She almost hadn’t registered the canoe in its silence, just another part of the pond. Until the flash of yellow braids under the stubborn sun, the determined set of shoulders. Mazie Pinkerton sat tucked in the back with a wooden paddle, her muscled shoveling at the water as regular as a heartbeat.

Mazie Pinkerton. Pregnant Mazie Pinkerton. Mazie Pinkerton who, it seemed, hadn’t lost enough to know what to hold on to.

Milly supposed she’d have to tell Ernst where Mazie was. Set his jumpy city mind at ease. First, though, she’d wait for Mazie to come off the water. Try to talk some sense into her.

The canoe had jerked to a stop, its stillness shattering the quiet. Then Mazie’s body had collapsed, her elongated spine wilted into a decided hunch.

Milly had known Mazie could not see her there, in the woods. There was too much distance between them, too many shadows. So she’d stood on the rock’s lopsided surface and watched. Watched Mazie reach and slip something on. Watched Mazie do it again, fit her arms into sleeves and button the fabric closed over her chest. And again.

Milly hadn’t cupped her hands around her mouth to halloo her. Her voice had the tenacity of a taut bicep, made strong from calling over fields and corralling beasts. From a childhood of holding a conversation over the Atlantic’s thieving wind, most of her words stolen from right out of her mouth, turning each word into a pantomime. Her voice might have reached Mazie. But it might have died somewhere out over the water.

Milly had recognized the final coat from afar. Mr. Pinkerton’s gray, woolen jacket. It was the sight of the coat’s nubby ends, worn into roughness, that brought everything into focus in Milly’s brain, like a reflection that stills for one crisp, sharp moment before quivering and dissecting into rippling colors. Milly’s entire body had rejected what she was about to see—yet another act of aborted life. She couldn’t help but appreciate Mazie’s choice. How when they fished Mazie’s body from the pond, her father would know what had finally sank her: not a fear of the vulnerable life clinging to her insides, but her father’s dull anger and disdain. He’d know how his fury had waterlogged her and dragged her into the space of choking.

Milly had flapped her arms, then, from her stone island. But she’d stayed silent.

Mazie had pushed herself to her feet, and the canoe rocked beneath her. She’d looked rounder, like nine months had passed while Milly had been sitting there. Like her own weight was dragging her down. Milly would always remember that moment, of seeing Mazie transformed into a soft-shouldered, surrendered woman, whose back curved inwards, like somehow she’d already been hollowed out, unable to straighten. Milly wanted to stop time and shed her of those years. How she would have willingly traded her own sinewy litheness for Mazie’s awkward weight.

Milly was next to the canoe now. She draped her arm across its back to catch her breath. Then loon-dove into the blackness. Down. Then up for urgent swallows of air. Her arms felt through the dark for something to hang on to. She could remember the heft of a rope in her hands, its thick reassurance, like whatever was underneath those waters was hers, just waiting to be rescued.

Her arms grew heavy. There was no buoy to guide her, no waiting rope to slide between the track of her hands. And there, under the still-blue sky with the growing weight in her legs, she no longer knew who needed saving.

She plunged under again and let herself sink. The only way to get deep enough. Until she saw something murky, wrapped in its own trap.

Mazie’s eyes had closed. She looked asleep, restful. Like she wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Like Milly’s hesitance to save her had been part of the plan, a gift, a way out. Like Milly could float to the surface alone and live out the rest of her barren life free from guilt’s drag. For not everyone, it seemed, was destined for life. Instead, Milly unbuttoned the gray jacket, worked the sleeves down Mazie’s arms, then left it for the water.

Milly pulled and swam. Her head crowned into the blissfully warm August air. She yanked Mazie behind her, from the tunnel of black, to the final, blinding light of day.

 

Elizabeth DelConte teaches English in Syracuse, New York, and has twice attended the Kenyon Review Writing Workshop. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in the raffish, Before After/Godwink, Cagibi, and Indolent Books’ “What Rough Beast” series.