Floating
Jackelyn Hoy The Fourth of July that year just happened to fall on a Sunday, and across the lake from the Habermeister’s party, Claire Beck, who was two grades ahead of me in school, was being submerged under water by my neighbor Mark (he was a pastor, Mark was, at First Church of the Something Something, or Christ Church of the Something, or Something Church of Christ; a congregation that had a special knack for saving hard sinners (addicts, thieves) and attracting loose teens, by “loose” I don’t mean sexually but unattached, like change), and Quinn and I had been planning since morning, since witnessing Claire and her older brother Brendan step out of their family’s station wagon parked on Mark’s street, where we would sit to watch them take their chartered dip into that sun-dappled lake, the blue water warmed by the height of summer. Silently, Quinn and I imagined Claire’s pregnant belly bobbing to the surface like something dead and bloated, like the jellyfish left on the beach near my grandparents’ condo in Florida, which, though dead, still seemed to be filled with some viable viscosity, some life other than their own, purply and churning. I wanted to watch from the woods on the north side of the lake where the land sloped steeply upward and the branches of the pines didn’t begin until about six feet above ground, offering us a perfect view but keeping us out of sight, and I suggested this to Quinn by saying we could build a small fire and sneak some of my stepfather Jerry’s cigars to smoke while we spied. But Quinn said no, she didn’t want to miss Eric V. if he showed up at
J AC K E LY N H OY
21
the party, which was scheduled to begin around the same time as the ceremony (we knew because Mark did this every month; he made brunch for the congregants first and they sat on his back porch sipping coffee and eating bacon before their earlyafternoon ritual), and she didn’t want to be stuck in the woods or smelling like cigar smoke afterwards. “Besides,” she said, “the Habermeister’s dock is the best view, who cares if they see us? They’re the ones doing this whole thing, and we live here.” She looked at her watch; though we had hours before the party began, she didn’t want to be late. “They know that, so they shouldn’t have come if they didn’t want us to see.” No one ever said I was right, not one person, and my mother never apologized for slapping me, twice. Not even after the police report was released; not after Mr. Beck was fired from his teaching job, his offspring divided and sent away to live with relatives (all seven children); not after Claire had the baby and everyone knew by then and looked for similarities, though they pretended they were doing otherwise (just the usual cooing at a chubby baby); no one ever said, “Well, it looks like you were right, that’s some premonition you have!” I brought it up once, about a year later, still waiting for my ceremonious pat on the back (“You just have to pay attention,” I’d say. “It’s just about noticing.”), and that was when I received my second slap. We were eating spaghetti. My eldest brother, Thomas, was home from college and was in the middle of a story about a lecture he had attended when I couldn’t take it any longer and I spewed it, that demand for recognition: “Doesn’t anyone care that I told you so?” I yelled, slapping the table with both my palms. “I said it first!” So I shut up, then. For good. It was the way his hand was on her back, Brendan’s, when she was being fed forgiveness from Mark as he was reading from his Bible, cupping it as if it were a tiny baby, as if it had lungs. That’s
22
F L OAT I NG
what did it. We were sitting on the dock like we had planned (Eric still not in sight) with Mark facing our direction across the water, and in front of him, Claire and Brendan, and I could see Brendan reaching out during the sermon and touching his sister’s back, rubbing it gently. No one else had seen it—Quinn was looking over her shoulder at Mr. Habermeister carrying his loot of fireworks from his garage to the rubber mat he had set up on the beach, and there were so many children running around the sloping yard that not one adult had their eye on what was happening across the lake. Quinn and I had the closest view, and still it was hard for me to see, but I saw it, that gesture. That gentle rubbing. Later that night, back at home before we all went to bed, I said it: “Claire Beck is having sex with her brother.” My mother, who was standing behind me (I was sitting at the stool at our breakfast counter; I didn’t know she was so close), grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me around on my seat, and slapped me across the cheek, hard. “Shut up,” she said, her voice shaking. “What an awful thing to say.” She walked away, clenching her fists as if she could barely stop herself from hitting me again. Jerry stood there with his mouth wide open; I wasn’t sure if it was because of my pronouncement or because of the slap. “Go to bed,” he said, finally, after he shut his mouth. It was a family problem, they said, starting with the father. A sister, an older one, had told. Poor Claire. Someone should have known. How does someone not know these things, or know these things? What hints are there? What could we have done? This is what they all said. This is what everyone said. Mr. Habermeister’s fireworks show was the best in our neighborhood, we knew because they floated higher than the others (which meant they were more expensive, and possibly more illegal) and because they reflected on the lake below (none of the other shows were lakeside). I stood far up on the hill where I was
J AC K E LY N H OY
23
eye level with the fanning, kaleidoscopic embers; where I could see the measly bursts from our neighbors’ displays barely clearing the rooftops; where I was alone save for a woman changing the diaper of her toddler on the picnic table nearby, its tiny rubbery penis a grotesque distraction that I wished away by plugging my nose. Below, Quinn and Eric were down on the dock where the both of us had sat earlier, where we watched Mark gently dip Claire under the blue surface, her dress sticking to her big body like papier-mâché, her thighs glistening in the sun. And, once submerged, Claire’s belly did float to the surface. Like something dead, like something bloated.