A mother walking towards a lake with a baby is inherently terrifying. It gets more terrifying if it’s her own baby, but anyone’s baby will do. Water, in general, should be avoided. A pool, a retention pond, even a kitchen sink are all dangerous for babies and their mothers. Maria locked her fingers together and squeezed her arms tighter around her son as they leaned over the edge of the aluminum peer. Maria assured herself that no one else was thinking about this. Her sister-in-law wasn’t holding her breath while she sat at the picnic table, watching Maria’s back carefully. Her brother-in-law hadn’t taken off his shoes, just in case. She willed herself not to turn around and make sure of all this, but couldn’t help it. Jenny sat with her bare feet up on the table and a hand over her eyes. She wore big red sunglasses, so Maria couldn’t tell for sure if she was looking at her or not, but she decided to get away from the water.
Maria had heard something the night before. In the impossible dark, there was splashing outside, and she felt like she was drowning because she was unable to catch her breath. She thought of something deep down there. Maria stayed awake after that, listening for any more sounds from the water that was, as her mother-in-law often reminded her, just 50 feet from the cabin. Rob slept hard as Maria’s skin pulsated at the parts where he grabbed her. Joey, so small, slept soundly in the traveling bassinet they got from Jenny and Patrick. Now, she was too afraid to go in.
“What time is it? Can I start drinking?” Jenny asked.
The four of them had never traveled like this before: just her husband Rob, Jenny, and Jenny’s husband, Patrick. Rob and Patrick were brothers. This was nice, was what all four of them kept saying, though, again, being together this intimately had never happened before and was more uncomfortable than any of them had imagined. So they drank. For four days straight.
“It’s vacation, time doesn’t exist,” Patrick said. He tilted his head back and faced the sun with his eyes closed.
Joey rubbed his small head against the crook of Maria’s arm. The sweat in the crease of her elbow was making his feathery brown hair damp. Sometimes, when he slept on her chest, she would put his hair in her mouth and rub it, gently, with her lips. She never did this when her husband was home, only during the day while Rob was at work. But summer days were long, and she was alone with her baby boy for almost all of them.
Maria took a breath, then another. “Rob,” she said. “Can you grab me a Truly?”
“Sure,” he said, though there was a tone.
Maria watched him get up slow. His body creaked and cracked as he stood and then walked to the blue cooler that was restocked everyday. His posture was poor. He hunched. That was the first thing Maria noticed when she caught him the other night, sitting in their dark bedroom, with his laptop on the floor, masturbating to a wedding photo of Jenny. The one where she was getting cake shoved in her face by Patrick who was blurred out in the background. She didn’t say anything. She backed out of the room and left the door exactly how it was: wide open.
“Did you already feed him?” Rob asked, holding out the pink and white can without handing it to her.
“I did,” she said.
“Relax, Robbie,” Jenny said, tilting her chair forward and putting her elbows on the table so she could hold her head in her hands like the moon. “Your blood alcohol correlates to the percentage of an NA. Like even if she has twelve beers and her blood alcohol is a .40, Joey will have gotten the same thing off of a fermented piece of fruit.”
“You know a lot about it, don’t you?” Rob said, and there was a tone–but it was different. There was a silkiness in his voice.
“I’m a mother, too, you know.”
“Cats don’t count,” Patrick said.
“Prove it. I’m going in. I’m hot and my head hurts,” Jenny said, getting up and pushing the metal chair back with her thighs.
“Rob,” Maria said. “Can I have it?”
Rob was staring, watching Jenny kick her shorts off as she ran down the pier.
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.
It shouldn’t have been attractive, but it was, somehow. Maria tried to work it out, exactly what she was doing.
“Here,” Rob said, not taking his eyes off Jenny.
Jenny dove off the end of the pier, her legs splayed a bit, it didn’t look graceful.
“I’m going in, too,” Rob said. He reached over to the still open cooler and plunged his hand in. Maria thought about the way the ice must feel against his hand. How shocking it would be.
Joey squirmed in Maria’s arms. It was too bright where she was, and she couldn’t put sunscreen on him yet because he wasn’t yet six months. She still couldn’t believe he was real. That he was here and that he could move and blink and grab her hand and sleep. Rob had been amazed, too. Look at him, he said. This and this and this is like me. Though he had not wanted a baby at all. And his absolute aversion in the beginning made Maria doubt herself. Was it her? Was it because he didn’t think she would be good? That she would be able to care for their child? Are you sure, he had asked her. Think of all you would have to give up. But there wasn’t much. The more Maria thought about it, it wasn’t much. And by then she was throwing up. Hard evidence that Joey was there, right in the toilet. I’m sure, she said.
Maria watched her husband, his pale but trim torso gleaming in the sun all of the sudden. He cracked his drink and took big swallows. She watched him carry it down with him to the water. He thudded along the metal pier. He had no hair on him, and it wasn’t on purpose but it would be if he did. When he got to the end, he sat down and scooted in on his butt, holding his drink above his head. Jenny was floating on her back, her red sunglasses still on her face. Rob made his way over to her. They were talking–Maria couldn’t hear them, but she could guess.
“She’s been acting different,” She’d heard Rob say the night before. He had drank too much and she had gone to the bathroom that had a door made of plywood. She could hear him still at the dining room table, and she imagined he was hunched, just like he had been over his laptop, looking down as he told his brother and his brother’s wife that something was off about her. That ever since the baby, something was wrong.
Later, when they were alone in the dark, Rob put his hand between Maria’s legs and pushed his dry mouth against hers. His chapped lips scratching hers–his dehydration from over doing it each day was draining him of moisture. She pushed him away. It was instinct, he tasted sour. He smelled bad, like tangy and folded skin. His skin was too warm. He pushed back. When she said “hey, no,” the baby started to cry and she pushed his mouth off of hers and slid out from underneath him. He grunted and rolled over to face the wall. Joey squirmed in her arms and Rob sighed loudly. He kept his back to them while Maria shushed on an out breath, counting how long she could keep it going in her head.
One
Two
Three
Four
“You should leave,” Rob said in a low voice that didn’t quite sound like his. Even low, it cracked with dryness.
Five
Six
“I’m serious. I need to sleep.” The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Seven
Eight
She left with her heart beating out of her chest. She stood in the living room bouncing and trying to stop her teeth from chattering, though it was not cold. That is when she heard something in the water, outside. She looked out into the dark but didn’t see anything. Like the black was collapsing in on itself. Maria closed her eyes. She imagined a great big scaled thing that pressed itself to the bottom of the lake to hide. Maybe that was what swallowed up the dark.
“How are you sleeping?” Her brother in law asked her now.
Without looking at Patrick, keeping her eyes on the lake, she said. “Not good.”
“I barely hear him at night,” Patrick said.
“No, he’s quiet. I just–can’t sleep I guess.”
“That’s normal, no? Hormones and all that?”
“I guess.”
“How has he been?” Patrick asked.
“Fine,” she said, maybe too quickly.
“Sure.” There was a long pause. Uncomfortable. “Maria,” Patrick started, but he couldn’t finish, because Rob was screaming in the lake.
“Jenny,” Patrick said, getting up so fast he knocked the patio chair back. His hand whipped down into a fist by his side, and he almost struck Joey but Maria’s reflexes were good. She turned at the perfect time and with such smoothness that Joey didn’t even open his eyes. He only nuzzled into her more, causing a warmth to spread from Maria’s center. Rob continued to scream.
“What the fuck?” Jenny yelled, and she started to get out of the water. Splashing chaotically as she dragged herself to shore.
“I just stepped on something,” Rob yelled, his can of strawberry seltzer now floating off near the pier. He thrashed around, as if a shark or giant eel intertwined his legs.
“Jesus, Rob,” Jenny said, catching her breath but now laughing at little.
“There! There it is!” And Rob fell, his shoulders disappearing under the water. He jutted his chin up and closed his mouth as he started forward, doing the kind of doggy paddle children did when they were panicked. He shrieked twice before he made it to the shore on all fours.
“I think I felt a hand,” He said, panting now.
“What?” Jenny asked, backing away from Rob who was at her feet.
Maria got up and Patrick crossed his arms over his chest.
“I heard something last night,” Maria said. “Something in the water.”
Patrick bit his lip but then sighed. He ran down the pier, his feet shaking the metal planks. Thunk Thunk Thunk Thunk. Then he stopped suddenly at the end. And waited.
“I think I see something,” he said, not quite loud enough, but they all heard him because they were all listening. Then he jumped. The water was not deep there, but he was under for a while or for what felt like a while but was maybe only seconds. Rob was still on the ground, leaning back on his hands. His chest going up and down. Jenny stood with her hands in front of her, wringing them like cloth. She was worried. But when Maria looked at her husband she only wanted to look away. She thought of the scaly monster she imagined the other night. Something inside of her went nice and soft when she pictured it wrapped around Rob’s ankles.
“Help me,” Patrick said, bursting through the surface of the water holding the creature–but that wasn’t right. It had arms and legs and a distended belly. Black swim shorts It was the color of Maria and Rob’s china plates–Serenely. On the porcelain or bone or ceramic it looked lovely. On this swollen thing with a face it looked different but somehow intimately familiar. Its black hair was stuck to its head. It was a man, but just barely. It was turning to something else. Its eyes were only slits and Maria found herself staring. It seemed impossible that he could once move or blink and grab someone’s hand and sleep. The milk in her breasts let down, wetting her dress.
“Take him,” Maria said, handing Joey to Jenny as he started to squirm, smelling his mother and knowing she was moving away from him.
Maria ran down the pier as Patrick pulled the man onto the platform.
“He’s dead,” Patrick said, breathing so heavily that Maria had the bizarre thought he was trying to make the body jealous. She shook her head and then got down on her knees, cupping the dead man’s face in her hands.
“Still,” she said, and then she started to press on his chest. Her fingers gripping for purchase as she slid over his skin. He was cold. She pushed him and he did not push back. There was no resistance, only give. When she put her lips to his lips, she found them wet and plump and kind. She kissed the dead man gently while her good baby cried out in hunger.