The Color of Water in July (12 page)

When Jess finally came downstairs, there was no sign of Mamie. There was only one phone in the cottage, and it sat on Mamie’s ornately scrolled writing table. Jess used the phone rather rarely. But today, she felt that she needed to call, right then and there, and decided to grab the moment when Mamie was out. She thought that Daniel was probably spending the morning in the darkroom, and she wasn’t even sure he would answer the phone. She dialed the number and then stood letting it ring, six, seven, eight times. Jess was gripping the phone hard, willing him to pick up.

Finally, on the tenth ring, she heard his voice. “Hello?” He sounded rushed. Clearly, she had interrupted him.

“Daniel,” she said. “Remember in
The Way We Were
, that part where Barbra Streisand breaks up with Robert Redford and then she’s crying and crying, and finally she calls him up and says something about how she needs a friend and he’s the only one she has?”

“I’m coming to get you, Jess,” Daniel said. “Just hang on.”

In the end, Jess just blurted everything out, right there in the truck, before they even got back to Daniel’s cottage. Jess could watch Daniel’s profile through her tears, but, careful driver that he was, he didn’t look over at all, just let her talk, about the late period and the little chemical cross, about Mamie spying on her, and about the appointment with Dr. Coggins, and about how her own mother would probably expect her to have an abortion but that she was having some kind of a chemical reaction and didn’t really think she could do something like that.

Then, they sat there in silence for a while, until Daniel pulled off the road and down the short white-gravel lane, two tracks with grass growing between, and pulled up behind the Painter cottage. Daniel, still silent and grave-looking, turned the key to switch off the ignition. When he saw that Jess wasn’t moving, but just sitting lumplike in her seat, he came around and swung the car door open, stretching his hand out to her. Quiet now, she got out, unable to believe the torrent of words she had just dumped on him, and terrified, absolutely terrified, to find out what would come next.

Once inside the cottage, Daniel didn’t speak right away, just went into the kitchen, filled the kettle with water, and set two mugs out on the counter. Jess stood back, searching his expression for clues to his feelings, but she saw none. His motions were steady and deliberate. Daniel said nothing until he had poured the hot steam of water over the two Lipton bags, releasing their fragrant scent. Then, grasping one mug in each hand, he turned to Jess. He looked straight at her with calm, smiling eyes, his face open and containing no reproach. She reached out her hand and took the steaming mug from him, and followed him out to the screened porch where the view of the lake was obscured by a canopy of green.

There they sat, until the sky was dark and the stars were peeping through the trees, talking to each other in urgent, heated voices, in the voices of youth and love and infinite possibility. Daniel was going to graduate soon. He would be able to work and support them; he would move to Austin and work while she went to school. Eventually, Jess would become a doctor; she would make enough money that he could pursue his photography and his poetry. They would not stay in Texas but would move back here—well, not quite here, a little farther north, maybe on the Upper Peninsula, where it was a little wilder. Maybe Jess would be a doctor in a rural clinic, or on an Indian reservation. The sky got darker. It was a hot night, and very still, and the hours passed. They ate nothing, feeding on the strength of their hopes, their dreams—solid imaginings, so real that the dreams themselves seemed ample sustenance. And each feasted on the face of the other, knowing that now, they would never be torn apart.

Later that night, Jess lay tossing, unable to sleep. She was wearing only a thin T-shirt and underwear, and had all her blankets thrown off at the foot of the bed, her shirt bunched up under her breasts. It had been a hot day, and the night had not cooled off at all. Upstairs in the cottage, the air was hot and close. Jess lay in bed cupping her tender, rounded breasts, letting herself feel the promise they signaled. Ever since she’d missed her period, she had felt, as a subtext, this aliveness. Now, she was letting herself, little by little, try on that feeling. She imagined in her mind’s eye the picture, like a tadpole in a water balloon, that she had seen in a book about pregnancy. And feeling herself full, full of life-giving life, pregnant with possibilities, Jess drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

It was before dawn when she awakened, just the palest pink and yellow light slivering through the trees. Already, this early, the sun’s rays had a scorching intensity. She awoke with a start, drenched in sweat. At first, Jess felt an ominous sense of foreboding, but then she realized it wasn’t fear—it was pain. A horrible cramp shuddered through her, unlike anything she had ever experienced before, as though her entire midsection were caught in a vise. Then, the pain ebbed away, gone as soon as it had come, and Jess lay there wringing wet and sticking to the sheets. She looked at her clock and saw that it was not even 5:00 a.m. yet. She was so hot that she couldn’t stay in bed, and so she unstuck herself from the sheets and slid on some shorts, hooked her bra, and pulled on a fresh shirt. She would have loved to take a shower but did not want to bother Mamie this early in the morning. The old pipes in the cottage made a terrible racket whenever anyone bathed.

Figuring it had to be cooler down by the lake, Jess slipped out the front door, taking great pains to make sure that the screen door didn’t squeak, and headed barefoot down the path toward the sinking sand. Halfway, she was gripped again by a pain so intense that she had to stop in her tracks, doubled over with the intensity. Jess was breathing hard, and sweat beaded up on her forehead and trickled into her eyes. She looked toward the lake, which appeared flat and gray at this time of day. This heat, so early in the morning, was odd. The pain gone, Jess stood up and walked on until she reached the small beach. She waded directly into the bracingly cool water, up as far as midthigh. Jess looked up and scanned the horizon; usually heat like this would quickly be broken by a thunderstorm, but the pale predawn sky was free of clouds.

Again, Jess was gripped by a severe cramp, this one barely letting up before another one started. She waded out of the water and sat down on the beach, hugging her knees to her chest, bracing herself for the pain to start again, but it did not. Jess sat perfectly still, hoping that the pain was gone and would not come back. She hoped it wasn’t anything serious. She could feel a dull ache in her back now. Probably, it was nothing. The pain was going away on its own—she hoped.

The air felt like a blanket. The lake was as flat as glass, and the trees were perfectly still. Several mosquitoes were buzzing around her face and one landed on her arm, leaving a few drops of blood when she swatted it. If only she could get cool. She dragged herself over to the gray chalky spot where the spring bubbled up and stood there, letting her feet sink down, until she was submerged in the glacial water up to her waist. The water was so cold that her legs felt completely numb. Her face though was still sweaty, with her bangs stuck to her forehead in sticky streaks. The morning sky changed steadily from gray to pale blue as she sat, immersed in the water.

Finally, Jess’s toes were so numb they started to hurt. The pain had subsided. She was just starting to pull herself out of the water when she felt a cramp so strong that she moaned out loud. Suddenly, a tremendous heat spread between her legs, like a fire from below, and Jess saw the white sand start to bubble up around her in crimson streaks. She felt herself go light-headed. Just as she realized that she was going to faint, she felt strong arms grasp her under the armpits and lift her up.

Daniel cradled her in his arms and sprinted up the path toward Journey’s End. All the while, bright-red blood was pouring down her wet thighs in rivulets, red streams against the chalky white silt that clung to her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

M
AMIE

It was not even June yet, but unseasonably warm. We were planning a picnic on Hemingway Point. At first, we thought to have Thomas row us across, but instead we had decided to swim.

It was odd that year. The waterline of the lake was much lower than usual. You could even see little bubbling springs in the sand along the shoreline. In most years, it would have been out of the question to swim so early in the season, but that summer, the ice floes had melted early and Pine Lake, though always bracing, was bearable to swim in, especially when the sun was out and the air was hot.

Later, people used to say that Hemingway Point was named after Ernest Hemingway, who used to like to sit there and fish, but it was in fact named after a Mr. Charles Hemingway, who ran a tree farm out on the point. Pine Lake was first settled by lumbermen, but most of the giant white pine was already gone by the time that Lila and I first visited Journey’s End. My father, Harris, had made his fortune in lumber, and so he took quite an interest in what Mr. Hemingway was doing, going over to the point a few times to converse with him about logging, which by then was just about finished. My daddy always said that to make money in lumber you had to find virgin forests to log out; there was no money in cultivating trees. Looking across the cove at the odd scrubby trees that were growing there, I thought my daddy was right. I used to spend a lot of time correcting people about why the point was called Hemingway Point, but after a while, I noticed that people were more attracted by the legend than interested in the facts. If people wanted to believe that Ernest Hemingway used to fish out there, who was I to tell them no.

This particular day, the day of our planned picnic, I remember as if it were yesterday: warm and clear, with the lake settling into its friendliest shade of blue. The sun shone down gently, warming the skin on our bare forearms and the backs of our necks.

“Can’t we swim?” Lila said, first thing in the morning, sitting in the clubhouse dining room sipping her morning tea.

This came as a surprise to me. Lila had seemed ill to me ever since she had come back from Europe. She never looked herself, and she was so quiet all the time. Before her trip, she had been lively and athletic, the first to play tennis or go for a swim. But since returning, she wasn’t like that at all.

I set my cup back on its saucer gently. I had developed the habit of treating her like she was a small child who might easily startle. Behind her, I could see the blue water out the big clubhouse windows. We were almost alone in the wood-floored dining room. Here and there, a family sat at a white linen–covered table, but mostly the big old room was empty. The doors were flung open, and through the screen doors floated a summery breeze.

The day was warm, but Lila had covered up in a bulky wool wrap. I thought she might have gotten poor blood over in Europe from eating all the wrong kinds of foods, and I begged her to agree to take a treatment from Dr. Lewis. Each time, she just averted her eyes and said that she was feeling well enough. She was cold all the time, always wrapped in heavy coats and sweaters, and though it was true that the cottage could be drafty this early in the season, her chill seemed to be inside her, of the sort that even a warm sun could not penetrate.

I studied my sister while she wasn’t watching me. Less than one year of marriage, and she seemed to have lost most of her prettiness. Her complexion was not so much fair as sallow, and her hair had a lifeless cast.

Lila had always had a faraway look, but of late it had been positively distant—sometimes she seemed not to even notice that I was in the room with her, and I would say “Lila” just to see if she would turn her head. It seemed as if she had gone away somewhere, so I kept by her side. I was expecting her to come back at any moment.

“You want to swim?” I said.

It was not unusual for us to swim to the point. We Tretheway girls were strong swimmers, having spent so many summers near the lake. Miss Ada always believed that lots of fresh air and exercise improved our complexions, so we were avid on the golf course and at lawn tennis and could swim without fatigue well out into the lake.

“I see the sun out, and it makes me want to swim.”

Lila’s pale face glowed white except for a bit of a blush at her lips and up along her cheekbones. Her face and arms were so painfully thin, and her figure, for she had always had a lovely figure, now seemed stiff and bulky, as though she moved with difficulty or pain. She pulled her wrap tighter around her and shivered.

“It’s not yet June, and the water must be frightfully cold,” I said.

“I’m so hot,” Lila whispered. “I want to swim . . . ”

It did seem odd that she would want to swim, but I thought that the exercise might breathe some blood into her bones.

When we finished our tea and toast, Lila and I returned down the front walk. Back at Journey’s End, I had the pleasure of provisioning us for our little picnic lunch. Miss Ada was feeling unwell that day and had decided to stay in bed. That was not unusual for her. She simply said that she was “going to the country” and refused to leave her room. My mother suffered from nerves, and I feared that Lila was following in her footsteps.

My delight was that our party included Thomas Cleves, who was planning to row us across to the point in a small wooden rowboat. The cook at the clubhouse had provided us with fried chicken and corn muffins and several kinds of pickles, as well as a pot of cherry preserves. I can still remember my joy as I put that little basket together, each bundle of food wrapped in a clean red-checked napkin, the cutlery nesting just so, and a bottle of fresh milk, still cool from the icehouse. The party was to leave from the wooden dock in early afternoon. Through the window, I could see that the sun was high and the sky cloudless. It did, in fact, seem a marvelous day for a swim, and I was looking forward to the tired ache I would feel in my muscles when finally we sat down on the warm spit of sand at Hemingway Point to eat the little meal tucked so pleasantly in the basket.

I confess that my mind was also on my beloved Thomas Cleves. Since the Cleves Cottage was not properly part of the Wequetona Club, there was no chance for meeting by happenstance, and though he came to visit every single evening, oftentimes motoring into town with some friends to a picture show, or over to the Loeb estate for some of their Sunday-afternoon baseball games, still the moments and hours that we passed apart from each other seemed like agony—the moments together so brief and so sweet. Our wedding was planned for Christmas, and so aside from my worries about Lila, I had plenty of pleasant images in my head with which to pass the time.

I wish I could say that it occurred to me even once that morning and early afternoon to ask myself
Where’s Lila?
I could not even say where we had parted after breakfast. Did she stop at another cottage, or did we part on the steps of Journey’s End? All that comes back to me is myself in the cottage, puttering around with the picnic things, the warm woolen blankets to take with us, my wool-flannel bathing suit.

We planned to meet at about one o’clock, and at that time of day, the weather promised by the morning sunshine had come true—it was a day as warm as midsummer. There was a very slight breeze. The lake water was a pale green close to shore where it was shallow, then a deep sapphire farther out where the water was deep and always several degrees colder. I was wearing my woolen bathing dress, navy blue with white piping. Over it, I wore a heavy fisherman’s sweater. At just a minute or two past one, I saw Thomas come around the bend of Loeb Point in the white rowboat. I never once laid eyes on that man that I didn’t feel my heart tug right away, and it was no different that time; though he was much too far away for me to make out his face, there was something in the steadiness of his motions that could have been no other man but he.

It was only then that I realized that I hadn’t seen Lila; up until that moment, I had assumed that she must be up in the cottage getting dressed. Lila was known to be punctual, and she could have been in Miss Ada’s room, tending to one of our mother’s whims. I was completely ready, dressed for a swim with the picnic basket on my knees. Thomas would reach the dock in a few minutes, and I did not want to miss even a moment of his presence. I set the basket carefully on the gray-painted steps and went inside the cottage, whose interior seemed gloomy after the bright sunlight.

“Lila!” I called up the stairs, loud enough, I hoped, to get her attention, but hoping at the same time not to awaken Miss Ada if she slept.

Hearing no answer, I climbed the stairs and circled over to Lila’s bedroom, which was on the north side of the cottage, the opposite side from mine. I saw that she had laid out her bathing suit and a thick wool sweater on her bed, but she was not there.

Downstairs, I rapped lightly on Miss Ada’s door, and when there was no answer, I cracked the door open slightly and saw Miss Ada’s sleeping form.

Back outside, I scanned the cove. I could no longer see the rowboat, so I knew that Thomas had pulled across and was now out of sight. I felt unsure what to do. If I ran down to the beach to tell Thomas that we were running late, I might miss Lila as she came out from wherever she was. I decided to sit and wait there on the steps a few minutes longer, thinking that if Thomas did not find us, he would moor the boat and come up to the cottage.

I think I first heard a crackling in the underbrush. It wasn’t unknown for a deer to crash out of the woods and find itself blinking in the bright sun of the cottage lawn. When I looked up though, I saw Lila, still clad in the same dress and wrap that she had been wearing at breakfast. She was just emerging from the path in the woods. Though I was right in front of her, she gave no sign of seeing me and she had a very odd look on her face, almost as though she did not even know where she was. I was shocked yet again by her pallor. My sister was clearly not well.

I truly wish that I could say that I gave more thought to my sister’s frail health, but in fact, I could think only of Thomas, who was certainly now looking toward the path up the bluff, wondering when we would emerge.

“Lila,” I said sharply. “Lila, if we’re to swim, you must change immediately. Thomas is already waiting down at the dock.”

“Thomas?” Lila said, as though she scarcely remembered who he was.

“I’ll meet you at the dock,” I said, and, picking up the picnic basket, I hurried down the walk in front of the cottages toward that path that led down to the dock, thinking that if Lila saw me leaving, she would be more inclined to hurry along.

I still remember clearly that combination of joys, the sun warming my hair and heating the wool sweater I was wearing, making me break out in a gentle sweat. The lake so lovely in its blueness and the prospect of Thomas waiting for me, who though I had seen him just the evening before, still seemed like a whole world of newness each time I saw him again.

As I rounded the bend, I caught sight of Thomas—sun shining in a crest on his dark head, one foot balancing on the rowboat’s gunwale—peering up the path at me, shading his eyes from the sun. Then, how long were we there together, passing the time in the warm sun next to the blue lake, waiting for Lila to come?

In truth, I do not know how much time passed, but before I had thought to worry, she came, dressed as I was in a woolen bathing suit with a thick wool sweater covering her almost down to her knees. I was surprised at the thinness of her bare legs, but do not remember noticing anything other than that.

“Hello, Lila,” Thomas called out. “I see you come ready to swim.”

“Are you sure you want to swim?” I said. “I was thinking how lovely it would be to let Thomas row us in the warm sun.”

Lila looked out over the lake toward Hemingway Point and appeared to take measure with her eyes.

“I want to swim, Mamie,” she said listlessly.

What was I thinking that day? How many times have I asked myself that question? So many times, I’ve tried to remember exactly what happened, but my memories come back like a series of images—still photos in an album—that I study to look for hidden shadows. A sunny day, a young girl in love, and a ghost story, getting ready to be told for the first time. What I keep from those moments next to the lake, just before we set out, is not a memory of Lila. It is the image of Thomas, his brown hair catching the sun, his broad knuckles grasping the wooden oars, the soft thick pad of his pink lower lip. Try as I might try and try for all these many years, and I can’t bring to mind an image of Lila. How cruel it seems that in memory she was already gone.

But I do have a photograph, taken by Thomas just before we set out to swim. I do not remember the moment it was taken at all. Lila appears pale, spectral, almost vanishing. In front of her, on the ground, is a dark shadow. Many times, I have studied that shadow in the photograph, wondering how it was that on that day, none of us could see it.

We set off swimming, Lila and I, Thomas rowing beside us. The water was almost unbearably cold, so that my teeth started chattering. The surface of the lake was glassy; there was almost no wind. Every tingle of water made me feel so alive. Each time my arms windmilled through the air, they were stroked by the warmth of the sun, so that quickly I began to warm up. About a hundred yards out, the water was suddenly much colder, a second shock to my system, and also murkier below us. I pulled more rapidly through the water, trying to warm myself.

Lila fell a bit behind. She was the graceful one of us Tretheway girls, and though several years my junior, she had always been able to beat me in tennis and golf and at swimming races. I had always known her to be able to run and swim without tiring, and so when I realized that it was I who had a slight advantage this time, I pulled even faster through the water, finding a rhythm to my breathing, and noticing that the water no longer felt like icy slashes across my legs.

“Come on, Lila!” I called to her, teasing, treading water. But she did not perceptibly change her pace, her slender arms pulling skillfully through the water at a steady, even rhythm.