A House at the Bottom of a Lake

37

They ate at the Chinese place on Simmer Street. They laughed a lot when Amelia accidentally walked into the men’s room instead of the ladies’.

“They’re not labeled right!” she said.

It was incredible. A reason to laugh. A real flub. On a real date.

They swapped stories about other first dates and James told Amelia about the lake smell in his house. Amelia told him that she felt like she was still underwater. Like she hadn’t figured out how to be on land again. They talked about this a lot. Wondered aloud if that was how sailors felt, or the people who worked on cruise ships, once they finally came home after months at sea.

“Everything’s a little wobbly,” James said.

“I’m changed,” Amelia said.

Some of it was heavy. Some of it wasn’t. But it all felt good. Every syllable. Every beat. They were talking about things they’d wanted to talk about for days. Days. And doing it wasn’t as hard as they thought it would be.

They laughed again when Amelia’s fortune read: “You will visit mysterious places.”

“That one’s a little late,” James said.

Amelia shrugged.

“Or not.”

After they paid, on the way out, James smelled the same faint lake water smell from home. He brought his shirt to his nose.

Had to be that. But it wasn’t.

They went to a movie but walked out halfway. Everybody in the theater was laughing hard and having a great time but they just couldn’t get into it. Amelia used the word transparent and James thought that was a good word for it. And it wasn’t just that they couldn’t get into the story; it felt like they could see all the way through the story and there just wasn’t any real magic to it.

So instead they walked. And they talked. And their talk remained fixed on heavier subjects because, no matter how much they joked about it, they’d been through something. They’d seen something. And they’d seen it together.

They walked away from downtown, to the darkening streets of the nicer homes, nicer than either of them had ever lived in. People were out on their porches. Some drank beer. Some smoked cigars.

Amelia and James walked.

Deeper.

Eventually their talk reached a subterranean level, an impossible pool in the basement of an impossible house. The roots. The place where the inexplicable grew, with no light to support it.

James felt it. Felt the growing space. The space between them getting larger, despite what they were trying to do.

“James,” Amelia said as they made another left, heading toward darker streets yet.

“What is it?” But he knew what it was.

Amelia stopped and faced him. Her features were obscured in the murky light.

“I think we need to end this. I think we peaked early and I think that, if we don’t end it now, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives talking about something that happened when we first met. One day, all of this will be a dream, partially a nightmare, and we’ll feel bound to each other because of it. Because of something unreal that happened so long ago.”

The growing space.

“I don’t see why we have to end it, though,” James said. But he did. He understood what Amelia was saying. It hurt was all.

“You’ll be okay,” Amelia said. “And I’ll be okay.”

A car drove by. To James it sounded like the engine was gargling. Like it was wet.

The waning light distorted Amelia’s face just enough to make it appear as if she were wearing a plastic mask.

“Okay,” James said.

Amelia reached out and squeezed both his hands.

James walked away.

Amelia walked the other way.

And as she walked, she thought about what she’d just done. It was right, she told herself. Had to be. Couldn’t sit around for twelve more days thinking about a house that didn’t exist. Couldn’t spend the rest of her life talking about the time when she was seventeen.

She’d seen people like that. Mom and Dad’s friends. Stuck. Snagged. Submerged.

She cried as she walked but she walked bravely. And every time she looked over her shoulder, looked to see if James was still standing where she’d left him, maybe even walking toward her, she saw only emptiness. Darkness. Like the areas of the lake the sun couldn’t reach.

Fuck, Amelia thought. Fuck because it hurt. Fuck because she was right. Right? She was right to do what she did and James was right not to fight it.

They knew.

They both knew.

This was right.

The air grew colder and Amelia hugged herself, trying to fight it. Trying to stay warm and bright in a cool dark place.

Another right.

Another left.

She looked over her shoulder.

James?

Did she want him to come for her?

She faced ahead again, facing the homes on the street.

One caught her attention. No lights on inside. But the shape of it. The size.

Amelia left the sidewalk, crossed the front lawn, went to the house.

At the front door, she pulled her phone from her pocket.

She called James.

“Hello?”

“James. Come to Chesterfield and Darcy,” she was whispering, excitedly. Like she was whispering and screaming at once. “Come now.”

“Amelia. We just—”

“I found it.”

Silence. Then not.

“Found it?”

“The front door… they fixed it… someone fixed it… and… and… there are three steps up to the front door, but you can tell… you can tell what it was like before. Come now, James. Hurry.”

“Chesterfield and Darcy.”

“Yes. Oh my God, James. Oh my God the windows. The roof. Come now.”

Amelia hung up. She backed up from the front door, backed up far enough so that she was able to see it all at once.

She fell to her knees on the lawn.

The feeling she had wasn’t happiness. Wasn’t relief.

It was different.

Deeper.

“James!” she cried out, smiling. “I found it!”

Far away, as if muted by layers of water, unseen waves, she heard footsteps on the concrete sidewalk. The thud-drumming, drum-thudding of James coming to see it for himself.

“I found it!” she yelled.

She felt the growing space, too. But not the space between her and James. Rather, the space beyond them, as if the two of them were the world and all else stretched, receded, became a shoreline, too far to see.

Amelia closed her eyes.

She opened them.

The lights had come on. Inside the house. The lights had come on.

James was getting closer. She could hear his shoes on the sidewalk, could hear him calling from somewhere in the same endless body of water.

“Amelia!” he called. Closer. “Where is it?”

“That one,” she said, pointing now, not sure if he could hear her. That was okay. He would see for himself in a moment. Finding a good place just took a little navigation. “That one,” she said. “Where the lights have come on…”