The Girl of the Lake

by Bill Roorbach

  “You’re a loyal young woman,” I said.

  “You should put your hand on my back,” she said.

  I did. We kissed some more.

  After a while, she said, “Don’t you know how to open a bra?”

  “No idea.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Kali.” She reached behind her, quick gesture, and a certain tautness under her sweater was released. She had to actually put my hand on her breast, but it was my own idea after a great long while to open her shirt, my idea to kiss at her brown small nipple, to linger there, to suckle. She kneeled between my legs to allow me access and somehow in the process brought the pressure of her thighs to bear upon my pain.

  “That’s all I want,” she said.

  “Proper kisses,” I said.

  “I’m on the pill,” she said.

  My attention to her nipple deepened. She shifted her legs, shifted them again, then more so. Unbidden, very suddenly, honestly out of nowhere, I experienced my first orgasm in the presence of another human, positively geothermal in its propulsive power, a soaking mess in my trousers, great sighs and gulps of the dead kiva air, near total embarrassment except for the sudden groan of fellow feeling on Claire’s part, my face suddenly in her hands, an even deeper kiss, acceptance personified.

  “You’re so, so, so cute,” she said.

  The kiva went a shade darker, and then another, Claire and I kissing, her hands on me, and mine on her.

  JUDITH AND BABA HAD found a frog in Frijoles Creek, a robust little brook that still greened the Ancestral Pueblo Peoples’ Eden. Claire and I took an interest, leaned over them to look, trying hard not to exude sexuality, my long shirttails strategically untucked. But Father cast an all-seeing eye on his beta boy. And then Judith cast her own eye at her sister, complicated tribal stuff.

  After a while, Father and Claire packed the picnic back into the basket and cooler, and the four of us strolled single file out of the ancient village and back to the car. Antonia’s legs stuck out the open side door of the van, making us laugh—Claire had predicted where we’d find her. Quickly we swallowed the mirth: one of the legs was swollen and veined red and purply black, dotted oddly with fat beads of sweat, and Antonia was unconscious. Baba checked her pulse: irregular, as was her breathing.

  “The snake!” Judith wailed, and fell into tears.

  In the scuffed toe of Antonia’s right hiking boot, Father found the embedded fangs of the serpent. The sneaky animal had found a way to delay its wrath: Antonia’s kicking at stones had gradually worked the fangs through the leather and to her skin. Baba eased the boot off, put a finger to a pair of simple scratches. “She won’t die,” he said. “But we must hurry if we are to prevent tissue damage.” In the trunk of the car he had a doctor’s first-aid kit, made up for the Southwest and therefore complete with antivenin, a tiny hypodermic shot he administered expertly under Antonia’s swollen knee. We pulled her further into the car across the carpeted floor, covered her. I couldn’t help noticing her exposed panties: dirty pink, not white at all. Claire sat on the floorboards to be beside her, a cool hand to her sister’s brow. Racing, I stuffed the picnic in the back, slammed all the doors, and we were off.

  “Her boot saved her,” Father said, less calm. “But we’ve lost a lot of time.”

  He drove evenly out of the canyon, yet very fast, up the long inclined road to the level of the surrounding desert, where finally his cell phone worked. We met the medevac helicopter at a crossroads—unparalleled drama, at least in my life—two businesslike military EMTs loading Antonia in while giving her another shot, wrapping her in a space blanket, covering her face with an oxygen mask. Claire went along for the short flight to Albuquerque, all the passengers the helicopter could handle.

  Judith wept and wept on the slow drive down and out of the monument—she had suddenly found herself alone with virtual strangers—sobbed and demanded I sit in the back seat with her, molded herself to me, fell asleep.

  AT THE HOSPITAL WE discovered that Antonia was fine, the main problem not having been the slight exposure to rattler venom but its combination with severe dehydration and the fact (discovered in the process of treatment) that she was several months pregnant. “Gravid,” as the ER physician put it to my dad. Apparently, she had announced in her waking delirium that I had tried to “stick” her.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Impossible,” Claire said.

  “I was with them the whole time,” Judith said, catching Claire’s defensive tone.

  Antonia was asleep in her hospital bed, an I.V. tube taped to her arm.

  The doctor said all the same to Mr. Hesterly when he finally arrived from White Sands that evening, and translated the word gravid into normal English for his benefit, mentioned the accusation of sticking, added that Judith had been with us the whole time.

  “Pregnant!” Mr. Hesterly roared.

  His eye fell upon me.

  I said it again: “Not I.”

  But Mr. Hesterly leapt upon me, knocked me to the tiles, pummeled my face with efficient fists. The doctor trotted off to get Security. Claire and Judith and Baba got Mr. Hesterly off me but couldn’t really restrain him—he kicked at me through their legs, spat at me over their heads, threw punches through their arms, a study in sustained fury. Security arrived in the person of a young man in a tight uniform who went down as easily as I had, covered his face and curled up on the floor beside me. The real police came next, bop-bop with their nightsticks, and that was the end of that, Mr. Hesterly jerked out of the room in handcuffs, still cursing me, cursing my father, cursing Antonia.

  No shortage of nurses to see to my bruises.

  FATHER’S COMPUTERS WERE RETURNED a few days later, no explanation, files intact. Rumor had it that Mr. Hesterly was released from the Punta de Fleche County Jail within minutes of his incarceration, rushed away in a black car. The very next week Claire and Antonia and Judith moved with their parents to Palo Alto, California. Claire contacted me every day—emails, text messages, Facebook, paper letters, phone calls, hot Snapchats, Instagram, Skype—enormously pleased that I wrote and phoned and messaged her back, virtual kisses constant. Jeff Brick moved on to Josephina Fox, gorgeous niece of the former Mexican presidente, never a harsh word between us. Nothing more was said about Antonia’s pregnancy, and there was never a baby. Baba allowed me to meet Claire and her sisters during spring break for a nearly ski-less ski trip to Taos, during which I saw Antonia but once, Judith only twice, and was taught to make love by Claire, condominium nights.

  I’ve enrolled as premed at Johns Hopkins, Claire the same at UCLA. We’re just kids, we both realize, and though I must say I was more than willing to put a label on our relationship, she says that’s not the thing to do. So perhaps I’ll resume my beta ways, make new friends among the women of my program, while Claire takes charge of hers, alpha being alpha, and gender no barrier to the hierarchy she seeks to dominate, not anymore. She and I have a loose plan for Thanksgiving, and that’s as far ahead as I’m allowed to discuss.

  My mother died just after my Taos trip, hacked at her hair once more, hacked at her breast, my uncle informs us, and finally flew to heaven. Baba says, “Oh, we knew it was coming.” But of course that’s no comfort, and wrong: I always thought I’d see her again.

  The Fall

  THEY’D DRIVEN WHERE UNCLE Bud had shown them on his tattered maps—west on a long unmarked logging road deep into the woods, through two unattended paper-company gates, then north on a faint jeep trail, once much used, no longer. They were to look for a particular boulder. And the pickup truck did fine, as her uncle had said it would, even with no four-wheel drive, Timothy confidently pulling the shift lever and kicking at the heavy clutch, bounding them upward through the deep ruts and grassy sections and singing—Timothy singing!—except Jean knew him just well enough after two years to know that the singing meant he was anxious.

  Jean was tense, too. “Where do you think we’ll pitch camp?” she said. An
d, “I really do hope I can manage that pack—you said thirty-five pounds but it’s forty-six now and I’m quite trepidatious about my back, sweetie. It’s hurting now, just from packing.”

  Timothy glanced over coldly, said, “She’s trepidatious.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “You’re strong enough to carry me, for Christ’s sake.” And he bumped over a great log submerged in the mud of the old road, very slowly, one mile an hour, said a soulful “fuck.”

  Which made her laugh. She clamped down on her lower lip with her perfect teeth—he always said she had perfect teeth, but with a kind of disdain, seeming to hate even what he liked about her. He also said she talked too much, which of course led to fights. But she did chatter at times. Something she ought to be able to prevent on a vacation week in the warm August woods and by force of will did: she didn’t say another word.

  Pretty soon—before noon, just as planned—they were at the unmistakable rock Uncle Bud had described, mossy and dark under old trees that Timothy said were hemlocks. He parked the truck and turned off the motor leaving silence. They had wanted remote, and this was remote, all right, Jean’s idea, actually, she who’d snorted when Timothy suggested two weeks with his folks and his brothers on Cape Cod—again—after what had happened last August, dismal visit. And then Christmas, my God, was he demented? Two weeks in that paradise of stifled resentments and overbaked competition. But he’d gone for this. He had. Jean had to hand it to herself. She’d known him two years and had come to handle him passably well.

  They had arrived so she talked: “I’m just saying forty-six pounds seems like a lot of pack for me.” Jean was petite—especially small compared to Timothy (who didn’t like to be called Tim and certainly not Timmy). One hundred five pounds, five foot two, eyes of blue, twenty-five years old, not the greatest beauty in the world, in her own estimation. Timothy was her giant bear, gruff, rational, reserved, a stark contrast to her more excitable (and, in her opinion, more exciting) nature. He said nothing, just pulled her pack and his easily from the back of the truck, her uncle’s truck, old wrecks, uncle and car, both of them. Uncle Bud in his cups last night had confided to her amusingly that he thought Timothy a stiff and a cold fish, though he was glad to meet him: now he could warn her off him. Wasn’t the boy a tad bit too much like her father, speaking of stiffs? Speaking of emotional deserts? Uncle Bud’s laugh was so infectious, even with his being so nasty. Wouldn’t she do well to wait to get married? “Thirty is even too young, but at least, I beg of you, wait till then,” he’d said. “I’ll be your best man. I’ll give you away! Find someone who’s not so angry.” They laughed and laughed until Timothy came into the big rustic room from one of many constipated visits to Uncle Bud’s nice outhouse, and even then they could not stop laughing. Timothy, for his part, did not crack a smile and did not ask what was funny. She’d never thought of her father as angry before, and so that had given her something to think about in the night.

  At the parking spot in the deep woods, Timothy put his hands on Jean’s shoulders, pulled her up out of her reverie, as he so loved to do, said, “We’ll drink up that gallon of water in your pack there and that weighs eight pounds alone.” He’d said this before ten times. He said, “We’ll eat down the food.” Ten times. He said, “And every day it’ll weigh less. You’ll be fine.”

  “Well, I’m worried about your pack, too.”

  He didn’t answer but hefted her pack and held it to her back, let her find the straps. He wriggled into his own without help, a staggering seventy-four pounds, way too heavy. But he found his balance as she had found hers and they hiked into the woods on the faint trail that would take them up Talon Ridge to Independence the back way, Uncle Bud’s way. For the first twenty minutes her thoughts were all ajumble and slightly furious—Timothy had talked her into too much weight. And too much weight for himself, too, always showing off. And no sign at all that he felt this was an especially romantic trip. But it was. Their relationship was the whole idea. And that you didn’t always have to be off with your brother someplace, or some replacement brother, doing manly things, making fun of everything on the planet, including Jean, for sport.

  Was that what her beautiful uncle meant by angry?

  Jean and Timothy, hikers now, passed through thickest woods, mossy earth, an untouched old forest that loomed over a recent clear-cut so that there was a view out at times, to the hills south, and to Mt. Abraham (she thought she recognized, but said nothing, not to invite derision in case she was wrong), all in a balmy updraft gusting at times to wind. Her pack felt light, actually. Her pack felt fine, to tell the truth. No problem walking. Timothy pushed her to greater heights, and that was a good thing. They climbed, mostly: switchbacks, lichens, boulders right and left, warbler song, chickadees, wood peewees—what a place Uncle Bud knew about! Timothy hadn’t said two words.

  “How’s your pack?” Jean called forward.

  “Heavy,” Timothy said. He could say just the one word heavy in such an ironic way that it meant everything about the little argument they’d had last night and the bigger one this morning, and about all her complaining, and yet how good she suddenly felt, even climbing up the big rocks here. Looming in the woods above them was a gargantuan boulder, yellow where all the rock around them was gray, a glacial erratic, Jean knew from a half-forgotten geology class, a mammoth presence, dragged by the ancient glacier all the way from Vermont, likely, cracked magnificently along the way, fallen into two pieces you wanted to push back together. “That is a glacial erratic,” Jean called forward. Timothy said nothing, hiked on, though she knew he had heard her by the brief and infinitesimal tightening of his neck.

  Well, altogether she had preferred art history in any case: Bonnard, Kandinsky, Cézanne, Max Planck, Otto someone, Courbet, Delacroix, Manet: why were they all men? Someone had complained and Professor Della Sesso had agreed, stopped his own class, rewritten his own syllabus in front of them, come back the next week with slides from Käthe Kolwitz, Vanessa Bell, Suzanne Valadon, Mary Cassatt, Romaine Brooks, Natalia Goncharova. He’d stopped the class! Of course it was all planned, to make his point, a great point about the place of women not so much in art but in art history. He was a beautiful man. Jean missed her college days. Her publishing job was basically secretarial, second assistant to the curator of the image bank at Time Warner. At least it was about art.

  They stopped a little higher, sat on a kind of wide shelf of cool, dry granite, pulled the top layer out of Jean’s pack, ate a lunch of chicken roll-ups she’d made this morning, two carrots each (Timothy had peeled them unnecessarily, making fun of Uncle Bud’s garden—its very existence when there were grocery stores), and then two big pieces of the carrot cake she’d made for Uncle Bud—carrots were the theme—a quart of water between them (which would be altogether nearly three pounds less for her to carry).

  “Here’s to Drunkel Bud,” Timothy said.

  Then he was silent, merely ate. He was often silent. He was twenty-five, too. Jean knew he was thinking and not to interrupt. He’d listen if she said something—but if she did talk, then he wouldn’t say whatever was coming, whatever bit of conversation he was brewing up—this was the silence before the talk, and she loved to hear him talk, loved him, in fact, from the bottom of her shoes, despite what Uncle Bud had said, late (Timothy already reading in bed), poor, unshaven Uncle Bud slurring his whispered words, eyes liquid, but so full of warmest caring and gentle humor: “You’ll marry him and stay with him like your mother stays with your fucked-up father, even not loving him, thirty years to realize it’s so, yes, Jean-Jean, it’s so for her as for you, and she still can’t shake him, just lies down for him, bed of nails. Nothing can stop you, I know. No, no, I know it’s true, Jean-Jean. No, no, I’m right, no use to argue: it’s misery you’re courting, since that’s all you’ve known.”

  Jameson Irish whiskey speaking.

  There in the forest, waiting for Timothy to speak, Jean finished her sandwich a
nd repeated to herself what she had whispered back to Uncle Bud (who had finally let her talk, listened unbelieving): she loved Timothy and felt just wonderful about him. And it was true—she could hardly remember what they’d argued about last night when she’d come to bed, what they’d argued about this morning (or ever, for that matter), and wanted to be his wife.

  Suddenly Timothy spoke: “It’s hard to imagine,” he said. “Hard to think of ourselves like, fifty years old, like Uncle Bud, huh, isn’t it? That such a thing could happen? I mean, what if it’s just a kind of joke they play on younger people, just to make ’em feel bad—right?—like, they know goddamn well that we’re going to be always just like this, more or less like this—I mean, there are young people, which is one unchanging species, and then there are old people, which is another—and the old-people species have as a kind of group joke that they pretend it’s all one-in-the-same species—that we young ones are on a long trip that leads to their sorry-ass state.”

  Jean laughed for him and he smiled and that melted Jean, that very handsome smile. She looked in his eyes and said, “But, Herr Doktor, I distinctly remember being younger. I’m not sure you’ve included all the evidence here.” Two years and they had this whole kind of private vaudeville act together, where she played graduate student and he played crazy brilliant professor. She really, really wanted to go to grad school, art history, to follow her favorite prof to his new position in Paris—he’d emailed her twice inviting her to apply—but that would have to wait.

  “Well, right—but we’re the kind that go from zero to about twenty-six and just hover there, always almost twenty-six, like someone in a book—always the same age every time you read it. We’re the somewhere-under-twenty-six-always species.”

  “What about a book where the characters grow old and die? I can name a few.”

  “Written by the Olds! Self-serving tripe! What on earth garbage have you been reading?” Even being funny he sounded harsh, like the joke was on her.