Yannick Murphy - This is the Water

T here are times when you feel like telling Thomas what the killer said. It is like something you’ve been carrying around that you finally need help with. It is the load of logs in your arms that you’re carrying in from the woodpile for the woodstove but just can’t make it to the door with, and you know at any second you’re just going to have to let them drop to the frozen ground. “Thomas?” you say when he’s reading, but he doesn’t look up, and you realize you are purposefully trying to get his attention at a time when he’s reading, and when you know he won’t look up, because deep down you don’t really want him to reply. You really don’t want to tell him about the killer for fear he’ll get up from where he is, go to the gun cabinet, pull out that well-oiled rifle, and go to that school you know the killer works at because you saw his picture in the paper standing by the sheep, and you are afraid Thomas will follow the killer home and shoot him dead, and then Thomas will go to jail for the rest of his life because there’s no evidence against the killer, and you cannot have Thomas go to jail. Who would do algebra with your daughters and teach them how two negatives make a positive? Who would cut and chop and split and stack the logs for the fire in the winter? You think maybe there’s a way of planting evidence. Maybe you could somehow obtain from Kim’s mother an item of Kim’s clothing, a strand of hair from her hairbrush, or a swim cap she wore. You could plant the evidence in the killer’s house. You imagine this conversation with Kim’s mother—“Uh, I was wondering if I could have Kim’s old swim cap”—and you lower your head. You do not want to put a woman whose daughter was murdered through this conversation.

This is the night. The dog coming upstairs and lying down at your door. This is Thomas breathing loudly in his sleep. This is Anna Karenina, calling on her friend Princess Betsy, who also has had affairs, but even Princess Betsy won’t see her, and Anna is snubbed. This is Vronksy telling Anna not to be seen in public. This is Anna, bereft over Vronksy’s coolness toward her, flirting with Levin just to feel better. This is you feeling like Anna, really feeling as if you are she for a moment. This is Anna, believing that Vronsky doesn’t love her anymore, that he’ll follow his mother’s wishes and marry a high-society lady, and this is Anna miserable, thinking the only way to free herself from the torment is to end her life. This is you saying, “Don’t do it, Anna,” in your room in the night with no one listening but maybe the shapes you see in the knots in the wood. This is the Russian freight train. You cannot stop the train from feeling beneath its wheels the flesh of a woman so sad, broken on the gleaming tracks. This is the moon shining into the room, lighting up the glass gun case and the rifles and guns standing upright inside of it. These are the barrels and triggers of the rifles and guns looking shiny and wet. This is you sighing so loudly that a small sound comes out from inside of your throat. This is moonlight falling on Thomas’s forehead, making it shine like the barrels of the guns.

When you see Paul at the next practice he is alone. In the foyer he walks up to you. He touches your shoulder. “Annie, how are you doing?” he says. He tilts his head slightly to the side, and looks long into your eyes, as if he wants you to know that his question is a question full of meaning. You want to step away from him. You wish he would remove his hand. How strange, you think to yourself, that he is repugnant to you now but wasn’t a while back, when he was being selfish and not wanting to go to the police with any information about Bobby Chantal. You cannot believe that now you are the one who is being selfish, who could prevent more murders if only you went to the police and told them what you know. When you first told Paul to go to the police you said it like it would be an easy thing for him to do, when obviously it would have been so hard to do. You only realize this now that you are faced with losing your daughter. You have a fear of even being near a police station, because maybe the killer is watching you and maybe he thinks you are about to turn him in. You answer Paul. “Fine,” you say, and turn away from him and get ready to swim.

In the locker room you see the older girls from the team, the ones who now drive themselves to and from practice. One of them could easily be the killer’s next victim. They are all lively and quick to smile at one another. They laugh easily about things you would laugh at too, and sometimes when you’re in the locker room, you smile just listening to them joke with one another while you change into your swimsuit.

This is the coach at a parents’ meeting after practice telling you and other parents that swimming is not about the times. This is you thinking, Then what’s it about, when every time there’s a meet that’s all it’s about? The expensive timing board up on the wall with the flashing lights that displays swimmers’ lanes and times, the expensive timing console and touchpads hung at the ends of lane lines during a meet, the plungers used, the timers using stopwatches, the heat sheets listing seed times and times to beat to advance up into age groups and zones, the announcer, pausing in between races to let everyone know who broke the pool record — these all tell you it’s only about the times. It’s not as if ribbons and medals are awarded to girls or boys with the prettiest fly, the strongest breast kick, the most elegant backstroke. Ribbons and medals are only given to the kid who touches the wall first. You know you are supposed to embrace the team philosophy. You know you are supposed to realize that it’s about the kids challenging themselves and being disciplined and learning to work with others on the team, but it’s like saying the involvement of the United States in the Middle East is about human rights and not about oil. Of course it’s about oil. You are having one of those moments when you wonder if you are the only one who sees these things clearly. You wonder if the other parents sitting in the room with you, the one with the fashionable scarf maybe, or the one with the dry cough, think it’s not about the times.

When Paul comes into the meeting late, you put your purse down on the seat next to you so he won’t want to sit down beside you. But he wants to anyway. He smiles and says, “May I?” and you have no choice but to move your purse and put it back on your lap. While the meeting is in progress, you can hear the loud voices of kids yelling to one another during practice, because the door to the room leads right out onto the pool deck. You can hear the coaches blowing whistles and, as always, the splashing of water. You can feel the hot air from the pool deck seeping in under the space at the bottom of the door, and your poison ivy, which has not yet healed, begins to itch.

Throughout the meeting, Paul tries to talk to you. You want to seem polite. You don’t want to be rude and talk to the person sitting next to you while the director of the facility is telling you what a wonderful place this is. You like listening to how it is a wonderful place. You wish Paul would be quiet. You like hearing that all of the money you spend every year to keep your daughters on the team goes toward a facility to which no other in your part of the country can compare. You like hearing that because our facility is so nice, we host all the meets, and because we host all the big meets, we don’t have to get in the car and travel for miles to a lesser pool, an overly chlorinated, poorly lit hothouse of a pool with only four lanes, for example. We don’t have to travel and spend the money on hotels as often as other teams. We don’t have to have our kids jumping off the walls in the hotel and not being able to have a restful night’s sleep before a big race the next day. Our kids race better in their home pool, you are told. Their times are faster. They’re more comfortable. They know exactly when to extend their hand for a backstroke touch and not waste time taking another stroke because they know the position of the backstroke flags in their home pool. The director is trying to make you feel better about having to work all the time at the home meets. Even when your daughters are not racing in some of the sessions, you are expected to help work. On top of that work, there are still positions to fill. Who will be head coordinators? Who will educate the parents? Who will contact the press, the local papers, and let them know there is a meet coming up they should cover? Who will organize the swimathons and car washes? Who will make the pots of chili for the room where the coaches and officials can go to grab something to eat while they’re working on deck all day during a meet? Who will make sure the team is social and has dinners together? Who will make sure the granola bars are well stocked at the concessions? Who will decide what to do with all the money the granola bars make? Who will learn how to run the timing console and download the updates, and know how to connect all the wires from the touchpads to the console? Who will put the stickers on the ribbons with the right names and times? This is so much nothingness that you are transfixed. You have even forgotten for a moment that Paul is sitting next to you, nudging you, saying, “Did you hear what I said?” And then you hear. It’s all about Bobby Chantal, and you want to get up and leave. Bobby Chantal is like an anchor on your neck you’d like to let drop.