Yannick Murphy - This is the Water

This is the facility, where everyone seems so much more relaxed now that the killer is gone. This is Paul and Chris, cheering Cleo on from the stands as she’s about to take off from the blocks. This is Cleo waving up to them, smiling. This is Chris grabbing onto Paul’s hand while Cleo is racing. Her race is that exciting, and Chris never realized before how fast her daughter is. This is Dinah, running after Jessie with a Gatorade chew and telling her to take one exactly three heats before her own, so that it has time to take effect. This is Jessie saying, yes, Mom, sure, Mom, but then giving the Gatorade chew to a teammate, because even though Jessie likes the way the Gatorade chew tastes, and it might help her swim, she knows another girl on the team who has never had them before and wants to try them so badly. This is Dinah, up in the stands, seeing her daughter on deck give away the chew and thinking with great relief how different her girl is than she is, thinking how her daughter, even so young, is and will be a better and more generous person than Dinah is now. And Dinah doesn’t care now if Jessie wins her race or not. She doesn’t care if Jessie comes in dead last. What she just saw Jessie do was better than winning any swimming race she could imagine.

These are the other parents from the visiting swim teams in the stands; everyone’s relaxed, everyone’s talking to the person they are seated next to, no one is standing up leaning on the railing to take pictures, getting in the way of all the other parents. You look around you at the facility, and you can see all of the parents you know from your team stationed at their various jobs. You can see the parent of Maria smiling while putting names on the award ribbons. You can see Wes, the father of Ginger, standing guard on the stairs and making sure no one comes up them because it’s a fire hazard, but you also see him relaxed, pretending he doesn’t see a parent sneak up the stairs to get in a picture. You can see Charlotte working the timing console and stopping for a moment to look up and wave to her son, who walks by her to get to his place in the bullpen. You can see Mandy even. She is behind the glass looking in, holding her mop at rest for a moment, admiring how inviting the pool looks, and thinking how later, when the meet is over, even she might put on a suit and go in. She picked up a suit a few months ago after it was left on a bench in the locker room, and she put it in the lost and found, but no one’s come to claim it. It’s a suitable suit, she thinks, not too short or deep in the neckline. Now that the killer is gone, she wouldn’t be upset if anyone happened to see her in it, anyone who happened to be on the other side of the glass. Yes, the suit would do nicely, she thinks, for her first step into that water she’s looked at for so long but never actually experienced.

This is you looking around at everyone, not seeing a likeness to your brother in any of the faces, and thinking that’s good. There was only one him, of course. A him that was damaged and scared and stupid and brave and arrogant and selfish and loving and hurtful and caring and talented and a lousy father and a good father too… What is it when someone is everything you can name? Is there a word for that? Because he was all of those things, you think. You’ll never know exactly why he killed himself or if someone could have stopped him in time. Maybe that day at the beach when he got up so suddenly and grabbed you and ran with you into the waves it was because what your parents were arguing about, what they were yelling at each other about, was that your father wanted a divorce. Your brother, not wanting to hear how your father wanted to leave the family, then grabbed you and ran with you into the waves. You figure, time-wise, that it was about right, that not long after that day at the beach your father was packing his bags and moving in with his girlfriend. Of course, you’ll never know for sure what made your brother grab you then, and it doesn’t matter either. What matters is now. What matters is your girls racing right now, shaving off time here and there, and gaining time here and there. What matters is Kim’s mother in the stands, now at the point where she’s able to watch her other daughter swim and cheer loudly for her. What matters is you right now timing with Thomas. He is telling the swimmers in your lane that they are in the lucky lane. That everyone who has swum in your lane has won their heat. You look over at your daughters standing in line waiting for their heats behind the blocks. They are healthy. You can see the small muscles in their backs move when they move. You can see the color in their cheeks as they talk and laugh with their friends in line. You see Thomas smiling at you. Yes, this is the lucky lane, you think to yourself.

This is after the state championship. The pool is closed. The water is being drained so that the grout and tile can be scrubbed. This is the water leaving through the drains, taking with it the thoughts of Annie, the motion of Kim, the detestable skin of the killer, and this is the new water being pumped in, filling the corners, meeting the gutters. This is the new water, the night before the pool’s opening to the public, waiting in moonlight shining in through the windows for the first swimmers, waiting to see whose bodies it will feel moving through it, waiting to hear what thoughts will come from those swimmers and soon become those of the water.

T hank you, Maya Ziv, for being a phenomenal editor who knows exactly how to bring out the best in a person’s writing and bring a character to life! I’m so grateful for all of the work that you and the staff at Harper Perennial have put into making this novel take shape.

Thank you, Judy Heiblum, for being a stellar agent. Even miles and oceans away, you always take the time to guide me in the right direction and give me brilliant advice.

YANNICK MURPHYis the author of the novels The Call; Signed, Mata Hari; Here They Come ; and The Sea of Trees , as well as two story collections and several children’s books. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Chesterfield Screenwriting Award, and the Laurence L. & Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award. Her work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The O. Henry Prize Stories . She lives in Vermont with her veterinarian husband and their children.

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