The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [104]
Linda glances down at her feet and over toward the boardwalk. Lovers are walking arm in arm, and some are descending to the beach. Overcoats will become blankets. In the wind, the streetlamp, on a wire, swings wildly, making the shadows lurch.
“He’s right,” Linda says quietly to Thomas.
He looks at her, a quizzical expression on his face.
“The water’s warmer in October. It’ll feel like a bath on a night like tonight,” she says.
At the home for wayward girls, Linda sometimes slipped out of her room when the nuns were asleep and walked out onto the rocks. There was one rock from which it was safe to dive. She would take off her robe and pajamas and plunge into the surf. She liked being naked, the sense of being free of the nuns.
Beside them, the argument continues. The boy who is sure the water is warm, whose name is Eddie Garrity, gets down on his belly, rolls his sleeves, and extends his arm to the water to test it. He can’t reach. It is, of course, too much trouble to leave the pier, take off his socks and shoes, roll his cuffs, and test it at the shore, as any sensible person would.
“Hey, Eddie, I’ll lower you down you want to test it,” a boy named Donny T. says and laughs hysterically. He means, I’ll lower you down and then let you fall in.
“Screw you,” says Eddie, scrambling to his feet.
“I told you twenty-five,” says Donny T.
Linda listens to the argument. She leaves Thomas’s side and walks to the far end of the pier. With her back to the boys, she takes off her peacoat and head scarf, her sweater and skirt, her shoes and socks. In her slip, she dives into the water.
______
When Linda comes up for air, she can see Thomas kneeling on the pier. He has an overcoat in his hands. Behind Thomas, within the pod of boys, Eddie has his arms wrapped around his chest. He is silent. The girl has gone in for him.
She hitches herself onto the pier, does a quick turn mid-air and sits with her back to Thomas. She is hunched in the cold. Thomas wraps her in the wool overcoat.
“Donny, give me your shirt,” he demands.
There is no sound of protest from Donny T. Within a minute, Linda feels a cotton shirt grazing her shoulder.
She uses the shirt to dry her face and hair. She puts on her sweater and her skirt as best she can with her back to the boys. She lays a hand on Thomas’s shoulder to balance herself as she steps into her shoes. Thomas holds her peacoat open for her, and she slips her arms into it. The boys are absolutely silent.
“The water’s warmer than the air,” Thomas says to them as he and Linda leave the pier.
______
Linda and Thomas have to walk quickly because she is shivering.
“I have a car,” he says. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“No,” she says. “I just live across the way.”
She has an image, which she doesn’t like, of leaving a wet spot on the seat of Thomas’s car. More important, she doesn’t want the cousins asking questions.
______
He walks her across Nantasket Avenue and up Park. Her sweater is scratchy on her arms, and as she walks sea water drips from her slip onto her calves and runs down into her socks.
“Why did you do it?” Thomas asks.
Her teeth are chattering beyond her control. Thomas puts an arm tightly around her to stop the shaking. Watching them, one might think the girl was sick, had perhaps drunk too much, and that the boy was walking her home.
Why has she done it? It’s a valid question. For the theatrics? To prove a point? To overcome the commonness of her name? To cleanse herself?
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully.
Her hair is plastered to her head, all the fuss with the rollers forgotten. She looks her worst, her nose running from the sea water.
Her hair is, and always has been, her one vanity. Normally, it is thick and long, the color running to warm pine. At the home for wayward girls, she sometimes grew it to her waist, though the nuns always made her wear it in braids.
“Well, it was great,” he says, rubbing her arms to keep the circulation going. And then he laughs and shakes his head. “Jesus,” he says, “they’ll be talking