Rita saw the girls were playing in the park again. Virtually every young girl in town must be in there, she thought, as she watched the youngsters across the street gallop about, playing some sort of game which involved one child running up to another and whispering something in her ear. It was such a gift of a day. Summer had indeed delivered on spring’s verdant promises and The Lawn (as the park was known to the townspeople) was almost green enough to shock the eyes, top to bottom, from grass blades to treetops.
Rita smiled and waved now at the children through the picture window at the front of her small house. Ether none could see her from that distance, or none cared to wave back. The woman’s features darkened as she realized the summer day would be so much more beautiful were the country not at war. It would truly be a wonderful day then. If only the town’s husbands and sons were here and not in Europe and all those other theaters of the nearly unimaginable global conflict. How could all that be happening over there when a heavenly day was right outside her front door?
Before she knew what she was doing, the young woman had shot out the front door of her house, crossed the street and was now entering the open iron gate of The Lawn. Though she had not been fortunate enough to have any children yet with Randy, who was now writing her cheering letters from The Philippines, she certainly hoped that darling little beings would grace their home in the near future. If only the dreadful war would end.
She was surprised that her arrival in the park seemed to throw the girls into a tizzy. They had stopped playing their unidentifiable game. Though they were scattered throughout the park, they all stopped at once, as if they were mechanical figures in a clock that had run down. And they all stared intently at her. Their chatter died.
Rita smiled and called out, “Hello, children!” She felt silly. It was an awkward moment. Children, too, value their privacy. Why had she come, she wondered.
But here was Suzie Mills taking her right hand, walking her down the path towards the pond, smiling brightly up at her. Here was the welcome she supposed now she had expected all along.
“Why, hello Suzie! Are you children having fun in the park today?”
“Oh yes, Miss Figgis! Father is overseas and mother is working in a factory. The one where my brother Paulie worked last year. Imagine that! Thank Goodness we have Miss Swan!”
“Miss Swan?” Rita asked with puzzlement.
“Oh yes, Miss Swan is wonderful,” Angela Lucarno chimed in, as she grabbed Rita’s available hand and jointly walked her down the path with Suzie.
“I don’t recall anyone named ‘Miss Swan’ in town. Is she a visitor?”
Both girls laughed at once.
“Oh yes, she is a visitor!” It was Angela. It had sounded fresh, that reply. She always had been a take-charge type of little girl, Rita remembered. Takes after her mother, she smiled inwardly. She realized all of the girls had been overly rambunctious lately. They had much less guidance these days. Though the adults had tried their best, clearly there was some neglect. Wild strains of children might be emerging.
Rita noticed that all of the girls were wearing white. Pristine whites. The effect was a bit uncanny.
“Girls, is there to be a photograph taken today? Here in the park?”
“What a queer thing to say!” Suzie sniped.
“Suzie! Your manners! Miss Swan would not approve,” Angela chided.
“Sorry. No, Miss Figgis. We’re not having our picture taken today.”
Rita noticed that many of the girls were wearing not merely Sunday whites but what appeared to be their communion dresses. How odd. As if Angela had read the woman’s mind, she suddenly offered an unbidden explanation.
“Miss Swan likes us to wear white. Well, certain days. Like today. She receives gifts and she gives them. We always wear white on gift days. Doesn’t that sound nice, Miss Figgis?”
Rita had no idea what the child was talking about. Was there a new church group active in the park?
“How do I meet this Miss Swan?” Rita asked Angela.
“We’re taking you to her now,” the girls said in singsong unison.
The trio had just reached the pond behind the kitchen garden.. This outbuilding was all that remained of the mill superintendent’s mansion whose property this had once been. Indeed, the iron gate through which Rita had just passed had been, many years ago, his perimeter fence. The land had simply been deeded back to the town several generations back. The pond was behind the kitchen garden. It was spiritedly reflecting light. Angela noticed this radiated light before she saw the water itself. A tallness of wild, orange lilies shielded much of the pond from view.
Rita noticed then that all the other girls in white were standing stock-still, and that they were all staring intently at her.
“Where are the boys?” Rita thought to ask then. “I know you don’t play with them, but aren’t they usually in the park, playing one of their games, over there?”
She pointed to where she had seen the boys playing football on so many past days. She realized suddenly it had been quite some time since she had seen the boys there. Perhaps they had started a club somewhere or were off following the railroad tracks. Boys like to do things like that.
“Boys aren’t allowed in the park, anymore. Miss Swan’s rules.”
This voice came from behind her, causing Rita to spin around. It was Julie, her neighbor’s girl. Maybe eight years old. Maybe nine. She had forgotten.
“Hello, Julie. I haven’t seen your mother since she took that new job. She’s working quite a bit, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Julie replied dryly. “Father is fighting in the war. Mother is working very hard. It’s a good thing Miss Swan is here. That’s for sure.”
Rita laughed then. It wasn’t really funny, was it? But she couldn’t help herself. Was it a practical joke the children had conceived. The little devils couldn’t be that clever, could they? And they were all so young.
“But come and meet Miss Swan,” Maureen said now, shooting in and replacing Suzie’s hand with her own. She had done it effortlessly, the way older children always do with younger children.
By now, a large group of girls of diverse ages (but none older than twelve in her estimation) in white had gathered about Rita and shepherded her behind the old, disused summer kitchen with the milky windows and wild vines groping it all over.
Here was the dark pond with the secret warm spring hidden in its center, feeding its life. So much algae floated in there and duckweed was scattered across the top like green living confetti. Here were the tall sedgy plants that surrounded it, the dragonflies skirting the water and the wildflowers savagely blooming without cultivation.
And here was a large black swan turning circles in the center of the pond.
Rita laughed loudly this time, unable to restrain herself.
“Why, this is ‘Miss Swan?’” she chortled in disbelief.
Wherever had it come from? Such an exotic specimen was certainly not native! Had it escaped from a zoo?
The children looked at Rita with expressions of stern disapprobation.
“What’s so funny?” Maureen asked.
“Well, I thought when you said ‘Miss Swan,’ that I would be meeting a….”
And that’s when she saw it. Before she could even finish her sentence, she saw the small arm floating there in the center of the pond. It was a child! Her senses all sounded their alarms at once. The swan was swimming with peaceful aplomb around the body in wide concentric circles.
Rita screamed, “Go get help!” as she charged into the pond, first running and then trudging through the water, through thick sludge that lay at the bottom, to reach the child. The water was not very deep and she only lost her footing once when she stepped into a hole or unevenness.
“Miss Swan” removed herself from this focus of furious activity. She shook her great wings and retreated to one corner of the pond, where she glared with seeming disapproval at the rescue underway. The fire opals of her eyes dartled at the children. The children began to mimic Miss Swan, pretending they had wings and flapping them. All of them did it. Rita never saw.
As soon as she had pulled the child to her, Rita felt a second shiv of horror go through her. She knew him. The drowned boy. It was Clyde Geary. She knew his entire family.
She was shaking and crying now, and when she turned back to the bank, holding little Clyde to her breast, she saw the girls simply stood there, a wall of white,staring blankly at her.
“Who went for help?” she screamed as she pulled the boy up onto the grass. She listened for his heartbeat. There was nothing. But she had already begun the physical efforts to revive him.
“No one did,” Sally said coolly.
“I told you to go get help!” She was furious now. Clearly these girls had been running wild all summer. They had no respect for adult authority and no understanding of the gravity of this situation.
But she knew it was pointless. He was so cold. Even on a hot summer day, he was cold. Even floating in the jets from the warm spring under the pond, the secret at its heart, he was cold. She gave herself a pointless little hope that the boy would somehow come around. Her efforts were futile. She could feel he was sodden. The body was sodden. She knew his lungs were full of pond water and, probably, duckweed. Why had that image come to her?
The girls in white began to scatter. They ran home to their empty, furnished houses. Because that is what Rita had shouted at them to do. She wanted them to stop staring. Above everything else, that is what she wanted.
When she looked back over her shoulder, the pond was empty.
Rita thought about Randy She wished he were there at that moment. Now more than ever she had wished it before. She cried when she realized she didn’t have the strength to carry the boy. It was all so pitiful. So she left the park. She left the boy lying there, fully clothed, on the sunny summer grass. Next to the pond. The pond that was radiant with afternoon light. She went for useless help. She forced herself to run, though she knew it was a joke.
* * * * * * * *
As the years passed, Rita talked of that day less and less.
She had tried to explain it to herself. She had tried to have others explain it to her. It all came to naught. She had even tried to talk to some of the girls who had been there that day, but they all seemed terribly embarrassed and confused by what had happened. They had all insisted that they were blameless. They had no idea how Clyde had come to drown in the pond wearing all his clothes, even his shoes. There had been no bathing suit on the boy. When she asked the children about “Miss Swan,” they had either forgotten her altogether or else they were all perfect little liars. One of them had told her with a straight face, “I vaguely remember that name as a game we once played, but I can’t really remember the rules.”
Occasionally, she would spy one of the girls, years later, on the street or while out shopping somewhere, and try to corner her. But she got no further in her understanding of that day. All of the girls were blank or innocent or the most deceitful creatures on earth.
And so that was how the matter darkened in Rita’s memory and in the memory of the town.
The black swan had been the subject of a search undertaken shortly after the drowning, but it came to nothing. Some had even the audacity to suggest that Rita had hallucinated the bird or had mistaken one species (“perhaps an egret?”) for another.
Much later, the pond was filled in for a new development project and the park became a shopping mall. Rita was sauntering through there one afternoon. By then, she was an octogenarian. She found herself staring at the fountain in the center of the mall, unable to look away.
By then her memory was going, and before she could explain what had occurred that immemorial day to another generation, her grandchild took her by the hand to lead her away from it. She wanted to lead her away from the mall’s artificial pond and whatever fascination it was that it held. Whatever it was which had darkened the poor old woman’s features for a few moments.
