The weight of water - Anita Shreve [8]
I read in the guidebooks that America was discovered at the Isles of Shoals, on Smuttynose, by vikings.
On Star Island, there is a cemetery known as Beebe. In it are buried the three small daughters of George Beebe who died separately and within a few days of each other in 1863 of diphtheria.
At the restaurant I have a lobster roll. Thomas has fried clams. There is a lull in the conversation, as though the strain of the trip into the harbor in the Zodiac has drained everyone of words. Adaline eats a salad and drinks a glass of water. I notice that her back is straight while she eats. Rich, by contrast, is easily slouched, his legs stretched in front of him. He pushes his chair slightly closer to Adaline’s and begins idly to stroke her arm.
Captain Samuel Haley settled on Smuttynose several years before the American Revolution. While he was building a seawall to connect Malaga and Smuttynose, he turned over a rock and discovered four bars of silver. With this money, he completed the breakwater and built the pier. The breakwater was destroyed in February 1978.
Edward Teach, also known as the pirate Blackbeard, spent his honeymoon with his fifteenth and last wife on the Isles of Shoals in 1720. He is said to have buried his treasure on Smuttynose.
“Don’t tear your napkin.”
Thomas’s voice is ragged, like the bits of paper on the table.
Adaline gently removes the wad from Billie’s fist and picks up the debris around her plate.
“How did you get a name like Billie?” she asks.
“It’s Willemina,” Billie answers, the name spooling off her lips in a pleased and practiced way.
“I named her for my mother,” I say, glancing at Thomas. He drains his wineglass and puts it on the table.
“My mom calls me Billie because Willemina is too old,” she adds.
“Fashioned,” I say.
“I think Willemina is a pretty name,” Adaline says. Her hair is rolled at the sides and caught at the back with a clip. Billie stands on her chair and tilts her head to examine the rolls and the way they seamlessly fold into the nape of Adaline’s neck.
Smuttynose is twenty-eight hundred feet east and west, and a thousand feet north and south. It consists of 27. I acres, almost all of which is rock. The elevation of the island is thirty feet.
Thomas is thin and stretched, and seems, physically, not to have enough leverage in life. I think that Thomas will probably be thin until he dies, stooped perhaps in the way some tall men become as they age. I know that it will be an elegant stoop. I am sure of that.
I wonder if Thomas is as sad as I am when he awakens in the mornings and hears Adaline and Rich in the forward cabin.
We are waiting for the check to come. Billie is standing next to me, coloring on a place mat. “Were you born in Ireland?” I ask Adaline.
“In the south of Ireland.”
The waitress brings the check. Thomas and Rich reach for it, but Thomas, distractedly, lets Rich have it.
“This assignment you’re on must be gruesome for you,” says Adaline. She begins to massage the back of Billie’s neck.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It seems so long ago. Actually, I wish I could get my hands on some old photographs.”
“You seem to have a lot of material,” Thomas says.
“It was foisted upon me,” I say, wondering why my voice contains a defensive note. “Though I must confess I find the accounts of the murders intriguing.”
Adaline reaches up and removes a gold hair clip from the back of her head. Her hair is multihued, a wood grain that curls slightly in the humidity, as does Billie’s. On the boat, Adaline most often wears her hair rolled at the back of her head or at the nape of her neck in intricate knots and coils that can be loosened with a single pin. Today,