The Drowning Girl

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “But you said you were a tree, right?”

  “That part comes later. On the sidewalk and in the alley, I was still just me.”

  “You were a boy?”

  She frowned and said she’d looked like a boy.

  “I couldn’t breathe, not after the press of all those bodies. They’d all kept staring at me, really hatefully, like the sight of me made them furious. When I reached the alley, I saw that it was a dead end. There was just a brick wall at the end and more trash cans, so there I was, thinking I’d live the rest of my life in an alley, because I sure as fuck wasn’t going back out into that crowd. But then I saw a fire escape. Someone had left the lowest ladder down, and I went to it and started climbing, just wanting to see the sky again. I climbed for a long time, the building was so tall. And when I passed windows, there were people looking out at me. All the windows had iron bars. Burglar bars, I guess. But it made the people in the apartments seem like they were in jail. Their eyes were white, and I knew they were jealous, even if I didn’t know why. Some of them pressed their palms against the glass. I tried hard not to look at them, and I climbed as fast as I dared. I held on tight to the railing and didn’t look down through the grating. I never wanted to see that alleyway again. Wherever the fire escape led, I was determined I was never climbing back down again.

  “Eventually, I came to the top, but it wasn’t the roof of the building. It was a green field. I was so tired from pushing against the crowd, and then having to climb the fire escape, I collapsed in the grass. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t let myself. I lay there for the longest time, smelling dandelions, trying to catch my breath. And when I looked up again, there was a woman with white hair, hair so white maybe it was silver, standing above me. She had the astrological symbol for Mars drawn on her forehead in red. Sometimes, it was drawn in ink, and other times in blood. Sometimes it was tattooed on her skin. Her skin was as pale as milk.”

  “That’s also the symbol for male,” I said. “The astrological symbol for Mars. The circle with the arrow. The female symbol is associated with Venus. The circle with the cross below it.”

  “Jesus,” she sighed, and glared at me again. “I know that, Imp. Even then I knew it.” She took back the box of Trix. “You want to hear the rest of this or what?”

  “I do,” I told her. “I really do.”

  Abalyn set the cereal box down next to the remote control. “So, she stood there over me, this pale, silver-haired woman. And she said, ‘Daughter, which will you choose? The Road of Needles or the Road of Pins?’ I told her I was sorry, but I didn’t know what she meant. I did, but in the dream I didn’t remember that I did. She said—”

  “It’s easier to fasten things together with pins,” I whispered, interrupting for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time. But Abalyn didn’t look put out with me; she looked surprised. “The Road of Needles is much more difficult, as it’s much more difficult to hold things together with needles. Is that what she said to you?”

  “Yeah,” Abalyn said, not whispering, but speaking softly. The way I recall it, she went a little pale. But that’s probably just my memory embellishing. She probably didn’t, not really. “That’s it, pretty much. You know what it means?”

  “It’s from one of the old French folk variants of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ back before it was written down. That’s the choice the wolf gives the girl when they meet in the forest. In other versions, the roads are called the Road of Pebbles and the Road of Thorns. And the Road of Roots and the Road of the Stones in the Tyrol. I sort of know a lot about ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’”

  “Clearly,” Abalyn said, still not quite whispering.

  “I hate that story,” I confided, and then I asked, “Which did you choose?”

  “I didn’t. I refused to choose. And so the silver-haired woman turned me into a tree.”

  “Like Phyllis.”

  “Right,” she replied, then didn’t say anything more for a whole minute or two. That awkward silence felt as if it stretched on forever, but it couldn’t have been more than two minutes. I was beginning to think Abalyn wouldn’t finish telling me about the dream, when she said, “I was a tree for years. That’s how it seemed. I saw the green field turn brown, and then winter came and covered it with snow. And then spring came, and it was green again. Over and over I watched the seasons change. My leaves turned yellow and gold and drifted to the ground. My limbs would bare, and then there would be buds and shoots and there were fresh new leaves. It wasn’t unpleasant, especially not after being lost in the city. I almost wanted to stay a tree forever, but I knew the silver-haired woman wouldn’t allow it, that, sooner or later, she’d be back to ask the question again.”

  “What sort of tree?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know shit about trees.”

  “Did she come back?”

  “She did. And, like I thought she would, she asked the question again, the Road of Pins or the Road of Needles. I chose the Road of Needles, because I suspected she’d think I was a coward or lazy if I chose the easier of the two. I was grateful, for her letting me be a tree, and I didn’t want to disappoint her, or for her to think I was ungrateful.”

  “Little Red Cap chose the Road of Pins.”

  “And she got eaten by a wolf.”

  …to keep my wolves at bay.

  “I never actually dreamed of walking on the Road of Needles, not literally,” she said. “Metaphorically, I did. It was all a metaphor, after all.” She looked down at the unlit cigarette between her fingers, and I almost told her to go ahead and smoke. But then she was talking again. “Did I mention that the mark on her forehead wasn’t Mars anymore? It was Venus.”

  “I guessed that part,” I told her.

  She nodded. “After that, it gets sort of silly. Childish I mean.”

  “You were a child.”

  “Yeah. Still.”

  “So, what was so silly? What happened next?”

  “She said that I’d learned to be patient. That I’d learned I couldn’t get what I wanted all at once, and it was hardly ever easy. I’d learned I might not ever get it. And this is the way of the world, she told me, and I wouldn’t receive any special favors. But then, she touched the mark on her forehead, and I became a girl. Just for an instant, before I always woke up. I’d lay there, after, trying so hard to go back to sleep, wanting to find my way back into the dream and never wake up again.”

  “I don’t think that’s so childish,” I said.

  She shrugged and muttered, “Whatever. My shrink was of the opinion I’d never had the dream, that it was only a sort of reassuring story I’d made up to give myself hope or some shit. But I did have that dream, I don’t know how many times. I still have it, but not very often. Not like back then.”

  “It doesn’t matter, if it was a dream or a story, does it?” I asked her, and she said she didn’t like being called a liar on those occasions when she was not, in fact, lying.

  “It helped, though.”

  That elicited another shrug. “No idea. I can’t see how my life would have gone differently without it. My decisions seem almost inevitable in hindsight.”

  “You never told your parents about the dream.” It wasn’t a question, because I was already certain enough of the answer.

  “Hell no. My mother might have murdered her demon child in its sleep if I’d told her. My dad might have come after me with a hot iron poker.” She laughed, and I asked what she meant about a hot poker.

  She laughed and put the cigarette back into the pack of Marlboros. “That’s what people used to do if they thought the fairies had stolen their child and left a changeling in its place. Fairies can’t stand iron, so—”

  “But if they were wrong—”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  I remembered then about changelings and hot pokers, or tossing children that might be changelings onto glowing coals, or leaving them outside on a freezing night. (See Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Cons
ciousness by Carole G. Silver [Oxford University Press, 1999], Chapter 2.) But I didn’t tell Abalyn I remembered. No, I don’t know why. No, I do. It struck me as irrelevant. What I knew and didn’t know, it didn’t have anything to do with this ghost story, which was Abalyn’s and not mine. Not mine at all. Except, the bit about changelings, because of what had happened already and what would happen. Seeing an illusion, put there to deceive or protect me, but either way to conceal the truth (or just the facts). Butler Hospital changing its name. Eva and Eva, July and November. The Drowning Girl and all those terrible paintings and sculptures Perrault made. In hindsight, as Abalyn said, all these come down to changelings, don’t they?

  Imp typed, “Eva and Eva, maybe. You’re not so sure about all the rest.”

  No, I’m not. But Eva Canning. What climbed into my car, what I found in a wild place and brought home, what left and bided its time, then came back to me both times.

  “Is this the sort of conversation that normal couples have?” I asked Abalyn, and that made her smile.

  “You’re asking the wrong woman about what’s normal,” she replied. “Anyhow, is that what we are now, a couple?”

  “Isn’t it?” Hearing the question, I was suddenly afraid I’d misspoken, or been mistaken, that I’d fucked it all up.

  “Sure, Imp. If you want to put a name on it.”

  “I do, but only if you don’t mind. If I’m wrong, if that isn’t what we are…that would be okay. I mean—”

  And then she kissed me. I think she kissed me so I’d shut up. I was glad, because hearing myself, I wanted very badly to shut up. Words start coming out of my mouth like rocks rolling down a hill, and every now and then someone has to stop me. It was a long kiss.

  When it was over, I asked if I could play some of Rosemary’s records for her, some of the ones that were my favorites. “I’ll try to avoid the really schmaltzy stuff. And you don’t have to, you know, pretend to like anything you don’t,” I told her.

  “I won’t,” she assured me, and crossed her heart. “Though, wasn’t I gonna give you the musical education, and not the other way round?”

  “First, you ought to know what you’re up against.”

  So for the next three hours we lay on the thrift-store cushions in front of Rosemary’s turntable and listened to Rosemary’s records. I played songs off Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Dreamboat Annie by Heart (which she decided she liked), Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, and Blue Öyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune. She wouldn’t let me play anything by the Doobie Brothers or Bruce Springsteen. She got up a couple of times, and strummed air guitar. We listened to the hiss and pop of the scratchy vinyl, and kissed, and didn’t talk about bad dreams or childhood or changelings. It was after four before we went to bed and that long, long day ended. Our last good day (in the July ghost story). Our last day before the gallery, and the river, the bathtub, and Abalyn leaving me.

  My fingers hurt from typing, and this is as good a place to stop as any. To stop for now, I mean.

  I’m not sure how many days transpired between our last good day and the day when, for the first time since I met Abalyn, I visited the RISD Museum. It might have been no more than one or two. Surely, not more than three. I do, however, know it was a Thursday evening, which would have made it the third Thursday of July (admission is free after five, the third Thursday of each month; I try never to pay admission). But I admit this timeline doesn’t seem right. There was the afternoon Abalyn and I almost quarreled, and then our last good day, and…I don’t recall the latter coming so quickly on the heels of the former. So here’s something else to cause me to doubt my memories. If it was the third Thursday of July 2008 (so, the seventeenth), then Abalyn might not have left until early August, and I was almost certain she went at the end of July. Time is warping. It begins to feel like my perception of time is collapsing back on itself, compressing events and recollections.

  I’m driving with the window rolled partway down. The city is shrouded in a long summer twilight, no clouds in the violet-blue sky, and I cross the Point Street Bridge. There are two swans floating on the river, and a cormorant is perched on a rotten old piling. The piling juts from the river like a broken bone, and the cormorant spreads its wings, drying its feathers. There’s a lot of traffic, and the air stinks of car exhaust and my own sweat. I catch a whiff of scorched crust from a pizza place, just before turning onto South Main. I haven’t had dinner, and I skipped lunch; the burned-bread smell reminds me I’m hungry.

  I told Abalyn I was going to the library. She didn’t ask which one, though if she had, I’d have told her the public library downtown. The central branch of the public library is open until eight thirty on Mondays and Thursdays. She had a deadline, and didn’t ask to come along.

  “Be careful,” she said, without looking up from her laptop.

  “I will,” I replied, and when she asked if I had my cell phone, I told her I did. I reminded her there was leftover Chinese in the fridge.

  The night before, I dreamed of The Drowning Girl, and the next day—this day—I couldn’t stop thinking of the painting. I was distracted at work, and kept making stupid mistakes when I rang people up or tried to show them to the aisle they were looking for. Then, on the way home from work, I turned on the wrong street and got lost. I hardly said a word to Abalyn until I told her I was going out. I had it in my head that if I saw the painting, if I confronted it, maybe I could stop obsessing over it.

  There are trees on South Main, and the wind through the Honda’s open window smells less of automobiles. I park opposite the museum gift shop, and linger by the car a moment, thinking it might be a mistake, coming here. Wishing I’d have asked Abalyn to come with me. I could climb back into the Honda and drive straight home again. Then I tell myself that I’m behaving like a coward, stuff the keys in my pocket, cross the street, and go inside, where it’s cool and the air smells clean.

  There’s a special exhibit up devoted to artists’ models as depicted by artists, and I use it as a convenient excuse to avoid confronting The Drowning Girl for another twenty minutes or so. There are pieces on display by Picasso, Klimt, Matisse, Angelica Kauffmann, paintings and charcoal studies and photographs, a cartoon from The New Yorker. I stop and examine each one closely, but I can’t really focus on any of them. It’s impossible to concentrate on these images, no matter how exquisitely executed or revealing or intimate they might be. This isn’t why I’ve come.

  Get it over with, I think. But not in my own thought voice. This is the voice I dreamed of the night before, the voice I’ve dreamed repeatedly, the voice I first heard that night by the Blackstone River. I take out my phone and almost call Abalyn. I notice one of the docents watching me, and I return the phone to the bag I’m carrying and walk away. I move through one gallery after the other until I come to that small octagonal room with its loden-green walls and ornate gilt frames. There are eleven oil paintings by New England artists, but the first one you see, entering from the south, is Saltonstall’s. I quickly avert my eyes and turn my back on it. I slowly move around the room clockwise, pausing before each canvas before moving along to the next. Each painting brings me a few steps nearer The Drowning Girl, and I keep reminding myself it’s not too late; I can still leave the museum without having caught more than the briefest glimpse of the thing.

  (Thing. I type the word, and it seems hideous to me. It seems filled with an indefinable threat. It has too many possible meanings, and none of them are specific enough to simply dismiss out of hand. But by that evening I had made a thing of The Drowning Girl. Probably, I’d been busy making a thing of it since Rosemary brought me to the museum on the occasion of my eleventh birthday, almost eleven years before.)

  There’s a docent in this room, too, and he’s watching me. Do I seem suspicious? Does the anxiety show on my face? Is he just bored, and I’m something new to occupy his attention? I ignore him and try hard to pretend to be interested in those other compositions—two landscapes by Thomas Cole (1828 a
nd 1847), Martin Johnson Heade’s Brazilian Forest (1864) and Salt Marshes of Newburyport, Massachusetts (1875–1878), and the last before Saltonstall, William Bradford’s Arctic Sunset (1874). That makes five. Were I the Catholic that my mother cautioned me against becoming, it would make somewhat more sense that it suddenly occurs to me how this was like the grim, grotesque procession of the Stations of the Cross, stopping before each painting. But I’m not Catholic, and it seems very odd. This, the fifth, Arctic Sunset, would be the scene where Simon of Cyrene carries the cross for Christ, and the next, the next will be Veronica wiping the brow of Jesus. The comparison is alien, another thing rising up to haunt me, and I push it away.

  I push it away and, my mouth gone dry as dust and ashes, turn to confront the thing that has brought me here. And I do, but that thing, it’s not Phillip George Saltonstall’s painting of a woman standing in a river. I turn, and Eva Canning is standing in front of me. Just like that, as ridiculous as a scene in a horror movie, a scene that’s meant to be unexpected, to startle you and make you jump in your seat. When it’s over, you laugh nervously and feel silly. I don’t jump. I don’t laugh. I don’t even breathe. I just stand there, staring at her. She’s wearing the same red dress she might have been wearing the day I thought I saw her at Wayland Square. The same sunglasses, round lenses in wire frames that make me think of John Lennon. She smiles, and her limp blonde hair glimmers faintly beneath the lights. She isn’t barefoot this time. She’s wearing very simple leather sandals.