Blue Water

by A. Manette Ansay

  A child’s flip-flop. Another beer can. Beyond the blinking light, a little blue car, no larger than a mouse, made its way down the Point Road, exhaust trailing behind it like a lengthening tail. To the east, on County C, a second car, also blue, was picking up speed as well. Catty-corner across the intersection, poised on the edge of the gulley, Cindy Ann could just see the small, white cross, half buried in the weeds. Remarkable, really, how frequently the crew would encounter little shrines like these. Most of them long overgrown, the bones of each cross like an old skeleton, crumbling into dust. Others were more recent, dates still visible on the paint, bunches of artificial flowers tangled at the base. Carlton didn’t mind if someone wanted to stop, put things right, digging the crosses back into the ground, rearranging flowers, pulling weeds. Sometimes, in fact, he even helped, pulling out his pocketknife, returning to the truck for a piece of string. For a while, there’d been a young woman named Cecilia who’d wept, each time, kneeling down to pray. For a while, there’d been a woman named Jo-Lynne who’d made sure to call out to Cindy Ann, “Hey, Road Rage—this one yours? How many points you get?”

  A hand on her sleeve. She shook it away. The first car, the second car, each heading toward the other as if drawn by some terrible knowledge, forbidden, absolute.

  Carlton’s voice. “You sure you’re okay? You want to go back to the truck?”

  The yellow light, blinking time, indifferent as a wristwatch. Cindy Ann couldn’t speak, could only point as the wet screech of brakes cut the air, the first car shooting through the intersection even as the second car swerved toward them, popped off the road, churning up gravel, clots of frozen earth, before righting itself, passing them by, the driver—a woman—white-faced, shaking her head. The first car was gone. It had never even slowed. Everything had happened in what seemed like an instant.

  “Jesus,” Carlton said, and then he called to the crew, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. “We cross the road together, hear me? We follow protocol. We—”

  But Cindy Ann was running now, up the embankment, down the edge of the highway, darting across the intersection toward Evan Van Dorn’s shrine. Trash everywhere. Faded plastic flowers. One arm of the cross propped against the ground, the other reaching skyward, as if drowning, begging for help. Life goes on. All those pious teachers who’d erected this cross, who’d gone to the funeral, who’d sent their cards of mourning; all those parents who’d shown up for the candlelight vigil, who had written those terrible letters to the paper, demanding Cindy Ann’s head on a platter—where were these people now? She was the one pulling up fat, frosted fistfuls of quack grass, snapping off stalks of dead goldenrod. The others caught up, knelt down beside her, orange vests burning like a ring of fire. And then, Carlton was kneeling, too.

  “He was six years old,” she said.

  “I’m walking you back to the truck,” he said.

  “The love of my life,” she said, but the cross broke apart in her hands.

  More hands, now, patting her back, rubbing her shoulders, stroking her hair: Carlton’s, Pamela’s, even Joey Schlegel’s. Trying to help, to heal. Her last clear thought, she’d tell me, later, would go something like this: Oh, they wouldn’t touch me that way, if they knew how much it hurt.

  Ten

  amy Kreisler opened the door to find a barrel-chested man in an orange work vest, a white van idling behind him in the driveway. She didn’t ask questions, just cocked her hip, waiting for him to get to the point. The doorbell had been ringing a lot these days: repo men, the sheriff’s deputy, a Realtor from the bank. By January first, it wouldn’t matter anymore. Mum and the little girls would have moved into Toby’s old place at the mill. As for Amy, she’d be staying with her best friend, Kristen, and her family at their house on Nelson Heights. Mum was crazy if she thought, for a minute, that Amy would be living in some freezing-cold dump, no hot water except what you heated on the stove, I mean, please. No wonder Toby had moved across the landing to Aunt Mal’s efficiency, where, at least, she had tried to fix things up. It wasn’t that he was trying to help them out, as people said. It wasn’t that he was going to be supporting Mum, financially. And if he was, well, he was a sucker, there wasn’t any need for that. That was the thing about Mum. She always had more money tucked away. She’d say she didn’t, but then, if she really wanted something, she’d go ahead and buy it anyway.

  “You must be Amy,” the man said, stepping forward as if he planned to come in. Amy glanced into the kitchen, but there was only the leftover clutter of boxes and bubble wrap, newspapers, wadded-up balls of packing tape. Ever since Mrs. Railsbeck stopped coming, Mum had been increasingly careless. Last night, Amy had arrived home from work to find empty wine bottles, a broken glass, lasagna fixings strewn across the countertop. The oven was preheating. The refrigerator door stood open. It was as if Mum had been abducted by aliens in the middle of making supper. “Mum?” Amy called, but there’d been no answer. No note. Nothing. The girls—thank God—were asleep in their beds. It had been after midnight when Aunt Mal had brought Mum home, Toby following in the Suburban.

  “Call if you need anything,” he’d said, pressing the keys into Amy’s hand, but Amy hadn’t thanked him, merely slipped them into the pocket of her robe without looking at him. It wasn’t that she disliked Toby, the way Mum did, it was just that there was the matter of his sister, who hated them, who was trying to sue them, who actually thought they’d run into her car on purpose. Sometimes Amy would forget about this, usually when she and Toby were talking about the future of the fish store—Amy planned to major in business administration, and she had lots of ideas about potential online venues—but then, all of a sudden, she’d remember, and, after that, she wouldn’t know what to say. That was the one good thing about the foreclosure, the auction, the bankruptcy. As Aunt Mal liked to say, by the time the Van Dorns quit dickering over the settlement, there wouldn’t be two nickels left for them to rub together.

  But if that were the case, then maybe it was true, what people said about Toby having to support them. When he and Aunt Mal first got engaged, they were planning to buy a little cottage on the lake; they’d even driven her and the little girls out to see it one sunny afternoon, while Mum was on Community. But then, all of a sudden, they’d changed their minds. They’d moved into Mal’s efficiency. They were pretending that Toby still lived at his place so the crazy old landlord, Mr. Dickens, wouldn’t try to raise the rent. All of this made Amy very uncomfortable when she thought about it, especially since she was giving Mum less than half of what she earned at the Dairy Castle. The rest she was using to buy stocks online: technology, mostly, a few bio techs, a couple of blue chips for stability. Analysts were saying the NASDAQ might actually hit 5,000 by next year. No way was she going to miss out on something like that.

  The barrel-chested man seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

  “Yes?” Amy said, impatiently.

  “Your mother,” he began, then stopped.

  “What did she do now?” Amy said, but the man seemed surprised by this, even a little offended.

  “Nothing,” he said. “But she’s real upset. I thought that maybe if I brought her home…”

  His voice trailed off as he nodded toward the van, and Amy suddenly recognized him: Mum’s supervisor. The one who sometimes said hello to them at church. The one who drove Mum and the other convicts to their various Community assignments. For God’s sake, stop calling us convicts, Mum would say, and Amy would say, What should I call you, then? Volunteers? By now, the little girls were at the door, too, Lauren gnawing on a cold slice of pizza, Monica carrying her Princess doll.

  “Wait here,” Amy told them, grabbing her coat from the floor where the mahogany coat stand once had stood, and she followed the man out into the driveway. She could just see her mother’s head, tipped forward, as if her chin were on her chest. Drunk, Amy thought, but when the man opened the door, she saw that this was wrong. Mum’s eyes were open, her face peculiarly white. She d
id not look at either of them. The wind toyed with a strand of her long, blond hair.

  “Is there somebody you could call?” the man said.

  A single tear ran down the side of Mum’s face, but it wasn’t as if Mum herself were crying, because anyone could see that Mum simply wasn’t there.

  “Just a minute,” Amy said, and she ran back toward the house, ducked through the still-open door where the girls were waiting, watching.

  “What’s the matter?” Monica said.

  “Shut up,” Amy said, and she picked up the phone, dialed Aunt Mal at the mill. No answer. She dialed the fish store, only half listening as Laurel complained about the pizza, something about green peppers, too many, not enough, her turn, her share. “Shut up!” Amy said again, just as Toby picked up, and there was the man in the doorway again, half carrying Mum, his face beet red with strain.

  “Everything okay?” Toby said, and Amy could hear customers in the background, the rattle of plastic bags. In an hour, Amy herself would have to be at work. That night, she and Kristen were supposed to go to a movie with Kristen’s boyfriend, Al, and a friend Al thought would be perfect for Amy. Besides, Amy had calculus to study for. She had a paper on the New Deal.

  “I think you should come over,” Amy said.

  “Okay,” he said. “As soon as I can.”

  The man was in the family room now, looking for someplace to put Mum down, but the comfy old couch and chair were already at Toby’s place. All the living room furniture had gone back to Ethan Allen. The dining room set had vanished, too. The man dragged Mum back into the kitchen and dropped her, with a grunt, into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Mommy?” Monica said.

  “Hello?” Toby said.

  “No,” Amy said, and her voice was trembling. “I think you should come now.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “I’m on my way,” Toby said.

  Rex and I had spent our wedding night at the Pfister Hotel. The following day, we’d flown out of O’Hare for a honeymoon week in Tuscany. We rented a villa in an olive grove, just south of Florence, overlooking a quiet lake. It was November, unseasonably cold—though warmer than Wisconsin—and we’d hiked, every morning, along an old donkey trail until we’d reached the little town of Caprese Michelangelo. There, we’d eaten our breakfast of white beans drizzled with oil before prowling the local markets for vegetables, fish, cheese. Afternoons, we drove too fast along narrow, curving roads, the mountains standing over us like broad-shouldered angels. Rex said, more than once, “We are lucky, so very lucky,” and though I agreed, something within me winced, longing to shush him, hush him, hide us both away. Old gods, it seemed to me, were sleeping everywhere. It wouldn’t take much to awaken them: a glimmer of hubris, the least suggestion of good fortune. Each time the road dropped out beneath us, I white-knuckled the door handle, held my breath. Blindly, we plunged into valley after valley, rising and falling as if in flight, the trees a blur of color as we passed.

  Awakening at the Pfister on the morning of Christmas Eve, I found myself missing Rex terribly. The troubles we’d been having seemed like nothing from where I lay, alone in a king-size bed as extravagant as any wedding cake: canopied, frosted, fringed. Beyond the heavy damask curtains, I could see the same gunmetal gray Milwaukee sky that had, on the first day of our marriage, appeared unexpectedly silver. Reaching my hand beneath my pillow, I’d discovered Rex’s hand, slipped my fingers into his, then realized—with a small, startled shriek—it wasn’t his hand but my own, numb from the weight of my shoulder.

  Slow kisses. Pins and needles. Desire awakening, sharpening.

  I would have settled, now, for simply hearing his voice. He still hadn’t called in on my father’s cell phone, the way we had arranged, though we’d gotten a brief, cryptic e-mail: Hard 2 phone. Everything fine. Hope yr same. Perhaps, he’d been too busy with Chelone to make it to Echo Island. Or perhaps the ferry had stopped running, as it did from time to time, due to weather, to mechanical problems, to the whims of the family that owned it. More likely, he’d been trying to call but kept getting disconnected. Last night, from the steakhouse where we’d all gone out to dinner, my father had checked for messages on the Florida machine.

  Nothing.

  “Now you know how we’ve felt all these months,” my mother said.

  A rap at the door: shave-and-a-haircut. My mother’s signature knock. I got up, grateful for the distraction, and slipped into a plush, hotel robe. On top of the TV sat the FedEx package Arnie’s secretary had sent, per my instructions, care of the hotel. The package was still unopened. I flipped it over, so the address wouldn’t show, before letting my mother in.

  “It’s eighteen degrees outside,” she announced, indignantly, stepping into the room. She was neatly dressed in a wool pantsuit, balancing two hotel mugs filled with coffee. I felt like a teenager, caught sleeping late, complete with a raging case of bed head. Not to mention the remains of my poisonwood rash, which was looking more and more like a bad case of acne. “You know what the temperature is in Miami today?”

  I took the mug she offered me, shook my head. Sipped. The coffee was sweet, nearly white with cream.

  “Eighty-two.” She glared around the room, as if she were looking for someone to blame. I’d forgotten how personally my parents took cold weather, as if it were something that had been engineered, specifically, to torment them. “Are you hungry? There’s plenty to eat in our room. I just came back from the buffet.”

  From the pocket of her tailored jacket, she removed two hardboiled eggs. I started to laugh, I couldn’t help it. Here was something else I’d forgotten. At the steakhouse, my father had ordered the New York strip, while my mother, demurely, chose the salad bar. After eating what he wanted, my father handed his plate to my mother who, in turn, passed him her salad bar leavings: baked beans, macaroni, Jell-O salad. I glanced around, hoping the waiter hadn’t seen, but my father just laughed.

  “As if he cares,” he said.

  “As if any one person could eat six dollars’ worth of salad,” my mother said.

  “Six ninety-five,” my father said.

  “And these steaks are just too big for one person!”

  “So ask for a second plate,” I said, but my father shook his head vigorously.

  “Bastards charge you a plate fee.”

  “At least the bread is free,” my mother said, giving the bulge in her purse a little pat.

  How they’d driven Toby nuts, when he’d still lived at home, with all their little shortcuts, coupons, early bird specials. Those mashed-together slivers of soap that broke apart in your hands. Toby. I’d called him after getting in from dinner, this time at his apartment, but a child had answered—had his number changed? I’m not supposed to talk on the phone, okay? she’d said, and then hung up. He hadn’t been at the fish store, either, which wasn’t surprising, considering the time. Still, in the past, it wouldn’t have been unusual for Toby to be there, working late, perhaps even spending the night stretched out on the hospital cot he kept beside his breeding tanks. I reminded myself that his life would be different, now that he was engaged. He’d be spending time with Mallory, after work, on weekends. In fact, with the wedding just a few days away, he might not have time to see me. Perhaps, after what Rex had done, Toby didn’t want to see me. Perhaps he’d sent the invitation for the sake of his conscience alone, expecting it wouldn’t reach me, that I wouldn’t come from so far away.

  “So what’s on your agenda for today?” my mother asked, sitting down with her mug at the glass-topped table.

  I settled myself across from her. “Depends on Toby,” I said. “By the way, did his home phone change or something?”

  “Who knows?”

  My mother cracked one of the eggs, began to pick at the shell. I’d been surprised to learn that she and my father still hadn’t seen him—or Mallory either, for that matter. In fact, they’d only spoken with Toby twice. He was busy, he was sorry, he would make it up to
them. There’d been talk of a prewedding dinner (where? with whom?), but that seemed to have fallen through. “Ah, the pressures of prenuptials,” my father had said, grinning, but this didn’t make any sense to me. It wasn’t that type of wedding, after all. How many details could there be, arranging for a justice of the peace to spend fifteen shivering minutes aboard the Michigan Jack?

  “It’s just so strange,” I said to my mother, now. “I can see where he might not want to see me, but he can’t spare half an hour to say hello to you?”

  “I don’t think you ought to take it personally,” my mother said. “I think something’s wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, he and Mallory had a contract on a two-bedroom cottage—did I tell you this? No? Well, a few weeks ago, they backed out of it. No warning. Lost their deposit and everything. And I just talked with Anna Schultz—she says hello, by the way—and she’s heard they’re staying on at the mill. Keeping both apartments.”

  “Maybe they’re not getting along,” I said, and it was hard to filter the eagerness out of my voice.