The Drowning Tree (12 page)

“Your friend may not have either.”

“H
OW CAN YOU KNOW THAT?”
I
ASK
. “I
SN’T IT TOO EARLY FOR YOU TO HAVE THE
autopsy results?”

Detective Falco tilts his head sideways and narrows his pale gray eyes. I have a feeling that the look he’s giving me is pretty much the same one I gave him when he quoted from Tennyson.

“You’re right,” he says. “We don’t know it for sure but the medical examiner’s preliminary report says there’s little or no water in the lungs—and we found this—” He pulls a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket and holds it up. Inside is an amber-colored plastic pill case—the kind with little compartments to store a daily dose. It’s exactly like the one that Fay Morgan said she saw Christine take a pill from last Sunday. “—inside Miss Webb’s jacket pocket.”

“Pills? You think Christine took an overdose? She paddled up Wicomico Creek and then swallowed—what? How do you know what was in there? They could have been vitamins.”

Falco gives the bag a sharp shake and I hear a rattle. I lean forward to get a closer look. The early morning light turns the ordinary plastic into a surprisingly lovely shade of buttery yellow—not unlike the silver stain in medieval glass. I notice that all of the numbered compartments—enough for a month’s worth of medication—are empty except for the last one, in which a pink oval tablet rests next to a round orange pill.

“The pink tablet is Luvox, an antidepressant, and the orange one is Klonopin, a tranquilizer that is also used as an antianxiety medication. I reached Miss Webb’s physician last night and he confirmed the prescription for Luvox, but not the one for Klonopin. Did your friend ever mention to you that she was taking either one or the other of these pills?”

I lean back in my chair. “I knew about the Luvox but not the Klonopin, but then she might not have wanted me to know she was taking a tranquilizer.”

“Why not?”

“She had a bad history with tranquilizers. She was given some to help her sleep after she broke her leg and she kind of got hooked on them.”

“In fact she overdosed on them, isn’t that right?”

“Did Fay Morgan tell you that? God, it’s amazing how gossip lives on in a little college like Penrose. The overdose was an accident …”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t. Still it is a
history
, as they say. Was that time in college the only time she overdosed?”

I look away from the detective toward the river. It’s still early enough that there’s mist rising from the water, an opaque coating that reminds me of the white enamel paint I use on glass sometimes. I think of Christine lying beneath the surface of that water and feel cold in spite of the sun. I realize that my reluctance to answer the detective’s questions comes from a desire to protect Christine, but clearly she is far beyond any need for my protection.

“No,” I answer, “but you probably know that already. Four and a half years ago she was admitted to Bellevue because she overdosed on tranquilizers.”

“Yes, in fact, Christine’s mother mentioned it. Still, I’d like to hear it from you. How did the substance abuse problems begin?”

“Well, she probably had a drinking problem as far back as college, only we all drank a lot then, so I didn’t really think about it. Then six or seven years ago she started taking pills, too. It started when she was writing regularly for an art journal and she said she was having trouble making her deadlines. She took Ritalin, because she said it helped her focus, and some other kind of amphetamines to stay awake. Then she would need tranquilizers to help her sleep … she mentioned she was taking Halcion once. She told me about it because she thought I’d get a kick out of the mythological reference—” I pause to see if Falco’s Greek mythology is up to his Victorian poetry but he’s shaking his head.

“You Penrose girls! Never at a loss for the literary reference.”

“I’m sorry—I know it sounds silly. It’s not important …”

“No, no, I’ll never rest now unless I hear the story. Can I have the Cliff’s Notes version though?”

“Sure. Halcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds, and she was married to Ceyx, son of Hesperus, the evening star.”

“A match made in heaven.”

“They
were
very happy together, but Ceyx decides to go on a sea voyage and Halcyone has a presentiment of doom. She begs him not to go, or at least to take her with him, but he goes anyway. If he’s going to die, he figures, he’d rather she be spared.”

“Big of him.”

“Yes, well Halcyone’s fears prove grounded. Ceyx’s ship is caught in a storm. In his last dying moments he begs the gods to bring his drowned body home to Halcyone so that she can bury him.”

“That’s what I never got about these Greek myths—if he could ask for that why couldn’t the gods just save him?”

I laugh. “I know. My ex-husband always explained it by quoting
his
favorite literary source, ‘You can’t always get what you want—’ ”

“ ‘But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.’ ”

“Tennyson
and
the Rolling Stones. I’m impressed, Detective Falco.”

“Yeah, call me Mr. Renaissance Man,” he says. I notice that he hasn’t
asked me to call him by his first name. “So go on. Ceyx’s body comes back to his poor grieving widow?”

“Well, not at first. Halcyone keeps praying to Juno to bring her husband back …”

“Your namesake.”

“She
is
the goddess of marriage. It bothers Juno, though, to go on hearing these prayers for a dead man—she feels it defiles her altars—so she sends Iris to the god of sleep, Somnus, who sends his son, Morpheus, in a dream to Halcyone to let her know that Ceyx is dead.”

“Quite a chain of command there.”

“The gods are big on delegating,” I reply, getting into the spirit of the story. For now I have forgotten why I am telling it. I am back in college telling it to Neil, who loved it so much he did a series of paintings based on the myth. He especially loved the part where Morpheus visits Halcyone in the guise of drowned Ceyx.

“Halcyone believes the dream because her husband appears to her not as he was in life, but pale, naked, and dripping in seawater. In the morning she goes down to the shore and there, floating out in the water, she sees Ceyx’s drowned body. As she reaches out to him she’s transformed into a bird and when she touches Ceyx he, too, is changed into a bird.”

“So they get to live together as birds?”

“Yes. And for seven days during the winter when they’re sitting on their nest—which floats on the ocean—Aeolus reins in his winds. Hence the term
halcyon days
—a time of peace and tranquility.”

“Or a drug to make you feel that way. Who knew the pharmaceutical companies were so literary? And you say this was why your friend Christine called up to tell you she was taking these pills? Because she thought you’d appreciate the mythological reference?”

“My ex-husband, Neil Buchwald, did a series of paintings based on the Halcyone myth. She said she thought it was ironic—that if Neil had
taken
Halcion instead of
painted
Halcyone he might not have ended up in a psychiatric hospital …”

“Wait a second, back up. Your ex is in a psychiatric hospital?” For the first time this morning I see a look of genuine surprise on the detective’s face.

“You mean none of the Penrose gossips you spoke to this morning
mentioned that? The story’s usually hauled out any time something goes amiss at Penrose. You see, Neil was admitted to the college as an exchange student during my junior year. The college was experimenting at the time with the idea of going coed. After I got pregnant and Neil had a rather spectacular mental collapse the plans for coeducation were ditched.”

“A
spectacular
mental collapse?”

I get up and walk to the railing. Only a few patches of mist remain, leaving streaks of white against the blue as if a layer of enamel has been scratched away to reveal the colored glass beneath. That’s what Falco’s questions have been—a scratching away to reveal some pattern in the glass.

“There was one incident senior year, but the real clincher is what happened the next year. Neither of us was attending Penrose at the time so it shouldn’t have concerned the college but still it was here in Rosedale …”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened, Miss McKay?”

“He took a boat out on the river and tried to drown himself.”

“I see.”

“No,” I say, turning back to the detective. “You don’t. He took me and Bea along with him. He tried to drown us as well.”

D
ETECTIVE
F
ALCO GIVES ME A FEW MINUTES TO COLLECT MYSELF BEFORE ASKING HIS
next question. “Did you and Christine discuss the incident with your ex-husband—the drowning attempt—last Sunday night?”

“We didn’t discuss it, but she did allude to it. I told her that I sometimes dreamed about Neil, and she wanted to know which Neil I dreamed about—the sane Neil or the crazy one, the Neil we knew when we first met him or the Neil that took me out on the river that day.”

“And?”

“I didn’t tell her. I lied and said I really didn’t dream about him at all.” Falco looks away from me when I confess my lie, as if to spare me the embarrassment. I think of the things he must have heard people confess to and try to believe that my little lie to Christine must seem slight in comparison, but then I remember the closed look that had come over Christine’s face when I lied to her. Had she brought up the incident on the river
because she was already thinking of killing herself? If I hadn’t lied would she have told me what she was planning? And if she had, could I have stopped her? Could I have helped her any more than I’d been able to help Neil?

I expect that these are the questions going through Falco’s mind, but his next question takes me by surprise. “But you do dream about him—like Halcyone dreams of Ceyx. So who does Morpheus send in your sleep? Sane Neil or crazy Neil?”

I can’t imagine what bearing my answer could have on his investigation, but I tell him just the same. Maybe to make up for not telling Christine. “Neither. The Neil who shows up in my dreams is dead. It’s as if he succeeded that day and drowned. He comes to me, just as Ceyx came to Halcyone, like a drowned man.”

I
LET
D
ETECTIVE
F
ALCO OUT THE SIDE DOOR AND WATCH HIM GO DOWN THE FIRE
stairs, hoping he doesn’t notice the rusted-out spots and cite me for some code violation. When he gets to the bottom step he lifts a hand up in farewell but doesn’t turn around. Instead of turning toward River Street where he left his car he turns left and heads toward the boathouse. I wonder if he has more questions for Kyle, but when he gets to the boathouse he veers right, toward the landing beach. When I lose sight of him behind a stand of willows on the edge of the water I go back inside.

The sight of the mess left in the wake of Bea’s departure does nothing to cheer me and even though I’m exhausted I know that if I lie down I won’t be able to sleep. So instead I start collecting the piles of laundry that lie scattered around the loft and stuffing them into a black garbage bag. I move quickly, not even stopping to find a tissue to wipe my eyes, but no matter how hard I work I can’t keep at bay the image of Christine hanging upside down in the clear water of Wicomico Creek. The thought that she got there by her own hand is unbearable. How could I have let her get on that train? I knew something was bothering her and with her
history
—as the detective put it—I should have known not to let her leave alone. I also know, though, that the minute she started talking about Neil I was ready to see her go. Had she brought up Neil’s drowning attempt because
she was already planning to kill herself that way? Would she have asked me to go with her if I hadn’t lied to her about the dreams?

And is that what Detective Falco thinks happened—that I went along with Christine on her suicidal mission and fled the scene when her kayak capsized? If only I
had
been there.

I pick up the bag I’ve just stuffed as well as the bag that still holds the dust-covered work clothes I wore last week and haul them both down the side stairs. I’d usually take the car with this much laundry, but today I seem to crave the backbreaking labor of dragging the heavy load down River Street—like some medieval penitent flogging himself through the streets of plague-ridden Europe. A homeless man wheeling his shopping cart full of tattered possessions, and the tolling of bells from St. Aloysius’s help complete the image for me.

At the laundromat I sort the regular laundry into light and dark loads and then dump my work clothes—after covering my mouth and nose with a clean bandana—into one of the oversized machines. I set the dial for hot. I’m just about to pour in detergent when I notice some papers sticking out from under a pair of jeans. As soon as I reach in and touch the thick, rough pages I remember what they are—the discarded sketches we found in the stone groove during the removal of the Lady window.

Cursing at myself for forgetting about them, I pull the wad of folded paper out of the washing machine and tap them against the edge of the tub to shake the dust off them.
Some conservator
, I think,
about to use industrial-strength cleaning solvents on fragile archival material
.