“Are you okay?”
BJ.’s voice startled me.
“Yeah. I was just looking at these old pictures.” Actually, I hadn’t looked yet, I was just holding them— clutching them so tightly, I suddenly realized, that I was bending the paper.
Around the south side of the island, the surface tension caused by currents of the swiftly rising tide smoothed the water to a glassy sheen and was broken only occasionally by the fins of a large school of tarpon as they rolled in the pass.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my past. You know, how I got here to this place, today. How things might have been different if I’d made other choices.” The school of fish moved closer to our anchorage on the inside of the pass. “My mother always wanted me to be an artist. I wasn’t really all that good, though.”
“Very few of us ever turn out to be what our parents want us to be,” he said. “They try to do the best they can, but it’s not about them in the end. It’s about us.” He put his hand on my shoulder and began massaging the knotted muscles in my neck, trying to knead away the tension. His voice was soothing, but I felt my stomach muscles tightening at his touch. I opened my fingers and looked at the smiling faces in my hands. In just a few years, I would be the same age as my mother when this photo was taken. For the first time, I saw the resemblance that people often remarked upon, the maple-colored skin, the same-size white tank suits, the shoulder-length sun-streaked light brown hair.
She was staring directly at the camera, and I noticed the deep lines at the corners of her eyes, the furrows in her brow. Though the weather in the photo was bright and sunny, in her eyes I saw the dark squall of her painting.
“We have expectations,” he said, “but then we discover life is full of hurts and disappointments and shortcomings.”
I nodded and took a swig from my beer. “Yeah, I’ve had a few of those lately.”
“What makes you so hard on yourself?”
“Me?” I cocked my head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“You’re a smart, funny, talented, beautiful woman. Aside from being a terrible cook, you’ve pretty much got it all.”
A smile touched the corners of my mouth for a little while, but as we sat quietly watching the sky turn violet, the sour taste returned.
Neal looked so damned cocky and happy and pleased with himself in the other photo. We’d made love that morning and made pancakes for breakfast before going ashore and exploring the ruins of an old fort down in the Dry Tortugas. It was funny that I even remembered we’d eaten our last papaya that day, feeding each other spoonfuls of the juicy pink-orange flesh dripping in lime juice.
“Neal saved my life down there, B.J. He didn’t have to come back and put that regulator in my mouth.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“It’s funny in a way. Crystal said he was a romantic, that he would come back for me—and he did. He died because he came back to save me.”
“Yes, I know.” He kissed the side of my head and smoothed back my hair. “And you should be happy for him.”
I turned to face him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Seychelle, do you really think Neal was all that content with who he had become? The Neal we knew back when you first met him was a guy who was struggling with lots of inner demons, but he was trying, really trying, to be good for you. I don’t know all his history—I don’t even know if his history would explain it—but for a while there, with you out of his life, the demons took over. He did things that he could never erase. I think he went a little crazy hiding up there in the Larsens’ house watching you and thinking about all that money out there, with him the only one who knew where it was. Finally, at the end, you gave him a chance to get his senses back, to do an honorable thing.”
I reached over my shoulder and stilled his hands. “So you’re saying I should forgive Neal, is that it?”
He laughed softly and exhaled in a deep sigh. Before he could say anything more, I turned to him.
“Please, don’t say anything for a few minutes. I want to tell you something. Just listen, okay?” I took a deep breath. “The summer when I was eleven, my mother asked me to go to the beach one day,” I began.
When I’d finished, we both sat in the netting, quiet for several long moments. Finally I said, “I was just a little kid.” I squinted at the horizon. “I didn’t know much about who my mother was. These past few weeks I’ve come to see just how dark her bad days must have been. No wonder she couldn’t climb out.” My voice cracked, but I swallowed and licked my lips. I felt like a huge stone was pressing on my chest, preventing my lungs from inflating. Clutching the photos and knowing in my own way that I was speaking directly to them, I said, “I miss her so much.” The school of tarpon had reversed their direction and were moving off, back toward the slick water of the pass. “I forgive ...”
I couldn’t get the rest of it out, but he knew what I meant. I forgave all of us.
The photos fell into the netting when I stood up and clambered out of the bow hammock and dove off the starboard hull. I had to get away, be alone. As though in one of the annual lifeguards’ qualifying races, I swam the crawl stroke with everything I had, all out, feet pumping, arms arcing out of the water and slicing back in with barely a splash. Each breath felt like burning sandpaper in my throat as my head rolled out of the water, gasping out of the corner of my mouth. I was headed out to the pass, to the dark, swift-moving currents, to the blue-hole depths where shadows lurked.
When I could no longer see the bottom and the surface of the water bulged smooth and taut, I kept at it, swimming with every ounce of energy I possessed, and still I stopped making any progress through the pass. The incoming tidal current sweeping through the narrow cut was just too swift. I flailed with all my strength, but I did not move an inch over the bottom. Finally, I took several short quick breaths and dove, angling downward, ears popping, lungs straining.
I opened my eyes and saw the huge silvery silhouettes gliding around me, unafraid, oblivious to my presence. Without a mask and with very little light underwater the enormous fish seemed to appear as if by magic, looming out of the shadows swirling and swimming around me in an underwater ballet. The tarpons’ scales, great round glistening disks, shimmered in the dark water finding and reflecting the last rays of the dying day. With their low-slung jaws and big dark eyes, the huge fish might have looked evil were it not for their total indifference.
I reached out to touch a fish as it passed so close to me, but as if with some unique schooling perception, the fish’s impressive body turned just out of my reach. As he turned, so did the dozens of others around him, and I wondered if it was that primordial cooperation that we’d given up to gain our free will.
My head broke the surface, and I let out a whoop so loud, it startled the egrets nesting in the mangroves on the bayside of the key. The two birds took to the air, bouncing off the tiny elastic limbs of the tree. I floated peacefully, surrendering to the current carrying me back to the boat.
B.J. stood up forward on a pontoon, leaning out over the water, his arms wrapped about the lower shrouds. Even at this distance, silhouetted against the coral-colored sky, his white grin glowed against his dark skin. He lifted an arm in a wave and hollered that dinner was ready. I began to stroke my way back to the boat with a different sort of urgency. All my appetites had returned.
THE END