Her hand trembled as she held her teacup. “Ethel, if I tell you what I saw, you mustn’t think me mad.”
“Of course not,” I said, laying a hand on her arm. I got a chill; cold was coming off her, as if she was her own north breeze.
“There was a woman in the water,” Myrtle said, setting down her cup, the untouched tea spilling over. “She was naked. Splashing around like it was the height of summer. Like the cold did not bother her one little bit.”
“A woman?”
She did not answer, and I was sure she’d decided against finishing her story. And part of me was glad! Some part of me did not want to hear.
I thought, of course, of Eliza’s story of seeing little Martha in the water.
The kitchen, which moments ago felt bright and warm, was now full of shadow and damp.
“Yes. A woman in her thirties. Dark bobbed hair, dark eyes. She had a scar under her left eye,” Myrtle said.
My body grew cold. My heart seemed to stop for two seconds, then three. The baby moved inside me, a soft flutter.
I bit my tongue to keep from letting out a cry.
It wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be.
Myrtle’s face had gone gray. “She helped me fill my jars with water.”
I looked at the jar on the table, the water inside darker now.
“She encouraged me to join her in the pool,” Myrtle said. “To take a dip myself. In fact, she was rather insistent.” Her jaw tensed and her breathing quickened.
“I declined, saying I had to hurry back to Felix. And I thought… no, I was sure—that if I got into that water, I’d never come back out again. It wasn’t just the cold. It washer.
“?‘Maybe next time,’ the woman said. And then she smiled at me and went under.”
I remembered being in that pool, how stunningly cold it was. How my whole body screamed with it. And that feeling, that feeling of fingers touching me, hands reaching out of the darkness to take hold of me.
“She went under and did not come back up again,” Myrtle said. “There were no bubbles, no splashes. What person leaves no trace like that?” Myrtle’s chin began to quiver. “I stayed and watched until it began to get dark. I told myself I should move, should go in after her or go tell someone. But I just sat, frozen there. The woman did not surface.”
chapterseventeen
June 19, 2019
Isat beside my father in the front row on a plastic folding chair, holding his hand. I’d been a little girl the last time I’d held his hand. My father wore a worn black suit and tie. The same thing he’d worn to my mother’s funeral and then my grandmother’s.
“Lexie had the unique ability to pull people in, draw them to her.” Diane dabbed at her eyes. “She found ways to push me outside my comfort zone again and again. Those of you who know me know I’ve got a pretty wide comfort zone, so this was no small feat!”
Laughter from the attendees.
“She had this unique ability to see through the bullshit. To know what was really going on in your head, in your heart.” Diane’s throat hitched. “Lexie touched so many lives. That’s never been more evident to me than today, as I look around this room.”
The funeral home had had to bring in extra chairs, and some late arrivals stood hovering at the back of the room. It seemed half the residents of Brandenburg had come to say goodbye to my sister. Some I recognized. Some I’d never seen before in my life.
Beside Diane, on a wooden pedestal, sat a tacky gray plastic urn that was supposed to resemble granite. The funeral director had put it there. Inside was a small plastic bag containing Lexie’s ashes. I knew they were in a plastic bag because my father had taken the lid off before the service to look inside. “I want to see,” he said, opening the jar as if Lexiewere a genie who might come bursting out. The bag was secured with a metal band and a tag with Lexie’s name. I’d looked at the small bag full of chunky white-gray ash, at my sister’s name on the tag—proof that she was really gone—and let out a small, strangled-sounding sob. Diane put a hand on my arm. My father had run his fingers over that tag, saying only, “There’s so little of her left.”
As the afternoon crept on, I realized he was right in one sense, but wrong in another. It was true that what remained of her physical self didn’t amount to much, yet Lexie’s vast influence, her spirit, it was everywhere. It was palpable in the air.
My father spoke first. He said in a sure and soothing voice, “Lex broke the mold. You hear that expression, and you think,sure, sure, but with Lex, it was true.” He looked over the room. “She was the person I was closest to in all the world. The one who always got me no matter what. Even as a little girl, she had things to teach me.”
He told the story of Lexie learning to ride a bike—how she skipped training wheels altogether and learned by pushing herself downhill over and over, refusing anyone’s help or advice. “She had more guts at six years old than most people show in their lifetime.”
Diane read the Mary Oliver poem “When Death Comes.” Everyone in the room was crying at the end. My own chest ached and heaved with shuddering sobs. When Diane invited me to come up and speak, I wiped my eyes and stood, making my way to the podium on shaking legs. My sister whispered in my ear.Are you going to tell them how you cut me out of your life, didn’t even pick up the phone when I called?
