The weight of water - Anita Shreve [7]
“What’s ‘E to E’ mean?” Billie asks.
“Blackbeard’s real name was Edward, which begins with E. And his wife’s name was Esmerelda, which also begins with E.”
Billie ponders this. Rich tells her that the silver ring belonged to Blackbeard’s fifteenth wife, whom Blackbeard himself murdered. Billie is nearly levitating with excitement and fright.
The boundaries of the Hontvedt house — also known, before the murders, as simply “the red house” — have been marked with stakes. The boundaries delineate an area approximately twenty feet by thirty-six feet. In this small space were two apartments, separated by a doorless wall. The northwest side of the house had two front doors.
After the brief ride back, I step up onto the Morgan from the Zodiac, Rich catching my hand. Thomas and Adaline are sitting opposite one another, on canvas cushions in the cockpit, seawater dripping from their bodies and making puddles on the floor. They have been swimming, Adaline says, and Thomas seems mildly out of breath.
Adaline has her hands up behind her head, wringing out her hair. Her bathing suit is red, two vibrant wisps of fire-engine red on glistening skin. Her stomach, a lovely, flat surface the color of toast, seems that of a young girl. Her thighs are long and wet and have drops of seawater among the light brown hairs.
She twists her hair and smiles at me. Her face is guileless when she smiles. I am trying to reconcile the image of her smile with the frantic, guttural sounds that emanate in the morning from the forward cabin.
I remember these moments not solely for themselves, but for the knowledge that beyond these memories lies an instant in time that cannot be erased. Each image a stepping stone taken in innocence or, if not in innocence, then in a kind of thoughtless oblivion.
Rich goes immediately to Adaline and puts a proprietary hand on the flat of her belly. He kisses her on the cheek. Billie, too, takes a step forward, drawn to beauty as any of us are. I see that Billie will find a reason to drape herself across those long legs. With effort, Thomas keeps his eyes on me and asks about our small trip. I am embarrassed for Thomas, for the extraordinary whiteness of his skin, for his chest, which seems soft. I want to cover him with his blue shirt, which is lying in a puddle.
On March 5, 1873, approximately sixty people lived on all the islands composing the Shoals: the lighthouse keeper’s family on White; workmen building a hotel on Star; two families — the Laightons and the Ingerbretsons — on Appledore (formerly known as Hog); and one family, the Hontvedts, on Smuttynose.
We run the Zodiac into Portsmouth. We are hungry and want lunch, and we don’t have much in the way of provisions. We sit in a restaurant that has a porch and an awning. It seems as close to the water as one can get in Portsmouth, though I think there is not much to look at beyond the tugs and the fishing boats. A sharp gust of wind catches the awning and lifts it for a second so that the poles that anchor it come off the ground as well. The awning tears loose at one corner and spills its wind. The canvas flaps in the breeze.
“The heavens rent themselves,” Thomas says.
Adaline looks up at him and smiles. “Uncovered orbs and souls.”
Thomas seems surprised. “Mullioned waters,” he says.
“Beveled whispers.”
“Shuttered grace.”
“Shackled sunlight.”
I think of Ping-Pong balls hit hard across a table.
Adaline pauses. “Up-rushed sea,” she says.
“Yes,” Thomas answers quietly.
At the restaurant, Billie eats a grilled cheese sandwich, as she almost always does. She is hard to contain in a restaurant, an effervescence that wants to bubble up and pop out of the top of the bottle. I drink a beer called Smuttynose, which seems