She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Llevaba a Ben hacia casa de una amiga, y este recorrido adicional le producía cierta irritación; tenía tantas otras cosas que hacer. Aunque sí le gustaba la privacidad del coche, y la sensación de esa otra voz asomando por encima de su hombro, mientras ella consultaba el retrovisor y descendía la velocidad para dar la vuelta en la esquina. Él estaba erguido en el asiento para menores ⸺Ben era bajito para ser ya un niño de ocho⸺ y miraba a través de la ventanilla hacia las calles del suburbio y los coches estacionados, mientras ella usaba el teléfono celular del muchacho para ubicar la ruta. Lo colocó junto a la palanca de velocidades, apoyado sobre el tablero gris de plástico. Era difícil visualizar la pequeña flecha en el desastre de la pantalla estrellada de Ben ⸺rara vez estaba lejos de su mano este objeto, a menos que se le cayera⸺. Por ahora, él miraba hacia el mundo real como ligeramente sorprendido de que estuviera ahí. “No me gusta Barry McIntyre”, dijo.
“¿No? ¿Por qué no?”
Tenían sus mejores pláticas en el coche. Si hubieran estado en casa, él hubiera dicho “No sé”, o “Porque no…” En el coche, él decía cosas como “Sin embargo, me gustan los niños. De verdad me gustan los niños”.
“Claro que te gustan”.
Se preguntaba por qué él no podía hablar cuando estaban frente a frente. ¿Qué tenía su manera de mirarlo que hacía que se encogiera y retorciera bajo la ropa?
“Eres un niño.”
“Lo sé”, dijo.
Por supuesto, era su mamá, así que cuando lo miraba siempre lo estaba examinando para verificar si no había algo que ajustar o admirar. Aunque trataba de no hacerlo. En verdad trataba de no convertirse en el tipo de mujer que diría “Siéntate derecho”, o “Deja en paz tu pelo”.
“Pues muy bien”.
Echó un vistazo al espejo retrovisor y sólo alcanzó a ver un lado de su cabeza. Su cabello áspero se estaba oscureciendo a medida que avanzaba el invierno. En un año o dos, sería completamente castaño.
“Odio el basquetbol”.
“¿Ah, sí?”
“De verdad lo odio”.
Recientemente, había usado la palabra “gay” como un insulto. “Eso es tan gay”, dijo durante la cena, y su hermana menor titubeó.
“Por supuesto que te gusta el basquetbol”, dijo ella, con calidez. Vaya mentira.
Él no respondió.
“¿Barry McIntyre juega basquetbol?”
En el retrovisor, vio su mano moviéndose hacia el lado oculto de su rostro.
“¡No te toques la nariz!”, dijo.
Era difícil no decir esas cosas. Eran tan temporalmente hermosos, sus hijos. Eran tan perfectos y, después, de repente, ya no lo eran. Los amaba de más, tanto, que no podía dejarlos ser.
Ella continuó manejando, mientras él miraba los suburbios de Dublín: los árboles en primavera, las casas semiadosadas, una anciana abrigada que paseaba a su perro. La app del teléfono la había llevado hasta una calle que le resultaba familiar, aunque habían llegado ahí por una ruta inusual, una que ella no hubiera tomado por su cuenta. La nueva amiga de Ben se llamaba Ava. Vivía en St. Clare Crescent, que supuestamente estaba en algún lugar cercano a la autopista. Pero ellos no usaron la autopista; tomaron una serie de calles estrechas, por algunas de las cuales ella ya había manejado ⸺este era el camino hacia el vivero, aquella era la ruta hacia la peluquería canina⸺ sin saber, antes, que hubiera podido cruzar de una a otra si hubiera girado en el lugar correcto.
“¿Qué preferirías?” Dijo Ben y, después, se detuvo.
Si no le hacías saber que lo estabas escuchando, se negaría a continuar.
“¿Qué?”, dijo finalmente ella.
Y, ahora que sabía que ella le prestaba atención, dijo “¿Preferirías beber una taza de lava o ahogarte en un lago de lava?”
“Oh, por Dios”.
“¿Qué preferirías?”
“No, no de nuevo”.
“¿Qué?”
“No se puede beber lava”.
“Sí, sí se puede”.
“¿En una taza?”
“En una taza de piedra”.
“Elijo el lago”.
“¿Preferirías caer de un tejado, o que un árbol te cayera en la cabeza?”
Estaba obsesionado con las elecciones, en especial las imposibles.
“Ninguna. Preferiría que ninguna de esas cosas me pasara”.
“¿Preferirías caer de un tejado, insistió, “o que un árbol te cayera en la cabeza?”
Tal vez estaba obsesionado con la muerte misma. No había manera de librarse de ella, en cualquiera de los casos.
“Tejado, dijo ella.
“O. K.”
“¿Y tú?”
“Sí, tejado, admitió.
“No es la mejor que se te ha ocurrido”, dijo ella.
Hizo una pausa, aceptó el reto.
“¿Preferirías que te picaran, hasta morir, las hormigas rojas, o ser colgada de los pies, de una gran grúa, hasta que tu cabeza explotara?”
“¡Genial!”
Continuaría hasta que ella estuviera completamente acorralada.
“Grúa, por favor”.
“¿Preferirías ahogarte en la oscuridad, o ser estrangulada en la oscuridad?”
Continuaría hasta que ella estuviera en verdad muerta.
“¿En serio?”
“En un lago enorme y oscuro, lleno de anguilas”.
“En verdad no. Absolutamente no. No lo preferiría”.
Le vino a la memoria, mientras manejaba, el recuerdo de un chapuzón nocturno, muchos años antes de que Ben naciera. Fue en un lago, en la campiña irlandesa; eran un grupo, y venían de regreso del bar, sin luna, sin sexo, se podría conjeturar ⸺ni esa mañana, ni la noche anterior, cuando se suponía que deberían haber tenido sexo de cabaña vacacional⸺ y ella se sacó el vestido por encima de la cabeza mientras caminaba, en la oscuridad, hacia el lago. Por supuesto que había un hombre en el grupo que no era, de hecho, el hombre con quien estaba saliendo en ese momento; era otro hombre, prohibido. Y ninguno de esos dos se convertiría, tiempo después, en padre del niño que ahora viajaba en el asiento trasero. Desnudarse en el bosque solitario y a media noche era una provocación para ambos ⸺cualquiera de los dos serviría. Todo esto fue hace mucho tiempo.
El atuendo era un vestido de lino azul, holgado y práctico, su ropa interior probablemente bastante lujosa e impráctica en aquellos días antes de los asientos para menores e hijos con fiestas de pijamas y teléfonos que te dicen dónde virar. Su cuerpo, también un objeto más fino en aquél entonces; si tan sólo ella se hubiera dado cuenta. Y estaba ebria, así que recordaba sólo en retazos el sendero que llevaba hasta el embarcadero mínimo, su experiencia en el momento también discontinua, aunque se desaceleró y aclaró cuando dejó caer su vestido sobre las maderas todavía tibias del suelo, y echó un vistazo al agua. En la superficie, de apariencia sedosa, había montículos de turbera y pastos que hacían castaño el lago, incluso bajo la luz del día. Ahora, a media noche, estaba más oscuro de lo imaginable, así que fue como un sexto sentido, el sentimiento de espacio abierto frente a ella. Cuando se asomó, vio la negrura brillar, como petróleo. Se sentó en la orilla del embarcadero para desabrochar su brasier elegante y hacerlo a un lado. La voz de un hombre diciéndole que se detuviera. Otro hombre diciendo nada. La voz de una mujer diciendo “No, de verdad, Michelle”. Y se zambulló. Se impulsó desde la orilla de madera y cayó en lo profundo, fue tragada en un golpe de agua que se volvió silencio líquido, y después luchó por salir hacia donde el aire empezaba. Agua negra en aire negro.
Mientras ascendía y giraba, pudo sentir el alcohol hincharse bajo la superficie de su piel, y el agua que, más que fría, era entumecedora. O ella estaba entumida. El agua resbalaba por su cuerpo mientras ella cortaba camino líquido, en una larga, extendida brazada que la alejaba de todos, incluso cuando parecía permanecer en el mismo lugar. Podía deducir, por las voces, que se estaba desplazando ⸺los fragmentos de sonido que percibía mientras surcaba la superficie, hacia el centro del lago.
Si acaso era el centro. Si acaso era, al menos, la superficie, aquello en lo que nadaba. Estaba tan oscuro y húmedo que era difícil saber si sus ojos estaban cerrados o abiertos. Temía que, al nadar, su desplazamiento no fuera del todo horizontal, estarse inclinando, hacia abajo, temía volver el rostro para inhalar y encontrarse con sólo agua. Los gritos que venían de la orilla eran ahora más esporádicos; era como si se hubieran rendido mientras ella daba vuelta o intentaba nadar de regreso hacia ellos, porque las briznas de sonido le brindaban un sentido de horizonte y era importante no perder eso. Necesitaba saber hacia dónde estaba la superficie. Empujaba el agua a sus costados, y aunque giraba al desplazarse, no se sentía segura de estar volviendo. Debería detenerse un momento y orientarse, pero no podía parar; no quería. Era ⸺y este fue el asunto secreto, repentino⸺ tan delicioso. No saber en qué dirección está qué, o dónde estaban las orillas. Se vio disuelta en ello. Podía ahogarse en ese preciso instante y sería un placer.
Percibió el destello de su brazo blanco, un resplandor vigoroso al que siguió ⸺su cuerpo como su propia brújula⸺ hasta que oyó, en la orilla, la voz del hombre con quien se suponía que se acostaría, vio el brillo intermitente del cigarro del hombre con quien se suponía que no se acostaría (y nunca lo hizo, por alguna razón; quizás lo asustó por completo). Su gran pronunciamiento se vio un poco disminuido, en la orilla, por el filo de las piedras en el limo bajo sus pies, mientras intentaba salir del lago, hacia la recriminación y el sexo de piel fría.
Se despertó a la mañana siguiente con un sobresalto, la consumación ligeramente acuosa de la noche anterior ya olvidada, gastada. Había ocurrido sin ella. Se sentó en la orilla de la cama y jaló aire hacia sus pulmones. Estaba viva. E hizo que este hecho entrara en su mente. Quiso clavarlo justo en el centro de su mente. No podía volver a hacer eso jamás. Tenía veinticuatro años, y estaba renunciando a la muerte. Ebria o sobria, no habría más lagos en la oscuridad.
“Sabes, Ben, nunca deberías nadar de noche”, dijo ahora, más de veinte años después, sentada en su Hyundai híbrido.
Acelerador, freno, espejo, clutch.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben.
“No, en serio, tienes que prometerme que no harás eso, nunca. No en un lago, porque no hay suficiente sal en los lagos para mantenerte a flote y, especialmente, no en el mar. Debes respetar siempre el mar. Es más grande que tú. ¿Me estás oyendo? Y no debes nadar nunca, nunca, si has bebido alcohol, o si tus amigos han bebido. Si un amigo se ha bebido un par de cervezas, cuando ya seas adolescente, y te dice ‘¡Vamos, será divertido!’, ¿qué le vas a decir?”
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben, pacientemente.
“No, no preferiría. En verdad no preferiría. No preferiría morir, ni de una manera ni de la otra. ¿Cuál es tu problema, Ben?”
Circulaban por una calle de casas semiadosadas recién construidas, depresivamente pequeñas e infinitamente idénticas. Jardines diminutos: serbal, cerezo, abedul plateado, sauce de ornato ⸺un horrible pompón en una vara. No entendía qué estaba haciendo en este lugar. Se estaba acercando para atraparla, incluso aquí. Venía para atrapar a sus hijos ⸺su propia estupidez; la había seguido más allá del agua. El chapuzón nocturno no había sido el final del asunto; ella se convirtió en cautiva de la muerte por un tiempo ⸺meses, un año. Porque, por supuesto, podías dejar el lago atrás, pero no podías dejar el deseo mismo, y todas sus imposibilidades.
Aunque algo se volvió posible. Algo se tornó real. Algo fue resuelto por la existencia del niño en el asiento trasero.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben, “¿vivir dentro de un pavo o que un pavo viviera dentro de ti?”
“¿Qué?”
“¿Qué preferirías?”, repitió, con ademán paciente, “¿vivir dentro de un pavo o que un pavo viviera dentro de ti?”
“Esa es una muy buena pregunta”, dijo ella.
“¿Qué preferirías?”
“Esa es, en verdad, una grandiosa pregunta. Ha sido la mejor hasta ahora”. Se estiró hacia la radio del auto y la encendió, con la esperanza de distraerlo.
“¿Es ese el lugar?” La app le indicaba virar a la derecha. “¿Es ahí donde vive Ava?”
“No lo sé”.
“Es tu amiga”.
“No, no lo es. No es mi amiga. Ella es simplemente muy, muy insistente”.
Su mano reposaba, en gesto anticipatorio, sobre la maleta para la noche, que se ubicaba a su costado, mientras ella giraba hacia el portón enorme y abierto de un nuevo desarrollo urbano.
“¿Este es el lugar?”
La Cerrada de Santa Clara, la Plaza de Santa Clara. El pequeño laberinto estaba situado alrededor de un espacio verde abierto y, en el centro del jardín, se encontraba un imponente edificio de tres plantas.
El Santa Clara mismo. Había estado ahí. Todo este tiempo. Ella había vivido a cinco millas de aquí, durante una década, y no se había dado cuenta de que estaba al final de esta calle, por la que había transitado con frecuencia, camino a algún otro lugar.
La habían traído hasta aquí, en un taxi, hacía casi veinte años, cuando todo lo que había alrededor eran campos verdes. Le aterraba pensar que el chofer sabría, por la dirección, que estaba loca, aunque no estaba exactamente loca; estaba sólo seriamente quebrantada. Estaba segura de que él sabría que había un ser humano roto en su taxi, que se daría la vuelta para dirigirle una sonrisa burlona mientras cruzaban la reja, o mientras subían por el acceso para autos dejando atrás los manicurados jardines, hacia esta enorme casa, estas instalaciones.
Las hermanas de Santa Clara y de Santa Inés. Casa de reposo privada.
La “escuálida Inés”, como se le conocía. El cubo. Había tecleado la dirección en el celular de su hijo, y no la asoció con nada.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben.
Así que era por eso que ella había recordado el lago.
Era muy extraño, ver el edificio desde fuera. Había pasado su tiempo como interna en una habitación pequeña, y había visto el exterior tal vez dos veces: la primera, de forma sesgada, mientras subía por la escalinata y, posiblemente una segunda vez, al volver la vista atrás, cuando su padre vino a recogerla. Nunca había recorrido los jardines, ahora poblados con casas elegantes y nuevas; es posible que ese espacio hubiera estado restringido. O, aún más probable, que ella no hubiera contado con suministro de ropa. Dormía mucho, o permanecía tendida sobre su cama estilo hospital. Se recordaba de pie junto a una ventana ⸺tal vez era esa ventana en el tercer piso, donde al edificio le crece como protuberancia esa torre redonda y gruesa. Sabía que la torre contenía un tramo de escaleras y que ella se había asomado desde lo más alto, como una mujer en un cuento de hadas lo habría hecho -aunque ella no habitaba un cuento de hadas, ella vivía en las brumas del Mogadon, por no mencionar las demás porquerías que tragaba obedientemente, dos veces al día, preguntándose si alguna vez volvería a defecar. A nadie parecía importarle eso. Importaban tus sentimientos, en lugar de eso. Aunque “importar” era tal vez la palabra equivocada. Observaban tus sentimientos.
“Mamá”, dijo Ben ⸺una palabra que usaba sólo cuando estaba realmente molesto. A ella se le había olvidado decir “¿Qué?”.
“¿Qué?”, dijo.
“¿Preferirías vivir dentro de un pavo?”
“¿Es este el lugar?”, dijo. “¿Es aquí donde vive ella?”
Había reducido la velocidad hasta detenerse en la mitad de la calle desierta. Un par de niños, uno de ellos muy pequeño, jugaban en el descanso de los anchos escalones de granito que conducían hasta la puerta principal del edificio que había sido la Escuálida Inés. El lugar se había adaptado para departamentos ⸺probablemente costaban una fortuna. Otras cosas se le agolparon en la memoria mientras contemplaba la fachada: un recibidor, donde se había registrado. Una sala enorme para las monjas, donde su padre se había levantado de un sillón de percal cuando ella cruzó por la puerta, lista para irse a casa. Era la habitación de techo alto de la izquierda, donde la madre de los niños había recogido la cortina, para vigilar que no se alejaran.
Había una abandonada sala de día donde la gente iba a fumar ⸺se preguntó dónde estaría ahora esa habitación. Todas fumaban veinte cigarros por día, las damas rotas de los suburbios, con sus manos temblorosas y sus batas de buen gusto. Se sentaban en aquel cuarto apestoso, con sus sillones tapizados en vinil, y observaban sus muñecas. Se preguntó quién viviría en ese espacio ahora. Alguien activa y joven. Alguien que pone orquídeas en el alféizar de una ventana que antes estaba atornillada. Esta persona no fuma. Esta persona sale de un encantador departamento privado hacia el pasillo común donde la gente triste solía pasearse, hace todos esos años. Llorando, sin llorar, silentes, mirando de reojo el teléfono de paga.
“Es el número 74”. El tono de su hijo era de un desdén infinito, y se dio cuenta de que no se había movido, estaba atorada.
Se dio cuenta de que el casi bebé y el otro niño estaban, de hecho, demarcados por los peldaños. Se mantenían en la parte superior, y pedaleaban su triciclo en la superficie plana. No se acercaban a la orilla.
Había pasado los últimos ocho años de su vida velando por la seguridad de niños pequeños.
El auto avanzó lentamente mientras Ben leía en voz alta los números de las casas que miraban hacia el jardín: 67, 69, 71.
“¿Dónde están los pares?”, dijo ella, mientras rodeaban despacio la parte trasera del edificio como si estuvieran dirigiéndose hacia una trampa. Así era como había sentido su vida, justo antes de que se rompiera ⸺todo estaba demasiado conectado. Y ahora estaba ocurriendo, otra vez: el viaje involuntario, las opciones nada graciosas, la idea de que su hijo lo sabía, por supuesto que lo sabía, todavía se podía oler en ella: el agua semisalada del lago.
Ubicó la ventana de la sala de día, en el segundo piso, y todavía estaba allá arriba, revisando sus muñecas. Fumando. Mirando, durante semanas, un pedazo de pared. Ben, desconocido. Su hija, desconocida. No habían ocurrido dentro de su cuerpo; no habían nacido.
“¡Ahí está! ¡Setenta y cuatro, setenta y cuatro!”
Detuvo el auto, jaló la palanca del freno de mano, y giró en su asiento para mirar a su hijo, que se desabrochaba el cinturón en el asiento trasero. Ben levantó la vista hacia ella, y era hermoso. Su cabello necesitaba un cepillado y algo brillaba bajo su nariz, pero era tan él. La miró por debajo de sus largas pestañas, como si la hubiera conocido desde hace mucho tiempo, y ella no estuviera dentro del edificio. Estaba aquí ahora, afuera, con él.
“Sé bueno”, le dijo, mientras él tomaba la maleta y se alejaba.
Para ser un niño a quien no le gustaban las niñas, fue muy veloz para llegar a la puerta de Ava.
“Te recogeré mañana, a las once”.
Regresó hasta el coche. Ella creyó, por un momento, que le quería dar un beso de despedida, pero él simplemente estaba buscando su teléfono. Ella se lo entregó por la ventana, y sacó la cabeza tras el teléfono, a manera de travesura.
“Mnnnnmm”, le dijo ella, frunciendo los labios. Y, de hecho, él le dio un beso, repentinamente, antes de correr de vuelta hacia la casa, hacia el porche donde Ava ya lo esperaba para darle la bienvenida. Una hadita rubia, con un corazón de lentejuelas en la playera, que brincaba de emoción al verlo.
El beso fue una cosa torpe. Carnosa. Rápida. Había un punto frío en su mejilla, venido de la punta de la nariz de Ben.
“¡Ben!”, le gritó. “¡Espera! ¡Ben!”
“¿Qué?”
“Preferiría que el pavo viviera dentro de mí”.
“¡O. K.!” Se tomó la respuesta con bastante seriedad.
“Sin duda alguna”.
Era sólo una pregunta, pensó ella. Y se asomó al espejo retrovisor antes de arrancar.
She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Llevaba a Ben hacia casa de una amiga, y este recorrido adicional le producía cierta irritación; tenía tantas otras cosas que hacer. Aunque sí le gustaba la privacidad del coche, y la sensación de esa otra voz asomando por encima de su hombro, mientras ella consultaba el retrovisor y descendía la velocidad para dar la vuelta en la esquina. Él estaba erguido en el asiento para menores ⸺Ben era bajito para ser ya un niño de ocho⸺ y miraba a través de la ventanilla hacia las calles del suburbio y los coches estacionados, mientras ella usaba el teléfono celular del muchacho para ubicar la ruta. Lo colocó junto a la palanca de velocidades, apoyado sobre el tablero gris de plástico. Era difícil visualizar la pequeña flecha en el desastre de la pantalla estrellada de Ben ⸺rara vez estaba lejos de su mano este objeto, a menos que se le cayera⸺. Por ahora, él miraba hacia el mundo real como ligeramente sorprendido de que estuviera ahí. “No me gusta Barry McIntyre”, dijo.
“¿No? ¿Por qué no?”
Tenían sus mejores pláticas en el coche. Si hubieran estado en casa, él hubiera dicho “No sé”, o “Porque no…” En el coche, él decía cosas como “Sin embargo, me gustan los niños. De verdad me gustan los niños”.
“Claro que te gustan”.
Se preguntaba por qué él no podía hablar cuando estaban frente a frente. ¿Qué tenía su manera de mirarlo que hacía que se encogiera y retorciera bajo la ropa?
“Eres un niño.”
“Lo sé”, dijo.
Por supuesto, era su mamá, así que cuando lo miraba siempre lo estaba examinando para verificar si no había algo que ajustar o admirar. Aunque trataba de no hacerlo. En verdad trataba de no convertirse en el tipo de mujer que diría “Siéntate derecho”, o “Deja en paz tu pelo”.
“Pues muy bien”.
Echó un vistazo al espejo retrovisor y sólo alcanzó a ver un lado de su cabeza. Su cabello áspero se estaba oscureciendo a medida que avanzaba el invierno. En un año o dos, sería completamente castaño.
“Odio el basquetbol”.
“¿Ah, sí?”
“De verdad lo odio”.
Recientemente, había usado la palabra “gay” como un insulto. “Eso es tan gay”, dijo durante la cena, y su hermana menor titubeó.
“Por supuesto que te gusta el basquetbol”, dijo ella, con calidez. Vaya mentira.
Él no respondió.
“¿Barry McIntyre juega basquetbol?”
En el retrovisor, vio su mano moviéndose hacia el lado oculto de su rostro.
“¡No te toques la nariz!”, dijo.
Era difícil no decir esas cosas. Eran tan temporalmente hermosos, sus hijos. Eran tan perfectos y, después, de repente, ya no lo eran. Los amaba de más, tanto, que no podía dejarlos ser.
Ella continuó manejando, mientras él miraba los suburbios de Dublín: los árboles en primavera, las casas semiadosadas, una anciana abrigada que paseaba a su perro. La app del teléfono la había llevado hasta una calle que le resultaba familiar, aunque habían llegado ahí por una ruta inusual, una que ella no hubiera tomado por su cuenta. La nueva amiga de Ben se llamaba Ava. Vivía en St. Clare Crescent, que supuestamente estaba en algún lugar cercano a la autopista. Pero ellos no usaron la autopista; tomaron una serie de calles estrechas, por algunas de las cuales ella ya había manejado ⸺este era el camino hacia el vivero, aquella era la ruta hacia la peluquería canina⸺ sin saber, antes, que hubiera podido cruzar de una a otra si hubiera girado en el lugar correcto.
“¿Qué preferirías?” Dijo Ben y, después, se detuvo.
Si no le hacías saber que lo estabas escuchando, se negaría a continuar.
“¿Qué?”, dijo finalmente ella.
Y, ahora que sabía que ella le prestaba atención, dijo “¿Preferirías beber una taza de lava o ahogarte en un lago de lava?”
“Oh, por Dios”.
“¿Qué preferirías?”
“No, no de nuevo”.
“¿Qué?”
“No se puede beber lava”.
“Sí, sí se puede”.
“¿En una taza?”
“En una taza de piedra”.
“Elijo el lago”.
“¿Preferirías caer de un tejado, o que un árbol te cayera en la cabeza?”
Estaba obsesionado con las elecciones, en especial las imposibles.
“Ninguna. Preferiría que ninguna de esas cosas me pasara”.
“¿Preferirías caer de un tejado, insistió, “o que un árbol te cayera en la cabeza?”
Tal vez estaba obsesionado con la muerte misma. No había manera de librarse de ella, en cualquiera de los casos.
“Tejado, dijo ella.
“O. K.”
“¿Y tú?”
“Sí, tejado, admitió.
“No es la mejor que se te ha ocurrido”, dijo ella.
Hizo una pausa, aceptó el reto.
“¿Preferirías que te picaran, hasta morir, las hormigas rojas, o ser colgada de los pies, de una gran grúa, hasta que tu cabeza explotara?”
“¡Genial!”
Continuaría hasta que ella estuviera completamente acorralada.
“Grúa, por favor”.
“¿Preferirías ahogarte en la oscuridad, o ser estrangulada en la oscuridad?”
Continuaría hasta que ella estuviera en verdad muerta.
“¿En serio?”
“En un lago enorme y oscuro, lleno de anguilas”.
“En verdad no. Absolutamente no. No lo preferiría”.
Le vino a la memoria, mientras manejaba, el recuerdo de un chapuzón nocturno, muchos años antes de que Ben naciera. Fue en un lago, en la campiña irlandesa; eran un grupo, y venían de regreso del bar, sin luna, sin sexo, se podría conjeturar ⸺ni esa mañana, ni la noche anterior, cuando se suponía que deberían haber tenido sexo de cabaña vacacional⸺ y ella se sacó el vestido por encima de la cabeza mientras caminaba, en la oscuridad, hacia el lago. Por supuesto que había un hombre en el grupo que no era, de hecho, el hombre con quien estaba saliendo en ese momento; era otro hombre, prohibido. Y ninguno de esos dos se convertiría, tiempo después, en padre del niño que ahora viajaba en el asiento trasero. Desnudarse en el bosque solitario y a media noche era una provocación para ambos ⸺cualquiera de los dos serviría. Todo esto fue hace mucho tiempo.
El atuendo era un vestido de lino azul, holgado y práctico, su ropa interior probablemente bastante lujosa e impráctica en aquellos días antes de los asientos para menores e hijos con fiestas de pijamas y teléfonos que te dicen dónde virar. Su cuerpo, también un objeto más fino en aquél entonces; si tan sólo ella se hubiera dado cuenta. Y estaba ebria, así que recordaba sólo en retazos el sendero que llevaba hasta el embarcadero mínimo, su experiencia en el momento también discontinua, aunque se desaceleró y aclaró cuando dejó caer su vestido sobre las maderas todavía tibias del suelo, y echó un vistazo al agua. En la superficie, de apariencia sedosa, había montículos de turbera y pastos que hacían castaño el lago, incluso bajo la luz del día. Ahora, a media noche, estaba más oscuro de lo imaginable, así que fue como un sexto sentido, el sentimiento de espacio abierto frente a ella. Cuando se asomó, vio la negrura brillar, como petróleo. Se sentó en la orilla del embarcadero para desabrochar su brasier elegante y hacerlo a un lado. La voz de un hombre diciéndole que se detuviera. Otro hombre diciendo nada. La voz de una mujer diciendo “No, de verdad, Michelle”. Y se zambulló. Se impulsó desde la orilla de madera y cayó en lo profundo, fue tragada en un golpe de agua que se volvió silencio líquido, y después luchó por salir hacia donde el aire empezaba. Agua negra en aire negro.
Mientras ascendía y giraba, pudo sentir el alcohol hincharse bajo la superficie de su piel, y el agua que, más que fría, era entumecedora. O ella estaba entumida. El agua resbalaba por su cuerpo mientras ella cortaba camino líquido, en una larga, extendida brazada que la alejaba de todos, incluso cuando parecía permanecer en el mismo lugar. Podía deducir, por las voces, que se estaba desplazando ⸺los fragmentos de sonido que percibía mientras surcaba la superficie, hacia el centro del lago.
Si acaso era el centro. Si acaso era, al menos, la superficie, aquello en lo que nadaba. Estaba tan oscuro y húmedo que era difícil saber si sus ojos estaban cerrados o abiertos. Temía que, al nadar, su desplazamiento no fuera del todo horizontal, estarse inclinando, hacia abajo, temía volver el rostro para inhalar y encontrarse con sólo agua. Los gritos que venían de la orilla eran ahora más esporádicos; era como si se hubieran rendido mientras ella daba vuelta o intentaba nadar de regreso hacia ellos, porque las briznas de sonido le brindaban un sentido de horizonte y era importante no perder eso. Necesitaba saber hacia dónde estaba la superficie. Empujaba el agua a sus costados, y aunque giraba al desplazarse, no se sentía segura de estar volviendo. Debería detenerse un momento y orientarse, pero no podía parar; no quería. Era ⸺y este fue el asunto secreto, repentino⸺ tan delicioso. No saber en qué dirección está qué, o dónde estaban las orillas. Se vio disuelta en ello. Podía ahogarse en ese preciso instante y sería un placer.
Percibió el destello de su brazo blanco, un resplandor vigoroso al que siguió ⸺su cuerpo como su propia brújula⸺ hasta que oyó, en la orilla, la voz del hombre con quien se suponía que se acostaría, vio el brillo intermitente del cigarro del hombre con quien se suponía que no se acostaría (y nunca lo hizo, por alguna razón; quizás lo asustó por completo). Su gran pronunciamiento se vio un poco disminuido, en la orilla, por el filo de las piedras en el limo bajo sus pies, mientras intentaba salir del lago, hacia la recriminación y el sexo de piel fría.
Se despertó a la mañana siguiente con un sobresalto, la consumación ligeramente acuosa de la noche anterior ya olvidada, gastada. Había ocurrido sin ella. Se sentó en la orilla de la cama y jaló aire hacia sus pulmones. Estaba viva. E hizo que este hecho entrara en su mente. Quiso clavarlo justo en el centro de su mente. No podía volver a hacer eso jamás. Tenía veinticuatro años, y estaba renunciando a la muerte. Ebria o sobria, no habría más lagos en la oscuridad.
“Sabes, Ben, nunca deberías nadar de noche”, dijo ahora, más de veinte años después, sentada en su Hyundai híbrido.
Acelerador, freno, espejo, clutch.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben.
“No, en serio, tienes que prometerme que no harás eso, nunca. No en un lago, porque no hay suficiente sal en los lagos para mantenerte a flote y, especialmente, no en el mar. Debes respetar siempre el mar. Es más grande que tú. ¿Me estás oyendo? Y no debes nadar nunca, nunca, si has bebido alcohol, o si tus amigos han bebido. Si un amigo se ha bebido un par de cervezas, cuando ya seas adolescente, y te dice ‘¡Vamos, será divertido!’, ¿qué le vas a decir?”
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben, pacientemente.
“No, no preferiría. En verdad no preferiría. No preferiría morir, ni de una manera ni de la otra. ¿Cuál es tu problema, Ben?”
Circulaban por una calle de casas semiadosadas recién construidas, depresivamente pequeñas e infinitamente idénticas. Jardines diminutos: serbal, cerezo, abedul plateado, sauce de ornato ⸺un horrible pompón en una vara. No entendía qué estaba haciendo en este lugar. Se estaba acercando para atraparla, incluso aquí. Venía para atrapar a sus hijos ⸺su propia estupidez; la había seguido más allá del agua. El chapuzón nocturno no había sido el final del asunto; ella se convirtió en cautiva de la muerte por un tiempo ⸺meses, un año. Porque, por supuesto, podías dejar el lago atrás, pero no podías dejar el deseo mismo, y todas sus imposibilidades.
Aunque algo se volvió posible. Algo se tornó real. Algo fue resuelto por la existencia del niño en el asiento trasero.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben, “¿vivir dentro de un pavo o que un pavo viviera dentro de ti?”
“¿Qué?”
“¿Qué preferirías?”, repitió, con ademán paciente, “¿vivir dentro de un pavo o que un pavo viviera dentro de ti?”
“Esa es una muy buena pregunta”, dijo ella.
“¿Qué preferirías?”
“Esa es, en verdad, una grandiosa pregunta. Ha sido la mejor hasta ahora”. Se estiró hacia la radio del auto y la encendió, con la esperanza de distraerlo.
“¿Es ese el lugar?” La app le indicaba virar a la derecha. “¿Es ahí donde vive Ava?”
“No lo sé”.
“Es tu amiga”.
“No, no lo es. No es mi amiga. Ella es simplemente muy, muy insistente”.
Su mano reposaba, en gesto anticipatorio, sobre la maleta para la noche, que se ubicaba a su costado, mientras ella giraba hacia el portón enorme y abierto de un nuevo desarrollo urbano.
“¿Este es el lugar?”
La Cerrada de Santa Clara, la Plaza de Santa Clara. El pequeño laberinto estaba situado alrededor de un espacio verde abierto y, en el centro del jardín, se encontraba un imponente edificio de tres plantas.
El Santa Clara mismo. Había estado ahí. Todo este tiempo. Ella había vivido a cinco millas de aquí, durante una década, y no se había dado cuenta de que estaba al final de esta calle, por la que había transitado con frecuencia, camino a algún otro lugar.
La habían traído hasta aquí, en un taxi, hacía casi veinte años, cuando todo lo que había alrededor eran campos verdes. Le aterraba pensar que el chofer sabría, por la dirección, que estaba loca, aunque no estaba exactamente loca; estaba sólo seriamente quebrantada. Estaba segura de que él sabría que había un ser humano roto en su taxi, que se daría la vuelta para dirigirle una sonrisa burlona mientras cruzaban la reja, o mientras subían por el acceso para autos dejando atrás los manicurados jardines, hacia esta enorme casa, estas instalaciones.
Las hermanas de Santa Clara y de Santa Inés. Casa de reposo privada.
La “escuálida Inés”, como se le conocía. El cubo. Había tecleado la dirección en el celular de su hijo, y no la asoció con nada.
“¿Qué preferirías?”, dijo Ben.
Así que era por eso que ella había recordado el lago.
Era muy extraño, ver el edificio desde fuera. Había pasado su tiempo como interna en una habitación pequeña, y había visto el exterior tal vez dos veces: la primera, de forma sesgada, mientras subía por la escalinata y, posiblemente una segunda vez, al volver la vista atrás, cuando su padre vino a recogerla. Nunca había recorrido los jardines, ahora poblados con casas elegantes y nuevas; es posible que ese espacio hubiera estado restringido. O, aún más probable, que ella no hubiera contado con suministro de ropa. Dormía mucho, o permanecía tendida sobre su cama estilo hospital. Se recordaba de pie junto a una ventana ⸺tal vez era esa ventana en el tercer piso, donde al edificio le crece como protuberancia esa torre redonda y gruesa. Sabía que la torre contenía un tramo de escaleras y que ella se había asomado desde lo más alto, como una mujer en un cuento de hadas lo habría hecho -aunque ella no habitaba un cuento de hadas, ella vivía en las brumas del Mogadon, por no mencionar las demás porquerías que tragaba obedientemente, dos veces al día, preguntándose si alguna vez volvería a defecar. A nadie parecía importarle eso. Importaban tus sentimientos, en lugar de eso. Aunque “importar” era tal vez la palabra equivocada. Observaban tus sentimientos.
“Mamá”, dijo Ben ⸺una palabra que usaba sólo cuando estaba realmente molesto. A ella se le había olvidado decir “¿Qué?”.
“¿Qué?”, dijo.
“¿Preferirías vivir dentro de un pavo?”
“¿Es este el lugar?”, dijo. “¿Es aquí donde vive ella?”
Había reducido la velocidad hasta detenerse en la mitad de la calle desierta. Un par de niños, uno de ellos muy pequeño, jugaban en el descanso de los anchos escalones de granito que conducían hasta la puerta principal del edificio que había sido la Escuálida Inés. El lugar se había adaptado para departamentos ⸺probablemente costaban una fortuna. Otras cosas se le agolparon en la memoria mientras contemplaba la fachada: un recibidor, donde se había registrado. Una sala enorme para las monjas, donde su padre se había levantado de un sillón de percal cuando ella cruzó por la puerta, lista para irse a casa. Era la habitación de techo alto de la izquierda, donde la madre de los niños había recogido la cortina, para vigilar que no se alejaran.
Había una abandonada sala de día donde la gente iba a fumar ⸺se preguntó dónde estaría ahora esa habitación. Todas fumaban veinte cigarros por día, las damas rotas de los suburbios, con sus manos temblorosas y sus batas de buen gusto. Se sentaban en aquel cuarto apestoso, con sus sillones tapizados en vinil, y observaban sus muñecas. Se preguntó quién viviría en ese espacio ahora. Alguien activa y joven. Alguien que pone orquídeas en el alféizar de una ventana que antes estaba atornillada. Esta persona no fuma. Esta persona sale de un encantador departamento privado hacia el pasillo común donde la gente triste solía pasearse, hace todos esos años. Llorando, sin llorar, silentes, mirando de reojo el teléfono de paga.
“Es el número 74”. El tono de su hijo era de un desdén infinito, y se dio cuenta de que no se había movido, estaba atorada.
Se dio cuenta de que el casi bebé y el otro niño estaban, de hecho, demarcados por los peldaños. Se mantenían en la parte superior, y pedaleaban su triciclo en la superficie plana. No se acercaban a la orilla.
Había pasado los últimos ocho años de su vida velando por la seguridad de niños pequeños.
El auto avanzó lentamente mientras Ben leía en voz alta los números de las casas que miraban hacia el jardín: 67, 69, 71.
“¿Dónde están los pares?”, dijo ella, mientras rodeaban despacio la parte trasera del edificio como si estuvieran dirigiéndose hacia una trampa. Así era como había sentido su vida, justo antes de que se rompiera ⸺todo estaba demasiado conectado. Y ahora estaba ocurriendo, otra vez: el viaje involuntario, las opciones nada graciosas, la idea de que su hijo lo sabía, por supuesto que lo sabía, todavía se podía oler en ella: el agua semisalada del lago.
Ubicó la ventana de la sala de día, en el segundo piso, y todavía estaba allá arriba, revisando sus muñecas. Fumando. Mirando, durante semanas, un pedazo de pared. Ben, desconocido. Su hija, desconocida. No habían ocurrido dentro de su cuerpo; no habían nacido.
“¡Ahí está! ¡Setenta y cuatro, setenta y cuatro!”
Detuvo el auto, jaló la palanca del freno de mano, y giró en su asiento para mirar a su hijo, que se desabrochaba el cinturón en el asiento trasero. Ben levantó la vista hacia ella, y era hermoso. Su cabello necesitaba un cepillado y algo brillaba bajo su nariz, pero era tan él. La miró por debajo de sus largas pestañas, como si la hubiera conocido desde hace mucho tiempo, y ella no estuviera dentro del edificio. Estaba aquí ahora, afuera, con él.
“Sé bueno”, le dijo, mientras él tomaba la maleta y se alejaba.
Para ser un niño a quien no le gustaban las niñas, fue muy veloz para llegar a la puerta de Ava.
“Te recogeré mañana, a las once”.
Regresó hasta el coche. Ella creyó, por un momento, que le quería dar un beso de despedida, pero él simplemente estaba buscando su teléfono. Ella se lo entregó por la ventana, y sacó la cabeza tras el teléfono, a manera de travesura.
“Mnnnnmm”, le dijo ella, frunciendo los labios. Y, de hecho, él le dio un beso, repentinamente, antes de correr de vuelta hacia la casa, hacia el porche donde Ava ya lo esperaba para darle la bienvenida. Una hadita rubia, con un corazón de lentejuelas en la playera, que brincaba de emoción al verlo.
El beso fue una cosa torpe. Carnosa. Rápida. Había un punto frío en su mejilla, venido de la punta de la nariz de Ben.
“¡Ben!”, le gritó. “¡Espera! ¡Ben!”
“¿Qué?”
“Preferiría que el pavo viviera dentro de mí”.
“¡O. K.!” Se tomó la respuesta con bastante seriedad.
“Sin duda alguna”.
Era sólo una pregunta, pensó ella. Y se asomó al espejo retrovisor antes de arrancar.
Translation commentary
Aurora Piñeiro
Ana-Karina Schneider states, in Understanding Anne Enright (2020), that the author’s short stories are “brief epiphanies that illuminate the inner lives of contemporary Dubliners, while her novels are more elaborate portrayals of Irish women in historical context” (3). The previous assertion is a useful one when it comes to “Night Swim”, the story by Enright hereby translated into Spanish, where sudden revelations take place and illuminate emotional territories of both the past and present in the protagonist’s life.
In “Night Swim”, Michelle drives her son, Ben, to a friend’s house. The car drive becomes the temporal framework within which the story takes place and an embodiment of in-betweenness, with the car itself as a heterotopic space, to put it in Foucauldian terms, where the exploration of themes such as motherhood or the allure of inner darkness is made possible. In just a few pages, Enright showcases some of the most distinctive features of her writing: the tensions of narrative rhythms that may be beautifully fluid and at times syncopated; the coexistence of formal strategies that represent “a little bit of bounce in a sentence” (Enright in Schwall 22), even when this may occur within an utterance signalled as an interruption. It is not a minor challenge for a translator to recreate this alternation of fluidity and interruption in a different linguistic system. When it comes to a target language such as Spanish, which is less economic than English, one of the central challenges for the translator is to avoid the temptation of adding, of articulating full sentences that would simplify or iron out the power of Enright’s poetic condensations or her deliberate ambiguities. I mean precisely those strategies with which the epiphanic moment gets articulated.
When it comes to fluidity, this may be found in the way dialogue between the mother and son is represented in the story: as a playful interaction that allows room for the mother’s parallel meditations on the dynamics of their relationship, as the third person narrative voice is mainly focalised on her perspective. But dramatic discourse is interrupted by the fact that the son’s playful questions are insistently associated to death, and one of them in particular to the idea of death by water, which triggers the mother’s memory of a night swim in a lake, an experience of fascination with death which had taken place years before. This is the moment in the story when dialogue is substituted by narrative discourse, but the narration of the night swim soon establishes a new or different type of fluidity, one that equates the bodily experience of aquatic immersion with the reader’s experience of submersion into a flow of sentences that is both fascinating and disquieting. The allure of the poetic prose becomes as darkly beautiful as that of the nocturnal swim but, to further extend the dynamics of fluidity and interruption, the main epiphanies in this passage are signalled by the use of em dashes, as if to frame the revelations within long horizontal bars that do not quite turn them into separate sentences but parallel utterances where illuminations are condensed.
And it was there, in those fragments, where the translation into Spanish was kept as economic as possible, as I will show in the following example. The sentence “It was ⸺this was the secret, sudden thing⸺ so delicious” was translated as “Era ⸺y este fue el asunto secreto, repentino⸺ tan delicioso”. Spanish allows for the omission of the personal pronoun at the beginning of the sentence, as it would have created an unnecessary repetition with the subject of the subordinate clause (as “it” and “this” would translate as “esto” and “esta”) while, in the subordinate clause, only a conjunction was added, which slightly reduces the asyndeton of the original but makes it possible to understand that these are two different clauses (even if the subject of the first one was omitted) and that the second and subordinate one is the linguistic place where the full force of the revelation is condensed. This strategy of omission and addition made it possible for the Spanish version to have the same number of words than the original text, and maintained the use of em dashes as the textual mark that highlights epiphanies in a dynamics of fluidity and interruption that characterises the story.
When the passage on the night swim comes to an end, the conversation between mother and son is reestablished, though in a different tone, just to be interrupted again by the unexpected finding of a building which will prompt, for the mother, another haunting memory. The substitution of dialogue by narrative discourse is reenacted, but the structural similarity in the construction of the text does not make it a repetition because internal changes are taking place in both characters as a consequence of the interactions during their conversations, their observation of the world outside the car and the epiphanies readers have witnessed. This way a process of maturity does take place for both son and mother, and their choice of life upon death does not have to be set off as a textual interruption signalled by em dashes any longer. By the end of the story, the revelation or the learning has been incorporated into the flow of the prose and the protagonist may “pull out”.