Deep Water by Emily Brisse

Under my shifting feet, the dock creaks and moans.

Or maybe those noises are coming from me.

I’m pacing the dock’s platform, some forty feet out from shore. The water below isn’t clear—algae and seaweed crisscross the lake’s surface in a pockmarked mesh—and no matter where I move, I can’t see the bottom. Lakes this far north are supposed to be clean. That’s what everyone said. That’s what I’d told Jimmy that morning on the drive up.

“Come on, put that back on,” I call to him. Below me, he bobs against wherever the lake’s bottom is with the tips of his toes.

“I saw one!” he says, before submerging again. Behind him, floating slowly toward shore like a dead fish, is his life jacket.

I pace parallel to where he’d plunged. I tug at my new sundress. I shouldn’t have worn it. I glance back at the cabin—a house, really, bigger than ours—and spot Brent on the sprawling deck. Another beer in his hand, he’s laughing at something with his old college friends, with their sundressed wives, with one in particular: Teresa, yellow and bright.

Jimmy pops back up—plash! A strip of seaweed drapes his goggles, and two other bands of green cling to his shoulders.

“Hey, I’m not kidding.” I crouch, stare into the water, trying to see something solid. “You put that life jacket on right now or we’re going home.”

But he takes a breath and ducks under before I finish speaking, drifting farther and farther out, where I know he can’t touch. He’s taken swimming lessons and done fine. But he’s barely five. I stand, swallow, rise on my toes. His legs and feet, all I can see of him, are spurring wild splashes atop the water while he tries to kick down.

“Brent!” I holler, glancing toward the house. I sound loud to myself, wildly loud. It’s the first time I think of the word panic. But Brent doesn’t hear me. Nobody does. The music coming from the deck drowns me out. He and Teresa are laughing. The other kids, all older, are playing badminton on the lawn between the lake and their parents.

Jimmy sputters up, blowing out air, and then hoots. “I touched one!”

“James Brenton Wallace, I’m counting to three.”

He used to be such a good boy, sweet and responsive—those big eyes—the way he turned them to mine when I so much as whispered his name. But recently he’s been like this, like—

He takes a noisy, dramatic breath, and sinks down.

I run my hands through my hair, gracelessly unstrap my sandals. This stupid dress. It’s much too tight, I can’t believe I ever liked it.

A sudden wind jags across the water, setting the algae and lily pads into a tipsy-turvy motion. It all tangles.

I picture him suddenly as a baby. Jimmy, Jimmy-boo. His milk-drunk eyes, heavy, sinking.

This next time he surfaces, that’s it. We’re leaving. I’ll scream something. Brent will hate me making a scene—“Nothing happened. Why do you always do this—catastrophize?” But goddammit. Goddammit.

“I’m not just going to stand here!”

The dock groans. I scan the bubbles. Lily pads shift, shadowing shadows.

“Jimmy!” My voice bounces off the water. A few seconds pass, then I glimpse something surfacing—hair?—waving like underwater weeds. I can’t tell. I can’t see him.

I can’t—

I dive from the dock into the deep water.

As my breathless body tears past fish with wide, skittish eyes, through the tangle of plant fronds and stems, the water dark and shockingly cold, all sound gone except my own self pushing through this compressed place, time stretches and slows. But what I think of is not Jimmy or Brent or those other people, who, momentarily, will see me stumble from the water, my dress slick and muddy against my body, my indignant son squirming and screaming in my arms. No, I think instead of a moment from long ago. Was I Jimmy’s age? When I went careening from the backyard where we were having a party into the quiet of our kitchen, and saw my father leaning close to a woman who was not my mother. My father didn’t see me. Neither of them did. Whatever was between them was too bright. So bright it made me gasp with what even then I understood as fear. Then I kept gasping, or gagging, arms and legs knocking into things, because the gumball I’d been sucking on had become lodged in my throat. Time went funny then, too. All I remember next were the faces of my mother and father, united above me—and relief.

In the murky water, I stretch out my hands, kick my legs. See my father’s face. How long can I hold my breath? What choice do I have? Sometimes raising an alarm, upsetting everyone and their afternoon plans, is the only way to save people from themselves.

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EMILY BRISSE — Emily’s essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction’s True Story, Parents, and The Sun. She teaches high school English in Minneapolis, creates guided journals for individuals and parents, and writes about presence and positivity (not the toxic kind) on Instagram at @emilybrisse. 

RAYDON BARROW — Raydon lives in Toronto but was born and raised in Guyana with dreams of becoming an artist, author, and filmmaker. His short fiction has appeared in Microfiction Monday and Scribes Microfiction while his artworks can be found at daydreamersinc.art. Raydon loves to create and meet others who share that creative passion. Feel free to say hi!