Mrs. Abel told me once that the party was an attempt to handle all the introductions at once, and to lessen people’s interest in and curiosity about her. In this latter desire, she failed. The peninsula in the summer was a place of leisure, of talk, and the gossip was drawn to what was unknown, what could be speculated upon, this natural mystery brought among us. People described Mrs. Abel as “striking,” a “striking woman,” which always felt to me like an aggressive way to say it. Her blue eyes—I heard people describe them as “piercing,” as if they might stab right through you.
She speaks many languages—English isn’t even her first.
She doesn’t own a car, she doesn’t talk small talk.
She washes her clothing in the lake.
She’s a severe vegetarian.
She was married to him for less than a month before he died.
She tore out all the electrical wiring in her cabin.
Someone reported seeing Mrs. Abel running along the highway at night, her shoes in her hands and her hair loose in her face. Others said that Mr. Abel was not her first husband, and quite possibly not even her second. Some wives felt that Mrs. Abel was over-friendly with their husbands; others claimed she was equally unfriendly to everyone; still others suggested that she was shy, quiet. And she was grieving, after all.
There was the talk and then the talk under the talk, pulling everyone in, early that summer. An undertow—all childhoods are haunted by reports of this current, that takes hold of your feet and holds you under, that only lets loose once you’ve drowned. It is not a thing that can be suspected, let alone resisted (I think of Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom”: “A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stacks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them.”).
Books and experts claim that such vortices and currents don’t actually exist, that they are exaggerations born of people trying to swim against a riptide—and yet, as I swim along the surface, I feel unseen weather, underwater winds.
Just the other morning, here in Oregon over twenty years later, I was walking my daughter to kindergarten. We were holding hands, talking about The Long Winter, which I’d been reading to her and her sister the night before.
“Do you think,” she said, “that Laura should have married Cap Garland instead of Alonzo?”
“Definitely,” I said.
“Would you marry Cap Garland?”
“Of course. If he asked.”
“Why?”
“His name’s cooler,” I said, “for one thing. And Alonzo seemed kind of old.”
Dropping my hand, she bent her head back; she looked up into the sky and said, “Those birds are flying in the shape of a question mark.”
To me, it looked like a ragged, uncoiling spiral, disappearing over the brick elementary school, the treetops.
“Why do you think they’re flying in that shape?” I asked her.
“They have a question up there,” she said.
We walked on, past the balance beam and slide, the jungle gym, past older kids playing basketball.
“You can go, Daddy,” she said, letting go of my hand.
“I’ll stay with you,” I said. “The bell hasn’t rung, yet.”
“I don’t need you to stay,” she said.
“I know that. Still—”
“I don’t want you to,” she said, and hurried away, past the bike rack; she looked up at the sky once more, then disappeared around the red brick building.
I followed, at a distance. I peered around the corner and saw her walk among the crowds of children and parents, not pausing or looking at anyone. Her face was so serious, self-sufficient and mysterious to me. She was prepared for the business of her day.
