A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [113]
Harrison could remember Jerry’s face, the way he’d tried to see around Harrison to the water. The way Harrison had backed him through the doorway and into the house again.
“I turned and stood in front of Jerry, confronting him,” Harrison said. “I was conscious only of trying to shield Stephen from Jerry’s prying eyes. I don’t know what I said. Have you seen Stephen? I might have asked to throw him off the trail.
“What happened, man? Jerry asked.
“I tossed him a fact or two to mollify him and to get him to go inside the house. It’s fucking freezing, I said. Let’s go in. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it worked. I’d given Jerry enough to go in search of someone else to tell.”
Harrison moved to the chair Nora had left minutes before and sat down. “When I went outside again, Stephen was gone.”
On the bed, Nora was crying.
“I ran down to the beach,” Harrison said. “I yelled Stephen’s name over and over again. But no one could have heard me over that surf. You remember what it was like when you were on that beach—even on a calm day you practically had to shout to be heard. I looked for footprints, but I couldn’t see anything. The tide was coming in, washing whatever might have been there away. I thought Stephen had ditched the pants or washed them out as best he could and then walked back to the dorm. Maybe I’d taken too long with Jerry, and Stephen had gotten fed up.”
Harrison rubbed his eyes.
“I know now that I should have gone screaming into the road, found a house with a light on, and called the police from there. They would have alerted the Coast Guard. Would the Coast Guard have saved him? I don’t know. A man in the water, as you know, is dead in less than thirty minutes.”
He paused.
“I returned to the dorm. He wasn’t in our room. I went up and down the halls, shouting his name. When I couldn’t find him, I went downstairs and told the proctor. I said the last time I’d seen him, he was on the beach.”
There was a long silence in the room.
“The school called the police, who took a spectacularly long twenty-seven minutes to get to Kidd. Irrelevant detail, for by then, of course, it was too late.”
Harrison let out a long sigh.
“I tell myself Stephen couldn’t have suffered more than a few seconds of helpless panic. But who am I to say? And how terrible those few seconds would have been. I imagine that his feet got tangled in his pants and that he couldn’t stand up. Maybe he made it to his knees. A wave came in and knocked him over, and he tumbled in the water and then got carried out with the undertow.”
“Oh God,” Nora said.
“It’s why I’ve never talked about this,” Harrison continued. “That one pathetic detail. I’ve kept that private. I’ve even tried to erase it from my own memory. It’s my last image of my friend, trying to clean himself in the water. I’ve tried to persuade myself I’ve never spoken of it for Stephen’s sake. Not to sully his memory. But you and I both know that’s bullshit.”
Harrison put his head in his hands. Telling the story was a cruel thing to have done to Nora, and for what purpose? To tell the truth? What exactly did that do for a person?
“Did Agnes know?” Nora asked.
“No one knew,” Harrison said.
“We’re all guilty,” Nora said. “That’s what Agnes meant. You. Jerry. Me, more than anyone. I owed it to Stephen to watch out for him.”
“Me, most of all,” Harrison said. “He was my friend. I think about his life—gone. A whole life gone. Twenty-seven years of a life not lived.”
“This is unbearable,” Nora said.
“As you know, his body washed up on Pepperell Island,” Harrison said, “the gruesome detail of a length of rope having risen and wrapped itself around his neck, giving rise to irrelevant rumors of suicide. I never knew anyone less likely to commit suicide than Stephen Otis. Unless you count slow death by alcohol poisoning.”