The lake swells with little but stones and grass between me and it. The water has flooded its banks. My bench needs a coat of paint, but then everything worth using does. I scratch at the flakes with a fingernail, feel them cut into my thumb. It’s the time of year when the lake is warm as a bath. An old man passes, younger by at least twenty years. He keeps his hands in his pockets and nods at me as if nodding meant something. I shake my newspaper out.
RUDOLF HESS DEAD IN BERLIN
LAST OF HITLER INNER CIRCLE
My word. A suicide, no less. What was it Mrs. Keyes had said? With a name like that, it’s no wonder the man’s a murderer. But that was back in ’47, when they hanged a man by the name of Hoess. A different Rudolph. Hess, Hoess, I could hear Mrs. Keyes saying. What’s the difference? Auschwitz, Charlotte would have said to that. Greta was only twenty-six in ’47 and already in New York. The girl never did bother much with names. In every school production she changed what she called herself, as if trying on a new coat. But in New York, they might have second-guessed if Greta had gone by Hess instead of Byrne.
The men are dead. I don’t believe Greta ever knew we had such an ugly name. I had never thought it ugly myself.
Margrit Hess, Father had insisted for the top of Mother’s stone. We children hoped to have the word Mother listed first. Still we were far too young to get a say in something like that. We buried Mother in the northernmost field, close enough for her to hear the river — if hearing she wanted. It took Ray and Father a full day of digging, and not even Lee to help. Lee, who traveled two weeks on a boat and three days on a train once the telegram was sent. If he hadn’t gone to war, it would have been Lee who built the box, Lee who did most of the digging. As it was, the grave wasn’t very deep. Lee was sorry about that when he got back. We laid our flowers on the mound. At her head, a block of slate. Mother, it read, though second to her name. When Charlotte and I buried Mrs. Keyes, we inscribed Mother on it as well. I took it hard losing her, but Charlotte took it worse. The word Friend didn’t seem enough for either of us.
A tap on my shoulder. “Norma?” The name isn’t anything but a fly at my ear. “Norma?” again. And then the name I know better, the sound that fills me with something else altogether: “Myrle?” I turn my head. Charlotte stands behind me with a coat thrown over her nightdress and slippers on her feet. With her hair drained of color, she looks a ghost. The sun has set. The waves in the lake are quiet. There’s a moon as yellow as a stone. It’s the only way I can see her at all.
“You were gone so long,” she says.
I shake my head to throw off the dust. “I’m fine.”
She takes my arm and I ease myself up. Only when I press my fingers to the wood do I feel the cold of that bench. When we turn to the city, the lake stays dark at our backs. The gulls are gone. The shops are closed now. The walk feels longer than before, though I have Charlotte and her cane, tapping the cement. We are two old women leaning against each other for every step.
“Just a bit farther” she says. “We’ll get you home. You must be coming down with that fever that’s going around.”
“I only lost a little time.”
Charlotte squeezes my arm and doesn’t let go. She studies me out of the corner of her eye. “We’ll get you home.”
I strain to look back. There’s a young girl on my bench. Her name is Myrle. She was always murkier than anyone could have guessed. I watch as she walks into the lake, the water lapping her shins. She’ll go deeper yet. Mother knew it when she filled our heads with the names of things. Because who says a person can’t live more than one life?
“It was me,” I told Charlotte after Greta was born. “I was the one who wanted to go.” And Charlotte pretended that was the way it had always been. “Esther was too jittery here,” she said. “But all you wanted was to get out of your room.” She traced a finger across my palm. “Besides, you talk in your sleep.”
That night before Esther and I left home, when everyone had gone to bed, I took Father’s key while he slept and fit it in the lock. We’ve got to know we’ve stolen the right one, Esther had said. The bolt turned, the door opening. When I stepped out, there was nothing but a thin moon and my feet bare on the wooden planks. I felt my way down the porch steps, through the yard where the grass wet my shins. Come right back, Esther had said, but I wouldn’t. Not yet. The river was quiet against the rocks as I picked my way out.
I had long hoped to try it. Since I’d found Mother so quiet in her bed. Since Tom had left me in the hayloft and Patricia made her announcement: That boy’s gotten himself engaged. All those days spent in my room with my eyes closed, holding my breath — they were only practice for this.
At the river, the dirt turned to mud, the grass higher than my knees. I threw my nightgown on the bank and hugged three stones to my chest. As I waded in, the water was cold enough to burn. The moon barely showed itself. The river cut a trail between the fields. The cold changed to numbness the deeper I went, the current tugging at my feet. The water was soon at my hips. When it reached my throat, I dove in.
There is a place where a person is nothing. Where water is the same as breathing. This was it.
I sat on the muddy floor with the stones pressed to my chest and listened. My ears rang. My heart beating in them. I was more than frozen, the key sharp against the inside of my hand. For a while, it seemed the bottom of the river was what wanted me most. The weeds were knots, the mud pulling at my heels. But this was the agreement I had made with myself. I would pinch my nose. I would dive in. And if something in me wanted to stay with the river, I would.
But soon I felt it, that swelling in my stomach. My arms, that swelling said, they didn’t want stones. I loosened my grip, let them sink. The key I held tight in my fist. I pushed at the mud with my feet, felt myself breaking through the surface. The air was clear and easy in a way I’d never known.
I made my way to the bank, heaving. On a rock, I sat out in the open and let the wind dry me as it could. There were the cicadas again. Farther out, the barn steamed with the animals sleeping. A noise in the meadow — a snake, a rabbit, a bird. I pulled my nightgown over my head, walked until the house showed itself. It seemed low and dull sitting there. I unlocked the door again and drew it fast.
A lantern blazed in the hall. “Why, Myrle,” Nan said, “you’ll catch your death.”
The key I hid behind my back. The river ran down my leg. Nan’s face showed sharp and pale, her arm trembling with the lantern’s weight. Her eyes swept the mat under my feet. When she raised them to my face again, her look softened. She opened her mouth as if she might say something. Instead she smiled.
Oh, Nanny, you can come with us. I took her hand.
Nan’s smile faltered. I wondered if I had spoken aloud. But Nan would never leave. She had let me go weeks before with the draft of that window. For her, she was as much a part of that house as the planks over our head.
“Go on,” Nan said. She jerked her chin at the stairs. I squeezed her hand and ran. At the top, Esther closed the door and sat me on her bed. I was shivering enough for the two of us.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“By the river.”
She frowned. “I don’t think we should go. It’s too far.”
I held out the key to her and she gasped. My hand was bleeding. I’d gripped it so hard, it had made its mark.