Holding the curled rails of the diving ladder, she began taking careful backward steps, finding each rung with the metal tip of her shoe before resting her weight there. Water contracted around her legs with cold energy, suctioning the wrinkles in her jumpsuit pinchingly to her skin. Ice cakes nudged at the dress. Soon the water was at her chest, then lapping the bottom of the faceplate. Anna took a last look up and saw Bascombe and Marle watching her from the ladder. Two more rungs and she was submerged, the green-brown water of Wallabout Bay visible through her four windows. No sound but the hiss of air.
On the last of the ladder’s fourteen rungs, she paused to increase her air supply. Sure enough: the dress inflated slightly, easing the water’s pressure on her legs. She felt for the descending line, swung her left leg around its manila cord, and let it slide through her left glove as she drifted down, the weight of the dress lulling her toward the bottom, the water darkening as she left the surface behind. At last her shoes met the bottom of Wallabout Bay. Anna couldn’t see it: just the wisps of her legs disappearing into dark. She felt a rush of well-being whose source was not instantly clear. Then she realized: the pain of the dress had vanished. The air pressure from within it was just enough to balance the pressure from outside while maintaining negative buoyancy—i.e., holding her down. And the weight that had been so punishing on land now allowed her to stand and walk under thirty feet of water that otherwise would have spat her out like a seed.
There was a single pull on her umbilical cord: Are you all right? She repeated the pull to indicate that she understood and was fine. All is well. She found herself smiling. The air in her nostrils was delicious; even the hiss of its arrival, which Lieutenant Axel had described as “a mosquito you can’t swat,” was welcome and sweet. They’d been told they wouldn’t need to adjust their exhaust valve from the two and a half turns it had been set at, but Anna couldn’t resist tightening the star-shaped nozzle a hair to let more air gather inside the dress. She began just slightly to rise, mud sucking at the bottoms of her shoes as they pulled away. A burst of pleasure broke inside her. This was like flying, like magic—like being inside a dream. She opened the exhaust valve and flushed out the excess air until her feet settled again on the floor of the bay.
A tool bag, perforated with holes that looked comical on land, floated into her grasp by a lanyard attached to the descending line. Inside were hammer, nails, and the five pieces of wood she was expected to hammer together into a box. The challenge would be keeping the wood—and the box itself—from shooting to the surface prematurely. Every diver would be timed, of course. “The clock ticks more loudly underwater,” Lieutenant Axel had warned. “If you have to surface to retrieve your wood, you’ve wasted precious bottom time.”
Anna opened the mouth of the tool bag wide enough to insert a hand. The wood pieces clamored at her wrist, eager to escape, but she managed to remove just two before realizing she’d left hammer and nails inside. She secured the loose pieces under her left arm and felt inside the bag for the hammer. A piece of wood shot from the bag, and in trying to seize it, she released the two from under her arm. She was barely able to block and snatch the three errant pieces before they lofted out of reach. Her heart stammered, and she felt light-headed. Panic, or any exertion underwater, made you exhale more carbon dioxide, which then weakened you when you breathed it back in. Anna returned everything to the bag and closed it. She took a long breath and shut her eyes and immediately felt a new responsiveness in her fingertips, as if they’d suddenly wakened from sleep. Of course. She would keep her eyes closed. Anna loosened the mouth of the bag and let two wood pieces nudge their way into her right hand. With her left, she prised free the hammer and a single nail. She hung the bag on her shoulder and braced the wood pieces at a right angle against the lead blocks of her belt. With a somnolent underwater motion, she hammered the nail until it perforated the soft wood and joined the two slats. Her hands were in charge; she hardly looked. Soon she was hammering the bottom onto the box, wishing it had taken longer to complete. She didn’t want to surface.
Without signaling the tenders, she stowed the box inside the tool bag and tightened her exhaust valve just enough to allow for a sequence of buoyant, floating steps. She felt debris under her shoes, the hidden topography of Wallabout Bay. What exactly was down there? She wished she could kneel and feel it with her hands. Holding up her umbilical cord so as not to get tangled, she turned all the way around, feeling the pressure of tides and currents from the river and the ocean beyond.
Three sharp tugs on her umbilical cord put an end to these antics. Stand by to come up. Her bubbles must have betrayed her; she imagined Bascombe’s annoyance at the sight of them straying from the ladder. His concern would be timing and performance, completing the job before the other team. She looked for the descending line, but the three-inch manila rope had disappeared. She’d hardly moved, it seemed, yet somehow she’d gone far enough for the line to be outside the reach of her extended arms in every direction she walked.
Seven pulls: they’d perceived the problem and were switching to searching signals to guide her. Anna echoed the seven, then received three pulls, which meant turn right. But how could they know which way she was facing? Dutifully, she turned and began to walk, sweeping her arms in hopes of intercepting the line. Her heartbeat squelched in her ears as she imagined the shame of having to be hauled up by her lifeline.
Then it came to her that she could surface without using the descending line at all, simply by adjusting her control and exhaust valves. She let the dress inflate just enough to rise gently, shoes plucking away from the mud. She kept her hands on the two valves, air supply and exhaust, inflating the dress enough to lift her through the brightening water without “blowing up” and flying spread-eagled to the surface.
Her hat broke the water, and daylight poured through her faceplate. The hammerhead crane was in front of her, which meant she was facing away from the barge. By paddling her arms underwater, she swiveled herself around and saw the barge only twenty feet away. She could not swim in the dress, but by pedaling her legs as if she were riding a bicycle, she was able to propel herself slowly forward. Cycling the boots was exhausting; sweat streamed between her breasts, and her faceplate fogged. She knew she should pause and vent her carbon dioxide, but she gave the last of her energy to closing the gap between herself and the ladder. At last she clutched a rail in each glove and let herself submerge again, resting her metal shoes on the lowest rung and trying to catch her breath.
Gasping in the overheated hat, Anna recognized the price of her innovation: she’d no strength left. She tried to climb the ladder, but once her hat was exposed, she had to pause again, reckoning with the weight that five inches at sea level visited upon her spine and shoulders. At last she mustered the energy to drag herself up another rung. She managed three more, bringing the water to her waist, but could go no farther.
Her faceplate jerked open, and Bascombe peered in from above her on the ladder. His face was every bit as grim as she’d expected. “Squat and let water run off the dress,” he told her. “That’ll lighten it.”
Anna gulped cold fresh air through the open faceplate. “I need to . . . go back down,” she panted.
“Don’t tell me that. Squat.”
Anna squatted and felt water being forced off the dress. But the hat and collar were still too heavy.
“Take a step,” Bascombe said, withdrawing to give her room. She managed to get her left shoe onto the next rung, but when she tried to hoist the remainder of her body up the next five inches, her knee buckled and she nearly fell in backward. Bascombe seized her forearms and pinned them, hard, to the ladder rails. Together they absorbed what had almost happened: falling into the water with her faceplate open would have meant plunging straight to the bottom.
“You want Marle and me to pull you up?” Bascombe said. “Fine, we’ll pull you up. And those mugs will say, Good riddance. Send her back home to Mama. Fuck that.” He jabbed his gaze thro
ugh the faceplate into her eyes. His own were very blue, hard as quartz. Anna felt as if she’d never really seen them before. “Find the strength, Kerrigan,” he told her. “Find. The. Strength.”
She saw that he was desperate. “It won’t count against you,” she breathed, “if I can’t.”
He made a disdainful noise. “It won’t touch me,” he said. “Newmann blew up, Savino nailed a hole through the leg of his dress, Fantano’s wood is floating down the river. Morrissey’s on his way up, but I doubt he’s built the box. At this rate, Marle and I are the only ones who’ll pass.”
“I made the box,” Anna panted.
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “All right, then,” he said. “Get up this goddamn ladder and take the credit. Lift your shoe! Good. Now the other. Up. Up.” He was still securing her wrists to the ladder, leaning down from the rungs above her like a bat. “I’ll see you topside,” he said, and sealed her faceplate.
His hectoring worked upon Anna like smelling salts. Or maybe it was having rested. Or breathed fresh air. Whatever the reason, she climbed the ladder. One step, then another. She was stronger than she knew.
Back on the barge, Marle steered her toward the diving bench, and she sank onto it. When Marle opened her faceplate, she saw Lieutenant Axel holding two completed boxes. Everyone paused to listen, Anna and Morrissey still in their helmets.
“We’ve had our share of tribulations this morning,” the lieutenant told the group coyly. “But I’m pleased to say we’ve two boys here who are honest-to-God divers.”
“One is Kerrigan, sir,” Marle shouted over the wind.
Even in her exhaustion, Anna knew she would not forget the look of appalled bewilderment that blighted the lieutenant’s childish face. Shaking his head, he peered at the diving benches.
“No,” he said. “No, no.” And then, “Which one?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
In bruising terms, Lieutenant Axel expelled from the program the three men who had failed their dives in Wallabout Bay. But as there was nowhere for them immediately to go (the barge being surrounded by water), and as their services—as both tenders and flywheel turners on the air compressors—were still required, they remained on board, the lieutenant eyeing them warily as the day progressed. He’d fewer divers than he needed. Of his two irreconcilable wishes—to amass a robust diving program and sack every diver in it—the latter had gained an edge.
When everyone else had dived successfully, the lieutenant grudgingly offered Newmann, Savino, and Fantano a chance to redeem themselves. This time all three managed to assemble their boxes and haul themselves back onto the barge. Celebration crested among the group as they steamed back to the West End Pier. It gathered force as they unloaded diving chests and air compressors and heavy wet diving dresses and carried them back into Building 569.
“We did a good job weeding out the bad apples early,” Lieutenant Axel told the group in subdued approval. “What we’ve left now are the strongest men, the ablest men, for diving. Some of you will fall away yet,” he said, a catch of excitement in his voice. “Accidents, injuries, mishaps—those are inevitable. But for now, congratulations, men.”
His eyes seemed to graze Anna each time he used the word “men,” as if he were conjuring her disappearance. In the lieutenant’s eyes, she was the inconvenient residue of a failed experiment—Anna knew this. Building 569 hadn’t even a ladies’ room. In order for her to use the toilet, Katz or Greer had to clear the men’s room and stand awkward guard outside it. She dreaded the arrival of her monthly. Back in her old shop, the marrieds had groused about marine guards glimpsing their Kotex during inspections of pocketbooks at the Sands Street gate. She’d have liked to see them react to this arrangement!
Her makeshift locker room was a broom closet. As she changed back into her street clothes, she overheard the male divers clowning in their locker room down the hall. A plan was afoot to meet at the Eagle’s Nest. It was Saturday night; tomorrow would be a day off. Anna stayed hidden as they passed her closet in boisterous packs on their way out.
When the building was quiet, she peeked from the closet and saw Marle walking alone toward the exit. Like her, he must have been waiting for the others to go. Anna had an impulse to join him. She was about to step from her closet when she heard Bascombe call from outside: “Say, Marle, you still in there?”
“Still here,” Marle called back, slowing his steps.
“The boys are walking over now. I’ll wait for you.”
Marle hesitated, glancing at his wristwatch. Anna had an uncanny sensation of being inside his mind—feeling hesitant, shy of the awkwardness of joining but eager to be included. Bowing out now, with Bascombe waiting, would look churlish; he might not be invited again. “All right,” Marle said, and moved toward the door with purpose.
Anna heard the crunch of their boots on the brick pier as their voices faded into the faint din of construction noise and boat traffic. Silence reverberated around her, prelude to the streetcar, the covered dish, the empty apartment. The prospect repelled her. All day she’d handled other divers and been handled by them in a way reminiscent of childhood: jostling with other kids, the feel of their breath, their sticky hands, the bready smell of their scalps. Having been nourished by so much proximity, she couldn’t bear to return to her solitude.
She hurried to the inspection building to look for Rose, intending to ask her to supper. If Rose demurred—as she likely would, with little Melvin at home—she might at least invite Anna with her. But she’d missed the shift change, and when she reached the second floor, she found Rose and the other marrieds gone, strangers on their stools.
The supervisor’s door was ajar. Anna knocked, uncertain whether it would be Mr. Voss or the night snapper.
“Come in.”
“Mr. Voss!” she cried.
He’d his coat on, hat in hand. “Miss Kerrigan,” he said, smiling. “What a lovely surprise.”
“I was—I came—” she stammered, trying to account for her presence. “I dove in Wallabout Bay this morning.”
“In the great big suit?”
“Two hundred pounds.”
“Wonderful. Was the lieutenant pleased?”
“Not at all,” she said. “He was hoping I would fail, and it was my pleasure to disappoint him.” The voice was not entirely her own—a return to the bantering rhythm she and Mr. Voss had fallen into before.
“This calls for celebration,” he said. “May I take you to dinner?”
“I’ll need to bathe.” She was caked with dried sweat. Mr. Voss wore a fine gray suit.
“Why don’t I take you home and wait outside while you freshen up.”
Now that he wasn’t her supervisor, Anna saw no harm in being seen with Mr. Voss; the Shipworker routinely carried small items on the weddings of couples employed at the Yard. She walked beside him along Sands Street, able at last to satisfy her curiosity about its uniform shops and tattoo parlors and dusty windows with small signs advertising “rooms.” But her solitude leered at her from behind the bustle like a mastiff at a window. On the streetcar, she kept her eyes on Mr. Voss and avoided looking at the dark.
In her apartment, she ran a bath. Nell had told her about department stores where girls could go after work to bathe and be styled and made up before their dates. The idea of transformation appealed to Anna. She was tired of herself. She rifled through the frocks her mother had left and found an off-the-shoulder strapless dress of sea-green satin. She adjusted the seams before the tub had even filled. Then she scrubbed herself with soap flakes in the hot bath and shaved under her arms. After drying, she powdered her breasts and neck, painted her lips, and rouged her cheekbones with her mother’s cosmetics. She added a string of pearls and diamond drop earrings—all paste, of course, but good from a distance. She found a pair of silver faux-satin gloves that reached her elbows. Lifting the hair from her neck, she pinned it as best she could—it was heavy and shiny for pins—then added a small round hat
to match the dress. When she looked in the kitchen mirror, the glamour girl gazing back at her made her laugh. A disguise! Why hadn’t she thought of this before? She exchanged a wink with her dashing new partner in crime.
Mr. Voss leaned against a wall in the chilly vestibule, reading his evening Tribune. “Miss Kerrigan,” he said when she reached the bottom of the stairs in her mother’s beaded cloak. “I am staggered.”
“And why is that, Mr. Voss?”
“Charlie. Please.”
“Only if you’ll call me Anna.” She felt a niggle of worry; was she certain he didn’t care for her that way?
“I’d been planning to take you to Michael’s, on Flatbush,” he said. “Now I think nothing short of a taxi ride to Manhattan will do.”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.” She’d lapsed into one of the moving-picture voices she and Lillian and Stella liked to use.
They hailed a taxi on Fourth Avenue and soon were crossing the Manhattan Bridge. The East River was a blue-black void, ticks of light suggesting a density of boats. Anna took a long breath. Without the familiar ballast of her loneliness, she felt unmoored, as if she might fall off the bridge into the dark river.
“Tell me something, Charlie,” she said. “Is there a woman at home right now, wondering where you might be?”
He turned to her, serious. “There is no woman waiting for me,” he said. “You have my word.”
“The girls in the office . . .”
“Ah, they love to talk.”
“Could it have hurt you? What they said?”
“Only if it were true.”
She’d been right; they were friends, no more. “Not even a daughter?” she asked. “Waiting at home?”
“I am, so far, childless.”
“A handsome fellow like you, Charlie,” she chided, tumbling back into banter like a bed of feathers. “How can that be?”
“Bad luck, I suppose. Until tonight. Providence has smiled upon me at last.”
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