Yannick Murphy - This is the Water

Paul and Chris walk in together, and they make a beautiful pair. Paul with his hair pulled back in his ponytail, wearing his leather jacket, and Chris wearing an oversized sweater the color of light-green sea glass. They are smiling at everyone as they enter, as if they’ve just arrived at an awards ceremony and not the foyer of the facility. They look at you and smile and wave, and you do the same back, and isn’t this wonderful, you think. None of what’s been happening has ever happened and here the king and queen of the swim team have arrived, arm in arm, happy again. When Chris does catch you alone for a moment while you’re in the ladies’ room before your long drive home, she puts her hands squarely on your shoulders. She wants you to look at her. “Tell me you’re all right?” she says. You nod. “I know you’ll never tell me what happened that night, but I have a feeling it almost got you killed. You sure you’re all right?” she says. “Yes,” you say and then, even louder, “Yes.” You are all right. The nothingness is back. Chris is relieved, you can tell. She looks more beautiful than ever. You can’t believe she doesn’t catch sight of herself in the bathroom mirror and stop to stare. The mintiness of her is so strong you expect to see mint on her body somewhere, pinned to her breast or adorning her hair. “Just so you know,” she says, “things are better now between Paul and me. Even though Pam Chantal’s going through with the exhumation, it’s going to be all right. Paul’s lawyer is going to be involved every step of the way, and who knows, it might not even come to that. Maybe the killer will strike again and be caught this time, and Paul’s DNA won’t matter.”

“What’s he going to tell the police?” you say. Suddenly you feel the fear rising up inside you like blood rising in your face because what if somehow the killer thinks that because you know Paul you are working with him to have the killer caught.

“Whatever he knows, that’s all,” Chris says. When she turns to leave you want to reach out and grab on to her. Don’t let him, you want to say, but you know it won’t work. Paul has to save himself and his family first.

This is the killer on the pool deck, standing in his swimsuit. This is the killer lowering himself in. This is the water wanting to part when he turns and enters the water, wishing it didn’t have to let him in, but it can’t do anything to stop him. This is the water sighing, having to close up around the killer, having to enter and sit in his ear as he swims a poor sidestroke crooked down the lane, having to meet the burn of the rash on his arms with its coolness and its chlorine.

This is the drive home. Your arms itching and you trying to scratch them with one hand on the wheel. You see the red streaks up and down your forearms the way you saw them on the killer’s arms, and now you also feel small bumps on them, and you know what they are because you have had poison ivy before. This is strange, of course, because you haven’t been near poison ivy recently, unless of course the killer walked you through it in the woods. You do know that you can get it from clothes that have the rash-producing oil on them, and you guess that when the killer grabbed you and pushed you, the oil rubbed off on you. Your body’s always been slow to react to poison ivy, sometimes taking a week before it appears. You’ve even gotten it weeks later from clothes you wore while walking through it, the oil rubbing off onto the material of your pants, for instance. It’s horrible, thinking that something of the killer’s has physically transferred to you. You scratch even harder, thinking you don’t care if you scar your skin. You already will have the scar on your leg. “Mom, stop scratching,” Sofia says without looking up from the book she’s reading. You grip the steering wheel with both hands, holding on tight so you don’t scratch. When you get to the house, you wish you could take the steering wheel inside with you, because holding on to it helps.

That evening Thomas takes out the rifles and fits one against Alex’s shoulder and says, “It fits fine.” He shows her the safety, how to load, how to use the German Zeiss scope that he says is such a strong lens, and how to eject the bullets. Tomorrow is the first day of youth hunting season, and Alex wants to go up high on the ridge at the back of the house and hunt deer. You know how to use the rifle yourself. You have hunted before with Thomas, but now is a good time to listen to him give Alex the lesson, because you may need to refresh your memory. Thomas has Alex focus on the hillside out your living room window, adjusting the scope on what must be one of the few remaining leaves left on the trees. “Don’t worry about the kick,” he says, and you know that the kick of the rifle is not anything to think about at first. It never hurts at first. It’s later, when you are walking into the house that seems so warm compared to the tree you were leaning up against for hours waiting for a buck to walk through the woods, that you feel the ache in your arm. You wish Sofia wanted to hunt also. Anything that might help to protect her. She does not know how to hold the rifle. She doesn’t want to learn. Thomas tells her that even if she doesn’t want to hunt, she should know how to use a gun, since we have guns in the house, but every time he tries to teach her she goes up to her room and reads a book, and he can’t talk her into coming back down.

What startles you isn’t the explosive sound of the shot Alex takes, but the ringing phone. You see that it’s a call from Paul’s cell phone, and you stare at the number on the small screen, but you don’t answer it. Avoiding him is best, especially for the safety of your family. You’re afraid you may tell Paul something about the killer if you talk to him again.

That night you think you’ve been talking in your sleep, and you wake up sweating with fear, thinking you have given away details about the killer and Thomas has heard them and will tell the police. You look over, and Thomas is sleeping, so maybe you’re still safe. Maybe you haven’t said anything. Maybe Sofia is still safe and the killer won’t ever touch her. After all, you have been holding up your end of the deal. Haven’t you? Even when Sofia was being mean to Alex, grabbing a book she was reading out of her hands, you didn’t tell Sofia she was being mean. Instead you told Sofia that you were pleased to know the two of them had an interest in the same reading material, that you thought it was sweet that Sofia wanted to read what her sister, three years younger, was reading. Very big-sisterly of you, you said to Sofia, and Sofia groaned, handing the book back to Alex — it was more like she threw it back at her, but at least it was you keeping up your end of the deal. It was the new positive you, and you were seeing what you thought were results. Sofia seems to be standing straighter these days. She isn’t as shy. She even asked a salesperson for help when she was buying a battery for her watch the other day, not expecting you to ask for her. When you go to the bathroom and then go back into bed, the sweat in your sheets has already turned cold. The coyotes outside seem as if they’re sitting strategically around your house in a circle. Their calls coming from all sides, and you and Thomas and the children at the center. Wide awake now, you scratch at your arms.

You read that some use gasoline on poison ivy rashes and some use juniper leaves. Some use a paste made from aspirin and some use bleach. Some slide into bathwater sprinkled with raw oats. Some use nail-polish remover, some use aloe, some use motor oil. Some get a shot from the doctor. Some use extremely hot water, some use extremely cold. Some swear by toothpaste, some by roll-on deodorant. You swear by the knife. You do not mind the cuts you have made up and down your arm. Anything to gouge out the rash. When Thomas sees you he yells, “What have you done?” and he gets the gauze and the Betadine and leans close to you and you realize the season of the wood is over and that hunting season has begun. He does not smell like the chainsaw oil anymore, instead he smells like the gun oil he uses to clean the rifles. This is a good smell, you think to yourself. Makes you think of the refreshing cold air of fall. He leans so close you can see how his hair is graying at the temples and thinning at the top, where you can see he has a small brown birthmark in the shape of the state you live in. “Amazing,” you say, and he asks what, and you tell him about the birthmark, and he says it’s always been there and how was it you have never noticed before. Seeing the birthmark you feel closer to him. You suppose it’s because it probably makes him look more like he did when he was first born. You like to picture him as a boy sometimes, because then he is easier to talk to and you are not so worried he will make fun of your everyday observations. The Betadine paste is brown and translucent and makes you look as though you’ve been seriously hurt. After he screws the top back on the paste, he tells you the best thing for the rash is time. Of course, he is right, and you nod. You stand up and take the Betadine and put it away on the shelf in the bathroom. He still stands and looks at you, but after a while he walks away. You can hear his feet on the staircase and his footsteps are so familiar you think how you could never mistake them for anyone else’s. You know everyone’s footsteps in the house. You know the sound of Sofia, who wears slippers that are too big for her feet and drag on the floor. You know the sound of Alex, the way she walks quickly and lightly. You can hear Thomas sitting down at the kitchen table, opening up a magazine, entering, probably, the universe, the solar system, the human body, the mind.