She understood then that this was no joke, and she panicked, flailing desperately with her arms and hands, writhing and trying to kick free as she strained every muscle and ounce of will toward the dim light above.
Still, she could not rise.
The white boat with the sunblocker collided with and sank the red plastic boat at the edge of the towel.
Michael looked around again for Bernice but didn’t see her.
He wasn’t alarmed. He picked up the white boat, now the sunblocker bottle again, and tried to remove its lid.
Bernice hung suspended beneath the water, her arms spread wide as if she were about to embrace a lover. The last of the air in her lungs had escaped through her slack mouth and was curving away in a graceful string of bubbles.
The cruel hands had finally released their grip on her ankles, and she slowly began to rise.
Deirdre gripped the tile lip of the pool and easily hoisted herself up and out of the water.
Someone screamed. Several people began to shout.
Deirdre snatched up her towel and started drying herself off.
Then she walked around the hot concrete apron to the other side of the pool to join the growing tide of people streaming around a confused Michael to see what had happened in the deep end.
22
Molly wished David would arrive.
She sat on the sofa hugging Michael to her. He’d stopped crying. At first she was relieved, then his silence began to bother her. She wondered if his young mind had finally grasped what had occurred. But that was impossible, she realized; most adults hadn’t grasped the immensity and banality of death. He lay inertly against her as she held him even tighter.
Molly had finally stopped crying too. The police had brought Michael to the apartment an hour ago, two uniformed officers with sad and respectful expressions. The taller of the two, who wore an inadequate mustache and looked barely out of his teens, told Molly they’d found Bernice’s purse and identification in one of the lockers at Koch Pool, and several people said they thought she’d been with Michael, whom someone noticed seemed to be unattended. When they brought him to this address, Mrs. Esslinger, downstairs, had informed them which apartment Michael lived in.
And the police had told Molly what happened to Bernice.
She cried on the phone when she called David at work to tell him. And she’d cried for a long time afterward. But now the shock, the merciful deadening of the senses, had set in, and her tears had dried as the hard fact of death was assimilated and the grief turned inward.
The door opened and David entered. He carried his suit coat slung twisted almost inside out over his shoulder, and the wind had mussed his hair. His eyes appeared puffy, as if he’d been crying too. Maybe he had, Molly thought. She’d never seen him cry.
He dropped his coat on the chair and came to her, then touched the side of her neck gently.
“You okay now, Mol? You sure Michael’s okay?”
She met his eyes and nodded, then looked away from him. She guessed she was okay. Her eyes were so dry now they burned, and her throat felt constricted.
“Nobody seems to know what happened,” she heard herself say. “Someone said they saw her go off the diving board, and she just never came up.”
David leaned down to kiss Michael, who smiled slightly but didn’t move. “Maybe she hit her head on the bottom of the pool,” he said, straightening.
“No. The police said there wasn’t any sign of that. They think maybe she blacked out and drowned. Or maybe got disoriented underwater.” Molly sighed. “Hell, David, she was a good swimmer. She went to some lake in New Jersey last summer with her mother and an aunt, showed us photos of her diving off a dock. She bragged to us that she’d won a bet by swimming across the lake, remember?”
“I remember,” David said. “How did Michael get home?”
Molly told him.
“Has someone notified Bernice’s mother?”
She nodded. “I told the police that her mother lived in Teaneck, and they said somebody there would talk to her.” She could feel moisture soaking through her blouse from Michael’s tears or saliva. He’d loved Bernice and he’d miss her in whatever way three-year-olds grieved. She’d miss Bernice too. How many friends had Bernice had, with her small family and her temporary jobs? It seemed she had never sunk the kind of roots that would sustain her into middle and old age, as if her life had been predicated on a premature death. There were people like that; you could see early death on them in their childhood photographs, something in their eyes, their stances, their uneasy look of impermanence. As if a part of them knew they were only travelers passing through, their stays briefer than most. It was all so unfair and sad.
Her grief expanded in her, almost choking her, and she began to cry softly. “Goddamn it, David!”
She felt the cushion shift as he sat down beside her. He rested a hand on her thigh. Michael moved against her, and she saw his bare feet dig into David’s stomach down near his crotch. David didn’t seem bothered by the small feet. He raised his hand from her thigh and cupped it around her shoulder, hugging her.
“It happens,” he said. “Stuff like this just happens. It’s shitty, but that’s how the world works.”
A sad laugh that surprised her broke through her sobs. “You sure are a comfort.”
“I guess I’m not much help. This kind of thing throws me. I’m sorry, Mol.”
She reached up and squeezed his hand gripping her shoulder. “It’s okay, David. I’m just all…I don’t know. Things are so screwed up lately.”
Then she began sobbing harder. It made her furious that she couldn’t stop. Within a few minutes she’d set off Michael, who began to wail.
Molly wiped at her eyes and saw David lean back against the sofa. His body slumped and he clenched his eyes shut. He looked haunted and years older.
She tried to get some work done the next day but couldn’t. David had gone to work as usual, but he still looked strained and tired. She doubted if he was getting much accomplished either.
She’d kept Michael home. He slept most of the day. Slept so much, in fact, that she’d become worried and phoned the doctor, who’d told her it was probably Michael’s way of dealing with Bernice’s death. Molly wasn’t to worry about him unless signs of physical illness or prolonged depression appeared. It was difficult to notice signs of depression in someone when they were asleep, she thought. But she didn’t mention that to Michael’s pediatrician.
Molly had sat at her desk, her work spread before her, waiting, but she’d barely touched it. She’d spent most of the day gazing out the window-rather, at the window. At nothing. Not even at the bluebottle fly that buzzed against the pane and crawled along the window frame. Her focus was inward. On grief and mortality.
Julia had agreed to come to the apartment and baby-sit Michael that night, while Molly and David were at the mortuary. This was the only night for visitation. Bernice’s funeral was scheduled for the next morning.
Molly began dressing for the visitation early, before David got home from the agency. She’d taken a long, cool shower, then chosen her simple navy blue dress to wear, with matching shoes. Her only jewelry would be her wedding ring.
David came home and kissed her hello. He acted very subdued and put on his charcoal suit, a white shirt, and gray and maroon tie.
Dressed for mourning, they sat on the sofa in the living room, waiting for Julia. Michael was asleep again. The TV was on CNN, but the sound was little more than a murmur. Neither Molly nor David moved to increase the volume. In near silence they watched a tearful woman interviewed in the rain, then tape of a military plane crash that had occurred last year and been caught with a bystander’s video camera. Molly watched the sleek jet fighter skim low over what looked like a runway, then dip a wing that caught the ground. The plane pinwheeled and disappeared in an orange fireball. The backs of spectators’ heads could be seen as they moved toward the crash site, then the tape went black.