I picked the painting up and leaned it against the wall on top of the dresser. Lexie seemed to be watching me, unblinking. I moved closer and saw that there was something in her eyes, in the dark pupils. A reflection. A reflection of her own reflection—Lexie on land reflected by Lexie in the water.
I settled in on top of the covers, Lexie watching me. Between the drinks and the codeine and my father’s unexpected plunge, I was feeling pretty wasted. At least my headache was down to a dull simmer. My cell phone was plugged into the charger, right where I’d left it when we got back from the funeral home. I picked it up and saw two missed calls and voice mails, one from Karen Hurst and one from Barbara. I listened to the voice mails.
“Hi, Jackie, it’s Barbara calling you back. I’m free tomorrow between one and three. Give me a call sometime in there if that works. If not, get in touch and we’ll find another time.”
I listened to the next, from Karen.
“Hey, Jackie, sorry to bother you again, but I was wondering if you’d heard anything from Valerie Shipee? She and Declan never showed up at the hospital yesterday and she hasn’t returned my calls. Hoping you have better luck. I’m really concerned. Call me with an update when you get a chance. Thanks.”
My phone showed no missed calls from Valerie Shipee. Damn. It was late and I was drunk. I’d try in the morning.
I felt restless and emotionally spent, but not tired enough to sleep. There was the stack of white boxes in the corner of my room, stuffed with Lexie’s notes. The lid was still off the top box, dropped on the floor when I’d heard the screams from the pool. I went over, sifted throughsome of the papers and scraps, wondered how I was ever going to make sense of any of this. But I resolved to try. I picked up the first paper:
June 3
I’ve come to think of the water, the pool, as a living entity all its own. A creature with its own needs, wants, desires. Its own… hungers.
June 6
G11: 1 p.m.—7.4 meters
G11: 5 p.m.—15 meters
G11: 10 p.m.—over 50 meters
I thought back to her rant into my answering machine.The measurements don’t lie. It’s science! The fucking scientific method. Construct a hypothesis. Test your hypothesis.So many pieces of paper had the same codes—a chronology of Lexie’s survey of the depth of the pool? It seemed to change drastically from one time to the next. But how could the depth be one thing at one o’clock, then something totally different later that same night? It couldn’t. I heard her voice, the last words she left for me:She’s here, Jax. Oh my God, she’s here!These measurements, they were what Lexiethoughtshe saw, what she imagined. I looked at my sister’s painting. “What the hell were you doing, Lex?”
I thought of my father, accusing me of always shutting Lexie down; stopping a conversation before it even started.
If I was going to truly try to understand my sister and what was going on with her in her final months and weeks, I’d have to step considerably outside of my comfort zone. I’d have to follow her clues, retrace her steps, no matter how crazy that seemed.
Go see for yourself, Jax. I double-dog dare you.
I turned to the image of Lexie in the painting. “Okay, Lex. Here we go.”
I padded down the hall, tiptoeing past the closed door to my grandmother’s room where Diane was sleeping. I was a child again, sneaking to raid the refrigerator or meet Ryan for a moonlight adventure. Back then, Lexie always led the way, finger on her lips, shushing me. Making me promise not to make a sound.Mum’s the word, Jax.
When we were teenagers, we flat out broke Gram’s number one rule. Lexie would wake me in the darkest hours of the night, whisper, “Come on, Jax, it’s time,” and I’d follow her down the stairs, out the kitchen door. I could always tell the times my sister had been skipping her medicine, because these were the times we swam at night. Being in the pool settled her, quieted her mind. So we’d slip out of our warm pajamas and into the frigid water. It felt a little like dying each time. But there was a dreamlike quality, too—Lex and I glowing in the black water, swimming side by side as our limbs grew numb and our hearts pounded, alive. One strange and perfect image I have of Lexie: She is seventeen, lounging naked in the dark, hair slicked back, water dripping off her as she smoked, staring up at the rings that drifted up to meet the black clouds covering the moon.
I could almost hear her whisper,Come on, Jax, it’s time, as I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen, not turning on any lights. I opened the drawer where we’d put the flashlight I’d found when we were cleaning. I flicked it on to make sure it worked, and the kitchen filled with light. I walked out the front door, opening and closing it as gently as I could so I wouldn’t wake my father and aunt. I knew this was crazy and that I was a little drunk and loopy. But I needed to see for myself.
I’d go out, see that the pool measurements were normal, and then I’d go right back to bed and forget that I’d entertained the notion that my sister’s notes might have some truth in them. I was the logical one.The one who made my living helping people in crisis. Yet here I was, sneaking around to measure the depth of the swimming pool at midnight, to see if it really was bottomless. Ridiculous.
The flagstone path that led around the side of the house to the gate was still warm under my bare feet, the stones holding the heat from the day. I pushed on the gate latch, and it opened with a loud screech. I made a mental note to give it a squirt of oil in the morning. I tried the switch that turned on the floodlights my grandmother had installed for early morning swims. But no swimming at night. Not ever.
The lights did not come on. The bulbs were probably missing out here, too, and we hadn’t thought to replace them.
So Lexie entered the water in complete darkness that final time. Slipping out of her shorts and T-shirt, leaving them on the edge where Diane and the police and paramedics found them the next day. A thought occurred to me: What if it wasn’t Lexie who had removed and broken all the light bulbs? What if she’d woken up in the dark and couldn’t turn on any lights? Heard a noise from the pool and come out to investigate? What if she hadn’t been alone?
I shook my head. There was no sign of foul play. No sign of an intruder. The police had pronounced it an accidental drowning.
A woman with a long history of mental illness and erratic behavior, including suicidal ideation, enters her pool and is found the next day by a concerned family member. It wasn’t such an odd story.
What’s your story, Morning Glory? What makes you look so blue?
I switched on the flashlight, cutting through the darkness. I willed myself to move closer to the pool. The sharp mineral smell of the water was mixed with something vaguely unpleasant. Sometimes, like now, the pool smelled dank and sulfurous, more like rotten eggs than the clean, healing water Gram used to promise it was. If we had a cold, the flu, a headache, she claimed a dip in the pool would cure it. I thought of Gladys Bisette asking if Bill could come for a swim to help his old warinjury. Of Diane filling a jar for Terri, who probably believed it helped her MS. It was amazing really, the power of the mind. But still… what left those scratches on Ryan’s leg? Who lured my father in this afternoon?
And what about the time I came down here on my own?
