A House at the Bottom of a Lake

15

Past the dining room, a study. One wall lined with books.

Intact. Bound. Underwater.

Books.

James trained the flashlight on the titles. Foreign languages, or maybe the letters had been ruined by water after all, stolen a piece at a time, the three lines that made up an A, the three of an F. By the bookshelf was a chair, solidly planted on the ground, beside it an end table with an ashtray, beyond it a bay window. By James’s light, the world outside the glass was pitch-black, yet he could see something out there. Seaweed waving at the base of the window, mud floating on submerged waves, the pulse of the lake.

James sat down in the study chair. Put his gloved hands on the armrests.

He noted the wallpaper, tiny ducks fleeing a shadow-faced hunter.

A stepladder to reach the higher books.

A second door, behind the study chair.

James grew colder. Physically, yes, but in a fearful way, too. Scary thought, himself seated in the study of an impossible home at the bottom of a lake. It suddenly felt possible, no, likely, that something dead could come floating through the door he’d entered by. Something falling to pieces, pulling apart, coming toward him, consciously or not, a drifting once-was, unglued.

He tried to pick up the ashtray on the end table. It wouldn’t move.

James stared at it for a long time, resisting the word why.

He got up and adjusted the tube’s slack, giving him another twenty feet of walking room.

Astronautlike, he rounded the chair and opened the second door. Because he didn’t have the flashlight lifted yet, wasn’t pointing it ahead, he saw nothing. In that moment, that single drumbeat of absolute darkness, he felt as if he were stepping into the nothingness of death, a real end, a place where he’d never be able to find Amelia, never find warmth, solace, confidence, triumph, reason, or love ever again.

Don’t enter this room.

A dark thought to have at a dark threshold.

But James entered the room.

He brought the flashlight up and yelled, two involuntary syllables crashing against the helmet’s glass.

A pale face in the flashlight. Staring into his eyes.

James stepped back, knocking his elbow against the wall.

But it was only a painting.

“Jesus,” James said. Then he laughed at himself. And he wished Amelia had been here to hear him scream.

Not a face. Not eyes after all. Two plums on a white table, the edge of the table like a perfectly set, unsmiling mouth.

A rippling still life beneath the (roof) waves.

James leaned toward the painting, bringing the helmet’s glass half an inch from the canvas. He thought it was an oil painting. He recalled the cliché like oil and water. He wondered if that had something to do with why it was still intact.

He shone the flashlight around the room, getting details the way he got anything in this house: in pieces. As if a puzzle had been dropped into the third lake many years ago, and now James and Amelia were here to put it back together again.

A brown leather couch. A long, thin window. Cabinet doors. A coffee table. A rug.

“A rug,” James said. He knelt to the ground and ran a glove over the hundreds of tiny tendrils, red and white fabric sea anemones.

It occurred to James that he was in a nice house. The nicest he’d ever been in.

He rose and turned and saw a pool table. The balls were racked at one end. The cue waited at the other.

Play me, it seemed to say. But don’t ask how.

James gripped a stick from a wall mount. Then he paused.

Staring into the space beyond the other end of the table, it felt like someone could be there. Someone to play a game with. As if, were he to break the balls, unseen fingers might take the stick from him, might go next.

He set the cue back into the mount. Then, taking the breathing tube’s slack up by his hip, he exited the lounge.

He stepped into a new room, but before he could determine what sort it was, his flashlight died.

Darkness.

Alone with it.

Clumsily, through the ape gloves, James clicked the flashlight’s switch on/off, on/off. He shook it, then cracked it against his hip. The suit was too bulky there so he tried it against his other arm. Too bulky there, too. He raised it up to his helmet, brought the dead flashlight back, and… stopped.

Don’t break your helmet, man. What are you thinking?

He let his arms fall by his sides. No light.

He stared into the darkness ahead, felt the cold of the darkness behind. Without light, he could be anywhere in the house. Upstairs, downstairs. Outside. In. The house might not exist at all. Why, he could be standing on the bottom of an empty lake. Could be sleeping. Could be awake.

James tried to smile, tried to stay calm, but it was very hard to do in the dark.

“Hi, Amelia,” he said, thinking a pretend-communication with her might help. It didn’t. And he wished he hadn’t. It made him feel more alone. Made her seem farther away. Or like he was leaving her name down here.

Like he was delivering Amelia’s name to the darkness.

He tried the flashlight again.

On/off.

It worked.

Light.

Ahead, not twenty feet from where he stood rooted, was a staircase. A wide one. Two could walk it, side by side.

Amelia, he thought. The light didn’t work for a second and man, I thought I was gonna shit the suit.

A red runner lined the stairs, molded to each step.

James held the light fixed at the top for a long time.

He wanted to climb the stairs, wanted to see what the second floor had to offer. But he’d had enough. For now.

He exited the way he’d come, not pausing to examine a single item. Through the lounge, the study, the dining room, the foyer, and the half front door.

Swimming up, he felt bulkier than ever. The house seemed to sink in slow motion beside him. And when he broke the surface, Amelia’s smiling face was as welcome as any he’d ever seen.

James bobbed for a moment, treading six feet from the canoe.

Amelia called out.

“How’d it go?”

Back in the canoe, he told her. And with each detail, her wonder grew wider.

“So you made it to the bottom of the stairs?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“So I should probably climb them.”

James paused before answering.

“Sure. If you want to.”

“In the name of exploring,” Amelia said, “I need to go farther than you did, right?”

“Sure. Yes.”

Amelia clapped her hands together.

“Help me get the helmet on.”

“The flashlight was acting up on me,” he said.

“It was?”

“Yeah.”

Amelia took it from him and tried it out.

“It’s working now.”

“Yeah. But, you know, it went out for a minute.”

Amelia looked over the edge, to the roof in the murky shadows.

“If it goes out,” she said, “I’ll just feel my way back.”

James laughed. He tried to recall exactly how scared he’d been, but now that he was safe, it was hard.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

While she got into the suit, she thought about being in the dark down there alone. She repeated phrases like It’s worth it and Nobody ever did anything great by being too scared to do it.

These helped.

Before she slipped her arms into the sleeves, James reached out and touched her arm.

“What did you do that for?”

But the look in James’s eyes told her that he didn’t quite know. That he’d seen her pale soft skin and had wanted to touch her. And that was all it was.

“Sorry,” he said. He could feel himself turning red.

“Don’t be,” Amelia said. She considered foolishly reaching out and touching him, too. To make him feel better. And because she wanted to.

Then she slipped her arms into the sleeves. Her hands into the huge gold gloves.

Once she got in the water, James tapped on the helmet’s glass.

She looked up at him, breathing steady, inquisitive. James thought she looked like a kid, a small girl in that big suit.

“Careful of the hose,” James said. “It could get snagged on something. Doorways. Tables.”

Amelia gave him a gloved thumbs-up.

Then she went under.

James watched her sinking past the roof, into the shadows. Soon she was only a tube, a thin line swallowed by the darkness.

Then James saw an eye, looking at him from the upstairs window.

“Amelia!” he yelled. He went to grab the hose, to yank on it, to pull her back up. But the eye moved and James saw it was a fish.

Only a fish in the upstairs window. As natural as anything could be in a lake.

Only a fish.