Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  And she got up the bank, and staggered behind Daniel, who, incredibly, repositioned his hands over the boy’s chest. She caught him around the neck, straining to pull him off, and when that didn’t work, she pulled up and back very hard, and threw him backward to the ground. His eyes rolled back and his head fell to the right.

  Shit. Maybe she’d broken Daniel’s neck. She leaned over the boy and threw him on his side, dug with her fingers, get that shit out of him, get it out! Draped him over, fought to a standing position, hefted him upside down, as best she could, and—

  He was dead.

  She screamed, “911! Emergency, somebody!” But she knew that wouldn’t help. She did everything she could, laid him down and tried to jumpstart his heart, and Daniel came around and started swearing at her.

  Dead from drowning in his own vomit.

  She had watched the kid die, stiffen and struggle and go; but before that, she had watched him spin in a slow, lazy circle, like the wheel of fortune at Caesar’s Palace as it spun around to zero.

  Like the bottle at a teenage party, and you had to kiss the one it pointed to; and it was always the guy you really, really liked, and to your utter shame he groaned when you puckered up, your own small heart hammering wildly out of control.

  And if Donna could have cried—God, if she could have, maybe she’d have been able to let him go.

  That night, in the bathtub, with a hot washcloth over her eyes, listening to Billie Holiday singing the blues in a drunken whiskey voice. Slugging back Scotch with her eyes covered, pretending to daydream about her singing career (what career, Donna?). Replaying last month’s gig at a joint in Santa Monica, where none of the guys on the force would see her. Smoke and a tight dress, black and low, and a rose in her hair; holding back, because there was so much inside, too much …

  No, there wasn’t. She was a big girl, a big, regular girl with a regular girl’s problems. A cop, which was a bit unusual maybe, but not given the way she grew up, Marine Corps pop and four brothers. Tomboy. And maybe a torch singer, when she grew up. A cop who happened to lose somebody. Hell, they all lost people now and then. Glenn had lost a little old lady once, smoke inhalation. Arson.

  The hot rag on her eyes, and that was sweat trickling down her temples and into the tub, because tears weren’t in her vocabulary. Drinking and singing, and feeling so very sorry for Miss Billie Holiday, who’d had a hell of a life and had suffered through it, really suffered. The woman had had no idea how to shut out the pain.

  The pain that people like Donna didn’t have.

  Back at the station house, the guys had made sure she was all right, some ski trip, eh, Osmond? (Her name was Donna Almond; in the time-honored tradition of cops and nicknames, they called her Donny Osmond.) As soon as she had assured them her rock-solid cop cojones were still hard as golf balls, they started in with the Natalie Wood jokes and ghoulish stories about other “floaters” and general CPR horror shows. Topped each other unmercifully. Told her the story of the Tahoe school bus, just in case she hadn’t heard it up there in Squaw Valley.

  Red mittens. The boy’s mother hadn’t made a sound, simply collapsed into her husband’s arms. The child had been deaf. It was likely he hadn’t made a sound, either, when he had fallen in while reaching for something, God knew what. His dog, a beagle named Dottie, was never found. Donna had searched for hours, joined by the paramedics when they got off duty. Perhaps she had fallen in, and he’d been trying to save her.

  Donna didn’t remember the glinting object until much later—saw it when she fell in, some bottle or something—but it seemed unnecessary to amend her report over it.

  While packing, Daniel had called her a cunt and a dyke.

  “Jesus, where would I go?” Donna said again, standing beside Glenn’s white-as-a-charger Mustang. She held her real champagne bottle in her right hand and her suitcase with the left. The plastic bottle was stashed in her oversize purse. Glenn frowned at her and she quickly added, “Say hi to Barb and the little shitheads.”

  “Will do. Over and.” He took a step toward her. She lifted her chin, just enough.

  As he sped away, her throat tightened. She watched him go, and she knew she should let him go. Really. She stood alone, as he took the corners too tight and heated up the rubber. Off to his Disney life, his Disney kids and wife, tra la, and she stood there.

  Alone.

  She swallowed. Well, girl, she thought, here was some grist for the mill. A lady wanted to sing the blues, she had to suffer, feel it way down in her gut, that sorrow, that pain, that …

  No. As his car disappeared, she could sense the walls rising inside her. Thick armored plates closing over, making her mouth twist into a half smile as she murmured, “Blowjob, you drive like an asshole.”

  Cutting it off. Tamping it down.

  Alone. And helpless to do anything …

  No. Never helpless.

  She turned on her heel and started looking for her ship.

  Dr. John Fielder wasn’t sure about this whole deal. He leaned against a dirty, rusted railing of the Robert X. Morris, absently pushing his glasses up his nose as he watched his son, Matt, scrabble along the pitted deck. The Morris was, to put it mildly, a bucket of bolts. Rusty bolts. Bolts he wasn’t sure were riveted together very well. If at all. Would it hold together long enough to get them to Honolulu?

  A tall, muscular man hailed Matt. It was Ramón Diaz, the suave first mate. Matt leaped and bounded over pieces of chain and boxes and joined Diaz. They began to talk, Matt gesticulating wildly.

  Sighing, John looked down at the glossy brochure in his hands. An elderly couple in nautical attire touched champagne glasses as they leaned against a pristine white railing. A Hawaiian sea spread behind them. He looked up at reality: a sailor in filthy dungarees hung over the side, which was spotted with mint-green paint, Rust-Oleum, and rust proper, a Mountain Dew in his fist, and hocked a loogie. Another sailor joined him, pulled out a cigarette, flicked the match into the filthy waters of Long Beach.

  John cocked his head. The superstructure, all seven uncertain stories of it, loomed above him. More mint, more rust, splattered with guano. Radar and masts bristled from it at all angles, so that it looked like an upside-down centipede.

  Another sailor loped past him, calling to the other two. He sported a spectacular handlebar mustache.

  “You seen Chiefy? We gotta check the starboard bilge pump.”

  Chiefy. Bilge. Would they talk like that on the Island Princess? John doubted it. Heck, if it was just him, he’d probably stay on the Morris if only for the sake of adventure. But he had the Mattman to think of.

  As if on cue, Matty whirled around and waved at him. The pale little face was glowing. Christ, he was all mouth and eyes these days. John had hoped he’d fatten up in remission. He ate a lot; damn, he was a bottomless pit. But somehow, his metabolism …

  The cancer …

  John waved back. Smiled brightly as tears sprang to his eyes. How, in all the unfair unfairnesses of life, had his son contracted the very disease for which John was paid inordinate amounts of money to discover a cure? His psychologist had tried to make him understand it was just a rotten coincidence, but John still had the hand-washing compulsion; still worried about touching his boy, breathing on him. Somewhere, in the back of his mind (to be honest, not so far back at all), he thought he’d infected Matty by something he’d brought home from the lab.

  Deeper back, he thought he was being punished, through his son, for giving up his practice with AIDS patients and moving into pure research.

  Couldn’t take it anymore.

  Dear God, couldn’t take this, either. He was terrified that in these five short days, somehow Matty would sicken and die. Waves of guilt washed over him at the thought of taking him away from the safe harbor of the hospital. You’ve got to let him live while he’s alive, Dr. Eling had told him, over and over and over. If you spend every moment afraid that he’s going to die, he may as well be dead. Harsh words, but very
true. He had counseled the families and lovers of his former patients with a litany very like it.

  He watched the boy jogging along, hopping over an open can of something, skirting a jumble of large, crumbling chain.

  “Everything all right, Dr. Fielder?” Mr. Saar, the second mate, paused beside him. He was carrying a clipboard and he looked harried. Fine-trimmed red beard, sunglasses, a snappy white uniform. More brochurelike than the sailors. That was something. “Are you settled in your cabin?”

  John deliberated a moment. Should they bail out? Or was he overreacting? He needed to talk this over with Matty. After all, this trip was for him.

  Because it might be his last …

  Christ, stop it! “I … I’m fine,” John blurted out. He turned his attention to Matt and the first mate. “If he gets in the way, you let me know.”

  Saar nodded, glanced at his watch, and made a notation on his clipboard.

  “Well, we’ll resume loading in about five minutes, sir. It would be fun for him to watch for a while. They’re serving tea for the passengers in the dining room.”

  John raised an eyebrow. The Morris couldn’t be all that bad if it served afternoon tea, could it?

  “Thank you,” he told the second mate, who nodded and ambled toward the trio of sailors. They all rolled from one foot to the other, these seafaring men. As if the boat perpetually rocked. Must be hell on the inner ear.

  “Matt!” he called. “Hey, Mattman! C’mere!”

  Matt didn’t hear him. The boy sauntered along with the first mate, making broad motions with his hands. Looked so cute, in his baggy black shorts and black running shoes and military green T-shirt. His hair was too long for his flat-top; it folded over on the right side like an Elvis pompadour. Should have had it cut. That was another hangup of John’s: hating to trim Matty’s hair, because finally (thank you, God, again, and please, again) Matty had some hair. Chemotherapy was rough on everybody, but roughest on dark-haired nine-year-old boys who liked baseball and heavy metal and paging through their fathers’ gross surgery textbooks.

  Another man joined Matt and the first mate, stepping over the grimy metal lip of a heavy, round door painted the same mint-green. He was an old hippie, with gray hair down to the middle of his back, a braided leather headband, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a stained white apron. He cradled a metal bowl against his chest and stirred the contents with a wooden spoon as he talked. Then he bent down and offered a taste to Matt. Ye gods, he must be the cook.

  Matt tipped back his head: the turned-up nose, the freckles, the long lashes that were Gretchen’s.

  “Matt!” The name came out too frantic. John flushed and tempered his outburst with a smile.

  The trio turned toward him. He motioned Matt to him, feeling his stomach clench as the boy parted from the men and scampered toward him. Dennis the Menace, the Beaver, Matty the Mattman.

  “Hiya,” John said as Matt approached, and held out his arms for a hug. His stomach burned. Matt had (had had) cancer, and his old man had (still had) an ulcer.

  “Oh, Dad.” Matt held back. “C’mon. I’m too old. There’s dudes here.”

  John grabbed his wrists and pulled him against his body. Matt’s T-shirt was damp; the body inside it so damn skinny.

  “Listen, buckwheat, when you’re twenty-nine, you still won’t be too old for hugging.”

  “I’ll never be that old,” Matty shot back, and it took John a second to understand that he wasn’t being serious. That he wasn’t talking about that.

  “Listen,” John said, crouching down so he was at Matt’s level. He made a face. “This boat. It’s kind of older than I thought it would be.”

  “It was in Viet Nam!” Matty announced. His eyes widened. All eyes. No flesh. He looked like a commercial for one of those save-the-starving children funds they advertised on TV. “It was loaded with ammunition so they could blast the gooks!”

  John blinked. “Oh? Did Mr. Diaz tell you that?”

  Matt shook his head. “Cha-cha did.” He frowned impatiently. “You know, the old guy. He’s the cook. He was on it when it was in Viet Nam. Isn’t that on fire?”

  On fire. John was keenly aware of the crow’s-feet around his eyes when he grinned faintly at his little boy. The Haight and the Summer of Love had never seemed so long ago. Isla Vista, too—burn down that Bank of Amerika—if you wanted to talk about fires. Never trust anyone over thirty, hell; and now his kid used the sacred and arcane vocabulary of the newest new generation, and he was stuck in his own time zone like some old geezer, trying to translate, if not keep up.

  “Well, you shouldn’t say gooks. You know about that. But listen, do you like this boat?” He grew serious. “If you want to do something else, we can. We could take another boat to Hawaii. Or we could—”

  “No way! This is neat!” Matt turned to race off.

  John caught the neck of his T-shirt. “Cool your jets, Jack. They’re going to load the deck and they want us out of the way. We can watch from the dining room.”

  “All right! Cha-cha’s making a cake. It’s Mr. Diaz’s birthday.”

  John started to hold Matty’s hand, brushed his shoulder instead. Tea and cakes. Okay, maybe. It wasn’t the brochure, but maybe it was okay.

  In the dining room of her temporary home, the Robert X. Morris, Ruth Hamilton sat on an overstuffed chair and sipped her tea, eavesdropping on the argument two of the other passengers were having on the opposite side of the room, not ten feet away.

  “It’s my vacation, too. And I’ll be damned if I’ll spend it on this wreck.” That was Ms. Elise van Buren-Hadley, as the lady had said it. Hadley, as in, forget to say that and I’ll turn you to stone with a mere gaze.

  Quite possible, Ruth thought, and went on placidly stirring her tea.

  “I mean, really.” The woman wrinkled her nose and moved her shoulders in a gesture of complete and utter distaste. She practically raised her lizard-skin flats off the ground.

  Ruth could understand her disappointment. The Morris was not as advertised, and the dining room was a particular disaster. Small and gloomy, despite two sets of large square windows that framed the profiles of sleek, blond Ms. van Buren-Hadley and her husband, Phil, whose sandy brown hair and short, trimmed beard reminded Ruth of Stephen. The windows were covered with yellowed venetian blinds that muffled the sepia sunbeams of Long Beach, a long-polluted suburb of Los Angeles, and cast the combatants in a drab olive light.

  The furniture felt dirty, and the carpet was an ugly dark green that curled up near the walls, and the three coffee tables had cigarette burns in them. One was an old kidney shape that Ruth thought might have fetched a good price at an auction, if only it had been taken better care of. The other two were standard oak veneer rectangles; motel issue.

  But the best part was the walls. They were papered with blue and green in a sea-kelp pattern, and over this were draped dusty dark blue fishing nets. And in these nets—Ruth had held back a peal of laughter when the sexy first mate had grandly escorted her into the room—dozens of stuffed fish bounded the waves among bright orange starfish and blown-glass bubbles of aquamarine. The taxidermist had not done a very good job: the fish looked furry and moth-eaten, and it seemed their glass eyes cried with humiliation.

  And in an apocalypse of good taste, a culmination of all that seemed to be this ship, the Morris, the entire weepy school swam toward the room’s pièce de résistance: a three-dimensional model of the Morris itself, created out of match-sticks. Under glass, as it were, captured inside an oversize cutout of a bottle that rode plaster waves of Day-Glo turquoise.

  “I kinda like it, honey,” Mr. van Buren said in a slow Southern drawl. He reached for his wife’s hand. With an angry jerk of her head, Ms. van Buren-Hadley crossed her arms. Yuppies. Their clothes must have cost them a fortune. They dripped good living. Ruth’s stomach growled and she eyed the cookie plate wistfully, but didn’t want to spoil the mood. She had a suspicion they’d forgotten she was there, and she didn’t want to remi
nd them in case they got embarrassed and stopped fighting.

  Her hazel eyes twinkled and she took another sip of tea. Wondered if that crazy old cook had washed the pot out within the last decade. That was likely, since the tea tasted like soap.

  She looked down at her gnarled, arthritic fingers, and beyond to her bony feet in her nautical-themed espadrilles with anchors appliquéd on the tops. She had on a pair of navy slacks and a white sailor middy blouse piped in blue trim. Her grand-nephew, Richard, said she was a “hot old dame,” and she did her best, but she was old, damn it. Seventy-one (though she had managed to lie her way onto the freighter by claiming she was sixty-eight; they had an age limit). There were wrinkles all over her face and her lipstick bled into the skin around her mouth; her chin was a turkey wattle, and though she was in love with her frosted blond hair, she was sure she looked ridiculous in it. Still, people were forever telling her how attractive she was, for her age.

  For her age, and that selfish girl across the room had no idea how lucky she was.

  Now, now, she mustn’t get into a dander. Growing old was preferable to the alternative, as she well knew. And as for that, well, fate had handed her a bad hand, but she had to stay upbeat, at least until she talked to Marion Chang.

  She took a breath. Marion could be another charlatan, too. Ever since Ruth’s Oprah appearance, all kinds of people had been contacting her. So to speak. All kinds, with outrageous claims and convincing stories. Marion’s had been the most convincing yet.

  Ruth’s hand shook beneath the saucer. She pressed her lips together and made herself calm down. The tea was the color of brine. It needed more sugar to cut the soapy taste.

  She needed to know about Stephen. She would give anything, do anything, just to know. Even if he was … if it didn’t come out as she hoped.

  “We’ll just cancel the AmEx,” Ms. van Buren-Hadley was saying, clipped, harsh, a foil to her husband’s honey accent.

  Ruth got up noisily and took three steps to the long table laid out with tea and coffee urns, white china plates, and plastic serving trays lined with homemade chocolate chip and sugar cookies. The old guy had made these, too. They probably tasted like scouring powder.