The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [121]
“I’m going back to Seneca Falls on Friday,” I said. “I don’t know what else I’ll find. Maybe nothing. But I’m hoping for the end of the story, or at least to find another piece of it.”
“And then what?” Keegan asked. “How long will you stay?”
“Well, then Yoshi comes. And then—I don’t know.”
Water lapped lightly at the edges of the boat. We were sitting in the back, near the diving platform, and I was vividly aware of Keegan next to me, the faint heat of his body in the evening air.
He slid his hand up my arm, let it rest on my shoulder. I was so tempted then to give in to the powerful currents of desire, to slip back into that familiar way of being, that time before, when Keegan and I were still carefree, driving off into the lake-scented darkness as if we’d live that way forever. That was impossible, though. So much time had passed, so many things had happened. And he had his life here, while I did not.
“Let’s swim,” I said, pulling back, slipping my shirt over my head. I was wearing a bathing suit underneath; I pushed off my shorts. Before he could answer I was poised on the edge of the boat, and then I dived, cutting deep and clean, the water closing over me. I went down and down, feeling the depth by coldness because there was no light.
I wondered what I would find at the bottom if I could dive far enough, what wreckage I would discover scattered along the landscape beneath the weight of water. Boulders and mud and moss, and the swift movement of dark fish brushing my skin, and maybe the long-lost dinner boat that had caught fire before it sank, and maybe the plates and the forks and the glasses those people had been holding in their hands when they saw the flames and leaped. Maybe their crinolines and corsets, their shoes and boots, discarded as they tried to swim to shore. Maybe my father’s lost tackle box or the plane that had gone down fifty years ago, knifing through the clear water just after takeoff, the bodies floating upward, drifting with the currents, miles away. Or maybe I’d find ice picks and axes scattered by the midwinter crew that was out cutting thick blocks for the ice houses when the frozen lake began to tremble and crack under the weight of their sleighs and they fell into the icy water, the men in their thick coats, the horses with their harnesses, the sleigh plummeting until it reached the muddy bottom, dragging everyone along.
My lungs began to spark and I caught myself in all that darkness, the world just the same whether my eyes were closed or open. Threads of panic ran through me. I had to force myself not to move, to let myself float for a second to gain my sense of direction, for there was no light to guide me. I kicked harder, rising, I hoped, rising and not falling, my panic growing because I could not see, could not tell how long until I could breathe, and then I was bursting through the surface, tipping my head back to inhale the beautiful clear night air.
“Damn, Lucy,” Keegan said. He was in the water, too, and he took several strokes to reach me, pushing an inner tube into my hands. The rubber was still warm from its day in the sun. “You were down so long. I was beginning to think I’d lost you.”
“Thanks,” I said, breathing more evenly now.
“Hey.” He was treading water next to me and he put one hand on the tube, brought his face close to mine. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I will be. It was so dark. Hard to know where the surface was.”
Kicking, his foot grazed my calf, the fabric of his shorts drifting along my leg.
“Sorry,” he said. He was setting off little currents in the water that rippled all around me. I remembered what Yoshi had said, how he felt I was always trying to keep such a tight rein on everything and then closing down when I couldn’t. But from what was I running now? From the bloom of the past, from the life Keegan had made, so rich, so solid, so rooted in this place?