The Oshkosh Trilogy 01 - The Dark Lake

by Anthea Carson

  "Yes. They knew nothing about it." I started thinking about my dad. That had been really weird that day with him.

  "What is that thought that you are having right now?"

  "What do you mean?” God, could she read my mind?

  "Your eyes, what are you thinking. What happened there?"

  "Nothing, just that they didn't know anything about it.” I thought about it for a minute and then said, "Do you know anything about it? I mean … did you see the article?"

  Silence, combined with another ‘oh come on’ stare.

  Exasperated … twenty more minutes of this. I started tapping my foot and just looking around the room.

  "Do you want me to get the article out of my drawer?” she asked, eyebrows raised way up too high, head turned sideways, slightly mocking smile.

  "What?” I screamed it. Did I actually scream?

  "Why did you scream?"

  "I have to go.”

  I stood up.

  "I need water."

  "You've had enough water. Sit down."

  "I have to get out of here!"

  "Out of where, Jane; where are you?"

  I felt like I couldn't breathe.

  "Why are you torturing me?"

  "I'm not. I am trying to …"

  "Forget what you're trying to do. I have to go."

  Half afraid she'd block the door, I ran out of the room and to my car. My heart was pounding. I shook so bad I could barely get the key in the keyhole. Saying, "Oh my God, oh my God,” as I started the ignition. I thought she might even follow me, and I was too scared to turn my head around to look to see if she did as I squealed out of the parking lot and down the road.

  "Why is she so mean? Why is she so mean?” I screamed in my car as I drove, unfocused. Trying to drive away from the horrible feeling. It made me a danger on the road.

  ***

  "Don't feel that feeling anymore," Krishna advises and then giggles at her own absurd statement and then she says, "Here, smoke this." She loads a pipe, hands it to me.

  We drive around Menomonee Park, near Lake Winnebago. It’s that long curve that goes around from the street where I live to her house, which overlooks the lake.

  I take a hit, draw it deep into my lungs and blow it out slow. I loved watching the smoke leave my lungs. It felt like power.

  "Ad lucem," she says.

  "I hate it when you speak Latin," I say.

  "Pour qua?"

  "At least when you speak French I can understand you."

  "Pari idioma infatti."

  "Stop speaking Latin."

  She laughs and looks out her window, loads up her little, red, wooden pipe again, and takes a hit. She blows the smoke out slowly and lays her head back on the seat, closes her eyes and holds the red pipe and the black lighter tightly in each hand.

  ***

  I drove by the lake, by Krishna’s old house. Someone else was living there now. Who were they? I was tempted to knock and tell them I used to live there and ask if I could come in and look around. I parked across the street in front of the little white house in the funny, angular shape, like it couldn't make up its mind what shape to be. Part of it looked like an L-shaped thing. But then it went off in the back as if it were a quaint English cottage. The rooftop was rust red and quite sloped, like an English Tudor. Behind the house there was what looked almost like an Italian garden, complete with those white, vine-covered, lattice awnings.

  White, round garden tables used to stand back there. I wonder, were they still there? I don't know, and I wasn't going to go knock. I pulled my car slowly forward and drove past, around the rest of the curve of Menomonee Drive, past the beautiful homes along her street, past the other streets, where other friends had lived: Ann Binder, from eighth grade, Ann Jenson, who used to have a pool in her back yard. If you kept going down Menomonee Drive it curved back and crossed Bowen again, where, if you turned left, you could go straight back to my street. New York Street. Signal. Turn right. Home.

  14

  My job interview was in one hour. I was so nervous I could barely stand it. I stood in the blue and white dining room with the Danish tiles and stood looked at myself in the cabinet mirror that I'd looked in all my life: going on dates, going to prom, homecoming, cream-colored dresses with lacey gauze draping around the sides and flowers dotting here and there.

  My anger-management group yesterday had made me so mad I had to spend the entire day today and the entire night last night calming myself down. I had to watch about three solid hours of nineteen-fifties, black and white reruns to get over it.

  I had wanted to talk about my interview today, and they would not shut up.

  And the leader could not make them. He was too weak—light-brown mustache, curly brown hair, and frail frame. What could he know about anger anyway? Some egg-headed degree he had? What do these people know? His charts and his handouts with the cycle of violence printed on them as a diagram of our feelings? But then what the hell does he do about it when somebody keeps interrupting you? Nothing. He just lets people walk all over each other in his classroom, and then if I were to get angry about it, then boy would he ever write that down.

  And those morons in there, I was so sick of them and their drivel, same crap week in, week out.

  Leaves had turned the bright golds, reds, and yellows signifying Halloween and Thanksgiving, and still they chattered away about the same issues. One person's husband refused to get up off the couch. If I were that woman's husband I would refuse to get up off the couch too.

  Outside the leaves had been raked up and put in big black trash bags and set on the terrace—six or seven of them. They looked like Halloween ghouls of some kind, waiting. The lawn had been mowed, but an occasional wayward leaf flew across it and spoiled its pure, green look.

  I better get going.

  I said nothing to my sullen-looking mom and got in my car and drove down New York Avenue toward Main Street. Across the railroad tracks and left at Open Panties.

  Down past the Sears on my right, the hardware store, the bank where I took out my three hundred dollars and snorted it all up in coke. What's on my left? All I can see is what's to the right of me.

  I pull into the parking lot of the Gazette, walk in the beautiful double doors, feel the fancy, old, brass, lion-head doorknobs that open into the wide, long, empty hall with the shiny, black flooring. Nice. Old. Like I'm in a Sam Spade movie.

  "Sweetheart, I’d like to talk to you about a job,” I’d say.

  I took the elevator to the third floor. Office number 310, she had said.

  I told the secretary I was there. She gave me a long stare. Annoyed, I held my tongue and opened a magazine on the table. Hunting and Fishing. Oh, how Wisconsin of them.

  "Jane? You want to come on back here?"

  A tall, thin, well-dressed woman with tight, black curls and red lipstick—just like a dame.

  "Hello.” I reached out to shake her hand.

  She motioned for me to sit in a big, heavy, brown, leather chair in front of her desk.

  "My name is Leelah."

  You've got to be kidding.

  "Nice to meet you."

  "So, you lived in Casablanca," she smiled.

  "Yes."

  "Like the movie."

  "Ha, ha, ha."

  "You're a long way from there now, huh."

  "Ha, ha, ha."

  "Long time ago, though, wasn't it?"

  "Relatively."

  "Done anything since then?"

  Okay, here it comes. Damn it, I immediately started fiddling nervously with something on her desk. What was it? A paperweight? It was a glass ball in which the snow falls if you turn it upside down. It was a Snoopy sitting on his red house.

  "Well, I've worked in some different capacities. Nurse’s Aide. Clerking. Some yard work."

  "Anything to do with proofreading?"

  "Well, not exactly the same, but, I can learn it and…"

  "You're hired!"

  "Really?" />
  "Ha, ha, ha."

  "Hey, I can take a joke. I think you'd like working with me.”

  She paused, leaned back in her chair.

  "You know, I believe you're right. I believe you might be right about that. But aside from your lack of experience, I do have one serious concern."

  "What's that?” Was she seriously considering me?

  "Your ability to get here on time."

  "Huh?” How in the hell did she know about that?

  "Yes, you see, the reason for my concern is… well, to be frank with you, it's about that night with your car in the lake and everything."

  "Huh?” Mouth open, to the floor. A little scared but still too much in shock to react.

  "Yes, you see, given your history, I don't see how you will be able to show up on time."

  "Why?"

  "Well." She seemed a bit tongue-tied. "I really just wanted to interview you because I just had to meet you. I had to meet the person whose car went in that lake. I had to see what you would say."

  "So, you are laughing at me."

  "No, no, not at all. I'm even thinking about hiring you."

  "You're kidding."

  "No, I'm not. Tell you what. Let me think about it for a few days, okay? I'll let you know."

  She stood up and motioned me out the door.

  "Okay." I sounded dumbstruck.

  My footsteps echoed as I walked down the empty hall. The elevator seemed so slow on the way down. I spent a long time at the gold-colored drinking fountain: reluctant to leave, I suppose.

  I forgot to ask about the article, I thought on my way home. The real reason for the interview in the first place, really. The job part had mostly been a ruse. I never really thought I'd get that job. It was like playing dress up.

  I took a different way home. I crossed the bridge on 45th Street, turned left way out at the edge of town, and took the pretty way in by the lake. The narrow, two-lane road hugged it all the way home like a necklace.

  I liked this bridge better, too. It was so much more beautiful than the other one. The other bridge was old and ugly, and had an industrial look, but this one was swanky and new. Why was that? And this one was close to the mall too, and all the nice restaurants in town, like the Pioneer Inn, and Oshkosh's version of the Ritz. I had to laugh whenever I thought of that name. The other bridge was by steel mills and diners with dirty windows.

  I turned right on … what's the street, the one Ziggy lived on? High Street. High Street.

  Then left on Bowen.

  Drive about fifteen blocks down Bowen Street. How many stop lights: one? Two?

  Turn left on New York Avenue. Third house if you turn left from Bowen. 909 East New York.

  What was the matter with the yard?

  15

  I sat frozen behind the wheel. I stopped the car right in the middle of the street. Was there traffic behind me? I don't know. I couldn't move.

  The grass was two or three feet high. It was covered with wild weeds.

  Maybe I had driven down the wrong street. Maybe I was lost again. I must be completely lost.

  I didn't even bother to double-check the number or the street name. I just simply re-drove back to the Gazette office, retracing every one of my steps.

  I had done that once when I was six. I got lost, trying to walk home from an art class that was held down at the museum near the university. I thought I would walk home, because I was tired of waiting for my mom, and then when I got lost, I simply turned around and retraced my steps. If I passed something, I asked myself, "Have I seen this before?” and if yes, I continued. If no, I changed direction till it looked familiar again.

  I would do the same thing here. Except…

  Except I decided not to head back to my house again, but to go, instead, directly to Miriam's office. I would just wait there. If she were not there I would sleep in the car if I had to. I may need to be in the hospital.

  I knew what Miriam would be trying to get me to do. Think about that night. Maybe I should try.

  Funny. Madness never occurred to me back in those times, but maybe it should have. And if it were madness, was it true that remembering the party, or what happened with the car, would really help? I couldn't see how. It was just another party, a night like any other night. I drank till I blacked out, I was angry … someone tried to take the car keys out of my clenched fists.

  It’s impossible to remember what happened in a blackout. But then it’s weird too. Often the memories will just come up clear and cold and stark, as if you had never forgotten them. Huge sections will be missing. Someone will tell you something you did…

  Like that time I drank till I blacked out before. I simply had no memory whatsoever about any of it. We had all gone to county park.

  It was Ziggy’s birthday or something like that. It was summer. We brought several cases of beer and set ourselves up at these picnic tables under shady, green, wooden roofs. I think some people brought swimming suits.

  I remember starting to drink, but then I didn’t remember anything else, until Krishna and Gay told me how funny I was later on. They told me we went to my house, and we were in the blue Danish dining room, and my mom had a centerpiece on the table that was a bowl of fresh peaches. I said, “What a lovely bowl of peaches,” and took a bite out of each one. They thought that was funny. And when they told me about it, my memory of doing it came back crystal clear.

  Maybe that’s what I needed. Someone to tell me what happened. See, that’s what I mean, if I could just talk to one of them, I would know what happened.

  How did the car end up in the lake, and how is that related to what happened that night? Are they even related?

  I sat staring at Miriam’s office window and replayed what I could remember about that night.

  Something had happened that day. I remember when the party started. I remember Krishna’s brother making Long Island Iced Tea. I remember him standing over the crystal punch bowl, stirring and laughing, telling us how much alcohol there was in it. Her brother had a non-smile smile. I remember that.

  I remember how prepared Krishna had been for the party. It was weird, how prepared she had been. She had collected her whole stack of Rolling Stones albums; she had lined them up against her parent’s old-fashioned stereo. Ziggy had brought some of his records too.

  “Let’s get started,” I remember her saying. She had been anxious to start. She had seemed irritated when it took me so long to get started, and how I kept just going back into the kitchen for more drinks. I don’t think I had paid much attention to where I had placed my Beatles albums. I hadn’t even brought many of them. She had nearly everything I did, so I didn’t need to.

  I remember I had been very excited about the contest. I had been feeling perfectly confident that the Beatles would win. After all, they were the best.

  But I also remember that I had another feeling that day, an icky feeling. Something else had been bothering me. I think maybe I might have gotten two different memories completely mixed up in my mind. There they sat in the past, and since they had their existence only in the past, these memories, they were subject to none of the rules that govern physical reality.

  Why were we driving on the frozen lake? This party was in summer. And there was one more thing I couldn't remember—like, how did I get out of the car, when it went through the ice? I couldn’t remember at all the car going through the ice, not at all.

  I lay there and reclined my seat back and bravely tried to imagine it. I was frightened from my optical hallucination of the overgrown front yard, and fear can be a real motivator. So even though I was afraid to, I tried hard to see everyone's face. But when I tried, I just ended up fighting that water … that ice-cold water.

  ***

  Krishna once wore a getup to school that I had never imagined before. I don't know how to describe it. Let's see … there was a velvet, classic, black Marilyn Monroe dress, green combat boots, black fishnet tights, and those little, green GI Joe soldiers we all
played with as kids hung from her pierced ears by gold hooks she'd rigged up.

  She had looked at no one. She sat regally in her chair in the back of the classroom in this getup.

  Suddenly Mr. Brown, our social-studies teacher, walked over toward her and began to stare. He folded his arms. He seemed truly enraged suddenly—for no reason I could see—other than her odd manner of dress.

  "Krishna, you feign such indifference to the opinions of others. You come in here, you act so haughty, and yet I know it's all a facade. You dress like this …,” he gestured, helpless for words at her outfit, "to impress everyone here. You are in reality very much in need of everyone's attention, and therefore their approval. Your … attitude is a bad influence on my other students."

  There was an odd, tense moment of silence in the stricken room. I waited, with a half-smile, anticipating her response.

  Krishna rose slowly from her chair, gathering her books gracefully, steadily, all the while keeping her eye on him. She shook her long, black mess of curls as if it were her way of clearing her throat. The dangling soldier earrings held their rifles and swayed back and forth, confused as to which way to point. Then she began.

  "Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!” she said, imperiously, and after a pause, to allow the students and their teacher a moment of awe, exited the room, head held high.

  ***

  A car door slammed. Had I drifted off? It was Miriam, oh thank God.

  I jumped out of my car and startled her to death. She grabbed her heart.

  "Oh it's you! Oh my goodness, let me catch my breath."

  "I have an emergency," I fairly shouted, slamming my car door shut.

  "Okay, okay, let me unlock the office."

  It was dark now, dark all around, it didn't seem like there were enough streetlights. When the lights went on they glowed a warm orangish. It was so comforting. Like warm milk, a blanket tucked in …

  I practically pushed past her to get inside.

  "My goodness, Jane, what is it?"

  "I am having visual hallucinations now," I panted.

  "Hmmm. What are you seeing?” She sat down, gathering her materials, putting her purse away, grabbing her pen, and opening up my huge file.