A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [135]
Theresa stood, looking at the water while the girls ran to get the buckets we kept stashed in the hollow of a log. They peeled off their clothes, down to their underpants. I buckled them into their life jackets. I made them wear the jackets in spite of the fact that they both knew how to swim. It was ridiculous because they couldn’t go under water very well with the vests on.
“This is where she is for me,” Theresa said. “I could never explain to Dan that the pond isn’t sinister. It’s just water. My heart hurts like wild every time I come up from the woods. You know everything—that I feel like I’m going to die with the hurt. But I’m drawn here, too. I have to come. And I believe, Howard, that the place needs to be peopled. I have the feeling she is here and that life needs to go on, in this setting, so she won’t get lonely, so she’ll be a part of us.”
We sat on two rusty metal chairs that had been down at the pond for probably a good thirty years. I knew I should do something to stop whatever she was going to say next. I was leaving Prairie Center. We were going. I should thank her for Sandy Brickman and Mrs. Reesman. She had done a brilliant job, sending down those two women to rescue me. She had also marched into police headquarters and told the investigators to lay off Alice. Thank you should have wrapped it up.
I braced myself when she took a deep breath. “Howard.” She said my name as if it were an imported chocolate. The sound of it made me cringe. “At first,” she said, “I told myself that that night wasn’t important, that it didn’t matter.”
“Yep,” I mouthed, trying to concur.
“No, actually, at first I was scared to death, that I’d broken a Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s.’ It was the words that horrified me, isn’t that the limit? I’m a good Catholic girl at heart and I guess I always will be. After I’d gotten over the fright of the individual sentences, I kept thinking of that night as a mistake. But I just can’t believe it anymore. It was spiritual for both of us, I know it was. The impulse was one of love, of purity. It was a rare sort of intimacy. Rare.” She nodded, agreeing with herself. “I’m not going to say any more about it. I believe what I just said and I always will.” She was staring at my profile. I could feel her eyes on me while I watched the girls frolicking in a place that seemed polluted. “I’m sorry that I haven’t come down, haven’t taken Emma and Claire. I felt so mixed up for a while. I just didn’t think I could see you.
“Dan came home from his conference the next night. I screamed right away, the second he walked in the door, that either he had to talk to me or I would leave him. We had a fight. He accused me of breaking down everywhere I go and I yelled at him about how he is in denial the likes of which I have never seen in all my professional days, and that one of these mornings he was going to wake up and realize his heart was broken in spite of himself, that that was going to be far worse than knowing you have a broken heart and tending your hurt. I told him we wouldn’t tiptoe around him anymore, that we weren’t going to pretend we were fine. I said I cried to everyone else because I was scared out of my wits to even say her name, to say, ‘Lizzy,’ in front of him. I’ve been afraid that I’ll make one slip and he’ll break. You know that. I said it killed me to see him suffering, it hurt so much to begin with, and then with his pain on top of it. I feel sometimes, like I’m carrying everyone’s pain. That’s why I’ve had to go bawling around.” She was so close to my face I could smell her. “My God,” she said, “he nearly cracked up at the kitchen table. About all he’d let me do is keep ahold of his arm. Finally, finally he started to talk about it. He said he couldn’t stand Lizzy being only a memory. He said he just hadn’t gotten enough of her, that he hardly knew her.