a book
The Waterline
Joseph Olshan · 1989 · 307 pages
Death by water haunts Billy Kaplan. He was seven when Mark Rosen drowned, the last to see the two-year-old alive. Now, at 20, he still feels guilty. The Waterline charts the emotional journey which Billy and his parents undertake to arrive at a peaceful coexistence with their past.
"I've tried to imagine what it's like to drown. You thrash around, trying not to breathe, but you have to inhale sometime. Finally you just give up and your chest caves in with a choke that ruptures everything inside you. I used to put butterflies in closed jars with cotton soaked in alcohol. They skittered around until their wings froze and darkened with a stain of chemical death. I remember how your mother laid you on your stomach, water bleeding out of your clothes, how each time she pressed down on your back I was afraid she was killing you. But then your eyes fluttered open, looking far away at heaven."
"I've tried to imagine what it's like to drown. You thrash around, trying not to breathe, but you have to inhale sometime. Finally you just give up and your chest caves in with a choke that ruptures everything inside you. I used to put butterflies in closed jars with cotton soaked in alcohol. They skittered around until their wings froze and darkened with a stain of chemical death. I remember how your mother laid you on your stomach, water bleeding out of your clothes, how each time she pressed down on your back I was afraid she was killing you. But then your eyes fluttered open, looking far away at heaven."
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sourced from public statements
Kate Winslet
“This novel begins with two young boys playing at the edge of a lake, and one drowns. That event influences everything to come for the survivor—his relationships, his fear of love, his failure to trust. I read the book a long time ago, but one thing has stayed with me: the way a trauma in childhood—though the memory is so blurred and disjointed—can affect us deeply without our even realizing it.”↗