Someday Home (25 page)

Judith snorted. “He's a selfish jerk who reneges on his promises.”

“I know, but look how my life has changed. Had he not initiated a divorce, I'd still be locked into being a person that I don't even like. Trying to be someone I am not. I tried to be what he said he wanted, I really did. And I was good at it.” Her voice dropped. “But it wasn't me.”

Frogs chorused from the lake. A fish splashed. A dog barked somewhere in the distance across the water.

“Such peace. Lord, I do want to forgive Jack. I don't want to carry all this hurt and anger anymore.” Her eyes brimmed over and her nose ran. She dug a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose. “Help me, please.”

Judith wagged her head. “You guys make me almost wish I could forgive my father, but there's just too much. Twenty-five years! More. He ruined my life. I'm an old woman without a past and without a future.” She shuddered. “No. I can't do it.”

I
love
canoes!” Angela came slamming in the back door. Her wild arrival startled Judith, who was sitting at the kitchen table with Lynn, so much she almost spilled her coffee. “Well, maybe not love. But like.”

Phillip entered behind her. “She didn't do too badly, either. She's finally getting the hang of it.”

Triumphantly, Angela held out a stringer with three fish, each about a foot long, and laid them on the table.

Judith frowned at them. “Those are trout?”

“Walleyes.” Angela pointed. “See how the two dorsal fins are arranged? Trout only have one fin there and an adipose fin near the tail—a little fleshy tab, not a fin with spines.” She sat down, too.

Phillip flopped into a chair. “Fly-fishing can be pretty frustrating even for people who fish a lot, so we went after walleye.”

“Phillip,” Angela said, “thank you so much for taking me out! If it isn't something to do with real estate or makeup, I don't know anything about it. This is all new to me.” She looked at Lynn. “It was amazing.”

Phillip was smiling. “Our whole family enjoys fishing; glad you do, too.”

Lynn added, “Phillip has been canoeing and fishing since he was five. He'd better know what he's doing.”

“Five?” Angela sighed. “I never realized until just now how much Charles and Gwynn missed out on. Jack and I were always so busy…” Her sentence died unfinished.

Her children missed out?
Judith thought,
I missed out, too! On so much!

Lynn stood and crossed to the sink. “Now comes the interesting part. Bring your fish to the sink, Angela.”

Phillip hopped up. “Oh, gee! Look at the time! Gotta go. G'night, Mom! Judith.” He rushed out.

Judith watched him go. “What precipitated that?”

Lynn laughed. “He absolutely hates to clean fish. I'm afraid I spoiled him.”

Yeah, right.
That generous young man is spoiled.
Judith walked over to the sink, too.

“This is a filleting knife; very sharp and no serration. If the restaurant is fancy enough, they'll serve your fish with the head still on it. Our house is not fancy.” Lynn slipped her knife in behind the gill covers and cut off the head with crunchy, squishy sounds.

Our house was fancy. The cook served some fish with the head still on.
Judith was in an alien world all right.

“Then we remove the internal organs. We stick the point of the knife in here and carefully cut open the belly. It isn't going to ruin anything if you accidentally cut the intestines, but it's nicer if you don't. Like this. See? And we clip out the anus here.” Lynn had obviously cleaned a fish or two. She flicked the knife and it did just what she wanted.

She handed the knife to Angela. “Your turn.”

As Angela performed surgery on her other walleyes, Judith thought,
Could I do that?
Yes, she could. The sorrow was that Cook never let her in the kitchen. She was always too little, even when she was approaching age thirty.

Come to think of it, she felt sad for Cook, too. The grumpy old woman spent her whole life and career—her
whole
career!—serving in the Rutherford House kitchen. She was good, very good. She could have been a major hotel chef or owned a restaurant. Why did she spend her whole life cooking for the Rutherfords? Not making that much money, either—Judith knew; she kept the books.

“If it's a fish this size, I usually just butterfly it. Catch a larger fish, and I'll show you how to fillet it.” Lynn demonstrated with one fish and Angela butterflied the others. They applied a rub, wrapped the fish, and put them in the refrigerator. Dinner tomorrow.

Judith spent part of the next day simply reading, a luxury that until now she had not permitted herself. In fact, she had not yet finished the Galveston hurricane book, and this was the best part, too. The author remarked that a disproportionate number of women and children died. Well, yes. Men could swim in street clothes. Even women who could swim wouldn't have much luck in a raging storm, trying to swim in ankle-length wool skirts. And her thoughts pleased her. She was reading analytically, a good habit for doing well academically.

Around noon, Lynn went out to deadhead the roses and dahlias. Judith studied. After lunch Lynn went into town to the grocery and hardware store (and took Homer along—“we don't want Homer to think that every time he gets in the car, it means a trip to the vet's”), and Judith thought about her furniture. She'd made a formal study space, but her desk was too far from the window. She wanted more natural light. And over by the window here…someone knocked.

“Come in!”

Angela stood there grinning. “Let's go fishing.” She was still glowing, like a child on Christmas morning. “That was a wonderful time last evening, fishing for walleye.”

“I've never done that. Or paddled a canoe.”

“It's not that hard, really! I can show you. Half an hour or so, not long; I know you have to study.” She sobered. “Besides, I just got a call from my lawyer.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Not about me. Jack has not sent the money to buy his half of the house, so the lawyer hired a private detective to go nosing around a little. A woman named Marillee—I had to get my lawyer to spell that—wrote the check for his latest mortgage payment and now he's put her name on the deed as a co-owner.”

Judith wagged her head. “That creep!”

Angela brightened. “Anyway, I'm going to put all that behind me and just go fishing. That's very scriptural you know. When Peter was so upset, he said, ‘I go a-fishing.'”

Judith laughed. Several times she had wondered how they could possibly help Angela. Well, here was an opportunity. She'd move furniture later. “Sure. Let's go.”

Angela gathered up her fishing equipment and they walked down to the dock.

The T dock was fairly large, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet. The canoe lay upside down on one side of it. Tied up on the other side, an inflatable rubber raft with a small motor on back bobbed in the water.

“Phillip showed me how.” Angela gripped the edge of the canoe and flipped it over the side. It plopped into the water. Judith saw that it was tied to a ring in the dock and the paddles were lying under it. Well, at least that part seemed simple enough.

Cautiously, Angela crawled in and settled herself on the rear seat. The canoe only wobbled a little. “Pass me the tackle box, please, and the paddles.”

Judith handed her the tackle box, the rod, and a net. “Why three paddles? There are two of us.” She handed all three in.

“In case you accidentally lose one and it floats out of reach. You have an extra.”

“Speaking of safety. Aren't we supposed to wear life jackets?”

Angela thought a moment. “I don't know where they keep them. Not in the mudroom.” She shrugged. “Oh, well. We're not going out very far. Untie us, please.”

Judith did so, tossing the rope into the front of the canoe. Then she climbed into the boat but carefully, reluctantly, as Angela had done, stepping in the middle only. The canoe moved beneath her feet too much; she didn't like this feeling. No matter. She was in. She sat down on the forward seat and picked up a paddle. “Which end goes in the water?”

Angela laughed. “That's about how much I knew about it, too.”

Judith wondered how you were supposed to turn corners with this thing. But then the beauty of the moment seized her and she forgot about turning corners. The lake lay flat and glistening before them, with only a few wind ripples to give it texture. The sun skipped in and out among clouds, and the patterns of clouds and sunlight on the water were new and wonderful and constantly changing.
And look!
There was a loon way out there.
A loon!
Judith was not looking at it from her world onshore; she was in the loon's world now, a dream she'd had forever.

Behind her, Angela baited her line and cast it out. Judith laid her paddle across her lap and simply drank in the quiet beauty. Serenity. But this was a more peaceful serenity than what she had known at Rutherford House. It took her a few minutes to figure out why. At the house, she was always listening for the bell her father rang when he wanted something. Always. They had spacious, well-tended gardens and lovely rooms, but she could never just sit in them and enjoy the quiet. There was always that bell, an unpleasant expectancy; peace could always be shattered at any moment.

“I got one!” The canoe wobbled. “Oh, nuts, I lost it. Oh, well.” The canoe wobbled slightly again as Angela cast her line out.

Judith smiled. No, that was not the same thing at all as an interruption at Rutherford House. That was simply joy being expressed out loud. She watched the loon.

But then her attention turned to a flat line of ripples approaching across the lake, a curious thing. The line was quite straight. And behind it the water was really bumpy.

“Angela? Turn us around and let's head back. You can fish from closer to shore.”

“But I don't…well, I suppose, if you want.” The canoe wobbled. “Okay, Judith, you hold your paddle in the water straight up and down; don't paddle, just hold it there; and I'll paddle and turn us around.”

The line in the water was approaching quickly. And then it was here; it hit the canoe at an angle and they almost went over. From practically no wind to lots of wind instantly.

“Paddle! Paddle!” Angela cried.

Judith paddled! They were now positioned nose toward the shore, but the wind was driving them backward. They weren't approaching shore; they were getting farther out.

The wind picked up more.

“Maybe we should just turn around and paddle for the far shore,” Judith called. “Then when this dies down, we can come back across.”

“I think you're right! I'll turn us around.”

Judith set her paddle vertically; she heard splashing and sloshing in back. The canoe began to turn. The wind caught then sideways, and they started to tip away from the wind.

“Lean into it!” Angela yelled. “Lean into it; it's going to blow us over!”

Judith leaned into the wind. Too late, she realized that was a serious mistake; the wind now had more canoe surface to blow against. It shoved the canoe sideways, and then they were tipping over in a terrifying sort of slow motion. Before she could lean on the other side or something, it was too late.

Angela screamed; Judith screamed; they were in the water!

The water was cold! Ice! It pierced Judith's clothes instantly. She was soaked to the skin with ice water. She gasped the biggest gasp she had ever gasped.

Angela was gasping, too, but she must have inhaled water; she was choking and coughing.

“Hang on to the canoe!” Judith cried. “Don't let go of the canoe!”

“It's going to sink, and…”

“It's upside down, but it's still floating; hang onto it!”

Cold! She was so horribly, miserably cold! They had only been in the water a few seconds and already she was shivering uncontrollably.

“Helllllp!” Why was Judith screaming for help? There was no one to hear her; no one ashore and certainly no one out here. And the cold…“Hellllllp!”

Angela managed words in between the coughing. “Help me! I can't hold on.”

Judith was having trouble hanging on, too. Her hands were too cold to grip, her arms so cold they were stiff. Her legs were numb. Did she have feet? She didn't feel them. She was never, ever going to be warm again, never. The cold was even in her chest.

The upside-down canoe offered nothing to hang on to; its sides were smooth. Judith had been gripping the edge—the gunwale—but it was underwater, under frigid water. Her fingers were too numb to do that now. She groped underneath and grasped one of the crosspieces. She hooked her left arm over it and sort of locked herself onto it.

With a yelp and a moan, Angela drifted out from the canoe; she'd lost her grip.

Judith grabbed her and pulled her in, curled her free right arm around her, and held her.

“Helllllllp!”

It was raining; not just raining, but a drumming, slamming rain. And the pounding raindrops were curiously warm.

Something nudged into Judith and shoved her head against the canoe. What was happening? Her head went under; she forced it back up.

And suddenly she realized her right arm was empty! Angela was not there!

She wanted to cry out,
Angela! Angela!
but it came out as “Aaahnsssh…Aaahnshh!” Her mouth and voice no longer obeyed her.

She couldn't see anything because a huge gray blob right in front of her face blocked out everything. “Aaahnnssh!”

Hands were gripping her, pulling on her. “Let go!” Lynn's voice. “Let go!”

The words were supposed to be,
I can't! I can't feel…Angela is drowning! Find Angela!
“kkkaahhhnn…Aaaaahnnnsssh…”

“Let go!”

Without doing anything, Judith felt her arm slip free of that crosspiece. She was getting dragged up the side of the gray blob. She fell forward. She realized she was in an extremely awkward position, her cheek pressed against a flat surface, her hind end in the air, and her feet hanging down out there. And she couldn't move to change it. Besides, she didn't care anymore.
Angela! Find Angela!
“Aaahhnnsh…” So cold.

Was that she who was coughing or was it someone else?

Hands gripped her legs and tugged. She was going to slide back into the icy water feetfirst, and she could not move her arms or legs to do anything about it.

“Okay, Lynn, we've got her.” A man's voice.

An engine kicked in; it sounded like it was moving away.

Judith could not feel her body parts at all, but she could at last raise her head to see what was going on. That inflatable boat they had seen at the dock was headed for shore. Lynn was operating it. And Angela was curled up beside her! Angela was safe!