“I’m into you today, Mommy,” says Eva when she comes pattering into our bed this morning at dawn. We’re back in our Deer Isle haven, unpacked for the month and happily settled into our round house. Moist, cool air fills the room. At nearly four, Eva’s skin is plump and delicious. I touch her cheek, and can see that the swelling from the spider bite she got in her sleep the first night we arrived is going down. I can again detect the natural large almond shape of her eye as her face begins to lose its distortion.
I hug her, and we play under the sheets. It’s a relief to leave the world of illness and death behind for a while. Cancer or no cancer, Roy will be here for three whole weeks this year. He’s finally left his job, and the new one doesn’t start until the last week of the month.
I’m glad, too, that Eva’s face should be back to its normal shape by the time her new glasses arrive next week. Just at the last minute as I was getting everything organized to leave New York for the month, I brought Eva to her yearly medical checkup, just like usual. It was time for the eye chart, and no one was paying any particular attention until the doctor and I realized that Eva wasn’t joking when she said she couldn’t read the letters. The doctor tried holding up a picture of a monkey riding a bicycle, and Eva couldn’t tell what that was either, even from only a few feet away.
We were lucky that the ophthalmologist had an appointment left that last week in July. That’s when we found out that Eva, the child of two parents, each with perfect vision, turned out to be severely far-sighted, and one of her eyes was significantly out of sync with the other. “The weaker eye is already relying on the stronger eye to work,” the doctor told me, as he wrote out Eva’s eyeglass prescription. I was shocked at the diagnosis, and felt enormously guilty that I could have been so oblivious to it. “Should we pick up the glasses when we get back from Maine, in September?” I asked. “Actually, I’d go right over to Broadway and get them right now,” said the doctor.
Trying my best to be as matter-of-fact as the doctor was, I explained to Eva that we were going to pick out a new pair of glasses. “But I don’t want to wear glasses now,” she said weakly, much too weakly for her usually forceful personality. Once in the store, Eva adjusted. “I want a pink pair and a purple pair,” she said. We tried on twenty or thirty pairs and admiringly chose frames that were blue and green, to match her eyes I pointed out. I gave the store our address in Maine, and they said we’d have them at our doorstep in about a week. To care for the glasses, I should wash them in soapy water every night, and dry them with a paper towel, they told me.
Roy and I return from lunch at our favorite Deer Isle café, and Eva and the babysitter are sitting on the front steps waiting for us. “My glasses came, Mommy.” Eva hands me the box. I untape the brown paper and then the bubble wrap, and there inside is the painted metal case with the dogs on it, the same one Eva had picked out in the store. When she puts them on, they look different than they did when we chose them. The lenses, which are real, magnify her eyes. This time she doesn’t look like a little girl trying on glasses; she looks like a little girl who wears glasses.
On and off, she tests them. I watch her begin to see the world differently. We’re driving around in the car when she leans toward me. “I didn’t know you were wearing those earrings that are shaped like a leaf, Mommy. Your face is much closer now.” To Roy she says, “Dad, your hair is brown.” Later that afternoon when Roy leads her down the dirt path that we walk daily to the swimming pond, she tells him, “They put more pebbles on the path since yesterday.”
“Can you see better now, Eva?” I ask her once we’re back at the house and getting ready for dinner.
“No, everything just looks different,” she says.
And then she runs to the bathroom and looks in the mirror, and I follow her. “I look funny,” she says.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her, my heart cracking a little as I witness this moment of change in my daughter’s perception of herself. “When you go to sleep, I’ll wash the glasses off for you and put them next to your bed, so you can put them on in the morning,” I tell her. The truth is that I really don’t know anything about wearing glasses, and I’m trying to sound like I do. Even though I’m her mother, Eva will always know more about this than I will.
It’s easy to meld into a relaxed spirit this summer. But my father’s visit disrupts our pace, especially because I’d been anticipating something better. When we visited him on our way up here, he’d seemed more comfortable. When we’d pulled into his driveway in what turned out to be the middle of the night and woke him from his sleep, he’d been unguarded and sweet. In the morning he played with Eli and Eva while I prowled around the house. I noticed that over the months my father had quietly cleared out almost all of my mother’s possessions, although he’d left two flannel nightgowns and a few scarves in the corner of her dresser drawer, and there was still a belt of hers hanging in the closet. There was a distinct emptiness of my mother’s presence that I hadn’t felt before. And I supposed my father must have felt it, too, even though he didn’t talk about it. As we continued the trip up to Maine, I’d missed my mother and felt tenderly toward my father.
But now he’s awkward and yearning for attention, and I hate that I’m begrudging with him. We take him on the ferry to Isle au Haut and I point out the seals, but he keeps missing them when they jump out of the water. “Isn’t it magnificent here?” I try to direct him toward all of the surrounding beauty of the granite islands set in the dark blue water. But it’s as though he just can’t see it. “It’s too sunny out on the water,” is his response. “And the wind could blow your hat away out here.” In the playground he hits the tetherball too hard and it crashes into Eli’s head.
I know a lot of the problem is my lack of tolerance. The kids both seem happy with my father’s visit. Eli has taken to calling him “Pops.” And Eva has come up with a new nickname, too. “Hey, Papa Joel-ie!” she yells. “Come see my new tie-dye shirt. It’s drying on the porch.” The shirt-making kit that my father brought as Eva’s birthday gift is a big success. But I can’t help it, when he drives off to Andover, I’m happy to continue the rest of our time on our own.
We’re all sad when we have to drop Roy off at the Bangor airport. When he comes back in a week, it will be time to pack up and drive home and no one’s ready for that either. “Daddy, do you have to go?” Eva says. “When you come back will we still have time to swim some more in the pond?” asks Eli. Tears well up in my eyes as we wave goodbye. And Roy looks sad when he turns around one last time before walking onto the runway.
On the way back to Deer Isle, Eli and Eva bicker incessantly. They’ve already eaten all the snacks, and we’ve stopped for ice cream, and we’re not even halfway there yet. I swerve over to the side of the road. “If you don’t stop fighting right now, we’re staying right here!” I threaten. They’re a little surprised, and for a few minutes they stop. But then they’re at it again, all the way back to Deer Isle.
Even once we get home, they’re still arguing, and I’m starting to yell, too. In the bath, Eli throws water on Eva and she starts crying. “Give me a fucking break!” I scream, instantly realizing my vast indiscretion. But we’re all laughing hysterically. “That was very, very wrong of me,” I apologize as we all continue to laugh uncontrollably.
“What happened?” asks Eva, still too small to understand.
“Mom said the f-word,” says Eli.
“What is it?” asks Eva.
“I’m not going to say it,” says Eli as we all laugh and laugh, finding our balance again.
As our summer ends, it seems to have reached a perfect state. This last week is sunny and lovely, just as it’s supposed to be. The swimming is beautiful. I’m blissful as I take my final strokes and emerge onto the banks of the pond. The late August sun is still warm. I find a sunny spot to spread out my towel, and nod at the familiar locals and vacationers who share the allure of this bucolic place. Once my bathing suit is almost dry, I round up Eva, who’s playing with our local babysitter Emily. Eva has to be cajoled with a cookie to leave her sand pile, because it’s time for me to drive Emily home. Eli stays behind with some New York neighbors, who have surprisingly turned up this week at our Lily Pond paradise. They say they’ll look after Eli while I’m gone, and they’ve brought a canoe with them. Eli’s excited about that.
When I return to the pond with Eva, all seems as usual. If there’s anything impossible about the scene, it’s only that it’s so typically lovely. Eva, still sleeping after the car ride, lies easily down on the blanket. I wave to Eli, who’s playing at the water’s edge, and open my book, at the same time keeping an eye out for Eli. What I see are the comings and goings of the canoe, and children happily splashing in the water.
And then imperceptibly the mood changes. I begin to hear words in the air—words that are unaccountably echoing and repeating. “A man, about forty . . . last seen a couple of hours ago . . . entered the pond in a wet suit . . .” They’re saying he has MS, but that he’s a good swimmer. “His parents dropped him off at the pond. A couple of hours ago.” No one really seems to know him, but that’s not very surprising because almost all of the people at the pond today are out-of-towners. It’s the end of August and all of the local kids have already gone back to school. The conversations begin to gain momentum. The man’s parents have come back to find him, but they can’t. They’ve lost track of him. I realize that I must have been dropping off Emily when the man everyone’s talking about went out into the water. The New Yorkers with the canoe offer to take the man’s parents out into the pond, to go look for him. They all get in, and someone shoves the canoe off from the beach.
Sitting on blankets and towels on the grass by the pond’s edge, people are getting concerned. The canoe returns, but there’s no new information. They decide to go out again in the canoe, but this time maybe they’ll stop and get out, to search on the paths around the pond. Maybe the man had gone for a walk after his swim. That’s when the buzzing turns into panic. I thought the missing man had MS. How could he go for a walk? What is everyone talking about? And why on earth do the people keep going out in a small canoe to look for this man?
“I think we should try to get some help,” I finally say. Someone reaches in her bag for her cell phone, to dial 911, but all of us being out-of-towners, we don’t know that 911 doesn’t work in these reaches of Maine.
I get the kids out of the water and walk them up the path to the car, and by now the action has escalated. An official station wagon, the Deer Isle version of an ambulance, has arrived. People are gathered around, and now they’re really talking. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask. “Maybe I could go home and call for a helicopter.” Somehow I thought that helicopters were what you were supposed to use to find drowned bodies. But I’m told that it’s better to use a boat to look for the man. And a boat is already on its way, a special boat with trenchers.
“What’s going on?” the kids want to know.
“A man got lost,” I say.
I leave it at that. And so far, they don’t ask anything else, and I haven’t said anything that’s not true. For the past two and a half years, I’ve been consciously saving the details of my mother’s death until the kids are older, so they won’t be afraid of swimming. This summer Eli has made great strides. At camp he was awarded the “most energized bunny doggy paddle,” and at six-and-a-half he’s very proud of this. Eva has spent almost every day this August rolling around at the water’s edge, splashing and swimming with her “floaties” attached to her still pudgy biceps. It’s been a great summer for swimming.
The next day our friend Andrea arrives for a visit. After our hellos, she tells me that she’s heard some bad news on the radio on her drive up.
“Rain?” I ask, my attention drawn instinctively toward planning our daily activities.
“A drowning at the Lily Pond in Deer Isle,” she says. “A man with MS.” That’s how I find out for sure what I already knew. I tell Andrea that the Lily Pond is actually where we swim, and because it’s a spectacularly beautiful day, and the kids want to go swimming, that’s where we go. Despite the warmth of the day, there are no cars parked on the edge of the road at the head of the path that leads to the pond. We keep on going, and when we come into the clearing, there’s the pond. It’s completely calm, reflecting the world around it, with not a soul in sight. The kids jump into the water and I frolic around with them, but can’t bring myself to take my usual swim. It’s too spooky.
Later that day, I track down a friend who’s a local and who seems to know everybody and everything on this small island, to find out what really happened in the pond. The man with MS was in his mid-forties, she tells me, and his illness had become unbearable to him. And he had become completely dependent on his parents, which made it even worse. “Each day brought him terrible pain,” she says. “Only a few years before, he was a shining star. He was going to get married, until the disease took over.” We’d seen him just last Sunday when he’d come down to the Lily Pond. Didn’t I remember? We’d all been at the pond together that afternoon, when he came there in his walker with his parents to survey the idyllic scene. I sort of did remember. “He asked his parents to bring him to that same spot yesterday afternoon, and then to go do some errands or something, while he took a swim.” That’s when he went out into the pond and never came back.
Now there’s a reason for the drowning, a human story. The man with MS must have been tremendously miserable, in pain and frustration and without an option. But did the scene for his death have to be in a public beautiful place like the Lily Pond? And what about the way he’d treated his parents? It seemed like such a cruel setup, but then again, I tell myself, that’s part of what being in pain can be about.
I worry vaguely about how my mother’s drowning is surfacing again, how it haunts me and how I might unwittingly be transmitting that to my children. But as I try to envision the man drowning in the Lily Pond, I’m aware that really the thing that disturbs me about this death isn’t my mother. It’s Danny. It’s the man’s similarity to Danny, who also chose to end his own life, that has now ruined the peace of the Lily Pond, the place of refuge that over the years I had learned to inhabit and trust. Maybe I had been right all along to know that deep down it wasn’t safe.
Danny had planned his death, too. Although Danny was different. Physically he had been vital. The pain he could no longer bear was his own mental anguish. And Danny’s death had been horribly violent. There were no beautiful ponds, no peaceful settings with birds and rocks and trees all around.
Nearly two decades have now passed since Danny’s died, and still when I hear a siren I think of the screeching ambulance that must have carried his bloody, messy body from the restaurant where he worked in Providence to the city hospital. He had cut up his body with a kitchen knife, right into the intestines, right before the eyes of his boss at the restaurant, a woman who must never have been able to fathom what happened in front of her.
There had been bad signs. His alarming phone calls, filled with rage about his monstrous boss, had frightened me and Ted. Neither of us could understand the degree of his hatred for that woman. Only later did we come to recognize that through no fault of her own she probably stood for my mother. A couple of weeks before he killed himself, when Danny was visiting in Andover, he was alone with my mother, and he’d torn off the T-shirt he was wearing and slashed it up, right in front of her. My mother had been terrified, but she didn’t say a word about it to anyone. Except for when she told us about it after Danny died, and then she never mentioned it again.
Danny was scared about what he was about to do. Two nights before the night of his death, he called my father saying he’d sliced his finger and he was worried about the cut. My father could hear his fear, but he couldn’t possibly comprehend the real meaning behind his words. And then Danny went through with his ghastly plan. The doctors thought he must have been on drugs to endure the pain he’d inflicted on himself. But the autopsy proved that his blood was clean. His intentions had been pure.
For years I could feel the violence he committed to his body quietly etched on my own. I had been his champion, his companion. We were allies, especially in our shared disdain for our mother. “You must be so angry at him,” people would repeat to me endlessly after Danny died. But I didn’t know what they meant. I loved him deeply, and missed him beyond belief. And for years I pledged to myself that I’d keep on being the living part of him in this world. Even though ultimately we were different. He was dead and I was alive.
The conflicted grief I have for my mother, I now see, has been bound up in the ongoing pain I still carry for Danny. By winding the pain of Danny’s death with my mother—with her life and her death—I was passing along the very legacy I wanted more than anything to be free of. The echo of suicide and death that was part of my mother’s way of being did not have to be mine. If I could just distinguish that invisible piece of my mother that still lived inside me, maybe I could be free to accept her. And maybe with that, I could at last admit the real loss of Danny.
It’s Danny, not my mother, and certainly not the man who drowned in the Lily Pond, who has ruined my sense of sanctuary. I force myself to swim out far into the pond one more time before we return to New York for the fall.