She thought about Henry. She thought about Amy. There was nothing there, but there had been oncesomething as beautiful as a double rainbow over the beachand that was nice to know, nice to remember. She thought of her father. Soon she would get up, and trudge down to the Grass Shack, and call him. But not yet. Not quite yet. For now it was all right to sit with her feet planted in the sand and her aching arms around her drawn-up knees.
The waves came in. There was no sign of her torn blue shorts or Pickerings red golf shirt. The Gulf had taken them both. Had he drowned? She supposed that was the likeliest thing, but the way he had gone down so suddenly, without so much as a final wave
I think something got him, she said to the deepening air. I suppose I prefer to think that. God knows why.
Because youre human, sweetie, her father said. Only that. And she supposed it was that true and that simple.
In a horror movie, Pickering would make one last stand: either come roaring out of the surf or be waiting for her, dripping but still his old lively self, in the bedroom closet when she got back. But this wasnt a horror movie, it was her life. Her own little life. She would live it, start ing with the long, limping walk back to where there was a house and a key to fit it hidden in a Sucrets box under the old ugly gnome with the faded red hat. She would use it, and she would use the telephone, too. She would call her father. Then she would call the police. Later, she supposed, she would call Henry. She guessed Henry still had a right to know she was all right, although he would not have it always. Or, she guessed, even want to have it.
On the Gulf, three pelicans swooped low, skimming the water, then rose, looking down. She watched them, holding her breath, as they reached a point of perfect equilibrium in the orange air. Her facemercifully she didnt know thiswas that of the child who might have lived to climb trees.
The three birds folded their wings and dove in formation.
Emily applauded, even though it hurt her swollen right wrist, and cried, Yo, pelicans!
Then she wiped her arm across her eyes, pushed back her hair, got to her feet, and began to walk home.
Harveys Dream
Janet turns from the sink and, boom, all at once her husband of nearly thirty years is sitting at the kitchen table in a white T-shirt and a pair of Big Dog boxers, watching her.
More and more often she has found this weekday commodore of Wall Street in just this place and dressed in just this fashion come Saturday morning: slumped at the shoulder and blank in the eye, a white scruff showing on his cheeks, man-tits sagging out the front of his T, hair standing up in back like Alfalfa of the Little Rascals grown old and stupid. Janet and her friend Hannah have frightened each other lately (like little girls telling ghost stories during a sleepover) by swapping Alzheimers tales: who can no longer recognize his wife, who can no longer remember the names of her children.
But she doesnt really believe these silent Saturday-morning appearances have anything to do with early-onset Alzheimers; on any given weekday morning Harvey Stevens is ready and raring to go by six-forty-five, a man of sixty who looks fifty (well, fifty-four) in either of his best suits, and who can still cut a trade, buy on margin, or sell short with the best of them.
No, she thinks, this is merely practicing to be old, and she hates it. Shes afraid that when he retires it will be this way every morning, at least until she gives him a glass of orange juice and asks him (with an increasing impatience she wont be able to help) if he wants cereal or just toast. Shes afraid shell turn from whatever shes doing and see him sitting there in a bar of far too brilliant morning sun, Harvey in the morning, Harvey in his T-shirt and his boxer shorts, legs spread apart so she can view the meagre bulge of his basket (should she care to) and see the yellow calluses on his great toes, which always make her think of Wallace Stevens having on about the Emperor of Ice Cream. Sitting there silent and dopily contemplative instead of ready and raring, psyching himself up for the day. God, she hopes shes wrong. It makes life seem so thin, so stupid somehow. She cant help wondering if this is what they fought through for, raised and married off their three girls for, got past his inevitable middle-aged affair for, worked for, and sometimes (lets face it) grabbed for. If this is where you come out of the deep dark woods, Janet thinks, this this parking lot then why does anyone do it?
But the answer is easy. Because you didnt know. You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered. You kept a scrapbook devoted to the girls, and in it they were still young and still interesting in their possibilities: Trisha, the eldest, wearing a top hat and waving a tinfoil wand over Tim, the cocker spaniel; Jenna, frozen in mid-jump halfway through the lawn sprinkler, her taste for dope, credit cards, and older men still far over the horizon; Stephanie, the youngest, at the county spelling bee, where cantaloupe turned out to be her Waterloo. Somewhere in most of these pictures (usually in the background) were Janet and the man she had married, always smiling, as if it were against the law to do anything else.
Then one day you made the mistake of looking over your shoulder and discovered that the girls were grown and that the man you had struggled to stay married to was sitting with his legs apart, his fish-white legs, staring into a bar of sun, and by God maybe he looked fifty-four in either of his best suits, but sitting there at the kitchen table like that he looked seventy. Hell, seventy-five. He looked like what the goons on The Sopranos called a mope.
She turns back to the sink and sneezes delicately, once, twice, a third time.
How are they this morning? he asks, meaning her sinuses, meaning her allergies. The answer is not very good, but, like a surprising number of bad things, her summer allergies have their sunny side. She no longer has to sleep with him and fight for her share of the covers in the middle of the night; no longer has to listen to the occasional muffled fart as Harvey soldiers ever deeper into sleep. Most nights during the summer she gets six, even seven hours, and thats more than enough. When fall comes and he moves back in from the guest room, it will drop to four, and much of that will be troubled.
One year, she knows, he wont move back in. And although she doesnt tell him soit would hurt his feelings, and she still doesnt like to hurt his feelings; this is what now passes for love between them, at least going from her direction to hisshe will be glad.
She sighs and reaches into the pot of water in the sink. Gropes around in it. Not so bad, she says.
And then, just when she is thinking (and not for the first time) about how this life holds no more surprises, no unplumbed marital depths, he says in a strangely casual voice, Its a good thing you werent sleeping with me last night, Jax. I had a bad dream. I actually screamed myself awake.
Shes startled. How long has it been since he called her Jax instead of Janet or Jan? The last is a nickname she secretly hates. It makes her think of that syrupy-sweet actress on Lassie when she was a kid, the little boy (Timmy, his name was Timmy) always fell down a well or got bitten by a snake or trapped under a rock, and what kind of parents put a kids life in the hands of a fucking collie?
She turns to him again, forgetting the pot with the last egg still in it, the water now long enough off the boil to be lukewarm. He had a bad dream? Harvey? She tries to remember when Harvey has mentioned having had any kind of dream and has no luck. All that comes is a vague memory of their courtship days, Harvey saying something like I dream of you, she herself young enough to think it sweet instead of lame.
You what?
Screamed myself awake, he says. Did you not hear me?
No. Still looking at him. Wondering if hes kidding her. If its some kind of bizarre morning joke. But Harvey is not a joking man. His idea of humor is telling anecdotes at dinner about his Army days. She has heard all of them at least a hundred times.