Her name was Eleanore, but a name like Jean or Jo would have suited her better. She was a lean woman, with short blond hair and narrow blue eyes that would have been at home in a man's face. Eleanore seems like a name for a matronly woman, a woman like my mother was then, plump and soft-eyed. I saw Eleanore only that one time, yet her features are as clear to me now, years later, as the features of people I know well. I can even picture her hands on the oars, her long, tan fingers, fingernails filed straight across.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a story about reservoirs, those special bodies of water that are set aside for drinking water and protected by law. There was a reservoir near the house where I grew up, and there is a reservoir near the house my husband and I have just bought. This reservoir is forbidden to swimmers, boaters, and fishermen, forbidden to everything, except, perhaps, looking. No Trespassing signs are posted all around, but the signs are old and there is a path along the shore made by trespassers before us. The reservoir of my childhood was forbidden to swimmers and picnickers, but licensed fishermen were allowed to cast their lines from the shore, and some were even given permits to keep rowboats there.

I never liked fishing, for itself, but I enjoyed going fishing with my father. Sometimes we cast from a favorite spot on shore; sometimes we borrowed the rowboat of someone he knew from work. Fishing is one of the few things in the world where you can sit and do nothing and nobody bothers you. You don't even have to talk.