Shapes in the Water

Photo by Adheesha Paranagama on Unsplash

It was two weeks before our babies were due to be born, late last March, when our next-door neighbor died. I discovered this as I returned home from work that evening, my belly taut against the steering wheel, and saw that the sign for his family business, which shared a property with his home, had been draped entirely in a black cloth. Slung over the top was a garland of artificial flowers, each bloom as large and red as a human heart. 

After I turned into our driveway and hauled myself into our house, I said to my husband, “Did you see the sign? One of the neighbors must have died.” 

“Yes, it was the old patriarch,” he replied. 

“Oh,” I said. Of course I had half-expected that much but, upon confirmation, my body felt somehow even heavier, containing multitudes though I was. 

Our neighbor, the ‘old patriarch,’ was a stonecutter. The blackened sign hung from a tall granite post. An assortment of gravestones is displayed by the side of Concord Street in front of the building that serves as the office. Some of the carvings are ornate; on one large slab of pink marble, an angel sweetly drapes herself over the blank space, waiting for an inscription. I had wondered if the stones served as floor models, or if someone, finding one they thought their deceased would approve of, could point to it and say “This one right here,” and the next day there would be an patch of flat dry dirt where it had been, and that stone, after sitting there with the traffic passing for however long, would feature a name and dates marking worldly entry and departure, finally destined for a quiet plot in one of Peterborough’s hilly cemeteries. I wish I had thought to ask our neighbor. 

We had moved into our house only two years before, but I had spoken with him at least a handful of times, usually when I was out in our front garden pulling weeds or optimistically introducing some new flowering perennial. Our houses were very close, both in proximity and style, built by the same builder at the turn of the 20th century. If I was in my little garden and he stepped outside, he was sure to see me and offer a greeting, and I was always happy to take a break from sweating into the dirt to straighten my back and have a chat. 

He was an immigrant, with strong German features and waves of white hair, still handsome even in his early 90's. I was impressed by his slimness, and the straightness of his posture – combined with the clarity of his blue eyes, it would be easy to mistake him for a full two decades younger than he was. Though my understanding was that his son had formally taken over the family business, he gave the impression that he could still pull a full workday with relative ease. His accent was just heavy enough that I had to focus intently to understand every word, but his voice was pleasant, and I enjoyed speaking with him. 

The stonecutter and I did not typically talk about anything very intense, or intimate; usually the topics were gardening and the weather. Together we lamented a particularly brutal drought, and the increased work required to keep our tomato plants alive – I initially found out about his tomatoes after I offered him some of my own bumper crop. I complimented his impressive border of marigolds, which shouted their hot colors annually by the sidewalk. He was very modest, but I could tell he appreciated the compliment. 

One humid summer afternoon we were standing in our usual chatting spot between my front garden and his driveway, him facing north while I faced south. We had covered the state of the weather and our most recent horticultural efforts, and, after a moment of silence he suddenly said, “You know, a little girl drowned on the property, back in the sixties, before it was mine.” He waved his hand vaguely towards the opposite side of his house. “She wandered over from the neighbor’s, and fell into the pool that was back there.”

“Oh God,” I said, suddenly acutely aware of the shouts of my then almost-five-year-old daughter, who was just around the corner of our house, scampering around the backyard. 

“The pool is not there now,” he continued quickly, perhaps noticing the look of maternal disquiet on my face. “He filled it in, the man who owned it, after it happened. I think he was very proud of having a pool at first, but then, well…” He did a little shrug and smiled in a sad way. 

From the backyard, I heard my daughter happily yell “Leaf!” and “Dirt!”, probably narrating the ingredients of whatever concoction she was making in her improvised outdoor kitchen. Still, a chilly feeling slowly spread across the back of my shoulders. 

“I can’t imagine,” I said, but imagine I did. 

I couldn’t figure out what had inspired the stonecutter to share that piece of morbid history with me, but the image that had formed in my brain was stuck there - I laid awake that night, haunted by the drowned girl. I saw her with braids, for some reason, and a pale-yellow cardigan. Her little arms outstretched in the still water. In my mind’s eye she mercifully appeared face down, with a few errant maple leaves floating with her. He had said she had wandered over from the neighbor’s house…Was it my house, then, which served as home for the duration of her short life? Who found her? I wondered. The homeowner? Her mother? What happened as they approached the pool, first saw the cold shape of her small, breath-empty body? Did they exclaim? Collapse in anguish? Did they jump into the pool, shouting, and haul her, dripping, onto the ground, thinking that it was not too late and that she could be revived? 

I felt guilty then, considering these scenes. Guilty that I was allowed to imagine them with no consequence other than a few hours of lost sleep, while the inspiration for them was true, and the factual sadness that resulted must have rippled on through the years. It may very well still be. 

The day after the stonecutter’s sign was covered by black cloth, in the small hours of the morning, I laid awake again, my hands resting on the hard globe of my abdomen. Underneath them I felt an occasional churning as the two bodies of my unborn children rolled over each other, each baby fighting for room inside her own little pool, deprived of space but nothing else. 

I was sore and sad, but also peaceful. I wondered if the marigolds would appear again in the summer, planted by the family as a kind of seasonal monument. I hoped so. 

I wondered if his children were lying awake, too. I had lost my own father just over a year before, and I remembered the pain in the following days and weeks, so potent it felt like my heart was cramping. I also remembered that very special kind of exhaustion that is borne from sudden loss accompanied by a relentless crush of memory, and the realization that the material of one’s future memories will be scattered with sad little holes, like moths have been at them.

And even while I held that empathy for the survivors of the old man, I also felt a tremendous sense of relief. I was relieved that, this time, I was not the one in charge of sorting through possessions or planning services, balancing a broken heart with society's call for ritual. Relieved that I was finally (though barely) past the point of breaking into tears at any sight or scent that reminded me of my dad or, rather, of his absence. 

I cried then in the darkness, but it was more out of happiness than anything else. I felt so lucky, so elated to have only new life – new lives - impending, and no present need for black drapes. 

The grief of others, from even such a near distance, is still a mystery, like a scream loosed underwater but heard only, softly, from above.