Wasn’t it? Why did it make her sick?
And who are you, she asked herself, optima, the all-knowing judge of what is fake and real? Nah, just a casual observer, uncommitted, unspoiled. Pretty much perfect.
Are you going to do this or not?
Socks on, long johns hitched up, she stretched in the light. The blanket fell away from her torso and she drew a sharp breath when the cold hit her bare skin. She pulled the shirt on and swung her legs out of the bed. There’s something about the light here that cleans you out, doesn’t it? It’s the refection off the snow, the gonging whiteness pouring in through the windows like an awkward teenage boy who’s everywhere at once, thrashing around the room in search of something important he’s lost—a guitar pick or a condom that’s slipped between the wall and the dresser. It’s assertive, this light, she thought, insistent and irritating, but you still want it all over you.
Goddamn, she said out loud in greeting to the day, a solvent to break down the noise in her head and start fresh.
Shivering bathroom ablutions, freezing toilet seat, robe, downstairs for coffee. Is she going to do it dressed like this? Yes. While the men are out.
She’d shown Jane and Bo the new series of paintings for the first time a month earlier. Jane had been back to look again, alone, a good sign, and my mother hadn’t mentioned it to either of them since. These things took patience and delicacy. But sometimes a push. Just a nudge. My father’s rant might have helped—by insulting their taste, he might have rattled Jane just a little, just enough to give her something to think about, and if either she or Bo had been suspicious about my mother’s motivations for dragging him out to Montauk for the weekend, he’d taken care of that. She had something to apologize about now, a way into Jane’s inner sanctum.
11.
After emptying his guts over the side of the Boston Whaler, my father found his attitude greatly improved, his body cleansed. The air on his face was rejuvenative. It was almost as if he’d expelled the sense of dread along with the rest of the contents of his stomach. He sat up and slowly got to his feet. Without any commentary, Bo put a rod in his hand, baited the hooks, and pointed at the water. My father took a moment to get the heft of the rod before whipping the tackle in a soaring arc, hitting the water about fifty yards away, prompting Feeney to utter a grunt of approval. It was a nice rod, responsive at the tip, solid against his hip, the fiberglass transmitting the pull of the current, the pull of the weights. He had tugged the rod tip upward to get a feel for the weight of the leader and for the water itself, and the water had pulled back once, more sharply a second time. He hauled back on the rod, and the line went taut, vibrating as it sliced the water.
You’re goddamn kidding me, Feeney said.
My father’s fingers dropped to the reel, and he leaned back to take in some line, dipped the tip, spun the crank a couple of revolutions. Nothing huge on the other end, he thought. Then it dove with furious strength, and he thought for a moment the line might not hold, but he got to the drag in time, let it sprint. When the tension eased, he hauled back, watched the tip bow down against the fish’s next powerful run for the deep, and his frozen fingers fumbled for the drag. He let more line spin out. The tension in the rod relented and he held steady, waiting to see how far the fish could go. The fish had only paused, and now it ran hard, plowing deeper into the cold waters, diving for the seafloor, it seemed, and my father waited. Neither Bo nor Feeney spoke, though they were both watching. The line was fizzing off the reel, and just when he thought he would have to take a chance and lock down the drag, the fish relented. My father pulled, both hands anchored high. He got the rod vertical, dropped the tip, reeled like mad, pulled again.
There you go, Bo said quietly.
He dragged the fish up from the black depths that way, heaving, reeling, heaving, reeling, until it emerged into a depth where the striated sunlight broke across its big yellow eye and something activated within its brain and it went on another run, this time not straight down but at an angle before turning directly at them and shooting beneath the boat, the line going slack, then emitting a twang as it tightened against the hull. My father opened up the drag just in time, surrendering a hundred yards of line in the time it took to stumble over the center console to the starboard side, Bo ducking as the rod came whistling over his head.
Get him up close and I’ll stick the son of a bitch, Feeney said.
My father was weakening, his arms cramping. He hadn’t been at it very long, maybe three minutes, and the fish was on a wild tear now, heading back out, the line trailing out directly behind it, and it was pulling like a tractor. My father once again locked down the drag, trying to break the fish’s will, and he leaned back against the console to rest. There would be no relief for his arms, though, short of releasing the rod and letting it skate across the water. He held on, his fingers frozen, sweat stinging his eyes, the muscles in his forearms searing, until the fish had given up. Life and life and, just like that, death. He reeled a couple of times, tentatively, and wasn’t even sure there was still anything on the other end of the line, so easily did the line glide back through the eyelets and onto the spool. A little jolt confirmed that the fish was there, but it had depleted its stores, and all he had to do was drag the carcass back through the water. He continued to pull back line and just as he felt the fish should be rising through the surface, another convulsion stabbed his arms, and the fish went banging away, a final desperate surge as it fought to loose the hook from its jaw, before breaking the surface of the water with a wild thrashing animosity that my father felt in every fiber of his body. The fish was big, a single flexing muscle, a raw, elegant distillation of strength.
My father was a little mesmerized by the sight of the animal, until then nothing but a dark force beneath the water, in a sense nothing more than an exertion of his imagination, and he recoiled when the single steel tooth of the gaff swung down and pierced the fish’s flank. Feeney gathered the fish on board, its blood running pink onto the deck, and Bo leaned over and cracked it on the head twice with a wooden mallet, and the fight was over.
Nice fish, Bo said.
Big son of a bitch, Feeney said.
They can pull, can’t they? Bo said.
A little bit, my father said.
The fish was sleek, robust, its porcelain belly darkening to virescent gray on the sides, and across its back, mottled greenish yellow. It had a perfect mermaid’s tail. The mouth was rimmed with wicked-looking teeth, and its dorsal fin was an elegant fan that receded in an arc like a schooner sail. It lay there, freezing to the waffle pattern on the deck, while the men stood looking down with their hands on their hips.
That one had only been the start. He’d pulled out another one as big as the first, then an even larger one, while Bo and Feeney had plashed their bait into the water with not even a single strike between them. My father’s recovery had a warming effect on all three of them, and Feeney’s verbal jabs landed differently afterward. He was less solicitous of my father, throwing harder, sharper. Bo was pleased—that he’d caught nothing himself didn’t matter. He was like a grandmother presiding over a groaning Thanksgiving table, delighted by her own cooking and her family’s appetite. For Bo, stoned and focused, it had been a righteous experience to watch the man battle those fish. It relieved him of his embarrassment for my father, whose success as a writer meant nothing to him, and though the next day he wouldn’t be able to quite recall exactly why, the feeling of warmth didn’t entirely disappear, and he was thankful for it. This was the way men won other men over: not by defeating them but by making them witnesses to the triumph of inner resources. My father had risen above his limitations to become, for a moment, a hero.