by T. Greenwood
Tonight, I knew that between the heat of Indian summer and the sounds of the bowling alley below, sleep would once again pass me by. And so I resigned myself to wakefulness, figured I’d spend the night as I spent most every night lately: sitting on the roof looking at the cool shimmering green of the public pool across the street, closed for the summer now, while Shelly slept in the other room.
I poked my head in to check on her. A few weeks earlier, when summer came back, I’d put our only fan in her room. It whirred in the window, making the curtains billow out like ghosts. She was flat on her back and fast asleep, wearing one of my old Middlebury T-shirts and the gum wrapper necklace she never took off.
I quietly closed her door and went down the hall to the window, which led to my rooftop refuge. Even at almost midnight, the tar paper still held some of the sun’s warmth, and the air was thick. Across the street, the water in the pool was still. Shelly’s birthday again, and here it was: another batch of sad cupcakes. Another week of restless nights. I was kidding myself blaming my unease on the heat. It wasn’t the heat at all but rather the passing of another year. It was that Shelly had outgrown another pair of sneakers, another winter coat. It was that she didn’t need me to tie her shoes or brush her hair: each small milestone a cruel reminder that life was going on. Moving forward. She was growing up. And each year she grew older, Betsy was that much further away. A child’s birthday should never be the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Betsy. Before this, before I knew the color of the sky at three A.M ., before I knew the sound of a child sleeping—before I knew the fear of being entirely alone as the world slept—there was Betsy. Her name found its way to my lips on those waking nights, and I practiced their syllables as if I were reciting a poem or a prayer. She was always there. Before this, I had not known the world without her in it.
I looked for Betsy in Shelly. And sometimes I found her there: in the lazy blinking of her eyes, in a sigh, in a blush. But more often than not, in searching for Betsy, I only found myself. Shelly had my awkward long limbs, my pale skin, the same squinty blue eyes. She was almost twelve now—the same age that Betsy was when I first fell in love with her. But no matter how hard I looked at Shelly’s face, Betsy simply wasn’t hiding there.
Twelve years.
My rooftop reveries inevitably ended with thoughts of Betsy. It didn’t matter if I tried to concentrate on other things (the house for sale on Finney Ridge, the Sox’s recent loss to the Yankees, the John Fowles novel I was reading), my mind always found its way—no matter how circuitous the route—back to her. And as Shelly’s birthday approached, the journey back to Betsy Parker became less and less oblique. I’d start out considering what the mortgage might be on that three-bedroom Cape and wind up thinking about something Betsy once said about wanting to own a home that had an orange tree out front. (I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that oranges almost never grow in northeastern Vermont.) If I started out with baseball, I saw Betsy yanking Ray’s old Sox cap off his head and putting it on her own. It had covered her eyes, and we all laughed. And when I thought about that novel, the one where a collector of butterflies falls in love with a stranger and decides to first kidnap and then keep her, I began to wonder if Betsy ever felt like that: like a captured butterfly.
And here she was again tonight, curling up next to me on the roof. Waiting with me until the sun rose, insistent, over Depot Street. I left her only when I sensed that Shelly was stirring, that the day I’d been dreading had arrived.
Shelly came out of her room as I was making coffee. She rubbed her eyes and then spied the cupcakes sitting on the counter.
“I hope they’re okay,” I said. “The middles might be kind of soft.”
She smiled at me in that sad way she had and picked one of them up. She licked the frosting off the top and said gently, “Thanks, Daddy, but I’m kinda too old to bring cupcakes to school now.” And then, because she probably thought she’d hurt my feelings, she peeled the paper cup off the cupcake and popped half of it in her mouth. “Mmm. It’s really, really good, Dad.”
In my pocket was the gift I’d bought for her: a pair of glittery barrettes. I had planned to give them to her at breakfast, but decided then to wait, suddenly certain that the gift was all wrong. I didn’t want to let her down again. I’d have to stop at Kinsey’s after work. Maybe a charm bracelet would be better. A pair of earrings. A watch.
I was grateful for the morning’s rituals (making coffee, getting myself dressed and Shelly fed, packing our lunches) as well as for the morning’s unexpected events (a lack of hot water, milk gone sour in the fridge and a missing sock). Sometimes I felt like the mundane details of our lives were the only things tethering me to the world. I could hold onto them—distractions necessitating action. They gave me a sense of purpose. If not for the leaky faucet, the sandwiches, the bills, I might not know what to do with my hands.
Shelly kissed my cheek and then walked down the hallway to our neighbor’s apartment as I watched her from our doorway. Mrs. Marigold, an elderly widow, took care of Shelly before and after school, while I was at work. Shelly insisted that I not use the word “sitter,” and especially not “ baby sitter” when referring to Mrs. Marigold. But, whatever her job title, she made sure Shelly got to the bus stop. That she had a place to go after school. In exchange, I ran errands for her: buying groceries, depositing her husband’s pension checks at the bank, that kind of thing. She used to be a nurse, probably a hundred years ago, but this made me feel somehow safe.
“Happy birthday!” I called after her.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said over her shoulder, and skipped down the hall.
I had to leave for work earlier than I would have if I were driving, but as long as the weather permitted, I preferred to ride my bike. Most of the time, I left my car parked in the alley behind our building; I didn’t drive unless I had to anymore. After Betsy died, the world started to seem like a dangerous place. Every time I got behind the wheel, especially with Shelly in the car, I couldn’t help but envision every horrible thing that might happen. Every catastrophe. And so I’d opted instead for a bicycle, a J.C. Higgins three speed, which I knew had seen better days. I bought it at the Methodist Church rummage sale for five dollars and fifty cents. The spokes were rusted, and the seat was stuck at an elevation reserved for a taller man than I; even at 6 feet 4 inches, I had to stand on the pedals as I rode to avoid the unfortunate angle of the seat. But despite the inadequacy of the bike, there was something perfect about the two-mile journey to the railroad station each morning. In a month or so, when snow came and I had to negotiate my old VW Bug through the snow, I’d miss these mornings: the rushing air, the burning in my calves as I pedaled up the winding hill. The ride usually cleared my head, invigorated me, but today nothing could dispel the awful disquiet I was feeling.
By the time I got to work, I was antsy, like I’d had too much coffee. Too little sleep. I tried to look forward to the daily tasks, to losing myself in a stack of invoices, the bills of lading. I had been working at the freight office at the railroad station since I was twenty-two years old. I’d worked my way up, as much as you can in a place like this, and was now the freight traffic manager. It was hardly the job I’d thought I’d wind up with, but my ambition, like everything else, sort of flew out the window when Betsy died. I had never planned to make this job my career, but here I was. And I have to admit, there was a small but certain satisfaction when the numbers balanced out at the end of the day, the week, the month. At least there was order here. Predictability.
While I waited for the night shift to end, I sat at the grimy table in the break room thumbing through the previous Sunda
y’s Free Press and grabbed a doughnut from a box that somebody’s wife must have dropped off. It’s just another day , I thought. But just as I was about to take a bite of the doughnut and look in the sports section to see whether or not Boston had won Saturday’s game, Rene LaFevre, one of the French Canadian car knockers, came rushing through the door.
“Down by da river,” he said, breathless. “Dere’s people everywhere. Some’s drowned. And the ones that ain’t drowned are bleeding half to death. You gotta come wid me.”
Though it was almost October, the air was muggy and thick, not the normal crisp prelude to autumn. I could feel the hot, wet air in my lungs as I rode behind Rene on my bike, following the tracks out of the train yard toward the river. In the woods, the scent of apples was thick, nauseating. Apples had ripened with the first signs of fall and then rotted in the heat, their small suicides leaving only sad remains, pulp and empty brown skin littering the ground beneath our feet. I dodged them like land mines while Rene plodded and plundered through the rotten mess. Rene, who had to have weighed close to two hundred fifty pounds, had to stop several times to catch his breath. I waited as he bent at the waist, clutching his chest.
“You okay?” I asked.
Too winded to speak, he nodded. But despite Rene’s obvious exhaustion, we kept traveling further along the river’s edge, early morning sunlight struggling through the thick foliage.
Teacups. The first thing that I saw were about a dozen perfect china teacups floating along in the current, bobbing and dipping downstream: some with rims lipstick-kissed, some still filled with tea now mixing with river water, all of them disengaged from their saucers. In the hazy sun, it was almost beautiful, only a floating tea party. Before I saw the wreckage, I saw this.
Then, with a gesture that struck me as almost grand, Rene motioned toward the place where the woods opened up, where the train had jumped the tracks. It had derailed just after the bridge, and one of the rear cars had fallen into the river. The early morning sun glinted in the silver metal of the train, in the broken glass, and in the water. The other cars were tipped on their sides, bloodied people crawling out of the broken windows and doors. Some passengers sat stunned and silent on the bank of the river, while others screamed.
“My baby,” a woman wailed, futile in her attempt to climb the embankment where a child lay motionless on the grass. Her feet kept slipping, her fingers clawing at the earth. She looked up at us and screamed, “Why?” Rene reached for her hand and, bracing himself, helped her up the hill. She staggered across the grass and then collapsed on top of her child, her whole body shaking.
I turned toward the river, paralyzed. I could feel my pulse beating in my neck, in my temples. I willed the other thoughts out of my head, the other disasters.
“Dere’s people stuck inside,” Rene said to me, grabbing hold of my arm, as if to wake me from sleep. “You got to go in dere.”
Rene went to a woman who was beating her fists on the window of a wrecked car, and I rushed blindly down the riverbank to the car that had tumbled into the river. The water was cold and smelled swampy. It soaked my work clothes, the weight of water like the weight of deep sleep. Remarkably, the car was still upright. I shielded my eyes against the sun and scanned the row of windows looking to see if anyone was trying to get out. I fought against the current, holding on to a fallen tree so as not to get swept away. There were several shattered windows; I made my way to the closest one and hoisted myself up into it. I swung my leg over the edge and lowered myself into the car, where I was waist-deep in the water again. Inside, I saw more teacups as well as white tablecloths floating in the water. Plates and soup bowls, water and wineglasses. I pushed through the water using the dining tables for leverage.
“Hello?” I hollered, but my ears were filled with the sound of the river. “Is anybody in here?” I made my way from one end of the dinette car to the next, my legs shaking with the effort and the cold. I could see the narrow serving area and the entrance to Le Pub, the lounge car. “Hello?” I said again, louder this time.
I fought my way to the far end of the car and looked for another open window. My hand throbbed with the beat of my heart. There was no one here. But just as I was about to hoist myself out of the water, I saw something through the window into the next car. I pried the doors open and stepped through into the lounge. An upright piano was floating in the water, bobbing and dipping in the current as the river rushed through the windows. Relieved, I turned to go back. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something else.
The porter’s black and white uniform was fanned out like a nun’s habit; his head was immersed in water, his arms outstretched. The dead man’s float. Shelly had learned how to play dead at the public pool that summer. I’d watched all of the children in her swim class floating like toys in the water. It had given me a sick feeling in my stomach then. Now, my stomach turned again. I was shaking badly. It felt like the river was inside me, cold and wet. Unforgiving. I went to the man as quickly as the river would allow, and gently rolled him over.
His face was bloated, pale blue and swollen. At the sight of his face, I turned away, feeling bile rising in my throat, and I vomited into the river water. I turned back to the man and felt the shivering turning into something more like a small convulsion. I had the momentary impulse to give in to the current. I was so full of the river by then I could have just let it carry me away. But something inside of me pulled me out of the wreckage, back into the water, and slowly, slowly, up onto the muddy shore, where I could barely feel my legs.
The police and the town’s only ambulance had finally arrived. The emergency vehicles were parked cockeyed and tilted on the grassy shore. The red and blue lights swirling and humming reminded me of a carnival. Of a midway. Of some terrible ride.
There were other drowned people. Their bodies lay along the river’s edge, a morbid picnic. There was so much blood; the grass beneath my feet was slick with it. Children cried in their parents’ and strangers’ arms; the air was loud with the sound of sirens and screaming. I recognized faces but could not connect the faces with names. I concentrated instead on teacups, a hundred bobbing teacups, and I made my way out of the river. I climbed the bank, my boots and eyes filled with water, walking and walking until I couldn’t hear the sirens or see the train. About a hundred yards from the accident, I sat down under a great willow tree, exhausted, and put my face in my hands. I was fatigued, delirious. I blinked hard against the exhaustion and all of the pictures on the backs of my palms and on the backs of my eyes. But no matter how hard I tried, all I saw was the dead man’s face, and every breath reminded me of the other man I’d left for dead in this river.
I could have been there minutes or hours. The lack of sleep seemed to make time mutable. I could barely keep track of it anymore. Entire days went by sometimes without my noticing. Months could have passed while I sat at the river’s edge. Seasons changed.
I lifted my head only when I sensed someone standing in front of me. The sun was bright behind her, but I could make out the silhouette of a young girl, maybe sixteen, seventeen years old, her belly swollen like an egg. An apparition. A cruel trick of my mind, intent on its return, as always, to Betsy. Her name found its way to my throat but not through my lips. I squinted against the sun and quickly realized that this was not a ghost, not Betsy , but a real girl. A girl with skin the color of blackberries, holding a suitcase, her hair dripping river water onto my legs.
“What’s your name?” she asked, her accent jarring me, clearly placing her far away from home.
“Harper,” I answered, standing up awkwardly, as if I were only going to shake her hand.
“Harper,” she said. And then she pressed her tiny hand against her swollen stomach, a gesture I could never forget. “Please,” she said. “You gotta help me, sir. My mama’s dead. I got nowhere to go.”
What happened after this (the moments that followed, the months that followed) I can only explain as the acts of a man so full of sorrow he’d do just about anything to get free of it. Here I was at the river again, with only a moment to decide. Forgiveness. For twelve years, I’d only wanted to say I was sorry, but before this there was no one left alive to offer my apologies to.
“Please,” she said again.
And this time, I didn’t turn away.
O NE
Two Rivers
T here aren’t really two rivers in Two Rivers, Vermont. There’s the Connecticut, of course (single-minded with its rushing blue-gray water), but the other river is really just a wide and quiet creek. Where they intersect, now that’s the real thing. Because the place where the creek meets the Connecticut, where the two strangely different moving bodies of water join, is the stillest place I’ve ever seen. And in that stillness, it almost seems possible that the creek could keep on going, minding its own business, that it might emerge on the other side and keep on traveling away from town. But nature doesn’t work that way, doesn’t allow for this kind of deviation. What must (and does) happen is that the small creek gets caught up in the big river’s arms, convinced or coerced to join it on its more important journey.
