Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

* * *

  By the time they began looking again for the cord they’d slid down, Dexter had long felt the need of more air. Crawling was harder than walking, had left him light-headed and rubber-legged. Holding the rope taut between them, they walked slowly in the direction where Anna believed the vertical line would be. Mercifully, they hit it.

  Dexter waited at the bottom while she ascended. With his hand on the line, he felt her pause partway up to decompress a few minutes; then a jerk as she passed from line to ladder. Then nothing. The line went still in his hand, and Dexter felt only the currents muscling him. Carefully, he turned the air knob on his helmet clockwise just slightly, as the Negro had instructed. He took voluptuous breaths, the pleasure of gorging himself on that hissing air like guzzling cold water in a towering thirst. His light-headedness passed, leaving his senses sharp. He was alone at the bottom of the sea. The extremity of his position mesmerized Dexter. He’d always liked the dark, but night was the only version of it he’d known until now. This was the primeval dark of nightmares. It covered secrets too atrocious to be exposed: drowned children, sunken ships. He let go the line and took a few steps away, imagining himself cut off and alone in this forsaken place. Something long and smooth slid along the envelope of his diving suit—an eel? A fish? He felt the possibility of panic.

  But what visited Dexter instead, as he stood alone in the throttling dark, was his first clear memory in years of Ed Kerrigan. An ironic asymmetrical smile from under the brim of his hat. Always a good hat, an excellent feather. The man knew how to dress. Holding down his hat in the wind as they’d walked along Manhattan Beach. How Dexter had liked him! Kerrigan’s accommodating manner; his quick, unshowy way of getting things done without letting on what it cost. A mick. There had been an understanding between them, Dexter had felt that instinctively. Later he’d wondered: understanding of what?

  Kerrigan’s cipherlike nature had been essential to the job. He could go anywhere, find out anything. Through him, Dexter had tasted freedom from the constraints of time and space. He could appear where he was not supposed to be, listen to what he was not permitted to know. Proximity—that was what Kerrigan had granted him. Omniscience. Invisibility. And Dexter had grown accustomed to it—dependent upon it. He’d been far too comfortable, too greedy for the flow of facts, to consider that access, like all things, had its price.

  In Dexter’s line of work, men who broke the rules egregiously were taken for a ride, as the parlance went. Everyone knew what had happened, and they were rarely mentioned again. Certainly Kerrigan had understood this.

  Then why? Here was the question that had dogged Dexter in the years since his erstwhile employee had sung and paid the price: Why had he done it? Money? Dexter had paid him well—would have paid more, had Kerrigan asked.

  Now, having seen the man’s lowly home, his crippled daughter, Dexter understood the reason even less. Why risk getting snuffed when his family needed him so badly? Why take the chance that someone—the healthy daughter, perhaps—might investigate?

  There were no answers. Just the man, smiling his uneven smile as he looked out at the sea. “Not a ship in sight,” he’d said once, his reticence giving so little away that Dexter couldn’t tell if the news was good or bad. He’d looked out, and it was true: there was not a single ship.

  Dexter seized the cord he’d come down on, looped his right arm and leg around it as the Negro had advised, and opened the air valve to inflate the diving suit. Sure enough, he began to rise as if by magic. For a euphoric moment Dexter felt godlike; he was flying, floating, breathing underwater—all things a human could not do. A sense of blinding comprehension assailed him. Yes, he thought, and then cried it aloud: “Yes!” An essential thing was clear to him at last, one that underlay everything else. He was gaining velocity, the diving suit ballooning uncontrollably as he flew up the rope, forcing his arms rigid so he couldn’t touch the dials on his helmet or even hold the rope any longer. He hardly cared; he was too enthralled. Of course, he thought, distracted from the rocketing speed of his ascent by the need to seal in his mind the crucial thing he’d finally understood.

  His blown-up form shot to the surface fifty feet from the lighter. Marle bellowed at the goons, two of whom ran to the gunwale and began yanking at his lifeline. Bascombe kept his eyes on the compressor gauges, cursing fantastically. A mood of panicked concentration imposed harmony upon their motley ranks, all of them moving as one. Anna descended the ladder, bootless in her dress, and waited as the goons yanked Dexter Styles toward her, facedown and spread-eagled. He looked dead. When he was beside her, she tried to flip him over, intending to open his faceplate, but Marle bellowed for her to leave him.

  “We need to get him on deck,” he said. “If he loses pressure, he’ll sink.”

  It was true—in her fright, she hadn’t been thinking. She helped as best she could to shove his bloated form over the gunwale onto the deck, where two goons caught him under the armpits and two more backed them up. Anna leaped over the ladder and crouched beside him as the men turned him over. Water poured from his diving dress around her feet. She opened his faceplate with shaking hands. His eyes were glassy, wide-open.

  “Can you hear me?” she said.

  He blinked, then grinned. A tidal wave of relief nearly toppled all of them.

  “Did you . . . hold your breath coming up?” she asked, recalling the air embolism.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Your friend the Negro warned me not to.”

   PART SEVEN

  The Sea, the Sea

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  It was only when Dexter returned to his automobile outside the Red Hook boatyard that he had the ease and solitude to revisit his discovery. The Cadillac’s fragrant leather seat received him like a pair of arms, and he settled exhaustedly into its embrace. A trying dispute had followed his “blowup,” pitting him against not just the Naval Yard men and Kerrigan’s daughter but also his own boys and even the skipper. These unlikely bedfellows were united in the belief that he should go back to the bottom and rise again slowly, with stops along the way, so as not to get the bends. Dexter waved them off. He felt fine, no pains anywhere—in fact, he felt damned good, considering he’d muffed the dive and had to be fished out of the harbor like a rag doll by the very men he’d forced into submission earlier. He hardly cared. Behind all of it beat the tattoo of his discovery. He was aware of it through each step of dismantling their voyage, all the way to the end, when he shook hands with Kerrigan’s daughter and her colleagues and noted without rancor that the men met his eye as equals.

  He’d chanced upon his favorite hour: a premonition of dawn without any visible sign of it. He started the car to warm it, then let his mind turn at last to the revelation that had bombarded him during his ascent. But the flash of comprehension, of illumination, was all he could remember.

  Dumb with surprise, Dexter returned to the moment of discovery: rising through the dark water faster, then faster still, the friction of the rope making a hot stripe through the middle of his gloves. Meanwhile, dawn leaked under a rim of Brooklyn sky and a hush fell on the harbor, lighters and tugs and freight-car floats falling briefly silent in the sudden faint light like strangers in an elevator.

  Had he really forgotten?

  He could still get home before sunrise. This wish—to make today ordinary, like any other day—hardened into urgency. He pulled away from the curb and accelerated through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, racing against the sun. The stakes seemed to rise as he drove, until he was convinced that if he could just begin at the usual time, in the usual place, something would have been repaired. Success hinged upon rhythm and timing, like the old game of sidearming pennies under moving streetcars. You had to know exactly when to release the penny to get it through.

  A pointed brightness had gathered above the Flatlands by the time he reached Manhattan Beach. He’d beaten the sun. He was breathing hard, unaccountably relieved as he entered the silence of his home.
He heated the coffee Milda had left, poured himself a cup, and drank it on the porch with the wind in his face, exactly as he’d imagined. The sun rose humbly, scattering weak light over the sea. The dawn minesweepers reminded him of custodians waxing a lobby floor. A procession of ships shouldered past each other beyond Breezy Point. Gulls hung stationary, like kites. All of it felt salubrious, as if his proximity to the sea had rubbed everything—Kerrigan’s daughter, the dive, even his revelation—into insignificance.

  He wondered if Tabby might join him. She’d done little besides mourn and mope since Grady had shipped out nearly three weeks before—a bereaved widow of sixteen. Dexter would have missed his nephew, too, had he not been so relieved to be rid of him.

  He refilled his cup twice and drank coffee until sunlight laid bare his need for sleep. He descended to his sunken bedroom, picturing Harriet dreaming in their bed and longing for her—for his wife specifically—in a way he hadn’t in weeks.

  He found the blackout shades raised in their bedroom. The resulting slash of brightness affronted him after the gentle murk he’d anticipated. He heard running water from behind the bathroom door. Saturday. Why on earth was she up so early?

  He was on the verge of rapping on the door to pose that question when something made him wait. He went to his dressing room, removed his piece and locked it up, released his socks from their garters, and unfastened his cuff links, which he’d worn beneath the diving suit. When the bath taps had been turned off, he called through the door, “You’re up early, darling.”

  “I’ve a bridge game at the club,” she called back. “Tabby’s coming, too.”

  Gently, he turned the doorknob but found it locked. The twins had a habit of bounding into rooms. “Is she awake?” he asked.

  “She spent the night at Lucy’s with some other girls. A Carmen Miranda party.” He could hear her washing. “They make headdresses out of fruit and hang curtain rings from their ears and dance to ‘South American Way.’ As I understand it.”

  This onslaught of bright detail had the same off-putting effect as the sunlight. “I’m surprised she has the spirits for it,” he said at last, through the door. “With Grady gone.”

  “Oh, I think she’s getting over that.”

  He heard her rise from the tub. A few moments later, she opened the bathroom door in her satin coral peignoir, expensive smells lazing in the steam behind her. Dexter had met Carmen Miranda when Down Argentine Way first opened, and she could not hold a candle to his wife. He approached Harriet, aroused by the beads of humidity gathered in her hairline. She brushed past him into her dressing room, closed the door partway, and flung her peignoir over the top. For a second time, Dexter found himself making conversation through a slab of wood. “Since when does Tabby play bridge?” he asked.

  “Felicity’s got her hooked on it.”

  “Felicity.”

  “Booth’s daughter.”

  “Ah.” He lowered himself to the bed in his trousers and shirtsleeves. The sun jabbed his eyes. “You didn’t mention Boo Boo.”

  “I told you days ago. We’re playing a rubber and having lunch, and then I’m driving the girls to the Squibb Building to wrap coats for Bundles for Britain.”

  Something about this litany of plans had the airtight quality of an alibi. Dexter lay back on the bed and waited for Harriet to emerge in the sporting ensemble she usually wore to the club. She appeared in her new “capote” scarf-hat with mink along the face, presumably for the mirror—she wasn’t leaving yet.

  “I’m glad Boo Boo is putting our gasoline to good use,” he said.

  “Booth.”

  “You call him Boo Boo.”

  “I know him better.”

  “And getting to know him better still. Using my gasoline.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk.”

  Dexter sat upright. She was throwing open windows, letting in wind, along with more sunlight. He left the bed and moved close to his wife. He took both her hands in his, interrupting her flurry. “Harriet,” he said. “What can you possibly mean by that?”

  She avoided his eyes. “I need to pick up Tabby.”

  “What are you thinking?” He was holding her hands, waiting for her to meet his eyes. Let it come, he thought, whatever it was she’d guessed; let them put it to rest.

  “I’m thinking that I want a cigarette.”

  “What else?”

  “The car may need gasoline.”

  “What else?”

  “You’re strange today, Dex. You’re making me nervous.” At last she returned his gaze from within her oval of mink.

  “What else?” he asked softly.

  “You’re restless. Unhappy. You’ve been for months.”

  “What else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” she asked, impatient. But she held his gaze.

  “Only if there’s nothing more.”

  “You’re off your game. Father said so, too.” She broke away, took a cigarette from the silver case on her bureau, and placed one between the bright stripes of her lips.

  “Did he,” Dexter said, lighting it with her onyx lighter.

  “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” she said through a stream of smoke. “You drove me to it.”

  “Your father said that?”

  “Promise you won’t tell him.”

  “I won’t.” He sat back down on the bed, trying to manage his extreme disquiet. That the old man had thought along those lines—that was nothing. Dexter had as much as told him so. But the fact that it had been said aloud in Harriet’s presence—discussed—was a horse of a different color. It implied a family conversation of which Dexter had been the topic.

  He breathed Harriet’s smoke, craving one himself. “When?”

  “Just in passing.”

  “Recently?”

  “I don’t remember. Forget it.”

  “Like hell you don’t.”

  From his first meeting with the old man at the hunt club years ago, their communication had been forthright and direct. Under what circumstances should Dexter need to be discussed? He felt injured and wanted his wife not to see it.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” she said, sitting on the bed beside him.

  He scoffed. “To play bridge with Booth?”

  “Tabby can play. I don’t have to.” She’d taken his hand. There was a skittering avoidance about her eyes.

  “You’re nervous,” he said.

  “You used to like going there.”

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “I hate to see your feelings hurt, that’s all.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  He was uncertain what was happening between them—whether it was something important or nothing at all. He would know only when he’d slept.

  He stood and began pulling down shades. Harriet crushed out her cigarette. “I’ll lie down, too,” she said, moving close to him and spreading her long fingers over his chest. He felt their cool slenderness through his shirt. She’d taken off her hat, and her auburn hair fell loose.

  “I thought you had to go.”

  “Tabby won’t mind if I’m late.”

  Her smile had a downward tilt that made it look naughty. How he’d always adored that smile! Dexter breathed the smell of her hair and felt a trickle of distrust. She was a pretty stranger standing too close, making a jittery effort to seduce him. He thought: I will never touch this woman again.

  “You go ahead, baby,” he managed to say warmly. His sudden revulsion for his wife felt dangerous—a poison that would remain inert only until she perceived it.

  He lay with eyes shut and listened for the front door. When he knew she’d gone, he slept a parched, fitful sleep. He woke at noon, as usual, washed, dressed, and readied himself to go to Heels’s place. Although his head ached, he felt saner. What had gone wrong with Harriet, exactly? Nothing so bad, it seemed now.

  As he was taking his coat from the front closet, he sensed, or heard, someone else in the house. “Hello,�
�� he called.

  A faint reply: the twins. It was Saturday. Dexter climbed the stairs to their room and thrust open the door without knocking, moved by a habitual wish to catch his sons unaware. Their startled faces shamed him. Phillip was struggling into a shirt; Dexter glimpsed the gash of his appendix scar and experienced heartbreak so profound that he lurched toward his son with a notion of embracing him. The boy turned wary eyes upon him. “Are we in trouble?”

  “No,” Dexter said. “No. Goodness.”

  He’d been avoiding their bedroom for weeks, protesting the redundant prizes they were bent on winning in pointless contests. But the room had been transformed since his last visit. Now the roller skates, bugles, accordions, and slingshots were nowhere in sight. “Say, what happened to all your loot?”

  “We brought it to Saint Maggie’s,” John-Martin said.

  “For soldiers’ children,” Phillip added.

  Once again, Dexter found himself chasing events that seemed to have run away from him. A vision of the importunate deacon, hands outstretched to receive this windfall, wafted through his mind. “When?”

  The boys consulted each other. “Lately,” John-Martin said.

  “You mean recently?”

  “Recently,” they agreed.

  A narrow table had been introduced between their beds, converting them into a pair of workbenches. John-Martin sat upon his, facing a spread of balsa wood, rubber cement tubes, waxed paper, and Bluejacket instruction pamphlets.

  “Airplanes?” Dexter asked.

  “Why does everyone think that?” John-Martin huffed.

  “Ships,” Phillip explained. “We’ve just begun.” After a pause he added, “Recently.”

  Dexter noticed for the first time that the challenging snap of John-Martin’s tone was exactly offset by the caress of apology in Phillip’s. Was that new? “Why not airplanes?” he asked.

  Both boys stared at him; he’d missed something obvious. “Grady,” they said.

  “We’re going to sea ourselves when we’re sixteen,” John-Martin said with a show of carelessness.