Falling Under, Through the Dark

Kara’s sitting at her desk when she falls. There’s no time for panic; it happens too fast. One moment she’s working. The next, she’s in the water. Gravity and the force of the fall plunge her into the depths and everything blurs. She wants to yell but her body needs to conserve oxygen and won’t allow it. Natural buoyancy kicks in and she bobs to the surface, eyes still burning from the chlorine.

Now her heart starts to race and she breathes in huge gulps of air, her mind already fumbling for statistics. Facts. Every day an average of ten people die from drowning, and of those, two are children fourteen and younger.

Even as the edges of her world sharpen back into shape, the water pulls again, but nearly 80% of drowning victims are male keeps her afloat.

She rubs her palms together and focuses on the sounds of the office: the rhythmic hum of a printer ejecting paper, a snippet of conversation from another accountant’s cube, a quick trill of laughter, music from someone’s speakers set too low to discern anything save its existence. The prosaic, the expected.

Of course, because the falling is only in her head and her heart. There are many ways to drown; not all of them require water.

“Grab hold of something when the attack starts,” Doctor Harris said. “It will help your mind realize what’s happening isn’t real. Close your eyes so you see darkness instead of distortion—that works with car sickness, too—and breathe slow and even.”

But his recommendations require thought, and in those five to ten seconds, there are no thoughts, only the sensation, the shock. He told her it would pass—the old time and wounds and healing song and dance—and offered a prescription, an offer she didn’t take.

She doubts he’d approve of her methods.

She keeps statistics running through her head until the end of the day—she doesn’t fall again—and drives home, the sky a study of pink and orange. Her cell phone rings on the way, but she ignores it, knowing it’s Colin. They’ve said everything that needed to be said and everything that didn’t. She has nothing left for him.

Walking into the silence of her apartment, she fights the urge to call out that she’s home. Old habits don’t like to relinquish their hold. She turns on the television instead for background noise. Bare walls gleam marble pale. Boxes she hasn’t bothered to unpack collect dust in the corners. After setting a can of soup to heat, she listens to her voice mail. Colin asks if she’s received the papers from his attorney, asks if she’s signed and sent them back yet, asks how she is. The last feels like an afterthought. She grimaces, erases the message, and drops her phone beside a teetering stack of unread mail on the kitchen table.

Through the sliding glass door leading to a small balcony, she has a view of the South River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. In spite of the autumn chill in the air, boats still move across its surface.

It takes longer to drown in salt water than fresh, allowing a greater chance of rescue.

She closes the blinds. Every flat surface in the living room holds a collection of framed photos: Ben’s wispy hair, his sweet smile, his trusting eyes. In spite of the photos, the apartment isn’t home, but a waystation. She fled to this apartment three months ago, unable to bear the house, the pool in the backyard, unwilling to meet Colin’s eyes, to bear his scrutiny as she pored over statistics, unable to explain her compulsion.

A stack of books perches on the corner of the coffee table; another pile rests on the floor, some still bearing their library markings though they’re long overdue. She’s read about local drownings, accidental drowning, suicide drownings, the science of drowning. A description of horrible experiments done with dogs to gauge the behavior, the stages, gave her nightmares for weeks. She ripped out the pages and ran them through the shredder at work.

She knows as much about drowning as she does accounting. Knows more than she wants to know. Knows, too, that if her mind can turn Ben into a statistic, she can convince herself it all makes some kind of sense. At least that’s what she tells herself.

Kara closes her eyes. Memories flicker like frames in a movie: the unlatched gate, Benjamin face-down in the pool, a shout, a scream, the ambulance, the police, the questions, the disbelief, the distillation of the events into a single word—accident.

But the word assigns no culpability. It’s nothing more than a panacea for blame. She uncurls her fingers, wincing at the half-moons sure to leave bruises in her palms. Her gaze flicks to the kitchen, to the stack of mail. When Colin admits he left the gate unlatched, allowing their three-year-old access to the pool, she’ll sign whatever he wants, but forgiveness isn’t something that can be won with mere words.

* * *

Strange how the mundane becomes a kind of torture. Ben loved the grocery store, loved to sit in the cart and babble, arms reaching for any brightly colored object, be it a box of sugary cereal or a package of bendable straws. Now Kara moves through the aisles with military precision, a list in hand and no deviation. If it wasn’t important enough to remember outside the store, it’s not needed at all.

When she moved to Annapolis from Edgewater, only ten minutes away, she worried she hadn’t moved far enough, but she hasn’t run into anyone from her old life yet. Not that they’d recognize her with her formerly long hair shorn into a pixie and the lines cutting brackets around her mouth and across her forehead, lines that appeared seemingly overnight. The change is significant enough that her reflection in the morning still startles her.

The sales clerk gives her a half-hearted smile and an equally half-hearted hello. A mother and child wheel behind Kara in the line. His wispy hair reminds her too much of Ben’s, and she keeps her gaze fixed on the clerk’s busy hands.

Then she falls. The world distorts and she can’t do anything but let the water take her down. The sales clerk’s mouth moves, but her words are muffled and indistinct. Someone who is drowning will not thrash about.

She bobs to the surface, plummets again and—

They become still and the people around them may not even realize something is wrong.

—she can’t breathe because she’s holding her breath and she can’t unhold it—

“Ma’am, your change?”

—and she’s too deep and she catches a glimpse of something else, something small, and then it’s gone and—

One in five—

she breaks the surface again, but the water is swirling around her ankles, trying to pull her back. The clerk’s mouth is open, her brows raised. The mother is standing in front of her son, shielding him as though Kara’s attack might be communicable.

“Panic attack,” she wants to say, a lie that everyone will accept. Instead, “One in five,” emerges.

The clerk blinks. “Ma’am?”

Kara grabs her bags and bolts, not caring that the clerk calls after her about her change, not caring that she draws wide-eyed alarm from everyone she passes. One in five who die from drowning are children fourteen and younger. One in five. One in five.

The water recedes, but the smell of chlorine clings to her mouth and nose. In the car, she rests her head on the steering wheel, her eyes closed and burning. The chemical reek hangs heavy in the air, and the cuffs of her pants are wet. She lifts damp fingers to her nose, inhales the caustic bite.

What did she see? Who did she see?

No one. She saw no one. She saw nothing. It’s all in her mind, never mind her pants. The moisture and the smell are more mental trickery. She scrubs her hand on her thighs and thinks of Doctor Harris, who she hasn’t seen in a month, thinks of the prescription, but she knows there aren’t enough pills in the world to put her shattered pieces back together again.

* * *

While the bathtub fills, she balances on the edge, her robe loose around her shoulders. Try as she might, she can’t shake what she saw (or didn’t see) from her mind. Rationally, she knows it couldn’t have been Ben, but what if? What if she has a second chance to save him and put everything back to right? What if her sorrow has made it possible? The heart can make almost anything real.

Easing into the bath, she takes a deep breath and scoots down so she can slip beneath the surface, her eyes open. Soon enough, a nest of claws and barbed wire makes a home inside her chest, but breathing is the art of the living. She can’t count herself among that privileged group, even if she isn’t precisely dead.

At the funeral and after, if she heard “I’m sorry for your loss” one more time, she was sure her teeth would turn piranha and rend flesh from bone, but they didn’t and she didn’t. She nodded and said, “Thank you,” all the while screaming inside.

Her lungs are doing the screaming now. She fights to stay under, but her body refuses and she lurches up, gasping for air.

Wrapped in a fluffy towel, she laughs broken glass and brambles. It isn’t funny, but it is. The attacks started a week after Ben’s accident and now that she wants to have one … Her cell phone rings from the kitchen, the sound jarring, and—

She falls.

Into the blur, the inability to breathe, and everything turns grey. Something moves there with her, no, not something, but someone—Ben, drifting, his hair floating above his scalp in pale tendrils, his arms outstretched. Kara reaches, her mouth opens to say his name, and—

Among ages one through four, most drownings occur in swimming pools.

—she shoots to the surface and falls to her knees, coughing out a mouthful of water. She scrubs the taste of chlorine from her lips with the back of her hand. Not caring that her sopping towel is dripping puddles on the floor, she curls into a nautilus, sobbing.

She can’t do it. She can’t. She’s not afraid of the water. She’s afraid she won’t be able to save him. She’s afraid she’ll have to let him go.

Again.

* * *

The knock at her door is soft but insistent.

“Kara, I know you’re home,” Colin says. “I saw your car in the parking lot. Please, can we just talk? We really need to talk about the house, and I just, I just want to know you’re okay. This is hard on me, too, okay? You’re not answering my calls anymore and—”

Kara scoots as far into the corner of the sofa as she can, pulls her knees to her chin, and covers her ears.

The five stages of drowning: Surprise, lasting five to ten seconds; Involuntary Breath Holding as the body tries to protect itself; Unconsciousness as the body begins to shut down; Hypoxic Convulsions due to the lack of oxygen; Clinical Death when the heart finally stops.

* * *

From her balcony, she watches the river. The air has turned from chill to cold, and only a few boats are out on the water. She empties her mind. Wills herself to fall, again and again, but nothing happens.

She closes her eyes. Thinks about Ben running around the yard. That day, he brought her his new water wings, fresh from the package, still deflated and smelling of plastic, and said, “Want to swim now, Mommy,” and she said, “In a bit, little man. We have to finish with the pool first.” He pouted but went to play with his trucks.

She wasn’t being mean, but she and Colin were cleaning the pool and the decking, getting things ready for the season. A little early, but the weather was warm enough. Then she ran into the house for something and when she returned, Colin wasn’t there.

And Ben was in the pool. Somehow he’d managed to put on the water wings, not understanding that their superhero logo wasn’t enough to keep him afloat.

She falls. Down and down into blur and shadows, and she sees that it’s not a pool but a vast ocean of the deepest black, a chasm with no bottom. Although she can’t see Ben, she senses him in the darkness, waiting.

Consciousness is usually lost within three minutes of submersion.

And she’s back in the here and now. Her lips pressed in a thin line, she summons an image of Ben and falls again. Four minutes without oxygen brings her back. Water sluices from her skin, runs across the balcony, drips off the edge.

* * *

She drives over the South River Bridge into Edgewater, humming along with the radio. Her fingers tremble when she makes the turn onto her old street; her stomach twists when she pulls into the empty driveway. It takes five minutes before she can make herself get out of the car, jingling the keys in her palm. If Colin changed the locks, this trip will be in vain, but she doesn’t think he did.

She’s right. The inside of the house is dark; all the curtains in the back are drawn, blocking the view of the yard there. The house itself looks … lost. There are divots in the rug from the sofa she took, and her gardening magazines still sit on the end table. Over the fireplace, there’s an empty space where a family portrait once hung. She can still smell Ben in the air, though, and she pinches the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb.

Some factors that influence risk of drowning are: lack of swimming ability, lack of barriers, lack of close supervision.

French doors in the family room lead to the back yard. Her steps are quiet and she darts furtive glances over both shoulders while she crosses the patio and lawn. A waist-high white fence surrounds the pool, the gate closed and latched tight. Colin hasn’t closed the pool yet. Leaves and dead bugs float on the surface, rendering it a scene from a Shakespearian tragedy.

Most drowning children do not yell for help.

Kara’s hands curl into fists. While she fell in love with the flower beds and the kitchen, Colin fell for the pool. Growing up, his best friend had one, and he recounted a thousand summer days spent playing Marco Polo and Fish Out of Water, games he said he’d play with their children.

She remembers laughing because they’d just decided to start trying for a baby the previous week. The thought of being an actual parent was still too nebulous. She wants to remember that she was worried, but she wasn’t. She believed in the protective power of the fence, the gate, and the lock. And Colin promised he’d teach their children to swim.

Drowning is responsible for more deaths among children ages one through four than any other cause save congenital birth defects.

She passes through the gate. Strips to her underwear and bra, her skin pebbling. She swallows hard, fighting the urge to run. You can drown in grief as easily as you can in a swimming pool. Either way, you emerge on the other side irrevocably changed. Damaged.

If she falls and Ben is there, she’ll do whatever it takes to save him. If he isn’t there, she’ll call Doctor Harris and take him up on the prescription. She’ll return Colin’s call and sign the papers.

Children aged one through four have the highest drowning rates.

She can’t stop shaking, but maybe she owes Ben her fear. Maybe she owes it to herself, too. She steps to the pool’s edge. Clears her mind and thinks about Ben’s smile. His laugh. The way he’d tug on her shirt and say, “Carry me, Mommy.” She takes a deep breath and thinks about that day, thinks about him saying, “Want to swim now, Mommy,” and—

She falls. The world turns wavery, light streaming through the water in rays of pale. Because she isn’t surprised this time, she counts the seconds. Gets to nine when her feet touch the bottom. Then the concrete crumbles, opening into a chasm, and she stops counting, keeps falling, past black stone walls, marked with pale horizontal striations. The sort of lines you’d make on a doorframe to mark a child’s growing height. And from the walls, a steady thump, a great heartbeat.

She twists her body, knowing she doesn’t have much time, but she’s surrounded by shadows and murk. No Ben. Fear and a growing tightness in her chest turn her movements frantic, then she sees him drifting toward her, his eyes open, his mouth curled into a smile so familiar it makes her chest ache anew. He’s wearing his water wings and they’re filled with air. Safety. Is this magic or madness or something undefinable? Perhaps a bit of all three.

She reaches for her son, and Ben holds out a hand, fingers splayed. For a brief moment, she feels the warmth of skin against skin, then only stone. The water ripples and when it stills, a tableaux comes to life on the wall of the chasm: the house, the back yard, the fence. She and Colin are standing inside, near the pool. Ben is sitting on the grass, his water wings beside him, arranging his toy cars in a circle.

He says, “Want to swim now, Mommy.”

The other Kara says, “In a bit, little man. We have to finish with the pool first.”

Then Colin runs into the house—

No, that isn’t right. Colin didn’t go inside the house. She did.

She wills her eyes to close, but they won’t. Everything wavers again, clears, and now the other Kara’s scooping debris—a bird’s nest that fell from one of the trees—from the pool. Colin calls her name from inside the house, she puts the net aside, and dries her hands on her shorts. She passes through the gate and—

Four minutes without oxygen and the brain cells begin to die.

She doesn’t want to see this anymore, but her body won’t move. She can’t make it move.

—says to Ben, “I’ll be back in just a second,” the other her says, moving toward the house, but there’s something wrong. She needs to turn around, she has to stop because the gate didn’t click. It didn’t latch.

Her mouth opens. Water rushes in. The ache in her chest turns to a thousand jellyfish stings. Colin was already inside the house. She left the gate unlatched.

No, no, no. Colin left it unlatched. Not her. Please, not her. In the shadows of her mind, she sees herself running into the house, sees Colin standing by the pool, but the image breaks apart.

Even if the heart can make almost anything real, it doesn’t make it the truth.

The tableau bleeds back into the stone. Her body convulses, and her elbow strikes something hard, knocks it away. All around her float framed photographs, Ben’s smile peeking out from every one. Her body convulses again; the resulting waves send the nearest photo spiraling.

Another image flickers across the rock—Ben floating face-down, the water wings deflated and torn, tattered ends floating like strands of seaweed.

She screams into the water. Pounds against the rock with her fists. She didn’t mean it. It was a mistake, but she can fix everything. She just needs another chance to make things right. She won’t forget to lock the gate this time. But Ben’s image fades, and she knows it’s too late. All the apologies in the world won’t bring him back.

The pain inside her swells. Breaks. The steady thump from the chasm’s walls begins to slow; the stone begins to melt into nothing at all. She drifts down and down, and then there are hands beneath her arms pulling her up, dragging her out. Voices tell her to breathe, just breathe, and she can’t find the words to tell them that she wants to, but she can’t remember how.