It’s late after the service and everything else when Helen is driving north on the 95 in her rented Chevy Malibu, the road stretching out and away ahead, struck through the hearts of countless towns and cities infesting the coast, they themselves having been carved and shored from the glades and fens like a hundred widows propped up by the arms of their surviving loved ones. They become a wash to her, after the times she’s made the drive — a featureless blur of townlights and resorts, beckoning but not appealing. She’s got some brain-numbing playlist of lo-fi beats apprenticed to her speakers through the wonders of Bluetooth. Anything more intense than that would open her mind up in an unpleasant way; she feels like she’s already let the light shine in too much today.
It feels good to leave West Palm Beach behind her, she thinks. Maybe for the last time, if there’s a willing and kind god in the universe. Her mother hadn’t held on to much at the end, so there wasn’t much to sort out in the will. That’s all something for her aunt and uncle to figure out. Nothing there for her anyhow. The majority of the “estate,” such as it was, was willed to her older brother Jacob, who nobody has seen or heard from in years. No social media presence, no partners online, no forwarding addresses, nothing. This meant that her mom’s siblings would need to contest various elements of the will; Helen had no interest in any of it. There was some small part of her that had hoped Jacob somehow heard about their mother’s passing. That he would have been at the funeral, with his dry laugh and his messy hair and his lopsided smile that eats up his whole face.
Suddenly Helen sees a sign for the SR60 junction through Fellsmere, and despite the miles to go before she reaches her hotel reservation in Jacksonville, she finds herself taking the exit west. She hasn’t been out this way in years. Her mother’s declining health meant they weren’t able to take birding trips together any longer, and it seemed hollow, somehow, when she was alone.
After a time she leaves even the relatively paltry lights of Fellsmere itself behind and finds herself in the very heart of Florida, all wetlands and humidity, the night a rare sort of evening this time of year where clouds aren’t dominating the sky. Through gaps between them the stars twinkle winningly, fixing a path in the sky she follows like a streetcar bound to overhead wires. The route trails past another exit, this one for Blue Cypress Lake, which she also takes. It cuts down and between the trees to a small lot next to a hut for boat rentals. She eases the car into a spot, parks, turns off the engine by twisting an actual, physical key — how archaic —and stares out of the windshield. What am I doing here? she thinks.
She gets out of the car and steps into the thick, humid evening, the cloak of air conditioning falling away from her body, and she locks the doors. The Malibu makes a cheerful chirp which blends in almost seamlessly with the tapestry of frogs and crickets. There is a path wending its way through the brush down to the lakeshore, adorned with a hand-painted wooden sign reading “WARNING: GATORS,” complete with an amateur drawing of one of the creatures. She smiles; it’s always so obvious what’s spelled out for the people who aren’t from around here. Her hands find the inside of her pockets as she walks down to the lake. She sits cross-legged near the shore and looks out across its glassy surface, at the moonlit clouds reflected in it, and at the bent-low cypress trees arching over the lake, supplicants to its waters.
Helen startles. On a cracked and splintered white-painted wooden table about ten feet from her someone’s left an honest-to-goodness radio — it’s a reflective orange, probably visible from space — and somehow, Helen doesn’t know how, the damn thing is on. There’s sound coming with a shocking suddenness from the waffle-mesh speaker on its front, a gentle, easy crackle and hiss underlying a voice — rough, but not harsh — with a sincere familiarity she somehow simultaneously can’t quite place.
“-istening to 105.7 Easy FM - Old Listening for New Problems, and it’s time for today’s Speakeasy with Danny Campo, presented by — yes, that’s right, yours truly, Danger Dan, Millennium Man. Good gracious, it’s been a warm summer, hasn’t it? Feels like they’re all warm summers by now. Scorchers, huh, and it’s not gonna get any cooler out there, folks. Times like these set my mind wandering, just like all the times seem to these days. Memory lane tonight leading me way, way back to the shore, all swim trunks and sliced watermelon. When I was coming up we didn’t pay much mind to sunscreen so we truly didn’t have a care in the world, and maybe the world didn’t have a care in us either.” There’s a slight pause. “Ah, I suppose I’m assuming too much. Listen to me go again.”
Helen walks over to the table and turns up the volume on the radio, carrying it back with her to her seat. She’s certain she’s never heard this program before; she’s never even heard of it, but she has this feeling in the back of her brain like she knows Danny Campo, somehow.
“You know, this reminds me of something I heard about the other day. All the way up in Washington state they’ve got this lake by the name of Crescent. You know, like the moon, or like Mom’s hot dogs in crescent rolls, on a Tuesday night when everyone’s just too tired for real cooking. You can drive right up, get out, go swimming. Rent a kayak. Now that was never my scene, mind. Always too afraid I’d roll the darn thing right over and I’d get stuck down there and drown, but those who love it sure seem to love it. And who am I to judge?” Danny pauses reflectively for a moment. “Not me, and I know not any of you all either, isn’t that right?
“So this lake,” he continues in the same conversational tone, “it’s tucked right into the mountains, because they say a glacier carved it out of them. Scooped it out like the earth was made of ice cream. Gives a new meaning to ‘rocky road’ doesn’t it? Big pine forests on either side. Cold lake too, full up with rain and melted snow. And like I said, you can get right out and step into the water, or swim out in the middle, but the thing that really gets me is, nobody knows just how deep this lake goes. They’ve tried a hundred ways but it’s deeper than anyone can dive. Who could ever know everything that’s really down there? But on the surface it’s just a clear, perfect blue in the day, and a mirror for the stars at night.
“Anyway, it’s about time I do that thing you’ve all been waiting for and open up our line to you all, wonderful callers. Let’s have a chat tonight about, you guessed it, swimming. A time you took to the water. Now, you all know how this story goes: just pick up the phone and dial on in! As soon as it’s time, you’ll remember the line. Well, would you look at that, here we are now. This is Danny Campo on the Speakeasy, you are live on the air!”
Another voice cuts in, muted, like someone talking into a tin can. “Hello, wow,” the voice says, with a slight quiver. It’s a young man, Helen guesses. “I’m really on the air?”
“You really are, kid. You’re live. Enjoy your taste of fame!” Danny chuckles softly. “What’s your name, for all our lovely listeners out there?”
“Oh, uh, Nate,” the voice replies.
“Nate, now, is that short for Nathaniel? Or one of those nickname-full name situations?”
“Yeah, short for Nathaniel.”
“Less of a mouthful, that’s for sure. All right, Nate the Great, where are you from?”
“Peoria.”
“An Illinois boy! I don’t even remember the last time we had a caller in from the Land of Lincoln.”
“Oh, no, sorry,” Nate says with a quiver in his voice. “Uh, Peoria, Arizona.”
“They have a Peoria down there too, huh? What will they think of next. Not a lot of water down there I imagine, so this ought to be an interesting first call. Take a deep breath, Nate, and tell us about a time you took a dip.”
Nate’s deep breath, as directed, is audible on the line. “Yeah, okay, Danny,” he says. “I guess, uh, I guess like. Well, I better start by saying that this was a few years ago when I was still a kid, like, in high school.”
“The old days, huh, kid?” Danny says. Helen can practically hear the smirk, the twinkle in his eye. “The long sunlit summers of youth.”
“Y- yeah,” Nate stammers. “So we were in high school, me and my friends. And it was after senior prom. Which, here, in April, or whatever, it gets real warm then. It was a real hot night. I took this girl named Ally, it was at… I don’t know, one of the fancy hotels. They had like, ice sculptures and a chocolate fountain?”
“You don’t seem too sure about that,” says Danny. “Were you maybe a bit distracted? Maybe by this Ally character?”
“No, they did, sorry. There was fresh fruit and stuff you could dip into it. No, but Ally did look good in her dress. We’re still together and everything. Anyway, me and my friends and our dates decided to ditch the prom before it was all over so we all piled into my buddy Kevin’s car. There had to be like ten of us in there. I don’t know how the cops didn’t pull us over.” He’s easing up, getting used to the rhythm of being on the air. “At some point someone got the bright idea to drive to the canal. There’s this place where the chain link along the walking path kinda pushes away from the fence and you can squeeze through and go sit right next to the water on the concrete, so we did that. The ground was hot as hell out there.”
“Burning you clean through your tuxedo pants, huh?”
Nate laughs. “Hah, yeah. And Kevin had some beers he got somehow in his car so we were having a drink and sitting by the water, laughing and joking and all that. We were right next to a bridge and the sound of the water flowing underneath it, real fast, through the big metal pipes… I’ll never forget it. Kevin and my friend Michael were throwing bottles across the water, seeing how good their arms were, and Ally was rolling her eyes and saying she was glad I wasn’t an idiot like that, and that’s when we saw the dog.
“It had fallen into the water upstream, I guess. I dunno, medium sized dog. Maybe a mutt. It had… it had on a collar, like, with a little license on it. Shaped like a blue bone, I dunno why I remember it was blue. A couple of us start yelling and looking around for something to hoist over the water, try to fish the dog out. Its eyes, it’s panicking and uh, trying to swim to the shore, but it keeps dipping under the water. So I start taking off my tux and throwing my clothes aside cause I’m gonna jump in and swim to it and save it. Only I get to the edge of the canal and I look at the water flowing by so fast and under the bridge and I can’t do it.
“I see the dog’s head slip under and disappear under the bridge and we all run up there to see if it comes out the other side and it doesn’t. It’s gone.” His breath shakes.
There’s a long pause. “You know, Big Nate,” Danny says, “if you had jumped in, you might not be calling in right now and telling us this story.”
Another pause. “Yeah, yeah, thanks, Danny. I guess what I can’t stop thinking about is whatever kid or family or whatever, whoever lost that dog. They’ll never get to know what happened.”
“Most of us don’t, huh?” Danny says, almost wistfully. “Nate, thanks so much for calling in. We’re out of time here for now because we’ve got to squeeze in some more callers.”
“Thanks for having me on, Danny.”
“Sure thing. Don’t forget to speak easy!” There’s a soft click as the line disconnects. Helen sees ripples out in the water. Fish just under the surface, or maybe even an alligator. There’s a brief commotion and then the lake is still again. Soon, the only signs of the disturbance are the great, sweeping concentric arcs of ripples that lap at the lakeshore.
“You know,” Danny begins again, “every minute’s just a time you could jump into that canal, or not, right? Take me for instance. My first marriage, over almost before it began. In love with being in love, you know what I’m talking about. What if there hadn’t been a bent knee the day it all started — but there was. There was that jump into the canal. You could spend a whole lifetime wondering, ‘what would it have been like if I jumped, or if I hadn’t?’ The big questions, really, the ones maybe we’re all thinking about, living up in our heads like we do.
“And then, of course, if you know me, you know that this show itself, me talking into this microphone, taking callers, lending a listening ear, a quick joke — all that was a jump. You can’t spend your whole life looking down into the water, feeling the call of the seafloor, and not take the plunge someday, no matter how icy the waves are. Ah, but you devoted Speakeasy listeners know exactly what I’m talking about. And it looks like someone else is ready to make the jump now! Hello, this is the Speakeasy, with Danny Campo, you are live!”
“Hey, Danny,” a woman’s voice says on the line.
“Well, if I haven’t heard everything. This must be the one and only Maritza on the line. Longtime fans of the show will know Mari. She last called, what?”
“Two years ago, give or take.”
“Two years.” Danny whistles softly. “Time’s a funny thing. Two years, and it sure seems like yesterday to me. Maybe the day before, if you really push it. But we’ll never, ever forget that voice, huh? Burned into my brain anyway. We’ve had a lot of great chats, you and I. It’s a treat to hear from you, Mari Shapiro.”
“It’s my pleasure to be back on and I’m sorry it’s been so long since I called in, Danny,” Mari says. Her voice has a faint accent to it. Despite her apology, Helen thinks she sounds strong. Resolute.
“Well,” Danny says —and Helen detects a hitch in his voice so slight that she’s unsure she hears it at all — “I suppose we have an awful lot to catch up on, but as you know our time is tight here on the Speakeasy. We all know by now where you’re calling from, so I’m after your water story. What do you have for me, Starry Mari?”
The woman clears her throat. “It isn’t a very long story, I hope that’s okay. It just makes me think about going over to visit my tía Dolores’s house. She had a pool in the backyard because her second husband made a lot of money. He was an engineer or something. He didn’t really like us kids much so we didn’t see a lot of him.”
“Now, we’ve heard about Dolores before on the Speakeasy,” Danny says.
“Yes, Danny. She was a big part of my life when I was young. I was closer to her than to my mother, que en paz descanse. I told tía Dolores everything growing up — my first crush, my first kiss, whenever I failed a math test, when I got into my first choice. She helped me pack my things for college, she came and visited me in the hospital when I got in my car crash when I was a junior. She’s a saint.
“But with the swimming. When I came back home to visit after my last semester in college, my tía Dolores invited me over to her house. It was just the two of us. She cut up a pineapple and we ate it with our feet in the pool and talked about this and that and I finally told her I didn’t want to come home after I graduated. I met friends and my partner up in New Jersey. My whole life was there — everyone but her. And do you know what she said to me?” Her voice is stony, antiseptic. “She said, eres tan parecida a tu madre. You’re just like your mother.
“I knew she always resented my mother. My mother was always the pretty one, the smart one, the successful one. When my mother decided she wanted to go to school in the United States, my abuelo pulled up every root the family had to transplant her, and tía Dolores never forgave her. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me either, because we haven’t spoken since then.”
Danny gives her a beat and then, “Do you ever think about giving her a call?”
“All the time,” Mari replies. “But she never calls me either. If she wanted to talk to me, she has my number. So she must not.”
“Maybe so,” Danny says. “Well, Mari, it’s fabulous to hear from you as always, and hey, don’t be such a stranger, all right? What do you say? But our time together is up and we need to reopen that line.”
“Thanks Danny, it’s always a pleasure.”
“All right. Wow, the one and only Maritza. You know, when I stretched and yawned and rubbed my eyes this morning I never dreamed I’d be hearing from that lovely lady again today. So glad you all were with me for that journey, just like you always have been. It makes it all a little easier knowing we’re by each others’ sides, doesn’t it? At least in a sense. I know I couldn’t do it without you all. Sometimes it’s like a loose wire knocking around in there. The connection’s a little fuzzy, it comes in and out. It’s not that hard to fix if you know how — if you can open up the radio and solder it back into place. But to someone who doesn’t have the skills it feels impossible. That’s just how these things go, isn’t it?
“And would you look at that, our time together is nearly at an end. The hour always goes so fast,” he says, and Helen checks her watch. Has it really been almost an hour? Forty-five minutes since she sat down on the lakeshore. “One last chance for someone to pick up that thing and give me a ring. You know the number — it’s right there at the the tips of your fingers and the tip of your mind. In about fifteen minutes we’ll kick off our hour of tunes guaranteed to smooth out those rough edges. Ah… here we are now. This is the Speakeasy with Danny Campo on Easy FM, you are on the air!”
“-een trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty. This message is time-sensitive. Please ca-“
There’s a click, and Danny lets out a short sigh. “Just can’t get away from them no matter where you are, huh folks? You could bury your life under a tinfoil blanket and not escape all of that. And trust me, I’ve tried. There’s nowhere that the grid doesn’t reach, at least a little, right? Maybe there’s some comfort in it. It’s nothing personal. All right, let’s go ahead and give it one more whirl. What do you say? Just pick up that phone, punch that number in, and spin me one last story about the water. Maybe one where someone actually gets all the way in this time!”
Something compels Helen to reach for her cell phone. She pulls it out of her pocket and the face recognition catches her even in the dim moonlight reflecting off the lake. She opens her phone app and her fingers dial four numbers, tap tap tap, like machines — but then she hesitates, for just a moment.
Long enough. “Ah, here we are!” Danny says. “You are now on the air with Danny Campo on the Speakeasy!”
“Hey there, I’m live?”
Helen’s veins turn to glass.
“You are on the air. What’s your name, fella?”
“Jacob,” her brother says over the radio, clearer than the gap in the clouds that lets the moon through. It can’t possibly really be him. “Hard to believe I really made it through, hah.”
“Well, there’s no time like the present. Tell me, Jacob, where are you from?”
Helen clutches the radio close to her chest. She fumbles with the volume dial, turning it up so loud she’s sure that someone across the water could hear.
“Florida,” is all Jacob says. Where they grew up. Where he’s from. She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’ve heard the show a bunch of times, never called in though.”
“Florida, near and dear to my heart, of course,” Danny says. “All right, hit me. Let’s hear your story about the call of the water.”
“Yeah, sure.” Unlike Mari and Nate, her brother’s voice is perfectly crisp. He almost sounds like he’s in the studio with Danny, instead of over the phone. “One time my mom and dad and sister and I took a trip to California. I would have been a teenager and Helen was probably…” He ponders for a moment, doing the math in his head. “I don’t know, six or seven.”
“And this Helen, she’s your sister?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Anyway we did this trip because my dad won tickets to Disneyland.” He lets out his dry, short laugh. “Hah, it’s funny. The big park is right over the hill in Orlando, but they had us flying literally across the country. Whatever. We did the Disney thing and then my folks said they wanted to stay another couple days and go to the beach. Well, it was really my mom. My dad kept saying, ‘Sue, we’ve got the damn beach at home!’” His impression of their father is as flawless as ever. Helen rocks back and forth on the lakeshore.
Danny chuckles. “I can tell you’ve practiced that.”
“I had a lot of immersion in it. Helps,” Jacob says. “So we wound up at the beach. You know, the beaches are really different. The Pacific, over in California, it’s cold. There’s always a sea breeze, cuts into you a little. The water’s freezing even though the sun is warm and the sand is hot. Murky, too. I guess it’s all full of algae and plankton and stuff.”
Helen racks her brain. She remembers going to Disneyland perfectly — the churros, being terrified of Goofy, riding the Matterhorn with Jacob — but for some reason, she can’t recall this trip to the beach.
“I remember we had breakfast burritos that day, and my folks called me and Helen up to the blanket to eat. We were all sitting there looking out over the ocean and listening to the gulls and watching the big military ships drift by, however far out they are. I dunno.
“Well halfway through my parents started fighting over… over I don’t know what. They were at each others’ throats a lot back then.” Helen’s eyes widen, listening to her brother over the radio. “I remember my dad’s face turning bright red, like a balloon, and his big mustache trembling, and he said, ‘That’s it. I’m getting in the car and I’m leaving in fifteen minutes whether you all are with me or not,’ and he stomped off all barefoot through the sand. Just kept trudging up, and I tell you that sand was hot, Danny, but he didn’t even speed up or slow down or anything.”
Helen realizes she’s crying.
“My mom started packing up all the stuff, putting things away in the swim bags. She was doing that quiet crying she always used to do, where the tears just ran down her face but she looked serene. Or maybe that isn’t the right word. Placid. Like someone squeezed the water out of a rock. I went over to her because someone had to and I put my hand on her arm and she just shook me off, so I started to help her put things away, and then I realized Helen wasn’t there. And then I realized I couldn’t see her anywhere.
“So I shouted, ‘Mom! Mom! Where’s Helen?’ But it was like she was in a daze. She looked up and said, ‘She’ll find her way back before we have to go,’ like we were in our neighborhood park or something.” Helen hasn’t heard her brother’s voice so upset in… well, maybe ever. “So I started looking around. The beach was really busy so it was hard to even know where to look. But then I saw her long dark curly hair bobbing up and down in the waves.
“I took off. I never knew I could run that fast. The sand was burning but I was flying, I mean, I never moved like that before or since, Danny. Something sharp sliced my toe open, I’ll never know what. Broken bottle or seashell or something. I hit the water and the cold was such a shock I could barely breathe but I just started swimming. I just remember thanking God that mom put me in those swim lessons and had me on swim team and whatever even though I hated it so much. I breaststroked out like my ass was on fire and I made it to Helen and I grabbed a hold of her and I pulled her to shore, She was starting to go blue. There was another family there — two guys and their kid, and one of them grabbed a hold of her and did CPR and she puked up all the seawater and she started breathing and I just fell back into the surf and started crying. I was sure she was dead.”
Helen is curled up, the radio tucked under her chin. Her body heaves with the weight of her sobbing.
“Eventually I guess my mom snapped out of it because I heard her screaming,” Jacob continues. “She ran down to us and held Helen’s head in her lap and kept screaming if she was okay. In the end she was all right but I’ve — I’ve never been so… I’m sorry, I’m all choked up.”
“Forget it, Jake, it’s The Speakeasy,” Danny says sympathetically.
“Anyway, that’s my story. I haven’t talked to Helen in a long, long time, but I just hope she knows I’m doing okay, and I sure hope she is too. I’m not hurting or anything. I miss her a lot but I just have this feeling I’ll see her again someday.”
“I’m sure you will, Jacob. Like you said, the shores feel different. One’s cold, one’s warm, one’s clear, one’s murky. But all the oceans connect to one another in the end.”
“Yeah, thanks, Danny, that’s right. I appreciate you having me on.”
Helen takes out her phone, tries to dial in, the screen blurring through her tears. She was so certain of the number before, but it’s gone now. She pounds her touch screen furiously, her fingers pressing random buttons over and over and over and over until the number wraps around and then turns into ellipses and she accidentally hits the call button and she’s greeted with three tones and an apology that the number could not be completed as dialed.
“My pleasure, Jake. Thanks for calling in. Well, that’s all there is for us tonight, folks. I was thinking a little about what our new friend Jake just said and it’s funny, isn’t it? The way the waves are eager to carry us out to sea when we shouldn’t be there but push us back to shore when we ought to be. The sea has a life of its own, really. That’s a lot like how everything is, right? A push and a pull, and we’re always going against the current, at least a little. At least until we can’t anymore.
“Anyway, it’s about time I said my goodbyes. The wife will have my head if I’m late for dinner! This has been The Speakeasy with me, Danny Campo, signing off. Please enjoy your one hour of uninterrupted tunes starting….. now.”
The radio briefly crackles and then goes silent. Helen tries flipping the switch off and on. Nothing. She pulls out the batteries and puts them back in. They must be dead.
She sits there on the lakeshore, just thinking, just feeling, all night, until the morning, and when the sun rises and the ospreys take leave of their nests to fish in the water, the lake reflects against the cypresses, and they turn the most beautiful shade of blue.