I didn’t leave in a dramatic way. There was no confrontation, no shattered plates thrown against the wall, and certainly no tear-stained note left on the granite kitchen counter for them to find. Drama requires an audience, and for the last decade of my life, I had been performing for an empty theater.
To understand why I left, you have to understand the water.
It happened two weeks before my departure. The date was August 14th.
The humidity in Illinois was suffocating, a wet blanket that made the air shimmer above the asphalt. My grandson, Evan, twenty-one years old and currently “taking a break” from his third attempt at a college major, had decided to host a gathering on the back deck.
“Grandma,” he had said, not looking up from his phone, “the boat seats are filthy.
Can you wipe them down? The guys are coming over at three.”
He didn’t ask if I was tired. He didn’t ask if my arthritis was flaring up in the damp heat.
He just issued a command, disguised as a question, assuming the hierarchy of the house remained intact: he consumed, and I maintained.
I went down to the dock. The wooden planks were old.
I had asked my son, Richard, to power-wash the algae off them three times that month. “I’ll get to it, Mom,” he had said, pouring himself another scotch.
“Stop nagging.”
I stepped onto the wood with a bucket of soapy water.
It happened in a heartbeat. My flat shoe hit a patch of slick green slime. My feet went out from under me, not gracefully, but with a violent, bone-rattling jerk.
I hit the deck hard—my hip taking the brunt of the impact—and then rolled.
The world turned upside down. The sky was replaced by the dark, murky green of the lake.
The shock of the cold was paralyzing. I sank.
The water filled my nose, burning and foul.
My heavy cardigan, the one I wore to hide my arms, absorbed the water instantly, becoming a lead weight dragging me down into the silt. I kicked. I thrashed.
Panic, sharp and primal, clawed at my throat.
I breached the surface, gasping, spitting out lake water, my hair plastered across my eyes. I looked up at the deck, ten feet above me.
Evan was there. He was standing at the railing with two of his fraternity brothers.
They were holding red plastic cups.
Time seemed to warp. In my mind, I expected the frantic shouts. Oh my god, Grandma!
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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