The Paper Palace(109)

She looks utterly confused. I watch her puzzling out what I’ve said, putting the pieces together. I recognize the exact second it comes clear to her: a twitch, an imperceptible shift, the nervous dilating of pupils.

“Conrad?” she says at last.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Not Leo.”

“Not Leo. It was Conrad. Conrad raped me.”

For a long time, my mother says nothing. In the darkness, I feel her energy slipping, dimming. She sighs, a heaviness upon her.

“I’m sorry I let you blame Leo.”

“Leo left me. Our baby died.”

I can see from her face that she is preparing for the worst as she asks me the next question.

“And Conrad drowning?”

“The boom hit him. He fell in.”

Her look of relief is palpable, and I so wish I could leave it there.

“But we both knew he wasn’t a strong swimmer. We didn’t throw him the life preserver.”

“We . . .” There’s a flicker of confusion. “Of course, Jonas was with you. I’d forgotten.”

“He knew everything,” I say. “He’s the only one.”

She nods. “You two were inseparable. He had such a crush on you back then. I think you broke his heart when you married Peter.”

“I did.”

An image of Jonas comes to me. Not the man I have loved, eaten, wanted, ached for today, but a small, green-eyed, dark-haired boy, lying beside me in the woods on a bed of velvet moss. I do not know him yet. But we are there together, lying by the spring, two strangers with one heart.

“I loved him, too.”

My mother is not one for warmth, but she puts her arms around me, cradles my head against her neck, strokes my hair the way she did when I was a little girl. I feel a thousand years of bile and bitter and silt seeping out of my veins, my muscles and tendons, the darkest places, pouring into the pocket of her lap.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I meant to be good.”

“No,” she says. “I’m the one who let Conrad in the door.” She pushes herself up off the sofa with a heavy creak. “My bones are not what they once were. I’m going to find a Maalox and hit the hay.”

On her way past the big picnic table she clears the children’s ice cream bowls, takes them inside to the sink, spoons clinking. “These can wait until morning.”

She pauses at the screen door, an odd expression on her face, as if she’s tasting something, digesting it, trying to decide whether or not it’s good. When at last she speaks, her voice is decisive, the way it’s always been when she’s given me serious advice.

“There are some swims you do regret, Eleanor. The problem is, you never know until you take them. Don’t stay up too late. And remember to close your skylight. They say we may get two inches of rain.”

I wait until I hear her cabin door click shut before following her down the path. There’s a ring around the moon. The rains we hoped for are finally coming. I can feel it in the brooding air, the impatient sky. Outside Anna’s and my old cabin, where my children sleep, I pause. All their lights are off—even the dim glow of Jack’s computer. I listen to the silence, imagine I can hear their soft, safe breathing. No demons, no monsters. If I could protect them from every terror, every loss, every heartbreak, I would.

A swath of moonlight stretches toward me from the center of the pond, widening as it approaches. I push my way through the bushes to the water’s edge. The pond is low. In the wet, sandy shoreline, raccoons have left a trail of sharp footprints. I take off all my clothes, hang my dress over a tree branch, and wade naked into the silk water, the pond obsidian clear, the croaking of bullfrogs, the whisper of moths. I can feel the molecules Jonas has left behind him all around me in the water. I cup my hands in the pond, put them to my mouth, and drink him. In the distance, lightning fractures the sky.

I stop on the path outside our cabin, count the seconds, listen for the faraway rumble of thunder, watch as the acid strobe fades away, watch as darkness takes itself back. My body feels like a sigh—relief and regret. But for which swim? I climb the steps of our cabin, knowing the answer. For either. For both.

Peter is still in his deep, satisfied sleep. I unhook the skylight, lower it softly into place. I climb into our bed beside him, spoon him, latch on to him—the familiar warmth of his body, the comfort of his calming breath—and wait for the storm to make its way inland from the sea.

4:00 A.M.

At four in the morning, when the winds come up, it’s the cabin door rattling against its hinges that startles me awake. Outside, pine trees are bent sideways, limbs howling in rage. I climb out of bed and go to the door. A beach towel has flown off the laundry line and landed on the roof of my mother’s cabin. Birds tumble through the stormy sky like fall leaves wheeling through the air, helpless in the wind, the relentless, circular current. Wrens and finches, skylarks—airborne, but not in flight. I stare out into the dreamlike predawn light. A few inches beyond the screen, a ruby-throated hummingbird is thrumming, fighting to hold its ground in the air, trilling against the tide, its iridescent wings beating invisibly fast, a flash of gemstone in the gray sky. It is flying backward. Not pushed by the wind, but deliberate, frantic with purpose, pressing for shelter in a thicket of white-blooming clethra outside our cabin. Its wings, attached with minuscule wrists, make figure eights—infinity symbols.