Page 116 of The Deepest Lake

I’m not only valued for my healthy uterus. I’m also a good listener, as I prove now, encouraging her with my silence, so that she can pour out her complaints about the ungrateful participants and staff.

“And the grocery prices! Hans operates like he’s running an Ibiza restaurant instead of a lunch for ten writers.”

Twelve, at least, I think.

“We overbought avocados, more than anyone can possibly eat, and so now we have buckets of black guacamole on our hands. And now we’ll have gallons of your special tea, which you don’t want to drink. The workshoppers can have it instead.”

“Pepper,” I say as a new hope dawns on me. “Black pepper is the missing ingredient. And fennel. Do you have fennel?”

Eva sighs. “I think we do.”

“That’s what settles the stomach. The ginger, the pepper and the fennel.”

“Sounds yummy,” she says, standing to leave.

“It is. Good for fussy travel stomachs too. Let everyone taste. Hans will thank me.”

I feel sick with anticipation, hoping that Eva won’t forget, hoping that Mom will understand, hoping that my desperation hasn’t landed us both in deeper water.

It’s midmorning when she comes again, bringing the improved tea. I taste it with eyes closed, noticing the bite of the ginger and pepper, and the faint licorice aroma of fennel.

I am five years old, sitting up in bed with a tummy ache.

A tear slides down my nose and lands on my lip.

Eva asks, “Is it that good?”

I nod, unable to speak. This is my madeleine moment. But whether it will be the same for anyone else, I have no way of knowing.

I finish the tea and say, “I don’t think I want to see my mother ever again.”

“And why are you mentioning her?”

My throat tightens. Careful, Jules. Only the right words.

“No reason—except to say that I want to move on. I need to live my own life.”

Eva says nothing, though her hand goes to her cheek, rubbing a spot that looks raw and red. I didn’t notice it when she first came in.

I ask, “Did you get hurt?”

“A little. Just a swimming accident. But thank you for asking.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Eva. I care about you. Just like you care about me.”

I notice her eyes getting glassy.

With little to lose, I say, “Remember you once tried to convince me I should just live in Guatemala a year—or Thailand—and write a book? Maybe fiction. I’ve had so much time to think lately. Maybe it’s being pregnant. I’m fertile with ideas.”

She tilts her head, wearing the expression of the writing teacher or the therapist, listening to her patient find her way through a maze of half-formed ideas, toward some truth.

I tell her, “I feel like I could just start over, in another country, with another name.”

I worry that she can see the desperation on my face. Her non-replies thicken the air.

“Do you know what I mean, Eva?” I ask, my voice high and loud.

“Yes,” she says, smiling. “I understand the feeling. I did that as a teenager in England, remember?”

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