The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black Page A

were stained with chemicals. I touched my hair. Had I remembered to brush it?
    I sat down in the wing chair and pushed back into it so Faline would understand I wasn’t giving up, that I had no intention of leaving. I looked over at the pile of newspapers. The banner read DEATH OF MAN RULED AN ACCIDENT .
    In general, Faline disapproved of storytelling. “Don’t waste my time,” she would say, when Mary Liz tried to read to her from a paperback. She made an exception only when Patrick and I were hurt or unhappy. Even then her narratives were different, sad and shocking. “One time there was an explosion at a warehouse,” she would begin. Or, “One time there was a woman jumped off Pier 22 with a baby on her arm.” Patrick and I sat slack-jawed, listening, our own pain forgotten. Later I realized that her stories came from the week’s sensational headlines. I was suddenly aware of how close Patrick and I had come to being featured in one of them.
    “I can’t talk to Michael,” I said. “He doesn’t talk, he makes speeches. The same ones, over and over, with variations. That’s what he’s good at.”
    “Maybe if you would listen he wouldn’t have to repeat hisself.”
    I shook my head. “Faline. There are things I need to know. Things he can’t tell me.”
    She turned back to the stove. “Why you got to go into all this now?” she said. “Life supposed to go forward. People supposed to grow up. Everything all right. Why can’t you leave it alone?” She was rubbing hard now.
    “Everything isn’t all right,” I said.
    Faline stopped her polishing. She leaned forward on both hands and sighed and her head dropped forward. Somewhere in the house water was running. The sound of it through the walls was like distant rain.
    “I was a good mother,” I said.
    “Well,” said Faline, “I know that, baby. I surely do. You don’t have to tell me.”
    I rested my hands on the arms of the chair where the fabric was worn and stringy and the stuffing showed through, the places where she must have rested hers. “That old chair,” Faline said. “Same one, all these years. The footstool, though, that’s new, Otis got me that. I’m still thinking about putting my feet on it. You want to, go ahead.”
    I looked down at my bare feet. Probably the soles were dirty. “I better not,” I said. We stayed there for a while, neither of us having any idea what to say next. I tried to formulate a sentence, but it was like climbing sand, I kept sinking in and sliding backward. Finally I said, “After Bailey … after she … I kept thinking about the Island. I don’t know why. What I wanted was to remember her, how she looked, the things she said. To keep her memory, at least, safe. But instead I kept thinking about”—I looked around—“all this.” I stopped. “Faline, do you think the dead have dreams?”
    “If they do, they good ones. There got to be some peace after this life.” Faline turned around to look at me. I sensed something different in her manner. “You asking all these questions,” she said. “Pull on a string, no telling what going to be on the other end.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Easy to say now. You don’t know what you going to find.” She folded her arms. Again I saw the resemblance, and I wondered where Otis was.
    “Otis gone over to Kemah,” she said. “See about a boat.” She smiled. “You always been easy to read. Not like your mama. She keep herself to herself.”
    I thought of Eleanor at dinner, her face above a blue-and-white bowl of flowers, the light from the candles shining on her hair. Her posture unyielding. Her eyes half closed, as though she were entirely absorbed by something no one else could see.
    Faline stepped over to the kitchen table. I remembered its cool surface, Faline holding a needle to the light. Sleep tugged at me, but I made an effort to rouse myself. “Faline,” I said, “do you remember the time you sewed my dress? What you told me?”
    I’d