Blue Water (9 page)

i
magine a woman rising on a dark,
December morning, cursing beneath her breath, the sound of the bedside alarm going off for the third time. The pain at the back of her head like the most insistent cliché: a pounding, a drumming, a hammering with ice picks. Imagine her teetering on the edge of her bed, feeling herself on the brink of something worse than the usual despair, the sense that everything is getting away from her, the bills, the instructions for the housekeeper, the weekly shopping lists. The roof is leaking. The cats' teeth need cleaning. It's time for her annual Pap smear. On and on, a hundred small things: irritating, necessary, meaningless. In fact, she considers going back to bed, letting the girls spend the morning at home, eating Fig Newtons, watching DVDs.

But, no. Cindy Ann Kreisler gets up.

A mile and a half away, I am getting up as well.

Imagine her pleading with the girls to hurry-scurry as she pours out three bowls of Cheerios, divides the last splash of milk. Hurry-scurry as she herds them out to the Suburban, part of her last divorce settlement, a behemoth of a thing, solid as a tank. She'd been lucky about the car, even her divorce attorney said so, and afterward, he'd
hugged her—his fat belly hard and tight against her—and told her she was brave, getting out of that marriage when she did, the heck with appearances or what people would say, the heck with trying to make it work when it was clear that the guy was having problems, seriously, he was a menace to himself and others, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Get hit once you're a victim,
she'd quipped.
Get hit twice, you're a fool
.

But then she remembered she'd used this line with the divorce attorney before, and that he hadn't smiled. He didn't smile now. He gave her a card with a number written on it—the meetings, he said, were at the Lutheran church—and she'd meant to call the number, she truly had, thinking that, perhaps, the attorney himself might be there. After all, how else would he have had that number? How else would he have known about the Lutheran church, about the people who'd been sober for five years and more, the medallions they got to prove it? Perhaps he might ask her out for coffee sometime, after. Perhaps he might put his arms around her again, and this time, she wouldn't be taken by surprise, she'd have the sense to hold on tight, a man like that, settled in his work, even tempered, and the weight, well, she'd just have to get used to that. What mattered, she told herself sternly, was kindness. What mattered was finding someone who loved you for what you were under your skin. Bees and butterflies were fine for kids, but she wasn't a kid, she was a grown woman, widowed once, divorced twice, with three grow
ing daughters to think of.

But she hadn't called the number, although—and she was proud of this—she'd been making herself wait until after the girls had gone to bed, limiting herself to two bottles of wine, no hard stuff, no cheating. Certainly, there could be nothing wrong with that. Certainly she deserved it, a little quiet time to herself. Only, last night, Amy had gone to bed late—she'd been studying for a test, she said—which meant Cindy Ann couldn't open the first of her bottles until after midnight. Somehow she'd opened three bottles, maybe four, though she couldn't believe she'd drunk that much, couldn't believe she wouldn't have remembered going down into the basement, to the cedar-lined closet, and lifting the lid of the low, wicker chest where she kept an extra bottle or two, just in case, tucked beneath the girls' outgrown coats.

But the next thing she knew, the alarm was ringing. And ringing.

And ringing again.

Christ, she was late. Her head ached. It had started to snow. Backing out of the driveway, her rear fender kissed the Haldigers' mailbox, and she pulled away dragging a tangled string of Christmas lights. Later Evie Haldiger would say that she'd seen everything from her breakfast nook, that she and Roy had shaken their heads as they'd watched the Suburban zig and zag its way down the street. Not that they'd thought much about it at the time. That was Cindy Ann Kreisler for you, what could a person do? Poor girl, married to that older fellow who'd up and died on her, though what did she expect? And then those other two good-for-nothings, each one worse than the last. The first one, at least, had left her well settled. Still it had to be tough, a young woman like that, attractive, all alone in that house, and with those three girls to care for.

In the backseat, the girls had started to quarrel in the high singing voices they used only with one another. Cindy Ann's headache gripped the back of her skull like an external force, something cold-blooded, evil. The sound of the quarrel, its familiar refrains and endless, silly verses, made her long to swerve off the road, plough through the snow fence beyond the shoulder, hurtle down into the frozen belly of the ravine. Certainly that would be easier than dropping Monica and Laurel off at the grade school, Amy at the high school, each of her daughters disappearing without so much as a wave or a backward glance. Easier than returning home to the disapproving stare of Mrs. Railsbeck, who'd raised seven children of her own without so much as a cleaning lady, thank you very much. Easier than getting properly dressed, running errands, checking in on her mother at the assisted-living center, all the while thinking of those bottles in the fridge, their twin, elegant necks, their crisp, clean glow. Easier than gathering the girls after school, running them to dance class, piano lessons, soccer. Easier than sitting down to the lasagna or tuna casserole Mrs. Railsbeck had left in the oven while the girls complained, or fought, or giggled, or related endless details about their day. The grandfather clock sounding out the quarter hours. The evening wearing down like melting wax. Dribbling closer, closer still, to the moment when, at last, she could open that first chardonnay, pour herself a crisp, cool glass, the initial sip like goodness, like a mouthful of clarity itself.

But, of course, Cindy Ann stayed on the road. She loved her girls. She wouldn't have done anything to harm them or, for that matter, anybody, including herself. It was only that she was particularly tired this morning. It was only that the days had grown so dark—you forgot, each summer, what the winters were like, year after year, in Wisconsin. It was only that she'd just turned forty-
five, fifteen years older than she'd been when David passed, and still there wasn't a day she didn't wonder how her life would have been different, if. She'd been numb with grief when she'd married Laurel's father, Scott—he'd been after the trust money David left, she could admit that now—and as for Andy, well, all she could say was that he'd been different, before. Before he'd proposed. Before he started drinking so much—
much
more than she did, that was a fact. Before he began to look at Amy in a way that Cindy Ann recognized. At least, she reminded herself now, she hadn't not-seen that look, insisted on not-understanding it, the way that Mum had done. At the time, Monica had still been in diapers. Still, Cindy Ann had thrown him out.

Her attorney had been right. She was brave. She was that.

At least, in her darkest moments, there was always that.

Only now, here she was, single again. Middle-aged. The mother of three daughters, ages seven to sixteen, each of them bearing a different last name. How on earth could she meet someone new, begin all over again? Who, after all, would want someone who'd already been married three times? Who wouldn't assume what Cindy Ann herself had been suspecting ever since the summer she, herself, was her oldest daughter's age: that there was something fundamentally wrong with her, repellent, scarred, stained?

“Skank!” That was Amy.

“Slut.” That was Laurel.

Monica kicked her heels against the back of Cindy Ann's seat.

Enough.

Turning onto the Point Road, Cindy Ann snapped on the overhead light so she could see their faces in the rearview. “Keep it up,” she promised, pumping the brakes so hard that their heads snapped forward and back. “I'll pull over, make you walk, I swear it.”

Three pairs of eyes observed her patiently, scornfully. She wasn't going to make them walk. They knew it, and they knew their mother
knew
they knew it. The moment she sped up again, they'd resume their bickering, which was, in fact, delightful to them, an invigorating exercise of wit, a warm-up for all that awaited them in the close, crowded hallways, the overheated classrooms, the echoing gymnasiums of Fox County's public school system.

Imagine the Suburban tunneling between the plow drifts in the early-morning haze. Imagine it approaching the yield sign, the flashing yellow light that foreshadows County C. Headlights striking dark patches of ice. Pale twists of dead cornstalks, lumps of hardened snow. Imagine the hushed, expectant faces of the girls, who love one another, need one another, in desperately equal proportions. Imagine the pleasurable tension they feel, returning their mother's stare.

Someone stifles a giggle. Somebody sneaks a pinch. At last, Cindy Ann slows down for real, turns in her seat to face them, the Suburban traveling forward as if by intuition alone, a headless warrior, a blinded horse.

Yes, I understand.

Because at this moment, it's incomprehensible to Cindy Ann that the world could be larger than what she sees. Everything and anything that matters is here: her children, her daughters, this external, tri-chambered heart. All her best wishes, her tenderness and longing. Her past and her future. Her reverence and hope. So that when she faces forward again, accelerating as she does so, it's easy to dismiss the glimmer to her left—astonishing, quick as a falling star—as a tremulous illusion, a trick of the eye. Her feet, after all, are snug in their boots. There's a prickle of static in her hair. A commercial on the radio, something about peanut butter, the crunchy
kind, even as one of the girls draws a high, sharp breath.

No, this cannot be happening.

That long-buried thought, rising to the surface like a fish, like an eel, shooting out of its deep cave.

And then, the first ting of metal against metal, unyielding as an unwanted kiss.

 

Cindy Ann Kreisler touched, with her index finger, the line of Carla Gary's letter containing my name, a name that, even after twenty-odd years, sounded wrong to her, unfamiliar, strange.
Megan Van Dorn
. In her thoughts, I was still Meggie Hauskindler: narrow-hipped, solemn-eyed, the sort of girl who favored bulky sweatshirts, jeans tattooed with a ballpoint pen. Cindy Ann wore patchwork skirts she made herself, Indian-style blouses, beads. Sweet perfume that belonged to her mother. Mum never minded, the way some mothers did. She let Cindy Ann wear her jewelry, too, as often as she liked: turquoise earrings, funky toe-rings, bracelets set with bright, tumbled bits of glass.

“You're a lovely girl,” Mum used to say. “It's only right you should wear lovely things.”

Lovely. Cindy Ann closed her eyes, bent her head until it rested on the cool, smooth surface of the letter, the photos spread out on the counter like a dark halo, circling her head. Her stomach muscles ached from the gym; her neck was stiff, too, from where she'd pulled it, hauling trash. Three days a week, she reported to the Highway Department with a half-dozen other violators. There she strapped on a dirty orange vest and walked beside whatever stretch of road they'd been assigned, picking up litter with a grab-stick. Nine
A.M.
to three
P.M.
, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was
July. She'd been doing this for five months.

Five hundred hours,
the criminal judge had said.
That should keep you out of trouble.

Sometimes, passing cars would slow, heads turning to gawk. Occasionally, someone threw something, a can or a bottle, a wad of fast-food wrappers. Today, it had a been a shoe. A single high-topped sneaker, whizzing past Cindy Ann's ear. Carlton Schmidt, their supervisor, picked it up. He was soft-spoken, a widower, a Sunday-morning usher at St. Clare's. All of them sweated like pigs as they worked, especially now that the cooler, June weather had turned, but the thing about Carlton—they talked about it sometimes, among themselves—was that he never, ever broke a sweat. He seemed genuinely happy to see them in the morning. He addressed them as mister and missus. He never acted as if he were speaking to a bunch of petty criminals, which is what, for the most part, all of them were. Shoplifters and vandals. People who'd been too stupid not to get caught.

“Kids,” he said, with a mild sigh, stuffing the sneaker into Cindy Ann's bag. He didn't bother to write down the license. Nobody ever bothered with that.

But now, it was Friday evening. The air conditioner hummed. The girls were all in bed, thank God, even Amy, who had only worked until nine—her throat hurt, she'd said, there was something going around. The blinds in the wide, bay window were closed, the new, thick curtains pulled tight. Cindy Ann could hear the quiet hiss of the ginger ale she'd poured just in case Amy came back to the kitchen, pretending she needed something: cough drops, hot tea. Pretending she wasn't checking up on Cindy Ann. Which, of course, was exactly what she was doing. Because Amy had found the letter, the photos, which had shown Cindy Ann sitting down in exactly this
spot. Taken from the street, which meant—according to Carla Gary—that they were perfectly legal, admissible. What an idiot she'd been, letting down her guard. Believing what Toby Hauskindler had told Mallory: that the Van Dorns were dropping the civil suit.
Ha
. The Van Dorns had set her up, that much was clear. And what made it even worse was that they'd used her own sister to do it.

Not that Cindy Ann owed the Van Dorns or anyone an explanation for those photographs. Not that she didn't have the right, in the privacy of her home, to enjoy a glass of wine if she wanted to, the hell with some goddamn court order. The hell with her therapist, with Carla, with Mal. The hell with Amy, always watching her, always worrying, as if she were the mother and Cindy Ann the troublemaker, the child who couldn't be trusted. Amy, who insisted on working this job, putting all her money into six-month CDs, buying stock, investing in government bonds. For the future, she said. If we need it, she said. We have to be practical, Ma, in case the Van Dorns take everything.