Black Water Page 5

  ACNE CAN OCCUR AT ANY TIME NOT JUST ADOLESCENCE!

  Extra cells are produced in the skin pore lining, which blocks the exit of oils causing oil and bacteria to build up behind the plug. This leads then to whiteheads and blackheads and in cases of severe acne cyst formations. Recommended use of BENZOYL PEROXIDE an antibacterial medication and SALICYLIC ACID to cleanse and clear affected pores. Recommended green-tinted cosmetic underbase to neutralize the reddened skin areas then cover with sheer lightweight foundation and face powder.

  NEVER apply foundation directly to open acne lesion for this can result in infection!

  I want him to. His eyes, his hands. His mouth... Must stop staring.

  Her hair, her eyes, her lips... What is that fragrance?

  White spandex swimsuit with tiny pearl buttons for that lingerie look. Single shoulder strap and cut HIGH on the thighs so you will want to be golden tan ALL OVER.

  Daffodil-yellow cotton mesh tunic to be worn all summer with chiffon, jeans, swimwear: smart, versatile, and SEXY.

  CAUTION: the sun's ultraviolet rays, saltwater swimming, and overheated blow dryers are serious dangers to BEAUTIFUL HAIR.

  CAUTION: More than 100,000 American women are infected with the AIDS virus.

  CAUTION: Beware of disreputable modeling schools promising fashion magazine assignments within twelve months.

  CAUTION: Perfume, hair spray, and mousse that contain alcohol can cause permanent damage to silk and acetate garments. Spray before dressing or place a towel over shoulders before you spray.

  * * *

  SCORPIO'S MYSTERY. Pluto, God of the Underworld, was originally NOT a man but a woman— daughter of the Earth Mother Rhea. Pluto is but a masculinized goddess! It is believed that with the dawning of the New Age long-suppressed Scorpio powers will be rediscovered and the Scorpion will evolve to a new level—the PHOENIX RESURRECTED.

  SHE WAS NOT SCREAMING NOW NOR WAS SHE SOBBING knowing that the oxygen in this darkness must not be depleted but she spoke loudly and clearly her throat raw I'm here I'm here I'M HERE.

  She was not hysterical. She was not paralyzed with terror.

  She could hear him... somewhere above. The surface of the water was close above. There he moved cautiously in the shallows, he was diving, swimming to save her where she was trapped in the dark so she must guide him I'm here I'm here I'M HERE.

  As the black water rose about her, to fill her lungs.

  As the black water rose about her imperceptibly it seemed to her that draining, trickling water in thin rivulets like tears on her face, the soft groping-sucking of hundreds of leeches fastening their mouths on her, no it was merely water, she was sitting in water, shivering convulsively in water that smelled of sewage, gasoline, oil, her own urine where she'd soiled herself. Don't leave me. I'm here.

  One minute speeding along the bouncy rutted road the moon bright overhead and his kiss hard on her mouth the next minute fighting for their lives and he'd kicked her convulsive himself in terror to escape but he had not known what he was doing, it was blind panic, she understood.

  She understood. She had faith.

  She remembered now who he was: The Senator.

  She felt his fingertips on her bare shoulder, his breath that smelled of beer, alcohol... she was not a bad girl, she would explain behaving, in The Senator's company, in such a way as to appear to be, or in fact to be, obvious, expected, banal.

  Yet, after they'd been introduced, after they were talking so easily, discovering so much to talk about, Carl Spader for instance, Citizens' Inquiry for instance, Kelly had changed her mind about the man.

  —really warm, gracious. Genuinely interested in other people. And certainly intelligent.

  Rehearsing the future, in words.Your words. Your story.

  For you must never doubt there will be a future.

  And such a sense of humor!

  Making him laugh, entertaining him... an exhausted middle-aged man beginning to go soft in the gut, steely-gray curly hair thinning at the crown of his head, his left knee he'd sprained back in January playing squash so, damn it, he's easy game for Ray Annick on the court, wild Ray with his lethal second serve, yes make me laugh entertain me I want so badly to be happy so Kelly Kelleher was inspired telling the story (which she'd told Buffy long ago but sweet Buffy pretended to be hearing it for the first time) of the Gowanda Heights feud, no it was more than a feud it was outright war, property holders in the township were forced to choose sides and no waffling was permitted: either you favored the Gowanda Heights "tradition" of un-paved roads (which were surprisingly costly—a minimum of $40,000 a year on the average per road above the cost of maintaining paved roads) or you favored "modernization" and there were stormy emotions on both sides of the issue but especially on the side of the traditionalists... like Artie Kelleher of Scotch Pine Way, who believed his property values would decline if his road was paved and who quarreled so bitterly with an old friend who opposed him at the township hearings that Kelly's mother feared he might have a heart attack. Friendships were shattered, neighbors stopped speaking, lawsuits were threatened, at least one dog was suspected of being poisoned... and all for what, Kelly demanded laughing, all for what: dirt roads!

  The Senator laughed but well, yes, he supposed he understood, you have to know the human heart, the cherished trivia of the human heart, there is nothing not political as Thomas Mann said no matter how petty how selfish how ignorant it seems to neutral observers, Kelly was too young to understand, maybe.

  "Young? I'm not young at all. I don't feel young at all."

  The words sudden and fierce, and her laughter rather fierce, so that the others looked at her; he looked at her.

  She was determined not to say Senator I wrote my senior honors thesis on you unless the statement could be supremely casual, amusing.

  SHE WAS PULLING HERSELF UP USING THE STEERING WHEEL AS A LEVER.

  She was trembling with the effort, whimpering like a small sick frightened child.

  Like a child pleadingHelp me. Don't forget me. I'm here.

  How many minutes had passed since the car ran off the road, was it fifteen minutes?— forty minutes?—she could not gauge for some of this time she had not been fully conscious waking suddenly in terror as something snakelike rushed across her face, her neck, soaking her hair, not a snake and not anything truly alive but a gushing coil of black water as the car which had been apparently precariously balanced on its side shifted with the pressure of the current to overturn completely.

  Now trapped in here, not knowing where here was, not knowing how far away he was, upside down in utter blackness squirming and panting trying to get free groping for—what?— the steering wheel—her stiff fingers grasping the broken wheel to use as a lever as he had used it as a lever working himself free.

  The steering wheel positioned her at least. She could not see but she could calculate: how far to the driver's door that would open for her, she was certain it would, it must, open for her as it had opened for him, not wanting to think that perhaps the door had been flung open partly by the collision with the guardrail and had subsequently been shut by the force of the current, the rapid churning water she could not see but feel, hear, smell, sense with every pore of her being: her enemy, it was: a predator, it was: her Death.

  Not wanting to think. To acknowledge.

  You're not an optimist, you're dead.

  She was telling her mother she was a good girl but her mother seemed not to hear, speaking quickly, as if embarrassed, her grave gray eyes Kelly had always thought so lovely fixed on a spot behind Kelly's shoulder, "that sort of love is just a"—Kelly could not hear but thought it might be a fever in the blood—"it doesn't last, it can't last. Darling, I don't even remember when your father and I... the last time... like that... that..."—now profoundly embarrassed but pressing bravely onward for this was the conversation they had had, Kelly remembered suddenly, when, aged sixteen, at that time in her third year at the Bronxville Academy, she had fallen de
sperately in love with a boy and they had made love awkwardly and miserably Kelly for the first time and subsequently the boy avoided her and Kelly had wanted to die, could not sleep could not eat could not endure she was certain, like one of her friends at the school who had made in fact a serious suicide attempt swallowing a full container of barbiturates washed down with a pint of whiskey and taken by ambulance to the emergency room of Bronxville General she'd had her stomach pumped out, her frail life saved, and Kelly Kelleher did not want to die really, crying in Mother's arms she swore she did not want to die she was a good girl really, she was not a bad girl really, she did not want to take the birth-control pill like the other girls, and Mother was comforting her, Mother was there to comfort her, even now though not seeming to hear her (because of the rushing of the water perhaps, the barrier of the windshield) yes Mother was there to comfort her.

  As the black water splashed over her mouth.

  Except by a sudden exertion of strength she would not have known she'd had after the initial dazed trauma she was able to lift herself partway free of whatever it was clamping her knee, and now there was her foot, her right foot entirely without sensation, as it was invisible to her as if it did not exist and perhaps it was severed... except if so she would have bled to death by now she reasoned, so much time had passed.

  Still, she could neither move the toes of that foot nor feel them and even the physiological concepts of toes, foot had become confused in her mind so quickly she stopped thinking about them: she was an optimist.

  Kelly imagines she's so cynical, so wise to the ways of the world her friends teased her fondly,Oh but we know better! unable to resist teasing her about the Dukakis debacle, and her stubborn loyalty to Carl Spader, who treated her like a typist, once at a party she'd overheard Jane Freiberg telling a man Yes that's Kelly Kelleher let me introduce you she's so really sweet once you get past the—and she'd turned away quickly not wanting to hear the rest of Jane's words.

  So rude, people talking of her while she was within earshot. While she was alive.

  Her friends speaking of her so. How did they dare!

  Kelly?—beautiful.

  A voice jarringly close in her ear. But she saw no face.

  Nor could she remember his name exactly except to know that he was laboring to get to her, swimming against the swift choppy current his hair lifting in tendrils from his pale anguished face, he was reaching for the door handle, his fingers groping for the door handle that would release her if she had faith if she did not give in to fear to panic to terror to Death.

  Here. I'm here.

  Somehow it had happened she was lying upside down across what she understood to be the ceiling of the wrecked car, the roof was now resting rocking as if shuddering against the invisible creekbed, and close above her cramping her was the cushioned seat to which in some way she was still attached too, a strap across her shoulder, across her neck failure of the spinal cord to fracture as the prisoner falls so that the prisoner slowly suffocates but it was her right leg that was caught fast in the twisted metal: her foot paralyzed, numb, as empty of sensation as if it were a rock: severed? or still attached?

  But no, she must not think of that. She was an optimist.

  She realized then that she had vomited on herself without knowing when, reasoning swiftly that such a purging was beneficent clearing her stomach so that there would be less poison to pump out of it, this water that was not water of the sort with which she was familiar, transparent, faintly blue, clear and delicious not that sort of water but an evil muck-water, thick, viscous, tasting of sewage, gasoline, oil.

  Here? Help me—.

  Holding herself up out of the seeping water by sheer tremulous force gripping the steering wheel, whimpering like a child with the effort understanding If I can keep my head up, my mouth clear she would be able to suck at the air bubble floating above her irradiated by moonlight.

  That bright flat moon! Proof, so long as she could see it, that she was still alive.

  We'll get there Kelly And we'll get there on time.

  She knew, she understood, they were counting on her. He was counting on her.

  There would be an ambulance. A siren. The red light spinning wildly bouncing careening through the marshland.

  The girl named Lisa, the girl with a twin sister, who had tried to kill herself swallowing thirty-eight barbiturate tablets. They'd come to get her and pumped her stomach out and saved her and all the girls whispered in awe of her afterward her absence in classes and in the dining hall so conspicuous.

  That girl, though a twin, a sister, was not Kelly Kelleher.

  Kelly Kelleher who, after G-----, vowed she would never take her life for all life is precious.

  And so it was a matter of her strength, her will. The concentration of her soul. Not to give in. Not to weaken. The black water was rising by choppy degrees to splash over her chin, her mouth, but If I can keep my head up it was a matter of knowing what to do and doing it.

  Why had she hesitated to say they were lost, why hadn't she told him to turn the car around, to reverse their course, oh please!—but she had not dared offend him.

  The black water was her fault, she knew. You just don't want to offend them. Even the nice ones.

  He was nice. Even knowing they were so closely watching, memorizing him, certain of his remarks, his jokes. The way, in the spontaneous heat of a tennis volley, he gripped his jaws tight, bared his teeth.

  You come to despise your own words in your ears... your "celebrity."

  And how unexpectedly sweet he'd been to her. Kelly Kelleher. So radiant and assured there on the beach, wearing her new glamorously dark sunglasses the lenses scientifically treated to eliminate ultraviolet rays, and she knew she looked good, she was not a beautiful girl but sometimes you know, it's your time and you know, no happiness quite like that happiness.

  You're an American girl: you know.

  Yes she'd gained back a good deal of the weight. No her hair was no longer coming out in distressing handfuls, it was gleaming again, glossy, her mother would be relieved. A bitter childish thing to have wished G----- dead but Of course I don't feel that way any longer, I think of you as a friend.

  Still she had hesitated not wanting to utter aloud the word lost, had her own mother not warned her no man will tolerate being made a fool of by any woman no matter how truthfully she speaks no matter how he loves her.

  And then suddenly it was all right: the air bubble had stabilized.

  So strangely shaped, luminous it seemed to her, her blinded eyes, bobbing against the seats now suspended from the ceiling but it has stopped leaking away she was certain, she would hold it fast to her sucking lips sucking like an infant's lips until help came to save her.

  ALMOST STERNLY, REPROACHFULLY HE WAS SAYING, "—the Gulf War has given your generation a tragic idea of war and of diplomacy: the delusion that war is relatively easy, and diplomacy is war, the most expedient of options."

  And though she was flattered, how could she fail to be flattered by a famous man addressing her so earnestly, and paying so little attention to the others, quickly she said, "There is no such thing as 'my' generation, Senator. We're divided by race, class, education, politics—even sexual self-definition. The only thing that links us is our—separateness."

  The Senator considered this remark, thoughtfully.

  The Senator nodded, thoughtfully. And smiled.

  "Well, then! I stand corrected, eh?"

  Smiling at her.Frankly staring. What was the girl's name?—it was clear to all that indeed The Senator was impressed with the attractive articulate friend of the girl with whom Ray Annick was currently sleeping.

  And how raw and beautiful this northern shore of Grayling Island—the smell of the salt air, the bright fresh open ocean, the saw-toothed and precipitous white-capped waves so beautiful this world you want to sink your teeth into it, thrust yourself up to the hilt in it, oh Christ.

  KELLY, KELLY!—SHE HEARD HER NAME BEING CALLED f
rom above, Kelly!now on all sides of her, loud, jarring, her name rippling through the black water.

  Here, I'm here. Here.

  As the water splashed and churned about her mouth, foul-tasting water not water, like no water she knew. But she was holding her head as high as she could, her neck trembling with the effort. She had pushed her face, her mouth, into a pocket of waning air in a space she could not have named except vaguely to indicate that it was beyond the passenger's seat of the capsized vehicle, beneath the glove compartment?—a space where her knees had been when she'd been sitting. Her knees, her feet.

  Except she could no longer think of what the space was really. She had not the words, nor the logic by which they were joined.

  Nor had she the word for air just knowing, sensing, that her sucking pursed lips must not lose it.

  As the moonlit patch of light swelled, and ebbed, and swelled, and ebbed, she had no name for what was light, not even life.

  As the black water filled her lungs, and she died.

  No: she was watching the men playing tennis. She, Felicia Ch'en, Stacey Miles, amid the prickly wild rose above the St. Johns' handsome court, Kelly fingering the rose petals, stroking the thorns, sinking her nails into the fleshy red berries, a nervous mannerism, one of her bad habits, hard to break because it was barely conscious, watching the energetic play, watching him. Stacey said, laughing, "The main difference is, I mean you can see it so clearly, their muscles. Look at their legs."

  The Senator was the tallest man on the court since Lucius from M.I.T. disguised his height playing out of a deep canny crouch, the young women admired, applauded, took snap-shots, drifted away and returned and it was fascinating how a man will reveal his truest self, or so it seems, on the tennis court competing with other men, serious doubles is the real test, a risky enterprise. The Senator and his lawyer-friend Ray Annick gamely and good-naturedly teamed up, their opponents young enough to be their sons, as a man ages the legs go first but the shrewd player knows to conserve his limited energy and to force others to expend theirs. The Senator moved with territorial ease on the court, the manner of one who has played tennis since boyhood, years of instruction thus wicked shots to the rear of his opponents' court, amazing shots that barely skimmed the net, serves executed with machinelike precision placed seemingly where willed, and, yes, Kelly and the other spectators were impressed, they were admiring, noting how gentlemanly The Senator was calling certain of his opponents' balls in when they looked clearly out.