Yannick Murphy - This is the Water

This is you in that wobbly phone booth again, calling the police hotline. This is you telling the cop who answers that you’ve got a tip for him: The killer is the same man who was found dead in his apartment not long ago. Follow the lead, you tell the cop, and hang up.

This is Mandy, at night, after swim practice, mopping the ladies’ room and wondering whatever happened to the new member, the man with the dark hair who would watch the swimmers during practice, the one who, when he went into the water himself, lowered himself in with a smile. Perhaps he quit. It happens sometimes — a person joins the facility and then leaves. Maybe they received the membership as a gift and didn’t really want it in the first place, or maybe they just preferred to stay at home and run on their own treadmill, or maybe they were too embarrassed by their own body and didn’t want to be seen by so many other people every day. Whatever the case, Mandy is glad. The man scared her. She didn’t like how he watched the girls. She felt justified in being leery of him. Too much has happened around here lately, especially with those murders taking place. She was on the verge of reporting him to the director herself, because she didn’t like how he watched the girls through the glass wall, but she never felt like the director would have listened to her if she told him. What would she have said anyway? There’s a man watching the swimmers in the pool? That would have been absurd. Everyone watches through the glass wall. Even she sometimes stops in the middle of her mopping and leans her hands on her mop and rests her chin on her hands and watches the team workout. The team is impressive to watch. The swimmers unflagging in their two hour swim. The coaches walking up and down the deck, following every lap of their swimmers and stopping at the end of the lanes to give comments and directions. It’s like looking into an ant farm where the ants are always moving and working. Mandy scrubs the grout hard on the ladies’ room floor. It’s satisfying to see the dirt come up, and to see her mop reveal the bright whiteness. Yes, she says to herself, what a relief that man isn’t here anymore. She thinks of going up to the lake with her husband this weekend. They would have to dress warmly to sit in the boat, but she doesn’t mind. She looks forward to seeing the migrating geese that she knows will fly overhead. She looks forward to hearing the loon’s call and seeing the trees onshore, now bare, leaving their jagged images on the water’s surface.

T his is a few months later, the middle of winter. Layers of old snow sit beneath a layer of new snow, covering up what became pocked and riddled with road grime and dirt.

This is Chris at Paul’s hearing in a small courtroom, where she sits with her head bowed and a welcome bit of sun coming in through the windows, almost brightly enough to make her feel hopeful. Paul is looking uncomfortable at having to answer all of the questions about his affair with Bobby Chantal, and when asked why he never went to the police afterward with the information about the car he saw in the parking lot, he tells the court honestly that he thought the focus of the case would be shifted to him, and that it would prevent the real killer from being caught. And also, of course, he was afraid he would be implicated and found guilty of a murder he never committed. After the first hearing, Chris and Paul walk arm in arm out to the car to drive back home. “I’m sorry to put you through all of that,” he says. “I should have gone to the police years ago, but I didn’t want you to know about it then. I thought you’d hate me. I don’t know what the courts will decide, but already I feel it was the right thing to do.”

When they drive up to the house they can hear the phone ringing and Paul rushes in to answer it, his boots on the lawn sending up powdery snow behind him in an arc. It’s his lawyer.

“Looks like you’ll be getting off the hook,” his lawyer says.

“What? Already?”

“Yep, you don’t even have to testify, because they found the guy.”

“You’re kidding. Who did they find?”

“The murderer. He’s some guy who worked at a school all these years. He was found dead not long ago, shot dead. It was a cold case until someone sent in an anonymous tip saying he was the man, not you. Sure enough, they were able to match some carpet fibers found on his clothes to the fibers on the clothes of the last two victims, and they found the same fiber match on Bobby Chantal’s body. Guy lived in the same apartment for years. Results just came in. You can sleep easy tonight, buddy.”

This is the night, the air frosty and clean. The clouds sailing by, revealing stars so bright one could see by them to walk a wooded trail, and Paul thinking he’s the luckiest man in the world. He turns over and settles against Chris, matching his body up to hers, his mouth at her neck, planting kisses in a row.

This is Chris the next day in her studio with one of her biggest buyers from Connecticut. He has been here over an hour, having had tea with her and having admired all of her work, except one that he hasn’t seen. It’s covered with a cloth. Chatting with her, almost ready to leave after having chosen three paintings he would like to buy, he points to the covered painting. “May I?” he says, wanting to reveal it. Before Chris can say no, the cloth is off, and the face of the killer is staring at them. “Oh, God. Isn’t that the face of that serial murderer who was found dead up here?” the buyer says. Chris nods. “I’m sorry, it’s not for sale. In fact”—Chris says as she takes her X-Acto knife and rips through the canvas—“pretend like you never even saw it.” Later, Chris takes the canvas she ripped out of the frame and burns it in the woodstove, feeling relieved that she’ll never have to see the face again. She thinks about Beatrice, how she wishes the killer being caught could somehow have reversed what was done to Beatrice all those years ago, but she knows now nothing can change that. She’ll just have to be content with the fact the killer is now dead, and that, she thinks, is something to be very happy about. If they ever found out who killed him, she’s going to go up to the person who did it and personally thank them.

T his is March, when the state championship is held at the facility. The nights are still freezing, but the days are warming up and the ice in the streams begins to melt. From your house you can hear the sound of the rushing water coming from your melting streams and growing higher in your valley. You and the girls have taken morning walks back to the stream on your land. If they could they would spend all day breaking the ice with sticks, standing knee-deep in their boots, and watching the cold water flow around the holes they have made as it bubbles beneath the ice shards.

This is the facility on the weekend of the state championship, where the girls are all heading to the bathrooms after warm-ups to put on their fast suits. The mothers and friends help guide the suits up and over the swimmers’ rears. This is you later, on deck, with your hand over your heart. Along with everyone else in the facility — the deck is packed with swimmers, officials, and coaches, the bleachers crowded with parents and grandparents — you face the flag and get ready to hear the recording of the national anthem. This is the anthem, playing for a second and then not playing. This is everyone waiting for the technical problem to be solved by the coach, but the coach is not able to fix it. This is the coach coming back out on deck and beginning to sing it herself in a loud voice. This is everyone else in the facility joining in, even you, and the sound of your voices carries up high and reaches to the glass-paneled ceiling, and you think to yourself that this is the way the anthem should always be sung, by everyone at the meet, because it sounds so much better than the recording.