The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  Duncan Avery is dead, he said.

  I know. It’s terrible.

  It should’ve been me.

  It doesn’t work like that, I said. If you are to blame for his death then we are all to blame. For all of them.

  How?

  Every decision can be traced forward to some tragedy. You know this. The world doesn’t end at our fingertips. We affect the world every moment.

  Fred turned to me and put his lips against my ear.

  I can’t shake it, he said.

  You will. You have to.

  Something will happen. Something good.

  We will make it happen.

  I hope so, he said. I . . . don’t feel alive.

  I wrapped myself around him, pressing us together.

  You are alive, I said. You are here with me. And I am so grateful for that. If it had been you . . . I’m happy it wasn’t you.

  It feels wrong, he said. To be happy that it wasn’t me. It feels wrong to be alive.

  * * *

  The next morning Fred got up early and burned all of his writing, his novels, everything, in the fireplace. I was awakened by the smell, and when I came in the living room he stood in his bathrobe before the fire as the flames roared up the chimney. The heat was incredible, and Fred’s body was slick with sweat, his eyes bloodshot. Outside charred paper and flaming bits of pages fell like snowfall, catching on the trees, falling in the yard, drifting out over the lake.

  Fred! What are you doing?

  He tossed in a fat stack of paper and the fire whooshed and sparkled.

  I never had a real story to tell, he said. Until now.

  He walked over to me and kissed me on the forehead.

  I’m fine, he said. It’s over.

  Then Fred showered, shaved, put on a suit, and went into his Burlington office.

  * * *

  A few weeks later his father Ham came buzzing low over the trees in his seaplane, looking for a place to land. Within the year we would be living on the Irish coast, an outpost at the end of the world.

  * * *

  The afternoon after the incident in the school bathroom I met my sister Beatrice at her car for a ride home like usual. Her face was sullen, inert, in a sort of frozen state, and it was so striking that I was scared to speak and we drove home in complete silence. When we pulled into the driveway, Beatrice asked me to wait a moment, still holding the wheel, staring through the windshield at the garage door. Finally she turned to me and in her face, just for a second, I saw an expression of such sorrow that I had never seen up to that point in my life. It was a look of mourning, as if she had been abandoned here, alone. Then covering her face with her hands she burst into tears. Beatrice leaned over and I held her as she sobbed in my arms, but she would not say what had happened to her.

  That evening at dinner she had to be asked twice to pass anything and she stirred her pasta around her plate. Her presence made us all feel clumsy and irritated.

  What on earth is the matter with you? my mother said with a note of exasperation in her voice. Will you please straighten up?

  Go to hell, Beatrice said, her face calm. All of you can go to hell.

  * * *

  The next morning at swim practice my teammates doggedly stripped down to their suits, staggered out onto the deck, cursing the cold tiles, the cold water, the coming hour and a half of toil. I had slept little, but everything seemed in sharp focus, the fluorescent lights casting us all in stark relief, standing at the pool edge, our sleepy coach scratching a workout on a portable blackboard. The other girls huddled together, arms crossed, sullen-faced, shivering. I flung myself into the air and attacked the water. Our coach always worked us hard but I went at the timed sets like a frantic machine, coming in way under the interval, lapping the other swimmers in my lane, slapping at their feet so they would get out of the way and if they didn’t I swam over them. At the end of the last set I was panting like some kind of hysterical animal, my chest heaving, my skin blooming with flowers of blood, and my arms felt hard as iron. My coach knelt by the pool in his flip-flops, his jeans wet to the knees, and gave me a small pat on the shoulder. Everyone else was out of the pool, standing there, looking at me. My goggles were fogged but it didn’t matter; they looked like ghosts on the edge of a deep wood. I was fifteen years old.

  I went down and pushed off the wall and dolphin-kicked halfway across the pool and exploded into butterfly, tearing through a two hundred. I finished hard into the wall and immediately vaulted out of the pool as I could feel my muscles about to seize. I was crawling on all fours on the tile in a world of smoke. On the deck there was a white bucket with a twenty-dollar bill in the bottom. If you filled the bucket you got the money. I grabbed the rim with both hands and heaved everything I had. My body was convulsing, and I buckled over into a fetal position, my bladder spasmodically releasing. I covered my face with my hands and wailed. An indoor pool is a world of echoes, and the sound was deafening. I didn’t care about anything.

  You see that? my coach said.

  He was standing over me, addressing the rest of the team.

  That’s what it takes, he said. To win. That is what’s required.

  * * *

  Until now I have never told anyone other than Fred the story of what happened to my sister, or how her life seemed to spiral away from her that day. Her last year of high school was a calamity of conflict, long hours of shouting at my parents, a sudden change of friends, quitting the field hockey team, staying out all night. Her face became hard, her voice cold and sarcastic, and she bickered with me over nothing at all. For so many years all I wanted was to be more like her. All my young life I had lived happily in her shadow. And then she drifted away to a place I couldn’t find. It was like a great light had gone out, and as I moved into adulthood the world seemed cast with a silver glow, rippling like water, something always slipping furtively away just out of the corner of my eye.

  Beatrice began bartending in ski towns and waiting tables at summer resorts, and rarely called our parents, who became like lost birds, wandering around the house in a daze, unable to comprehend what they had done.

  * * *

  Two years after she left home, when Beatrice was twenty, she called my mother one night, laughing hysterically into the phone, to tell her she was pregnant. It was well after midnight, and I heard the strident tone in my mother’s voice in the kitchen. I crept out of my bed and watched her shout into the phone from the darkened doorway, the echo of my sister’s tinny laughter filling the room.

  We didn’t hear from her until four months later. She called late at night again, and this time I answered the phone. She kept pausing to talk to someone else who was there with her. In the background I could hear music and shouting, the clink of glasses.

  You all should be happy, Beatrice said. You all got your way.

  What do you mean? I said.

  The baby’s gone, she said. Done.

  What? How?

  Don’t be an idiot, Elly, she said. I lost the baby. Had a fucking miscarriage.

  She covered the phone for a moment and I could hear her arguing with someone.

  Do you even know what that is? she said.

  Yes, I said.

  You don’t ever want it, she said. I wouldn’t wish that shit . . . You don’t want it.

  There was a crack in her voice and she covered the phone again.

  Beatrice?

  A muffled sob. A woman screamed with joy in the background.

  Yeah.

  Are you okay?

  Oh . . . fuck, Elly. Listen. I gotta go.

  * * *

  Heartbreak is often described in stories as something like getting hit in the chest with a heavy object, a kind of blunt trauma of the heart. For me it is more like the furtive scraping of a branch, as if someone were digging around my ribs, poking about looking for something soft to stab. A finger rattling around my spine, unexpected but always present, like a dry cough. Its touch is dead-dry and without feeling, li
ke something without a human concern, the passionless expressions of lizards and stone.

  * * *

  The man who died in Fred’s place fell from the eighty-sixth floor of the World Trade Center. Duncan Avery clung to the smashed window frame with a group of people until the heat became too intense. He spoke with his wife on his cell phone just before he fell. He told her that he was sorry but that he had to let go.

  The Averys lived in Jersey City with their three small children. His wife, Marie, was a pediatric nurse who one Christmas gave us a baby blanket she’d knitted, the pattern a pale green shamrock on a field of blue. It was shaped like a lopsided hourglass. Fred had it folded neatly in an old seaman’s chest. Marie told Fred she hoped that it would bring us luck, that it would bring us healthy children.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The builders came in first, skulking off the street, the rain running off their clothes. They spread out around the room, a couple by the fire, a few others drawing up to the bar. Fred poured them lagers and they sat in their squinty groups, sipping their beer and muttering in Irish. We had a half hour till closing and we didn’t have any other customers. Fred went back to reading while I went in the kitchen and made up a couple of turkey and cucumber sandwiches. I had an hour of Patty Griffin in the jukebox, the entire Flaming Red album, and in the kitchen I heard the steady thump and swing of “Tony” warming up as the door opened again, the sound of rain and the sea, then silence again save for the music.

  When I came into the main room there were two men in ferry gear, one of them Eamon Corrigan, standing inside the door, shaking off their wet jackets. Fred set his book down and stood behind the bar, smiling gamely, waiting for drink orders. I set the sandwiches on the bar.

  What’ll it be, gents? Fred said.

  The Corrigans looked around for a moment, taking in the surroundings. I put my hand on Fred’s arm.

  Hey, I said to him, I think we ought to—

  One of the builders at the bar reached over and flipped the plate of sandwiches across the room, shattering it against the wall.

  What the fuck? Fred said.

  I had an idea that maybe we could back out into the kitchen, lock the door, escape into the back alley. Eamon Corrigan stepped forward, his survival suit crinkling. He had that wide, gap-toothed Corrigan smile of a child, his black hair wet against his forehead.

  What? Fred said. What is it?

  Fred’s chest was heaving, his breath coming fast. Eamon muttered in Irish, and a builder at the front door flipped the open sign around, and turned off the main room lights. The only light came from out of the kitchen and Fred’s reading lamp behind the bar. The builders gathered around us.

  What do you want? Fred said.

  The door opened with a whoosh of air and water, and Conchur stooped under the doorframe. Water came off his oilskin trench coat in sheets, and he took off his hat and scratched his head with a distracted air, as if he had just come in for a beer. When he saw me he gave me a nod and an almost apologetic expression.

  You left your big anchor at home, mate, Eamon said. Now you are fucked!

  Then Conchur came across the room and Fred and I stepped back, but Conchur shot a hand over the bar and had Fred by the shirtfront. I grabbed Fred’s arm but Conchur yanked him forward, dragging both of us across the bar. A couple builders peeled me off my husband, pinning my hands behind me.

  Conchur held Fred at arm’s length, the entire front of Fred’s T-shirt balled in his fist.

  Get off me!

  Fred twisted and wrestled with Conchur’s wrist.

  I’ll call the fucking police!

  Fred took a long, looping swing at Conchur, clipping him on the chin. The builders squeezed my arms tighter.

  ’E wants a bit, does ’e? one of the builders said.

  Fuckin’ blow-in, Eamon Corrigan said. You and the blind man, a couple of goat-fuckers, are ye?

  I’m gonna call the guard! Fred yelled, his face wild with fear.

  Eamon stepped behind Fred and swatted him across the back of his head.

  You stupid fuckin’ Yank. We are the guard!

  Stop! I screamed. Please!

  Conchur grinned at my husband, gathering more of his shirt into his hand, getting him tight, and drew a fist back by his ear.

  You ready for this, mate?

  I remember the sound of the rain drumming on the windows and Patty Griffin singing, the sour beer smell of the pub, how the light from the docks outside glistened on the yellow survival suits of the Corrigans.

  Then Conchur hit Fred square in the face, crunching his nose, and my husband groaned and tried to turn away, putting up his forearms as Conchur began to repeatedly punch him, even and steady like a piston, hitting Fred in the eye, the forehead, the temple, the ear. He dropped him to the floor and Fred curled up, trying to protect his face. I began to struggle with the builders holding me. I probably outweighed both of them, but they had hard, cruel hands, practiced to violence, and they cranked my wrists behind my back until I was on my knees, crying out in pain. A shadow hurried by the front windows. There were people just outside, going on about their business.

  I began screaming. Conchur knelt and straddled Fred, pinning his arms down with his knees. Fred’s face was a smear of blood and saliva, his cheeks and forehead blotchy red and swelling. Conchur began to smack him hard with his open palm, side to side. Fred was crying as he turned his face away from the blows, an awkward gasping sound I had never heard my husband make before. He looked at me for a moment, and in his eyes I saw his anger and frustration, and behind that, something larger and more hurtful to us both.

  * * *

  When they left I crouched on the floor cradling his head as he covered his face and wept. After a while he stopped and I looked at his face, lightly touching the swollen parts, and he asked me if it was bad and I said no, it wasn’t so bad. He asked me if I was okay and I said I was fine. Then he said he didn’t want me to look at him anymore, so I turned away.

  We locked up and went upstairs. I stood outside the bathroom as he washed his face, not knowing what else to do. I heard running water, then the small grunts and gasps as he dressed his wounds. I thought of him standing at the sink in his underwear, fingers of dried blood matted in his chest hair, his eyes in the mirror. What was he thinking, what did he see there? I would never know.

  Are you okay? I said through the door. Can I help?

  No, he said. Please, let’s not talk about it.

  Okay. I’ll be in the room.

  I lay in bed in the darkened room, and after a long time Fred came out, holding a damp towel full of ice to his face. He stood there a moment, his silhouette against the hall light.

  Do you want me to turn on the lamp? I said.

  No, he said.

  He got into bed and arranged himself carefully on his back, still holding the ice to his face. I moved over to him and he put his arm around me and I rested my cheek on his chest. Fred gave my back three little pats, like he always did.

  What are we going to do? I said.

  Nothing, he said. Let’s just sleep.

  * * *

  The next day when Fred went down to open up the bar I sat at his desk and watched the fog burn off Baltimore harbor, the moored boats emerging one by one like returning sentinels. On the computer was a list of dozens of folders containing hundreds of files with fragments of language, poetry, soliloquies, titles, names, locations, long screeds about religion, culture. I clicked a couple.

  You have no idea what loneliness is. Consider the Galápagos tortoise, June of 1937. A tortoise nosing its way around the island falls into a deep rocky crevice, getting wedged facedown. Moisture collects at the bottom in a pool, inhabited by a weedy mold and blind amphibians, so the tortoise is able to remain nourished. A Galápagos tortoise can live for more than a hundred years. That tortoise is still down there, facedown in the black. No one knows that he is there and there is no hope of salvation. He can only eat and survive and think his lonely tur
tle thoughts, long grasses, the sound of wind, the dream of being naked in the sun. Get ahold of yourself for fuck’s sake.

  If you had a million years it wouldn’t matter. Be glad you don’t. Giving cut flowers to another is such a powerful expression because they will die, very soon. Put them in a nice vase, give them water and light and perhaps stroke a stamen or two at midnight. They will die knowing they meant something, and that is all we are trying to do here.

  Take solace in this; your cares may not be original but they are universal. And seriously, which is more important?

  You know when you have the image of something in your mind, but when you go to do it you can’t make it right? It just doesn’t match up? There is only one problem in this life and this is it.

  One folder was simply labeled “Images.” I opened it. Inside was a series of pictures, a long sheet of thumbnails, images of figures, human figures. I didn’t really want to see the particular species of pornography that my husband was so absorbed with, but I clicked on one image anyway and it expanded to show the edge of a building, a black-and-white photo, a cluster of people in the windows, and a blur of movement halfway down, out in the white space of the sky. It was a woman, her skirts billowing, her arms slightly bent and gesturing out, like she was holding an invisible dancing partner.

  They were all pictures of people falling. People falling from buildings, bridges, many falling from some unknown source, the picture just of a body in the air, in flight. The first grouping was a series of photos from something called the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, grainy black-and-white photos of women jumping out of windows, their faces composed, most clutching their pocketbooks, some chastely holding their skirts down as they jumped. Most seemed determined to land feetfirst, as if they would dust themselves off and walk away. Others were more contemporary, people falling from suspension bridges, a whole series from the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, skyscrapers, the burning towers. I scrolled through the thumbnails for a minute, but there was no end. There were thousands of them.