At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  Annie felt a stirring down beneath her ribs. It was not a good feeling. “All right, then,” she said to Mrs. Larsen, “I’d better be going.”

  “Oh, must you?”

  “I’m afraid so.” She gave Mrs. Larsen a quick hug and kiss, then waved good-bye from the landing. She glanced once again at the lady preacher, who was still talking. “Don’t let the god of this age distort your vision. Ask the Lord to let you see the truth.”

  She went down the stairs, and the lady preacher’s voice faded. Poor Mrs. Larsen. Five minutes from now she’d have forgotten Annie had even been there. She wondered what it would be like to walk a while in Mrs. Larsen’s shoes. Her parents had come to Ballard from Norway when she was five. “Have you ever been back?” she had asked her once.

  “No,” Mrs. Larsen had said, her eyes unfocused as she tried to recall that place.

  It had struck Annie how sad it was to lose sight of your home, and in spite of her resolve, she heard the preacher woman’s voice echo again.

  She went back downstairs, then knocked on the door of the apartment next door to her own, and after a minute the door opened.

  “Annie!” Adrienne smiled with blinding welcome, and Annie’s heart lifted, as always.

  “Here you go, darling,” she said, handing Adrienne the key to her front door.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Adrienne jumped up and down. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

  Annie shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Adrienne! I thought you had more faith in me.”

  Adrienne grinned. Her braces were purple this week. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked, an expression of desperate hope on her face. “My mom said I was imposing.”

  Annie smiled and shook her head. “Are you kidding? It’s an honor to have my humble abode used for your thirteenth birthday party. Just don’t burn it down.”

  “You’re the best, Annie.” Adrienne threw her arms around Annie, and Annie hugged her back, her heart giving a twist. She would miss Adrienne, and for just a moment it seemed like reason enough to stay.

  She patted the freckled cheek, like her own in that respect. In fact, she realized again, Adrienne looked enough like her to be her daughter. They had the same red hair, the same upturned nose and tilted eyes, though Annie’s were gold-speckled green and Adrienne’s brown. “Cat eyes,” Ricky Truelove had teased her. She picked up her suitcase, then headed down the stairs, pushing thoughts of Sam’s younger brother back where they belonged.

  “Your present’s on the kitchen table,” she called back to Adrienne. “Don’t open it till tomorrow.”

  “I promise,” Adrienne called after her.

  “Right! You’ll be up there before I’m out of the building,” Annie called back. The three packages on her kitchen table contained a set of twelve lip glosses in shades of pink and orange, a silver bracelet with a large letter A dangling from the catch, and a crazily striped scarf she had knitted herself. All right, she had gotten a little carried away. She was just sorry she wouldn’t be here for the party. She could have made the cake and decorated the apartment. She thought about balloons and streamers for a minute before she took herself to task. Adrienne was somebody else’s child. Not hers.

  She thought about Adrienne’s life, shuttling back and forth between two rooms, two parents, two lives. It couldn’t be easy, but then no one’s life was. Everyone carried their heartache, some on the outside where it showed and others more privately.

  She drove to the airport, left her car in long-term parking, then got on the plane to California. She sipped coffee, ate the Snickers bar for breakfast, doing her best to peel away the wrapper, which had become one with the caramel and chocolate, then took out her laptop and wrote up some questions for the next interview she would do with the mother of two autistic sons. She tried to imagine what it would be like to look at their closed faces and know you could never enter in. She did not trivialize her pain enough to believe that she understood it, but she had an idea. She remembered that feeling of being shut out, the hopelessness of appeal.

  She thought about the work she had chosen and wondered why she did it. Not just the nights she worked through in yet another cheap motel, the gallons of coffee she’d drunk, the miles she’d logged in airplanes and rented cars. But the work itself. The dark tunnels she traveled. The grimy, gritty places she explored and the lonely souls she found there, whose stories she tried to tell with grace and compassion. This was not what she had imagined herself doing. She had pictured herself writing lovely things. Pure, beautiful works, full of virtue and grace. Instead, she had written about a week of life in a migrant worker’s camp; about riding in the back of a cramped van with illegal Mexican immigrants; about shadowing a Seattle police vice officer for a week and then telling of the toll it took on her mind, her health, her family; recounting the story of the first murder in a small island town in Washington and following its ripples of pain.

  Perhaps these stories were not lovely, but they were true, and she wove them the same way she had once woven tapestries, stretching the warp of truth tight so the pattern could emerge upon it. She had not even known there were such stories when she had been dreaming her dreams, much less that they would become her dwelling place, a misty half world that would become her native land. But there were people who lived there, and their stories deserved to be told, their pain honored. They deserved a witness, but she had not imagined herself as their voice. She had imagined herself dwelling in the kingdom of light, not among the shadows. Oh my, but she had been idealistic, and she gave a wry smile at the way life dealt with ideals, the effect of reality on dreams. She shook her head and ignored the twist in her stomach that hadn’t left her since the day before. Since five years before. She tried not to think about the ache that said she was out of sync. Out of place. That she had missed something important. That she was not in her native land, after all, no matter how natural this one might seem.

  The plane landed. She got out of her seat, took down her overnight bag from the overhead compartment, and stepped outside. The air was balmy and warm. Palm trees lined the airport driveway. She raised her arm, and a cab drove up beside her and stopped.

  “Two hundred two West First Street,” she told the driver after settling in the backseat. He was Indian or Pakistani, she guessed by his dress and the name on the license hanging from the visor. He nodded wordlessly and pulled away from the curb.

  Los Angeles was buzzing and bright, nothing like the damp gloom she’d left in Seattle. She rolled down the window to let the hot wind sweep her face, but the traffic sounds were loud, and the air smelled like exhaust. She rolled it back up again. They snaked through a maze of freeways. Starting. Stopping. Starting again. She checked her watch. She was cutting it close, but she would make it. She put her anxiety aside and looked out the window.

  Southern California was dry and dusty. And not beautiful, at least not anywhere near here. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire lined the freeway. The concrete walls of the buttresses were covered with swirls of graffiti and boldly colored artwork. Well, there were stories here. That much was obvious. Maybe not pretty stories, but then, whose really were?

  The cab turned off the freeway, and after a few more turns they were downtown beneath a maze of concrete high-rises. The sidewalks were clotted with businessmen and women and crowds of tourists with camera necklaces, the corners adorned with palm trees looking stressed and out of place, and everywhere cars and haze.

  The cab pulled to the curb and stopped. She paid and asked for a receipt. He grumbled, scribbled it out, then roared away as soon as she was out and the door was shut. She stood there for a moment looking around her. There was nothing familiar here. Nothing that moved her or caught at her heart. She could live here. She entered the lobby of the Times building, grateful to be out of the smog and heat, and checked her watch. She had time to freshen up.

  She found the rest room as well as her lipstick and hairpins, but not without emptying her
entire purse onto the washroom counter. She colored her lips with the cinnamon lipstick, rubbed a tiny dab onto each cheek, dashed a little mascara across her lashes, combed her hair and wound it up again, and looked a sight better without the yellow pencils. She could hear Ricky Truelove’s voice taunting her in that long ago childhood. Better be dead than red on the head! Better be dead than red on the head! She smiled, thinking of her brother-in-law, as close to a pesky little brother as she would have in this life. Mean as a snake and wild as a jackrabbit, and she would love him until the day she died. Why didn’t she tell him? She shook her head, gathered up her things, and arrived in Max Kroll’s office five minutes early.

  She announced her arrival to the receptionist, accepted her offer to stow the suitcase, then sat down to wait. She occupied her mind with a few story ideas she’d been rolling around. It never paid to let things sit in neutral for very long. The moss started to grow and things took root. She rummaged around in her purse for notebook and pencil, flipped past other notes, located a blank page, and wrote quickly before she lost her train of thought.

  She was interrupted by the clearing of a throat.

  “Annie.”

  She looked up. The managing editor had come out to greet her himself. He was around fifty, paunchy, with a plummy voice, sharp eyes, and brows that looked like old toothbrushes, wiry and white. They had met only once before—at the Washington Press Club dinner before the Scripps Howard Awards. One of which had gone to her. She still felt astounded to realize that. She had listened in stunned disbelief as the award had been announced. “The prize for feature writing is awarded to Annie Ruth Dalton of The Seattle Times for her intimate, beautifully written stories of American life.” Max Kroll had introduced himself to her at that dinner and followed up a few months later with a note expressing admiration for her work and an invitaion to visit the Times.

  Kroll was watching her now, looking amused. She wondered how long he had been standing there waiting for her to look up.

  “Good to see you again,” she said, easily pulling out the greeting from the collection of conversation starters she carried along with her spare disks and pencils.

  “You, too,” he said. “Never take a day off, I see.” Glancing at her notebook.

  “Not if I can help it.” She shoved it into her bag.

  “Bad for you. You’ll drop dead one day.”

  She felt a grim shock at his words, though she had long ago learned to let those careless cruelties slide off. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand. How could they? “We all will,” she said softly, and followed him into his office.

  ****

  “This is the Features Department,” Max Kroll announced. It was the last stop on their tour. Annie stood at the doorway and stared as if she were on hallowed ground. But actually now that she gave it a good look, it was just like any other newspaper room. Bigger, maybe, but still just a crowded mess of desks and computers, snaking cords, and busy people. There was the electronic chirping of telephones, the low din of noise, the hum of energy common to any newspaper. But this wasn’t just any newspaper, she reminded herself. It was the Los Angeles Times, one of the top four newspapers in the country. And they wanted her. That fact had finally been stated in the conversation she and Max Kroll had just concluded.

  “This will be your desk,” Kroll said, leading her toward a metal desk.

  Annie smiled. She had not told him yes, but she felt a flush of pleasure at being courted so determinedly.

  “The woman you’ll be replacing is on assignment in Mexico, and her actual departure date isn’t for another month or so, but we can find something for you to do in the meantime if you want to start sooner.”

  She sat down at the desk and fingered the keyboard of the new computer. Tried to imagine what it would be like to be anchored in one place. To put down some roots, to put forth leaf and perhaps fruit.

  “Is this the famous Annie Dalton?” The voice hit her ears before her eyes saw the body. She bristled a little and turned.

  “Jason Niles,” the man said, smiling and extending his hand. There was no mockery on his face, only pleasant interest.

  Ah. Her boss-to-be, who had no reason to be mocking the likes of her. He had made a big mark of his own, writing everything from hard news to soft features. He had worked for the Associated Press and had finally won a Pulitzer a few years back for his reporting on 9/11. She had read those pieces herself. They were incisive, eloquent, and moving without being maudlin. So he had decided to cash in his chips and stay put for a while, as well. She gave him a sharp look, interested to put a person with the name. He was tall, six two or three, slim and tanned. He looked to be in his early forties with blond hair thinning a little at the sides.

  “Annie Dalton,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand, “but you already know that.”

  “I’ll leave you in Jason’s capable hands,” Max Kroll said. “He’ll give you the details on dinner tonight.” They said their good-byes; Max Kroll left.

  Jason Niles took her on a tour of the Features Department. She met a parade of people whose names she was sure she would sort out eventually.

  He took her out to lunch at a Japanese restaurant not far from the paper. She wasn’t hungry, but she pretended to eat, picking at her food, listening attentively to his stories, making a comment from time to time. She steered the conversation to her stories, her education, keeping it well away from dangerous personal ground. It came near only once.

  “I enjoy hearing your accent,” Jason said. “May I ask where you’re from?”

  “North Carolina,” she said. “The western part, near the Tennessee border, where the Blue Ridge meets the Great Smoky Mountains.”

  “Near Asheville?” he asked

  “That’s right,” she said and smiled.

  “I visited there a time or two. It’s beautiful country.”

  “It’s the most breathtaking place on earth,” she said, and then she felt embarrassed. “How about you?” she asked quickly. “Where are you from?”

  “San Fernando Valley, born and raised. Not breathtaking.”

  She smiled. “Did you go to college here, too?” she asked, and they were off again, back on safer ground of jobs and schools.

  Finally he escorted her back to Max Kroll’s office so she could get her suitcase and take a cab to her hotel. A hot shower sounded good. And getting out of her grown-up shoes. “I’ll expect a lot from you,” he said, “but I’m sure you can deliver. Your work is excellent.”

  She felt a flush of pleasure at his praise. “Thank you. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

  “Yes. It is.” He gave her another one of his pleasant looks, and she wondered if there was more to him. There must be. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel for dinner at seven,” he said.

  “I’ll be waiting in the lobby.”

  He nodded, lifted a hand in good-bye, and the elevator doors closed.

  She picked up her suitcase and called for a cab to take her to the hotel, then waited outside for it to arrive. The traffic surged by, and the buildings rose up around her like tall columns of rock, people boxes, and she tried to think how many humans were represented by each glass square. She tried to look beyond the clutter of buildings toward the mountains she knew ringed the city, but she could not see them. She tried to imagine herself making a life here. She could, she told herself. She could.

  ****

  The hotel was a high-rise in the heart of downtown. She could look from her window and see the civic center, the Staples Center, a couple of other hotels, and countless office towers. She saw cars darting forth and surging back, ant people crawling along the sidewalk. She turned around and inspected the room. It was nice. Well, that hardly described it. The walls were a lovely glowing gold, the artwork tasteful, and the brown leather chairs looked like the real thing. There were fresh flowers and a bowl of fruit on the table. She thought of the rooms the Seattle paper rented for her when she went out of town to cover a story. Then it was
Motel 6 or Super 8 all the way. Well, la-di-da, she thought, smiling, and she suddenly remembered the way Sam had courted her. So gallant and chivalrous, and she remembered him taking her to the ridge behind The Inn at Smoky Hollow and holding her hand on the night he proposed.

  “I want to give you a beautiful life,” he’d said. “I want to make sure nothing ever hurts you.” And he had kissed her hand and put his grandmother’s diamond ring on her finger. They had both been foolish to believe that was possible, hadn’t they?

  She thought of what he had said when he had asked her to come to The Inn that first year and how the words had rung in her ears even after she had said she would. Come home, he had said. Let me take care of you. Let me fix it, he might just as well have said.

  Her mouth suddenly dry, she went to the minibar and took out a diet soda, then unpacked her suitcase. The dress she had brought was gold silk. It would need to be ironed. She took off her suit and hung it up, put on the thick terrycloth robe the hotel had hung in the closet for her, then lay down for a few minutes. She closed her eyes, determined to rest, but after a while she realized she was scrunching them shut and giving herself a headache. She sat up, tired but resigned that she would not relax enough to sleep.

  She hesitated a moment before digging out her address book and looking up her sister’s telephone number. She dialed. Her brother-in-law’s bass voice boomed from the answering machine, and she felt a burst of relief that she would not have to speak to him in person. At least not right now. She left a message, the hotel’s telephone number, her room extension.

  “I hope I can see you tomorrow,” she said, “before I go back to Seattle.”

  She got up and paced the room. She felt odd. Excited but bored. Tense but tired. She thought about taking a hot bath but decided to take a walk instead. The quietness of the room was working on her nerves. The hotel was soundproof, and even though there were hundreds of souls around her, she could hear nothing but the muffled opening and closing of a door now and then.