Grim

by Anna Waggener

  Across the shore, where the bones of more water plants split the surface of the lake, came a quiet splash. Erika rested her forehead against the back of her hand and tried not to dwell on the image of her own fingers, pale and slick, grabbing Shawn’s collar and dragging him to the bottom of a bloody lake.

  Jeremiah closed his eyes and kept rowing. His movements were steady, and the gentle pull of the water gave Erika a rhythm to focus on. Each stroke came like the rock of a cradle, smooth and easy, and brought back snatches of lullabies and sleepless nights. A mother’s memories. Erika tuned every sense to the physical presence of the boat. She forced her breath to come slowly, regularly, and forced her mind away from her children.

  They bucked forward. Erika’s head snapped up. Jeremiah nearly dropped the oars.

  “I told you to listen!” he yelled, tightening his grip, and tried to row faster.

  A pair of thin, water-pruned hands slammed against the edge of the boat. Erika screamed, drawing back. She kicked at them and the fingers flew up, joints locked at odd angles.

  “Don’t touch the water,” Jeremiah said sharply. He threw himself into his work.

  The surface of the lake burst as if boiling, but the water that slapped Erika’s face and arms was cold enough to hurt. She clenched her teeth and held tight to the wooden seat as the boat continued its erratic skipping. She felt it leave the water. Beneath them, the lake came alive. They splashed when they came back down on the frothing waves. Erika winced, her muscles so tense they burned. Jeremiah kept his head down and rowed hard.

  The sun came out.

  Erika squeezed her eyes shut when the light exploded around them, its arrival making her dizzy and confused. The world, so green and blue and brilliant after the dark of the woods, almost blinded her. The water continued to throw them into the air, splashing yellow-brown now instead of black. When Erika opened her eyes again, she could see something crisscrossing the lake bed: thin, black shadows streaking past like bullets.

  They were nearly to the eastern shore.

  Jeremiah got to his feet, knocking the boat into a sideways lurch. “Don’t touch the water!”

  He grabbed the coil of rope from under his seat and swung the looped end in wide circles above his head. A docking post stood onshore, short and squat and so far away. The rope rippled out from Jeremiah’s hands. He watched it fly, desperately fighting for balance on the shifting floor.

  He missed.

  The rope flopped on the patchy grass, kicking up a fine breath of dust. Jeremiah’s stomach jerked as he realized that he’d missed his only chance, and that he’d lost them both to the Weeper’s lake. He could feel the boat tipping up at the bow, rising on the back of an unnatural wave. He hauled on the rope to pull it back, and hissed as the cord cut into his sweaty palms.

  A sapling shot out of the earth and speared the improvised lasso. As the tree grew, it dragged the boat into harbor. Jeremiah clung to the rope until the hull struck shore. Then he collapsed over the edge, desperate for just one mouthful of air that wasn’t tangy with fear.

  A splash came from the middle of the lake and the surface turned to glass all over again. Erika lay curled in the bottom of the boat, still sheltering herself with her arms.

  “Boy!”

  She looked up and saw an old, summer-baked man standing beside the newly risen tree. He leaned heavily against a knotted staff and glared down at Jeremiah with sharp black eyes. It didn’t seem that he’d noticed Erika yet.

  “Every time, boy,” he said. “You never bring no good here.” His sandals scuffed the ground as he turned, and his staff kicked up dry dirt each time he jammed it down. “Help her along, poor thing,” he said. “No idea, eh? You not telling her.”

  When Jeremiah reached out to help Erika to dry land, she latched on to his hands as if they were lifelines. Jeremiah draped an arm around her shoulders as she stepped onto shore.

  He leaned down to her ear. “That’s Baba Laza,” he said. The pitch of his voice soothed her. “Or Laza, if you like. He’s going to offer you tea.”

  Erika looked at the ground, thick and soft with grass, and at the trees that nearly buckled beneath the weight of their own fruit. Berries grew fat on shrubs, and bushes and flowers bloomed, yellow, orange, violet in any space not occupied by leaves. A cottage squatted on the rise ahead of them, small and made of cut stone like the house by the statues across the lake, but ropes of creeper turned this one green, and grapes like rubies bunched along its eaves. The air here vibrated with life. Erika looked over her shoulder at the lake and saw that the surface had stilled and, from here, the water had gone as French blue as the sky above it. The woods on the other side looked like the woods around her now — summer-drunk and thriving — but there were no statues, no moonflowers, no paved pathway to be seen. Jeremiah squeezed her arm and pulled her on ahead.

  They found seats on an old vine-invaded bench until Baba Laza came out of his fairy-tale cottage with a clay bowl in each hand. He gave one to Jeremiah and one to Erika before stepping back to look at his two visitors. He took in Jeremiah, who still had an arm around Erika, and Erika, damp from the lake and covered in dust and sand from the bottom of the boat. She pressed herself into Jeremiah’s side as if terrified of losing him. She’d traveled so far out of her element that Jeremiah was all that she had to anchor her. She could just about hate him for it.

  “See her loving you,” Laza said. “After you bring her through that.” The old man shifted his weight, setting one hand on his hip and leaning heavily against his staff. “What would your brothers say?”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “I can’t hear you.”

  Laza’s papery laugh came out through cracked lips and broken teeth. “You are your mother’s boy,” he said.

  Erika took time to examine Baba Laza between sips of his spiced tea. His posture was all angles and his skin was all knots. There were fans of laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and his mouth had stiffened out from frowning. His cropped hair was salted, the bristles on his chin were peppered, and each stood out against his red-brown skin, tough and burnished from gardening. Laza’s mismatched appearance comforted Erika in a way that she couldn’t quite place.

  “I’m not a bad man,” Jeremiah said.

  Laza dropped his chin. “Our talk is one-sided. You cannot hear and you will not listen, so your company is worth nothing. No better than usual.”

  “We need a place to sleep, Laza,” Jeremiah said.

  “And you will have my floor.” The old man tossed back a hand, rapping one dusty windowpane with his knuckles. “No better than usual.”

  Shawn and Rebecca avoided each other all day. It was easy to do after Megan got up, because Shawn took her to the park, and then shopping for a funeral dress, and then for dinner and ice cream, where he tried, and failed, to finally talk to her about their mother. She just watched him with her big, steady fawn eyes and broke the silence by asking for more chocolate syrup.

  Shawn was angry, and wanted to be able to blame Rebecca. Drunk, sad, unhelpful Rebecca.

  He and Megan came home to find the lights on, as usual. When he pushed open the front door, the smell of flowers struck him.

  Rebecca stood at the kitchen counter with her ear to the phone and a pen in hand. Clouds of white and pink peonies filled the room, the air heady with their scent.

  Shawn walked over to her once he recovered from the shock. “We can’t afford this,” he said, his voice low.

  “Dad paid for it,” Rebecca answered coolly. “He’s coming, by the way.”

  Megan buried her face in a bouquet and came up smiling.

  “He shouldn’t be involved,” said Shawn.

  Rebecca covered the phone’s mouthpiece with one hand and smiled at her little sister. “I bought you a new dress, honey,” she said.

  “So did I,” said Shawn.

  “It’s on your bed and you’ll love it. Go up and try it on.”

  As Megan’s footsteps pounded up the stairs, Rebecca turned back to
her brother.

  “Sleep it off,” she said. “You’ll be less bitter in the morning.”

  Shawn rolled his eyes and left the kitchen. He still wanted to hate her.

  Erika tried to sleep, but she was overtired. Her skin felt stretched over her bones and her muscles were worked sore.

  She crept to Jeremiah’s side and felt in his pockets for the little knife. His breathing went on slow and undisturbed even after she’d moved away. Curled tight in a corner on the other side of the room, Erika put the flat of the blade against her lips and let out a long, slow breath. She could feel the air funnel out along her cheeks and she could taste the metal of the knife. The light from the window thinned and then became a luscious, sacred white. Something sifted through the pores of Erika’s skin and she wilted with relief. Everything in her flowed away.

  Shawn sat on a cliff, his legs dangling over the edge and his hands gritty with black earth. He could feel the wind grate the back of his neck, where his skin stretched tight with sunburn and where his sweat gathered in a tangle of hair. He could feel a layer of loose sand shifting under his weight, sticking to the backs of his shins, a little more each time he touched the crumbling ledge. He could feel his mother beside him — could smell her perfume — but was too afraid to look.

  When he opened his mouth to ask a question, no sound came out.

  “I miss you, Shawn,” Erika said. “And I miss your sisters.”

  You’re dead, Mom, Shawn wanted to say, but “Me too” came out instead.

  “I want to talk to Meg,” she said, “but I’m afraid to scare her. Is she okay?”

  Shawn didn’t answer. He stared at his knees and the world that fell away beneath them. He thought, briefly, about jumping.

  His mother waited out the silence until she had to break it. “Tell her that I love her. That I didn’t mean to leave.”

  “She knows, Mom.”

  More silence. Erika reached over to touch Shawn’s shoulder, but then stopped. Put her hand back down. “It’s not the same, is it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m trying to come home.”

  When Shawn opened his mouth, he heard his own voice say, “Don’t.” As his teeth closed around the reproach, he felt a jolt of panic. What had he done?

  Erika sat still for so long that Shawn began to wonder whether she’d disappeared.

  “You’re dreaming, Shawn,” she said at last. “But I’m not.”

  He shivered. “Mom,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  “I miss you. I still love you. I still want to come home.”

  “We lost you, Mom. We bury you tomorrow. You can’t come back.”

  “I’m not dead, Shawn. I would know. He would tell me.”

  “Who would tell you?”

  Finally, she reached out a halting arm and put it around her son’s shoulders. Her touch was cold. “You’ll understand.”

  Shawn turned his face to hers, more out of shock than curiosity. Her skin looked caked on and her eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. There were sores around her lips, and the gums that held her brittle teeth were blistered black.

  He could sense his mother’s distress, as if she could only see herself through him.

  “Why do you picture me like this, Shawn?” Erika asked, close to tears. “Why would you think this?”

  Shawn tried to move away from her. Instead, he slid too far, to the edge of the cliff, and lost his hold. He seemed to fall forever, but his life never flashed before his eyes. All he could see was his mother, looking down from the mountain, not saying a word.

  He was less than a meter off the ground when the man caught him. The man slipped his arms under Shawn’s shoulders and knees to stop the long fall and the crack of a skull and the jolt of a broken back. For some reason, Shawn didn’t feel at all thankful.

  The man smiled, but the warmth never touched his eyes. He looked miserable.

  “I’m Jeremiah,” he said.

  He sank down into a crouch and laid Shawn on the ground.

  “What are you?” asked Shawn, looking up into his rescuer’s troubled face.

  Jeremiah took a pocketknife from his blazer.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The blade flashed down, glittering, and Shawn gasped as his throat split open.

  He woke up on the floor in a tangle of blankets, his wrists crossed above his neck to block Jeremiah’s knife.

  Erika opened her eyes and found Jeremiah standing over her, blade in hand. He flipped it shut with an irritated snap and put the knife back into his pocket. Even in her embarrassment and anger, Erika watched closely as it slid out of sight. It drew her in, made her desperate. Jeremiah noticed.

  “Don’t do that again, Erika,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

  “They’re my kids!”

  “You saw the way Shawn thinks of you. And telling him that you’re coming back — don’t you realize that you’re scaring him?”

  Erika pushed herself off the floor. “I am their mother and I have a right to see them.”

  He turned away and straightened his jacket. “I can’t hear you, Erika, so stop. Stop all of this before you do something stupid. And don’t steal my things.”

  The door slammed behind Jeremiah as he left the room.

  A rainstorm rolled in at noon, seething with a tension that made the city smell like cooling pavement.

  Erika’s children arrived at the interment site with armfuls of calla lilies. The flowers stood out against their black clothes and left smudges of pollen against their sleeves. When the children got there, their mother’s coffin sat waiting beside the gaping hole, a polished cherry box with brass clasps and a lid draped with peonies and ivy. Shawn carried Megan from the car as she sobbed against his neck. Rebecca stood beside them, dark sunglasses hiding swollen eyelids. Only she knew why Shawn kept throwing worried looks at the gathering crowd.

  Matt had come with them. He spoke quietly to the priest while the children waited by the coffin, watching the rows of collapsible chairs fill with family friends and a handful of Erika’s coworkers.

  The storm had not yet broken, but some mourners carried umbrellas with them, just in case. The pool of black suits and dresses broke in flashes of bright polyester, tucked quickly under chairs because the shock of color seemed inappropriate.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  The priest cleared his throat and brought all extra talk to a close. He began by quoting a Bible passage to let them know that Erika lived with God now, and that she was happy. Shawn smoothed the back of Megan’s velvet dress, to quiet her crying, and felt her drift to sleep against his shoulder. He looked at Rebecca, to see if she’d noticed, and then followed her gaze out to the stretching line of cars. His face fell. Beside him, Matt straightened up.

  The priest began listing Erika’s qualities: A good mother. A hard worker. A loving wife.

  Rebecca leaned into Shawn and whispered, “I told you he’d come.” She wasn’t talking about the priest, but about the man who arrived late, a navy Windbreaker over his suit jacket. Shawn didn’t answer.

  Megan woke up after the ceremony and threw flowers into her mother’s grave. Matt offered to take her for a walk while her brother and sister accepted condolences from the crowd, and Shawn agreed before Rebecca had a chance to open her mouth. When she saw her brother’s eyes hooked on the man with the Windbreaker, she thought it best not to argue.

  A light rain began to patter against the cemetery grounds. Shawn opened a black umbrella and held it between himself and his sister, silent as Rebecca spoke softly to everyone who came by. She took hugs and promises with the same earnest half smile. Shawn watched the milling crowd, gauging the time.

  After fifteen minutes, Matt and Megan made their way back to the grave site and climbed inside the patrol car to wait. The headlights flipped on and the wipers began their familiar slide across the front windshield. Megan put her chin on the lip of the door, her nose squashed up against
the window. Matt suggested they turn on the radio, but she said no.

  She watched the man who hung around at the back of the line, letting other people join in ahead of him, and knew that he wanted something. You didn’t let people cut unless you wanted something.

  “Did Mommy know that man?”

  Matt sighed and drummed the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Yeah, Meg. She knew everyone who came.”

  “Did she like him?”

  Matt looked over at Megan. Her hair drifted up at the crown of her head, static charged from the rain. Her dress hovered at the bend of her knees as she knelt, pressed forward against the glass, her shoes working mud into the passenger seat.

  “Sometimes, Meg,” said Matt, because he wasn’t sure what else he could say. He wanted to tell her all about the other times too, but knew that it wasn’t his place. “Sometimes she liked him a lot.”

  There was quiet for a long time — just the tapping of rain on the top of the car and the slosh of tires spinning by, hurrying out of the cemetery to someplace where death could be mourned in secret.

  “Should I like him?” asked Meg. She’d pulled back a little from the window, her face reflected in the glass, transparent as a ghost. Erika’s ex-husband had almost reached Shawn and Rebecca. Men from the cemetery were standing by to fill in the grave.

  “That’s up to you, honey,” said Matt. But he knew that it wasn’t.

  Shawn and Rebecca stood side by side in the growing dark as their father stepped forward. The three of them stared at one another for a few long seconds.

  At last, John Stripling cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about your mom,” he said. The familiar gravel in his voice made Shawn wince. The blunt words brought back the weeks following his parents’ divorce, when friends came up saying, “Hey, I’m sorry about your dad, but can’t you, like, get over it or something? I mean, we don’t even know you anymore,” and he just wanted to tell them No, no, no, it’s not that easy. He’d only been ten then, but the words still came to him now, and they still applied. This time they spilled out.