Black Water (6 page)

Now,
at Buffy's, in her new swimsuit fitting her slender body like a glove, white
spandex, teasing little pearl buttons, a single strap, the invisible underwire
bra lifting her breasts pushing them together so there was a shadowy cleavage
and she'd seen his eyes drop
there
unconsciously,
she'd seen his casual gaze take in her ankles her legs her thighs her breasts
her shoulders bare except she'd slipped on a daffodil-yellow crocheted tunic
out of modesty perhaps out of her old shyness regarding her body so unlike
Buffy in her silky black bikini her campy-lewd glitter-green fingernails and
toenails, Buffy with her flawless skin, her funny "faux" ponytail,
brash enough and confident enough to slap her thighs in Ray's presence crying
Cellulite!
that's
what this is: cellulite! I'm too
fucking young for cellulite God damn it!

And
they'd all laughed.
He'd
laughed.

Buffy St. John who was so beautiful.
So confident in her oiled heated skin.

Since freshman year at Brown Kelly
had had the habit of starving herself to discipline herself to maintain
rigorous control to lighten her menstrual periods and, after G-----, to punish
herself for having loved a man more than the man seemed to have loved her, but
this past year she was determined to be
healthy,
to be
normal,
forcing herself to eat regularly and
she'd regained eleven of the twenty pounds she'd lost, she slept without
sleeping pills not requiring even the single glass of red wine she and G----
had made a ritual of before going to bed during those three months G----- had
actually lived with her: not even that.

So
she'd regained
health, normality.
She was an American girl
you want to look your
best and give your ALL.

Yet avoiding the house in Gowanda
Heights.
Guilty of making her mother worry
about her, guilty of provoking quarrels with her father, those
"political" quarrels that were really about Daddy's authority
unheeded, but relations between them were all right now and Kelly was fine now
discreetly avoiding certain of her old friends the embittered idealists the
angry pro-abortionists and even Mr. Spader after this most recent divorce (his
third) unshaven, potbellied, losing his fiery hair, sixty-year-old
babyface
the dimpled smile grown dented, sodden, and she'd
been acutely embarrassed that day in the office feeling his eyes on her,
hearing his hoarse breath, there were hairs in his ears and nostrils like
Brillo
wire poor Carl Spader once a media personality an
eloquent young white associate of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and
now the dismal storefront office on
Brimmer
Street
and
Citizens' Inquiry
with its fluctuating
circulation of 35,000-40,000 where at its peak in 1969 it had had a circulation
of 95,000-100,000 rivaling
The New Republic
but never get Carl Spader
going on the subject of
The New Republic,
where in fact he'd worked
for several years after college! never get Carl Spader going on the subject of
the triumph of conservatism in our time, the heartbreak, the tragedy, the
dismantling of the Kennedy-Johnson vision, the loss of America's soul never get
him started!— Kelly was discreet answering The Senator's questions about his
old friend Spader, Kelly Kelleher was not one to gossip carelessly, nor was she
one to exploit another's misfortune for meretricious conversational purposes,
it was a principle of hers that you must never say anything about another
person you would not say in that person's presence.

The
Senator several times turned the conversation back to Carl Spader, whom he had
not, he said, seen in years. In The Senator's voice there was a tone both
regretful and mildly censorious.

Yes
of course he read
Citizens' Inquiry—
certainly.

His
office in Washington had a subscription.
Of course.

He'd
asked Kelly what she did for the magazine and Kelly told him mentioning her
recent article "The Shame of Capital Punishment in America" and The
Senator said why yes, yes he'd read that article, he believed he had read it,
he'd been impressed.

As,
on Buffy's great new bike, she'd felt his eyes follow her too.

Politics, the negotiating of power.
Eros, the negotiating of power.

Gripping
her shoulders bare beneath the crocheted tunic with his strong fingers and
kissing her full on the mouth as the wind blew caressingly about them like a
palpable tactile substance wrapping them together, binding. He had kissed her
suddenly yet not unexpectedly. Hiking in the dunes behind the St. Johns' house,
the gulls flashing white overhead, their knifelike wings, deadly beaks,
excited
cries.
The pounding splashing
surf.
Beat
beat
beat
of the surf. She'd heard it the night before sleepless hearing muffled sounds
of laughter, lovemaking from Buffy and Ray's room, underneath such human cries
the beat of the surf, the rising of the tide, the moon's tide, a tide in her
blood, the almost unbearable rush of the man's desire so it was understood
between them that he would kiss her again and Kelly's seemingly impulsive
decision to go with him to catch the ferry instead of spending the night of the
Fourth at Buffy's as planned was a public acknowledgment of this fact.

She
was the one, the one he'd chosen.
The one in the speeding
car.
The passenger.

Scorpio
don't
be shy, poor silly Scorpio your stars are WILDLY
romantic now. Demand YOUR wishes.
YOUR desires for once.

So
she did, she had and would. She
was
the one.

Tasting still the
beery warmth and pressure of
The Senator's
mouth on hers.
The
forceful probing tongue.

Even
as the nameless road flew out from under the Toyota she
was
tasting
it. Smiling wryly thinking how often in her life had kisses
tasted of beer, of wine, of alcohol, of tobacco, of hash.
The
many probing tongues.
Am I ready?

She'd
been staring at the moon out of the jolting car.
How queerly
flat-looking, how bright.
Lit from within you'd think and not mere
reflected light you'd think but you'd be wrong for thinking, reasoning,
calculating out of your own brain is not enough: poor Scorpio.

Of
course Kelly Kelleher did not believe in anything
so
idiotic as a horoscope, astrology. In her innermost heart though she was a
volunteer for the National Literacy Foundation of America she felt a certain
contempt for ignorant people, not just blacks of course (though all of her
students were black) but whites, whatever: men and women whom the ruthless
progress of civilization had left behind really, their limited intelligences
could not grasp certain facts of life really, no doubt as Artie Kelleher and
Ham Hunt and all of conservative America believed it
was
hopeless
thus save your own white skin but Kelly Kelleher angrily rejected such
selfishness, had she not committed in writing a shameful statement to her own
parents composed on her word processor at college and carefully revised and
signed with her baptismal name "Elizabeth Anne Keller" and mailed to
the Kelleher home in Gowanda Heights, New York, in partial explanation of why
she was not coming home for Thanksgiving this year but going to Old Lyme with
her roommate,
I will always love you Mother and Father but I have come
to realize I would not live the lives you live for anything please forgive me!

Kelly
had been nineteen years old at the time.

The
wonder of it was
,
her parents
had
forgiven her.

The
Senator was of a social background similar to that of the Kellehers, he too had
gone to Andover just after Arthur Kelleher had graduated, then he'd gone to
Harvard for both his B.A. and his law degree and Arthur Kelleher had gone to
Amherst and then to Columbia and very likely The Senator and the Kellehers knew
many people in common but in their meandering disjointed excitable conversation
that day neither The Senator nor Kelly Kelleher had chosen to pursue the
subject.

She
knew that The Senator had children her age—a son?—a son and a daughter?—but
neither mentioned this of course.

She
knew that The Senator was separated from his wife of approximately thirty years
and this fact The Senator did mention, or allude to, very briefly.

Saying,
with a smile, I'm alone this weekend: my wife's having her family out to our
place on the
Cape...
his voice trailing off
inconclusively.

Tasting his mouth on hers.
And earlier that day when Kelly had been sitting with her head resting on her
arms at a picnic table apart from the others sleepy and sun-dazed and slightly
ill
(why
did she drink? when it affected her so
unpredictably? was it simply to be one of a party,
as in college? was it simply to appear
to be one of a party, as in college?) when someone came up
steathily
beside her, she saw through her eyelashes that the person was barefoot, a man,
large white veined feet, gnarled-looking toenails, and there came the lightest
most shimmering touch on her bare shoulder, a touch that ran through her like
an electric shock as she realized it was his tongue on her skin... his warm
soft damp tongue on her bare skin.

Staring up then into
his face.
His eyes.
The whites faintly yellowed as with fatigue,
threaded with blood, but the irises startlingly blue.
Like
colored glass with nothing behind it.

And not a word passed between them for
what seemed like a very long time though Kelly's lips twitched wanting to smile
or make a nervous girlish joke to break the spell.

You know you're someone's little girl,
oh yes!

Recalling this as they sped into the
desolate area southeast of Brockden's Landing as dusk deepened and it began to
look (to Kelly at least) that they would not make the 8:20
p.m.
ferry.

The place was dense with mosquitoes and
here and there fireflies and some of the blond broom-headed rushes grew to a
grotesque height swaying top-heavy in the wind, like human figures grotesque
without faces so she
shivered seeing them.
Remarking to The Senator it was strange wasn't it that so many of the trees in
the marsh seemed to be dead...
were
they dead?... isolated tree trunks in the twilit gloom denuded of leaves,
limbs, bark gray and shiny-smooth as old scar tissue.

"I
hope it isn't pollution of some kind, killing the trees."

The
Senator, hunched over the wheel, frowning, exerting pressure on the gas pedal,
made no reply.

Had
not spoken directly to her, Kelly was thinking, since they'd turned off onto
this damned road.

Since G-----, last June when it
had finally ended, Kelly Kelleher had not made love with any man.

Since G-----, when she had wanted
to die, she had not touched any man in desire; nor even in the pretense of
desire.

Am I ready?
ready
?
ready
?
—a
small mocking voice.

On
all sides were shrill shrieking nocturnal insects in a frenzy of copulation,
procreation. A din of cries, near-deafening—she shivered, hearing them.
So many.
You would not think that God would make so many.
Their frenzied cries as if in the very
heat
of
midsummer sensing the imminent and inevitable waning of the heat, the
quickening of night, and cold, their tiny deaths flying at them out of the
future and Kelly Kelleher swallowed hard regretting now she had not brought a
drink along for herself thinking,
Am I ready?