“Hang on a minute,” Peter says. “Wait. You mean to tell me you went in after him yourself? Into the men’s swimming pond?”
“The water was dark, but I saw his bathing cap.”
“Christ, Elle.” Peter fumbles for a cigarette, lights it.
“The paramedics were already there when I got him to shore. He looked like a fetus—one of those things they keep in formaldehyde.”
“You could have drowned. What the hell were you playing at?” he says, his voice gruff with love and worry.
I look away from him. I wish I could tell him, explain it. I needed to save him. A drop in the bucket. But I can’t.
He wraps me in his arms, holds me tight. “Let’s get you into a hot bath.”
“No. No water.”
Peter peels my wet clothes off where I stand, carries me to our bed. He climbs under the covers with me, fully dressed, spoons me. I like the feel of his shirt, his belt buckle, his pants, so cloth-like, so concrete, pressing against my naked flesh.
“You should take off your shoes,” I say.
“I’ll go make you a cup of tea. Don’t move. In fact, I’m never letting you out of this flat again.”
My skin refuses to warm. I pull the covers closer around me but my body keeps shaking. I can’t stop thinking about his body drifting down, the amniotic embrace of death, how graceful he looked as he fell. I listen to Peter filling up the electric kettle, the jangling of silverware as he opens a drawer. I imagine every little movement he is making: carefully choosing a teacup he knows I will like, dropping in two PG Tips bags instead of one, steeping the tea forty seconds longer than I would, pouring in enough milk to make it the correct shade of pinky-beige, not too pale, stirring in a heaping teaspoon of sugar.
“Whiskey in or on the side?” he says, bringing me my tea.
“I need to go home,” I say. “I’m sick of the rain.”
“What rain?” he says.
24
1993. September, New York.
The cat has stretched herself out on a sun-washed windowsill next to a pot of red geraniums. Her long tail brushes back and forth like a trailing vine, strewing loose flower petals from the sill onto the hardwood floor below. One of them has landed on her back and perches lightly atop her soft tortoise fur, a splash of red paint. The telephone rings, but I ignore it. There’s no one I’m in the mood to talk to. I hate everyone today.
Peter is drinking his coffee, reading the paper in the kitchen of our East Village walk-up. “Can you get that?” he calls out. “It could be the office.”
I’m hating Peter most of all. The apartment stinks of cigarettes; there are newspaper fingerprints on the walls, on the light switches, on the backs of the chairs. We had plans to go upstate this weekend for my birthday, but Peter had to cancel. Too much work. And yet somehow he has time for the Sunday paper and coffee. His dirty underpants lie in a heap next to the bed, waiting for me to pick them up and throw them in the laundry. He bought skim milk. I hate skim milk—its thinness, its blue-vein color.
I let the phone ring twice more, just to irritate him, before reaching over to answer it, but the machine gets there first.
“Eleanor?” a small shaky voice asks, confused. “Eleanor? Is that you?” I grab for the phone.
“Granny, I’m here,” I shout, afraid she is already hanging up the receiver—as if my voice can catch her hand midair.
Now that my grandfather has died, my father and the Bitch have decided to move Granny Myrtle from her Connecticut farmhouse into a nursing home. Not a nice one, with a big circular driveway lined in sweet-smelling privet and reassuring nurses who tuck you in with a bowl of hot soup and read to you. Just some shithole in Danbury that smells of urinals, with a bunch of underpaid nurse’s aides—cinder-block institutional, dirty floors, windowless puce hallways.
I’ve given her my word that I won’t let it happen. She will stay in her own house. She’s already told my father and Mary that they won’t have to pay for round-the-clock nurses, if it comes to that. She’s fit as a fiddle. She can look after herself. There’s a local girl who can bring groceries in, do light cleaning, carry the mail in from the box at the bottom of the hill. She’ll manage. Because that’s what the Bitch is worried about: spending any of their potential inheritance on private nurses. My father has promised me they won’t move her if I can figure out a solution that makes everyone comfortable. They are worried that she will fall, he says, and unless I’m willing to spend every weekend with her to spell the girl. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I say.