Page 66 of The Deepest Lake

Yes, Rose thought about how much easier it would be to disappear. For both of them to disappear. It wasn’t logical. It was just a feeling, of nothing mattering, of wanting this whole mess done with. And maybe it was only chemicals out of whack, but it filled Rose with the deepest shame she’d ever known. She didn’t love her own daughter. Her own baby.

There. She’s written it. Enough. She didn’t try hard with the first three prompts, but this time she has tried to be honest. To remember the pain. To try to find words—stupid words. And they are stupid. Because they fail to capture the fact that things changed. Six months later, everything was different. Six months later, she was madly in love with her daughter, and at home in her own body, again. Why go back?

And then again: If she’d ever been forced to journal this way a year or two after it happened, would the topic of depression have been easier to talk about? If she’d spoken earlier and more openly with Jules, could certain periods of suffering have been avoided?

This hurts too much. It isn’t bringing Jules back. It’s just making Rose realize how many mistakes she made, all along the way, and those moments can never be relived. There is no revision in life. There are only consequences.

“One minute left,” Eva says. “Pens should still be moving.”

Rose looks to her left and notices Rachel also looking up. Not writing.

Rose risks a glance toward the journal in Rachel’s lap. The page is blank except for a single sentence, the handwriting blurred. Rachel’s face is wet. The edge of her forearm is smeared with ink.

Rose whispers into Rachel’s shoulder, “It’s okay. You don’t have to do this.”

Eva, who has been flipping through some printed-out pages, snaps to attention. “I’m sorry? ‘You don’t have to do this?’ Well, if you’re not here to be part of our circle, our community of women, then you don’t.”

She glares at Rose, then softens her expression, pushes away from the stool, and approaches Rachel.

“Are you all right?”

Rachel looks down. “Yes.”

Eva passes her a tissue. “I’m glad. Keep writing.”

After a few more seconds, Eva shouts from the front of the room. “Better!” She’s gathering up the journals, but she’s looking directly at Rose. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

Chef Hans and two Guatemalan women enter the open-air classroom with big wooden trays of freshly baked cookies and two glass pitchers of some kind of home-brewed Mayan tea. Rose looks around for Eva, who has swept out of the classroom, toward the house. Keeping her voice low, Rose asks Pippa, “What did you think about those prompts?”

Pippa brings her hands together in a gesture of prayer. “Two years working on this shitty memoir and I just revealed more in twenty minutes than I’ve dared to reveal in two hundred pages.”

From the row of seats ahead of them, Scarlett says in a quiet voice, “I’d like my journal back.”

“But which one is even yours?” Pippa asks. “We had to write in several of them.”

Scarlett doesn’t turn to face Pippa. “Eva didn’t explain the rules before we started.”

“Well,” Pippa smiles. “Now you know the rules. Anything goes.”

20

JULES

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It’s five o’clock, and the second day’s workshops are finally over. There were tears of sadness and moments of stunned shock and brief upwellings of joy—or at least that pleasure that comes when the pain stops. The lady who was writing about Jesus-and-cats did end up stalking out, as Eva hoped she would. Two hours later, the woman whose son recently killed himself also left. Eva doesn’t mind. They’ve already paid. It makes everything easier.

I noticed the little mood boost that happened each time one of these “Difficults” left. The people who stayed shifted their chairs into closer arrangements. At lunch, it was easier to fit everyone at two tables, instead of three plus overflow on the lawn.

I briefly thought it was my job to warn Eva if workshoppers were having a hard time. Now I know: Eva wants it to be hard. The tension brings down people’s defenses. It opens them up to what she has to say. It knits the remaining group together.

But I don’t want to talk about any of that now. I’m looking for Barbara. If Eva is as sensitive and controlling as Mauricio claims, maybe it’s smarter just to talk to other staffers. One of them must know the code to the safe where my passport is being kept.

Reaching the edge of the bluff, I smell cigarette smoke.