A Sky for Arcadia (Chapter One)

Clearly that was my angular body lying supine, the long legs I have always thought of as clumsy, now inert. The sodden skirt and blouse were certainly the ones I had put on that morning. Their muted tones, turned muddy by the wetting, made my body look like a water splotch on dry sand.

The skirt clung to me, hiked up around the top of my legs, revealing a majority of inner thigh. If I could have felt anything at all, I suppose it would have been embarrassment.

The earnest young man kissing life back into me, or rather attempting to, was beyond embarrassment.

Barry, my brother the doctor, looked on, his hands jammed into his slacks pockets. He was the image of our father, without the clerical collar, as I remembered him twenty years ago. Like our father, Barry is tall, with the self-possessed, purposeful arrogance professional men often have.

How had he gotten here? I could not remember having talked to my brother or to his wife, Margaret, in weeks. Perhaps Mother had been worried about me and called him. She knew how I loved to slip off and visit the drowned site of my childhood.

“Excuse me, sir.”

One of the young men was holding a clipboard and touching Barry on the shoulder.

Barry shrugged away from the scene and turned to face the man.

“Yes?” His voice was tight with anger.

“Excuse me, sir, but if you know this lady, I would like to get some information.”

“I know her,” Barry said.

The man raised the pen and clipboard to the ready. “Name?”

“Mine or hers?”

“The victim’s, sir.”

“The victim’s name is Mary Anne Brooks Conway.”

“Address?”

Barry continued with a terse recitation of whatever necessary vita linked my body to the paper on the clipboard.