The weight of water - Anita Shreve [40]
“Lovely girl,” I say.
“Lovely Mom.”
“Sleep well.”
“Sleep well.”
“See you in the morning.”
“See you in the morning.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“Sweet dreams.”
“Sweet dreams.”
“Love you.”
“Love you.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
I put my lips against her cheek. She reaches up her arms, letting go of the dog, and hugs me tightly.
“I love you, Mom,” she says.
That night, on the damp mattress that serves as a bed, Thomas and I lie facing each other, just a few inches apart. There is enough light so that I can just make out his face. His hair has fallen forward onto his brow, and his eyes seem expressionless — simple dark pools. I have on a nightshirt, a white nightshirt with pink cotton piping. Thomas is still wearing the blue shirt with the thin yellow stripes, and his under shorts.
He reaches up and traces the outline of my mouth with his finger. He grazes my shoulder with the back of his hand. I move slightly toward him. He puts his arm around my waist.
We have a way of making love now, a language of our own, this movement, then that movement, signals, long-practiced, that differ only slightly each time from the times before. His hand sliding on my thigh, my hand reaching down between his legs, a small adjustment to free himself, my palm under his shirt. That night, he slides over me, so that my face is lightly smothered between his chest and his arm.
I freeze.
It is in the cloth, faint but unmistakable, a foreign scent. Not sea air, or lobster, or a sweaty child.
It takes only seconds for a message to pass between two people who have made love a thousand times, two thousand times.
He rolls away from me and lies on his back, his eyes staring at the bulkhead.
I cannot speak. Slowly, I take the air into my lungs and let it out.
Eventually, I become aware of the small twitches in Thomas’s body — an arm, a knee — that tell me that he has fallen asleep.
To get a landscape photograph at night, you need a tripod and decent moonlight. Sometime after midnight, when everyone is asleep on the boat, I take the Zodiac over to Smuttynose. I use the paddle, because I do not want to wake Thomas or Rich with the motor. In the distance, the island is outlined by the moon, which casts a long cone of light onto the water. I beach the Zodiac at the place where Louis Wagner left his dory and retrace the steps he would have taken to the house. I stand in the foundation of the house and replay the murders in my mind. I look out over the harbor and try to imagine a life on the island, at night, in the quiet, and with the constant wind. I take two rolls of Velvia 220, seventy-two shots of Smuttynose in the dark.
21 September 1899
I HAVE BEEN thinking this morning upon the subjects of story-telling and truth, and how it is with the utmost trust that we receive the tales of those who would give them to us.
Not long after our mother had died, and I had recovered from my illness, Karen became, as I have said, the mistress of the house, and Evan and I were sent out to work, me to a neighboring farm, and Evan to sea. This was not such an unusual occurrence, not in that area and in that time.
Our father, having grown older and grieving for the loss of his wife, was going to sea fewer days than he had before and not for long journeys as he had done in the past. Thus he did not have a surplus of fish to sell or to dry. All around us at this time, there were other families in failing circumstances, some far worse off than we were, families in which the father had drowned, and the mother and the eldest son had the responsibility of feeding many young children, and also families whose livelihoods had been reduced by the economic troubles of the region and, indeed, of the entire country at that time, and there were many indigent and homeless persons as a result. By contrast, I remember very few occasions when our family actually had no food in the pantry, although I do recall at least one and perhaps two winters when I had only