The almond cookies almost but not quite the same as the ones her grandmother used to make at home, when Heike herself was small.
She twisted off the top of the second jar and took a long drink, then leaned forward to ruffle Dani’s hair.
— Where’s your hat?
Daniel held a cookie up and peered at her through the filigree.
— It blowed off.
— When? Heike looked around.
— A while ago. It went in the lake. He took a bite of cookie, then examined it to see the shape his mouth had made. You were paddling, he said. It was before my peach.
Heike drew the blanket up close to the edge of the raft, and they dangled their feet in the water.
— I can’t reach! Daniel straining to get more than his toes wet.
— Here, come here. Heike hauled him up onto her lap, then between her knees, dipping him into the water, on and off the raft again: Hoppa! Hoppa! Ploomps!
Daniel kicked his feet in the water.
Heike sang:
Hoppe, hoppe Reiter
Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er
Fällt er in den Graben
Fressen ihn die Raben
Fällt er in den Sumpf
Dann macht der Reiter plumps!
She dipped Daniel low, leaning so that he was wet to the belly. He shrieked and wriggled in the cold water and Heike grabbed at him, her nails digging in a little.
— Hey! Stay still, I’m going to drop you! She squeezed him in tight against her lap again, nuzzling his neck. I don’t want to lose you! Here. Let’s swim.
Heike sat him down next to her on the raft and stripped off her shirt and shorts.
— Do you want your shirt off?
Daniel nodded.
— Okay, here, I help you. She pulled the T-shirt up over his head and folded it next to her own clothes on the blanket,
then lowered herself off the edge of the raft. The water deep enough that her feet didn’t touch.
— Come. Now you can jump. She held her arms out, treading water with her legs only.
Daniel danced on the raft, one foot to the other.
— What if there’s a turtle?
— There’s no turtle. I promise. You can come.
The splash and force of his jump caught her off guard, though, both their heads ducking under the water before they came up, Daniel sputtering.
— It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re bigger every day, makes it harder for Mami to catch you! She bobbed him in the water a little before easing him out of her arms. Hold my hands. So, like this: you make your legs like an egg beater, like we are making a cake in the water. Daniel’s face turned up to the sun, chin and ears barely breaking the surface, legs pumping. His fast breath. That’s it! Heike beamed. Kick your feet! Kick your feet! She caught him up again just as he started to tire, his mouth and nose slipping under. The two of them treaded together for a moment and then Daniel wrapped his legs tight around her waist. The little wet lick of blond hair behind his ears.
— You’re holding me like a monkey! Are you a baby monkey? Heike pinched gently at his toes: Look out, it’s a turtle! What’s under the water? Look out, a turtle gets your toes!
When her legs began to tire, she helped him pull back up onto the raft, guiding his hands and heaving from behind, then pulled her own body up and collapsed in the sun. She closed her eyes. It seemed impossible that she should feel so sleepy after rising so late in the morning. Daniel sat upright and pinched at her toes:
— Who got your toes, Mami? Something got your toes!
Heike threw her arm up over her eyes and listened past Daniel’s chatter. They were just far enough from shore that the general noise of the woods was muted, only a few clear notes reaching them. The high, true song of a warbler, and then the mockingbird’s poor counterfeit, a slim set of repeated tones. Ducks setting up shop back in the reeds. From somewhere far off, a solitary loon called and answered to its own echo. Out on the lake, Heike thought. Or around the other side of the bay.
She crooked her elbow up and peered at Daniel. He was on his belly, a cookie in one hand. With the other, he traced a path between knots in the wood with a solemn finger: a car on its way to the city, or a school bus heading out into a field. A garbage truck. He made a low humming sound that increased in fervour with the speed of his travelling finger. She closed her eyes again. There was so much freedom in a day like this. Just her and Daniel, no one else. No Eric.
Heike let the guilt and pleasure of this thought wash over her. Then, for a moment, allowed the imagined possibility of a life without him to drift into her mind. As though she were telling herself a little story: What if there had been a car accident on the road to Ithaca, a morning drunk crossing the line, Eric too distracted by his own thoughts to notice until it was too late? She called up one version after another, in a daydream way. He’d taken an unexpected detour and hit a place where the road was washed out, the car rolling and tumbling down a steep ditch; out running at noon hour in the July heat, he’d suffered a freak young man’s heart attack.
These things happen. Heike had read something like it in The New York Times, a thirty-year-old marathon runner who fell down dead.
The truth was that being with Eric often felt like work. Was this a private honesty, or was she simply disloyal, too demanding?
He just required so much of her energy. Was he bored, or tired? Had he eaten recently, had Heike packed enough food, and the right kind? Had she brought a radio. Was it too hot, too cold, too buggy, too wet. Was Daniel too chatty, too quiet, too nervous in the water, had Heike taught him to be nervous. Did Heike not look happy enough. Had something unnerved him, or, better, could she catch that thing before it happened? Prevent him from going sour, or sulky, make everything just right, perfect. Above all, keep the day from seething within him, ward off an evening argument early. Block the blow-up.
Of course, there were rules to this kind of game. Ways that Eric couldn’t disappear: No abandonment. No gory accident, or at least, not an accident Daniel might see. No suicide, obviously, although she didn’t think Eric the type. Nothing that might follow Dani into his own life.
Heike sat up suddenly, shocked at herself for letting it go this far. The sun blinded her, and she held up a hand to shade her eyes and scan her surroundings, as though making sure this musing of hers was only that, a moment of intimacy, that it hadn’t somehow careened into the real world. Daniel needed a father.
And Eric loved her. He took care of them, Heike and Daniel both.
Daniel with his cookie, with the sun in his hair, continued driving his truck along the boards, unaffected by this conflict. Heike lay back again, her hands against her belly so she could pay attention to the rise and fall of her breath.
Eric had simmered three eggs in their shells for their breakfast, stood close behind her as she buttered and cut the toast into little strips, one hand rhythmically stroking her arm. He had a new idea, something glorious and untested that he began to explain before waving off her questions. He was looking for a nomination, a prize: that part she understood, and in a way it was the best part of him, boyish, half-bouncing on the balls of his feet over a moment of greatness that was sure to come. Heike listened, heating the milk for his coffee before he got into his car and left for the day. The summer house far enough from the hospital to make commuting a chore. This house she had wanted, Heike, and the few times she’d come along for the ride, Eric hadn’t even dragged her into his office to make polite small talk with the nurses but let her sit outdoors in the sunshine or sipping a coffee in the diner down the road. She reminded herself of these kindnesses; they counted for something. She counted them out.
This calmed her, and she forgave herself again and shook off the last traces of anxiety.
She dozed a little. Stretching out one leg so that her foot rested on the back of Daniel’s thigh, keeping track of him that way. The loon calling again, a little closer, the tune broken and lonely but far enough away that the ducks weren’t bothered. Not close enough to be a threat.
DANIEL WAS TALKING to her now, and Heike realized that his little leg was gone from under hers, the wood plank hard against her heel. She sat up and opened her eyes. The sun was strong enough to make her vision spotty. The light washed everything out. She squinted and Daniel came into focus. He was on hands and knees, at the raft’s edge, talking away. Not to Heike. She sat up taller, drew a leg in, one arm supporting her from behind.
There was a little girl with him, down in the water, one hand gripping the side. As though she’d swum up to the raft. She held something in her other hand, a paper. A drawing, the bright crayon catching the sun.
Heike looked around. There was no other boat; no one, that Heike could see, standing on shore. She brought a hand up to shade her eyes, looking off toward the cottage roof in the distance, looking for a car, any sign of people. Was it possible that she was wrong about the place being abandoned? She thought back to the click of the doorknob lock opening against the force of her hip, the dust on the windowsills, the absence of any track, tires or shoes, in the warm, wet ground. After all that rain.
The little girl pulled up onto the raft with both hands now, Daniel crawling back to give her room. She’d abandoned her drawing. It wavered, white against the surface of the pond. Heike thought how quickly it would take on water and be lost to the bottom; a gift, perhaps, that the little girl’s mother—wherever she was—would fail to receive.
— Come, let me help you.
Heike reached out her arm, but the girl was up on the raft on her own by now, sitting high on her knees. She was a sweet thing, about the same size as Daniel but perhaps a touch older. She’d already lost her babyness. Heike saw that her face was slim and almost sculpted, where Daniel’s cheeks still puffed out round. She had the same blond hair, the wisps near her face shining almost silver in the sunlight, pulled
back neatly in a ponytail, and wore a blue-patterned one-piece bathing suit with a ruched top and little gathered bloomers. So there was a mother, somewhere. Someone to brush and comb her hair, look after her, send her out into the world well cared for. Her skin, too, had nice colour, although she was certainly fair. A rosiness to her cheeks. Heike thought she looked a bit thin compared to Daniel. She guessed she might be as old as seven.
— I am Mrs. Lerner, Heike said. She held out a hand still, but the little girl didn’t move toward it, looking instead at Daniel.
— This is Tessa, Daniel said.
— Tessa, where are your parents?
The girl gestured vaguely behind her, and Heike glanced up and scanned the lake again. How long had she been dozing? At some point she must have drifted deeper asleep, had heard nothing of the girl’s approach. Not a splash. Where had she come from?
She looked for movement in the reeds, the nudge of a rowboat. Maybe the parents were hidden, fishing quietly, unaware of how far their daughter had gotten in a short time. When they lived in New York, Daniel had often hidden inside the big round racks of dresses at Bloomingdale’s. Or Heike would find him standing, stone-like, in a boutique picture window with the mannequins. She’d lost him more than once.
— I’m thinking your mother is going to be very worried.
— I always swim here, the girl said, but she was talking to Daniel, not Heike. The water isn’t so deep on that side of the raft.
Heike watched her in profile, the sharp lines of her cheek and chin. She tried again:
— Do you live here?
The two children had gone back to chattering quietly together; he was showing her something wedged deep in a knot in the wood. Heike looked up toward the cottage a second time, then searched the shoreline with her eyes. Surely someone had to be missing this little girl. Soon they would hear a woman’s voice, her mother or grandmother, calling out and rising in panic: Tessa! Tessa!
But the call didn’t come. Tessa’s hair was already dry in the sun. Had it ever really been wet? It was so light that Heike couldn’t see a difference. But now not even the tip of her ponytail hung damp. The children had risen to their feet, and she was teaching Daniel some kind of clapping game, their fingertips moving together and apart, together and apart.
Hysteria Page 3
