Under the Lake

14

Howell sat at the desk and let the droning voice of Lurton Pitts wash over him. He searched through the self-serving mush for a way to begin, and just as he thought he might have an idea, there was a soft rap on the door. He quickly switched off the tape recorder. Pitts’s voice was familiar to millions from his television commercials for the fried chicken chain, and he wanted no one to hear it. He walked to the door, wondering who it might be. He had not heard a car. He opened the door and found Leonie Kelly standing on his doorstep.

She looked quite different today, more contemporary. She was wearing jeans instead of the rather dowdy dress of the day before, and a blue man’s workshirt was tied in a knot above her waist, showing three or four inches of powdery, freckled skin. She wore newish sneakers without socks, and her hair was pulled back into a pony tail.

She gave a little laugh. “Well, you did invite me to drop by, didn’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” he replied, suddenly aware that he had been standing, staring at her. “Come on in.”

“Here’s your mail,” she said, handing him some letters.

He winced. The top one was from Elizabeth. “Thanks,” he said, tossing them on his desk.

She wandered about the room, looking carefully at things. “I’ve never been inside here,” she said, poking her head into the kitchen, then lingering for a longer look at the bedroom.

“Don’t you know Denham White? He’s been coming up here for years.”

“I’ve seen him in town a couple of times, I guess.” She strolled out onto the deck, and he followed. The midday sun was hot. She motioned toward the broken railing. “That looks kind of dangerous. You better fix it.”

Howell stared at the railing. “Yes, I’d better take a hammer and a nail to that, I guess,” he said.

“I remember this place from a long time ago,” she said. “When I was a little girl.” She seemed about to say something else, but then suddenly blurted out, “It’s a gorgeous day, how about a swim?”

“Sure,” he said, while she was already untying the knot of her shirt. She ran down the stairs to the dock, leaving her shirt, jeans, and shoes in a trail behind her. There was no underwear. Struggling with his own clothes, he saw only a flash of the tall, full body before she was into the water. A moment later, he dove in and surfaced, shouting, gasping. He had forgotten how cold the water was. She still had not come up, and he looked around for her. Ten seconds passed, then another ten. She must have been under for nearly a minute, he thought. He forgot the cold and started to worry.

Something brushed his thigh, then she was on his back, ducking him under the water. He’d had no chance to draw a deep breath, and he struggled to free himself from her and get to the surface. She pushed away, and he thrashed upwards, gasping at air. “Jesus!” he shouted. “You want to drown me?”

“No, I don’t want to drown you,” she said, swimming over and putting her arms around, his neck. She kissed him; he put his arms around her and held onto her buttocks. They sank together from a lack of swimming, and he was the first to break free and return to the surface. She came up a moment later. “You’ve got to learn to hold your breath longer if you’re going to have any fun in the water,” she shouted, then made for the dock.

She pulled herself up and sat, trembling, rubbing at the chill bumps on her body. He climbed out beside her. “I’ll get some towels,” he said. When he came back, she was on the deck, still naked, piling their clothes on a chair. She took the large towel, dried herself thoroughly, did the best she could with her hair, then wrapped the towel about her and flopped down into a reclining deck chair. He dragged up another.

“How’s the back today?” she asked.

“Terrific,” he replied. “That was some sort of miracle, you know. How did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I’d never done it before. I think Mama did it through me, somehow. She says her powers will come to me when she’s gone – that it’s already started to happen. I guess it has. It’s more than the healing, too. I get flashes of thoughts, sometimes, from lots of people. I can nearly always tell what the other kids in the family are thinking. Never with Mama, though. She can be as much a mystery to me as to everybody else. Only Dermot seems to read her easily.”

“It’s hard to believe that you… well, that you’re all brothers and sisters,” Howell said.

Her face clouded briefly. “I don’t want to talk about that, please.” Then her expression changed, became laughing, mischievous. “You know, I think I enjoyed your backrub yesterday as much as you did.”

“You couldn’t possibly have liked it as much as I did,” he said.

She laughed aloud. “Well, nearly as much.” She reached over and kissed him, gently. “I wanted to do that yesterday, but I might have forgotten myself.”

He kissed her back. Oh, God, he thought to himself. What is going on here? There were a couple of times in his life when he had been seduced by a girl, but never as directly as this. He felt himself drifting into a soft haze. Whatever it was, they were both experiencing it. He slipped a hand under her towel, parted her, and stroked gently for a moment. She sighed and opened her legs slightly. He kissed her again, then moved slowly down her body with his lips and tongue, pulling away her towel. She was fresh from the lake water, and he was amazed at the sweetness of her.

In what seemed to be one long motion, she took his head in her hands, pressed him back in the reclining chair, threw a leg over his body, and drew him inside her. She had moved so gracefully, aimed so perfectly that she had not even needed her hands. She began to move slowly up and down him in long, smooth movements.

Howell lay back and looked up at her, her head thrown back to receive the sunlight, her pale, red hair stroking her shoulders as she rolled her head, an expression on her face that seemed as much acute thought and concern as passion. She opened her eyes and looked at him with surprise, moving faster, silently opening and closing her mouth, her eyes going in and out of focus. “It’s happening,” she said, huskily. “Come with me! You must, you must!”

He sat up and hugged her to him and did as she asked, without effort, pouring himself into her in floods until, at last, he had only the strength to lay his head on her shoulder and hold on. She ran her fingers through his hair and rested with him, both of them twitching involuntarily. Then she pushed him gently back into the recliner and stood up. She passed a hand over his eyes and said, “No, just rest, don’t get up.” He did as she asked. A moment later he opened his eyes, and she was standing over him, her jeans on, tying a knot in her shirttail.

“Don’t go,” he said, attempting to rise.

She pushed him back in the deck chair and kissed him. “I must. Mama will wake up soon. I need to be there.” She kissed him again, then started for the stairs.

“Leonie,” he called, and she stopped and turned. “Why me?”

She paused, and for a moment he thought she would tell him. Then her expression changed, and she shrugged. “Why not?” She ran down the steps and away.

Howell gathered up their towels and started toward the bedroom, feeling just a bit pleased with himself. It was a nice thing, having a sex life again; it did wonders for the ego. It was the best of all worlds, he thought. The relationship with Scotty was such that he felt no guilt about sleeping with Leonie; they had both made their declarations on that subject. On the other hand, Leonie didn’t know about Scotty. He didn’t feel inclined to tell her, either. After all, Scotty was only available in the evenings, and Leonie had said she could only see him in the afternoons. He felt a little guilty about feeling so good about that, but pushed the thought aside. He didn’t need guilt right now. Then his eye fell on Elizabeth’s letter.

He picked it up and weighed it in his hand. At least two pages of her heavy, cream writing paper. He dreaded reading it; she would probably beg him to come back, making him feel even more guilty. He tore it open and sat down to her bold, precise handwriting.

Dear Johnny,

If I were a braver person I would have come up to see you, or at least called you, but I’m not, so I’m taking the coward’s way out.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left. I felt when you went that you probably would not come back, but then I thought you might come back out of a sense of obligation and not because you wanted to. I don’t want that, and, after a lot of agonizing, I think it would be better if you didn’t come back in any case.

I may as well tell you, too, before you hear it from somebody else, that I’ve met a man that I’m strongly attracted to. You don’t know him; his name is Winston Behn. He’s not one of the people we ran around with, he’s a fashion designer, and a good one. (Definitely not gay.) We seem to have a lot in common, and I’ve grown very fond of him very quickly. I don’t know if it will work, but I have to try.

I know you feel badly that it was you who drew away, but I don’t think you should. I honestly think you did the best you could. We never fought or tried to hurt each other, and I have a lot of good memories. A part of me will always love you, and I’ll always think of you as my friend. I hope you’ll think of me that way.

I’m in no hurry for a divorce, but I think when you’ve finished your work up there we should sit down and discuss it. Denham will handle it for me, and, since I can’t see us squabbling over things, you might ask him to do for you, as well.

Again, I’m sorry to have to tell you all this in a letter instead of face to face, but I don’t think I could have done it any other way. I hope you’re taking care of yourself and that your work is going well. We’ll talk when you come back.

Affectionately, Liz

On the second page there was a postscript.

P.S. Although Winston and I aren’t living together, exactly, he is spending a lot of time here, so I’ve packed all your things from the dressing room and the library and moved them out to your study over the garage. I’ve had the gardener put the Porsche under cover and attach a trickle charger to the battery. Please feel free to leave these things here until you’ve found your own place, or as long as you like. Unless you particularly want it, I would like to have the station wagon back for the cook to use when you come back from the mountains.

L.

Stunned, Howell read the letter again. Winston. What kind of name was that? Bulldogs were named Winston. Definitely not gay – oh, swell, that meant they were screwing the socks off each other twice every night of the week and four times on Sunday. And his things were in the fucking garage, now; that was considerate of her. We wouldn’t want Winston to have to look at Johnny’s toothbrush in the bathroom, would we? Howell wadded the letter and threw it at the fireplace as hard as he could.

He stood there, breathing hard, livid. He kicked a chair across the room and walked out onto the deck. Then he began to get some control of himself. It was his fault, all of it, he knew. She couldn’t have been better, not at any time. Maximum wife. He hadn’t deserved her. And, after all, he was screwing the socks off two women; what did he have to be jealous about? All he had wanted was out of the marriage, wasn’t it? He sat down on a deck chair and looked, sightlessly, at the lake. He felt something solid, something permanent breaking inside him. He put his face in his hands and wept like a child.