The canals are a short drive from my hotel. I park along their edges and find a walkway in. Before yesterday, I’d never heard of the Venice Canals. Regina didn’t take me to see them when I visited. From Google, I learn that they are a popular tourist destination, modeled after their Italian namesake. These canals are nothing like the original Venice, though. There are no stores or restaurants, no winding cobblestone streets to get lost in. It’s just a grid of fancy houses, divided by waterways with bridges and sidewalks, lush flowering bushes that make the gray morning too sweet.
From the internet, I have the name of the canal, Linnie, which is two blocks long. I walk up one side, down the other, waiting to sense the spot where they found her. It’s all so cold and foreign. I keep searching, fearful that if I can’t locate the exact place where she died, then she will have died everywhere—not just here in the canals but anywhere I go.
At ten in the morning, I pass only a few pedestrians. A man in shorts walks two Yorkies, shouting into his Bluetooth such that he appears to be berating the wind. A few others carry surfboards. The playground is more active, with three toddlers exploring the underside of the slide, their mothers clustered under a tree. The shades of most houses are up, the living rooms dark inside. I walk up and down the other canals, seeing if somewhere else tugs at me. It’s all so empty. When I recognize a house shaped like a castle, I realize I’m walking in circles. Three men with pitchforks stand in a canal, digging up piles of algae. They work deliberately. I wonder if these were the men who found her.
I approach them cautiously, and they nod without losing focus on their work. As I continue to watch them, they grow wary, assuming I’m going to make trouble.
“Do you need something?” the older one asks.Olderis relative. To me, they are all young. He just seems the most worn down by life.
“Were you—did you find—in the canal yesterday—” I start and stop, trying to form an impossible sentence. Their postures stiffen, hands gripped tighter around the handles of their pitchforks. “The woman you found in the canal, Regina Geller? She’s my daughter.”
The man speaks to the others in Spanish. They stare at me, their faces lined with sympathy.
“I’m sorry to disrupt you. I need to see ... I need to know where ...” My voice trails off.
The man I have come to think of as the boss puts down his pitchfork and climbs up the side of the canal.
“I can show you,” he says somberly.
I follow him down one block before we turn and stop a few feet farther. He peers down at the shallow water at the center of the canal, dark enough to reflect the palm and magnolia trees from the nearby backyards. I scan the oily surface for signs of Regina—one of her stacked rings, a colorful sneaker, a strand of her dyed hair, sometimes blue, other weeks purple. The muddy water would come up to my knee. It strikes me how unlikely it is that anyone could drown in so little water, especially Regina.
The man nods to me, then walks away, leaving me alone. Across the canal, someone coughs. I glance over at a young woman situated behind an easel. I wonder if she has any idea what transpired here barely twenty-four hours ago. A man bikes past her, clipping one of the feet on her easel. It collapses, and she shouts at him to be more careful as she bends down to retrieve her canvas. The man waves in apology. I spin around, taking in the full circumference of Regina’s last moments alive. Why was she here? What connection did she have to this strange place?
My knees ache from walking on hard cement. I’ve had two cortisone shots and will need a knee replacement soon. I’m fighting it, even thougheveryone who’s had their knee or hip replaced tells me it’s infinitely better once you’ve healed. It’s the healing process that scares me, especially now that, when the doctor asks who will help me recuperate, I have no one. Each thought of Regina bleeds fresh. How many more ways can I lose her?
Behind me, a woman my age steps out of a weathered house into a ramshackle backyard, unfazed by the dead plants she weaves between. While there are a few other houses like hers, blights on the otherwise pristine community, hers is the most neglected—a tarp across part of the roof, those dead plants, siding that once may have been blue. Even though I can’t see through the navy curtains across her windows, I can easily imagine the stained furniture inside, the piles of old magazines and dusty carpeting beneath. I don’t want to think of her this way, the way everyone likely sees her. I can’t help it. Her house really is that derelict. She creaks open the gate and nods as she passes me, tucking her arms behind her back to walk like a soldier on patrol.
As her figure disappears around a corner, my phone rings. It’s Isaac.
“Hey, Barb. You doing okay?”
“Good as can be expected.” I face the dark, shallow water that lies stagnant in the basin.
“Same,” he says, then we’re both quiet. “The police called. They finished the autopsy, so they’re sending her to us tomorrow. Since that’s just before the Sabbath, we should be able to do the l’vayah on Sunday. We hope you’ll sit with us for the full seven days.”
I’m about to argue that I’m her mother—of course I’ll sit for the entire shiva. But I just got here. I can’t leave until I figure out what happened to Regina.
“I’m in LA.” I hold my breath, girding myself for his disapproval.
“Barb, don’t put yourself through this.” Every time he says my name, I wish he’d call me something else, something no one else does, something I don’t have to hear from my friends, cashiers at coffee shops. Because from now on, every time I hear my name, I will hear it in his voice: the pity, the sympathy I don’t want.
“Things don’t add up, Isaac. Regina was sober. She was a lifeguard. A varsity swimmer. She wouldn’t get so messed up that she’d drown in less than two feet of water.”
“Regina was an alcoholic.” His voice is deliberate, practiced. “That never goes away.”
“It was different this time. I know it. She didn’t slip.” When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “I need to do this.”
“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”
After we hang up, I stare at the opaque water until my vision goes blurry. Isaac’s words reverberate through my limbs.That never goes away.Regina was a recovered alcoholic, an addict. Those labels followed her, stalked her, but she knew how to keep them at bay. Isaac thinks my grief is blinding me. He wasn’t on the balcony at Shutters when she detailed her recovery, the checks she had in place to never relapse again, for us never to return to that time when she couldn’t have me in her life.
I remember the exact conversation seven years ago, down to the word, that forever changed our relationship. Regina was home for a visit. Isaac had paid for her ticket, which meant she was staying with him. Of course it hurt. But she was home, at least. I forced myself to focus on that fact.
I agreed to have Shabbat dinner with them. It was so bizarre, Isaac lighting the candles, blessing the challah. Isaac was raised agnostic. No bar mitzvah. No temple. When we got engaged, my mother complained that he wasn’t really Jewish. Both his parents were Ashkenazi, immigrants from Hungary. The blood was real. The rest could be learned. I was the one who insisted on a rabbi at our wedding, Hebrew school, and then a bat mitzvah for Regina. That was tradition, though, to keep our culture alive. I’ll go to Linda’s for the first night of Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. But I never fast, never keep kosher for Passover, never wash away my sins. I can’t remember the last time I lit a menorah. Isaac, though—when he married Anna, he found his faith. Shabbat dinners, abstention from shellfish and pork, no milk with meat—although he didn’t goas far as having separate dishes—temple on the High Holidays, and even on minor ones I was unfamiliar with. Anna wasn’t particularly religious before they got married either. Their religion atoned them.
I’d like to believe that Anna wasn’t meddling, that after twenty-plus years of marriage to Isaac, she was secure enough in her relationship not to start trouble. Maybe it had nothing to do with Isaac. Maybe it was her relationship with Regina that made her insecure. I don’t know. I can’t devote energy to trying to understand Anna.
That evening started off pleasant enough. Isaac had a nice singing voice, emanating calm as he intoned the prayers, a calm I believed would last the night. It didn’t even last through the blessings. After Isaac sang to Anna, the woman of the house, and it was time for the kiddush, Anna made a point of telling Regina that it was grape juice.
