“Is this Dad’s favorite place?” I ask.
“No. It’s mine,” she says.
“Dad said you can’t swim.”
“I am not here to swim. I am here to teach you.” She steps closer, and my blood runs hot. “I grew up on a very simple rule. The Rule of Three.”
“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is mastery,” I say, reciting the rule.
“Yes. Tarson has a hold on your soul, Michael. As long as you are drawn to these woods, you will never amount to anything, do you understand me? You will never be free. This place, the factory, your father’s obsession with these woods, it killed him.”
“He died trying to save people,” I whimper.
“Your father died because he wanted to be a hero,” she says, her face curling in a sneer. “A hero for everyone but you and me. He could’ve come home that day, Michael. He could’ve been our hero, left when they told him to and come home. But still, these woods would’ve claimed him sooner rather than later.” Tears bead on her lashes, and she laces her fingers through mine. “If you are meant to waste your life in this town, I would rather you not suffer it.” She leans forward and stares down at the water; then her gaze slides to me. “I don’t want you to suffer, Michael. I want you to be a master of your own life.”
“What are you saying?” I lean away, but she squeezes my wrist and twists my hand around the wrong way. I yelp, but she doesn’t seem to hear it.
“Three times is mastery. Are you going to be a master of your life, Michael? Are you going to amount to anything outside this town? The way out of Tarson is uphill on all sides. You have to be strong. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes. Pain is the best teacher for those who understand it.”
“Mommy?”
Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, and for one split second, her face softens and her brown eyes glisten with something warm for me.
“This is for you,” she says as she shoves both hands into my chest. I tumble backward, arms pinwheeling; then there is no ground, and the air is rushing up, up, up.
The slap of the water forces the breath from my lungs, and I plunge under. The current floods my mouth and fills my nose. I kick and claw at the water, my body spinning. My shoulder glances off an underwater stone, and I inhale water. I force my eyes open. It does little good, grays and browns sliding by at a dizzying rate.
I strike out blindly in one direction, and my knuckles drag along something solid. I reach forward with both hands, bumbling over roots and stones. At last, I grab hold. Anchoring my hand turns my body into the tail of a whip, and I slam into the bank, nearly losing my hold. I work my feet under me and claw my hands higher. My fingers feel the weightlessness of air, and I push off whatever is underneath me.
My face emerges, and I gasp for air. I grip the twists of roots that jut out from the bank and pull my head and shoulders out of the water. Shivers claim my whole body, and my hands shake so hard that it is difficult to hold on. I can’t tell what side of the river I’m on, and I try to remember if it had been flowing to my left or my right when I was above the water. But Mother is not on the bank. She is in the river downstream, hip deep in the water, the ends of her hair sopping wet, her nightgown see-through and clinging to her sagging body. My father had said that she could not swim, that the river scared her. Is she so angry with me that she is no longer afraid? I could climb this bank and run somewhere—anywhere—but then I could never go home.
I let go and drift toward her. I have to press down on the river with my hands to keep my face above water. The current speeds up, but suddenly my toes drag against the riverbed. Three more seconds pass and I can stand. My mother stays where she is. She will have me walk to her. So I do.
“You are here by accident,” she says.
Snot streams from my nostrils, and my limbs ache with exhaustion.
“Are you going to be a master of your fate, Michael?” she hisses.
Water and tears and mucus pool under my chin and drip off in slimy strings. It takes every ounce of strength I have to stand still in the current, which pummels my back and tugs on my legs, bending my knees. I nod, but I wonder if she can see it through how hard I’m shaking.
“I won’t push you again. You need to jump. Your father said, ‘All things for a reason.’ He believed that things are meant to be a certain way, that we have no control over our lives, that no matter what choices we make, we will live a certain way and we will die a certain way. That’s called Fate. You want to see your father, you want to remember him, this is how. Go back to the place you fell in, and jump, and Fate will save you, or she won’t.”
“Fate is a lady?” I ask, somehow struck by this idea that there is another woman in this river so interested in seeing whether or not I will drown.
“She must be. She might as well have been your father’s mistress.” She glowers, her dark eyes focusing on something other than me for a full second. “You will need to jump two times more. Surviving once more would just be a coincidence. Three times is what, Michael?”
“Mastery.” I can barely hear my own voice.
“If Fate saves you, I will do everything in my power to bring greatness out of you, to make you feel the music. If you are going to leave this town, you must do something or be someone no one else has done or been before. That’s the only way anyone from Tarson can go and stay gone. I will not let one more piece of me die in the shadow of that factory. Get out of the river, Michael. Go find your fate.”
I walk sideways to the bank, keeping her in view until I step onto the muddy shore. I can feel her stare on my back as I pick my way up the ledge and walk to the place where she pushed me in. My toes curl over the edge. My fingers ball to fists. I suck in a breath, seal my lips, close my eyes, and leap.
* * *
I wake in the middle of the night to screaming, but it is not my voice in my ear. I try to throw my legs over my bed and to the floor, but my stomach is a knot and my sides are two bruises. I push myself to stand with my hands and hobble across my room. The screaming has turned to gasping and sobbing, and something heavy crashes to the floor.
I tiptoe down the hall, one shoulder pressed against the wall, and my mother’s room comes into view. I turn on the light. She’s kneeling in the center of her room, her matted hair spilled over her downturned face. Her bedside table is flung on its side and her lamp is broken in a dozen pieces on the floor.
“Michael, turn on the lights! I can’t see.”
“The lights are on, Mother,” I whisper, hanging back in the doorframe.
“They’re not!”
I flip the lights off and then turn them back on, keeping my toes behind the threshold to her room.
“They’re on, Mother.”
She slaps her hands against every surface within reach. She strikes out again and again, and then she waves her arms around, fingers outstretched. She makes contact with the quilt strewn half off her bed and yanks it the rest of the way to the floor. I watch, paralyzed and fascinated, as she balls it in her hands and then pulls at it like she’s preparing dough, and I wonder if she’s dreaming.
Then she screams, a pure, singular note, rising in volume, consistent in clarity and pitch. The air inside me swells, and my heart begins to race. I could run to the piano keys and find that note, I could. It’s just two or three keys to the right of the very middle key. Or is it four?