Lisa Gardiner
Black Water (Joyce Carol Oates Edition)Lisa Gardiner is a student at Kelly Kelleher’s school whose earlier suicide attempt, emergency resuscitation, and return to campus become central to Kelly’s understanding of survival. Their relationship is not initially close, but Lisa’s experience remains with Kelly: when Kelly faces mortal danger herself, she recalls both the fact that Lisa lived and her own determination that Lisa should not die. The parallel makes Lisa’s story a measure of life’s value, but Kelly also resists treating one person’s experience as a substitute for another’s.
Identity and Background
Lisa is identified as a girl at Kelly’s school and as one half of a twin pair. Her twin sister is Laura, whom the students at Kelly’s school have never met; Laura attends Concord Academy in Massachusetts. Lisa and Laura grew up together at home in Snyder, New York, and, three years before Lisa’s later crisis at school, the sisters attempted suicide together by taking sleeping pills. The account identifies Lisa’s earlier history as a suicide pact rather than an isolated episode.
Lisa’s connection to Kelly’s school is marked by her absence after a separate attempt to take her life. She swallowed thirty-eight barbiturate tablets and was taken by ambulance to Bronxville General, where doctors pumped her stomach. The emergency treatment saved her. Her absence from classes and the dining hall made the crisis conspicuous to the other girls, who whispered about her afterward.
The Crisis and Its Effect on the School
Kelly is the person who sees Lisa collapse in a bathroom and runs for help to the resident’s suite. Lisa is carried out unconscious, with her mouth open and her tongue convulsing. Kelly presses her knuckles to her mouth as she watches the emergency unfold and thinks of Lisa’s life as something draining away. She wonders whether that life can be restored; it can, and the medical team revives Lisa.
The incident occupies the school community. For a time, the girls talk about little else: Lisa’s collapse, the emergency team rushing upstairs, the stretcher, and the fact that her heart stopped. Their reactions include shock and fascination, but the repeated attention becomes exhausting. Some resent the attention Lisa receives, viewing her as someone who has to be the center of things; the account also shows how the group’s emotional response shifts from alarm to weariness. Lisa’s survival therefore becomes both a dramatic event and a social burden around which the students organize their talk.
Kelly and Lisa
Before the crisis, Kelly and Lisa had not been especially close or confiding. When Lisa later returns for a visit, Kelly deliberately seeks her out and speaks earnestly with her. The change matters: rather than joining the students who have grown tired of the story, Kelly gives Lisa sustained attention and listens to what she says about being a twin.
Lisa argues that there is little difference or purpose between people when one is half of a twin pair. Kelly internally rejects this claim, insisting that she is not Lisa’s sister or twin and is not Lisa herself. Their exchange places an important limit on the meaning Kelly draws from Lisa’s survival: Lisa’s near-death may teach Kelly that a life can be saved, but it cannot make their identities interchangeable. Kelly’s interest in Lisa coexists with a firm refusal to be absorbed into her story.
Recollection During Kelly’s Ordeal
As Kelly is trapped in the sinking Toyota, the earlier school incident returns in her thoughts. She remembers Lisa’s collapse, the ambulance, and the possibility that Lisa had died before the medical team brought her back. In the present crisis, Kelly’s wish that Lisa survive reappears as a plea, and Lisa’s rescue becomes part of the memory through which Kelly confronts her own danger.
The parallel is not a claim that Kelly’s fate must match Lisa’s. Kelly recalls her own promise, made after G-----, that she would never take her life because life is precious. Lisa’s survival gives that conviction a remembered instance, but Kelly’s thoughts also preserve the distinction between them: Lisa is a person who survived her crisis, not a guarantee of what will happen to Kelly. Lisa’s role in the narrative is thus carried by both connection and difference—an earlier life saved, remembered by Kelly as she fights to remain alive herself.
